on being matt murdoch

[burntcopper]

pondering about re-visiting one of my old fic 'verses. originally, standard superhero girl meets boy - they like each other in masks, meet at party, it's bloody obvious who they are, so there was no barrier to getting together in RL.

Have since been on a jag of listening to the Zorro ST. (this version is based on the Isabel Allende book, which I really have to get around to reading...) Which has the old-skool Lois and Clark device where she likes Zorro but thinks Diego is an useless prat. And now pondering if I could do that and how feasible it would be. I have a couple of factors on my side here :

Girl has been blind in RL due to measles since she was tiny. (parents into homotherapy etc and didn't get her vaccinated.) When her powers kicked in they were spectrum-related, so she can 'see' heat and uv and so on, so she can see shapes but not colour, and can figure out dark and light due to the heat refraction and intellectually knows that the cooler light on traffic lights is the 'green' one. Just not what you'd call 'normal' vision. Think Daredevil. Current generation of masks is new enough on the scene that no-one's figured out she's blind aside from her sister.

So. Er. Taking into account Matt Murdoch, how feasible would it be for Boy to not figure out that the superhero he thinks is an arrogant bitch is the blind girl he really likes who keeps blowing him off? (she thinks he's an arrogant jerk no matter what) How plausible a distraction would the blind factor be when you know the person in both personas?

Comments

[sgrio.livejournal.com]

I imagine it would be a pretty big mental hurdle for Boy. I can see it working!

[cidercupcakes.livejournal.com]

A. This sounds delightful. Actually, the description kind of made me think a twist on the Cinderella story at first, with the hidden identities -- which is a common enough theme, but since you've also written that one, I thought you'd get a kick out of its being mentioned.

B. I think that would depend on Boy more than anything else. Is he a Batman, detective type? Then it's going to be more implausible for him not to figure it out pretty quickly, unless the joke is that he's not a very good detective. Is he more of the smasher type, who doesn't rely so much on his intellect? Then it's easier to believe he wouldn't make the connection between Superhero A and Girl B, especially if no one knows that Superhero A is blind, while he does know that Girl B is (maybe he thinks Superhero A is the sister initially, if they look similar?). And there's a huge potential for comedy there, in that she's going to be trying not to give away that she has a kind of vision after all. Basically I think you can definitely set it up so he doesn't figure it out until you want him to, you just need to be careful how you set up Boy. And Girl, for that matter.

C. The more I think about it, the more delightful this sounds.

[genarti]

Also, how hard does the girl work at keeping her personas separate? Does she change her voice, work to have a significantly different demeanor and body language, wear clothing that hides her physical fitness, etc? Or is it just the presence or absence of a mask and spandex? If she's good at that kind of subtle subterfuge, it'd make it easier for Boy to plausibly miss the cues, and just think "Gosh, there's something familiar about her... I dunno, maybe we've met before somewhere? Maybe she just resembles somebody I can't quite place."