Announcing: Festibility! Please Signal Boost!

[sasha_feather]

Announcing access_fandom’s first Fanworks Festival, Festibility!

What: Hosted by access_fandom, Festibility is a fandom festival accepting all kinds of fanworks (fic, meta, art, icons, podfic, vids, recs, picspams, drabble sets etc) about disabled characters. Works can focus on canonically disabled characters or canonically able-bodied characters that you reimagine as disabled. Pieces can be as long or short as you like.

When: July 15 to September 15, 2010 (for those who work best under deadlines). Yes, this starts one week from today!

How: We’ll make a post soliciting prompts from you tomorrow! Prompts can be general or fandom-specific. Feel free to respond to prompts with commentfic, or use them for longer works posted during the festival posting period. You don’t have to claim particular prompts to post, and claiming a prompt does not mean you’ve committed to posting a fanwork filling it. You can also post fanworks without filling any prompt--basically, anything goes!

ETA: Here is the prompts post!

Who: For Festibility, your mods are kaz, lightgetsin, sasha_feather, and were_duck. Any and everyone is welcome to participate!

We will also host a beta pool of folks willing to check other folks’ fanworks for portrayals of disability. This is entirely volunteer and optional, though we ask that participants make a strong effort and do their research in order to create positive and affirming portrayals of characters with disabilities. Your mods will do our best to provide resources to help you reach this goal!

Please note that you can post links to fanworks or recs in this community at any time. The end date of this festival is when your mods will stop cheerleading; it does not mean that you have to stop posting. This is intended to be a low-pressure festival.

Please watch this community for more information. Leave comments here or contact one of the mods listed above with any questions or concerns.



Canonically Disabled Characters in Fandom-- A starter list

Felix Gaeta (Battlestar: Galactica)
Professor Xavier (X-Men)
Scott Summers (X-Men)
Logan and Max (Dark Angel
Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood)
John Locke (Lost)
Oracle
Daredevil
Artie (Glee)
Jake Sully (James Cameron’s Avatar)
Geordi LaForge (ST: TNG)
Capt. Christopher Pike (Star Trek: TOS/reboot)
Kerry Weaver (ER)
Greg House (House)
Monk (Monk)
Dr. Gabriel Fife (Private Practice)
Dr. Al Robbins (CSI)
Joe Dawson (Highlander)
Toph Bei Fong (A:TLA)
Johnny Smith (Dead Zone)
John Watson (Sherlock Holmes 2010)
Thakur Baldev Singh (Sholay)
Alex Krycek (X-Files)
Xander Harris (Buffy)
Augustus Hill (Oz)
Joey Lucas (West Wing; a prominent guest star)
President Bartlet (West Wing)
Pete Thornton (MacGyver)
Riddick (Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick)
Toothless (How To Train Your Dragon)

ETA from comments:
Kevin (Joan of Arcadia)
Miles Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan series)
Diana Reid (Criminal Minds)
Scott Macintyre (American Idol)
Cassandra Cain from Batman (DCU comics)
Aquaman
Lex Luthor lost a hand in some continuities
Slade Wilson (DCU comics)
Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Gobber (How to Train Your Dragon)
River Tam (Firefly and Serenity)
Sarah Connor (Terminator 2 and Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Roland (Saved!)
Teo (Avatar: the last airbender)
Lireal (Garth Nix books)

Please see comments for more! Lots of great suggestions!

Comments

[passerine]

Nemo, Dory, and Gil from Finding Nemo.

In the Toy Story series, Buzz temporarily lost his arm, Woody was a "broken toy" and had to deal with the ramifications of that, and Jessie has pretty clear-cut PTSD.

[laeria]

May I please have a link to this Amberverse of yours? (I've toyed with Fiona-as-the-ultimate-puppetmaster theories in my youth!)

Thank you for mentioning Coral and Jurt - I've a really patchy memory of the second set of Amber books.

And, yes, it's a fascinating setting, particularly because of Shadow-walking. Luke was trapped in his own hallucination; what if hallucinations were a part of somebody's disability? Also, since the worlds Amberites "build" are shaped by their perception, what kind of worlds would they find/create if they were, say, blind? [Corwin couldn't manage, but maybe that's because he was using his usual visualisation methods, which I refuse to accept are the only way to Shadow-walk.]

[thingswithwings]

In addition to John Watson, what about Sherlock Holmes himself? Book canon, Granada series canon, and recent movie canon all depict him pretty clearly as bipolar.

[wisdomeagle]

Stacey McGill (Babysitters Club, diabetes)
Abby Stevenson (Babysitters Club, severe allergies and asthma)
Lindsey McDonald (Angel the series, lost a hand)
Peter Pettigrew (Harry Potter, lost a hand)
Nog (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, lost a leg)

[(Anonymous)]

<span style="color:#666; background:#666">SECRET TEXT HERE</span>

I used HTML escapes to make those angle brackets appear in the comment, so you can copy this template right out of this comment and save it.

You can also use color names, like "color:yellow" (no "#" with a color name) (SECRET TEXT HERE), and other combinations of hex digits for RGB (with a "#", as in the example at top) (SECRET TEXT HERE); but if you don't know what that means, don't worry.

-- thnidu from LiveJournal

[were_duck]

Thanks for leaving this code! We also suggest using amadi's spoiler code (the grey-on-grey kind) because it includes a function that alerts people using screenreaders to the spoiler text and gives an option for them to skip it if they'd like!

[passerine]

Oh dear...I may have to hunt in the wayback machine, since much of my writing in this fandom was posted to what used to be my Geocities page back in 1998 or so. :)

(I will warn that my Amberverse's family tree doesn't always branch, if you know what I mean, and that knowledge of this is a large part of how Fiona was able to blackmail Brand into cooperating with her.)

Though, more recent but still a few years old, I wrote Red Glare set in that world. [STRONG WARNING for self-injury and sibling incest.]

And yeah, there's a lot I love about the second series, but my version pretty much disregarded it wholesale, because ironically my favorite characters from the second series make my setting completely not work, as you can tell if you read my fic. :)

[passerine]

Also Clarice? I believe clinical depression is canonical for her, complete with some of the more unpleasant side effects of antidepressants.

[svollga]

I don't think I've seen them in the comments though I could miss something: Queer as Folk (USA)
Justin is disabled as a result of gay bashing.
Vic, Ben and Hunter are HIV-positive (and Vic gets HIV-positive boyfriend later).
Brian has testivle cancer and later has his testicle removed.

[incidental_fire]

Yup, both of those are definitely canon for Clarice.

[asimaiyat]

Exciting! :D

I would like to add Lisbeth Salander from Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy to the list.

[ariaflame]

As I remember Lois also had issues with depression and antidepressant side effects.

Then there's Sydney's cancer scare. Not sure if that fits in an ableism discussion though.

[wisdomeagle]

svollga reminds me:

RENT: Angel, Collins, Roger, Mimi and April are all HIV+

I am a big fan of older characters, and it occurs to me that things we call disabilities in the young seem natural in the old. Nonetheless:

Miss Marple (Agatha Christie novels, rheumatoid arthritis)
Mimi Kishi (Babysitters Club, post-stroke cognitive and physical impairments)

deleted and reposted repeatedly for dw newbie coding fail.

[softestbullet]

Elim Garak (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) (claustrophobia -- and he's played by an actor w/ claustrophobia!)

[atalantapendrag]

The Heretic from Kage Baker's Empress of Mars
Sato from Welcome to the NHK
Creb from Clan of the Cave Bear
Kyle Chutsky and Sgt. Doakes from the Dexter novels
Claudius from I, Claudius (also from real life, of course)

[livrelibre]

I just finished the first book and I love her!

[trinity_clare]

If you go with some of the fanon for post-series Dark Angel, the entire X series has Max's tryptophan deficiency, so that might make an interesting fic.

[livrelibre]

Awesome!

Alternate Astrid Farnsworth from Fringe (Asperger’s)
Cougar from The Losers (PTSD in the comics)

[executrix]

USA has a series debuting on the 13th, "Covert Affairs," in which Christopher Gorham plays Auggie Anderson, a blind CIA analyst.

[duskpeterson]

Two questions:

Most of what I write is original fiction: slash, gen, and het. Does that qualify for the fest?

Most of my disabilityfic is set in fantasy and historical fantasy worlds where views on disability are unenlightened. Everybody, including the disabled folks, are using "ableist or other oppressive pejoratives such as 'lame'," because that's the accepted language in their culture, and they're living decades or centuries before pejorative language has become a societal concern. Am I understanding correctly from your rules about language that this is the wrong community for that type of fiction?

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for this question! Original fic is fine. You are allowed to post fic with ableist pejeratives, but please warn for it in the fic headers/notes. My rules notes was more for the propmts feature and we are posting an edit right now to clarify.

[duskpeterson]

Super! Thanks for such a quick clarification. I'm looking forward to seeing how the fest goes.

[katta]

Ooh, look at this! How awesome!

To start with some chars I've already written (and no, this isn't a lazy excuse to bring out old fic *g* rather a way to make others write them too), these could be added to the list:

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Angel AU episode "Birthday" (Yes, I know, one episode, but it's a whole universe to play in!)
Lee MacAvoy, Doctor Who (guest character)
Garrett, Quest for Camelot
Gus Pike, Road to Avonlea
J.J. Fredricks, SeaQuest - and Dagwood too, come to think of it.
Ross Tanner, Second Sight
Nick Andros, The Stand
Ike McSwain, The Young Riders
Artie Maddicks, X-men universe
Felipe (or in other versions, Bernardo), Zorro

*goes off to read prompts*

[katta]

Oh! And! I haven't written him and there isn't a fandom (unfortunately), but Kai from the 2009 version of Vorstadtkrokodile is a kick-ass character. (The actor's not really paraplegic, but the stuntman is.)

[passerine]

IIRC, it was quite a bit more than a "scare" - wasn't there a story arc where she was getting chemo, her students were shaving their heads in support of her, etc?