#disabled protagonists

It’s Disability Pride Month, and we’re celebrating with books that have queer disabled main characters! For more books with queer disabled MCs, or to look for specific conditions, check out our Disability/Neurodivergence page, linked here.  If you have a visual disability and are looking for more accessible titles, you can find lists on the site of books available in Large Print, Braille, and/or…

As you wish, @jadesabre301

My fics for stray gods mostly come in sapphic, particularly Calliope/Persephone because they're so angry and messy and delightful and writing Calliope soothes my inner menace. The first I ever wrote was Kore Enterprises, filling in the missing scene of Persephone visiting Calliope's apartment.

I expore Calliope and Persephone first getting together in Firewater, which probably still has one of the better opening paragraphs I've managed recently.

Calliope is used to Persephone on the edges of things. A cautionary tale for late night drinks and the bluer days of late autumn, when the city parks are full of crows fighting over the night’s scraps amongst raw and jagged trees, their final leaves are just the shed skins of their livelier, younger selves. A fragile song through tiny bones.

I wrote You caught my voice and listened as a response to @kshaar's Earworm, which is such a good drabble istg. Everything they write is incredible, whether for stray gods or dragon age, you should read all of it. But Earworm was the one that had me seeing if I could remember enough Greek to mangle some Sappho. It's also, like most of my fics for these characters, full of extravagant eidolon lore.

I have one Calliope x Grace, Calliope x Persephone, eventual ot3 everyone lives AU called Sing all your questions to sleep, which was quite fun. Comes complete with a rant about The Symposium!

The two fics I'm probably the most proud of, however, are The seed that grows without the sun (complete) and Monsters of the old world (one chapter to go).

Like… what?

So, a disabled person can’t do things now?

Some recommendations for LQBTQIA+/Disabled/Chronically Ill/Overweight characters who are protagonists and not fetishized:

A Bouquet for an Ugly Girl (Overweight, not conventionally attractive girl)

Elf Boyfriend and Boyish Girlfriend (not conventionally attractive female protag)

I Want to Be Normal (Protagonist with Face Blindness)

Gaijin-Chan to Mushinkei Boyish-Chan (Masc Lesbian)

My Androgynous Boyfriend (Genderfluid Male Protag)

Half (Lesbian Couple)

In The Closet (Lesbian One Shot Collection)

Paperbag-Kun is In Love (Male Protag with Anxiety)

Koi no Koe (Male Protag with Anxiety)

Kimi No Koe (Mute Female Protag)

Bring the Love (Male Protag with Burns and Chronic Pain)

Koe No Katachi/A Silent Voice (Deaf Female Protag)

Looking Up to You (Masculine Girl/Feminine Boy Couple)

Perfect World (Paralyzed/Chronically Ill Male Protag)

Pochimani (Overweight Female Protag)

Pulse (Lesbians)

Yankee-Kun and the White Cane Girl (Blind Female Protag)

Womanly Boyfriend and Manly Girlfriend (Exactly what it sounds like, but super cute)

I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up (Lesbians)

Tamen De Gushi/Start with Your Name (Lesbians, Super Funny and Cute)

Take Off Your Mask, Ishikawa (Female Protag with Anxiety)

Sweat and Soap (Spicy, Female Protag with Hyperhidrosis)

Beauty and the Beast Girl (Spicy, Lesbians, Blind Protag)

Our Dining Table (Gay)

Boyish Girlfriend (Lesbians)

Komi Can't Communicate (Female Protag with A Communication Disorder)

Nearby Muscle Girl (Masculine Female Protag)

Strong Girl Saotome (Masculine Female Protag)

Gestures of Affection/Yubisaki to Renren (Deaf Female Protag)

07. Is there a catchphrase or sound that they tend to make a lot (likely without being aware of it)?  

Ista doesn;t  even realise she’s swearing half the time. Just sort of sneaks in, sotto voce, as she’s going about her daily life (...falling her daily falls.) The Chargers would probably inspire some unique combinations of invective. 

20. Does your character like animals? What are some of their favorite animals? Would they want pets? What about mythological creatures?

Mostly, Ista likes animals at a distance. (Unless they’re dragons, in which case she tends to get appallingly close-range. Thanks, Bull.) She doesn’t really trust herself to look after a plant, let alone anything with eyes. She’s fond of birds, loves the idea of griffin  and would eat up any stories about them. I sort of want to write “Ista gets adopted by a scraggly, angry, particularly cat-like griffin that won’t take no as an answer” now, but that would be a bit daft. 

39. When people look at your character, is there some assumption they might make about them just by appearance? Is that assumption correct? 

For @bloomingcnidarians, who was kind enough to let me use her Beira Adaar. 

The Inquisition is loud. Makes sense, Fidan supposes. There's something in the name that conjures banners and spikes, even without the teeming mass of it setting up on the Western Approach, talking about the Arbor Wilds as if it's only days away. There's some fine-spoken shem lady moving about, too. Mangling elvhen words as she talks about her learning where anyone can hear her. 

When Fidan moves into the centre of the main camp, there's a lot of swearing and one big man follows her like he's measuring all the weak places in her spine. Fidan grins. She'd worry about who to look at, except that there is ozone in her mouth, an itch on her skin. The Fade, hot and bright and too close to the surface of things. 

"That," she says. "Must be really fascinating, and also a pain. Are you the Inquisitor? I'd like to help. And I'm fine with all your friends looming and all, but it's—"

A long, exasperated sigh and the creak of leather from her left side. "Now, see here."

The voice low for a woman. Navarran. Annoyed. Fidan half turns in her direction, though not fully away from the quiet, magical centre of the space.  

"Sorry," she says. "Can't." 

"I beg your—"

"—no you don't, but that's all right. I'm Fidan. You're all about to wander into a bunch of clumsily animated corpses. Just thought I'd warn you. Also, if that 'Arcane Advisor' takes one more daytrip into the burial ground--"

"Look, y—"

Fidan turns back to the Inquisitor. "Everyone always says that," she says, mournful.

She does not expect the Inquisitor to laugh. Surprised and bright and lovely, and from a greater height than Fidan expects.

“They really do,” the Inquisitor says.

She joins the bickering, crowded mess of them all, doing her best to stay in Morrigan's way. It's hard not to follow Inquisitor Adaar like the sun.

"If I tried to heal more than a papercut on a very small child I'd be out for days," she says, when Beira works in the surgeon's camp at Skyhold, Fidan crouched on the other side of a patient's bed, feeling magic shift and tug and gently smooth things together. "This is—graceful. I'm jealous."

"Graceful?" a snort. "I'm hardly—"

"—this is. You are, Inquisitor."

"Beira, please."

"Yeah?"    

Fidan wonders if she's blushing, swallows down something daft and babbling as Beira takes her hand. 

"Yes, you." 

"You know," Fidan says, trying to span the distance between floor and barstool at Herald's Rest and wondering if she dare make the attempt, "I think Solas has decided I'm a waste of space. Finally." 

"Oh dear,” Beira sighs. “I...shouldn't laugh..." 

"I don’t see why not. I mean, honestly: 'You can never understand, lethallan," Fidan intones this, with a dreadful attempt at Solas’s vowels.  "'Small magic is merely--' gods, I nearly gagged.”

“You didn’t gag?”

Fidan grins.  “You can cram a lot of passive-aggressive into Dalish endearments if you want to. He wanted to. Amazing how he started picking holes in everything I did only after finding out I like women, too." she shudders. "If I'd known, I'd have gotten to someone to paint a sign. Saved a lot of boring dream conversations. Does he do that to everyone, without their consent?" 

Beira swallows. "He's very—" 

"—annoying." Fidan kicks at the bar stool. "Like this thing." 

"Can I help?" Beira asks. 

"Er...all right—oh!" 

Fidan is lifted off her feet and she can feel the edge of the chair, right before Beira's weight shifts forward and it falls, leaving her suspended and the grip at her back turned tight as Beira clutches at her to stop her fall. There's a clatter. Laughter from both of them, and Fidan wraps her legs around the other woman's waist, grinning at the ridiculousness of it as patrons swear and shuffle away. She presses her face into Beira's shoulder, but frowns when her friend's laughter has something raw and sad in it. 

"Hey," she says. "Hey, sweet. You've got me. This is fine." 

"I am so sorry," Beira says. "I just wanted to help. I am the worst. I am so—"

"You've got me," Fidan says again, raising her head, letting one hand move around to the back of the other woman's neck. "I've got you. You're no such thing."

"This is the silliest—"

"—excuse you," Fidan says, swallowing a little herself as the next words press up inside, insistent and reckless. "I get to be this close to a gorgeous woman." She slips back, letting the fingers trail from Beira's neck up along her jaw, then to her cheek, Distance measured, she leans in, presses a light kiss to her lips. A lot of hope. Half a question.

I know, I know. I commission a lot of art for Ista. But I’ve never commissioned her with Bull before and @tevinterllama did the most incredible job. The back-and-forth emails leading up to and following this art are full of exclamations, but I was running out of ways to say: look, look them, the sneak!romantic dorks...

Ista’s scars. Bull’s missing fingers. The stretch of muscle of her arm being held that way, both of them knowing exactly how much her body can take and pushing it a little further, even in simple gestures. Bull braces as he pulls. Her thumb at his cheek is the result of a thousand tiny movements. 

(also, she’s blushing a little and I’m dying.) 

Jackie, thank you so much for your patience and the care and effort you put into this.