Moved to @StellasWritingNook on tumblr

Remember in Adventure Time when it was foreshadowed for years that Finn was gonna lose his arm?

it's a scene from arrested development. michael's illusionist brother puts a dead dove in a paper bag in the fridge and marks it as dead dove do not eat so that the rest of the house doesn't get a nasty surprise looking for leftovers to snack on. michael takes it out of the fridge, reads the label, and then looks inside where there is in fact a dead dove. he then says, to no one in particular, 'i don't know what i expected.'

fandom thought shit was funny so we incorporated it. 'dead dove: do not eat' means 'i tagged this fic accordingly. if you don't read/regard the tags and find some shit you dont wanna read in here, that's your problem.'

it has nothing to do with darkfic or triggering fic or any of that. it just means 'this is a very specific niche, mind the tags.' someone could write like, balloon-popping fetish fic where the plot is 100% fluffy and no sex takes place and everyone's having a good time, but they might still tag it 'dead dove' because they don't want some no life to come into their comments like 'what the fuck? why did you write balloon fetishism into your balloon fetish fic!!!!'

LITERALLY

What the “dead dove do not eat” tag/warning means

For the record.

It’s not about the darkness of the content!

- Neil Gaiman

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”

“In 1655, Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]

The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]

In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]

In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

If you have chairs (Do people sit on chairs to eat dinner? Write letters? Rest their aching feet?), and you have wheels (Carriages? Chariots? Oxcarts?), then you have zero reasons they can’t be put together.

Also:

[Image description: black and white image [against a red background] of Hephaestus from an archaic, 6th century B.C.E., Greek drinking bowl, sitting in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, with his smith’s hammer over his shoulder. The image is surrounded by gold dots, and framed in gold, black and white. Description ends]

In case you missed it, that image was originally painted in the 6th Century B.C.E. (That’s 200 years before Alexander the Great).

When I think of God on wheels, I think of the delight I take in my own chair. I sense the holy possibility that my own body knows, the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit. I like to think that God inhabits the particular fusions that mark a body in wheels: the way flesh flows into frame, into tire, into air. This is how the Holy moves through me, in the intricate interplay of muscle and spin, the exhilarating physicality of body and wheel, the rare promise of a wide-open space, the unabashed exhilaration of a dance floor,where wing can finally unfurl.

On wheels, I feel the tenor of the path deep in my sinews and sit bones. I come to know the intimate geography of a place: not just broad brushstrokes of terrain, but the minute fluctuations of topography, the way the wheel flows. When I roll, I pay particular attention to the interstices and intersections: the place where concrete seams together uneasily, the  buckle of tree roots pushing up against asphalt, the bristle of crumbling brick. I have come to believe this awareness reflects a quality of divine attention. Perhaps the divine presence moves through this world with a bone-deep knowledge of every crack and fissure. Perhaps God is particularly present at junctions and unexpected meetings, alert to points of encounter where two things come together.

— Rabbi Julia Watts Besser, “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology” (Tikkun Magazine) 

When I roll, I pay particular attention to the interstices and intersections: the place where concrete seams together uneasily

^^^So much this!^^^

I am convinced, down to the level of my bones – down, even, to the level of my mitochondria – that I became a writer in general, and that my chosen genres are wonder tales and poetry in particular, because I have cerebral palsy. 

Ever since I was a toddler (as soon as I was old enough to not always be carried around), I’ve need to be aware of the spaces between things.

“Can I fit through there?” “Is there anything on the floor that would cause my wheels to get bogged down, or crutch tips to slip?” “If I enter this room, will I have space to turn around and leave?” etc..

All these questions deal with concrete, everyday, manifestations of “The Liminal.” I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the fantasy genres, to both write, and read, as my favorite genre. Because so-called “realistic” fiction completely ignores these borderlines, and therefore feels empty and fake to me.

I’d almost forgotten that I wrote this. I still agree with it. So there.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

(A moment’s pause to put tape on my oldest copy of the Mentor W. H. D. Rouse prose translation, as the cover just fell off in my hand…)

In Book XVIII, things on the battlefield before Troy have gone even further to shit than usual. Patroklos, who borrowed Achilles’ armor to go out and fight when Achilles wouldn’t, is now dead, and Hector’s got Achilles’ armor. So his mom the sea-nymph Thetis goes to see Hephaestus to ask him to please make some new armor for her son.

The god’s in in his workshop when Thetis turns up at his house. Hephaestus is really busy building automated delivery robots—

…twenty tripods which were to stand around the walls of his room. He put golden wheels under the base of each, that they might run of themselves into any party of the gods and then run home again. They were a miracle! They were nearly done; only the lugs had to be put on, and he was just finishing these and forging the rivets.

So when Thetis comes along, his wife Charis (one of the Graces) goes to meet her and gets her a drink, and then calls back to the workshop, “Husband! Come in here; Thetis wants you!” And after cleaning himself up a little and changing into a fresh tunic—

…he limped out leaning on a thick stick, with a couple of maids to support him. These are made of gold exactly like living girls; they have sense in their heads, they can speak and use their muscles… These bustled along supporting their master, and he stumbled to a chair beside Thetis…

…and then we get into the small talk that precedes the armor-making, so never mind that. But in the meantime: “Look, sir! Droids!”