If you want a really good example of how the “curing the crippled character” trope is beautifully subverted, look no further than the first season of The Dragon Prince (not so coincidentally written by some of the same people who wrote the legendary Toph Beifong):
In the middle of the season, the main characters rush to find a cure for the sacred dragon egg (which had been dropped in icy water). They come across a young girl with a pet wolf, who tells the story of how she found the pup in a trap and how the local veterinarian had to amputate her leg:
Her father responds to this with typical eugenics-based ‘advice’:
So she runs away to keep the village from killing her pet and meets an elf:
One magical spell later, we see that the wolf now has four legs:
So you’ve got this whole tragedy model of disability going, you’ve got the eugenics, you’ve got the magical cure, you’ve got the happy villagers, you’ve got the main characters saying, “Hooray, magical healer, let’s go!”
And it takes several episodes, all of which feature the wolf walking around, running, jumping, etc. for them to finally find this elf, only to reveal:
The whole show threw out an UNO reverse card and revealed that the only magic that needed to be done was an illusion to convince everyone that she was no longer ‘broken’ and thus was worthy of life. Incredible! I mean, the story comes at the worst time because the egg that contains the dragon prince is about to die so they need a healer, but what a story!
Incidentally, The Dragon Prince also features the love of my life:
(The show actually hired ASL interpreters to help with the accuracy.)
The third season comes out next weekend, and will undoubtedly feature more disabled characters with great representation, more nonwhite characters, more LGBT characters, my aforementioned wife, and just a great story/atmosphere in general. If you’ve got Netflix, check it out!
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