Crayon Adventures! Heck yeah!

So, what is Eff No, Stairs and Sewers? It’s a blog to look at various locales and regions, mostly in video games, and see how accessible they are. Now, I mean this to an extent. I don’t expect even-grounded forests, or caves with ramps, or ancient ruins with built in elevators. But there are plenty of works of fiction that take place in modern or futuristic, realistic surroundings. Those are the ones I’ll be looking at.

A bit about myself. I’m disabled. I was born with a birth defect that has left me requiring the use of a wheelchair. Around the house I am mobile enough, but for any sort of travel, I require the use of a wheelchair. That said, a lot of what is looked at on this blog will be from a wheelchair point of view. Also, I play video games. I have since I was around three years old. They have helped me deal with the fact that there is a lot of stuff I can’t do. Video games have always been in some way an escape for me. I can vent frustrations. I can do things I can’t normally.

But even that got me to thinking. In video games it is so rare to see a hero venture forth on a quest or become the best or be handpicked by some interplanetary savior as the chosen one and for them to be disabled. No one springs to mind, really. Even as NPCs, the disabled are few and far between. I’m being a bit unfair because I’m not counting people who have lost limbs and had them replaced with awesome metallic toolboxes full of rockets, guns, grappling hooks, and megaton strength, because that happens. But how many plucky 12-year-olds in wheelchairs head off into the big world to stop the alien overlord floating over the cityscape? How often do we see someone disabled set forth with nothing but a map and a little bit of money, determined to become the new champion of monster fighting? Could they even, with how the games are set up? That’s what I plan on looking at.