This is its own post because itâs its own discreet thought but re: disability and writing, thereâs a nice little thing I like to think about which is that just about any series about superpowers tends to actually be chock full of disabilities that people- sometimes even the writers- donât think of as disabilities. This is probably the spirit of the original post- where someone pointed out that the enormous popularity of Fullmetal Alchemist as a series, puts the lie to the notion that you canât meaningfully have a major action series with a disabled protagonist.
Because FMA has two of its main characters as disabled- both Elric brothers. Ed is literally and quite explicitly a double amputee, while Alâs ailment is a bit more fantastical but vividly and overtly impacts his quality of life- itâs been a good while since Iâve read the series but I recall it being discussed that he canât sleep or eat, I believe he has impaired tactile sensations, and probably actually has a hard time telling if his body is damaged (such as in the aftermath of Scarâs debut when he goes to grab Edâs shirt with his arm and said arm just. falls off, surprising both of them)
I think that a sneaky variant of ableism is this- that in the presence of fantastical elements that people often stop viewing this as a disability. And this may well be the root of a lot of poorly-conceived, âcharacter X is blind but has another function that perfectly replaces their vision in such a way that they live exactly like a sighted person doesâ takes.
But the fascinating thing about this is if you turn it on its head- arguably every single character who has a superpower that doesnât completely shut off when not in use and canât be triggered by accident IS DISABLED, or at least, has an extremely strong bridge to being relatable to disabled experiences.
A great example: in the series Danny Phantom, the main character gets his powers from a sudden lab accident. One of the most persistent and involuntarily triggered of those powers is intangibility. Itâs mentioned offhandedly in an early episode heâs been banned from handling any fragile school equipment. Considering his intangibility power is one of his defensive mainstays and virtually always triggers when heâs nervous, which, if heâs dropped a bunch of stuff, carrying anything breakable probably makes him nervous, which may or may not trip his intangibility powerâŚ
âŚare we talking about a secret teen superhero, or are we talking about a kid who got into a household accident, got nerve damage, and is now trying to live with being notably, frustratingly clumsier in most aspects of his life?
This is just one case of one power. And the fact that this can coexist entirely with aforementioned problem of âif the disabled character has cool fantasy attached to them, people tend to view the disability itself as fantastical and thus write it out of any ânormalâ read on the characterâ,
(which I havenât just seen in FMA, but Voltron: Legendary Defender also had a surprising number of people omit a major characterâs prosthetic arm in various AUs- AUs that found excuses to keep his facial scar and the streak in his hair that happened at the same time)
altogether comes to a frustrating time where you can have a huge number of stories with characters who are functionally disabled, but written or read with a huge denial of the idea this is what weâre talking about.
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