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]

Arguably Benedict from Chronicles of Amber as well, at least during the time he is missing a hand?

[laeria]

Oh yes! And Corwin was temporarily blind.

What are your thoughts on Brand-as-clinically-depressed?

[passerine]

Almost but not quite. Canonical description is much closer to bipolar than to unipolar depression, and that is generally how I wrote him in my primary version of the Amberverse. (He was a major part of it because, short version, Fiona was my real Big Bad and was blackmailing Brand into fronting for her.)

Also two more people dealing with missing-body-part issues: Jurt and Coral. Canonically, Coral is fairly traumatized by the loss of her eye and what it was replaced with.

I think that Amber is a particularly interesting setting to write about disability in, because the standard abilities are so far beyond the human norm, and yet they cannot/do not simply serve to negate disabilities, physical or otherwise.

[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.]

[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. :)