*Slams hand on desk*
I solemnly swear to you that Maddy Stone (the protagonist in my upcoming book, The Rejects) is going to be the happiest cinnamon roll in the oven who begins the story proud of her disability and loving herself and ends the story proud of her disability and loving herself without any change in between.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Minnie and Juniper and all of my other disabled female characters with a passion. But both of them have very unique and deliberate character traits. Minnie is a woman who is proud of her disability but is often fiery, passionate, and...well...antagonistic towards people. Juniper’s a pure cinnamon roll with a fighting streak buried deep who became clinically depressed when she realized her disability is permanent and had to fight tooth and nail to convince herself that she was going to be all right.
I love both of these characters dearly but as much as I love them, I also want to write a girl with a disability who is a cinnamon roll and is happy and cheerful and optimistic and pacifistic and even though there are things that make her sad and scared, she refuses to be sad and scared for very long.
Give me this adorable ball of sunshine and rainbows who lives in a world where a chunk of people want her disability to disappear but she doesn’t care because she loves herself and her friends and wait a minute I don’t need you to give me this I can give it to myself and then I can give it to you.
