Hi! I've very recently finished AoB and was going through your blog and reading your stuff about it. It was absolutely eye-opening, and while I don't agree with some of your opinions about Ferdinand (the reason being some personal stuff going on on my side), I can see that you have enough textual evidence to back everything up! It was... refreshing, to say the least, to see someone actually addressing the elephant in the room (fermyne being adjacent, if not outright pedophilia... or just admitting that it's a little bit weird...).
with that being said, I know what you don't like about AoB and would change. so i want to ask: is there something(s) you absolutely loved in the work?
Hey, thanks! I'm glad you appreciated my analysis even if you don't agree. There's actually a lot of stuff I really like about aob, which is how I ended up reading it to completion. If you don't mind I'll just go down the list
1. The premise
Aob got me with its premise immediately. I love granular world building, I love logistics, and I was SO hyped for an actually marginalized protagonist(with a disability!!!) instead of the usual "I'm oppressed for having pink hair and a useless skill that's secretly the strongest magic ever" bullshit. Myne having to claw her way into just SURVIVING for a little bit longer, seeing slavery and prostitution from the short end instead of being the one buying slaves, etc. was such a refreshing idea, both as a deconstruction of the usual isekai world with sharp inequalities the protagonist doesn't care about because they're on top of the world and just as an interesting story with actual conflict. And books! God, books, what an interesting thing for Myne to fixate on. Books have so much potential for a medieval setting, you can discuss the classism of who has access to books, you can discuss the classism of who has access to literacy, you can explore who gets to write books in what language, what you're allowed to write books about, and that's not even getting to the content! Every single book is an excuse to dive into world building, to tie together old concepts and introduce new ones, and the process of writing, building, and distributing a book introduces so much space for conflict and character building. Unlike modern times where writing a book is the only part most authors have to engage with, Myne has to invent paper before she can write on it!
2. Myne
I love P1 Myne so much it's actually crazy. She's such an interesting character. She's brash, she's weird, she's combative, she's incompetent, she's weak, she's ignorant, she's prejudiced but she's also horrified by injustice, and that MEANS something. It means she gets made fun of by her family for doing stupid stuff, it means she needs assistance to do everyday tasks, it means she has to try to build relationships with people because most of them don't like her at first, and it means that she has to fight for every single win. And I love that. I like my protagonists like I like my sandpaper, so imperfect that it fundamentally changes the story they interact with. I want Myne to deliberately, constantly, and unavoidably affect the plot because she wants to and also can't stop herself. Also, I really like her story of becoming disabled. Urano being abled means that Myne being a disabled child is a really hard change for her, and the fact that it's terminal puts a lot of pressure on her, plus the classism of the fact that it wouldn't even have happened if she was born upper class. Back when it didn't have a cure I was even onboard for it being magic because she couldn't use too much of it without dying. Very rich mine for character conflict even if I wish her magic capacity was mediocre.
3. A handful of side characters
Benno, Sylvester, Charlotte, and Hannelore are my goats(I do love Detlinde too but that's just because she's my very special girl). Even if I have some beef with the direction they took Sylvester's character, I still really like his earlier appearances and his conflict with Charlotte and Myne had so much potential it truly makes me sick. Charlotte herself is a classic 90s girl power girlboss story but I like her a lot and I wish we got more of her conflict outside of just being Myne's cute little sister. I actually do like Rozemyne's dynamic with her where she feels suicidally compelled to help her because Rozemyne saved her life even when she actively sabotages her because she doesn't pay attention to Charlotte. REALLY juicy. Benno is just like. So fun and cool. I really like his character and it's a shame that he basically disappears from the story in later volumes because he's my guy. Hannelore is just such a baller I simply have to respect it. I still send her little ç°ćžžæ æ comic as a reaction image.
4. The manga (p1-2)
The part 1 and 2 manga are SO GOOD. They're so fun, and the fact that they take us out of Myne's head means that we can get so much characterization for the other characters plus the ability to see Myne's actions from an outside perspective. The art is also beautifully detailed and so many emotional beats just fucking HIT. You are, and have always been Rosemyne...
I think the worst kind of tags I got in that post with the stupid Tolkien and CS Lewis tags (you know the one) was those that implied that Tolkien used the concept of LOTR being a fictional translation to "avoid" explaining things. First of all, as if Tolkien would use any excuse to be lazy about WRITING of all things, he was using it to make his story feel more real, more rich, he was trying to build myth and he knew how to do it in a way few people could.. Segundo, Francia, and third, that's called narrative framing, it's been used since ancient times and it's something I don't even feel qualified to even talk about because I'm sure people have written entire papers on it.
No, actually the worst thing were those tags that said something like "I don't know where coffee or cellphones do and I'm sure OP doesn't" because fuck you, some of us actually are interested in how the world works, do you think things appears in your supermarket out of nowhere?
No, no, actually, the worst thing is when someone said "Asimov is like Tolkien" and, I quote "Heinlein is the wheeeeee space opera guy". Heinlein. Fucking Heinlein being the wheeee space opera guy. The guy who dedicated whole pages to explaining how the technology and society of his worlds worked and made whole books on that premise to the point I think he was a hardass. Heinlein would burn your book if you didn't explain how the propulsion system of your spaceship worked.
Heinlein would not say "wheee space opera" ni de casualidad. Goddamn.
No, no, no, actually the worst thing is all those tags that say "I'm like C.S. Lewis" oh you mean you're writing heartfelt, profound fiction with mythological themes inspired by your religious beliefs and your complex relationship to them? "I'm like CS Lewis I don't have to explain anything it's just magic xdxddxddxd" oh okay, la re concha de tu madre entonces
No, no, no, no, actually, the worst part of that post was all the people telling me I haven't heard about "suspension of disbelief" or "don't like don't read". Yes, if your story just has generic knights eating potato stew with no thought at all at the society they live in, I will not like it and I will not read it. Thanks.
No, no, no, no, no, the worst thing is when people tried to make a sick burn at me saying I should just read encyclopedias. Yes, that's what I like to do. Yes, there are whole fictional encyclopedias to read out there, it's a thriving and fascinating genre. Not my fault you don't know about them.
No, no, no, no, no, no, the worst thing was that one that said I caring about potatoes and coffee in settings as such was just nitpicking like the people who complain about people of color in fantasy, when most of that post was actually ABOUT why non-european people are not represented in fantasy and science fiction to the point that their contributions to the world and customs are completely erased. And when I tried to answer them they blocked me.
Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you
Why are your stupid little wizards and knights eating potato stew in your dumb European middle ages fantasy world. Where did they get potatoes from. Where is the center of domestication of potatoes, do you have a fantasy Andean civilization? What are the social and economic consequences of having such a calorie rich crop in cold climates. I don't care about "themes" or "enemies to lovers with found family", I didn't ask about that. Where does your idiot space captain gets their shitty coffee from. Is it imported from Earth? Are there coffee growing worlds? Is it an alien species replacement with the same name? What are the social consequences of that? Don't try to change the subject, I'll stop pointing the gun when I want, I'm trying to have a conversation here,
Sorry to commit the sin of being serious on a joke post instead of joining in on the bit but it is actually a good idea to get serious about, like, two or so food or fabric items per book. Reading a scifi novel where some characters on a space station are sipping orange juice in an Important Meeting provided by the host and it's revealed that it's real orange juice, shipped up from Earth, not the artificial stuff that gets manufactured in orbit, adds some real richness to the world and the personality of the orange juice provider and their dynamics with the person they're sharing orange juice with. Having your fantasy characters sip hot chocolate at a ball with a foreign diplomat and having the diplomat mention how lucky they are to have so much cocoa when it doesn't grow well in this climate, and they sure hope that their trade deals with the cocoa growing nation remain strong in spite of the threat of war with their neighbour and it potential to upset trade routes, in the diplomat's home country cocoa is almost impossible to find and they'll miss it so much when they leave, gives some real grounding to both the setting and its international relations as well as giving you a lot of things you can imply via said diplomat depending on their specific attitude. You only have to do it with a couple of things, it really goes a long way for establishing depth and trust in your worldbuilding.
Iâve talked about The Potato Question a few times and I think this grossly mischaracterizes the essence of it. Yes some people latch onto it extremely literally but if you dismiss it out of hand you are not really engaging with the meat of it.
âWhere did the potatoes come from?â does NOT mean âGive me an exhaustive ethnobotanical history of your crops!â
Itâs a shorthand for asking if you are taking a western imperialist worldview for granted in your worldbuilding (and reacting with hostility when a hypothetical reader interrogates that). Are you buying into a particular cultural mythology of Ye Olde Fantasy Europe by having the norms and resources available to your setting be those of a white supremacist revisionist fantasy? Why does your society have the culture of an extractive colonial empire if they have no imperialist interests?
You donât have to engage with these sorts of questions but if you arenât willing to give them thought then it will show in your writing and a certain percentage of your readers will think you lack insight into the world you created.
I don't think being uninformed or lazy is a Western imperialist worldview. It's very, very easy for anachronisms to slip through the cracks while writing. It's naive maybe, certainly it's leaving potential on the table, as derin says. But it's not like. Complicit in atrocities. There's atrocities behind everything if you keep digging. History is not a nice place.
Are you buying into a particular cultural mythology of Ye Olde Fantasy Europe by having the norms and resources available to your setting be those of a white supremacist revisionist fantasy?
I don't think potatoes are a loadbearing pillar of white supremacist glorification of feudal Europe. There's not much glorious about potatoes.
Why does your society have the culture of an extractive colonial empire if they have no imperialist interests?
You don't need an extractive colonial empire to have potatoes just because in our world potatoes happened to be brought to Europe by an extractive colonial empire.
Did you not read what I said? Again: the potatoes are a shorthand. Thatâs my point. The potato question is not really about the potatoes or the anachronisms but about the assumptions about society they may betray.
I have read stories that go way out of their way to justify the presence of potatoes and yet do not actually manage to shake the Eurocentric cultural mythology at all. Because, again, the potato question isnât actually about ethnobotany.
No one really thinks there is interesting ethnobotanical history behind the presence of tomatoes and tobacco in the Shire. We can tell that we are supposed to take it for granted because the Shire is a quaint 19th century English countryside. And thatâs the issueâweâre also supposed to take it for granted that the Shire just kind of naturally acquired the wealth, class structure, resources, and culture of a pastoralist painting through the pluck and moxie of Hobbits acting on their own, without any kind of imperial history. We see this time and time again in fantasy and sci-fiâromanticized proxies of Western Europe presented as a naturally-occurring state sanitized of all the ick and exploitation that allowed them to exist.
It's very easy to defend a stupid point people make by substituting a less stupid point and then defending that instead. But okay, let's pretend this is about the less stupid version.
Firstly, I think it is very common to use far away or long ago places as backdrops and then just write about the relationship dynamics or psychological explorations or magic-as-allegory or whatever actually interests one. These stories will transplant modern ideas and dynamics backwards without much regard for accuracy, and I think this is mostly fine. These stories should not inform your understanding of the past, but you should not get your information about the past from fiction in the first place. Literary writers lie, it's their job.
Secondly, you are assuming certain cultural quirks can only come about the same way we have seen them come about in history. I think this is very narrow-minded. It's not like sociology is a solved science and we know how these things can and can't develop. If there is a dominant idea in your medieval story which would have been very foreign to actual medieval people, then this can be interesting to explore, how did that idea get hold in the first place? But a) a skilled writer will be able to pull that off, the idea doesn't have to come from where we know it came from in the real world, and b) a writer not exploring that at all is leaving potential on the table, yes, but they are not doing anything wrong. The story doesn't have to be about that.
And it doesn't mean the writer is endorsing or naturalising that idea. They may be shadowboxing against a bias which was invented by the Victorians and mistakenly doing it in a medieval setting. Maybe a bit embarassing, but not a grave ill. If they ARE actually endorsing and naturalising the idea, then you can criticise that directly, and you can do it on the merits of the idea, without making it about the anachronism or the missing context or whatever. It's not like the Shire would be less of a conservative's wet dream if there were in-universe explanations for everything.
Your issue is not the lack of an explanation, you want it to be an entirely different story. That's fine! I would also be interested in the alternate universe version of The Lord of the Rings where Tolkien was a committed anti-imperialist. But we are very far away from potatoes now, are we not? Really, it doesn't have anything to do with the potatoes at all. The potatoes are not a shorthand, they are a completely separate thing. Tolkien was in many ways a conservative, and that sucks because conservatism sucks and not for any other reason about historical context or whatever.
My point is that âwhere do the potatoes come from?â is a thought experiment in challenging what you take for granted in fantastical settings and why âromanticized and unproblematic Western Europeâ is considered a perfectly neutral basis upon which to base a fantasy society, to the point that even suggesting that this neutrality is worth interrogating is treated as this ludicrous nutjob imposition to be met with hostility, as you are demonstrating. Potatoes are merely a symbol of the unquestioning ease with which eurocentricism and white supremacy is normalized in the literary world. Whether the provenance of potatoes (or other symbol) is ever explicitly addressed in the worldbuilding is less the point than âdoes the text betray the authorâs biases and blindspots regarding western culture and seem way too comfortable ignoring the global south?â to which the answer is so often âyesâ.
So the potatoes are just a detour to a criticism which is not difficult to make directly, and then when people take the detour seriously they are missing the point?
Hi! I've very recently finished AoB and was going through your blog and reading your stuff about it. It was absolutely eye-opening, and while I don't agree with some of your opinions about Ferdinand (the reason being some personal stuff going on on my side), I can see that you have enough textual evidence to back everything up! It was... refreshing, to say the least, to see someone actually addressing the elephant in the room (fermyne being adjacent, if not outright pedophilia... or just admitting that it's a little bit weird...).
with that being said, I know what you don't like about AoB and would change. so i want to ask: is there something(s) you absolutely loved in the work?
Hey, thanks! I'm glad you appreciated my analysis even if you don't agree. There's actually a lot of stuff I really like about aob, which is how I ended up reading it to completion. If you don't mind I'll just go down the list
1. The premise
Aob got me with its premise immediately. I love granular world building, I love logistics, and I was SO hyped for an actually marginalized protagonist(with a disability!!!) instead of the usual "I'm oppressed for having pink hair and a useless skill that's secretly the strongest magic ever" bullshit. Myne having to claw her way into just SURVIVING for a little bit longer, seeing slavery and prostitution from the short end instead of being the one buying slaves, etc. was such a refreshing idea, both as a deconstruction of the usual isekai world with sharp inequalities the protagonist doesn't care about because they're on top of the world and just as an interesting story with actual conflict. And books! God, books, what an interesting thing for Myne to fixate on. Books have so much potential for a medieval setting, you can discuss the classism of who has access to books, you can discuss the classism of who has access to literacy, you can explore who gets to write books in what language, what you're allowed to write books about, and that's not even getting to the content! Every single book is an excuse to dive into world building, to tie together old concepts and introduce new ones, and the process of writing, building, and distributing a book introduces so much space for conflict and character building. Unlike modern times where writing a book is the only part most authors have to engage with, Myne has to invent paper before she can write on it!
2. Myne
I love P1 Myne so much it's actually crazy. She's such an interesting character. She's brash, she's weird, she's combative, she's incompetent, she's weak, she's ignorant, she's prejudiced but she's also horrified by injustice, and that MEANS something. It means she gets made fun of by her family for doing stupid stuff, it means she needs assistance to do everyday tasks, it means she has to try to build relationships with people because most of them don't like her at first, and it means that she has to fight for every single win. And I love that. I like my protagonists like I like my sandpaper, so imperfect that it fundamentally changes the story they interact with. I want Myne to deliberately, constantly, and unavoidably affect the plot because she wants to and also can't stop herself. Also, I really like her story of becoming disabled. Urano being abled means that Myne being a disabled child is a really hard change for her, and the fact that it's terminal puts a lot of pressure on her, plus the classism of the fact that it wouldn't even have happened if she was born upper class. Back when it didn't have a cure I was even onboard for it being magic because she couldn't use too much of it without dying. Very rich mine for character conflict even if I wish her magic capacity was mediocre.
3. A handful of side characters
Benno, Sylvester, Charlotte, and Hannelore are my goats(I do love Detlinde too but that's just because she's my very special girl). Even if I have some beef with the direction they took Sylvester's character, I still really like his earlier appearances and his conflict with Charlotte and Myne had so much potential it truly makes me sick. Charlotte herself is a classic 90s girl power girlboss story but I like her a lot and I wish we got more of her conflict outside of just being Myne's cute little sister. I actually do like Rozemyne's dynamic with her where she feels suicidally compelled to help her because Rozemyne saved her life even when she actively sabotages her because she doesn't pay attention to Charlotte. REALLY juicy. Benno is just like. So fun and cool. I really like his character and it's a shame that he basically disappears from the story in later volumes because he's my guy. Hannelore is just such a baller I simply have to respect it. I still send her little ç°ćžžæ æ comic as a reaction image.
4. The manga (p1-2)
The part 1 and 2 manga are SO GOOD. They're so fun, and the fact that they take us out of Myne's head means that we can get so much characterization for the other characters plus the ability to see Myne's actions from an outside perspective. The art is also beautifully detailed and so many emotional beats just fucking HIT. You are, and have always been Rosemyne...
and it's just DIFFERENT right it's so different in the manga because you can SEE THEM. you can see their little pudgy baby faces, how the weight of the whole world is weighing on these kids and the way they have to work so far beyond their years to handle this burden and try to move on because her sister and his best friend is dead but she isn't but they have to pretend she is. tuuli is acting brave she's shining like she sun but her eyes are all puffy because you know she was crying her damn eyes out all night while she tried to think of anything she could do. and even this, tuuli's wonderful idea, is no longer a big sister making clothes for her little sister because in heartbreaking contrast with myne's funeral rites they really truly do have to deal with the fact that for the rest of their lives, myne will never be anything but their boss. tuuli will never be allowed to bully her little sister again. lutz can't slap his stupid friend upside the head when she says some truly out of pocket shit. the BEST they can hope for, ALL they can do, is try to find a way to just see her again.
[ID: A screenshot from the movie Nimona, showing Nimona, a small white girl with red hair, grabbing the right prosthetic arm of Ballister, a knight in black armour with black hair and light brown skin. He is holding a broken bottle in his prosthetic hand while Nimona admires his arm. Overlaid on the screenshot is white text that reads "Disability Tropes: The Perfect Prosthetic" /End ID]
In a lot of media, prosthetic limbs are portrayed as these devices that act as a near-perfect replacement for a character who has lost, or was born without a limb. So much so that in a lot of cases, the use of a prosthetic has basically no impact on the character beyond a superficial level or their appearance, or it's portrayed as something that's even better than the old meat-limb it's replacing. This trope shows up most often in Sci-fi, but it shows up in all kinds of stories outside of that, even otherwise very grounded ones!
If a story isn't depicting the loss of a limb as the be-all-end-all worst thing that can happen to a person, they almost always default to a perfect prosthetic, functionally curing the amputation with it. But the reality is that prosthetics are FAR from perfect, and as someone who has used them for their entire life I don't think they ever will be. Limb difference is still and always will be a disability, regardless of the prosthetics available, and this really isn't a bad thing.
Why is this trope so common?
I meant it when I said this is a really, really a common trope, so much so that the majority of the media I've seen with amputees and characters with limb differences that released in the last decade or end up using it. Even stories where becoming an amputee is treated like a fate worse than death, ironically, aren't excluded from this. I have a few theories as to why this has happened:
The pessimistic answer is that it's easy. You get to have a disabled character and claim you have disability representation, without really having to do much extra work or research because most of your audience won't notice if you aren't accurate - in fact they kind of expect it. You also, for the most part, dodge the backlash other kinds of disability representation (or really any minority representation) usually get.
The more optimistic reason is that, for a long time, amputees and people with limb differences (as well as a lot of other disabled people) were predominantly shown in media as sad, depressed and unable to do anything, very much falling into the "sad disabled person" trope. As a kid, this was really the only way I saw people like me on screen or in books. And so, the limb difference community pushed back against that portrayal and were pretty successful in changing the narrative in the public's eye. A little too successful. A lot of creatives were genuinely trying to do right by our community, listen and do better, but many simply overcorrected and instead ended up creating stories where prosthetics were essentially cures instead of the mobility aids they are.
I also think the public's general lack of understanding about disability plays a roll in all this. There are a lot of people who, in my experience, believe that the more visible a disability is, the worse it is. Limb differences and amputations are very visible, but prosthetics, even those that aren't trying to be discreet, make them less so. While using a prosthetic is very, very different to a biological limb, you won't necessarily see how in a casual interaction with, say a co-worker or neighbor, especially because there is a very real stigma applied to people with limb differences to keep those things hidden from the public.
There are other reasons too, such as the fact that a lot of creatives don't even consider the connection to real amputees when creating characters with robotic limbs in genres like sci-fi and some fantasy, so they never stop to consider that these tropes could be impacting real people. Amputees are also very frequently used in "inspiration porn" content that uses the angle that disabilities can be "overcome" with a good attitude, downplaying the way those disabilities actually impact us. The prosthetics industry - specifically the component manufacturers, often also push the idea of prosthetics being the only way to return to a "normal" life, both to the wider public and to people with limb differences and amputations (which can add to that sense of shame I mentioned when it doesn't play out that way for them).
On top of that, I also think the recent increase in popularity of concepts like trans-humanism contributes to it as well. these movements often talk about robotic or bionic body parts being enhancements and "the way of the future", and I think people get a bit too caught up on what may be potentially possible in the future with the real, current experiences of people with "robotic limbs" aka prosthetics, now. There are also inherently disabling things that come with removing and replacing parts of your body, things that will not just go away with some fancier tech.
So How do you actually avoid the trope?
So, we have some ideas about why it happens, but how do you actually avoid the "perfect prosthetic" trope from appearing in your work?
The most important thing is to remember that this is still a disability. The loss of a limb, even with the best prosthetic technology or magical item in the world, will always have some inherently disabling aspects to it - and this is not a bad thing.
The key is to not over-do it, lest you risk falling into the old "sad disabled person" trope. So let's go over some of the ways you can show how your character's disability impacts them. You don't have to use all of these recommendations, just choose the ones that would best fit your character, their circumstances and your setting.
The prosthetic itself is just different
Probably the most important thing to address and acknowledge for prosthetic-using characters, is the actual ways in which the prosthetic itself is different from a biological limb, and the drawbacks and changes that come with that. For the sake of simplicity, I'm mainly going to focus on modern prosthetics here, but it's worth considering how to apply this your own, more advanced/fantastical prosthetics too.
One major thing that most people writing amputees fail to acknowledge is that prosthetic limbs are not fleshy-limbs with a different coat of paint. They do the same basic thing their meat-counterparts do, but how they do it is often drastically different, which changes how they are used. A really good example of this is in prosthetic feet. There are dozens of joints in a biological foot, but most prosthetic feet have no joints or moving parts at all. Instead of having dozens of artificial joints to mimic the real bone structure of a foot, which are more prone to failure, require power and make the prosthetic much, much heavier for very little gain, prosthetic feet are often constructed from flexible carbon fiber sheets inside a flexible rubber foot-shaped shell. This allows the bend and flex those bones provide, without all the drawbacks that come from trying to directly mimic it. Making the sheets into different shapes makes them more ideal for different activities. E.g. feet made for general use, like walking around the city, are simple and light, shaped to encourage the most energy-efficient steps, while still allowing their users to do things like wear normal shoes. Feet made for rough terrain often have a split down the middle of the foot to allow the carbon fiber sheets to bend better over rocks when there is no ankle, and some newer designs also include a kind of suspension using pressurized air pulled from the prosthetic socket to allow some additional padding. Running feet have large "blades" made of these carbon fiber sheets to absorb more pressure when the foot hits the ground, and redirect the force that creates to propel their user forward as quickly as possible.
[ID: A photo of 4 prosthetic feet. On the left, the foot is covered with a black shoe, the one to it's right consists of a small, carbon fiber blade, split down the middle, in roughly the same shape and size as the previous foot. Next to the right is an even simpler and smaller carbon fiber foot with no split, and finally is a very short foot that is vaguely rectangular in shape. /End ID]
These are some of my own prosthetic feet I've had over the years. The two on the right are designed to be used by someone who is less mobile, and the ones on the left are made for someone who is more active. As my needs changed over the years, I've used different designs and styles, and keep the old ones since my needs do tend to fluctuate.
There are also robotic feet available that are designed as a kind of "all-purpose" foot that use an electronic ankle which more closely mimics a biological foot, but they are not very popular as the mechanism adds a lot of extra weight and it requires a battery and power to work, with many amputees feeling the jointless carbon fiber feet do a better job at meeting their needs.
The same goes for arms and hands. "Robotic" hands that mimic a meat hand exist, but they aren't really that popular, even in places like Australia where the prohibitively expensive price tag isn't as much of an issue due to government programs that pay for the device for you. Instead, most arm amputees who use prosthetics that I know prefer simpler devices that do specific tasks, and just swap between them as needed, rather than something that tries to do it all. A big part of this is because the all-purpose hands can be clunky. they often require manual adjustment using the other hand to do simple things like going from holding a deck of cards to putting them down and picking up a glass of water, for example. The few that don't require that, I've been told, are often temperamental and don't actually work for every person with a limb difference.
Altered Proprioception
Loosing a limb is a big deal and this is always going to have an impact on the body in some way that won't be solved with a fancy piece of tech. One such example is how limb loss effects your sense of proprioception. This is your sense of where your body parts are in space. It's how you (mostly) know where your foot is going to land when you're walking, or how you're able to do things like lift up a glass of water without needing to actually watch your hand do it.
Your brain does this by creating a mental map of your body, but this map doesn't get adjusted if you loose a limb. If that map doesn't accurately reflect your real body, you're not going to have an accurate sense of proprioception. This might look like a leg amputee being a bit less stable on their feet, or like an arm amputee needing to look at their arm or hand to be able to grab something with it.
Those born without their limbs who take to using prosthetics often have a lot of trouble adapting, as their brains aren't used to having that limb in the first place, whereas an amputee's brain can sometimes be tricked into using their outdated body map to help them adjust to the prosthetic (though its impossible to line it up perfectly). Prosthetics that directly integrate with the nervous system, while rare, do exist, and even this direct connection doesn't completely erase this issue for reasons doctors aren't quite sure about.
This is something that does become less of a problem with time. Eventually, someone proficient with their prosthetic will learn to compensate, but their sense of proprioception will never be 100% perfect. At the end of the day, no matter how it attaches, a prosthetic is still not a natural part of the body, and that will always cause some issues. It also means if they aren't practicing it all the time, they may have to relearn how to compensate for it.
Extra weight
You also have to remember that a prosthetic is not a natural part of the body, like we already talked about, and so no matter how good it is, your brain will most likely always interpret the weight of the prosthetic as something attached to you, not part of you. This means that, even though prosthetics are actually a lot lighter than biological limbs, they feel so much heavier. This is because, while a meat limb is heavier, a lot of that weight is from muscles which are actively contributing to the limb working, so it doesn't really feel like its that heavy. When you have less of your meat-limb though, you have even less muscle to work with to move this big thing strapped to it, so it feels heavier. The more of the limb you've lost, or just didn't have, the heavier the prosthetic has to be, and the less muscle you have left to move it. It's for this reason that a lot of amputees and people with limb differences get tired faster when using prosthetics. Some of us are fit enough where you almost wouldn't notice the extra effort they need to put in, but once again, just because you can't see it from the outside, doesn't mean it's not an issue.
Avoiding Water
Most prosthetics also aren't waterproof, and so prosthetic users have to be very careful about when and how they come into contact with it. For amputees with electric components, contact with water at all will likely damage the device. This can even include especially heavy rain, something I was told to avoid when I got my electronic knee prosthetic and something I assume would also apply to arm amputees with complex, electronic hands.
For those with non-electronic prosthetics, water can be hazardous for different reasons. If the prosthetic has metal components, water may cause them to rust, especially if it's salty water. Other prosthetics have foam covers to give the illusion of a limb with the general shape of muscles and fat, but these covers do not come off, and if they get wet enough that water seeps all the way through, it is very hard to dry it and they may become moldy. Finally, cheaper modern prosthetics may also float. Many are made of very light-weight materials and some have pockets of air trapped inside them. For leg prosthetics in particular, this means a user might, at best, struggle to swim with them on, but at worst, may get flipped upside down and become trapped underwater - something that happened to me as a very young child. On the flip-side, older prosthetics were usually made of heavy materials like wood or steel, and so had the opposite problem, acting like a weight and pulling a person down if they were to wear them in the water.
Water-safe prosthetics do exist, I had a pair of prosthetic legs as a teenager that were hollow, and designed especially for me to swim with fins on when swimming in the ocean, and Nadya Vessey, a double leg amputee in New Zealand even got a mermaid-tail prosthetic made especially for use in the water. Most amputees though just swim without any prosthetics at all, and in 99% of cases, this is the easiest and safest way to go.
Prosthetic-Related Pressure Sores and Pain
Many people with limb differences also experience pressure sores from their prosthetics. Modern prosthetics typically attach to the body using a socket made of carbon fiber or fiberglass, held on either by pressure, using a vacuum seal or through a mechanical locking system built into the socket. No matter the specifics though, the socket has to be very tight in order to stay on, and this means that extended periods of use can lead to rub-spots, blisters and pressure sores. Many socket prosthetics also use silicone liners to add extra padding, but this means wounds caused by the pressure can't breathe, and bacteria in sweat has nowhere to go, meaning if the person doesn't rest when one of these wounds occur, it can very easily and quickly turn into a serious infection.
In a properly fitting prosthetic, used by someone who has fully adjusted to them, this doesn't happen often, but it is something most amputees and people with limb differences have to at least be mindful of.
Some new prosthetics use a different method of attachment, called Osteointegration - where the prosthetic attaches to a clip, surgically implanted into the person's bones. While Osteointegration avoids many of the issues like pressure sores that come from a socket, they have their own issues: mainly that they are incredibly expensive, and as of right now, have a pretty high failure rate due to the implant getting infected. Because the implants are directly connected to the bone, these infections become very serious very quickly. Many people with Osteointegration limbs have to be on very strong medication to keep these infections at bay, and they are generally considered unsuitable for anyone who is going to regularly come into contact with "unclean" environments.
Maintenance
[ID: A screenshot of Winrey, from Full Metal alchemist Brotherhood, a white woman with blond hair handing out the sides of a green hat. She is measuring a piece of metal from a prosthetic she is making while Ed, the prosthetic's owner, gives her a thumbs up in the background. /End ID]
Finally, prosthetics also require maintenance from a specialist called a prosthetist, and they don't last forever. Some parts, like a foot or hand, can be reused over an over, but the sockets of a prosthetic need to be completely remade any time your body changes shape, including if you gain/loose weight, you start experiencing swelling, or you're just a child who is growing. Children in particular need new prosthetics every few months because they grow so fast, and as such, their prosthetics have to be made with this growth in mind. If they go too long without adjustment or an entirely new prosthetic, it can seriously impact the child and their growth but even small adjustments can be costly, depending on where you live.
While prosthetics are built to be sturdy and reliable, they need a lot of work to stay that way. The more complex the prosthetic, the more work is needed. Complicated electronic components may need to have regular maintenance done by your prosthetist or even the specific component's manufacturer, and depending on where you live, this might mean having to send your prosthetic limb away for this to be done. While my prosthetist technically has the skills and knowledge to do the maintenance on my electronic knee, for example, the manufacturer forbids anyone not from their company to provide this service, meaning my leg needs to be shipped off to Germany once every few years if I want to keep the warranty. This has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes your limbs getting lost in postage (shout-out to Australia Post, who lost mine twice), meaning it can be months before you get it back or get a replacement. Usually, you'll be given a replacement in the meantime if you need it, but walking on a leg that isn't yours, even when its correctly fitted, always feels a bit weird (maybe that's just me though).
Not every difference is Inherently Negative
We've talked about some of the negatives that come from having a prosthetic, but not every difference is negative or even really that big of a deal. In fact, often times, it's these little moments in the depiction of a disability that go the furthest and make it feel the most genuine. My amputations effect me from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to bed, but that doesn't mean every single way it impacts me is always inherently bad or negative.
For example, back when I was working a normal job and going to university, I would often come home, throw my legs off at the door with the shoes still attached and get into my wheelchair, the same way you might throw your shoes off after work and replace them with comfy socks and other comfy clothing. This is something I've only ever seen on screen once, with Eda from the Owl House (and she wasn't even an amputee yet, her limbs were just detachable)
[ID: an screenshot of Eda from the owl house, a very pale woman, laying on the couch in a bathrobe, her hair in a towel. She has taken her actual legs off, throwing them to the other side of the seat. /End ID]
After that, my day mostly looked the same as most other people working a 9 to 5, I'd make myself dinner, watch some TV or play some games, maybe do some extra work at my desk or chat with friends. The only difference is that it would all be from a wheelchair, mainly because my prosthetics were heavy and it was just easier to use the chair around the house. The fact my afternoon and evening routine was done from a wheelchair wasn't a bad thing, it was just different. Likewise, I also don't sleep or shower with my prosthetics on, for the same reasons most other people wouldn't take a shower or sleep in thigh-high, steel-capped boots.
In your own stories, this might look like giving your characters similar alterations to how they go about their day. Let them take their arm or leg off when they're resting or relaxing, show them taking a few minutes longer to get ready because they have to put it back on, show them doing some things without it. Arm amputees in particular tend to get very good at going about their days without their arm prosthetics, and leg amputees often either learn to get around more relaxed spaces like their homes using a different mobility aids like wheelchairs or crutches, or just through hopping if that's something they're physically able to do.
Even when everything is going well and working as intended, your limb-different character won't wear their prosthetic 24/7, no matter how much they love it. There doesn't have to be something wrong with it or painful about it to not want it glued to them at all times, just like you can love a pair of big heavy boots but not want them on when you're trying to sleep.
For more action-focused stories, being an amputee, also changes things like how you fight. The specifics will vary from person to person, but for example, when I did Hap Ki Do, a Korean Martial art, my instructor heavily modified when I learned what techniques. Beginner-level kicks and most leg attacks were impractical for me, as the force from the kicking motion would usually cause one of my legs to fly off. I also couldn't jump very well, due to some complications with my original amputation that made my stumps too sensitive to withstand the force of landing again. So I ended up learning a lot more upper-body attacks much earlier than it is typically taught. By the time I got my green belt, I was practicing upper-body techniques usually saved for black belts - including weapons training that I could use my secondary mobility aids for, like crutches and my cane in a bad situation. Many holds that rely on creating tension in your target are also less effective on amputees, because either the anatomy that causes those holds to be painful just simply isn't there, or the body part in question can just be removed to escape.
Whether we're talking about the negative things, or just neutral differences that come with using prosthetics, you don't want to go too far with any one example. The key is to strike a balance. Of course, the old writing advice of "show don't tell" also applies here. It's one thing to tell us all of this stuff, but unless we actually see it play out, it won't mean much.
How NOT to avoid the trope
Before we move on, let's focus for a moment on some common things I've seen that you SHOULDN'T do as a way to get away from the trope.
The Enhanced Prosthetic
A lot of sci-fi in particular will take prosthetic limbs, make them function exactly the same as a biological limb, but add something extra to it. This does change the way the prosthetic functions and is used, but it usually still ignores the actual disabling parts of having a prosthetic.
A really good example of this can be seen in pretty much any futuristic setting, but personally, I think Fizzeroli, from Helluva Boss is the best one to demonstrate what I mean. Fizz is a quadrilateral, above knee/above elbow amputee with highly advanced prosthetics that function, more or less exactly like the limbs he lost, but with the added benefit of being super-stretchy. Fizz is an acrobat and a clown in service, at least initially, to Mammon, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. These prosthetics help him perform and we even do see how they change little things like how he walks and just goes about his day, but the show still treats them like natural arms and legs, but better.Â
[ID: A screenshot of Fizzeroli from Helluva Boss, a white-skinned imp with 4 black, prosthetic limbs, dressed in teal a nightgown as he lays in bed, reading from a list /End ID]
We see that he never takes them off, even when sleeping, and when he needs to use them as regular arms and legs, they do everything he needs, perfectly fine - at least when they're working correctly. The only time he ever even takes them off or has any issues with them, is when they break in season 2. The word amputee is never used to describe him, as far as I remember, and the fact he is one never really comes up at all, except for when they break or when the story focuses on how he lost them.
Which brings me to my next point.
The Glitchy/Broken Prosthetic
One way I see people try to avoid the perfect prosthetic trope, is to take the prosthetic and break it or otherwise make it unreliable by having it malfunction, but not really changing anything else.
This approach is heading in the right direction but still kind of misses the point of the criticism a lot of limb different folks have with the depictions of prosthetics in the media. Yeah, prosthetics do break down and some do require extra maintenance, but if your character's prosthetic is still exactly the same as a biological limb (or even better, in the case of the "enhanced prosthetic") when it's not broken, and the only time their disability is treated like a disability, is when it breaks, you're not really addressing the issue. Real prosthetics, like we discussed, even when functioning at 100%, exactly as the manufacturer intended, don't function the same as a meat-limb. They are fundamentally different, and the glitchy/unreliable prosthetic completely ignores all of that.
Once again, Fizz is a really good example of this - the only time his prosthetics are not perfect, is when they break or are malfunctioning (despite the criticism, I do genuinely love Fizz as a character, but he unfortunately does fall into a lot of disability tropes).
[ID: Another screenshot of Fizzeroli, this time in a torn up jester outfit, looking down, panicked, at his prosthetic arms which are fully extended and laying motionless on the ground, with his left arm visibly short-circuiting with electricity around it. /End ID]
Now this isn't to say you can't have your character's prosthetics break down or malfunction at all. just that this shouldn't be the only way you differentiate the prosthetic from a biological limb. You should also be mindful of how or why they're breaking. A typical prosthetic isn't going to break down randomly from normal use unless something is very, very wrong or your character just has a terrible prosthetist (which unfortunately, does happen). You might experience issues if you try to make the prosthetic do something it just wasn't designed to do, or expose it to something it wasn't designed to deal with though (e.g. submerging an electronic prosthetic in water and trying to use it to swim).
Just add Phantom Pain
Another common pitfall I see when people are trying to avoid the perfect prosthetic trope, is to just give the character in question phantom pain - which is a side-effect of amputation where your brain's mental map of the body doesn't acknowledged you lost a limb. Your brain tries to fill in the gaps, since there is no signals coming from that part of the body anymore, and assumes either something must be wrong and so you should be in pain, even when you actually aren't. Alternatively, it can also happen when your brain was so used to feeling pain from that area before, in the case of people who had chronic conditions before they lost their limb, that it just keeps remaking those old signals itself.
Like the broken/glitchy prosthetic approach, this also doesn't really address the issue with the perfect prosthetic trope, because it has nothing to do with the prosthetic itself. Phantom pain doesn't come from the prosthetic, nor does it effect how they're used, and so including it doesn't really address the issue of the prosthetic being functionally the same as the original, biological limb. This isn't to say that you shouldn't include phantom limb sensation or pain as something your character experiences, but just keep in mind that, when used on it's own, it doesn't counter the trope.
Also, just be sure to do your research, everyone's experience with phantom pain is different and it's not something everyone with a limb difference even experiences.
Why is this trope even a problem?
Alright, so we know what the trope is, we know why it became so prevalent, ways to avoid it and also how not to avoid it. All good information, but why is this trope even bad? Why should you try to avoid it?
Outside of just wanting to portray a real disability that effects real people more accurately in your creations, the prevalence of this trope actually contributes to a lot of real-world issues, especially when it's as overused as it currently is.
I've talked before about "the jaws effect" - where the depiction of something in the media, especially something that the public is widely uneducated on, influences how people see it in real life. The Jaws effect specifically referred to how the popularity of creature-feature movies featuring sharks, like Jaws, caused the belief that sharks were monstrous killing machines to become much more wide-spread, even going so far as to influence decisions about laws and policy surrounding real-life shark preservation and culling in some parts of the world.
But sharks aren't the only thing this has happened to.
Disabled people are so thoroughly misunderstood by wider society, that when tropes like this one become popular, people can and often do start to believe the misinformation they spread - in this case, believing that our prosthetics are a perfect replacement for a biological limb, and that getting a prosthetic means you're not disabled any more. While this can be annoying and cause small scale issues for some of us, like people giving us a hard time for using disability accommodations we very much need, it can also impact us in systemic ways too. If the wrong people believe these tropes, it can and does have a very real impact on the lives of disabled people through things like changes to policies to make it harder for amputees and people with limb differences to access financial assistance for other things outside of our prosthetics we may need assistance with.
Conclusion
Despite the very real harm tropes like this can do when it's overused, I don't think it should go away entirely. Some of my favourite pieces of media even use the perfect prosthetic trope and there are even some kinds of media where I even think it's somewhat unavoidable.
Characters with perfect prosthetics in kids media in particular, especially when talking about side characters, can help to correct some of the other stereotypes kids may have seen elsewhere - such as prosthetics being "creepy" or "scary" - in a way that is casual and easy for them to understand. The problem with the trope, in my eyes, is it's excessive overuse. It's the fact that it seems to be the only representation amputees and people with limb differences are getting now. Not every story with a limb-different character can or even should delve into the reality of what using prosthetics is actually like, but we need at least some stories that do, without it being this majorly depressing thing.
[ID: The thumbnail from this artical. It contains a photo of a page from the Wings of Fire Comic, featuring Starflight and Fatespeaker, two black dragons with starry wings flying with a larger group of multicoloured dragons. Fatespeaker is holding Starflight's claw as they fly. A speech bubble from starflight says "âŠand lots and lots of scrolls⊠I wish-" and a bubble from fatespeaker saying "We'll find a way to make scrolls you can read, Starflight." Over the photo is text that reads "Disability in Worldbuilding: Thinking beyond your character". /End ID]
When you're writing a story in a fictional setting, worldbuilding is essential, but one area of worldbuilding I see repeatedly ignored is disability. Specifically, how disability is accommodated in a setting. Even when a character in the story is disabled, this stuff is often overlooked, so much so that A LOT of stories simply take the approach of "nothing existed before this character, they (or their allies) invented the accommodation/mobility device/assistive technology themselves".
But just like with any other aspect of worldbuilding, you need to think outside of just your characters if you want your world to feel alive and not like a flat backdrop to your story. So if your story contains a disabled character, or a character becomes disabled during the plot, here are some things to consider about the accommodations and assistive technology they might or might not have:
1. What kind of accommodations and assistive technology already exists in your world for your character's disability?
It can be easy just to think about your character in a vacuum but unless they have a super-setting-specific disability that only exists in that world, there will almost definitely be others in their position (and even if it is specific to your setting, unless there's a specific reason why their disability is unique, there will likely be others), so think about what these other people might have come up with. What came before the modern era? How do designs vary from person-to-person? How dose the solution to the same kind of inaccessibility change based on environment? Their cultural values? How individualistic their society is? How much your character's wider community value individuality vs conformity? For example, A more conformist community might sacrifice functionality to make the mobility aid or accommodation less noticeable, whereas the individualistic society might not care as much about the appearance, or might even sacrifice functionality to make the mobility aid stand out even more in more extreme cases.
2. If something is an issue for your character, it will usually be an issue for others too
If your character has an issue with the existing technology or accommodations and requires something new to be made, there's almost definitely others with that same problem too. This doesn't always mean that problem will be solved, mind you. In real life, things like prosthetics and wheelchairs are custom made, but a lot of their components are mass-produced, which makes it harder to deviate from the base design if a small portion of the users don't find it suitable. In a situation where mass-production doesn't apply though, it's worth taking some time to think how different people might address the same short-comings of the existing assistive technology and accommodations in your setting. If your character makes a big innovation or change, will they share it? How do others in their community (disabled and non-disabled) react to the change? Will people who see them try to copy what they did? this is especially important to consider if your setting has some kind of widely-accessible way of getting information out, like TV's or the internet.
3. Disability aids will often mimic and reference other technology of the culture it's creator comes from
There's a reason why a lot of "invalid chairs" (the predecessor to self-propelled wheelchairs) tended to look like the popular styles of regular chairs of their era with high backs and big, padded seats, even if it wasn't the most practical design. Either that, or they looked like mini-buggies or carriages which also had their drawbacks. It's because people will draw from what they know and what already exists for inspiration, and it's much easier to convince people to use something that they can already kind of understand because it references the shape of something they already know how to use. There's also the fact that it can make sourcing parts easier, especially in time periods and settings where budget would be a serious issue. The more sleek, active frame wheelchairs we have today often use racing bike wheels with small modifications to add the push rims - one of the biggest suppliers for wheelchair wheels in the world, is actually a bike company for this reason.
4. Make sure it fits with the rest of the setting
This is a continuation from 5, and also something I mentioned in my "perfect prosthetic" video a while ago, but make sure the assistive technology matches the technological level in the rest of the setting. For example, you tend to see prosthetics that are way more technologically advanced than everything else in a lot of different genres, but I've also seen sci-fi settings with faster-than-light travel that are still using hospital wheelchairs straight out of the 1950's. Now, the caveat here is that you can create a mis-match, just make sure there is a reason behind it. For example, if your society shuns disabled people or views disability as divine punishment, they're probably not going to put much effort collectively into innovating the technology they need. This doesn't mean individuals won't, but that will have a ripple effect on how people react to seeing that kind of invention in the world, they might look down at people who use them, or maybe even see their creation and use as heresy for defying the will of the gods, which will impact how people react to the character who needs it.
5. If there really is no existing accommodation in your setting yet, why?
...And don't just stop at "because not many people in my setting are disabled". I mean, you can, but I think it's way more interesting to dig deeper than that! It only takes one or two people to invent a solution to a problem. Keep in mind, they don't have to be the most efficient or practical solutions, especially if you're thinking about this in the context of what was available before your character, nor does it need to be in wide-spread use. It just needs to work for that person and their community. But if there genuinely is no existing assistive technology or accommodations for that disability, think about what stopped people from creating them. Maybe it was a technical barrier that just made it too hard, maybe there's a social stigma against disability, so people don't want to associate with them or help them, or maybe some kind of legal red-tape meant something could be created, but it was banned from use (at least in public). These are all things that happened in the real world!
For example, you didn't really see self-propelled wheelchairs until the 1600's when Stephen Farfler designed his own, called the "manumotive carriage". A big part of why this was the case, was because there was very little in the way of accessibility in wider public spaces, meaning a wheelchair, even a modern one, couldn't go many places unless it was able to handle a lot more than it's modern counterparts would need to, and technology (and society) wasn't really there yet. So, for a lot of people, it was simply more efficient to be pushed or carried by someone else, or pulled by an animal in a kind of carriage or chariot. The manumotive carriage worked for Farfler, but it's design didn't really catch on as a personal "wheelchair" and if I had to guess why, it would probably be because it was quite big and bulky in order to get him over unpaved roads and grass, but this doesn't make it especially practical for getting around tight, enclosed spaces. So for most people, the older methods were simply a better fit. It is, however, thought to have influenced the design of the tricycle and bicycle, which is a great example of how innovations for disabled people often do help non-disabled folks too! (which I'll talk more about in a moment!)
[ID: a black and white drawing of a man sitting in a small car-like device with three wheels, one at the front and two at the back. Above the front wheel is a large box with two hand-cranks, one on either side, that the man is turning /End ID]
In many European cultures, morality was also often tied to disability and specifically attributed it to either being a punishment by gods, or the work of the devil in more Christian regions. "If you were disabled, you or your parents did something to deserve it" is an attitude that has unfortunately, always existed. So when you tie the existence of a vulnerable population to the displeasure of gods or the work of the devil, you get people not wanting anything to do with them at best, resulting in them being shunned from society and their existence becoming a taboo subject. Even into modern times, stigma like this persists, but when a whole culture believes it, it's going to result in a lot of disabled people getting left behind or actively shunned, like what happened in the US with Ugly Laws, or people outright killing them. In this case, disability was not necessarily associated with divine punishment on a cultural level, but rather it was associated with beggars and the poor. The ugly laws aimed to make any displays of such things illegal in public, and unfortunately in many cases, that included the bodies of disabled people themselves. The stigma pushed disabled people out of the public eye, and as a result, the development of anything that would make their quality of life better was not exactly a high priority.
finally, sign languages have been used by d/Deaf people for thousands of years, but in 1880, their use was internationally banned in schools for the Deaf thanks to The Milan Conference in favour of oralist teaching methods, so things like lip-reading and verbal speech, which isn't practical for many people. This had wide-spread impacts on the d/Deaf community. Deaf teachers who primarily used signing to communicate were fired on mass, causing unemployment of d/Deaf people to rise and students caught signing had their hands beaten and caned. As you would expect when you deprive people of language and a way to communicate, the quality of their education globally declined, which further isolated them from the wider community. So in this case, an accommodation was available and widely-used, but it's use was banned in favour of making the population who needed it conform to be more "normal".
So like I said before, you certainly CAN just stop at "This disability just isn't common" but it's so much more interesting to dig deeper than that and actually think about why. The only thing is, if you're going to use any of these kinds of reasonings for why no other examples exist, make sure you actually make it clear why within your story, not just in your world-building document.
6. Consider the Curb Cut Effect
Nothing ever happens in a vacuum in real-life, developments in one kind of technology will often have run-on effects and impact other aspects of life, and this includes disability accommodations and assistive technology. When something created for disabled people helps others, we call it the curb cut effect. Curb cuts, the little ramps you see cut out of some footpaths and sidewalks that lead onto the road, were originally a disability accommodation for wheelchair users so they could cross the street and get onto side-walks easier, but it also helped so many other people, such as mothers with prams, cyclists (if you live somewhere where cyclists are allowed on the footpath), shoppers pushing trollies (carts) and so many others. But curb cuts are not the only example of this. Captions were created for d/Deaf people, and are widely used by non-disabled people, especially if there is a TV in a public place such as gyms and bars. As I mentioned before, Stephen Farfler's manumotive carriage, a mobility aid he made for himself, was the predecessor and inspiration for bicycles and tricycles. A lot of search engines like google use alt-text to help you find image search results, but alt-text's primary job is to describe images and videos to people with screen-readers. Even the screen-reader itself, which works by reading on-screen text and alt-text aloud to a user who is blind, was the origin of modern text-to-speech tools, including the ones you see used on apps like Tik Tok. In my high school, we also had a program called "pathways" where you could opt to spread your classes over two years, so you would only have a few classes every day. It was designed to help disabled students who had to travel for medical treatment, so they wouldn't have as much to catch up on when they came back, but it was also very popular with athlete students who had to travel for sporting commitments, students who worked while studying, or students who's home lives weren't great, and so studying after school wasn't really an option. Even those really corny TV ads you see, selling oddly specific tools to help around the house? most of those were accessibility tools first that found a market in the wider public! All of these are just a few examples of disability accommodations and assistive tech helping other people!
So think about how the assistive technology in your setting has helped to change the world your characters inhabit, beyond just the direct disability applications.
Conclusion
Now, none of these are rules, it's your setting, you can do what you want with it, but they are just some examples of things to think about to get the cogs turning!
History of Wheelchairs - Science Museum
History of Sign Language - Auslan: Now & Then
The Milan Conference of 1880: When Sign Language Was Almost Destroyed, An Unpleasant Setback in Deaf Education - Verywell Health
The History of Disability Book 3: The Ugly Laws, Disability in Public by Susan M. Schweik
theres a reason people in core adjacent fandom circles dont joke about rape the same way they do with war crimes & genocide and thats because rape is something that can happen to them, therefore deserving consideration, while war crimes and genocides are silly stuff that happen to unreal people they dont see as humans as much as themself
you might argue that characters with a past in such violence are given more weight & their crimes aren't painted as unforgivable as such in works, making it easier for fans to treat them the same way, but you'd still be coming to the same conclusion: even by writers, especially professional writers, such violence is often written off as Quirky or Narratively Unimportant. you can find "war criminal" "genocidal" in a silly blorbo traits list fairly often unlike "rapist"
NOTHING gets "morally gray character fans" going like saying "ugh people INSIST on writing my favorite war criminal as a bigot! isn't it funnier if he's actually super woke and a loving father" and firstly i don't care what's funny because i am a cruel and sadistic tyrant who wants characters to suffer, but secondly i simply can't sympathize with people who want to downplay a villain's badness until it beggars belief. like at that point why not just like the morally pure babies you mock your opponents for liking?
not to dog on that genre in the slightest like i said i check those out whenever i see them but it is a bit of a pisser to really reckon with the fact that we are so far from true trans rights and feminism that i can name like one single* manga where the protagonist's finding happiness was not entirely conditional on either 1) getting the approval of a cis man or 2) becoming more feminine in other ways, usually both. also while the girl is often trans coded i can name like one that actually features a transfem character(Otoko wo Yamete Mita) and also only one where the girl actually stays masc(although Ikemen Joshi to Josou Danshi gets extra points for having a gnc* couple who both stay gnc).
*translated, i don't read manga in japanese and ive seen several really promising ones that just don't have an english version anywhere
SO. Enabled by @ming-sik asking me about it, here's my AU spoilers/rambles about Arslan's no good very bad time in Ecbatana. I'll figure out what to do w the other characters later. For now... tormenting my blorbo son.
To set the scene, let me direct you to this post by @innerchorus detailing how corrupt the priestly class in the capital exactly were. Though I will however also paste the relevant novel quote from that post here:
'Narses, you see, had also been investigating the priestsâ abuse of their privileged positions to perpetrate sundry transgressions. Not only were the priests exempt from taxes, even if they were to commit a crime, they would not be arrested or executed.
They lent money to the peasantry at exorbitant interest rates and seized their lands when the money could not be repaid. They also monopolized the underground kariz aqueducts and reservoirs, imposing a water tax on the people. If anyone resisted, they sent forth their personal troops to burn and pillage, and afterwards divvied up the spoils. The salt they sold to the public was cut with sand. If the peasantry dug their own wells, they poisoned the wells. After investigating and collecting proof of all these misdeeds, Narses requested that the king exact severe punishment upon the priests.'
(Book 1, Chapter 2, part i)
Soooo. Pretty horrible, right?
So Arslan grew up in VerkÄna, an incredibly private and tolerant region considered somewhat backwater and away from imperial scrutiny, enabling Shapur to do stuff like secretly free all the enslaved people in his castle in batches and integrating them into the local community and hiding a whole entire magic clan in his lands. This all started when Arslan was 4, it's been 10 years since, so this model of operations is pretty much the only one Arslan will remember.
Cue his culture shock when he came to the capital.
Feeling powerless and nauseated at the casual cruelty displayed everywhere, I think he and the other kiddos start going around healing people in secret (especially the enslaved who were given corporal punishment and left to deal with their injuries without any medical attention), conducting funerals for the downtrodden, even going around helping draw water into new wells with magic or creating antidotes to the poisons in the wells and distributing them on the down low.
Of course, none of this is... particularly sustainable. The enslaved are still being abused. People are still dying. The wells will keep being poisoned over and over again and it's just... not good. It doesn't really do away with the root problem, just... kinda deals with the symptoms. The kids know this, but... what more could they possibly do?
To make matters worse, Arslan gets caught. The Temple finds out that Arslan is an active participant and even the leader of the whole little... vigilante activity, shall we say.
The Temple is obviously not too pleased with Arslan, but they might not just want to off the boyâ I don't know if his status as an illegitimate son of a marzbÄn will help shield him or not, they did send assassins after an entire Shahrdaran (particularly privileged feudal lords who were permitted to hold private armies!!!) aka Narsus (but then again Narsus would've been pretty unpopular among the ruling class soooooo hm), BUT they do recognize his high magic potential. Boy can communicate with the djinn no problem, his healing is potent, they don't have any reason to believe that he might be following another faith (though we in the fandom typically associate religious intolerance with Lusitanian Yaldabaothism, I will be basing Wolfsong's Parsian priestly class on the Sassanian variety, incredibly privileged and powerful, super fucking intolerant of other faiths, of course there's variation and some regions are more lax, but the Zoroastrian-inspired Khuda-Yasna as I've named it, it's the state religion of Pars, basically), they essentially want a piece of that cake. I've read about how some famous Fire Temples historically extolled their virtues and miracles in order to attract more pilgrims and such, so I have essentially grafted that attitude onto Arslan here. The priests want him and his magic so that they can exploit him for bullshit, essentially.
They start kinda âsoftâ. They approach Shapur (or invite him to the Grand Temple), they sit him down and they wax poetic about Arslan's talent and how that talent should be used to serve the gods properly instead of going rogue like this, becoming increasingly insistent as the conversation went on, they even insinuated that IsfÄn and Arslan might get into a succession feud (though IsfÄn and Arslan call each other brother, legally they're like, uncle and nephew) because IsfÄn is elder but born from a slave woman and not even sired by Shapur besides, Arslan was born to a commoner woman (as far as they could tell anyways) and actually sired by Shapur (LOL) so assuming that IsfÄn is Shapur's favored heir, wouldn't it be prudent to eliminate any any potential for IsfÄn's claim being challenged by a rival claimant aka Arslan? Just submit your child to the Temple and everything will be solved!
(Shapur is appropriately horrified and insulted by the insinuations and flat out denies their ârequestâ)
I am like, kinda putting it down that Shapur and his troops arrived at Ecbatana maaaaybe a month and a half before the actual Battle of Atropatene, I still haven't figured out the timeline here BUT there's opportunity for a period of stand-off between Shapur and the Temple over custody over Arslan. It's a mess.
If the Battle of Atropatene and subsequent chaos didn't happen, it's likely that they would've escalated and forced the issue (maybe even forcing a trial of sorts since I remember reading that priests carried out judicial stuff during the Sassanian era? I'm not sure on this one though) and/or pressured Shapur and his VerkÄna region eventually. For better or for worse, that didn't end up happening.
Instead, perhaps at Narsus' advice (if he's there, that is, which is likely?), Shapur entrusts Arslan into the care and protection of SÄm, a fellow marzbÄn (capable fighter as well as political shield against... you'll see), for fear of the Temple just taking its changes at Shapur being absent from the capital for battle and snatching Arslan up.
Things were going okay-ish... until the disastrous battle and the subsequent siege.
As y'all know from canon, the Lusitanians promised to free the enslaved if they opened the city gates for them, leading to riots, Garshasp kills some of them and SÄm tries to intervene in canon. But because Arslan would've been under SÄm's protection... could he have been present at the scene also?
In any case though, SÄm (as per novel canon) and Arslan (is Narsus with them? somebody help me) go to petition the Queen Tahamenay to free the enslaved to prevent. Y'know. The worst-case scenario.
Tahamenay refuses, reprimands SÄm for encouraging a youth's naivete, and then decides to hand Arslan over to the Temple for good measure. Washing her hands of a problematic entity + hoping the Temple will âhandleâ him and use him to quell the riots maybe (the Temple could've been badgering the royal family w spiels of âthe boy will be good for controlling the masses, promise!â even before the siege bc they wanted the royal family's backing to get control over Arslan) + and gaining favor from the priestly class for the future, so all in all feels like a solid decision, at least in her head.
Arslan is yoinked and held under house arrest with the Temple trying and failing to use him for propaganda (oops! it just made it worse) when the city is breached and sacked, and the rest is history as you all know what Arslan did after the Lusitanians got into the city.
All of this to provide a sense of unease and foreboding for the time leading up to the canon era chaos, like building up the tension for something we all know is inevitably coming! Like I said, I wanted to showcase Ecbatana for all its splendor and âprosperityâ being a place so steeped in hurt and horror and oppression that its societal foundations and pillars are rotting, cracking, the same âcultural foundationsâ that the elite choose to preserve at all costs that's giving this city the feeling of imminent implosion! It's about to collapse under the weight of its own cruelty! Just like how the kiddie trio's solutions didn't feel sustainable there was no way this status quo was ever going to be sustainable. The blood has saturated to its maximum capacity. The rubber band is at its maximum stretch and tension. All it has left for it is to snap.
kicking my feet and twirling my hair cos i love bloodshed. it IS always complicated to come up with a reason for your character to not just get murdered while they're still at low power(idk perhaps the temple could also fear retribution if they attack the doctor healing all the slaves from the slaves? even if they kill them at it leaves them without labor and it could turn a minor problem into a much bigger one). of course it's only a prelude for when the tension snaps and there actually is a revolt!
Progress on this WIP! (Drew for five hours instead of writing, and spent the rest of the day before that sat in a weird anxious queasy episode because of a nightmare, oof) I'll hopefully do proper rendering and try my hand at blending the characters into the background! We shall see!
I'm not terribly happy with how Elam looks but ehhhhhhh I'm tired, it'll be fine đ Saman also looks kinda jank, and Arslan's fur hat was supposed to have a tail as some hats of this type from Central Asia are supposed to, but the tail I drew looked so stupendously horrid that I chopped it off. No tail for your hat, boy.
