#characters with disability

[elaine19day]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56532880 Here's a short and sweet tianshan fic I wrote for @rainy19days birthday, based on her idea :) I hope you enjoy reading it~

"I'm He Tian, by the way." No reaction. "And you are…?" "Not interested." "Ouch." He Tian's eyes are beaming. He hasn't had this much fun in weeks. Leaning forward again, he lowers his voice. "You're hurting my feelings, little redhead." The guy doesn't lift his gaze when replying. "See if I care."

[badassbutterfly1987]

So a week back I saw a post criticizing the trend of vampires getting blood from blood banks instead of directly from people because the trend suggested it was the morally superior option when really it just took from blood donations that people depended on. Therefore the morally right (instead of just appearing morally right) option would be to take blood from volunteers.

Then a couple days ago I saw a post rebuking that post's idea, stating vampires need blood to live and will die without it, therefore they also need to use a blood bank to avoid killing people, and that need to use blood banks could make vampirism a metaphor for disability. I will admit I skimmed the post because of the flawed premise but that's the gist of it.

Aside from the latter feeling like a bad faith reading of the former, it didn't sit right for me for reasons I needed to sort through first. Also not going to reblog the post because a) it would mean crawling through tumblr to find it again and b) I don't want to be that "interesting interpretation but..." reblogger.

General thoughts about a disability metaphor:

vampires are generally written somewhere between soulless monsters that eat humans, people fighting against their darker murderous urges, and people with a maneagable (potentially harmful) condition

i don't think i need to explain why "the blood-sucking parasites are disabled people" idea can carry all sorts of unfortunate implications

there is an interesting reading here where vampires are just chill people with a medical condition. the inherent danger of vampires makes it an awkward metaphor for the same reason as x-men mutants being metaphors for racism or queerness are.

[tarnishedtexas]