this is not at all my best written post, but i have thoughts rotating in my brain about how minimizing thirteen to "her life is all about huntington's" is actually not a great thing to do to a character with disability/illness. it totally buys into the phenomenon that pops up both in and out of chronic illness communities of labeling people as their diagnosis, and being encouraged to embrace that wholly, to let it devour you beyond the hold the disability or illness already has on your life. and the result of that is getting absorbed by it, losing who you are as a person in your diagnosis, because you can't see yourself beyond it anymore. and other people start to see the diagnosis instead of you. (a good example of this is when people can't see or understand who thirteen is beyond her huntington's; or, in real life, when abled people comment or complain that for chronically ill or disabled people "everything is always about [diagnosis here]", even if that isn't true.) the whole phenomenon in media specifically is just like... a microcosm of how society teaches us to strip chronically ill and disabled people of their individuality and agency (and teaches chronically ill and disabled people to do this to themselves!) and it really shows how we have to actively work to escape falling into that trap.
like. in and out of chronic illness and disability communities, people are like "i can't imagine having (diagnosis here), that must be awful". and then those of us with disabilities and health issues can get wrapped up in how other people perceive us because of our diagnoses, and how a diagnosis affects our lives. which is only natural and fair! but it's society that makes it problematic and pulls sick people into identifying solely as "sick" because it quite literally profits off of illness. something something. do we really need to repeat those cycles in fiction by reducing characters with chronic illness to, say, "the huntington's girl", for example? something something, it s a good opportunity to look at bias we might not have thought about otherwise. if any of this makes any sense. basically, in regards to media analysis, thirteen's huntington's is essential to understanding her as a character, and i'm absolutely not denying that. but it's also important to remember that she is far, far more than just 'the sick/dying girl', and that's just as crucial to understanding her character (and to understanding the disabled & chronically ill people in our daily lives!), if not more so.
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