Dear people who aren't physically disabled who plan to write fantasy settings:
[ID: Several images taken from the Geordi La Forge yes and no meme format, with Geordi holding out a hand disapprovingly for the no section, then pointing in approval for the yes section.
The first image is the meme:
No: "Saying the existance of magic in your setting means there are no disabled people (this literally just means disabled people are killed. AKA eugenics)"
Yes: "Having disabled people who use magical mobility aids and other assistive devices. Realizing that someone is still disabled even if their prosthetic arm is made of magic instead of plastic."
This is followed by four more panels of yes section:
"Geordi la Forge is still literally disabled. His visor helping him does not erase his disability and make him magically abled."
"Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender is still literally disabled even though her Earthbending helps her. It does not make her disability ~magically~ go away."
"Having your disability be accomodated does not mean the disability goes away. Having a prosthetic hand, even one that's made of magic, does not mean you're not disabled."
"Magical mobility aids do not mean disabled people don't exist. It just means they use magical mobility aids instead of plastic or metal ones. A limb made of magic is still a prosthetic even if it's made of the soul of the universe instead of plastic and metal."
Then another no panel: "'There's no disabled people beacuse magic'".
Then one last yes panel: "'Magic helps disabled people in a variety of ways'".
End ID.]
This also applies to science fiction; just because Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is super advanced doesn't mean it's no longer a prosthetic, or that he's not disabled. Same with Darth Vader - just because he has a suit that lets him breathe and walk around doesn't mean he's not disabled. (And Star Wars' propensity for making the villains visibly disabled while the heroes disabilities get covered up by super advanced prosthetics is a topic that deserves its own post, especially with how ableist some of the authors of the books are. Troy Denning is especially ableist)
Edit:
Because people keep being fucking obnoxious and ableist in the tags, yes,,, motherfuckers, if you refuse to have disabled people in your setting, that does make you fucking ableist. If you say that the magic is used to cure all disabled people and that's why they don't exist, that's fucking eugenics.
You cannot ""cure"", more like remove all disabilities without fucking eugenics. Magically automatically destroying disabled fetuses (a very fucking popular trope!) is eugenics.
The only way to fucking "cure" autism is to fucking kill all autistic people, also known as eugenics!
What about people with PTSD? Do you just fucking brainwash them so they aren't traumatized anymore?
Do you force all Deaf people to be able to hear? Do you force all blind people to be able to see? Do you force all anosmics to be able to smell?
Do you magically force everyone with a speech impediment to speak to your standards?
Do you force everyone born with bodily or facial differences to live up to your fucking standard of beauty?
You cannot fucking say "disablities don't exist in this universe because magic cures everything" without inherently saying that eugenics exists in your fucking universe.
Not all fucking disabilities need a cure. If you ""cured"" my autism I'd just be fucking dead. You'd literally just be changing me into what you think is fucking acceptable.
Stop fucking arguing in defence of ableists on my fucking post so you can pretend that eugenics has never been written about in magical settings when it is extremely fucking prevalent.
And while we're fucking at it, let your gods damned characters become disabled over the course of their story, and call them disabled within the fucking story. I don't care if they're a robot. I don't care if they have magic. Not all fucking damage can be fixed. Curses exist. Hardware can go out of fucking date and no longer be manufactured anywhere.
Let your characters become disabled and do not magically fucking cure them back to brand new every single time they get hurt. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is destroying any chance of ever having stakes.
No, "magical healing leaves scars on the mind from the memory of the injuries though!!!!" is not fucking good enough. Let your characters have scars. Let them become disabled. Stop being fucking ableist cowards.
Edit number fucking 2:
No, motherfuckers, you do not get to comment "if the disability was caused by magic it's not ableist to cure it with magic". You are the ableist this post is about. Shut the absolute fuck up, stop treating being disabled as the worst possible outcome, and just admit you're a fucking ableist. If you don't want your characters to become disabled, then don't fucking make them disabled.
[ID: The Garfield "you are not immune to propaganda" meme, now edited to read:
"If your first thought upon reading this post is, 'Oh, but it's okay to magically cure disabilities caused by magic!' Congrats…you are the exact sort of ableist jackass this post is about."
End ID.]
Edit number fucking 3:
Autistic people exist! People who are born with disabilities exist! You cannot create a setting where disabled people do not exist because we're all "cured" or "fixed" and not inherently say that you are killing disabled people as soon as they're born, or fucking aborting us as soon as you figure out we'd be born disabled! That's fucking eugenics!
There is no way to "cure" autism without eugenics! There is no way to "cure" people with body differences without eugenics! There is no way to make disabled people nonexistant in your setting without eugenics! Thinking you can and should "cure" and "fix" all disabilities IS EUGENICS!
Also:
[ID: A character shouting at the camera, now edited to read:
"Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! If the rules of Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them! It is your fucking personal responsability to be a better person than your bigoted society wants you to be!".
End ID.]
[ID: White text on a dark brown background with white and black borders around the edges, that reads:
"I don't fucking know or care about Dungeons and Dragons.
This post is not about Dungeons and Dragons.
Do not fucking throw the rulebook of Dungeons and Dragons at me like it's some sort of 'Gotcha!'.
You will literally just be blocked like the rest of the ableist assholes who've already tried it.
If you play dungeons and dragons, it's your responsability to make your games not be ableist, even if it means breaking the rules.".
End ID.]
I do not fucking care what the ableist rules are in Dungeons of Dragons. Do not fucking throw ableist rules for a game I have never and will never play at me on a post I made so that people could learn how to make their settings less ableist. If the rules in Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them. If you don't want to change them, then stop fucking playing an ableist game.
Disabled people deserve to see ourselves represented in fiction just like everyone else, without any fucking requirements that we be "cured" or "fixed" before the story ends.
How the fuck would you feel if a trans and gay character's whole story revolved around going on a quest to become straight and cis, did so, and only then was allowed to live happily ever after?
Why do you fucking think suggesting people write stories about disabled people going on a quest to be cured because it's the only way they'll ever be happy is any less fucking offensive?
Also:
This post is NOT a place for you to talk about how disabled people in fiction should have the option of curing their disabilities. It's just not. That's the fucking default for this society. That is not a revolutionary concept. It's not novel. We fucking know this society wants us gone. A post about how disabled people deserve representation is not the place to talk about how "Well, actually, in fiction disabled people should be cured!" Like that's not the fucking universal default???????????
Edit #4:
Everyone needs to stop tagging this singing praise for Fullmetal Alchemist. A story that uses disability as a punishment and the characters are on a quest to cure their disabilities is not the amazing representation you're all claiming it is just because the character who is only disabled because of DIVINE PUNISHMENT uses prosthetics.
Read this post, and this one. Fullmetal Alchemist is a hell of a lot more ableist than you people are letting on.
guess what you can now find a PDF version of this post on the web archive.
Edit #5! August 23rd, 2023!
A) Everyone. Disabilities that can only exist in the magical setting are still disabilities.
Trying to cure the younger brother's magical disability of being a soul floating around in a magical suit of armour is, in fact, going on a quest to heal a disability!
It doesn't matter if the older brother doesn't want to get his limbs back when they're going on a quest to heal the younger brother's disability! Especially when they BOTH get magically healed at the end!
Magical disabilities that can only exist in that setting, but not real life, are still disabilities, and it's not okay to magically heal them either! What part of the Garfield meme on this post did you all choose to ignore?!
B) When you leave tags on a post you are reblogging, the original poster can see them! When you leave tags on this post, I can see them!
If you think this post is ""too aggressive"" then simply do not reblog it! Don't fucking tone police me on a post I've had to edit five times now due to the constant ableism people have been commenting since I made it!
I have been called the R slur by multiple people in response to this post! People have literally reblogged this post to defend eugenics abortions! You can't see these comments or replies anymore because I blocked the poster!
If you think minorities are being too aggressive by responding appropriately to bigotry, you're a bigot! And you should either not reblog the post at all, or at the very least, shut the fuck up and not tone police us!
Do not fucking put tags on this post complaining I'm being too aggressive! That's called tone policing and you're a bigot if you do it! Don't fucking do it on anyone else's posts either! They can see your tags too!
C) When I fucking say Harry Potter fans are banned from this post, yes, this means YOU!
Either stop supporting a billionaire who's literally using the profits from her bigoted shittily written books to fund REAL FUCKING GENOCIDE, or fuck off!
By continuing to support the Harry Potter series, you are literally giving JK Rowling free fucking advertising! You are encouraging more people to read the series and watch the movies, spending more money and giving her more fucking money with which to LITERALLY SHAPE A COUNTRY'S LAWS TO COMMIT GENOCIDE. She is literally fucking fighting to make being trans illegal! She is literally fucking fighting to have even more of autistic people's rights taken away!
You cannot fucking be a fan of the Harry Potter series in 2023 and call yourself an ally to all the minorities harmed by JK Rowling and the bigotry baked into her shitty series!
Read another book! The Web Archive has tons you can read for free! Literally every single book on gutenberg.org/ is free! Including audiobooks for some of them!
If you write Harry Potter fanfiction, simply fucking get rid of the names and identifiable features and start writing original fiction instead! It's literally free!
Not supporting a literal fucking genocidal billionaire costs LITERALLY NOTHING! And if you refuse to fucking stop supporting JK Rowling, which is what you are doing when you support the Harry Potter series and squeal over her OCs, you are not an ally to any fucking minority! No! Not even if you're trans yourself!
= = =
Edit again Nobember 28th 2023 because this comment is just. such a perfect example for all of you that think this doesn't happen.
butter-whore2 said, two hours before this edit:
kind of a fan of tumblr's slightly more algorithmically elements for reminding me of the hell's other people construct for themselves but this one hits like five of the boxes. How do people do this to themselves? it's such a bizarre way to act over media I genuinely do not believe is capable of stirring an emotional response
the metaphysics of disability here are unintentionally really funny but disability is not a coherent ontological framework, it's a vague descriptor for literally thousands of different things none of which lend themselves to categorizing
Moralizing over fiction is incredibly lame.
Liking harry potter is also incredibly lame, it's not morally wrong nor transphobic and you do not get to decide that lol.
people literally do get "cured" of their disabilities all the time, many of them have a positive experience in doing so.
this is not what eugenics is.
the anti abortion stuff lol
Literally how do you live like this? you guys don't even read real books I don't get it.
Archived version of the comment for posterity.
So yeah, lofl, block this fucker.
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Omg hi Ms. Yellow Caballero big fan of your work <3 For real though, I'm really excited that your sharing the Weekenders, it was a joy to read and I'm bongocat-ing now that others also get the privilege to read it as well.
Referencing your tags, would you please elaborate of ableism in fandom and, like you said, how fandom treats characters with unpalatable disabilities?
Hi Ms. Bud Lite I'm a big fan of you <3
TL;DR A fear of writing characters of highly marginalized identities shields you from criticism and discomfort, but it's actively stigmatizing to people of these identities and as a writer you really need to get over yourself and write The Icky People.
I guess I'll come out swinging on this one and say that fandom doesn't like severe mental illness. (As a note, when I say severe mental illness (SMI) I mean illnesses such as psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, personality disorders, etc)
Obviously, nobody likes people w/SMI. It's just insanely egregious in fandom to me, since fanfic writers absolutely love writing characters or HC characters with depression, anxiety, or a specific variety of PTSD That Isn't Scary. People actively reject any character HCs for a SMI. When people write a character with SMI, they nicely downplay it, ignore it, substitute it for a disorder they like better, or rewrite it. It's completely untolerated, in both headcanons and in fanfiction, and every time I bring it up I always get the most interesting reasons why somebody couldn't possibly acknowledge a character's SMI in their writing. I've heard all of these:
"I don't know enough about the disorder to write it accurately." Do research.
"I'm not X, so I can't really depict it." You probably aren't a cis white man, but you depict those guys just fine.
"It feels insulting to the character." There is no shame in having a SMI.
"I can't understand what it's like, so it's better to be cautious and avoid giving characters stigmatized identities." There are LOTS of experiences that you'll never understand because you've never had them - you just don't want to write anything you're uncomfortable with. People with SMI make you uncomfortable, and you don't want to write anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, or think of a comfort character in an uncomfortable way. SMIs are marginalized differently than solely depression/anxiety/The Nice PTSD, and by refusing to write them you're actively contributing to the stigma.
I think (?) I've spoken in the past about how I believe that the rigorous external and internal policing of writing people of marginalized identities is actively harmful towards efforts to increase diversity of experience and background in fiction. A lot of fanfiction writers are just terrified to write people who they can't directly relate with, because they're worried 'they'll get it wrong' and be Big Cancelled. I think this is negative enough when it prevents people from going outside of their comfort zone, but on a macro level I think this results in people refusing to write characters of marginalized identities as all. It's an insidious thought process, and it's reflected in people's unwillingness to diversity their writing or acknowledge canon diversity.
'Well, I don't understand what it's like to be Black, so I don't want to write Black people'. 'I want to project on this character, so I only want to write them with mental illnesses and identities I have'. 'If I write a marginalized character incorrectly people will yell at me, so I won't write a marginalized character who's marginalized differently than me at all'. Can you imagine writing a lesbian character with a boyfriend because 'you feel uncomfortable writing lesbian experiences'? It's blatantly homophobic. But people do that with disability and race/ethnicity ALL THE TIME.
People with SMI notice that you feel uncomfortable with them. It's obvious. They notice when a character has a SMI + anxiety, and you only write their anxiety. They notice when a character displays symptoms of a SMI in canon, but you write it out. And POC notice when the characters of color are written out. I know we all like to project on the blorbos and relate to them, and in the joys of your own head do whatever, but as a writer if you only stick to identities you're comfortable with you are actively being a worse writer. Which to me is the REAL sin lmfao.
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