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I do know that

accessportrayal is my community and I can make arbitrary decisions about it if I want to, but since the

access_fandom crowd is a big chunk of potential membership, I feel like asking opinions. I've been considering adding my own article, not about a specific disability, but about disabilities that magically go away, because I've had this happen to me and putting those experiences into words could be useful for writers who choose (against all attempts to persuade them otherwise) to go that route with their characters. Do you think that's a good idea (especially for fanfic writers who have no choice) or will it just encourage more of this kind of plot twist?

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I recommend that you try to get
different perspectives on this
(and other controversional
issues), not one article but
several. Aim to discuss the
various reasons why people like
and dislike this trope, what
good or harm it could do, what
some of its variations are,
examples of how it has been done
well or poorly.

This is something I've explored in
different ways, the whole broad
spectrum from "problem cannot
even be ameliorated" through
"can be buffered but not fixed"
and "adaptive equipment is
available but has drawbacks" to
"can be fixed" and even "can be
made better than before." The
point of writing is to
explore, and especially
to explore things that would be
risky or rude or impossible to
do in real life. It lets us
think about issues in new and
different ways.

Suppose a disability does go
away magically. Does the
character just go "yippie!" and
get on with their life? Not
much of a story. But what if
they feel guilty about
it, what if it wasn't a
voluntary change, what if the
cost was too high, what if they
are left with functionality that
is still somehow different
from the usual? Those are
other stories, maybe stronger
stories.

I feel that this is an important
issue, because it touches a
common thread in human experience:
we don't just let problems stay
problems. We try to solve them.
We imagine better options. And
that has taken us from peg legs
to marginally effective
prosthetics to Cheetahs that
wholebodied athletes don't want
to compete against. There are
people discussing truly bionic
limbs, or limb replacement. It's
tricky territory; letting writers
go first might help avoid or at
least anticipate some of the
challenges. We might get more
ideas for stuff that would work
better. We won't know if we
shut off the flow of stories
because some people write ones
that suck.

And that's just one disability.

Think about how people write
about these things, why they
write and read them, what the
variations are that suck or
inspire. That should at least
map out some of the major reefs
to avoid wrecking a ship on,
and some places that might be
worth visiting.

That's a very good point that I hadn't considered. I'll have to add writing that addresses what is done, and what could be done, with this in fiction.

Back when I ran PanGaia,
we had a debate column called
"Toe to Toe" where we'd set a
topic and then try to get at
least one essay for either side.
It worked, it made people think,
it generated a lot of letters.
Other times, we'd get opposed
essays spontaneously, or we'd
get one and ask if anybody
wanted to write a counterpoint.

Feel free to borrow any of that
which you think might be useful.

There are a lot of tropes and
techniques that people fight
over in fandom. As a literary
scholar, I find analysis more
useful than rants. And as a
reader, well, fandom!wank is
never fun. Try to avoid that.
In a community such as you're
running, it's going to be an
ongoing challenge, just because
the broad subject of disability
is fraught with so much tension.

Thanks. :) That's a cool technique. Accessportrayal isn't meant for opinion pieces so much as sharing experience and knowledge, but it's a good technique to know anyway. By the way, how did you avoid wank on PanGaia? I don't have any wank yet, partly because of how few contributors I have so far, but you're right, it could happen.

>>Accessportrayal isn't meant for opinion pieces so much as sharing experience and knowledge, but it's a good technique to know anyway.<<

I think you're going to find that
once you go beyond medical or
technological facts, you'll get
opinion pieces as folks discuss
their experiences or things
they've seen. Different people
will solve the same problems in
different ways, or interpret
things differently.

>> By the way, how did you avoid wank on PanGaia? I don't have any wank yet, partly because of how few contributors I have so far, but you're right, it could happen.<<

It was a magazine, so I used a
combination of editing (i.e.
not publishing things with
logical fallacies in them) and
developing a pool of reliable
writers.

See also my recommendations
for online communities:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/571551.html

Thank you very much for that warning and for the link. :)

one thing I've been debating a lot lately is the difference between

disabilities that completely go away, cured by science or magic

disabilities that are compensated for by some magical ability which makes the disability irrelevant (eg. You can't see, but you can see magic, and everyone is magic)

Disabilities which don't go away but are compensated by some entirely different magical ability (e.g. you can't see, but you are psychic)

Disabilities which can be fixed with adaptive technology (e.g. Geordie Laforge's visor)

Disabilities for which the adaptive technology actually give you abilities you wouldn't have had if you simply weren't disabled (e.g. Geordie Laforge's visor, actually; it lets him see in multiple spectrums)

and all of these are balances, of course. The fact is that my adaptive technology actually does give me some abilities I wouldn't have if I could simply type, and simultaneously doesn't do everything I could do if I could type. Science fiction, and even fantasy, can be great places to explore the possibilities of post-humanism. But as we all know, it's also a very dangerous road.

I always wonder why, when a piece of assistive technology more than compensates, it doesn't end up used by everyone? I'd like to see different spectra just because seeing different spectra sounds cool.

If you can see magic and everyone is magic, doesn't that still leave you unable to see walls and potholes?

Do you have suggestions for how best to address all of this in an article that's mostly only meant to be informative about what it feels like if it happens?

(By the way, have you considered contributing your own article?)

Actually, in the case of Geordi's visor, while it allows him to see different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, he doesn't see the band of the spectrum visible to most humans with much detail. For one, he doesn't pick up faces too well. This is how he sees Data. The visor also causes him pain. So it doesn't completely compensate for his blindness; it just gives him a different type of vision.

Data looks very... pink in that picture. In that case, it would be like Toph Bei Fong or

ysabetwordsmith's character, right? I'm not familiar with the fandom we're talking about here.

Yeah, it's just like Toph.

>>one thing I've been debating a lot lately is the difference
between<<

That's a good set of options to
consider.

>>The fact is that my adaptive technology actually does give me some abilities I wouldn't have if I could simply type, and simultaneously doesn't do everything I could do if I could type.<<

That's the way I tend to lean
when writing about compensated
disabilities. I have a blind
character in my Monster House
series who has a magical artifact,
but it 'sees' the world differently,
based on whether people or objects
have a destiny. So it's not the
same as conventional sight, and
that influences how she interacts
with the world.

>>Science fiction, and even fantasy, can be great places to explore the possibilities of post-humanism. But as we all know, it's also a very dangerous road.<<

These two things are equally true.

I prefer to scout ahead in
hazardous terrain, but that's a
personal preference.

I actually wrote a post about "curing disability and what to consider when you DO go there" a while back which touched on some of these points. I suspect part of the backlash against the cured!disability portrayals isn't just because of the subject matter but because the portrayal is unrealistically positive and doesn't reflect what sudden change is generally like - e.g., in the classic "wheelchair user can walk again!" example, the ex-wheelchair user doesn't have to build up their muscles first, doesn't at first have issues misjudging how far they can walk now and how much is realistic, doesn't have difficulty adjusting their routine now that "is this place accessible?" no longer need factor in (or have to adjust to things like no longer being able to use disabled parking spots or the like), doesn't have to get used to the different way people react to them now that they're no longer visibly disabled[1], etc. etc. etc. It's all "HOORAY I CAN WALK now instead of sitting in the corner going 'I am a sad miserable disabled person watch me be miserable' I can DO STUFF!" and... yeah, no, not really.

[1] not the same disability but as mentioned in the post, going from a person with an overt stutter to a person that was read as fluent after speech therapy really did my head in.

That's definitely one of the problems. I can also somewhat empathize with your feelings at suddenly being read as fluent.

I have had experiences that were (and continue to be) wholly positive, so it does happen, but it's not the only problem. I think that... well, I think it varies based on how the disability affects you. If it consists entirely of pain and suffering, or if you aren't able to find a way to do what you want with it, then I think reactions like that are more reasonable. (I think that may be why writers show them so often: they don't think about other relationships to disability.) If it affects how others perceive you, it can be very jarring. For me, having certain access barriers no longer be a problem, or be less of a problem, wasn't disturbing at all; I structured my life so that I didn't come into contact with them, so I simply continued not to come into contact with them. The extent to which you can accommodate a disability may be the extent to which curing it doesn't change anything. Of course, I didn't, for instance, lose a blue placard.

Do you think that sounds right? I speak from experience, but my experience may not be universal.

>> I actually wrote a post about "curing disability and what to consider when you DO go there" a while back which touched on some of these points. <<

Signal boosted. That's a very
good essay.

>> I suspect part of the backlash against the cured!disability portrayals isn't just because of the subject matter but because the portrayal is unrealistically positive and doesn't reflect what sudden change is generally like <<

I agree. Another aspect that
often bugs me is one you mentioned,
identity. I eventually figured
out that it was part of what
bugged me in Birds of Prey
with the evolving subplot of
Barbara Gordon working on a way
to walk again. Because I wanted
to watch Oracle, and she was
still wanting to be Batgirl,
and it just always rang a little
off-key then.

>>not the same disability but as mentioned in the post, going from a person with an overt stutter to a person that was read as fluent after speech therapy really did my head in.<<

*hugs* I can sympathize.

Me, I don't like taking my glasses
off. I've done it for some
photo shoots, but I prefer having
them on -- not just because I
can't see much without them, but
because they're part of my
identity in this particular body.
If they aren't there I feel lik
something is missing. *ponder*
Which is apparently common for
pieces of adaptive equipment,
especially for people who don't
hate theirs. So if somebody
like that lost the connection,
it would be as disorienting as
gaining a disability in the
first place, because they'd be
losing a part of themselves.

And almost nobody would understand
that, which would drive them nuts.

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