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Thu, Oct. 25th, 2012 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chordatesrock posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
access_fandomHello! I'm pleased to find that this place exists. I joined DW just to be able to post here, actually. It's awesome that I'm not the only one out there who cares about fandom AND disability. Nice to meet you all, I think we'll get along splendidly, although, alas, no one else here seems to like my ridiculously obscure current main fandom.
So, I was wondering if you have any advice to offer about something.
I was writing this fic that I may or may not ever get around to actually posting, in which a character has a disability xe doesn't have in canon. And as long as it's just for my own amusement, I can just write what would happen without worrying too much about what other people would get out of it, but in case I ever do post it, I'd rather it not fail, which it probably won't, but there's this one scene I was writing where xe's decided to try Doing Something Cool, but the Cool Something in question is one that real-life people with xyr extracanonical disability don't (at least where I live, I don't think it's legal and I'm pretty sure the necessary assistive tech isn't on the mass market yet), and someone is pointing out to xem that there's a reason for that and this is a really risky idea. But the character with the disability is canonically the sort of person who does risky things for fun all the time and (sometimes literally) drags the cautious character along, so xe's having none of this. Plus xe has access to assistance Doing Something Cool that real-life people with this disability don't, and is in a situation that's a little different from real life in that all of the risk is to the disabled character, the cautious character or a third person's property, whereas in real life the risk is to all of those things plus other people's lives. Also, in this canon, there don't happen to be applicable laws forbidding this, again unlike real life. And this particular Something Cool occupies a totally different position in the fictional culture from the one it occupies in the real-life one I live in. Among other things, the Something Cool is viewed as being really important to a person's ability to be a contributing member of society, to a greater extent than real life.
In terms of how I think the characters involved would act given the circumstances they're in, Extracanonically-Disabled Character is going to do this despite Cautious Character's protests. Xe's going to fail to mention a relevant disability to a character who would probably try to stop xem, and then Do Something Cool, and a couple of characters are going to be surprised afterward but they're not going to keep sputtering in denial or anything ever, they're just going to be surprised and move on. The character's going to be worse at Doing Something Cool than xe is in canon, because canonically at this point xe would have had several years of practice as opposed to just now learning.
But halfway through writing the scene I started thinking about how a CND audience might read it. And I started thinking that it's going to look like I'm being didactic and saying anyone can do anything absolutely regardless of any disability at all. I'm also worried that it's going to come off as questioning real-life people who (in obedience to the law, no less) don't Do Something Cool. Worse, I'm worried it could give the CNDs in the audience the idea that this is totally how it really works in real life, never mind the assistance the character is getting (which is a reasonable solution in their situation, but not in real life because not everything this canon has exists in real life), or that it could come off as a preachy lesson on how disability could never prevent anyone from doing anything, and only someone stupid and prejudiced would ever conceive of such a thing. Because the characters who are surprised are being reasonable (and I'm worried since neither of them are planned to be viewpoint characters in this scene, it's hard for the reader to tell the difference between "oh, I didn't think disabled people could do anything, OMG, I've Learned a Lesson that PWDs have value and can be capable" and "I didn't realize you could do that particular thing with this particular disability, but it looks like I guessed wrong") and the character saying this is a bad idea is acting pretty much like he does in canon about everything.
So, I'd love to know if anyone has any recommendations. If you were writing this, what would you do?
So, I was wondering if you have any advice to offer about something.
I was writing this fic that I may or may not ever get around to actually posting, in which a character has a disability xe doesn't have in canon. And as long as it's just for my own amusement, I can just write what would happen without worrying too much about what other people would get out of it, but in case I ever do post it, I'd rather it not fail, which it probably won't, but there's this one scene I was writing where xe's decided to try Doing Something Cool, but the Cool Something in question is one that real-life people with xyr extracanonical disability don't (at least where I live, I don't think it's legal and I'm pretty sure the necessary assistive tech isn't on the mass market yet), and someone is pointing out to xem that there's a reason for that and this is a really risky idea. But the character with the disability is canonically the sort of person who does risky things for fun all the time and (sometimes literally) drags the cautious character along, so xe's having none of this. Plus xe has access to assistance Doing Something Cool that real-life people with this disability don't, and is in a situation that's a little different from real life in that all of the risk is to the disabled character, the cautious character or a third person's property, whereas in real life the risk is to all of those things plus other people's lives. Also, in this canon, there don't happen to be applicable laws forbidding this, again unlike real life. And this particular Something Cool occupies a totally different position in the fictional culture from the one it occupies in the real-life one I live in. Among other things, the Something Cool is viewed as being really important to a person's ability to be a contributing member of society, to a greater extent than real life.
In terms of how I think the characters involved would act given the circumstances they're in, Extracanonically-Disabled Character is going to do this despite Cautious Character's protests. Xe's going to fail to mention a relevant disability to a character who would probably try to stop xem, and then Do Something Cool, and a couple of characters are going to be surprised afterward but they're not going to keep sputtering in denial or anything ever, they're just going to be surprised and move on. The character's going to be worse at Doing Something Cool than xe is in canon, because canonically at this point xe would have had several years of practice as opposed to just now learning.
But halfway through writing the scene I started thinking about how a CND audience might read it. And I started thinking that it's going to look like I'm being didactic and saying anyone can do anything absolutely regardless of any disability at all. I'm also worried that it's going to come off as questioning real-life people who (in obedience to the law, no less) don't Do Something Cool. Worse, I'm worried it could give the CNDs in the audience the idea that this is totally how it really works in real life, never mind the assistance the character is getting (which is a reasonable solution in their situation, but not in real life because not everything this canon has exists in real life), or that it could come off as a preachy lesson on how disability could never prevent anyone from doing anything, and only someone stupid and prejudiced would ever conceive of such a thing. Because the characters who are surprised are being reasonable (and I'm worried since neither of them are planned to be viewpoint characters in this scene, it's hard for the reader to tell the difference between "oh, I didn't think disabled people could do anything, OMG, I've Learned a Lesson that PWDs have value and can be capable" and "I didn't realize you could do that particular thing with this particular disability, but it looks like I guessed wrong") and the character saying this is a bad idea is acting pretty much like he does in canon about everything.
So, I'd love to know if anyone has any recommendations. If you were writing this, what would you do?