Disability AUs

[chordatesrock]

Is there an existing dialogue around the Disability AU (a story where a canonically abled character is written with a noncanonical disability)? Or do people simply have their private feelings, or public fanfics, without discussing why they feel and write the way they do?

I'd be interested in knowing what people think.

Comments

[cantarina]

This is something I find really hard to talk about, because Disability AUs are so almost exclusively tied to H/C that the conversation inevitably opens up a massive can of worms. I don't know if I've ever seen the discussion framed in a way that calls them Disability AUs, but there has been a fair bit of discussion about disability being used in H/C and just how problematic (but also potentially cathartic for PWD) it can be.

[chordatesrock]

I hadn't realized that was common. I believe I did see one of those once, but the only other Disability AU that comes to mind readily is attackfish's Quiet Shadowed Places, which is written from a disability rights perspective.

Thank you. :)

[katiemariie]

I'm not really a fan of the Disability AU (as the rules at cripbigbang likely make clear), because most of the time it's either hurt/comfort, has the non-disabled partner of the AU!disabled character showing them life isn't all that bad (or to properly acknowledge that they have a disability), or is a big inspirational narrative about character fulfilling their canon destiny by overcoming their disability. Also, it seems a little suspect to me that in many fandoms disability AUs outnumber fics about canonically disabled characters--it's like the author wants points for covering disability (or just wants to use disability as a plot point) without actually having to deal with canon disabled characters who aren't as appealing as non-disabled characters wearing the Cloak of Disability for this one fic.

That being said, the disability AU can be done well and in an anti-ableist fashion, but when I've done it, I've always had to keep a disability rights perspective at the fore of my mind while writing. Because it's a genre where one can easily fall into ableist stereotypes.

[chordatesrock]

I have sufficiently good radar for disability fail that I've never gotten far enough through any of the those fics to notice the pattern. I can usually predict where there will be fail and click the back button.

Additionally, my current fandom doesn't have any disability AUs. (Unless you count the fic where all of the main characters spend a day as persons of short stature.) It does, however, feature canonically disabled characters in virtually every fic. In fact, of the twenty fics on the current front page on fanfiction.net, at least seventeen include at least one canonically disabled character. (The fact that the main character and his sidekick both have canonical disabilities is no doubt partly responsible for this. The four disabled villains probably don't hurt, either.) Interestingly, two of the fics that don't feature canon disabilities are Ability AUs: the canonically disabled character is featured sans disability. If I were to count those, we would be up to at least 95% of fics featuring canonically disabled characters.

[jackandahat]

"Also, it seems a little suspect to me that in many fandoms disability AUs outnumber fics about canonically disabled characters--it's like the author wants points for covering disability (or just wants to use disability as a plot point) without actually having to deal with canon disabled characters who aren't as appealing as non-disabled characters wearing the Cloak of Disability for this one fic."

In fairness - non-disabled characters disable canonically disabled character by... how many times? (I'm not actually being sarcastic - I'm a step removed from most popular fandoms so I genuinely don't know.)

I can think of very few disabled characters in things I've watched recently. Off the top of my head there's one - a deaf little girl. So that means I can't write a male character, an adult character, or a character of colour with a disability unless I AU someone.

[chordatesrock]

Huh, that's interesting! When I consider the few television fandoms I know, I think you're right, especially for live-action. My current fandom is something of an exception here: a third of the cast is disabled, but only three have disabilities that reliably trip the THIS IS A DISABILITY! TREAT IT LIKE A DISABILITY! switch in nondisabled fans' heads. (Those three would be the flying-wheelchair user, the cane user and the blind seer. The others include a main character with a speech disorder, a villain with breathing problems, two people with implied mobility impairments, two people who are turned into small animals and several I'm forgetting.) There is really no disability fail in canon that I can see, except for two instances of somewhat atypical miracle cure; the fandom has mainly followed this example. Mainly. (There tends to be fail in depicting the main character's speech disorder.)

But now that I think about it, that's very atypical. I can't think of very many disabled characters in other fandoms. Burn Notice, IIRC, has none (unless I missed someone's Issues turning out to be diagnosable). Harry Potter probably has very few real-world disabilities (there's Moody, and if I squint, I can see Neville as being on the autism spectrum), and one fantastic disability (Lupin). Sly Cooper has one character with a disability that straddles the line between explicit and implied (and he became a villain because of it, so...). Avatar: The Last Airbender has three disabled characters (Toph, Teo and a spoiler for the finale) in its cast of almost fifty named characters and at least that many extras, which means that while it's better than average, it still portrays far fewer disabled characters than should exist. House is the only disabled main character on House (though plenty of patients of the week are disabled). I know there exists a police procedural with a short person, but I've never seen it and can't think of any that have disabled good guys (but plenty with disabled bad guys or victims or both).

In other words, I suppose different canons give writers different options.

[hopefulnebula]

OMG THERE'S A cripbigbang.

*goes to sign up*

[jadelennox]

There are some old links in the fanlore Disability Fic page. I feel mildly uncomfortable linking to them, becuase my post linked there is from more than 7 years ago, and I know my ideas have evolved since then, LGI's post is from almost 9 years ago and I strongly suspect hers have, too. But those posts -- both on the idea of disability as metaphor rather than fact -- certainly touch on disability AU, since such stories are often disability-as-metaphor.

If you want this post to become a place where we have a fresh version of that discussion -- and perhaps link it from fanlore? -- I'm game. *g*

(FWIW, my feelings are that it can be done well, but I feel that writing disability AU while ignoring canon disability is a massive can of worms; disability-as-metaphor is profoundly troubling; and h/c with disability -- which is a frequent trope in Disability AU -- nearly always offends me deeply as a PWD. And I can get into more detail on those if anyone is interesting in me and my two pennies over here.)

[chordatesrock]

Thank you.

I would love it if this post became such a place.

Yes, I find disability as metaphor Bad because it erases disability as the experiences of disabled people. Disability should be disability because disability is real, and when it's treated as a metaphor, I get the feeling the author thinks disability is a thing xe came up with for xyr story, and that it doesn't have its own reality. It's okay for things to be metaphors for other things, but it's typically either fictional things as metaphors for real things or trivial things as metaphors for important things, so using disability as a metaphor does not sit well with me.

With regard to h/c, I've only seen one hurt/comfort Disability AU, which did seem problematic. I don't read much h/c, so I don't know what the problem is with it. I gather that most h/c is problematic, but without reading it, I can't see why it would be, or why using disability in it would be problematic. I appreciate comfort when I encounter ableism. I'm also concerned about the topic, because one of the unposted stories on my computer right now (which I'm not posting yet because I'd rather make it into a series) is probably hurt/comfort. At least, it has a character who's hurt, and a character who helps make things better. So I want to understand whether there's something I might be doing wrong.

I'm very interested in your two cents. I think I might also have more to say, but I'll hold off for a while and think some more.

[sonneta]

I really dislike it, because in my experience it's usually an excuse for the writer to show off just how much research they did on $disability. Which never makes for a particularly interesting story.

[chordatesrock]

I find it surprising that they bother to research, as opposed to guessing and making things up.

Do you find the same problem in original fiction featuring disability?

[sonneta]

Yeah, I admit I've read the type where they don't bother to do ANY research. Neither option is good.

It's been a while since I read original fic with disability, so I don't quite know.

[jackandahat]

I like the idea of them because in theory it increases the number of stories about disabled people. In practice... yeah, it's often a h/c thing or Magical Healing. The few I've seen that I thought were damn good - like Broken Wings by Synecdochic - were written by disabled people. So even if they're not writing about their own disability then it's written from a place of understanding.

That's not to say that non-disabled people can't write them, I just suspect it takes more conscious thought.

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I was thinking about Broken Wings tonight when I was trying to formulate an answer about my issues with h/c which didn't go to the "some people have a harmful kink" place because, just, no, but it's really hard to talk about it without going there.

And where I came to is that I think Syn wrote amazingly realistic chronic pain and frustration and coping partly because she's experienced them, but there is nothing about the experience of those things that makes a person better able to write disability without going to the h/c place.

The two variants of that 'verse -- Cammie/Cam, hereafter collective referred to as "Cam" -- have a character with physical pain; sometimes, during some events, the character's pain and lack of function become central and need to be managed; sometimes other characters comfort the character in pain through a variety of (often profane) coping mechanisms. Yet at no point are the stories about Cam's pain and disability, let alone about other characters showing how awesome they are by being good at caring for him. They're about Cam (and JD, and Daniel, and family, depending where you are in the 'verse), and their relationships, and the various plotty things that happen in the worlds, and disability and pain are just craptastic facts of life in those worlds, not the axis around which everything else revolves.

So yes, I think Syn wrote the chronic pain and lack of function well partly because of lived experience, but it doesn't take lived experience to avoid the minefield of having the story be all about how a couple forms around one character's limitation and the other's caring.

[jackandahat]

Yeah - I actually like h/c but I think it needs to be handled fairly carefully. To me it's a bit like looking at characters/representation in film - is the character there just to provide [kink]? For example to me a 20-chapter story where a disabled character ends up "looked after" or comforted for one chapter in the midst of Actual Plot is very different to a 900 words oneshot where it's all about them being comforted.

"and disability and pain are just craptastic facts of life in those worlds"

And... hmm, I'm trying not to go too much into rambling self-analysis here but something that's come up lately is that as a disabled person, admitting pain/weakness can be (seen as) a license for other people to take over your life and overrule you, so I know a hell of a lot of people who are hiding pain/problems for that reason - and thus aren't getting any comforting even when they might want it. And that's before we get to gendered presentation of "admitting weakness" (Since I'm talking as a guy and most of the characters under discussion tend to be male.)

So I think there is room for h/c stories involving disabled people, but the risk with disability AUs is people making characters disabled because that's the only way they can imagine to bring them low.

[sqbr]

I have a headache so I don't know how coherent this will be but I'll try my best...

First off, of course, I am not in favour of stories which wallow in ableism for no reason but the bigotry of the author.

I've seen some good and thoughtful disability AUs, but I do wish they weren't so much more popular than writing about canonically disabled characters. Even the good ones count as much towards "diverse representation" as genderswapping male characters does towards representation of women (which is to say, very little)

As for h/c and the like: the way I see it is that fiction exaggerates reality, especially idfic-y fanfic. A lot of "disability" in fanfic is really just a larger than life exaggeration of the universal experience of minor injury or illness. And I think that's something able-bodied/neurotypical people should be allowed to explore.

THAT SAID: even if they don't MEAN to say anything about real disability, the connection is there, and writers should keep it in mind. I think writers of fanfic about disabled characters should always keep disabled readers in mind, as well as how the subtext of their story ties into the wider ableist culture. Either they should try to write a thoughtful (but not necessarily realistic, depending on canon/genre) depiction, or they should add a disclaimer warning readers that they haven't.

And not just writers: I wish reviewers would bear this sort of thing in mind too. I saw several different people unselfconsciously rec a fic which depicted my sort of (incurable) illness as an UNBEARABLE BURDEN which had to be ~magically cured~ for there to be a happy ending, and since I had no warning was really seriously upset by this "feel good" story.

EDIT, after thinking and looking at comments above: Overall, I just want disabled people to be written as people, with 3 dimensional lives. When canon characters become disabled they often become THE DISABLED CHARACTER and every single scene involving them (until they get magically cured) revolves around THE DISABILITY.
And in the other direction, I wish writers and reviewers etc would remember that "people" (eg their readers) includes disabled people.

[chordatesrock]

Maybe writers should stick with temporary injuries if they want that kind of dynamic.

It sounds like the problem with Disability AUs is mainly that they tend to have the same kinds of very basic fail as most other depictions of disability. Does that sound right?

Of course, portraying most disabilities as needing to be cured for a happy ending is usually faily for several reasons.

[sqbr]

Maybe writers should stick with temporary injuries if they want that kind of dynamic.

Well, sometimes death/permanent injury, or it's threat, is part of the plot. But it could certainly be dealt with better.

It sounds like the problem with Disability AUs is mainly that they tend to have the same kinds of very basic fail as most other depictions of disability. Does that sound right?

No, there's more to it than that, let's see if I can articulate it.

There are certain holes I've noticed able bodied writers fall into more with Disability AUs than they do writing about canonically disabled characters. Certainly the fic is more likely to be ALL ABOUT DISABILITY, and can often frame disability as this MASSIVE UNIQUE HURDLE OF ANGST that their super amazing favourite character will overcome with their SHEER AWESOME, rather than presenting disability as an everyday and not always so terrible thing that happens to lots of people. Canonically disabled characters will have been shown doing more boring everyday stuff without it being a massive drama. Of course both tend to ignore what disability is really like or show more than one disabled character at time, sigh :/

[kaberett]

Mmm, so on the rare occasions I've written "canonically abled" characters as chronically ill, it's because they've felt so familiar to me. In particular, my headcanon for Mai (from Avatar: the Last Airbender) is that she has some kind of gynaecological chronic illness causing chronic pain - a lot of how she moves and how she speaks and how she sits reminds me, a lot, of my own experiences with endometriosis. (There are canonically disabled characters in that source material - one of the main characters is blind; one of the auxiliary characters uses a chair.) But I tend to use her to write about her relationship with her body - being a badass and a fighter and in a lot of pain - because I'd love to be more like her, and I used to be more like her (before my condition progressed), and it's kind of cathartic.

And, in the particular case of endometriosis? Affects up to 15% of people with ovaries of ~childbearing-age~, but it's invisible and incredibly difficult to get the medical profession to take seriously (average diagnostic delay in the UK is 8 years from first report of symptoms). And so Mai not being canonically disabled - well, that's something else I identify with.

Personally I... don't so much get into writing about hurt/comfort-type dynamics - they're never something I write, so there's no reason for me to write them in the context of disability - but I'm Very Aware of some of the discussion in this area. Have you e.g. read the essay Do I Do It For You? -- it's about negotiating real-life service relationships (at the intersection of kink & disability) but is awesome. I can dig out a link if you like.

[kaz]

That is really, really cool to hear re: Mai.

Really, this is something that occurred to me after leaving my comment: that in some cases the AU is less "character has a noncanonical disability, what's different?" but "look, it is totally possible to read the canon as this character having this disability." Like, I've toyed with the idea of writing some character as a covert stutterer, which is something you wouldn't expect to see any evidence for except an oddity in word choice and possibly avoidance of specific speaking situations (ordering on the phone, maybe, or public speaking). Around 1% of the population stutters, and to me it seems a significant chunk of that is very, very good at hiding it.

[jadelennox]

Yes, I like this form of interpretation. For example Abed from Community often is written being neuroatypical, which is a likely interpretation of the text but certainly not necessarily true in canon (unless you count Jeff Winger's angry snark as diagnosis). Writing spectrum people is something that is done with mixed success, of course, especially given TV-Asperger's and the problems with those representations, but it can work.

[kaz]

I'm tired and not entirely with it right now, but - some thoughts.

Re: writing canonical disabled characters instead of disability AUs, I don't think I have such strong feelings on the matter. I get where this is coming from, that e.g. genderswapping male characters isn't the same as writing canonical female characters. However, to me this analogy doesn't hold up: there are much fewer canonically disabled characters than female characters, so whereas most canons at least have a few women to choose from there are many canons without even one disabled character - and often if they do the portrayal is really problematic in some way and maybe we don't want to have to deal with that? Also, maybe we don't want to write about any disability but a specific one, and then the options narrow much, much further. I think in order to find a canonical character who stutters to write about who isn't faily and stereotyped and frustrating to experience I'd have to write King's Speech fanfic, you know? Plus - again quite relevant for disability - sometimes even when you do have some canonical examples of a character with a given disability that aren't too faily, they still all fall into some stereotype - e.g., being a white guy, or having a particular presentation of that disability - and you'd like to write it from a different perspective.

Also, I do really enjoy a well-done genderswap, because often they take on questions like "what would have gone differently if Character X were female?" and can be really excellent at highlighting sexism. I think a disability AU along these lines would be really cool? But I'm not sure I've ever seen one.

There's also a type of fic that arguably falls under the "disability AU" umbrella I've run into with stuttering: the one where they give a character a noncanonical disability, apparently without realising, because the character has traits that appear in the stereotype of that disability. What I mean here is the way many fanfics will present shy characters as stuttering, even if they don't in canon (Hinata from Naruto is an example here, I think), and the way I keep seeing Peter Pettigrew being written with a stutter he never showed in the books apparently because, you know, cowardly whinging traitor apparently => person who stutters. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that I really really hate these! Has anyone run across anything like this with another disability?

About the h/c dynamics, I remember this really blowing up around two and a half years ago, when h/c bingo published bingo cards that listed things like "blindness" or "chronic illness" on the same card as "zombie apocalypse" and "wingfic". There was a lot of meta about h/c and disability back then: here's a post by sasha-feather and one by damned-colonial on the topic, also the metafandom delicious has quite a few links. I think this is where a lot of the worry here is coming from, plus the propensity for disability and h/c to treat the disability as inherently hurtful and tragic and also for healing cock/unrealistic cures.

[chordatesrock]

WTF is wrong with writers giving shy characters stutters? There's representation, and then there's... representation you'd rather not have. *shudder* That may be unique to you, though. Well, you and mental illnesses.

Thank you for the links. :)

[chordatesrock]

And now that I'm in less of a hurry...

I think that's somewhat unique to stuttering, but on the other hand, are they actually writing the characters as having the speech disorder? When I read fics like that, I get the impression that the characters are doing something different. You know how, sometimes, when you aren't completely sure if you want to say something, you start, and then stop yourself, and then realize you want to say it after all, and say it? (Or, sometimes, you say something else instead.) What I see written in fiction reads as doing that a lot, presumably because of anxiety, whereas actual stuttering (the speech-disordered kind) sounds completely different. I don't think they actually are being written as stuttering, and nor are most fictional characters who supposedly stutter, even when the canon claims they have the speech disorder.

(This could be behind the belief that PWSs stutter because of social anxiety or low self-esteem.)

I can think of a couple more examples of similar things. For instance, there's that thing where people diagnose the villains with mental illnesses just because they're villains. There also seem to be a large number of extremely faily discussions around where people discuss whether assholish or shy characters have Asperger's syndrome.

Also, ironically, the canon I'm writing in right now has far more disabled characters than female characters. This means that all of my OCs are female, in a desperate attempt to get up to realistic levels. Of course, my fandom is sick of female OCs, because most of them are Sues.

I appreciate the links and the comments on genderswaps.

[kaz]

This is a tricky one: I'm sure they're not thinking of stuttering-the-speech-disorder when writing these characters, but most likely that's because they don't realise that stuttering-the-speech-disorder as something distinct from repetitions due to anxiety actually exists. I think this is really behind the stereotypes and some of the more faily depictions: people don't get that speech disorder stuttering is something else with a different cause and different effects than what they might do. There also seems to be a lot of crossover between tropes used in this sort of fic and fic where the character stutters canonically and even when that's explicitly identified as a speech disorder: "gain confidence to speak fluently!" is a popular one.

At any rate, the way stuttering is portrayed in these fics is more like speech disorder stuttering than anything else: e.g., sound repetitions rather than syllable or word or use of filler words. That is, the stutter is written a la "I-I-I'm c-called K-k-kaz", when I'd expect anxiety-type stuttering to go more along the lines of "I, um, I'm call- called Kaz" - and sound repetitions are really classic speech disorder stuttering. Moreover, the extent to which these characters stutter is frequently not one I have ever seen on a fluent speaker, with a really high percentage of stuttered words. Maybe the people who write this are thinking of a more typical uncertainty-stutter and only writing it this way because that's how stuttering is usually indicated in fiction, but if so I think that's plain bad writing because they're using markers that very clearly indicate speech disorder stuttering to me.

Yeah, I was wondering whether the "hey, look, this character fits into all of these autistic stereotypes!" discussions might be related (and honestly, NT fans debating whether or not a given character is autistic always make me want to run miles, no matter which side of the argument they happen to fall on.) A bit different, still, since it's lacking the "give the character a disability they clearly don't have because they satisfy stereotypes" element, but there is the shared bit where stereotypes are frequently used above actual diagnostic criteria etc. as judgement. (Have I ever mentioned the time I saw someone explain why Sherlock couldn't be autistic by going through criteria she'd found in a book, and one of them was "lack of theory of mind"? AAAAAGH.)

Interesting, that bit about far more disabled than female characters... which canon is that, if you don't mind me asking? I'm not sure I've ever really seen one like that.