Okay so I think we really need to talk about CHARACTERS WITH DISABILITIES, because honestly it’s not spoken about enough and I am diddly darn fed the fuck up.
You hear all the time how people, especially people here on tumblr, want to see more characters with disabilities, whether they be emotional, mental, or physical. “Give us characters with problems!! Give us characters who aren’t perfect!!” This is complete and total bullshit for the majority of people who say these sort of things. People don’t want actually disabled characters, they want characters with disabilities they can handle.
People don’t want to work for interaction and threads, they want things to be easy peasy lemon squeezy, which means taking one look at characters who have emotional, physical, and/or mental disabilities and immediately turning the other way because, oh no, i’ll actually have to put effort and work into interacting with this character!!! wouldn’t want that, now would we? People don’t want characters who are realistically disabled, because that means instead of being catered to, they have to do the catering, and humans are lazy, simple as that. Why do work when I can just ignore a perfectly developed, good character simply because they’re disabled and interact with all of the hundreds of thousands of well adjusted, able bodied characters?
Tumblr is full of people who would rather ignore anything even remotely negative like emotional/physical/mental abuse/ailments/disabilities/abnormalities. It’s full of people who want to just stay in their perfect little bubbles full of perfect little characters, instead of put actual effort into trying to understand and interact with characters who suffer from things they can’t control. They would rather interact with characters who have conditions they can turn on and off, conditions that can be “””fixed””” with the help of friends, families, medication, etc.
Disabilities can’t just be fixed. If a character can’t walk, 9/10 times that’s just how it is, but that doesn’t suddenly mean your character can’t do things with them. If a character can’t be put in certain situations because it puts their health at risk, that doesn’t mean your character can’t do other things with them. Disabled characters are more than capable of doing things with those who aren’t disabled, whether their disability be physical or not. Just because a character can’t rough house, doesn’t make them a bad character. Just because a character has more limits due to health/mental restrictions, doesn’t make them a bad character. Just because a character doesn’t process things the same as others, doesn’t learn the same way, doesn’t understand, they are not a bad character.
You aren’t a bad person or writer if you choose to interact with/write characters who don’t suffer from disabilities. You aren’t a bad person if you personally have no experience in helping or dealing with someone who suffers from a physical, emotional, or mental disability. What makes you a bad person is when instead of giving a character a chance, instead of educating yourself, instead of putting actual effort into an interaction/thread, you choose to turn your nose up at disabled characters and act like they don’t exist because you don’t want to admit that not everyone’s life is perfect and wonderful and well adjusted.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO INTERACT WITH DISABLED CHARACTERS. DON’T BE AFRAID TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX WHEN IT COMES TO INTERACTIONS. DON’T BE AFRAID TO SPEAK WITH THE CHARACTER’S MUN TO TRY AND WORK SOMETHING OUT. DON’T BE AFRAID TO GOOGLE THINGS, TO ASK PEOPLE QUESTIONS, TO LEARN.
DISABLED CHARACTERS ARE JUST AS GOOD AS NON-DISABLED ONES.
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