Hello!
I'm writing a character with partial paralysis in one leg, from the knee to the foot, which makes it difficult to walk sometimes.
However, my character is a teenage boy and I'm writing him to be snarky and jokey, and I was wondering what jokes (if any) would be appropriate for him to make?
For example, I was thinking about writing jabs with scenarios like how he dislikes using his cane as it makes him feel old, how he uses his leg to get out of things he doesn't want to do (like chores) and calling friends ableist as a joke if they don't listen to him.
I obviously know to stay away from 'I hate my disability i would be better off without it' stuff but is generally considered alright to write him saying possibly slightly insensitive jokes about a disability?
Also, if this entire question is really tone-deaf I'm very sorry, I have a non-physical condition which I poke fun at similarly all the time but I know physical disabilities are different.
Thank you for your time! I really love the work the mods here do :)
you're probably going to have mixed reactions to it. In my view, it's completely fine if done right. I have a very similar disability to your character (also problems with one leg; I very visibly limp but rarely use a cane these days), and from my experience of having been a teenage boy and being around other teenage boys, you'd be hard-pressed to not have "potentially not very woke disability jokes" happen.
If he's comfortable joking about himself, his friends will probably join in on it. The key is for it to be all in good fun, more "teenage boy banter" and less "2009 anti-bullying campaign short film footage". No slurs for one thing, especially if it's set in the current day. Even the "ethical use of slurs in writing" aside, it just feels outdated. No currently-teenaged boy knows what "g*mp" even means nowadays.
If you want to match the tone, the second example would probably be less "calling friends ableist as a joke if they don't listen to him" and more "SMH bro is bullying the disabled 🥀💔" (Lol).
For examples of disability jokes for that demographic: anything about "having to be nerfed", making up reasons for using the cane (bonus points if genuinely nonsensical, "due to the evil and intimidating wizard" type thing), pretending to be deeply offended whenever someone around him complains about a minor injury (alternatively: immediately bragging about how tough he must be then), "yooo check out my disability privilege" any time he gets to skip a queue/gets offered a seat/etc. If he has chronic pain related to the paralysis (extremely common) you can also always go the "I can't believe y'all are letting me suffer like this, real friends would've at LEAST performed a field amputation" route.
I'll also mention that "(primarily abled) friend group who makes disability jokes" does not necessarily need to mean "friend group that's ableist". If they're close, then making a jab at his leg could just be the natural reaction to him making a jab at someone else's hairline.
If in a teenaged group of boys one of their disabilities is off-limits for jokes, they're probably not as close of a friend group lmao. That doesn't necessarily have to mean "literally anything goes", there can still be boundaries and other unspoken "hey man let's not do that".
Just don't make it "oops all disability!" either. It'll get very stale and gimmicky fast if he were to just be "the disabled one". This is my main problem with most of the disabled jokester characters; it gets boring pretty much immediately, or, in the very common worst-case scenarios: isn't even funny in the first place. Which is sadly unforgivable for a snarky character.
As I said, different people will have different reactions to it. Some will think it's ableist, others (like me) will see their own experience represented in a realistic way. When in doubt it's always good to have a sensitivity reader, especially one that knows what it's like to be disabled in your teens.
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