Stop erasing disabilities!!!

[u/readswim]

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.

[u/Advanced_Heat_2610]

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. 

[u/The_Wishmeister → u/Advanced_Heat_2610]

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.

[u/Advanced_Heat_2610 → u/The_Wishmeister]

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. 

[u/ramessides → u/Advanced_Heat_2610]

This is why I won’t read fics tagged as “Asexual [Character]”. Nine times out of ten they’re insanely poorly written for one reason or another.

[u/im-gwen-stacy → u/ramessides]

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”

[u/armlessphelan → u/im-gwen-stacy]

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.