I dunno, sometimes it feels much better to have a neutral word to describe a neutral reality rather than being defaulted to "gay" at best and "frigid bitch" at worst
Representation is good, and more of it is needed. ALSO, anybody read Stormlight Archives?
Brandon Sanderson has created a unique magic system where answers to some of those questions are given. The timing of injuries matter, how long it takes to get aid. It's harder to change things that were true about you at birth. How you perceive yourself is taken into account, so not everything can change if that's how you see yourself in your mind. As for the look of things, maybe that is the technology that developed alongside magic. Within the Stormlight Archives series the book Dawnshard focuses on a main character who is physically disabled, and has scenes touching on the development of her chair.
This was some of the most high effort bullshitting I've ever seen someone go through just to keep disabled people out of their D&D campaign.
It's so incredibly simple. And as someone who is chronically verbose, even I could boil it down to a single sentence.
PEOPLE LIKE TO SEE THEMSELF REPRESENTED IN THE MEDIA THEY CONSUME.
There should be a name for that.
Like... representative analogs.
Representism.
Representology.
I'm sure someone will think of something to call it. And then let everyone know how much it matters.
But seriously, It really does not need to be any more complicated. And it isn't even that complicated to come up with reasons disability exists in a magical realm.
Perhaps magic caused the disability in the first place. Or it is a curse not easily undone. Or perhaps magic gets better over time like science. 100 years ago, an infection was a death sentence. Now we have antibiotics. And the magic to "cure" disabilities just isn't advanced enough yet.
I could literally do this all night.
Fantasy is probably one of the easiest genres to include disabilities and it is really gross how many people want to deny us this opportunity for... representation.
So, I promise this has no big spoilers, but I'll tag anyway. I just pulled up Stardew Valley 1.6 for a few hours. New save file. After having played over 900 hours. In the first day there was a new item. Day two a new item. Day three there were two new items. Guys, I don't think any of us were prepared for this.
the older i get and the closer i am to reaching 30, the more the people around me try to deny me my age. it’s a constant ‘oh you’re just turning 29 again teehee 🤭’ or ‘dont tell your SO that, he’ll leave you for a younger model 😉’ and i just???? hate it?????????
i spent my entire teenaged years fighting for my life. i crawled through the deepest pits of my depression to cling to the promise of a life beyond that pain. i was so convinced that i was going to die young, that i would never see the grace of my age starting with a 2, let alone 3.
so im going to turn 30, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop me from loving it.
it’s a tragedy that dinotopia was adapted as a weird gritty looking tv movie with bad cgi when it’s, without exaggeration, the most ghibli any book has ever been