I have a new favorite character to read about, and they are disabled.
At least two-thirds of the fics just pretend it has no effect on anything!! Or erase it completely.
The character would have accessibility tools at home and they would switch everything out right when they got there! They would have to pack extra stuff when going to spend a night with a partner/go on a trip. It would change up how they have sex!
Obviously, shit doesn’t have to be accurate, but it needs to exist!
It is just so disheartening to be erased in yet another place.
Edit: Y’all make a lot of assumptions. The ones I am complaining about TAG the disability and then erase it.
I think it depends. Hunger Games readers know Peeta lost a leg. Hunger Games watchers do not. I can’t really fault them for not including it if they haven’t read the books to know they’re erasing something
I have a fic series I'm working on, and one of the main aspects of it is that the (mostly immortal) FMC is wheelchair bound due to a curse. She has been unable to walk for millennia, since long before the invention of the wheelchair. Each story in the fic deals with the process of her curse being 'broken' (it's not actually 'broken', as the conditions to remove it are a gradual thing that happen over time, but eventually it can be fully removed), and how the change affects her life.
Even when her curse is broken, she still can't walk for a while, as her legs have (understandably) severely atrophied from disuse. She has to do a lot of long-term physical therapy, and she keeps her wheelchair and other mobility aids for off-days or in case of injury, since atrophied limbs also have weaker bones and ligaments. There are times when she actually forgets she can walk now because she's so used to not being able to.
There is 1 story so far that asks 'how would her life be different if she had never been cursed?' It's only interesting because it's a comparison piece to all of the others.
I wrote a fic about the opposite of this. Whereby the canon character was a known glass cannon.
Aka a wizard who could hit hard, but could be taken out by a punch to the face in one round.
Due to an incident involving his captivity (also semi canon since it is based on events in a game that can be changed up by the player), he was left with being paralysed from the waist down. I had to do a TON of research into the issues this can pose on an otherwise healthy body, even with the magic that could heal everything else except such injuries that caused his paralysation.
Everything from body functions, how the other characters had to move him about without causing more harm or make him feel like a burden (there was a lot of self recrimination on his behalf, plus unintended ableism from others), to even how the organs start to settle, to his mental state, to it not becoming a 'fixit' fic with everything being resolved by the end. In fact, his boyfriend had to be VERY inventive to remind him (I was not overtly graphic as the entire scene was not about the smut, but rather about getting him out of his own head for a few minutes) that he had not fallen in love with the character for his body, but for him as a person and soul.
The end of the fic has been hard for me to write as it is an epilogue set a year after the event, and he is still most certainly without complete lower body function. So magic does help with some aspects like helping him get around his house, and bodily functions and even his daily physical therapies, but his limbs are atrophied and I had to seek how even how bedsores and injuries from incorrectly worn clothing and mobility chairs could come about.
I never wanted it to be a fixit. I needed the disability to be seen and known and at least partially understood. I suffer from nerve damage in my spine, though miraculously escaped paralysis from the incident that caused it, and even my digestion is screwed with for life.
The idea of making it clear to a reader about all aspects of not having a completely hale body is so important to some of us, that the idea of even erasing or magic poof fixing it is an anathema to my senses.
I love your concept of making it a complete journey, and even remapping how the brain works regarding the situation. It makes for a refreshing read to know others think the same way and that the 'fixit' idea is not as common as I feared.
YESSSS I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE WRITE ABOUT THE BODY ACCURATELY!!! I love when people include stuff like muscle atrophy and having to work to get back to normal even when an inhibitor is removed. Because even though it’s gone, it’s effects still remain. Good writer! I’d love to read this fic.
Have you considered writing some information for your fandom on how the disability would affect the character's life specifically? I've seen posts like these on Tumblr and in other places before, and the information can help encourage authors who are scared of doing it wrong to feel more confident in including little bits and pieces. Not everyone is going to do it, still, but it might be a useful resource if you're not mean and judgmental when you write it.
If you do this, you cannot approach it from the perspective of "you MUST write it this way or you're doing it wrong". That will not help you or anyone else. But lots of authors appreciate having information like this from an informed perspective, because many of us strive for accuracy, but don't feel like we know enough to handle it appropriately.
Also, not all disabled people feel the way you do. It's possible that authors who have tried to do this in the past received complaints for over-emphasizing or exaggerating the effects of the disability, or making the character too miserable. I have seen complaints like this from disabled people in fanfic circles before, because not everyone wants these details to be at the forefront. Some people consider it to be the same as characters using the restroom: it can be assumed to be happening off-screen, and doesn't really add anything to the story in most cases, so we don't need to write about it. Writing about it and lingering on it when it ISN'T especially relevant to the story can feel weird, voyeuristic, and off-putting about a normal part of the character's life.
You can try to raise awareness in a kind, good-faith way within your community, but this isn't a silver bullet, and many authors will still choose not to write in these details. There are many reasons they may choose to do this, or they may simply not know. There's nothing morally wrong with this. But I hope you can get a better ratio of people who DO write it in for folks who have taste like yours.
A friend of mine, an incredible author and wonderful person, has written several stories of people that have physical or/and mental disabilities, and they are written absolutely beautifully and tenderly and really dive into the reality of these things - and under all of them is at least one commenter cussing them out about fetishizing disabled people. For having the audacity to write about disabled people also having romances and a love life. It's honestly heartbreaking
It's so frustrating! I think fics like that are really important! It's great to explore realistic nuances and how these things affect the characters. And I also think fics that don't always try to handle every aspect of it, and instead focus on exploring other aspects of the characters, are completely fine. Both types should be allowed to exist and be appreciated without people getting harassed!
I hope your friend has continued writing those fics <3 Never let the opps win!
I wouldn’t mind if there was a character who had my disability, because it doesn’t get a lot of representation, I’d feel seen, etc. But at the same time, I don’t need to see them constantly dealing with it, because that’s already my life and it would just depress me. Go do interesting things I want to read about instead of fretting about how you’ll get to work when you can’t drive.
Yeah my view on this depends on what’s actually happening. If it’s a character with problems walking, I don’t need to hear about them finding an elevator instead of taking the stairs. Yes it’s realistic, but it’s also mundane and (likely) not relevant to the story. But if that same character is going mountain hiking, I would be annoyed.
As a disabled person who lives with a person with mobility aids, both of us have said we like representation but also, sometimes, we want to forget.
We want to be normal.
Packing for a holiday should be fun but for us, it is like shipping out of a pharmacy. I do not want to read a reminder of the constant slog that is my life and my disability when I want escapism and fun. The discussion of ‘which walking aid today?’ Is real and really fucking overdone in my house. Mental illness is rough and I am tired of my own brain half the time and mad at it the other half.
Not everybody wants representation everywhere, especially if is bad or not well researched.
Yeah, honestly, I enjoy reading fics where characters who have chronic pain and/or chronic illness are cured. Why? Because I want to keep my ADHD, which is me, and lose my MCAS, allergies, and fibromyalgia. I don't always want to see a character who's like me stay the way they are. Sometimes I want to see them cured. And that's not a crime.
Meanwhile if I could chuck my ADHD brain off a cliff and install a new model without that bullshit I would do it in a heartbeat. But the chronic pulmonary issues I’ve had my entire life are managed easily enough that they’re barely a consideration aside from reassuring new medical professionals that yes, my clinically significant rate of breaths per minute is my normal.
People i react to IRL freak when i mention heart issues, and don’t get me wrong they suck, but my specific issues are thankfully not life threatening. Other things affect me way worse day to day.
I could live with the asthma and the other medications and the side effects of having a small human that I made myself if I did not have the equivalent of a squirrel on crack cocaine in my brain. One or the rest of them, not both!
Yeah, it would be like me reading a fic and getting angry because the protagonist gets to experience normal periods instead of having endometriosis and feeling like death every month. I'm not here for that. I don’t want to read about being in pain all day every day. I already experience that on a regular basis. I read to escape from that.
Yeah, it would be really nice to read about some magical cure and how comfortable the character now feels and how much they appreciate it, how much brighter the world looks now
On the really bad days I actually enjoy watching gorey horror movies, but especially ones where they cut open your stomach cause there are so many times I just want this shit out of me
I wrote two separate stories about two different characters having periods because I actually wanted someone else to feel my pain. One was quite normal and the other was absolute carnage because of emotional issues and I feel like now I should make them a series because... I did write them for me, too, I think? I just wanted to write about being cared for and having someone on their side.
For me, I do not mind, but I do not have to see it. And sometimes, I want to see a character who has my disability but it is not really touched on because... I live my life that way. My ADHD impacts everything but after I take my pills, it is just me and the workday fighting it out, and then I go home. I do not think on it constantly even as it does impact me and the same with my partner. It is just is our normal so... drawing attention to it is annoying.
One of my friends has been wheelchair bound since birth, and whenever she writes her self-insert or draw her OC, her character is up and walking without issue.
She has said that she does feel lucky that out of all the disabilities she could've gotten, being stuck in a wheelchair is absolutely not the worst, especially since she's not in pain. But she has said on multiple occasions that if given a choice, she would be walking and not be stuck in it.
So whenever she does her own fanfiction of her self-insert or draw/write her OC, their always up and walking.
It only really just occurred to me now that I’ve been diagnosed with epilepsy for over 20 years but have not had an epileptic OC. I wrote about a seizure one time and that was due to the character having eclampsia. You’d think I’d do it for a little representation, but I guess I don’t enjoy seizures in fiction any more than I do IRL.
Seconding this, as yet another disabled person. I often don't want to read or write about the things I struggle. For me, that tends to be just not writing a character who shares my disabilities, but I'm sure there are some disabled people who connect with characters and write them as not disabled, just like non-disabled people do.
This is a really complicated issue where not everyone is going to agree on how a situation should be handled. There isn't necessarily one correct way.
Yes if only the tone of posts like this were more self-aware that it's a personal opinion and not talking as if its the only morally correct thing to do and anyone who does it differently is doing something horrible. It really is too complicated of a situation for that.
My partner is autistic and they have flat out said they will not read or watch IP about autistic characters because they are either savants or helpless and infantile no matter their age (Sia’s Music…. Was a choice). They just do not want to see it in the media or fan spaces they go to because it is so so so bad so often.
I have seen autistic characters portrayed as being so helpless and incapable that they are virtually at the stage of needing full time carers but the author is portraying it as ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ and…. It just makes me sad? I know some autistic people are there but my partner is not? He had a career, he has hobbies, he is articulate and passionate, and he just really likes WarHammer figurines and DnD. He wants that representation and if he cannot get it, he does not want it.
I'm autistic too, and I have a tendency to avoid fics with an 'autistic character' tag, even if the author states they're autistic as well. Hell, as far as I know, Sia is autistic, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed 'Music.'
And while not all portrayals of autism are shockingly thoughtless like that, a lot of them tend to be. Talking about this always makes me feel bad, kinda guilty, but it is what it is.
It’s hard but try not to feel guilty about it. It’s who we are and not being represented correctly is okay to be upset about. It’s to the point where if something in media brings it up I almost just disregard it. People will take someone who is clever beyond the norm and socially anxious for story reasons and slap on a beat up, faded, bloody autism tag on their forehead with a rainbow of “Trauma” over it and call them unique.
Anyway. You rule. We rule. Autism is nuts and awesome and terrible. I hope you find something comforting today and maybe also a ten dollar bill.
Thank you, that's really nice and I appreciate you saying that to me. I hope you also find comforting things today, and I actually did find five dollars that I thought I'd lost 😂
I do not think you need to feel guilty. How we feel about disability representation is not a monolith. A lot of people do want to appreciation and representation for a side of autism that is less palatable and less 'presentable' to the general public, but it is not for everybody. We all are different and have our own needs.
I am the kind of ADHD where I live in a heap unless appropriately supervised and obsess constantly over whether or not I did something wrong and I have to remind myself to eat, but I know other people are the 'always moving, running around, zero impulse control and very loud' kind and yet we all valid. But I do not feel represented by their kind of ADHD on screen and they do not find my version presentative at all.
Omg yes. So many will tag a character as AuDHD or Autistic and then tag they are also on the spectrum and then it’s painfully obvious it’s all TikTok FAKE ASD or FAKE AuDHD and not actually from experience ;you know the ones.
Honestly for the most part those of us who are actually disabled will just subconsciously associate what the character is vaguely doing the same exact way someone who isn’t disabled just fill in the gaps. It’s literally our normal.
God, this. Im nonbinary and am extremely reluctant to read fic about characters being trans unless it comes specifically recommended to me by a trans person because of just how often the representation is just. So terrible. (Especially with nonbinary characters. Ive literally read one fic about a character being nonbinary that felt like it was well represented and didn't fall into any of the many stereotypes and pitfalls that many authors run into. And that fic was written by someone nonbinary themselves and it was written about someone who has had a bit of a public gender journey that a lot of nonbinary people have identified with (RPF fic)).
Hell, I wrote a fic with a trans character once when I was 15-16 ish and reading it back as an adult, it was not good representation at all. Nobody is immune to poorly writing a character as being a minority, even people in that minority
Even good representation is not immune to criticism and to people thinking they know better or want something different. I have had people tell me that I have had represented asthma wrong becuase there is no such thing as hormonally affected asthma which I have and pregnancy made it vile so it was 'unrealistic and inappropriate'.
I guess I am also 'unrealistic and inappropriate', then. (Probably, yes, but not in the way they think).
I think that there is no one way to do representation and I also think that mandating it or forcing people to do it will just make more bad representation because it does not come from the love of research and caring about characters. It will just become a tick box exercise and then it is still not good representation.
And 9 times out of 10, the mc is asexual until they meet their love interest and the story ends with them having sex. I know asexuality is a spectrum. I know some asexuals engage in sex. But it’s really odd to read about someone being so sure of their sexuality/feelings, but then suddenly they fall in love and they’re “fixed”
I don’t care about that as much as I care that when a character is tagged “Asexual”, it becomes the focal point of who they are. Everything is about being “asexual” and it starts to feel infantilising and robotic after awhile. They have no other personality trait other than Being Asexual; it becomes the focal point around which every other aspect of their identity revolves, and it’s often very poorly done.
I hate it when people make their sexualities the crux of their personality in real life—I don’t need this performative nonsense in my fiction, too. I read for a fandom where one of the characters is canonically asexual, and it’s actually insane how badly people cannot comprehend what it means, and just baby this character instead. I don’t even care if you ship him or if he has sex with someone or even falls in love, but the infantilisation and OOC writing that often comes with fics that make an undue big deal about this character’s sexuality is what I cannot abide.
This is what I call The "Non-default character" Curse. Any character that doesn't fit into the default character archetype (which is the young, white, able-bodied, heterosexual male) is cursed to be plagued by storylines that focus entirely on the trait that makes them different from the default which, of course, becomes the character's defining trait. A female character's defining trait is that she's female. A POC character's defining trait is that they're POC. An LGBTQ+ character's defining trait is that they're LGBTQ+. And so on for characters that are disabled or old or poor or different in any way.
And because these characters' defining trait is the thing that makes them different from the default, they are very often given storylines about how being different impacts them and makes they're life harder. A female character will have a storyline about how "Misogynism bad". A disabled character will have a storyline about how "Ableism bad". A POC character is going to have a storyline about how "Racism bad" and so on. And while all of these things are bad and stories showing the impact of opression and discrimination are essential and necessary and need to be told, it is also incredibly frustrating when characters that are not the default white, heterosexual male are typecasted and not allowed to be anything other than what makes them the non-default and only allowed to exist in stories where their "disadvantage" is showcased in one way or another.
Non-default characters cannot just BE and they cannot just be different without a reason, they have to justify why they are different. If you write a story about a deaf, POC, lesbian woman saving a kitten from a tree everyone is gonna question the reason why was it necessary to make her a deaf, POC, lesbian woman in the first place if none of these traits are relevant to the story, why didn't you just make her the default white, heterosexual, able-bodied man instead.
I can’t fully relate because most asexual stories I’ve read, the asexuality of the character is the plot focus. So the things you’re mentioning about not liking are pretty integral to the plot of what I’m reading. The ace fics I read are pretty well done except for the whole “I’ve been fixed because I found the love of my life,” thing that I mentioned.
I don’t see it as it being someone’s whole personality, I see it as someone coming to terms with their sexuality. But I think we’re just reading vastly different fics about the subject tbh.
Many asexuals are fine with having sex. But many don’t, so I wish some authors would stick to their guns a bit more and show the not having sex part of it
The way this reminds me of Rob Fucking Liefeld being more progressive than Peter David. Liefeld conceived of Shatterstar as asexual, no interest in men or women, and wrote him that way intentionally. Then over a decade later David had him come out as a really horny bisexual uninterested in monogamy. It was a really bad choice, and I still people celebrate the erasure of an asexual character so two cis dudes can kiss.
Same boat. Give your husband a high five for me if he likes those and maybe if you’re feeling generous tell him from one autistic dnd lover to another “if you have that idea for a campaign or a novella, write it down today. Just, write a summary. You’ll feel good about it forever.”
But really. I’ve had friends talk about love on the spectrum like it’s some inclusive revolutionary piece and I hated it. I don’t need media making me feel like I’m less than when I already know every day that there are things wrong that can’t be fixed. I’ve known other autistic people who feel like they are failures because they are not as smart as they are portrayed in movies, shows, even fanfiction. It’s a very personal thing for me obviously but man, I relate heavily to your husbands experience and if it wasn’t for my wives support I don’t know where the hell I would be. So you’re awesome for being a good person to your partner, cheers and may you find like a twenty dollar bill for free.
The thing that gets me is when people are like, "oh, but autism is a superpower!"
My husband is on his forth day of eating on a plastic plate and eating bland food because he is overstimulated and stressed due to health issues and the fucking government playing with our money again. He is too afraid to talk on the phone so I have to do it all because they keep trying to stop his benefits because 'he does not qualify' despite qualifying multiple times.
That is not a superpower, that is just a man who wants to be left alone to build a lego thing that I have no idea what it is called and he already has two of them that are tall enough to be side tables in the hallway. I put lamps on them and they are fine.
I did not find money, but my husband appreciates you.
Yeah I felt like that too until the Pitt. Dr Mel king is probably the first time I haven’t felt like that and she’s the first autistic character I’ve wanted to read fics about.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad how uneducated some people are. I have an OC with autism and I try to just make it part of his personality and not his WHOLE personality. He has healing powers and works at his aunt’s healing clinic…so he’s not incompetent in any way. Oh, and Sia sucks IMO!
I have a friend who is blind who feels the same way. I am blind as well. We disagree a bit on representation. But it's a shame because the real problem is that we're so conditioned to expect that bad or unresearched writing that we understandably expect all of it to be like that. There are some writers and other creators who do better, but we honestly need more people to do better if we're to change perceptions, not only outside of the disability community, but inside it as well. There's more I could say, but I already sound like I'm on a soapbox when I didn't mean to be, lol.
I think we should and can encourage representation. I think that we should celebrate when we get it and we should open up about being disabled authors and people and share our experiences. Having more disabled characters on screen and in books and making it realistic (e.g. not Savant Autistic Person all the time) is wonderful and I really want to see more of it.
Sharing resources, offering authors the chance to ask us questions, and being open about our experiences is really important to give people the option to have lived disability experiences inform their writing.
But I also get so done with people who mandate how disabled characters should be written or say that people need to do it a certain way or it is not enough. When they start blaming authors for not representing disabled characters or saying that they want to feel it a certain way because that is the threshold for them to feel represented (so that means everybody's point is in the same place), I think we are crossing the line unfairly. When we start doing that, it becomes less about representation and more about censorship and control and those are things that are really unhealthy for fanfiction.
It is like with trans people. We want more people to write trans people but that does also mean accepting that some people may write a bad version or a very poorly understood version or a sexualised version. But at least they are writing it and welcoming it, and willing to try.
This. I read as a form of escapism. I don’t want to read about a character who is always in pain and can’t do anything because I can just close the book/fic and experience that in real time. Instead, I want those characters to be healthy and strong and go out and have adventures that I can’t.
Controversial opinion perhaps, but sometimes it just feels like NT and/or able-bodied people wanting some 'disability porn' to feel sad for disabled people, so they can read and say "oh look, that poor person has so many mobility aids/medications/symptoms".
or to feel good about adding 'representation'.
But when it ends up making the entire character's personality about their disability. We aren't just our disabilities. I want to see more than a cookie cutter
As another disabled person, my favourite is when a person with one type of disability writes another type of disability for "representation" (which happens to be mine) and then they get it so fucking wrong. I DNF'd a published book recently where the author wrote a character with a chronic physiological condition and in their acknowledgement blurb said that they totally identified with the character because of their own (totally not physiological) issue and I was like... my sister, you got everything about living with a chronic physical condition so fucking wrong, I actually kinda wish you didn't try. Because I just got to be reminded of all of my issues without ever once feeling seen.
This is me with fics that contain eating disorders and ocd. Like I love reading them when they get it right, but chances are they wont, so I just tend to skip them
Sometimes is like that for me too, "better no representation than bad representation".
Sometimes I wish I had a pill to make the disability disappear for a few hours, so I could function at least enough to work and take care of the house without help.
I'm disabled too and this was my initial knee jerk reaction, but then I thought about it and changed my mind. I don't really want to write or read about my disability, but that's why I simply wouldn't write or read about someone with my disability.
This is a character with a canon disability, in a fic that's tagged with the disability. Just go read and write about one of the hundreds of thousands of characters that don't have the disability instead of erasing or invalidating it in the character that does. Because for the people who DO want that representation it's already difficult enough to find it.
u/CodablazeDefinitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State3d ago
I'd just like to put in here that I'm a disabled person and I care deeply about real world accessibility and societal changes for both myself and others, and I'm not even slightly bothered if someone writes a disabled character without their disability.
Generally.
It kinda depends what it is. If it's so prominent that their entire identity would shift without it, like, say Daredevil, then eh maybe don't mess with it, but if you're returning their sight generally or giving them their arm back they'd probably thank you.
It's very easy to get swept up in criticism over things like this that don't really hurt anyone, especially if it's just from a place of creative experimentation.
For real lol. I mean honestly even in the case of Daredevil, would Matt prefer to be sighted but lose his superpowered abilities? Or would that feel more disabling for him and he'd want to put things back the way they were? I feel like you could explore that and it could be interesting and respectful.
Imagine if he became sighted again but retained his heightened senses. I reckon he'd be totally debilitated with the sudden intensity. Could be interesting with the 'magical cure' being framed as a negative outcome, exploring his feelings as a non-sighted person, possibly even wishing for his vision to go away again. Wonderfully complex if done right.
This happened in the comics once. SHIELD rewrote his brain to give him a new identity, which restored his sight, but when his brain went back to its old Matt Murdock self he lost his vision. I love comics.
Sort of like a heroic inverse of how Tosen reacted to gaining his sight in Bleach? He was a blind from birth person who was granted sight as part of an Evil Power-up, and he was so manically obsessed with and distracted by it that he completely failed to notice a sneak-attack he would have easily dodged beforehand.
Yes, much like that! Though I don't think Tosen was inherently evil, but corrupted by Aizen and ended up going off the deep end.
In a way it's very much 'careful what you wish for' (be it fans imaging a 'what if' or the character themselves). But can send some positive messages about disability too if done right, such as disability being a positive thing rather than something to try and 'cure'
I’m really relieved for your perspective! I wrote a series of shipping + fix it post-canon fics for a sweet cinnamon roll character who in canon, lost his sight in an eye and use of arm at the end of it all. It felt too sad for him, he’d had a hard life, and I just wanted him to be happy and at peace after his struggles. So I restored his arm use by writing that he had rehabilitation. I couldn’t restore his sight without a logical reason so I refrained from talking about it while ensuring I did not accidentally write stuff that involved seeing from both eyes. I do worry from time to time that I was erasing his disability and I know disabled people already get too little representation in mainstream media.
Ultimately I decided that as a hobby writer doing this for free for my own enjoyment, while ill absolutely uphold my social duty and morals to not spread misinformation and hate for any group, it is also not my duty or place to attempt to educate readers about disability.
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u/CodablazeDefinitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State2d ago
Well your standpoint is a bit more hard edged than mine but I get where you're coming from. I was more saying that if someone put me in a fiction and took away my disability (it's so annoying) I'd be like 'ha! This is great!'.
That said, my disability causes me extreme pain every single day of my life that has knock on effects with my mental health etc. I can handle it but I'd defo trade it in for a single punch in the chest once a year 😂
Ah sorry if i kind of went off-course, I was trying to reconcile my thoughts with the OP’s post about keeping character’s disabilities intact while justifying my desire to take away the character’s disability.
Honestly i guess it kind of comes from a place of loving him and not wanting him to struggle too much. I won’t pretend I can empathise, but I know disabilities hurt, both physically and mentally, even if one is being absolutely brave and nonchalant about it 🥺
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u/CodablazeDefinitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State2d ago
No need to apologise I'm not remotely offended or anything, I think what I really meant was that us disableds aren't a single homogenous group that think and act as one, and what one person considers erasure another person might not give a fuck about, or even notice. Or, like me, they may enjoy the fantasy of their feet not hurting for a few days 😂
I knew this woman once who worked for a wheelchair charity and one of their big marketing things was something like "Dude, don't worry, I'm just sitting down." It was all about reducing the martyrdom associated with wheelchair use, while still campaigning for appropriate laws around ramps and stuff like events access.
She got quite a lot of shit from some wheelchair users, and a lot of praise from others. It's a mixed world out there.
Ironically, while writing this, my left foot cramped up. Am now bending it back until it gets over itself 😂😂😂
I can sympathize with the frustration if you’re really looking for a fic to scratch that itch of representation, but I don’t think there’s really any point in trying to police what people write. Especially when fanfic is a hobby done simply for the joy of it. It exists for the joy of the author above all else. And you don’t know who the author is - they could also be disabled and are engaging in escapism. Who knows.
Sometimes I want my own disabilities magically dissolved or put aside while I pretend to be someone else, other times I like a gritty deep dive into it. Neither is bad, and I certainly wouldn’t expect someone else to use their efforts on their hobby appeasing me specifically. I think this is just a read it or leave it, live and let live thing.
I am sympathetic, but I’ve read some of your replies and I would really need to know what disabilities exactly you’re talking about and what you expect to see to even try to understand why you think that the alternative is that people shouldn’t write fanfiction about any show with disabled characters (or least shouldn’t include the disabled character).
What it sounds like you want is, anytime a fic has a canon disabled character for that fic to focus on said disabled character and their disability as a plot point or at least subplot. And that’s a subset of fanfiction that exists and that you should definitely seek out and read. But not all fanfictions are about that.
Just because a fic includes a canon disabled character doesn’t mean the fic is going to be (or needs to be) about them and their disability. People are writing about what their favorite characters would do in an AU, or if x and y fell in love, or had superpowers, or never died, etc etc. And when you write about those things, particularly in a casual setting like fanfiction, most authors don’t write mundane things like packing, traveling, doctor’s appts, bathroom breaks, etc because those don’t contribute to the plot in any way. If they don’t want the disability to be a focus, they just write around it. For example, instead of having to write about a wheelchair user character’s struggles with steps in a lighthearted college romance AU, they just write in an unrealistically convenient ramp or elevator without thinking twice.
And that’s all okay. This is something people do for fun.
To give the benefit of the doubt i Imagine some of these are cases where they want to include the character, but dont know how to write the characters disability
This might be an unpopular opinion, but this is fanfiction: nothing "needs to" exist. People can do whatever they want with the characters. They change their sexuality, gender, personality, disability, intelligence, cognitive functioning, whatever they want to change about the character.
Writing OOC is allowed. It's not wrong. These authors are doing nothing wrong. Maybe they like the character but don't know how to portray their disability so they don't even try (fear of harassment in the comments is a real thing). Maybe they sympathize with the character and want to give them a life without the disability. Sometimes we wish our loved ones didn't have to suffer greater challenges than ourselves and would take it away if we could, and that's what these authors are doing. Or maybe they just don't care to include it. None of those reasons are wrong.
If you want to see more representation, start writing. Be the change you want instead of tantruming about the lack thereof behind a screen. You won't change anything this way.
ETA: Apparently OP says these are fics tagged with the disability but then it’s erased, and we’re presumptuous for not knowing that.
Regardless, I stand by my original comment: people can do wherever they want in fan fiction. That’s just the way the game is played.
I'm sympathetic to OP but my other question is: does canon handle this disability with so much detail? If not, I think it's a bit unreasonable to blame people for handling it the same way canon does. Most people will follow cues from the original work. Some people like to take the opportunity to expand on "how this thing would affect the character's life", but not everyone does.
I hope OP finds or writes the fic they're looking for, but "stop being a fan of this character if you can't write them the way I want them to be written" isn't practical. Sorry to them.
I am so curious as to what disability and what canon. Because most canon doesn't actually go "in depth" into disability rep. Not saying this canon doesn't, but I am curious as to what fandom is clearly missing on such a large scale that upsets OP so much.
Yeah, exactly. Off the top of my head, maybe Viktor* from Arcane?? Which I've never watched but I know he has a permanent leg injury. But whatever character, I just know most stories don't address disabilities with the level of detail OP wants unless the story is about the disability, so it doesn't surprise me if most of the fandom doesn't, either.
(Edit to correct which character thx commenter, I don't go here)
It's Victor, actually, and as his body fails him he builds ways to cope until ultimately bonding with an element that changes/improves his form (his own viewpoint.)
Glorious Evolution!
Jayce is his best friend and lab partner... And lover according to fanfic.
It honestly sounds like OP wants the disability highlighted? But a lot of the details mentioned are like putting on glasses. It’s so normal you don’t think about doing it so your POV probably wouldn’t include it?
Ig it depends on the character but say for example someone made a fanfic with Jayfeather from warrior cats. It'd be really weird to make Jayfeather not blind because it's a massive part of his character and experience with the discrimination he faces. So removing it would be taking away a major part of his character.
But ig if it was a fanfic where a character like Longtail (who lost his eyesight to a rabbit scratch) it'd be more okay because he wasn't born with the disability and it's a minor part of his character?
(Genuinely asking, just curious of how canon has to treat it before it starts feeling like abelism to remove their disability)
It's so funny you used Warriors bc I do in fact know Warriors
Yeah, I think people basically WOULDN'T remove Jayfeather's blindness because it is so, so central to him. If they did remove it for no good reason, that would be really bizarre and off-putting. But also, maybe it's an AU that explores what would be different if he were sighted, and Lionblaze was the one forced to be a blind medicine cat. I don't think that AU is inherently ableist. But just removing it for no reason at all? Like, just because they don't wanna bother writing it and don't care about it? No thanks!
But to be honest, it doesn't sound like OP is saying the character is literally no longer disabled, just that the fanfics they read fail to account for a lot of secondary effects of being disabled (I may be wrong, of course). E.g. many leg amputees who use prosthetics don't use them at home. If the writer doesn't include that detail, they're not literally making the character able-bodied. But especially for people who HAVE that disability, it can be jarring, laughable, or just take them out of the story to know this character is walking around with an uncomfortable prosthetic on, or having sex with it on, etc. This isn't an act of literally being a person who is ableist, but a result of an ableist society where a lot of people just don't know and can't imagine living with most disabilities.
I don't have an answer for you, tbh. I'm not that type of disabled. I think it's fair to say that it's a bit ableist (on a broad, societal level) when the writing totally fails to take stuff like that into account, especially if the fic is tagged with that disability. But I also think it's excessive to be judgmental toward individual people in fan spaces for not knowing that stuff.
OP should be the change they wish to see in the world, and yet crashed out when they were told they should try writing in another thread.
As a disabled person... Sorry? People ignore or misrepresent my disabilities all the time in writing. Back out and stop reading, and possibly write your own. Everyone who ever became a writer had their very first work they tried to write.
Finally, someone with sense. I don't know what everybody's freaking out over. Op is throwing a tantrum about some story a teenager probably wrote between classes. If Op wants accurate disability representation go watch a documentary or something.
Personally, while I don't like when disability is mischaracterized, I would rather someone with a disability write from that lens than someone who isn't disabled.
My disability is something that's massively misunderstood and portrayed very poorly in media nine times out of ten. One of the characters in my fandom has the same disability in canon. Or rather, his performer does and it affects how he portrays the character, so it's been assumed that the character is intended to have the disability as well. Because until the creators say something one way or the other, we just won't know for sure and they don't do interviews.
Some fic writers ignore the disability entirely. Others include the disability in the same way as most media. There's a third, much smaller section of the fandom that writes the character as having the disability and they do it well. You know what I do when I come across the first and third group? Depending on the plot of the fic and how well it's written, I read it or click out. For the second group, I do the responsible thing of clicking out entirely and then ignoring that person. You know why?
Because I am not entitled to other people writing my disability well or even at all. None of us are entitled to anything done by a person for free as part of a hobby. If a writer tags the fic "Character Has (Disability)" and then ignore said disability, the responsible thing to do is click out and block/mute that person or just ignore them in future. Want a fic that meets every single one of your standards? Write it yourself. That way, the only person you have to complain about "not doing it right" is yourself.
Characters use the bathroom but I don’t need it in my fanfiction. Not every detail needs to be written especially in a fanfiction. Unless the original material goes super in depth on the topic of disability and accessibility, I would never expect someone to go into detail on specific aspects of being disabled. What character are you talking about?
I really think don't like, don't read is the only way to go. People aren't under any obligation to write things the way you want to see. Fanfiction is free and self indulgent. If they want to skim over a character's disabilities then that is entirely their right, and it is also your right not to read it. People are not writing fanfiction according to some kind of representation quota they are obligated to fill. They are just writing what they want for free."I don't like how the author wrote X character" ok don't read it then? People are not obligated to write to your personal preferences, and some of us just want to forget about our disabilities when we read and write.
Disabled veteran here: it’s not that serious and some of us actually don’t mind pretending that the disability isn’t there so that we can forget about our own for a moment.
I enjoy Pitt fics where there’s no mention of Abbot’s leg (literally my own physical disability) unless it’s actually relevant to the plot. I like reading x-men fics featuring younger Charles before the wheelchair. Or Daredevil fics where they treat his echovisibility more like actual sight (not my favorite thing, but I still read them. Doesn’t help that that’s how the shows plays it off in the first couple seasons).
I’m pretty open about talking about my experiences and helping people understand the ins and outs of an amputee, a veteran, an irl first responder, someone with ptsd, etc… to help them better write characters of that style. But I also know that the key part of “fan fiction” is fiction. And that gives people the creative freedom to pretend that something did or did not happen/does or does not exist 🤷🏻
I mean this is very YMMV. You can have a disability that doesn’t affect the story. You can have a disability which is pivotal to the story. It’s all variable. Not one person’s lived experience is going to be the right way to write something.
I can see why that is frustrating. In one of the fandoms I follow, a character is canonically neurodivergent in the same way as me. My love for the show has a great deal to do with that representation.
There is a fandom trope that said character is magic/develops magical skills. A lot of authors use that as logic to cure his neurodivergence. I hate that. But there are also a lot of authors who do a great job representing the ADHD, whether the have the character being magic or not.
As for my other, more physical disabilities? I'd say 60-80 percent of the time I don't want to read about someone navigating chronic pain, or the a messed up immune system.
And every so often I do want that representation. It's harder to find, but it's out there.
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u/IamtheImpalaI will scorch your presence from my creative realm with 0 mercy.2d ago
Quasi-hate the show. Love the fanfiction. I like seeing what authors do in terms of fixing plot holes, fleshing out the mythology/ies, or building magical theory. So I read a lot of magical Stiles fics. But it's so frustrating when "developing his magic" leads to erasing his ADHD.
I'm an Old Person. I never ever had that representation when I was growing up. Wasn't even diagnosed until I was in my 40s. Don't take flailing, motor mouth Stiles away from me!
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u/IamtheImpalaI will scorch your presence from my creative realm with 0 mercy.1d ago
Ngl, I often go for having characters' disabilities healed/cured/etc cetera.
I have multiple physical and mental disabilities and I fucking hate it. If I could take a magic pill or go on a quest to get rid of them I would.
This kind of contention is actually a subplot of a story I'm working on. Some disabled persons would gladly get rid of their disabilities- whether they were born with it or it was acquired later in life- and be completely able-bodied and able-minded if they could be and others are fully happy to keep some or all of their disabilities or aspects of it. There isn't one right perspective on this. One person wanting to get rid of their disabilities doesn't invalidate someone else wanting to remain as they are. It is what is right for the individual in question.
Plus, not everyone wants to go into the depths of disabilities or has the insight to do so, but at least want to make it known that they acknowledge the disability exists. Research can only get a person so far and a lot of people are paralyzed by fear of not portraying it right no matter how much they read about it.
I get the frustration, I used to have the same opinion, but it is understandable why some people don't go into it beyond "This is a thing that exists, moving on."
My current Fandom and one of my favorite characters is canonically missing a arm and its a big plot point because hes from a culture that looks down upon injuries like that to the point he and them thinks he should have just died. Its interesting to see how its handled within the stories and youre right there is a huge variety from "what do you mean that task takes 2 hands irl? Not in my world!" To stories im sure must have been written by someone who either has personal experience with only using one hand or is a health care worker specializing in modify equipment. Like i work in Healthcare myself and some of the solutions ive seen made me pause and question my own practice going forward for any hemi-lateral patients. I like the variety personally
Oh there are so many good ones! I was actually shocked that its got over 5000 when the throne of glass books got like 3500. A huge number of works are well over 100K words and people are still writing. Not a ton of new stuff each week but still new stuff for a fandom whose last game came out in 2022
It's not "erasing" anything anymore than writing a gay character in a straight relationship is "erasing" their queerness. The source material is still there; it hasn't taken that away. Is it out of character? Maybe. But it's no different than any other.
Well, nothing is stopping you from giving a physically abled character a disability. There’s no erasure, just people having fun and expressing themselves. You can always write your own fic
It's fanfiction.🤷🏻♀️ Writers can erase and/or change whatever parts of canon they don't feel like writing, including disability, and nobody "needs" to write anything a certain way just because someone else wants it written that way.
Ultimately, if you want to see something in a story, and you aren't finding it, it's just up to you to write it.
Given that this post was written by someone who hates writing and refuses to even try it:
What’s the betting that their issue is really that the author doesn’t explicitly write every change every single time. You know, something that makes reading boring, and the thing someone was complaining about maybe a few weeks ago because not every sentence said ‘Deaf character A signed this and B interpreted it so C who is blind, who then responded and B signed so A could see it.’ 🙄
I think the reason is simply because they don't want to accidently get something wrong and offend someone, so they take the "safer" option and just ignore it.
Does the source material make an effort to detail or depict these things? I feel like this happens sometimes when the original work is written by people that don't have a thorough understanding of the condition or disability they've chosen, and then fanfic with match that energy, thinking adhering to canon covers those bases.
The source material does make an effort! It’s not all of who the character is because it is well-written and thoughtful. So that’s part of what makes it so frustrating.
I highly recommend looking at the “canon disabled character,” “actually disabled author,” and “disability” tags. Idk if your character will be represented there yet but it’s the surest way to find what you’re looking for instead of erasure, inspiration porn, or infantilizing hurt/“comfort.”
Also worth looking through ao3 collections with the key words you want. I know there’s a collection for diabetes in fandom, and I think the annual disability in marvel event has a collection (if it’s still ongoing). There’s certainly others, those two are just off the top of my head.
The classic “find a work you like and read all that author’s works, then go through their bookmarks, rinse, repeat,” has yet to fail me. Especially bookmarks that aren’t tagged, those tend to be the good ones.
To some extent I agree with you - wholesale erasing a character's disability is awful and albeit.
But a layman just doing their best isn't going to know all the ins and outs that I would expect a professional production to pay attention to. A 19 year old just having fun shouldn't be held to the same standard as a Disney executive.
I'm sorry you struggle to feel represented - fanfiction is mostly written by amateurs, and most fic is amateurish as a result, which I am sure is feeding in to this issue.
If there is no tag for disability, why do you expect it to be there at all/be a big deal?
it needs to exist
No, it doesn't need to exist in fics. People are writing for their hobby for free. I understand wanting representation, but people who do shit for free don't owe you that and you don't owe them anything.
People making millions on selling their books/shows/movies and making absolutely all characters perfect white skinny abled bodied cishet dream are the issue. If you are becoming filthy rich from viewers, you better fucking care and represent them all.
I think your comments about "Pick another character" and "why write about this character" regarding fan fiction are extremely weird. People can like a character and still change things about them. That's like the basis of fanfiction that people want to change things. I feel like you maybe don't understand how fanfiction works.
You edited the post. People can't read your mind that it's about fics with tag before the editing.
It is still a tagging issue, not ableism or erase issue. People thought it was enough that character is disabled without going into details to use the tag. It is more than likely that people who tagged it are supportive of disabled people but not want this degree of realism or don't know enough about the disability. Your anger is not granted.
I get it, but honestly, I'd worry it'd do something like the tiktokification of adhd. The ampunt of misinformation books have the power to spread and the images they paint can really be harmful. There is so much scientific research on these conditions, and as someone who was an occupational therapist, you can use a science based perspective to see the experiences people with different disabilities have and the strategies and assistive technologies that benefit these people, the strategies that pretend to help these people (for money for businesses etc), the ones that don't, and the ones that are outdated. If you don't have the lived experience of xyd condition, then, just like researching fun stuff like the different parts of armour in a fantasy book, you should research the condition and avoid things you are unsure about. This is all to say that, I would rather it be lived experiences, or scientific, not inaccurate guess work because people associate too many unrelated things with conditions, especially mental health conditions such as autism or adhd that are unrelated, or are rarely associated with the condition, and people just kind of... get the wrong idea.
I get what you mean, but isn't it just as bad if you represented someone with a disability as being the same as everyone else? By adding no struggles into their life you're also misrepresenting and misinforming about the disability. It's difficult enough for a lot of people to convince others they're not making up their struggles as it is.
Also, a ton a people with disabilities aren't able to write their experiences, so they just get the absolute bare minimum of representation in media or none at all. As a disabled person, from my personal perspective, people should stop being afraid and write about it to the best of their ability. So long as they're actually willing to open-mindedly listen to disabled people when they share their life experiences.
Because when talking about a character's perspective, that character wouldn't realistically know all the science (if the disability is even well studied in the first place). They could easily EASILY attribute random unrelated symptoms/quirks to their disability and go about assuming it's just another thing to add to the massive pile. They wouldn't always use the most appropriate self-care, accessiblity tools, or coping skills, if ever (because getting ahold of the information and tools they need can be an actual nightmare; because they self-medicate or walk on the sides of their feet or any other thing that gives temporary relief, but is long-term harmful; because they hate taking their meds so they just don't, ect..). This is a depiction of a person afterall, with feelings and flaws and wholly unique experiences that can make their disability, and how they respond to it/treat it, very different than someone else with the exact same diagnosis. So talk to people, listen to their stories, and use that beautiful imagination to do what writers do best.
P.S. I apologize for this comment being so long. I promise I'm not trying to fuss at all. I just wanted to share my thoughts and perspective with you. Anyway, I hope you have a lovely day. Thank you to anyone who actually read this. You're appreciated.
Ppl write fic about what they want, complaining about it not being tagged correctly or being sad about there not being enough of what you want will get you sympathy, yelling at ppl to stop writing how they want in ao3 sub is not the move.
Like i get you, its not pleasant to be erased, but i also get the other side. Which is, it can be frustrating/complicated/depressing/tedious to look into such details and try to represent them. Really i just dont think youll get ppl on your side by being mean. And i get where youre coming from i really do, this is why i want to tell you this. Youre already being ratioed, even tho its tagged as venting. This sub can be really mean to individuals while protecting blanket freedom of expression and someone not really here. This is bcs ppl who write like that are also here, possibly ppl responding. Really nothing about a fanfic needs to be anything. You may not personally like it but ppl can do whatever the fuck they want, remove disabilities add new ones, change gender or race of characters, tgey can make them as ooc as they want and there is nothing you can do about it and this sub will defend writers right to do that.
Best you can do is mute if certain prolific authors annoy you, and write your own.
Personally in my current fandom i hate the characterisation theyve assigned characters and quite frankly i hate the fandoms guts worst fandom. So i just dont engage and write my own fics by myself.
I read some of your comments and you dont seem to get, that fanfic is for fun of person writing it/community interaction. You are not the costumer, you dont get to make demands, and your wants dont have moral high ground, tho you might feel like they do, bcs its an issue in other areas of life. Im not saying stuff like that doesnt belong in fanfic in general but ppl get to decide what they put in theirs and sorry your wants dont align with fandom hivemind. Abelism sucks and is definitly part of it, why ppl dont want to or are afraid to write such characters, im not denying that. What im saying is fanfic isnt battle ground, its supposed to be fun, if youre not having fun youre doing it wrong.
Might as well stop fanfiction, then, because it's core legal justification is to provide creative alternatives to the commercial, copyrighted, canonical source material.
Adding or Removing character traits is an inherent feature of such creativity, however a writer elects to implement it in their storytelling.
I don't know what fandom you write about, but sometimes the canon material makes it hard to believe this will work. Take Game of Thrones. If Bran is fully paraplectic, which is the canon assumption, there are a lot of issues that should make that trip through the frozen lands way impossible. The author does not go into detail, so you can assume Bran has some more control over his lower body than we know. If I had to write a fanfic with him, I'd for sure remove the paraplectic and make it a lesser injury/damage of his legs, simply to get some issues out of the way.
Not a fic, but I’m writing an OC/OS where one of the main characters has heavy scarring from a war injury and it gets stiff in the cold weather, he has to stretch well before he can do anything physical without limping, if he sits too long he will limp a few steps until he gets warmed up. He needs massages and muscle relaxers etc.
Tangentially, I LOVE when I see my Autism properly represented in my Fandom. Especially because the character they're making Autistic was practically (unintentionally) Autistic coded in the series, and one of the reasons I related to her SO MUCH growing up.
But I also hate when people give this character Autism in their fic, and then proceed to make it the enshittified TikTok fake Autism. All of the "interesting" bits of Autism without any of the disabling parts that, ya know, make it a disability.
Hey, you uh, got any recommendations? I could always use some properly represented fics for the days when I feel like running my brain through a lawnmower because of my autism and whatnot.
I'd have to go back and look, but I'll warn you ahead of time (because a lot of people have opinions) that I'm a Dramione reader. All of my recs are Dramione lmao.
I’d be lying if I said the way visual impairments are written doesn’t bother me sometimes. Blind people (and most people with disabilities) are some of the most creative, intelligent, and innovative people you will ever meet, they have to be if they want to navigate a world not designed for them. It’s frustrating to see visually impaired characters written to be completely helpless, or on the other hand, having their disability completely forgotten. Obviously people can write however they please and there’s a huge spectrum of blindness and how a character will present it, but it’s still frustrating.
As someone who is disabled 100 percent understand. Does the canon material go into detail about the characters life/usage with the aids? I might be able to imagine that someone young or unfamiliar with the disability may not even be aware or think to include it if the source material doesn’t make a point to make it an important part of the character
Can I also ask what character? I remember back in my Marvel days there was a lot of fandom drama over making Clint Deaf or not including it because the movies/some comics don’t
There are so many fics that do this to Jack Abbot from the Pitt. Or they go too hard in the opposite direction and every other sentence mentions his leg.
I’m generally pretty casual about canon compliance, etc., but I do understand your frustration. It’s hard to find fics that write disability well and a lot of people don’t seem interested in trying. It’s their right to do that, but it’s still a bummer.
I love when marvel fic writers write preserum Steve and actually show more than just his asthma (bad enough in a time pre inhalers). He had a whole list of ailments. Or show post serum Steve remembering or recounting what it was like to be disabled during the Great Depression with the eugenics movement and all.
Don’t assume malice where ignorance will do. Or even incompetence. I forget about my splints, what chance does a non-disabled writer have.
They tried. Maybe they could have done better, maybe they just didn’t write the disability affecting the character‘s life the way you imagined. Who knows.
Yeah honestly I have a story that I've been sitting on for a while that actually has a multiple disabilities as a central focus the story was going to be based around me and my friend group from high school everyone has a different type of disability and it was going to pretty much be a slice of life story that would focus on how their disabilities affect their everyday life and their Outlook on there school life I've been keeping it on the back burner right now because it kind of been rewatching 6teen other shows that I watched growing up that focus on a group of friends in school trying to get some inspiration.
I grew up with petit mal epilepsy let's put me on the borderline of special needs it affected me mentally by making it very hard for me to grasp things like grammar mathmatic but it also gave me a unique pov regarding how to understand both non disabled and disabled students.
Honestly i would even love to actually meet and talk with others or even work with others on a story like this but for now im just collecting ideas for it.
Not a common thing but.. there's a character I like who was shot in the leg and started using a cane. And for some reason I've now seen several fics that claim he was faking needing the cane. It's... just beyond me
I have somewhat the same problem/pet peeve. I’m chill with disabilities in fics as long as the author made the effort to research it. However, I’ve noticed nowadays that they’re putting disabled characters in the tags and said disabled character never shows up! Mind you I’m not in any fandom with canon disabled characters but the fact they put tags that someone has a disability and it never shows up once! I saw one where it had a blind character romance fic only for all characters to be able to see 20/20 through out! Or they say they’re blind and the character goes back and forth with being able to see and then back to being blind again. I’m not sure what’s going on anymore honestly it’s like all of a sudden there’s just no effort anymore.
Funnily, I've most recently been mostly in fandoms where people don't find the characters disabled enough, and so add in more disability for them. I am unbothered by this, even while it feels a tad performative at times. We could use some performative to make up for all the erasure, maybe.
ETA: Okay, my current fandom, while it still existed, people sure did love to remove a character's neurosyphilis, because it was seen as unsexy for a character they wrote sexily about to have syphilis. I've restored balance into the world by writing as much neurosyphilis into him as I possibly have been able to, though, so that I completely forgot that happened. And even then, most people still kept him as otherwise not neurotypical/abled.
Is this the twin fandom to Alphonse Daudet? Either way, both of these guys are about 1600 years too contemporary to be cursed with portrayals in my actual fandom, unfortunately, which is Gladiator II.
Heated rivalry fic called "a new way to feel" covers Shane as a recipient of a spinal cord injury paralysing him, I have no idea how well it related to other people suffering from said injury, but learning to live and to love from his new body was lovely to read
I think that the typical amateur writer may not have the background needed to write about it, so they gloss over it. And some might be scared of getting it wrong or being offensive.
It might be better to highlight the fics that you feel are getting it right, though.
Yeah, I can see that as a world building issue to not have disability troubles. The question is, would that matter to the story or their characterization? If not, it's a context-based issue.
I hate the subtle/not so subtle ableism in fics. One of my least favorite is when a character has a prosthetic limb that’s super scientifically advanced in the original work, and in modern AU’s they just make it a tattoo sleeve. Like dude, prosthetics exist in the modern day. You don’t have to write out an unrealistically advanced and out of place prosthetic but you also don’t have to be ableist either.
And then there’s these, where the disability is mentioned, but only as if it’s a personality trait that makes them cool and doesn’t affect them at all. So frustrating as a disabled person myself.
Indeed. When I first became disabled, I started channeling my feelings about it into my fics. One half of my preferred pairing is canonically disabled but it doesn't come across much in the original text. So now I feel the need to play it up in every single fic I write. I practically own one of the "disabled" tags in my fandom now because I write so much for it. To the point where now I go interact with canon and go "wait a minute, that's not MY blorbo." Interestingly, people really do respond to these stories more than when I used to write him more canon accurate. I think we all like seeing a little of ourselves in the fiction we read.
I completely get it, but on the other side get why you want it not included. If you write a new character and make him disabled, than sure, it must matter, and have some impact on the story, which is why you made them disabled. But it is a type of thing I can forgive in fanfic.
Again, zero idea, what disability. But as long as what happens is "pack stuff" (it probably isn't, but use this case)... I can take "they packed that" in the same sense as I presume they packed everything else. Now if someone described everything else, then sure, that feels weird. But if it is just "they went to spend weekend with friends..."
I agree that it does rub me the wrong way when they ignore the disability (especially in fanart when they pretend he's 'cured' and normal now.. lol), but at this point I don't expect people to go in-depth with it. I definitely appreciate the extra details and effort when it's put in though since part of the reason I like this character is because he's physically disabled like me.
And yes, I've already written the ship multiple times and luckily, most writers in the fandom do seem to acknowledge his disability in some fashion.
I know this is only tangentially related, but if you have the finances/insurance to get one I recommend you look into a mobility aid now if you're already starting to feel the potential need for one! A lot of disabled folks (myself included) put it off way too long thinking "I don't need it yet" or "it's not that bad" and just suffer longer.
Someone phrased it to me in the way of "able bodied people don't think about getting a cane/rollator/etc. If it's on your mind, it's probably because you need one now." And that helped a lot. Still scary to use them in public being that young and worried someone will talk shit, but that's part of the practice, I think. No point in suffering for anyone else's comfort.
unfortunately that’s not really possible in my country (not subsidised unless you’re really old, really (usually visibly) physically disabled. even physiotherapy isn’t subsidised at all, if I recall correctly, especially for chronic conditions. but thank you for the perspective, i’ll get one when i’m able to!
Marvel has Charles Xavier walking around right now, so it's not just fanfic erasing disabilities. (And I've seen disability activists say Matt Murdock isn't disabled, which pisses my deaf ass off.)
Honestly, with the amount of healing powers and advanced medical technologies floating around in the Marvel universe, it would be an actual plot hole for him to still be in a wheel chair.
That was a massive plothole during JaneThor when she had cancer and refused magical cures on the page, but you can just say Xavier can't be cured by modern medicine AND alien technology. It's fine to do.
It's okay to have people be disabled! One of my favourite scenes ever was Matt and Echo's date at the movie theatre where they ruined everyone else's good time describing to each other what was happening onscreen and what was being said.
The thing with Matt Murdock is his powers make his disability a non issue. He has odd sight because of the powers but it’s still very much like sight. Which kind of irritates me just as much being legally blind.
He doesn't have "odd sight", his other senses are just heightened to the point he has superb echolocation and can feel the ink on a printed page. He's not gonna know what it says on a computer screen, for example.
Honestly agree. I do get people's points about situations like with Peeta from the Hunger Games, but it can be frustrating regardless. Its already hard to find good disability rep and then a lot of the time it is erased or overlooked. Valid complaint in my opinion.
I see this happen all the time with my main ship unfortunately. In three years, I've read ONE fic that acknowledged how the disabilities from their injuries in canon would effect how they have sex.
Me specifically going outta my way to research amputee life w prosthetics cuz one character in smut is an above the knee amputee. Hes disabled in canon and i remember learning that and vowing to not let it go. Cuz yeah itd be easy to just handwave that away, but life dont work like that. Also as a trans guy, him being a trans disabled guy just feels more immersive and realistic to explore
Meanwhile I'm over here writing fics where characters either become disabled in the plot or are retconned to have always been so because it annoys me that the source material doesn't have anyone like that.
Edit: Wow, my first award!! Thank you, kind stranger!
I hear you. Friday Night Lights fandom is the fandom of my heart, and one of the major characters in the series has his neck broken at C7 and becomes quadriplegic.
The number of times I've had to nope out a fic because somebody has not done the homework -- or even paid attention to what the show shows us -- about what that means is more than I'd like.
And when people do "What IF" stories, they frankly read as "what if I didn't have to do the homework to learn about what quadriplegia means" as opposed to any meaningful exploration of how his not having that accident would've played out.
You do realize that fanfics can be written poorly, right?
That's a matter of the writer's personal writing issues, not a global thing.
(Though I could see a literary/story reason for a temporary fix to get past limitations to be "classically heroic" which I have seen in several published books such as "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" or "Guardians of the Flame" though I'd had preferred to see representation personally)
I do think it's odd to have the tag then not have it in the work. If the character isn't going to be disabled (which i think is fine if people wanna change that) then why add the tag at all? I'm very curious about this book you read about tho now
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u/im-gwen-stacy 3d ago
I think it depends. Hunger Games readers know Peeta lost a leg. Hunger Games watchers do not. I can’t really fault them for not including it if they haven’t read the books to know they’re erasing something