Some days ago i was asked to do a character for the Comicsgate controversy, and i did Connie Brooks. People liked her so i did a little gathering of ideas and votes for her Alias name and powers. He “super” name was decided as “Meta Maiden” and her powers were tied on “making peoples thoughts visible” and “Temporarilly getting powers she reads in comics”. Since those are two powers, and the later could be OP, my take is as follows:
She is normally just a girl with the power of making people’s superficial thoughts visible, and she uses it to piss of people or blackmail them, but then she can read a comic and transform into the costume kinda like Green lantern does, then she stops having the mind reading power and is instead substituted by the power she read about. This power would last a small ammount of time (maybe about 30 minutes) , and then the transformation would stop. For this power i think it could work something similar to Re: Creators; that the power comes from readers acceptance, meaning that if a lot of people have read, for example, superman, their collective minds would give power to her impersonation, but if someone just draws a few pages of a super op character, it would not work since only a handfull of people know it and most people would not accept a stupid op character for no reason. This is kind of a way to express the Comicsgate concept of not accepting stupid Mary sue diverse characters who have no meaning beyond injecting politics: Only real characters that people like would power her.
Also since the power really comes from peoples minds, when she uses it with a character’s powers, she “drains” readers for a while, meaning she can’t transform into the same character again until some long time passes and readers “recharge” by reading new comics of that character. That way she can’t just spam the most op one, and have to resort to picking the best one each situation. Some characters in fact may have so little readers (or be so old) that she can’t repeat them in years, or never.
I like the name Meta Maiden. The limits on her powers sound like good ones. They can cause her problems when she is not being careful.
Note: Maiden and not Maid.
In English both maiden and maid are the same word which means girl. Girl is a young women, frequently pretty and unmarried. Maid is also the job title of many female servants. Calling a black character a servant is likely to produce a considerable amount of politically correct backlash. Since #ComicGate is involved in a different fight ‘Maiden’ the archaic and formal version of the word was proposed.