Festibility: Prompt Post

[access_fandom_mods]

Welcome to the Festibility prompts post!

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. You can find out more at the Festibility announcement post on access_fandom!

Here’s how the prompts will work:

Prompts can be general or fandom- or character-specific. You can also choose to specify a type of disability. Be creative and have fun. Post prompts now through September 15th!

Fills can be posted starting Thursday, July 15th and the posting period goes until September 15th. We encourage you to post disability-centric fanworks to access_fandom after the close of the fest. After September 15th, please post to the community instead of commenting here, and link back to the prompt (if any) that inspired you.

Nest Your Responses. Respond directly to a prompt with the text of your story in the comment or a link to the story if it is posted elsewhere.

Anonymous commenting is allowed. To post anonymously when logged in, click on 'More Options' and pick 'Anonymous'. Do not ask anyone to reveal themselves if they choose to post anonymously.

Warnings:
We want warnings to be a community standard for this festival. If you need help putting warnings on your fan work, please ask your beta or contact a moderator. We accept “Choose Not To Warn” as a warning, but in the interest of making this fest as accessible as possible we prefer to have works be labeled with specific trigger warnings.

ETA: Please state one of the following on your work: "No warnings apply", "Choose Not to Warn" or include warnings/content notes mentioning any triggering material that does apply to your work. Marking your work in this way helps people with triggers to navigate the Festibility responses. Thank you! /ETA

Warn for common triggers even if the prompt implies some. You must warn for common violent or sexual triggers. Unwarned stories/art are subject to immediate screening at the mods' discretion.

o Triggers to warn for:
o non-con, dub-con, and rape
o character death
o suicide
o self-injury
o child abuse
o graphic torture
o incest
o underage (under the age of 18)
o extremely ableist language
o mind control
o If you are uncertain if you should include a warning, better safe than sorry.

The above list is not all-inclusive or meant to be limiting: people can and should warn for other things. You can gray out warnings or spoilers using this code that amadi posted, which also works for screenreaders.

If you have a policy of not warning, you must put "Author does not warn" in the subject line. Failure to do so will result in immediate screening/deletion.

Post links to NSFW images or images that require warnings. Do not embed them.

Single prompts can be answered as many times as you wish.

Anonymous posting and commenting is allowed.

Language reminder: Please say “has diabetes”, don’t say “suffers from diabetes” or “suffers hearing loss” when describing someone’s disability. Please say “uses a wheelchair” or similarly neutral language, do not say “wheelchair bound” or “confined to a wheelchair”. Please do not use ableist or other oppressive pejoratives such as “lame”. For more about inclusive language, click on the language tag of this community. Also, please do not include disabilities in your content warnings--It is disrespectful to cast a piece of someone's identity as a warning.

ETA: There have been some concerns raised about this language policy. For clarification, this language reminder is meant more for prompt suggestion than for actual fic. You are allowed to use whatever language you like in your fan fic. If there is a lot of ableist language in your fic, we would prefer that you warn for it in your fic headers. You are also welcome to address the negative as well as the positive aspects of living with a disability.

Thank you for participating! Let the prompts begin!

Comments

[hopefulnebula]

Prompt is a spoiler for Farscape season 4/the beginning of The Peacekeeper Wars. Farscape, Chiana, (skip) What if Chiana never did get her vision fully back after losing it in the end of season 4? How would she cope? What kind of assistive technology is available in the Uncharted Territories?

[bliumchik]

Sandman crossover: I'd like to see any character with a mental illness have a face-to-face with Delirium. River Tam comes to mind!

[originalpuck]

White Collar, Neal dealing with panic disorder while still being a famous conman/forger constantly being put in high risk situations (how would his approach change, if at all, etc)

[amchara]

Doctor Who, Amy (or Donna, or Martha, or Rose) has a mobility disability from birth.* How do they manage as a companion, for example when the Doctor says "Run for your Life!" (as he often does)?

*cerebral palsy, spina bifada, MS, etc

[jadelennox]

Sandman/Dreaming: Any story involving Delirium, either Endless-focused or not.

[(Anonymous)]

Any fandom. I would like to see realistic depiction of how a POC character 's culture and society shape his life with disability.

[(Anonymous)]

Criminal Minds, take your pic of the following:

1. Reid. Sometimes he still needs the cane. (If anyone wants to fix that horrible scene with Rossi and the ditch...)

2. Hotch, Morgan, and Reid; PTSD.

3. Reid. He can't stop worrying about inheriting his mother's schizophrenia...the person he sees about it diagnoses him with an autism spectrum disorder instead.

[mercredigirl]

Fandom: DCU or DCAU. Any character.
Prompt: Being a superhero with social anxiety/agoraphobia.

[(Anonymous)]

Babylon 5: Talia Winters. Dealing with PTSD in the wake of her Death of Personality assignment.

[(Anonymous)]

Criminal Minds, Aaron Hotchner, what if the hearing loss from the explosion was permanent?

Friday the 13th prompt

[terajk]

Prequel to the original Friday the 13th, set while Jason Voorhees* is a kid/still alive.


*Different places describe Jason's disabilities differently, but I remember one of the later films stating explicitly that he had hydrocephalus.

[(Anonymous)]

Harry Potter - When Voldemort tries to take baby!Harry's life, Harry gains a scar and a visible disability.

Inception prompt

[aris_tgd]

Inception: Dream logic is not the same in all brains. Either extraction from or extraction working with someone whose mental logic is not the same as a neurotypical's, and how that changes the dream landscape.

Re: Inception prompt

[skalja]

Oh, this is a great idea!

CSI prompt:

[killing_rose]

CSI prompt:

Gil Grissom--What if he'd been someone for whom the surgery to reverse otosclerosis symptoms not only didn't work, but made it worse?

(Alternatively, what if he'd chosen not to go through with the surgery at all?) What's going on in his life 6 months, 5 years, etc. down the road?

(What's his thought process? The team's? How important is their opinion in the end?)

[toft]

The Old Spice Man has an anxiety disorder of some kind, perhaps a panic disorder or OCD, or a severe phobia of a common thing (fish?). Is his ability to suddenly be on a horse his way of dealing with his anxiety? Or does he find the sudden propensity of tickets to become diamonds extremely stressful and exhausting? Bonus points for a story of him growing up and learning how to physically manipulate the world around him and constantly projecting a front of magnificence as a way to manage his anxiety, and, eventually, become an intergalactic space hero.

[milleniumrex]

This is the greatest thing I have ever read in my life.

[raven]

Vorkosigan series: Gregor talks about his mental health issues to someone (Cordelia?) who understands, and does not immediately start worrying about Emperor Yuri.

[lauredhel]

Prompt: True Blood or similar vampverse. A woman with spina bifida or early-acquired paraplegia of another sort is turned into a vampire. She decides to keep the wheelchair as it's part of her identity. She finds she still has vamp-powers while using the chair (lightning-fast speed, etc).

SGA

[distorquere.livejournal.com]

Anything on Elizabeth's mental health issues in The Real World. What if they weren't new? What if she'd been coping with some sort of mental health problems all along? What if they don't go away after TRW? I would love to see such a strong woman live with this (before or after), and still be able to live under the pressure of Atlantis. Or anything along those lines!

[ashmusing]

Any fandom - one of the main characters has ADHD, or one of its sub-variants.

Vorkosigan - Miles. (references to past surgery.)

[azurelunatic]

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan has canon physical disabilities including brittle bones, resulting in both planned and unplanned surgery. He is also described as "hyper".

***

Staying still was sometimes more torture than the doctors and the knives and the braces. Miles lay in bed after the latest round of medical intervention, twitching. He'd tried to run. He'd fallen. It hadn't ended well.

He couldn't move, but he could read. There was a stack of book-discs on the table, taller than the carafe of water, just within reach. Miles pulled one of them over, put it in the hand-viewer, buzzed through a few paragraphs. He'd already read that bit, and it wasn't useful. Not right now. He ran his finger down the stack and picked another.

An hour later the whole stack was scattered in various attitudes about his bed, new sections highlighted and more half-finished notes shot throughout them, and the beginnings of a plan drawn out on his personal tablet. The rest would have to wait until Ivan, or better, Elena, visited. Ivan might argue. Miles had seen the telltale signs of a Bothari lecture in some of Elena's discomposed mannerisms, and it might be a week before she forgot what Bothari termed "her place" enough to offer command-level criticism of his tactics.


Access to the attics was unsecured, at least once one was already within the confines of Vorkosigan House. Miles deputized Ivan to do the running, and the lifting, and Elena to fetch book-discs from the library if they weren't already available on the console in Miles's room. Miles found the familiar routines of a Plan comforting, amidst the exciting new details of implementation. "You can go help Ivan haul," he told Elena, and pulled the manual closer. Why yes, they might indeed be able to get away with only three power packs, and there would be no need for a special converter after all, if they just.... He allowed himself to become immersed in the details once again.

It was finally finished, and Miles beamed at their creation. With the loyal help of Ivan and Elena, they had converted an old military-issue cot and a camping chair (retrieved from the attic) to accept the field generators from no fewer than six sets of various-sized antigrav crutches (most of which had been stuffed into various corners of Miles's closet): three pair on the bottom, for lift; two pair rear-facing at the stern, for propulsion; a single unit pointed port and starboard at the front, for steering.

"Does it work?" Elena asked.

"Only one way to find out!" Miles said, grinning so widely he felt his face might crack.

Ivan accomplished the transfer with the ease born of long practice. Miles held the controls in his lap and toggled the first three pairs. With a slight hum as the antigravs drew power, the bed lifted, just barely clearing the floor.

Ivan drew in a breath and held it as Miles bumped the controls for the rear units. With the unit turned at a right angle to the primary gravitational pull, with a frictionless cushion of antigrav below the cot, it ought to -- yes, there was the thrust. Miles goosed the switches in fractional-second pulses, unwilling to get too much speed in the confines of his room.

"Let's try the hall!" he suggested. "Get the door!"

Ivan palmed the door open, and Miles eased the bed through.

The hall on this level of the wing was long and straight. Miles sped down it, suffering himself to accept Ivan's help turning around at the end before zooming back.

As riveting as speed was, the attraction soon palled. "I want to try outside," Miles said. It was the work of only a few moments to get the bed into the lift, which was the nice kind, sized like a cargo lift with great wide doors and plenty of interior room, but fitted to match the rest of Vorkosigan House, down to the parquetry tiles on the floor. Miles vibrated in the bed. He'd done it! Yes, there was certainly a perfectly good float-chair that he would be able to use as soon as the doctors cleared him again, but that was beside the point. He'd done this himself. He cheered, internally, as they descended.

"I'll turn you, so you can get out," Ivan said, already reaching for the bed in anticipation of permission.

"No, let me," Miles said, and manipulated his switches.

A few things happened at once, and very fast.

The bed shot forward, vibrating from side to side and up and down.
The antigrav units emitted some very unhappy sounds as all twelve slightly-misaligned units on the bed phased in interesting and never-designed-to-do-that ways with the more powerful antigrav units in the lift.
The lift slammed to a halt.
The bed hit the floor and friction dragged it also to a halt.
Ivan yelled and Elena shrieked.
The lights in the lift blew.

"Oh, hell," Miles said into the dim emergency glow, and for once Elena did not reprimand him on his language. They waited, in silence, for the Armsmen to come with the repair crew.


That evening, his mother perched on the side of his stupid immobile bed in his stupid closet of a room, and sighed. "Miles, you really must--"

She paused, and Miles tensed. She had already given all three of them the engineering lecture about what had gone wrong as soon as the repair crew hauled them to safety. Worse, Elena had had better questions about antigrav theory than he had. Bothari would have heard the security report by now. What if Bothari had said he couldn't play with Elena anymore?

His mother sighed again. "You must think of the other possible outcomes of any plan. Victory is never assured. Therefore, a strategy that only encompasses victory is insufficient, particularly when its modes of failure are unacceptable." She patted Miles's hand, then fluttered out in a swirl of tan skirts, leaving Miles alone with his thoughts.

[minkhollow]

Harry Potter, any character with bonus points for Harry himself or Neville, PTSD after the war.

[minkhollow]

Sneakers, Whistler doesn't stay in the van on every job.

[amilyn]

I don't know if this would count, but I wrote a short piece for Yuletide a couple of years ago: "Blind Date". I love Whistler.

[raisedbymoogles]

1) Winding Circle series by Tamora Pierce: Rosethorn suffered a brain injury (sort of) that left her with slurred speech. In the aftermath of that, Rosethorn's as opinionated as she always was, but has trouble making herself understood, most noticably in an emergency situation.

2) Chip Chase (Transformers G1) - declining offers from the Autobots to 'fix' his legs.

[raisedbymoogles]

3) FFVII - Rufus turning his wheelchair into an advantage, esp. making people underestimate him. Because he is a cynical bastard like that.

4) Pokemon - any character, a Pokemon as a service animal. (Growlithe seems to be the Pokearth equivalent of a German shepherd in the cartoon, if it helps.)

[minkhollow]

Percy Jackson universe, Hephaestus helps one of his kids adapt to a mobility disability.

[amaliedageek]

Any fandom, any character: a realistic depiction of albinism. All of the visual limitations -- many people with albinism are legally blind; existing adaptive tech helps but can't "fix" it -- and cultural bias; bonus points if the character is chromatic (and no, that is not a contradiction in terms).

[skalja]

Marvel Comics/Spider-Man (preferably the main universe, but go with what inspires you): Peter has chronic depression/anxiety/ADHD/psychological condition of your choice, which he manages successfully ... most of the time.

Further thoughts for perusal: Maybe he's always had this condition and superheroics actually help him manage it (lots of vigorous exercise can help with depression and anxiety); maybe they make it worse (frequent emotional trauma); maybe his condition was actually caused by his superpowers (he's got an entire new sense and several abilities with no counterpart in baseline humans - his brain must have gotten rewired a bit). How does his condition shape his identity, and if his friends/family/fellow heroes know, how does it affect how they perceive him?

Ten thousand bonus points if the story deals with quandary of needing/wanting psychological treatment when you have a secret identity and most of the psychiatrists you've met are secretly supervillains.

[sasha_feather]

Ten thousand bonus points if the story deals with quandary of needing/wanting psychological treatment when you have a secret identity and most of the psychiatrists you've met are secretly supervillains.

Wow, this is SUCH an amazing prompt.