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Chipped Up
Nov. 26th, 2010 09:41 amI've written plenty of characters with disabilities before. Grace Kriske in Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep was different. Grace was a challenge, and challenged what I had been doing with disabled characters up until this story.
I think anyone who has read my work or talked about writing with me knows that I have a keen interest in exploring stories with disabled characters, be these disabilities visible or invisible. I am disabled (blindness) and want to explore characters who are as well. I also wanted to get away from the trope I see in so much speculative fiction where the disabled character is an Object to be Cured! By! Science! (or Magic!), or else they play The Wise Magical Disabled Mentor ™ who was once whole and a hero in their own right, but now can no longer adventure/fight/fly/whatever. Though gruff on the outside, they have a golden heart within and will guide THE HERO on his journey. Until they get killed by THE VILLIAN (in order to show just how Villainous the Villain is).
I try to write stories where disable people are just people trying to get through their lives--heroically or otherwise. I write stories where their presence in the narrative is not driven by the other characters need to "fix" them. I try to write stories where that disability is simply part of who they are, as opposed to being the focus, the identifying mark of that character. I think it's important to write disabled characters as the people they are, to show them living and working with, through, and around their disability. To show the reader all the joy, pathos, and the full range of emotions that makes any character (disabled or not) human.
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I think anyone who has read my work or talked about writing with me knows that I have a keen interest in exploring stories with disabled characters, be these disabilities visible or invisible. I am disabled (blindness) and want to explore characters who are as well. I also wanted to get away from the trope I see in so much speculative fiction where the disabled character is an Object to be Cured! By! Science! (or Magic!), or else they play The Wise Magical Disabled Mentor ™ who was once whole and a hero in their own right, but now can no longer adventure/fight/fly/whatever. Though gruff on the outside, they have a golden heart within and will guide THE HERO on his journey. Until they get killed by THE VILLIAN (in order to show just how Villainous the Villain is).
I try to write stories where disable people are just people trying to get through their lives--heroically or otherwise. I write stories where their presence in the narrative is not driven by the other characters need to "fix" them. I try to write stories where that disability is simply part of who they are, as opposed to being the focus, the identifying mark of that character. I think it's important to write disabled characters as the people they are, to show them living and working with, through, and around their disability. To show the reader all the joy, pathos, and the full range of emotions that makes any character (disabled or not) human.
( Cut For Possible Spoilers )
