Writing Advice Part 3: Disability And Sadness

Writing Advice Part 3: Disability And Sadness

After covering infantilization(Part 1) and !demonization!(Part 2), now we are onto another way that writers and other media types mess up the simple phrase "disabled adults are adults"

Now We Are Onto:

"Disabled Adults Are Self-Hating"

A lot and, I mean, A LOT of writers tend to hear disability and think "what type of disabled are they?" According to bad representation of disability, disabled adults have two types defined by one-dimensional emotional attitudes that have an undercurrent of ableism and bad writing.

The list goes like this:

Anger

Sadness

FIRST: Anger And One-Dimensional Unlikeability

When disabled characters are defined by their anger they actually have to subtypes of existence depending on who they hate

Either they are a villain who is evil because they're envious of able-bodied people because they hate themselves and their disabled existence so much.

Or they're a one-dimensional annoying character whose anger is either sympathetic only to disabled audience members and not producers/characters because their anger comes from their boundaries being disprespected or annoying because they're just the most one-dimensional hateful person.

Obviously, making your one example of a disabled character evil is bad. I won't go into that too much since I covered that in Part 2 Writing Advice: Disability and Evil.

The problem with this narrative of self-hating existence is that it turns a complicated topic of internalized ableism as a way of making them a villain for abled-bodied people!

Obviously, when a person's only example of disabled characters is as the hateful unsympathetic villain they internalize that and project it onto themselves if they're disabled and onto others!

"But {name I don't have}, didn't you say that writing unlikeable disabled characters is good?"

Yeah but the problem tends to be that when you have an unlikeable character you either need to make them sympathetic and/or competent.

These characters aren't unlikeable because authors want to explore the internal lives of unlikeable people! They're unlikeable so that when they die/suffer, we cheer!

"When The Audience Cheers For The Death Of A Villain They're Also Cheering The Death Of A Disabled Person"

SECOND: Sadness And Self-Hating Existence

The existence of disabled characters is often marked through unimaginable hardship with disabled characters often acquiring their disabilities through traumatic accidents instead of the more common story of disease and congenital conditions.

Disabled characters are often shown being depressed and hopeless about their disabilities as they sometimes turn to villainy as an act of vengeance.

The only way they can gain happiness is through either being cured by magic/"moral eugenics" or by distancing themselves from disability.

That "distancing from disability" storyline is often demonstrated by characters becoming overjoyed at the prospect of losing their mobility aids such as wheelchairs! That's shitty.

I will adress the whole "self-hating narrative" in my conclusion since both anger and sadness are focused on the self-hatred narrative.

Firstly, don't cure characters who have incurable conditions. Because, guess what! Real disabled people with incurable conditions exist! They will still exist when your character is cured. All you've done is remove their representation and effectively said that the only way they can be happy is to not exist :) That's shitty.

Secondly, stop thinking that disabled people hate their assistant devices!

While wheelchairs might make you, able-bodied author, think of being trapped, disabled people who need wheelchairs need them in order to fully utilize their strengths. Wheelchairs are symbols of freedom!

FINAL: Self Hating Narrative

Disabled people aren't instinctively self-hating, you know? Like, if people didn't hate/ignore the existence of disabled people then there would be no problem?

You are writing a world that is divorced from reality. In a world where spies can dodge bullets. In a world where dragons exist. In a world where power fantasy exists.

Why, in that world, did you decide that ableism must exist?

Why can't you write a world where disabled people aren't defined by self-hated?

Why can't you check out the disabled community before you write your bullshit representation to see campaigns such as "My Face Is A Masterpiece" or "I'm Not Your Villain" that disprove your assumption that all disabled people are self-hating?

Not all disabled people are self-hating and most don't hate all able-bodied people!

Most disabled people live happy-filled lives marked by the type of struggle you, standard person, goes through.

Disability doesn't have to be the isolating, depressing, and self-hating experience you assume it is.

There are thousands of people right now who are loving their existence and assistant devices.

There are thousands of people right now working to get to that point.

You could write the story of disabled characters who are happy in their disabilities and who struggle with the problems you do.

You could write disabled characters in a way that doesn't invalidate their problems but also doesn't show disability as a death sentence.

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everyone please read this and share if you can.

Brazil is going through one of the worst climatic crisis ever seen.

i live in the southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. we have been suffering from extreme, nonstop rainstorms for a week now. the rivers are flooding, reaching 4-6 meters above their natural level. people are being rescued by helicopters, neighborhoods are being evacuated. entire cities are slowly but surely becoming submerged in water. 60 people missing and counting. 32 deaths and counting.

and this is not new. last november also had a flood like this one. 50 dead, many material losses. it happened again this january, with thousands being left without power or water for days.

three catastrophical disasters within less than a year. three disasters only a few months apart.

this is not natural.

unsustainable agricultural practices and politics led to this. a complete disregard for nature led to this. greed led to this. always greed.

when it comes to the climate crisis, i cannot stress this enough: we need to act now if we still want to live. disasters like this are going to happen more often and they're going to be much, much worse. this flood is being considered the worst climatic catastrophe in the history of my state. i don't know how long it will take for another bigger one to happen and take its place. i just know it will be sooner than it should.

links to donate (if you can't donate, sharing already helps a lot):

link for non-brazilians (paybox)

link for brazilians

pix assufrgs

will update more links later. in the meantime, pray for us.

Writing Advice: Characterization

Sometimes, the best inspiration for how you should characterize your character is how they first appear and struggle you have with writing them.

For example, when it comes to writing a character's sexuality or gender identity, I just let my struggle decide.

For example, I knew Théo was a trans woman before she knew since she kept switching between appearing as a man and as a woman so much. Eventually my brain decided "woman" but I decided to bring up her past with dicks by making her a trans woman.

Or Claude Covarrubias who gave me the biggest chase for gender i've ever seen! Genuinely, I kept trying to get a lock on their gender but it was futile as a cat trying to catch a bird from outside. I eventually decided that their gender was "ambiguous". What genitalia were they born with? I don't know. What do they identify as now? Murderer

Or Atlas who could not make up his fucking mind about his gender. Were they trans or cis? We didn't know. Woman, man, or nonbinary? We didn't know. So, Atlas was born into this world as Intersex but only discovered this fact through puberty when he randomly developed breasticles. They identify as nonbinary(genderqueer) and can go with any pronouns.

Basically, use your struggles to define your characters. Can't decide if they are paranoid or laidback? Make that their character struggle!

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