Disabled Wizards: A Fandom Challenge
So I just finished Games Wizards Play last night. There are very minor spoilers for GWP later in the post; not enough that I want to put this under a cut, but if you’re in total avoidance mode feel free to come back and read this later.
I have really mixed feelings about GWP right now. Because Diane Duane, bless her, is really great at representation in our modern culture. Along side her heroes in wizardry - which include Kit, a Hispanic boy - walk humans, non-humans, and aliens alike. And the humans form this great network of minor and background characters from races and cultures found all over Earth, and GWP introduced to us some interactions with openly LGBTQA wizards. Most importantly, in my view, we see those diverse characters *interacting* with the main characters, and the embarrassment of foot-in-mouth moments from the characters interactions are something I see as an essential modeling experience for readers. That is, it’s something that helps readers learn, in a very non-threatening way, that these characters from marginalized groups are still human and deserve basic respect and to be listened to.
And, you know, it just feels like the one group that doesn’t get that is disabled people.
(Okay, YES, we do have Darryl for Autistic representation, but that is just one of the many ways you can be disabled, and additionally, I have not yet read the NME for A Wizard Alone, so while I could comment on how awful parts of that were in the original printed version, I don’t yet have an opinion on how well it was fixed. Additionally, Darryl wasn’t in GWP in any significant way.)
There was one paragraph in GWP that did give me some hope for this; the moment where Kit saw a wizard using a sign-language version of the Speech and basically went “Oh, of course there are deaf wizards.” I spent about the next 75 pages waiting for more - for Kit to have an opportunity to join the conversation with the Deaf wizard somehow, and for us as readers to be there too.
This didn’t happen.
So, I felt the rest of GWP was a bit hollow for me after that. Sure, we got our racial, cultural, and sexuality diversities; we got a continuing bevy of awesome women and girls; we got some really awesome discussions of teens struggling with their own nascent sexual lives as they relate to their culture and families and romantic relationships.
But it was like going out to a nice dinner with some friends - you get your drink, your appetizer, your main course - and then being too full for dessert at the end, and even though it looks fabulously delicious you’re never quite able to justify the $3.99 for the chocolate lava cake. After all, you’re already taking leftovers home, why do you need the cake? (I always need the cake.)
So, Cousins, like many things, this might be something that it’s up to fandom to fill the gaps.
I challenge you to write about disabled wizards. It can be 100 words, or 1,000 words or 10,000 words. It can be slice of life, slice of errantry, or character driven, or full of plot.
Write about wizards who need mobility aids like canes or wheelchairs, write about wizards who are blind or deaf or both. Write about wizards with prosthetics, with hearing aids, with service animals.
Write about wizards in chronic pain, or with chronic illnesses, who need to set alarms in their manual to take their goddamned meds, who can’t leave their beds some days. Wizards whose doctors don’t know what’s wrong with them, and tell them to lose weight, or that they’re making it up.
Write about wizards with mental illnesses. Write bipolar wizards who have to deal with errantry while manic or depressed, who in a mixed state can’t stop themselves from tweaking the Lone One’s nose while hoping it kills them. Write depressed wizards who keep having to be talked out of rescinding their wizardry, because they feel they’re not good enough for it.
Write about neurodivergent wizards. Write about the Autistic girl wizard who couldn’t fucking get diagnosed until her 20s, because ‘girls don’t get Autism’. Write about the ADHD wizard who hyperfocuses on their spell design in class, and can’t concentrate on their homework. Write me wizards with dyslexia or dyscalcula, who have to really work on words or numbers to understand them, even in the Speech.
Write disabled wizards who fight the Lone One in big climatic battles from their wheelchairs. Write disabled wizards who fight in smaller ways through activism or education, through fighting to get that ramp put into the local restaurant, to get the accommodations they need for college or work, the wizard waiting two year for their damned disability application to go through and needing it before they get evicted. Write a wizards who can’t work but feels guilty about needing foodstamps. Write about wizards using simple spells at home to be able to stand up to get to the high shelf, and not being able to do so in the grocery store.
Write wizards whose fight against the Lone One is a day-after-day fight for their own survival.
Write about the disability you know from experience or from research. Ask a disabled friend to beta read you on their disability. Research a new disability - and make sure to listen to those who have it, and the struggles they face.
Please. No matter how short.
tl;dr - Disability representation is important, and we need to make our own. Write Disabled Wizards. If you do, tag it on tumblr as ‘Disabled Wizards’! And don’t forget the ‘Not You DD’ Tag. Go well, Cousins, and please, write!
