Writing Disability with Cy Cyborg

New posts on the first monday of every month A guide to help creators, authors and artists create more empathetic and nuanced disabled characters.

[mediaeval-muse]

Y'all wanna see some medieval mobility aides in manuscripts?

Medieval mobility aids

There are clues in the margins of medieval manuscripts to suggest that disabled people in the past made long pilgrimages, and were helped on

[saszor]

"Tutorial" on how to "draw" a blind OC.

My kofi

Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general. Links below so that you can research and do a nuance. Ones that were directly mentioned are bolded.

Writing a blind character 101 What to avoid etc Video on types of white canes Video on types of cane tips Some more explanation on white canes + tips + other stuff Guide animals Video on working with a guide dog ↑ if you're doing a non-dog non-horse animal please still perceive those two links. A guide animal is not a GPS that tells you "left" or "right" (in fact, you're the one telling it which direction you want to go). So before giving them something weird check if it actually makes sense. You can make a fantasy animal that still makes sense I promise 🦮👍 But why are Magical White Eyes a problem Same as above Going blind from an accident Video on conformers World's most basic "what do you call someone with albinism" The blindfold thing. No people don't wear these. This mostly stupid trope of covering a blind character's eyes because lord forbid someone sees a disabled body part This just stupid trope of giving a blind character some bs superpower to "see" The echolocation thing that every other blind oc does for some reason Just give them a cane good lord if you want a character that can see perfectly then maybe don't make them blind Bonus: if your character has a bunch of scars or whatever else then congrats! You made a character with a facial difference. Which is also something you should research.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi, I'm writing in a fantasy with a side character who is an amputee(left leg,) she's a street kid and the main narrator is a young woman who hasn't really seen met an amputee before(she grew up isolated) but I'm not sure what to call the part where the leg got cut off, I saw a video awhile ago that I can't remember about someone saying they either prefer calling it a "nub" or "stump" but I'm not sure which one(if either) and I really don't want to write an offensive term. Any suggestions? part of the plot is that the narrator starts to take care of the kid and her brother in the only way the narrator knows, which is to make them stuff: clothes, blankets, a socket sock from silk and super soft yarn (I think that's the name of it)

Hello, you can find the answer for questions like this in our pinned post's navigation section. I really recommend looking through the posts linked because they're there to answer these types of common questions and it's much faster than sending a new ask.

Post by @cripplecharacters

💬 3  🔁 64  ❤️ 491 · FAQ and Guidelines · [Large text: FAQ and Guidelines] Hi! We are CrippleCharacters, a blog dedicated to helping people

[writing-disability-with-cy]

If you’re still looking for an answer either is fine. I use “stumps” for my own legs personally but both are fine.

I have noticed that amputees with smaller amputations (fingers/partial hand/toes/partial foot) and people who were born without the limb tend to lean more towards nub, while those with larger amputations (like below/above knee or below/above elbow) tend to use stump but I couldn’t tell you why. That’s not a rule or anything concrete, just a pattern I’ve noticed within the community.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

So I've been watching my partner play through the Yakuza: Like a Dragon series, and the two main games in that series have some of the worst disability rep I've seen in a LONG time, but it's so bad that it loops back around to being absolutely hilarious to anyone who knows anything at all about disability and wheelchair use specifically. I AM disappointed that I only learned about these games after I wrote about some of the tropes they used though, because my god, they are literally textbook examples 😂

Disclaimer, this post is mostly a joke, I know Yakuza is not exactly the most serious game out there but it was so bad on this front that it got more than a few laughs out of me and I wanted to jokingly rant about it. This is not a serious post. I'm also not saying the games are bad, in fact I have enjoyed the sillyness and campyness, just the way they handle disability, specifically isn't good.

(Heavy Spoilers for both Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth ahead)

So Masato Arakawa being the classic disabled villain who hates his disability, and having the whole miracle cure thing are both pretty obvious examples of bad disabled rep. Though half a point for not making his hatred of his disability his whole motivation at least lol. It's just a roadblock, which is still bad but not as bad I guess.

However you can not tell me Masato, the son of a Yakuza boss living in a fancy and obviously expensive apartment, the man obsessed with his appearance and specifically, the appearance of wealth and power, to the point he injected himself with dangerous experimental drugs to get away from what he saw as "weakness," couldn't get anything better than a squeaky hospital chair for the 20+ years he was using one?? There are times and places for a character to use a wheelchair like that, like if he were newly disabled or poor (though I'm not even sure that would apply here since japan does have a system to help disabled folks access mobility aids, though I don't know what it covers nor what disabilities qualify), but a rich man who's been in a wheelchair since he was 2, obsessed with appearances, in wealthy family that care dearly for him (even if the feeling is not mutual) is not one of those times. Even if he himself was so ashamed of his disability that he never looked into other options, I can't imagine Masumi Arakawa, the man who's whole thing was family and wanting to look out for his family and especially his son, wouldn't have gotten him something, literally anything, better? The squeaking in particular honestly killed me, this is a game, they had to add that in intentionally, and I'm just so confused why they went through all the added work to do that?? 😂 I made a post ages ago explaining how mobility aids in character design can tell you a lot about the character they belong to, in the same way their clothing and accessories can, and Masato's wheelchair basically undermines everything his character is about, and not in a good, thematic way like I think they were going for. A man in his circumstances in a wheelchair like that tells me his already-confirmed wealthy family doesn't care about him enough to even get him a device that meets his needs, that he's fallen on hard times, or that he doesn't really care much about the appearance of wealth, all of which is objectively untrue lol.

Infinite wealth though is where it starts getting into the so bad it's funny territory. Eiji is revealed to be faking needing a wheelchair, obviously the "untrustworthy fake" trope is bad, but everything about this reveal is so funny in clearly unintended ways.

Eiji says that he had to drug himself in order to paralyse himself, otherwise Ichiban would have seen through the ruse and I'm going to be honest, I don't think that was necessary. Ichi is the least sceptical man on the planet. If they'd said that about Kiriyu, I'd buy it, but Ichiban? his best friends in this game were a woman who drugged him, stole his documents and left him naked on the beach, and the literal second person he met upon entering the USA, who attempted to mug him at gun point. This scene also features a rival yakuza boss who was actively hunting him and the aforementioned mugger to try and kill them both. I really, really don't think he would have suspected Eiji if he didn't load himself up with lidocane. speaking of which...

Mentioning Lidocane by name as the drug he used to paralyse his lower body as part of the trick was... a choice. Lidocane can paralyse small areas, but enough to make his entire lower body paralysed would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and he would need to be paying that regularly. It also just doesn't work that way lol. it makes small areas it's applied to numb, but not truely paralysed. To cover his whole lower body he would need A LOT. Injecting it is a bit more effective if you get a major nerve but is insanely dangerous and would, ironically, probably make him actually paralysed from overuse, or kill him. Either way that's some dedication.

Also NONE OF THAT WAS NECESSARY BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE IN A WHEELCHAIR IS PARALYSED. Ambulatory wheelchair users exist and, once again, I can't see Ichiban being the kind of person to not believe Eiji if he said something to the effect of "I have a muscle weakness, so I use a wheelchair most of the time because it's safer". And if you're thinking "yeah but they were trying to mimic Masato's disability to get Ichiban to lower his guard, that's why he pretended to be paralysed!" then I'd like to point out that Masato wasn't paralysed either! They never specify what he had directly, but they describe the drug he took to cure it as a performance enhancer that boosted his muscle strength enough to let him be able to walk, and he became disabled by being left out in the cold as a baby, which implies it's probably the result of nerve damage or, more likely, a muscle weakness, not a spinal injury. So if that's right, this way would have been easier, safer and MORE likely to work on Ichi!

Also why did the fake wheelchair user have a better wheelchair user than Masato? Eiji's wheelchair was worth at least a few thousand dollars. Once again, that is some dedication 😂

ALSO ALSO he must be ripped with how easily he got that manual wheelchair over the sand in the early game lol.

[nonexistentnull]

i really wish people could make characters with scars and just be normal about it. scars are just a feature, like brown hair or freckles, all it means is that you got an injury in the past. Scars are not gross or ugly or tragic or intimidating or scary or gorey or body horror, they are just a normal trait that a lot of people have. 

if i’m allowed to be picky, i also wish people could be more thoughtful/realistic when deciding on scars. like do some research and think ‘how did this injury happen’. if someone got attacked by wolves, how does that give them a straight cut scar across their face? 

and where are the other effects of these injuries? nerve damage, contractures, amputations, brain damage, PTSD, chronic pain, speech issues, sun sensitivity, blindness, etc? and please do research on these too, its good, its not that difficult.

i want to see characters have scars, and still be able to be normal, and cute/pretty/beautiful/sexy, and loved, and happy. this includes people with extensive burn scars, with skin grafts, with tons of reconstructive surgeries, who are missing eyes or noses or ears or limbs. this includes people with keloid scars, who don’t look normal, who have “gross” symptoms from their injuries. this includes people who have scars from elective or cosmetic surgeries, and surgeries that were botched. this includes people who have scars from self harm or suicide attempts. 

   please give more characters scars, and be normal about it. i am (politely) begging you. 

(sorry if this comes off as aggressive/accusatory, i struggle with tone)

[writing-disability-with-cy]

So I’ve realised I might need to take a hiatus from my “writing disability” stuff in the new year. I’ve got one more post that’s almost finished I’d like to get out before Christmas but if it does get done it probably won’t be on schedule 😅.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble writing the posts for the last 6 months and trying to push through it just resulting in stuff that’s too messy and contradictory to be helpful to anyone lol. I think I know why it’s happening and I’m looking into it, but it’s not something I want to talk about online until I know for sure. It’s nothing bad mind you, it’s just making it a bit harder than usual to focus lol.

I’ll still probably do the less formal posts in the meantimes though so this account will still be active!

[writing-disability-with-cy]

One of the things I love seeing in visual media is when disabled characters are just casually included the background. I love seeing that we just exist in these worlds, and our existence isn’t this super-special rare thing, especially if it’s in addition to there being a disabled main/named character like in Luca.

But if this is something you’re going to do, please be aware the environment will change a little bit as a result. If you’re putting a wheelchair user in as a background character, show that there’s at least one wheelchair accessible route to the location and not every access point has stairs. If you’ve got a blind character show there being braille on the signs (most do irl, at least where I live). If you’ve got elderly folks (because they’re often depicted as disabled too) or people who visibly struggle to walk or need support to do so like canes or crutches, give them a place to sit.

The world isn’t always accessible, true, and many of us have to learn to get by without proper accessibility but a) not every disabled person can do that, eg many powerchair users can’t get up stairs at all, and b) the intention behind these background characters is often to show a more diverse world, but it feels very cheap when it’s clear you didn’t think about how we even got there.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

The Sad Disabled Person: Disability Tropes

[ID: A thumbnail with a screenshot of lieutenant dan from the movie Forrest Gump, a man with white skin, short black hair and stitches on his eyebrow, looking sadly at the viewer while sitting in a hospital bed. Over half the image is a blue background with the words "Disability Tropes, The Sad Disabled Person" written over the top. /End ID]

CW: This post is going to discuss some heavy topics, including ableism, mental health struggles, suicide and eugenics.

It surprised me that when I went back through my backlog of disability writing advice, I hadn't actually talked about "The Sad Disabled Person" trope yet, especially considering how often I reference it in my other trope discussions. You may have heard it go by another name, "The bitter disabled person," "The depressed disabled person", "Disability is the end" or how I've referred to it in other posts, "Woe is me", but they all refer to more-or-less the same thing: a trope where a disabled character is sad or upset about their disability. In less extreme examples of the trope, it might stop at just them being sad, but more often than not, in this trope, their disability directly leads to depression and severe mental health struggles. In stories that are aiming for a more uplifting or positive tone, the sad disabled person trope is the setup to the "inspiring turn-around" where the character "overcomes" their disability and the mental health issues it may have caused, or it's the set-up to the miracle cure trope, where the character's disability is cured but not before showing us just how miserable their life is with their disability to justify the cure and the means they used to get it. In other, darker or more tear-jerker-style examples, the character (as well as those around them) believe that their disability means the end of their goals, what they want out of life, and any chance at success or happiness, and they don't really get better. For some characters who fall into this version of the trope, death is preferable to their current situation, and they'll make sure the audience knows that.

It's a very common trope that connects into almost every other disability trope out there, and to be honest, I'm kind of glad I haven't spoken about it yet, because my thoughts on it have changed quite a bit since starting this blog. I think for the sake of honesty, it would be best to disclose that I really don't like this trope and would be happy to go the rest of my life without seeing it, at least in it's current form. Despite that though, I think there's a lot of nuance to it that also gets overlooked, and the way I've seen some other people in disability writing advice spaces online talk about why it should be avoided ignores a lot of people's very real lived experiences, which can be just as harmful as the trope itself. So I want to talk about it. Personally, I do think it should still be avoided for the most part, but I also want to talk about why some people in the disabled community don't agree, and when it's actually necessary to include it in your work.

So let's start by looking at the contributing factors that make a lot of people dislike this trope:

Ties to real-life stereotypes that can and do cause very real harm

Misunderstanding of (or lack of research into) the negative aspects of the disabled experience by authors and creators

Oversimplification and generalisation

Sheer, overwhelming overuse

The Stereotypes tied to it

The Sad disabled person trope stems from a stereotype about disabled people that we are always sad and miserable, which in turn, comes from the stereotype that disability takes away your ability to do… really anything. When I worked on a disability awareness program, you would be shocked at the number of people who genuinely thought that when we were done with our talks, we just went home and sat in the dark all day and were cared for by our parents (we were all adults) or nursing staff. the amount of people who thought that hiring us was just an act of charity that "gave us something to do," that were shocked that we, the disabled employees, ran the program, that we drove ourselves, that this was a job that paid us, that we had hobbies, friends, spouses, kids, family, pets, responsibilities or any semblance of a normal life was pretty jarring, even as someone who'd been disabled for their whole life and has heard a lot of ableism in my time. The bar for disabled people is so low, and when you think a group of people's lives are that bland and empty, especially when you contrast it to the "normal person's" life many disabled people would have "lost", you can easily see where the "sad disabled person" stereotype (and the trope) comes from. While public understanding is improving, there are still a lot of people who believe these things. Probably more than you would think. Most visibly disabled people have at least one story of a random stranger coming up to them and saying they'd rather kill themselves than live with our disabilities, because all they've ever heard about disability is how bad it is and how we can't do anything anymore. The first time someone said that to me was when I was 4 years old; I was playing with a friend I'd made at day-care, and when we asked his mother if he could come over to my house on the weekend, instead of answering us, his mum just told me how sad I must be and how she'd rather kill herself than have to live like me.

Now, imagine for a moment that someone who believes these stereotypes and holds that opinion, suddenly becomes disabled, because disability can and does effect everyone eventually. You can see how, on an individual level, that stereotype can very quickly become harmful. It almost self-perpetuates itself in a way. mental health issues are normal when you're learning to deal with a new disability, but if everything you know about this new disability is from this stereotype that is so negative and you think you have nothing to look forward to anymore, it will get dangerous, very quick. At best, it slows the mental side of the healing process down because you have to unlearn so much, and at worst, well not everyone can unlearn it. Not everyone gets the chance.

But stereotypes like these can do serious harm on a systemic level too, because they can lead the general public, as well as people in positions of power, to believe disabled people inherently have a poor quality of life. This outlook can, in turn, make it's way into laws and policies that effect our real lives for the worst. I've heard a decent amount of non-disabled people argue against systems like Australia's NDIS, a program that is supposed to improve the quality of life for disabled people, by saying that no matter what the government does to help us, disability always causes suffering and we will always be miserable because of that, so why even bother? This is an ignorant comment, of course, but if enough people believe it and that impacts how they vote, it can have a very real impact on our lives, it can stop the problems with these kinds of systems from being fixed, or it can stop new systems like this from being created elsewhere. In more extreme cases, it can even impact how we live and die. Eugenics ideologies often use the perceived "inherent lower quality of life" of disabled people to justify eradicating us. They say, instead of helping disabled people who are struggling, it would be more merciful to kill us and end our suffering. The Nazi's used this tactic to get the more "empathetic" parts of the population comfortable with their death camps, by using them on disabled people first and telling the public it was an act of mercy to kill us. There was more to it, of course, but playing into this very stereotype was one of many ways they justified their actions.

The "sad disabled person" trope is, admittedly, a very small drop in the bucket of reasons why people continue to believe these kinds of stereotypes, but it does play into and help spread and perpetuate them none-the-less. So, given the impact they can have on disabled people both past and present, it's pretty clear to see why people have some pretty strong feelings about the trope and the stereotypes tied to it based on this factor alone. But as I said earlier, this isn't the only reason.

Generalisation, Oversimplification and Misunderstandings of the actual negative parts of being disabled

Ok, but Cy, you even said it yourself before, mental health issues are normal and expected for a lot of disabled people, especially when they're new to it. Lots of disabled people struggle with their mental health because of their disabilities! Pretending that life with a disability is all sunshine and rainbows can be just as harmful! So why is depicting those struggles and the negative stuff a bad thing now?

You're right, all of that is true. My post about the "perfect prosthetic" in particular really drove home how harmful it can be when you ignore the negative impacts of a disability in your work. But depicting the negatives that come with being disabled isn't the issue. I'm going to combine points 2 and 3 in this section I think, because they're kind of connected, but the way I see it, there's a few overarching issues with how this trope specifically depicts the negative parts of being disabled.

The way a lot of non-disabled people write this sadness is in a kind of… flat, generalised way that kind of misunderstands where that sadness comes from. A character is sad because they're in a wheelchair, because being in a wheelchair is always sad. They can't do anything because they're in a wheelchair, because people in wheelchairs can't do anything. But in reality, the reason behind that sadness is very rarely just because they're in a wheelchair.

Maybe it's because people started treating them differently. They can't go out partying with their friends anymore, because the club isn't accessible to them. They can't get a job, not because they're not capable, but because no one will give them a chance and hire them (yes that is illegal, just like it's illegal for buildings to not be accessible, but it still happens anyway). Because they can't get a job, depending on where they live, they might not be able to afford to get the medical care they need, or the mobility aids that will allow them to do more things. There is always more to it, and you'll notice, the more you dig, the more the actual issues tend to be connected to external factors, at least in part. Being in a wheelchair wouldn't be a problem for this character if the people around them didn't treat them differently, that's not their or their wheelchair's fault. It wouldn't be a problem if businesses actually followed the law and made their buildings accessible like they're supposed to, and hired disabled people who were ready, willing and capable to work like they're supposed to. It wouldn't be a problem if they could get the medical care and mobility aids they need, but they can't because of the aforementioned difficulty finding work. These are examples of societal barriers, and for a lot of people, they are some of the worst parts of being disabled, because they don't need to be that way. They could be changed and fixed if people would just listen.

This is also where the "lack of research" part comes in too. Quite often, I've noticed that when people write about disabilities they don't have, they don't always do the necessary research into what supports actually exist. A really common example is driving. I made a disability 101 post about it a few months ago, because so many people just assume it's something physically disabled people can't do at all, and don't even bother to double check that assumption. But in reality, there are a lot of modifications that can be made to a car, truck, motorbike or even other less common vehicles like planes, that allows people with all kinds of physical disabilities to drive (or fly) them. But if you don't know that, and don't think to look it up, you would probably write that your wheelchair using character is sad because they can't drive themselves around and this has contributed to isolation a feeling of loosing their independence. But that's based on misinformation and misunderstandings.

It doesn't just happen with driving. Some other examples I've seen include people not knowing about academic accommodations in university, and writing that an autistic character couldn't go to study because of it. Not knowing that people with spinal injuries can swim or do various other sports, so making plot points around the character having to give up on the sport they love. Not knowing that outside of the US, mobility aids are often subsidised or paid in full by government services, and using the device's cost to explain why a character who lives in one of these countries can't get the mobility aid that would best suit them.

Of course, there are exceptions to all of these things, because disability isn't a monolith. Some physical disabilities can't be accommodated with vehicle modifications, you can't modify a car to be safe for someone with no eyes for example. An autistic person might still struggle in academia even with accommodations because of things that can't really be accounted for, or maybe their university just has really bad disability services (which is unfortunately common). The person with a spinal injury might have found a way to do the sport, but the adapted version's just not the same, or there might be some factor that makes it more complicated for them. Lots of people fall through the cracks in government support systems, and just because it's something that some people can technically get on these programs, doesn't always mean you'll get approved for it. The thing is though, if that's the reason, you need to acknowledge that, and not just shrug and say "they can't do [x] because they're disabled". As we talked about, it usually goes deeper than that.

But it's not always societal issues. Sometimes, a character just needs time. Time to heal, time to learn how to adjust, time to recover, and grief is part of that.

A really good example of what I mean can be seen in The Legend of Korra, specifically in the final episode of season 3. Korra is injured badly and temporarily paralysed in her legs during the final fight. She uses a wheelchair while she heals and does not handle this well because her whole identity is tied up in her physical and bending abilities. That is realistic. But her lack of ability to continue her job as the avatar here is attributed to be because of her wheelchair. The president of Republic City even says, "Who will protect the world while the Avatar is in a wheelchair?" But we've seen that, in this world, a wheelchair would not necessarily be a barrier for someone like Korra protecting people. We know this because of Tio, a non-bending wheelchair user from the previous series that fought in the siege on The Day of Black Sun and then proceeded to join Team Avatar in late season 3. He was an admittedly minor character, but he shows that, using this story's own pre-established world, a wheelchair on it's own wouldn't have been a barrier. especially not when it's given to the world's most powerful bender who can bend the terrain around herself and fly (or I suppose, shoot herself into the air). But no one acknowledges any of that, and just blames the fact she has to sit down for a bit.

Does this mean I think Korra should have been out there immediately fighting again? Hell no, she needed to rest and heal. She was hurt, and grieving but that's what stopped her from going out, her still-healing injuries and grief. Not the fact she needed a wheelchair. I don't expect Korra to have been in the headspace to actually acknowledge that, but someone else could have. Her friends that we see she was writing to, her family, Katara (honestly, if anyone should have brought it up, it would have made the most sense for it to be her). Hell, even Zaheer could have said something if she'd stayed in the wheelchair a little bit longer.

Of course, despite all of this, sometimes the disability itself is the source of the sadness and difficulty. I'm an amputee, and part of that is phantom pain. While not every amputee or person with a limb difference experiences phantom pain, for those of us that do, it sucks. There's no if, ands or buts about it. It just sucks. My back is messed up as a side effect of using two prosthetic legs long-term. Again, not everyone who uses prosthetic legs will experience this, maybe that can even be entirely prevented in the future, but it was the best option that was available at the time and the damage is done, no accommodation can change the fact it hurts now. I have a heat pack in the microwave for that as I write this to help, and my loved ones being more patient and understanding can help to not make things worse, but the pain will still be there. I'm also chronically ill and that's probably the most difficult of my disabilities to deal with. I was never really sad about not having legs, the other social stuff I've already mentioned that come with it, yes, but not the fact I'm missing my legs. But I have been depressed due to my chronic illness directly before. It stops me from going out, not because people are terrible (though that has become a slightly bigger factor post-COVID lockdowns) but because I simply don't have the energy to. I've cried about being sick all the time, because being sick makes you feel terrible just on its own, even without social factors like a lack of accommodation, but that does make it worse. It won't make me feel any less sick, but it would be easier if people were more understanding about the fact I can't control all this, it would make going out way easier if everyone still masked and cared about keeping their community safe, if people in positions of power like doctors and government actually believed me when I said I need help. I bring all this up, because yes, sometimes, the disability itself is the cause of sadness, and that's valid, but as an author or writer you can't stop at the surface level stuff. The disability itself is rarely the only contributing factor, but it is where most non-disabled people stop when writing about us, and that's where it becomes an issue.

Overuse of the trope

The final point, and to me and many others it's the biggest part of why this trope is so disliked.

Sometimes, the problem is not that it's unrealistic or a misrepresentation to show all the negative parts of being disabled, and for a character to really struggle with it. Some people will see the societal barriers I mentioned before, and always blame themselves and their disability for them. For some people, the worst parts of their disability are just the inherent negatives that come with it. Some people's disabilities really do make it hard or impossible to do things they love and limits their lives. There will be exceptions to every single thing I've talked about here, and sometimes a disability does make people miserable. that sucks, but it's a lot of people's reality and ignoring that and pretending those people don't exist just hurts everyone in the long run. Sometimes, the use of the sad disabled person trope is realistic and we NEED to acknowledge that.

BUT

For a long, long time, this was the only way disability was depicted in media. it's not the only experience of disability though, and it took a long time for any other experiences of disability to get the spotlight.

A lot of the time, the sheer overuse of the trope is a problem in and of itself. Once again, when a decent chunk of the population already believes you're entire community's quality of life is terrible, and the majority of the media out there about people like you reinforces this idea, it will cause a problem, no matter how well or respectfully any one individual story handles it.

Personally, even though I've come to accept there are times when a story needs to have it's disabled character be sad about their disability, like for example, when they first become disabled, I still try to avoid anything I know that uses this trope too much, because I just don't like it, for all the reasons I've already discussed. However, the biggest reason why I don't like it, is because it's absolutely everywhere. Even when I go out of my way to avoid it, I can't. It shows up constantly in books, in games, it shows up in TV and anime, in comics, movies. Even when it's not a big focus of the story, it's everywhere and I can't seem to get a break from it. And this is things being better. It used to be so much worse when I was a kid!

My dad's favourite movie when I was a kid was Forest Gump. He still quotes it all the time, he has several Forest Gump-themed shirts, including a few that are just printed lines from the movie. When he went to the US he made a point to go to the bubba-gump shrimp company and try as many of the dishes mentioned in the movie as he could (that's also where his favourite shirt came from). And I could never bring myself to tell him that I HATE that movie with a burning passion. I hate it, I hate it so much, and specifically, I hate Lieutenant Dan. But, as an adult, I can recognise that it's not entirely Dan's fault. I don't think Lieutenant Dan is written especially poorly from a disability perspective. He's cliche and is a pretty perfect example of the Sad Disabled Person trope, yes, but it's not an unrealistic depiction, especially for the time period the film was set in.

The problem was not that it wasn't realistic for someone in his position though. The problem was he was one of so many people like me in media saying a life like mine wasn't worth living. He wasn't the only one, or even the worst example of it by far, he comes around in the end after all and the whole point of his arc is to drive home that his life is, in fact, still worth living and things do get better, but it still wormed it's way into younger me's head. It was while watching Forest Gump, specifically the scene where Dan first becomes disabled and says he wished Forrest had left him to die.

"There must be something wrong with me if I don't feel that way too."

"There must be something wrong with me for not hating my life."

This would have been when I was about 10, and again, it was not this movie's fault alone. Everywhere I looked, I saw only depictions of people with disabilities saying how much they hated themselves and specifically, the part of themselves that made them like me. Pair that with the adults around me saying things like my friend's mother had said, other kids telling me they felt bad for me and all these other little things. I just… didn't get it. this wasn't some defiant way to show I had unshakable confidence or any inspiring BS, I just didn't feel the same way, I didn't hate myself, I didn't hate my disability and I genuinely didn't understand why I should. So, that must have meant I was missing something that everyone else could see. That must have meant I was broken.

I never once thought my disability was what made me broken, but my inability to understand the constant negativity directed at it did. I look back on that feeling as an adult and am so angry that anyone, let alone a child, was made to feel broken for just being happy. Not even happy, just content. For there to have been so much content with this trope out there that a 10-year-old felt broken for not agreeing… says a lot.

Sometimes, it's not that it's unrealistic or a misunderstanding of the disabled experience or anything like that, it's just overused. When it's done poorly, that makes it worse, for sure, but sometimes, it really is just that it's everywhere, and some of us disabled people would really just like to see something, really anything else.

So, should you use this trope or avoid it?

As I mentioned earlier, I am exceptionally biased here. I could very happily go the rest of my life without seeing this trope… or at least the most common version of it that pins all of the blame for the character's sadness and difficulty on their disability alone without acknowledging external factors, or the versions where it's focused solely on the valid grief of newly disabled people. And that's not because it's not realistic, there's just a lot of it and I've got my own issues surrounding it, so do a lot of disabled people.

So, whether you should use it will come down to the story you're telling. If a character becomes disabled in your story, there probably should be grief shown and it shouldn't be glossed over. I've seen that grief stage get skipped with amputee characters in particular, and it always ends up doing more harm than good because it ends up contributing to other tropes like "The Perfect prosthetic". So if you're going to include a character's disabling event, you need to actually follow through with it, but don't let that be all they are either. Also, keep the points we've already discussed in mind. Do your research, make sure your reasons don't just boil down to disabled = sad, and keep the real-world stereotypes in mind.

At the end of the day though, this is still an overused trope that, even when handled well, is absolutely everywhere so if it's not absolutely necessary like the situation above, I'd personally recommend against it. One of the easiest ways to do that without falling into other equally questionable tropes, and the way I'd like to see more of in general for a variety of reasons, is by having characters who are already disabled when your story starts. There are some cases where an already disabled character will still have moments of sadness, true, but it's much easier to avoid this trope in more natural ways this way.

I would also like to specifically take a moment to ask creators to stop making disabled characters sad about "what they lost" when they were born with or acquired their disability so early in life they have no memories of life without it. You have to remember this is their normal, they didn't "loose" anything, and in my experience, both as someone who falls into this category and someone who's worked with and is friends with others who are too, we typically only start getting sad about it when other people's expectations are put on us, or we're excluded and mistreated. We don't really have the same grief period others have, there's nothing to get used to that we weren't doing from the start (excluding degenerative conditions I suppose, but they're not the ones I tend to see in media). That's not to say it never happens, but it's pretty rare compared to how often I see it in media, and again, usually heavily influenced by external factors like societal barriers.

So that's my thoughts on the "Sad disabled person" trope, at least right now. As I mentioned, my thoughts on this trope have changed a lot, even since starting to talk about disability in media, and they very well might change again in the future.

Despite my (current) feelings on the topic, it is more complicated than the internet likes to acknowledge - which is true for most things - and I really wanted to try and give this trope the nuance it deserves despite my bias. I don't know if I did a good job with that, but I can at least recognise this trope has it's place and (when it's handled with enough care) can be representative of real disabled people's experiences. Pretending those people don't exist when we talk about it doesn't help anyone. But on the flip side, the hate towards this trope isn't unwarranted either, though it is possibly a bit misdirected a lot of the time. It's often built on genuinely harmful stereotypes, uninformed beliefs and misconceptions, and it's sheer overuse makes it exceptionally hard to avoid. So if this is something you're planning to include, do so with caution and be mindful. At the very least, you should hire a sensitivity reader or consultant if you can, even if you are disabled yourself, because it is a complicated topic. I'd also recommend finding other articles on this trope by other disabled people from both points of view. I recommend that for anything I write about, I do not and can never represent the entire disabled community on any topic, but especially not on a topic like this, and there's good points to consider on both sides of the argument that you should be aware of, no matter what you decide to do.

[tawked-deactivated20260714]

So I'm reading a conversation between a couple other "disabled representation in media" people, and

OK, I don't think showing disabled people being gross is bad representation. I don't think it's going to make people think we're automatically gross. I do think a lot of bad portrayals present that as an assumption, but it's something that can be deconstructed.

Bodies are kinda gross, but sometimes disabilites prevent you from dealing with said gross things without accommodation. That's not the disabled person's fault, but the fault of a systemic lack of accommodation that most people aren't even aware of, thus they choose instead to blame the disabled person. Confronting that means acknowledging that something gross is going on and encouraging people to see the ways it could be resolved, ie. more accessible public bathrooms or whatever.

You know, if all the mobility impaired clients at a residential service are gettin stinky, maybe it's time to investigate whether they are actually able to use the bathrooms, whether there's handrails, chairs under showers, non-slip mats, and whether they've been trained in how to transition in and out of the bathroom. Grossness is a consequence of environmental more-so than personal factors. Every autistic bloke I know who's had bad teeth and halitosis just needed a different method of maintaining their oral hygiene, for instance.

I used to have a client with an intellectual disability who, every time she had her period, would peel her pad off in the bathroom and try to hand it to me. Kinda confronting the first time it happened! That's just how disability can be sometimes though man, sometimes disabled people are going to do "gross" things, but it's best to just empathize and understand what is actually happening.

In this case, she had been taught to always show carers whenever she's bleeding and that bleeding = "you're hurt." She'd never had her period explained to her, because she was fresh outta SPED and from a conservative family. So, over a couple months ('cause it had to be happening for the lessons to actually click), we learned about the difference between "bleeding because you're hurt" and "bleeding because your body is cleaning itself," so as to actually address the panic and distress she was going through every month.

This is actually a pretty normal experience to have when you work with girls and young women with intellectual disabilities. I mean seriously, every year I was working, I'd have at least one client who'd need a couple lessons on what their body's doing, so it could become normal and so we could move on to learning necessary hygiene practices, ie. how to clean up the area and apply another pad.

I do think that there's a wider conversation to have about overcoming the societal perception that something like a period or an erection or whatever is "gross." However, within the context of just dealing with the here and now, accepting that this is a real thing that does happen in these environments seems better than insisting a movie or TV show including moments like this is going to make us look gross and therefore normalize people hating us.

Rather, it seems like it'll just lead to more education and public understanding that grossness is not the default of disability, but that often it is an indicator that something we can fix is going on.

I do think drawing an intellectually disabled bloke with really exaggerated features and like stinky flies buzzing around his head is a different thing though. Like, not much of educational value can be extracted from obvious ableist caricatures.

[emotionalsupportgoblin420]

If I see one more misrepresentation of colorblindness in media I am going to crash out. So many times I will be watching a cartoon of some kind and it will be revealed that a character is colorblind but instead of it being an accurate representation it's always the usual "Oh they see the world in black and white" bullshit. Stop! Stop doing that! Educate yourself on the different kinds of colorblindness!!! The most recent example of this is Abaddon from Haunted Hotel. He is revealed to be colorblind when he says "Now you will face the bitter grit of the GRAY chips!" Note he said GRAY. So he sees the world in black and white. This would mean he has Achromatopsia. It is one of the rarest forms of colorblindness. But there's a problem. Achromatopsia comes with Photophobia which is a sensitivity to light. Abaddon does not display this symptom making it impossible for him to have Achromatopsia and yet the world is black and white to him making it obvious the creator has no idea what colorblindness actually looks like. This is so frustrating to me. Let me educate the masses on what colorblindness ACTUALLY looks like.

As you can see there are 3 main kinds of colorblindness. Deuteranomly, Protanopia, and Tritanopia. I will also talk about Achromatopsia but let's start with the big three.

Deuteranomly: This colorblindness is mostly caused by a genetic mutation that affects the green cone cells in the retina making is hard for a person to distinguish between red and green colors. This means the person mainly sees yellows and blues.

Protanopia: This colorblindness is similar to deuteranomly in that it is a genetic mutation that affects the red cone cells in the retina making the person inable to detect red. But they can still see green though not as vibrantly.

Tritanopia: This colorblindness is rare but still more common than Achromatopsia. Tritanopia affects the ability to perceive blue and green colors. This colorblindness, like the others, is caused by a genetic mutation that affects the blue-sensitive cones in the retina.

Achromatopsia: This is among the rarest forms of colorblindness and causes a person to see the world in only black and white. Achromatopsia is an inherited disorder caused by problems with the cone cells in the retina. But unlike the other colorblindness conditions I listed before, Achromatopsia has a couple other symptoms. Photophobia: Extreme sensitivity to bright light and glare, Nystagmus: Involuntary, back-and-forth eye movements, and Central blind spot (scotoma): A small blind spot in the center of the visual field.

This is the bare minimum of information on these conditions and I do believe there are more forms of colorblindness. I am not an expert. I'm just someone with a Google account. Please, please, PLEASE do your own research when creating an oc with some form of disability and take constructive criticism to make your oc more accurate to the disability you're representing.

[cripplecharacters]

Image description:

Infographic titled "What is colorblindness?". It features four versions of the same photo of M&Ms, labeled "normal vision", "deuteranomaly", "protanopia", and "tritanopia" respectively.

The remaining images showcase the same differences between the aforementioned types of colorblindness using different images.

[the-shark-well]

"this character is such good disabled rep. I completely forget they're disabled sometimes/their disability never gets in the way of the plot/barely gets brought up" is not a good thing btw and I'd like non-disabled people to stop acting like the standard for good disabled rep should be "written in a way where I don't have to think about their disability" rather than, I dunno, having a disabled character have importance in the narrative while just so happening to be disabled and face unique challenges because of it. or something.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

Let me tell you my story: Disability Tropes

ID: A thumbnail showing Neve from Dragon Age: The Veilguard from the shoulders up. Neve has brown skin, brown eyes and long, strait black hair. The image fades to a purple background and white text reads "Disability Tropes: Let me tell you my story" /End ID

In a lot of stories that feature a disabled character, especially a visibly disabled one, if they don't acquire their disability throughout the course of the story itself, there will inevitably be some kind of reveal about how they got it. Sometimes it will be a simple "I was born with it" like with Toph in Avatar the Last Airbender and other times it will get an entire, dedicated flashback episode or more, like Ed (and Al) in Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood.

In a lot of cases, authors and creators treat the story of how a character became disabled as some inevitable story beat that has to happen at some point. Disabled characters are rarely allowed to just be, they always have to explain why they look the way they do and how it happened.

James Cameron's Avatar is a pretty good example of this, in my opinion. Jake Sully is a wheelchair user due to a spinal injury, and we're told in the literal first line of narration that he was injured during military service. It's brief, but the fact that it's the literal opening line, before we know anything about him, his name or even the fact he's in a wheelchair yet, makes it a stand-out example to me of it feeling like an expected, inevitable thing. We have a disabled character, we have to explain how that happened, let's just get it over with. Other stories leave it until later on, and in a lot of these cases, it's almost always treated like a big emotional reveal. Fizzeroli from Helluva Boss, Zuko from Avatar the last Airbender, Rivet from Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Ed and Al from Full metal alchemist (both the manga and the Brotherhood anime) all have these big emotional reveals relating to their disabilities and disabling events. While I think it's handled decently in all these examples, you can see just how common it is.

It's also often used as a marker to show just how close the disabled character is to someone else. Neve from Dragon Age The Veilguard is a stand-out example of this, and the inspiration for this post even existing. She is a sarcastic, closed-off person at the start of the game, and she won't tell you how she became an amputee until your approval rating with her is high enough. For Neve, it's quite literally used as a marker by the game to signify your friendship with her is good, and when you do get it, it feels... very forced, at least to me. It feels like, "Congratulations, you're now friends with the disabled person, so they must tell you how it happened, because that's just what's expected. Obviously, there is no better way to show how close you are to disabled people than telling you about their history with their disability."

I love Veilguard, and I do think Neve's disability was, overall, handled fine (not perfectly, but better than most games at least) but her cutscene where she tells you how she lost her leg really stood out to me, specifically because I didn't get it during my first playthrough. And honestly, I preferred it that way. It was so nice to have a disabled character who's disability wasn't just brushed off like it is for so many amputees, it mattered, it was acknowledged in-game both directly and subtly, but she still didn't feel the need to explain how it happened or why she has it. She was allowed to just be disabled without having to explain herself, something that is pretty rare in media.

When you're visibly disabled, you're expected to explain how "it" happened all the time, often to complete strangers; which is part of why I find it so weird when it's used as a way to show trust and vulnerability in media. When I am with other disabled people or even my friends who were already knowledgeable about disability before we met, it rarely comes up. I've known some of my disabled friends for 10-15 years, and to this day, I don't know how a lot of them became disabled. I never felt the need to ask. It didn't matter. Their disabilities themselves did, but how they got them? 90% of the time, not really. When I first played through The Veilguard, My character's relationship with Neve felt pretty reminiscent of those relationships with my real-life disabled friends in that regard. It was so nice to see a disabled character in media who was allowed that same chance to just be, that same chance I got with my friends. But in reality, it wasn't that. The fact I didn't know what happened was just a sign she just didn't trust my character. It was the sadness that came after learning she does tell you about it that made me realise how common this trope is, and how much I just desperately wanted a disabled character who just is disabled. Where it's not connected to some tragic backstory (or a tragic event in the story itself), or even brought up. They're just allowed to exist as they are without explanation.

So, if you're writing a disabled character, ask yourself: Does the audience really need to know how your character became disabled? Why does it matter to the audience? What does it add?

However, if your answer is no, they don't need to know, this doesn't mean that you as the author or creator shouldn't know how it happened. How a character acquired their disability can impact things further down the line that might effect your story, even if you don't spell it out. An amputee who lost their arm in a fire will have a very different experience to someone who elected to get their arm amputated to stop the spread of an infection. Their stumps will look different, they may need different features on their prosthetic, the burn survivor will take longer to heal initially, may have to be more cautious about taking care of their skin even when it's healed and may experience more intense phantom pain, while the infection survivor may have a smoother initial recovery but run into more problems and complications down the line like chronic but mild re-occurring infections from the irritation of the prosthetic on skin. If a character's disabling event was traumatic, it may influence their behaviour throughout the story in subtle ways that might not need to be spelled out, but can still influence the situations the character finds themselves in.

However, sometimes, the answer will genuinely be yes, it is important for the audience to know how it happened. Full Metal Alchemist is a good example of this. Ed lost his arm and leg because he tried to break the most important law of alchemy, equivalent exchange, when he tried to resurrect his mother. But a human soul isn't as easily valued and replaced as the components of the body, which resulted in the exchange being unbalanced and more needing to be taken. First it tried to take Al's, body but Ed saved him by sacrificing his arm and leg to at least keep his soul there. This law of equivalent exchange and the value of the soul vs the body is a core theme of the story. Showing the horrific way that attempt goes wrong and the consequences for doing something like human resurrection is pretty important in setting up the stakes for the series' plot, as well as it's moral message. It doesn't always need to be for some big, important reason like in FMA, but it is a good example of what I mean.

If you are going to bring up how your character became disabled, here are some things to consider:

Timing

A lot of the time in media, creators and authors will hold off on telling us how a character became disabled and often make the actual reveal into this big emotional scene, but like I mentioned before, this is very, very far from how the real-life version of these kinds of conversations usually go. In my experience, it will be the first thing someone asks me. That's not an exaggeration, people will often ask me, "What happened?" "What's wrong with you?" "What happened to your legs?" before I even tell them my name, if I even get the chance to. I suppose you could make the argument James Cameron's Avatar was trying to make some kind of comment or commentary about that with Jake's opening narration about his spinal injury story, but even if that is the case, I think there's better ways that could have been handled.

Avatar aside, for some reason, non-disabled people think my disabling event is a great topic for casual small talk. I've been stopped on the street by passers-by, I've been asked in line at the grocery store while going through the checkouts or as something to fill the silence while I fill out forms, I've been asked on the bus and on the train by other passengers, including in the quiet carriages, I've been stopped and asked mid-workout at the gym, during job interviews as an ice-breaker (and yes, I'm aware that's illegal but it still happens very frequently), even once while I was crossing the street, by someone going in the opposite direction. They just yelled it out and expected me to yell back while navigating crowds in one of Sydney's busiest intersections. And I'm not alone in this, pretty much every visibly disabled person experiences this, or something similar.

Because of that, very few disabled people could keep it a secret to reveal, even if they wanted to, because if you refuse to answer these people, it makes an even bigger scene and most of us just want to get on with our day. For people like myself who initially didn't mind talking about "what happened," the sheer frequency at which I get asked this, before anything else, has made me hate being asked. I am used to it though. It annoys me, but I've found it's easier to just say "I got sick as a baby" and move on. I still don't mind talking about it on my own terms or to little kids, since they often don't know any better, but I despise being asked by adults who should know not to start a conversation with "hey total stranger, tell me about the potentially most traumatic thing that's happened to you as small-talk". Unfortunately, the reality is that very few people actually know that though. This is even worse for people who's disabling event is more traumatic and actually is a touchy subject for them because unfortunately, these kinds of people don't tend to accept "I don't want to talk about it" as an answer. So a lot of the folks I know who fall into this category also just get used to being asked and telling people the spark-notes version, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them. Eventually, a lot of us just become numb to it either way.

And I'll be honest, As much as this annoys me when it happens in real life, I'd love to see it reflected more in media with visibly disabled characters, because at least you can do something with the absurdity of it all, and it is a common part of the visibly disabled experience that's overlooked a lot. It also gives you a good excuse to bring it up, without the big, tragic backstory scene that can derail the pacing if you're not careful, and be used to tell us a bit about the character through how they react to it. Also, maybe if it shows up enough in popular media and is actually called out, people will stop doing it as often. That might be wishful thinking, but I can dream haha. Speaking from experience though, I recognise this can be a bit harder to pull-off than it sounds, because the whole point is that these conversations are weird, jarring and out-of-place. I'd love to see more people try it, but it can be hard to get it right depending on your story's pacing, so do so carefully. Something else to consider is that if you do use this approach, you don't actually have to tell us what happened to them. Some people I know, especially those who are more on the laid-back/jokey side, will just make stuff up to mess with people. This is something I've done with some of my webcomic protagonists, I never intend to tell the audience what happened to them, because the "how" isn't really relevant to their stories but I wanted to have some fun with people's nosiness.

The other way this usually tends to go in my experience is that it's eventually brought up extremely casually. Like I mentioned before, I have disabled friends I've known for years and I genuinely have no idea how they became disabled, and they also didn't know how I became disabled, because it just doesn't matter. There were some exceptions though. I knew some of their stories because they were public figures, and that's the first thing they always get asked about in interviews with non-disabled reporters when they're first getting their name out there. Outside of that, only a few of them very casually mentioned "after my accident" or "after I got sick" if it was tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, but it was very rare that the topic ever came up directly even if we were close. It wasn't because we didn't trust each other enough or didn't like each other, it's just that it didn't matter for most of us.

The difference between situations like what I was just describing, and, for example, the scene we got with Neve in Dragon Age, is that, it was pretty obvious that that scene was there to tell us what happened, even if Neve herself just mentioned it pretty randomly. In this case, it was less of how the characters were acting, and more how the whole thing was set up and framed. That whole scene's reason to exist was to tell us Neve's backstory. It happens during a conversation about coffee and insomnia, but it's pretty clear that's all filler. There's not really new information about her in that scene outside of her disabling event story, it doesn't tell us anything else we don't already know. A scene depicting a situation like what I'm describing though would have it be just part of another conversation that's equally as important to the plot or characters, or ideally even more so. If you want to bring it up casually, actually do it casually and don't make it the central focus of the scene. In Dragon Age The Veilguard's case, this could have happened during one of the group scenes where they're discussing how to move forward. As an example, maybe they needed to go to a new area in Minrathos for something, and Neve mentions that the group needs to be careful, a mage she was chasing ambushed her in that part of the city once, and she came away with "a new accessory", with another character agreeing and the group continuing the planning from there. I still would prefer it not be brought up at all mind you, but I feel like that would have been a better way to bring it up casually like they were clearly trying to do. and don't tie it to her approval of the player character either.

The reactions

Another thing to consider carefully is other characters' reactions to the disabled character talking about this. Real-life people tend to get weird whenever I tell them how I became disabled, and I suppose media mimics that pretty well, but it would be nice to see some more non-disabled characters react in ways that aren't either getting really uncomfortable, telling the person that they're an inspiration, or getting all sulky and sad about it. In real life, when I do bring the subject up to people, especially if I do it casually, you don't need to stop what we're talking about to "check if I'm ok" or comfort me or derail whatever we're talking about. If I bring it up casually, it's because I want you to treat it casually. If your character in your story is bringing it up casually, they will probably want the same, so don't make everyone else stop and go quiet in response. This goes the other way too, if the character does bring it up and is trying to be serious, make the other characters react accordingly, but I don't tend to see that as often. Of course, sometimes the point is that characters react poorly, but if that's the angle you're going for, actually point that out. Have your disabled character call it out as being kind of weird and uncomfortable, and don't just sweep it under the rug. Or have someone else point it out. I know I've said you don't need to spell it out for people all the time, but when you're going with a stereotype or playing into a trope, especially one like this that a lot of people don't understand as being a problem, it does need to be addressed.

Other character's reactions is an especially important thing to keep in mind for anyone writing for or creating video games, specifically where the player can choose how their character will react to a someone telling them this. A lot of the time, there are few to no good ways for a player to choose to respond to the disabled character's story when it is an option.

Conclusion

A lot of the time, real-life non-disabled people feel entitled to know what happened to us, and to some extent, I think this is why this trope is so common. I don't think this is intentional, or even a conscious thought on the behalf of people in real-life or creators, but many are so used to getting that explanation, that when it's not provided, it feels weird to them. As far as disability tropes go, "let me tell you my story" isn't the worst one out there, not by a long shot, nor am I saying you should never, ever use it. But it is a trope that I think flies under a lot of people's radar and I wanted to talk about it. Of course, do what works for your story and your characters, but I do encourage you to stop and consider how much it's really adding.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

So with NaNoWriMo getting (very rightfully) cancelled, I've decided to create my own writing challenge this year.

I'm giving myself from today, The 6th of October, until International Day of Disability, the 3rd of December, to write 50,000 words in Writing Disability articles.

I'll be using MyWriteClub to keep track of it and if I did my math right, that should come out to between 8 to 12 articles/posts, based on how many words I write per post. I don't know if I'll actually finish that many, but that's why it's a challenge lol.

I'll still be posting the articles here/on my website at the usual monthly pace, but I'll be posting everything to my Patreon as soon as it's finished on the $5 a month tier (I usually post my regular writing disability posts, art, comics and videos early there too) so hopefully I'll be posting a lot to Patreon over these next two months lol.

For the sake of transparency, I'm mainly doing this as a challenge because A) gameifying things bribes my brain into co-operating lol, and B) I'm expecting that next year is going to be a bit... stressful, so there's a good chance I won't have as much time to work on articles as I'd like. I really wanted to build up as much of a backlog here as possible so that if I'm right about that, I don't just vanish or there isn't a massive drop in quality or anything.

Also, there is a regular Writing Disability post going up later today I believe, that's not part of this challenge

[writing-disability-with-cy]

[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 "…and 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

Disability Through History by Jamie-Lee Dwyer

Stephen Farfler - Wikipedia

[writing-disability-with-cy]

It only took me like... 3 years? but I finally got around to watching Arcane. I'm only at episode 8 right now, but it made me realise a trope that I'd noticed, but never really put together that it was a trope before, and that's the "Run Forrest Run" sequence, where a disabled character disability starts having a reduced impact for one reason or another, or they at least think it does, and they just starts running, in most cases with little to no adjustment period.

Forrest Gump does it with, well, the OG "run Forrest run" sequence.

Arcane does it with Viktor

(Blue people) Avatar does it when Jake first uses his Avatar

Stretching the trope a bit to include flying characters, even How to Train Your Dragon does it with Toothless. As soon as he feels the prosthetic tail he gets this shocked expression and just takes off.

I don't really have anything specific to say about this trope tbh, I just noticed its existence and how often it shows up given how weirdly specific it is lol. In a lot of cases even the actual shots and editing are similar.

How realistic it is depends on the examples. Forrest Gump and How to Train Your Dragon aren't, but Arcane and Avatar... maybe? I know I definitely tried doing the whole "attempting to run" thing when I was a kid when I got the OK to use my prosthetics again after long periods off them, but that's less because "omg I'm finally free of the terrible wheelchair, I'm free to run and push my body" thing a lot of movies/TV are going for and more because I was a kid with undiagnosed ADHD and the energy of a caffeinated squirrel with no concept of "slow and steady".

It could be neat to see a reverse of the trope though maybe? Like a disabled character who resisted using a wheelchair for ages, then they finally try one and just take off because it did give them more freedom of movement than their other aids.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

[ID: An illustration of a red basketball wheelchair with a tall frame, low backrest and slanted wheels, sitting in front of an orange background. White text beside the chair reads: "Disability tropes: Sporting mobility aids as all-purpose ones"]

A visual trope I've noticed popping up more often as of late, is the tendency for artists and character designers to give their physically disabled characters mobility aids specifically made for sport as a daily-use aid. It seems to happen most often with leg amputees, being given running-blade prosthetics or wheelchair users being given basketball, rugby or tennis wheelchairs, but that could also just be because that's what I'm most knowledgeable about and so I just notice it more.

So what's the problem with that? Well, mobility aids designed for sport aren't like, say, running shoes where they're designed for one thing, but can be used for another. They are designed for one thing, and one thing only. trying to use them for literally anything else will... well it won't get you far.

Running Blades

Now look, I get why people want to draw these on their amputee and limb different characters, they look cool as hell AND they make you fast! I pestered my prosthetist for years to let me get a pair, admittedly, mostly because of the aesthetic so trust me, I get it.

But running blades are made to run, and only to run. Sometimes to jump, but mainly to run. You see, running blades look the way they do, because they aren't actually based off of human anatomy at all. The original running blade was inspired by the hind-legs of animals like cheetahs, dogs and other fast-moving land mammals. As the furries among us would already know, a lot of these animals have something called digitigrade legs, meaning they don't stand with their entire back foot on the ground. What we see as their paws is actually just the ends of their toes, and their ankle is held up off the ground. The reason so many animal species evolved with this trait is because it makes you really fast (among other things). The entire leg essentially works like a spring, giving the animal more force to push themselves forward, at the cost of the limb being a little less stable to stand on. that isn't an issue when you have another two legs out in front, but it's part of the reason why you don't see many bipedal creatures in nature with digitigrade legs.

Running blades took this general digitigrade leg layout and kind of simplified it, functionally making the athletes run on their toes. The blades are made out of very strong and very flexible carbon fibre sheets, and when the "toe" of the blade hits the ground, the force of the impact causes the whole blade to bend, then rebound, using the runner's own force and momentum to push them forward again. However, unlike most animals, humans don't have another set of legs out in front to keep us stable, so when the person with the blade prosthetic stops running, they either become very unstable or will fall over. This is because, in order to get that spring-like motion, these prosthetics can't have a heel and the way our body's weight is distributed means we kind of need that. Some leg amputees are able to walk a little bit in these running blades, but its not easy and is generally pretty uncomfortable to do, and for double leg amputees, it's exceptionally difficult.

There's also the fact that the running blades need a lot of force applied to them to actually work. A friend of mine brought her blade to an event we were both at, and you could not get the arch of the blade to bend with your arms. At all. One of the other guys at the event was a Paralympic powerlifter, and even he couldn't do it. even leaning on it with all our body weight wasn't enough to make it bend and push back. The only way to get it to bend was by landing on it while running at full speed - which is no small amount of force. Anything less and it won't budge, making these essentially very poorly balanced peg legs when used for anything other than running and jumping. This was actually the reason my prosthetist never signed off on me getting a pair of running legs, because I had an issue that made my stumps too sensitive to withstand the forces needed for them to work properly.

So unless your amputee character is going to be running everywhere at a full sprint, they don't need and probably won't benefit much from having blades in place of a regular prosthetic foot. However, if you want some extra speed for your amputee character, without the significant balance issues that come with a blade, hybrid feet do exist! These hybrids are made out of the same carbon fibre sheets as the big blades, but are shaped more like a regular leg and ankle, with an additional piece attached to the back to give you the stability of having a heel. These hybrid feet, often called active feet or high-mobility feet, take the best of both kinds of prosthetic, while also allowing their user to wear shoes, thanks to the rubber foot shell that goes over the top. They aren't as great for running as the big blades, but they're a lot better than most other prosthetic feet.

The one exception to all of this is if your amputee or limb different character isn't actually human. Quadrupedal mammals like dogs and cats who have their hind legs amputated often get something that looks like a running blade prosthetic as the shape mimics what they'd naturally have without the need for expensive (and completely impractical for animals) electronic parts. When it comes to furry and anthropomorphic animals, I personally make an exception here as well. Technically, the same rule should apply; they're bipedal, so they shouldn't be able to easily stand on a running blade and it wouldn't be practical. However, that rule should also apply to any furry with digitigrade legs, they should be equally unbalanced on their natural meat legs because that kind of bone structure isn't great for a bipedal creature, but it's just kind of an accepted thing to ignore that within the furry community, as long as you can make it look good. In this case, a running blade is the closest a digitigrade furry could probably come to a functional prosthetic without robotics, so I'm more inclined to let it go in that case.

Sports wheelchairs

The wheelchairs used in basketball, tennis and rugby are all different, but the features I see getting used in character designs are, for the most part, in all three, so for the sake of simplicity, going forward I'm going to refer to them all collectively as sports chairs. "Sports wheelchair" is an umbrella term that encompasses a lot more than just these three types, but I don't think I've seen anyone confuse a racing or golfing wheelchair for a general use wheelchair, so for this article, I'm mainly going to be using it to refer to those three. Likewise, going forward, I'm going to be calling normal, non-sports wheelchairs "day-chairs," which was a popular way of shortening "daily-use wheelchair" when I played wheelchair sports.

Just like the running prosthetic, sports wheelchairs are made to do one thing very well, and only that one thing, which is why people who play wheelchair sports of any kind need to have an entirely separate wheelchair to play in. The wheelchairs designed for Rugby and basketball are made to go on perfectly flat, perfectly smooth, indoor basketball courts. Likewise, tennis chairs are made to play on perfectly flat and smooth tennis courts. But it's pretty hard to find anything that smooth and flat outside of those specific spaces and these chairs don't handle any other type of environment well at all, even including the entrances and exists to the courts. These sports chairs are so bad at dealing with anything else, in fact, that people who play these sports will usually stay in their day-chairs, right up until they're on the court's sideline, then swap into the sports chair only when needed.

This is because the features that make these wheelchairs so good for their respective sports, tend to cause a lot of logistical problems anywhere else. For example, when most people think about sports wheelchairs, one of the first things that comes to mind is probably the big, tilted wheels. The wheels on all sports chairs are angled outwards, with the wheels closer at the top, and wider at the bottom - this is called wheel camber. A standard day-chair, though, usually has no, or very little camber - wheels that are not tilted outwards. Giving sports chairs camber has a lot of benefits, with the main one being added stability. When you're playing a game like wheelchair basketball or rugby, which are contact sports, you need to be able to take a hit without falling over, and a wider base of support helps with that a lot. The larger wheels on these chairs also tend to sit pretty far forward, which shifts the chair's centre of gravity, making it way easier to do precise, tight turns. However, this makes the chair much less stable, which the camber also helps with, which is one of the big reasons you see tilted wheels on tennis chairs too. Finally, you also need your hands and fingers on the wheels to move, but if someone crashes into you, having the wheels tilted this way keeps your hands out of the way of being crushed on impact...usually.

As you can see, this feature has a lot of advantages, but you'll notice that having the wheels tilted also makes the chair very wide. So wide that they don't actually fit most doors, except double doors. When I played basketball, to even get our sports wheelchairs inside the courts we practiced on, which only had standard, single doors for some reason, we had to sit in our day chairs and push the basketball chairs in front of us with the big wheels removed, or they wouldn't be able to fit inside. I'm sure you can see now why this makes these wheelchairs impractical for daily use. It's hard enough getting a normal day-chair through some building's doors, let alone through crowded or tight places like shops with narrow isles or down narrow footpaths. You will occasionally see a day-chair with a very minor tilt on their big wheels, but it's usually only done on very thin chairs with active or experienced users, and it's almost never more than a 2 - 5° tilt (whereas sports chairs can have as much as 15° to 20°, depending on the sport).

But tilted wheels aren't the only thing that makes them impractical for daily use. Another feature of these chairs is their anti-tip wheels; little wheels at the back that stop you from falling backwards out of your chair. A lot of day-chairs have anti-tips too, but the ones on day-chairs are usually positioned so that the wheelchair can still be tilted back enough to get up things like curbs and small steps and mildly rough terrain. However, remember how I said sports chairs have their big wheels moved further forward to help them turn easier? this will cause the chair to tip back way easier, and to account for that, the anti-tip wheels on sports chairs have to be basically touching the ground. If they weren't, every time you pushed forward, you would loose a bunch of your energy and momentum from tipping back slightly. You'd also probably damage the courts after a while too from forcibly slamming your front and anti-tip wheels into the ground repetitively. So they make the anti-tip wheels as close to the ground as practically possible to stop that, and also so you can lean as far back in the chair as you need, without having to worry about falling back but this means the chair is prone to getting stuck on everything and anything if the ground isn't perfectly flat and smooth. Even trying to take one of these chairs down a tiny curb-cut ramp is likely to result in your front wheels getting wedged on the road, while the anti-tips get stuck on the ramp with your big wheels (the ones you use to propel yourself forward) getting stuck in the air.

Finally, there's also the size. Even without tilted wheels, these chairs are often quite a decent bit larger than a day chair, mostly to protect their user. Most sports wheelchairs have a protective bar in front and around the sides of the chair, and the anti-tips add quite a bit of extra length to them in a lot of cases. The bar protects your feet in the event of a collision or fall, and makes the chairs more bottom-heavy to prevent them from tipping over whenever you make a sharp turn, and the anti-tip wheels need to extend a decent way out of the back of the chair or else they can't do their job. These things don't matter too much on the court, but once again, out in the real world, it makes a big difference.

There are a few other little differences too that can, in some cases, make them less practical. things like the fact breaks are never included on sports chairs (anymore) because they just weren't needed during the games and increased the risk of hand injuries - I lost a few thumbnails from snagging them on my day-chair's breaks when I was pushing fast. Sports chairs also can't fold down, as making them able to do so is a safety hazard since it weakens the frame of the chair. So that, combined with their larger shape means they can really only be transported by most people by putting them in the back trunk of the car, whereas even day-chairs that can't fold are designed to be able to be placed on a car seat, meaning they're easier to get in and out of a car when you don't have anyone to help you.

I speak about all of this from experience, by the way. As a teenager, my first wheelchair basketball coach intentionally didn't explain the above points to me when he lent me my first ever sports wheelchair. He knew the first thing I was going to do was try to take it to school, and he knew I wouldn't listen if he just told me not to try it, so it was just better to let me figure it out on my own. My old English classroom's door still has a big chunk of paint missing from where I tried to force this extra-wide sports chair through almost 10 years later, and I was late to every single class that day because the school's elevator had a small lip by the door I kept getting stuck on. Not to mention the several times I got stuck on the curb cut just trying to leave our local courts the day he gave it to me.

Sometimes kids just have to learn through trial and error, and I definitely tried, which is why it's so funny to me when I see wheelchair using characters in fiction either using just a straight-up sports wheelchair as a day-chair, or who's day-chair was designed by someone who very clearly just googled "cool/sporty/fast wheelchair" and slapped a bunch of features they saw onto a more standard wheelchair without understanding what those things actually do.

Conclusion

Honestly, as far as disability tropes go this one is mainly harmless. Personally, I find it more funny than annoying or harmful like most of the tropes I talk about, but it does come across to those of us who have used these mobility aids that you haven't really done much more than superficial research.

[writing-disability-with-cy]

Free Customisable (and Animateable) Wheelchair Model

This is the last of the free downloads I had planned for Disability pride month, and it's the one I'm most excited about!

This wheelchair model made for Blender is able to be customised to suit a wide variety of characters with different personalities, lifestyles, needs and disabilities. Everything from the overall shape to the colours and (in some cases) textures can be controlled via a customisation rig, with several parts that can be enabled or disabled entirely. The rig is also animateable (via a different set of controllers to prevent conflict).

You can get the model for free on my Ko-Fi store

or you can download it from my Google Drive.

This Download includes:

The original .Blend file to edit in Blender.

an .obj file of the default version of the wheelchair that can be imported into programs like Clip Studio Paint.

A texture file for the spoke cover + .clip/.psd templates for making your own custom cover (overwrite the original file and restart Blender to replace it on the model)

a HDRI texture for lighting (from Polyhaven)

A link to the user's manual (found here) for more detailed instructions on how to use the model.

I plan to update and continue adding more options to the model over time too, including things like higher/more supportive back rest options, different types of side guards/arm rests, handles and spokes, and power-assist modules. I'd also like to add the option for a foldable frame at some point, though that may take some time (or it might have to be a different model entirely, we'll see).

I've also included a bug report and feature request form here in the User Manual, so if there's anything you want to see or you find any problems, let me know!

More info below:

At first, I had just planned to update the original 5 wheelchair models but the problem with making active-style wheelchair models, is that in real life, these chairs are made to fit their users perfectly. As a result, It's basically impossible to create a pre-made one for artists to use as reference and have it actually fit their characters the way it should. So instead, I made a model with a Blender rig that can be adjusted to best suit your character. Just like the previous models I made, you can export the whole thing to an .obj to use it in Clip Studio Paint and other 2D art programs.

As well as the overall shape, the colours and materials can also be edited through the rig, so you don't need to know much about Blender's material editor to change things (in general, I've tried to make the rig as beginner-friendly as possible). The only exception to that is the texture on the Spoke Cover. You can change that the usual way via the material settings, or simply overwrite the texture file and restart Blender. There are also .clip and .psd templates included to show you how to make your own custom texture for it. Finally, There's also an option to swap out all the metal shaders for ones that resemble wood for a more fantasy vibe (though I want to continue to edit that so it will eventually look more like a fantasy wheelchair rather than just a pallet/texture swap)

[writing-disability-with-cy]

Tag from @fandomstuckportal

#i wonder how i can make this work with vrc avatars...

Right now, the rig depends on a few blender-specific features - mainly curves and hooks (for the frame so it can deform properly) and some specific types of drivers and constraints that, to my knowledge, can't be ported over to a game engines like what you'd need for a VR chat avatar. At least, as it.

That said, there are a few work-rounds I can think of:

The easiest way would be to get the chair to the shape you want with the rig, then export it as an .obj (there's some instructions about that for specific settings in the user's manual link) but you loose the animation rig and the materials that way. Technically, you can export an .mtl file with the .obj, but it doesn't export all the materials so it's not really that helpful in this case lol.

The second way is a bit more tedious but you'd have less lost info. Same as before, customise the chair how you'd like and once you're done, convert all the curves to meshes (Which is the frame, the little bit of padding under the footplate, the backbar and the anti-tips if you have those enabled) and then parent those to the master controller. After that, apply the shape keys, then all the modifiers (except the armature one) to the radial-style spoke if you're using them. there's two so make sure you do that on both sides. This will lock a lot of the customisation options but the animation controllers SHOULD still work, and you'll be able to keep the materials too (not sure if they'll look the same in-game though, since most of them are procedural). You might have to do a bit of clean-up on the meshes too, since a lot of them are pretty high-polly. It shouldn't be an issue, but the model just isn't really optimised for real-time stuff like games and VR chat yet, so if you've got a detailed avatar, it might cause some trouble.

I really want to optimise and make the model easier to port over to game engines and things like VR Chat in the future, but I really wanted to get this out by Disability Pride and I ran out of time, sorry!

If you do manage to get it working though or if you need help with some more specific troubleshooting, let me know!