You’ve mentioned that characters faking disabilities can feed into the ableist misconception that disabled people are likely to just be faking for benefits. Is it less ableist if an abled character impersonates a specific other character who happens to have a disability? The example I’m … read more »
People create monsters that reflect the fears of their society, including fears about disability. Because of this, ableism has been incorporated into our depictions of monsters. In some cases, disability is used to make monsters seem dangerous, unsettling, or unpredictable. Other times, it’s used to … read more »
The monster villain of my story uses music to hypnotize and kill victims. My protagonist is deaf and loves music, but he’s immune to the hypnotic tune because he can’t hear it. How do I depict this respectfully? – Anon Read more »
Hi! This is a question for Fay, hope that’s alright. I have a protagonist that loses an arm named Soup, and they happen to be the main focus out of their group. I have done some research, and I have come across a slight problem. … read more »
I have a character who recently got blinded and now has to deal with what that means. How can I show him struggling and adapting to his new life without caricaturing or stereotyping the experiences of blind people and blindness in general? In addition, my … read more »
Fay, I’ve read your article on addressing ableism in sanity systems, and I’ve been wondering how to write about horrible things that do cause radical alterations in people. I come from the land of the SCP Foundation Wiki and they have anomalies that hijack and … read more »
On the last podcast, Fay brought up the problematic trope of the killing of disabled people, especially if they’re disabled during the story. This made me think. If you’re writing historical or historically inspired fiction where this is something that did happen ([Malcolm provided several … read more »
I am developing a character for a Curse of Strahd campaign that is a wheelchair user (for context, I’m an able-bodied person), and I’m worried about accidentally falling into ableist tropes. My character is a lawful evil necromancer working on kind of a Victor Frankenstein … read more »
I had a question about the Magical Cure trope. My main character (14yo girl) lost her left arm about six months before the novel begins. Then, at summer camp, she’s chosen to participate in a secret magical contest between the fairy courts. She makes a … read more »
A few weeks ago, I discussed some helpful tips on successfully portraying an autistic character. In that article, I mentioned characters like Sheldon Cooper, who aren’t stated to be autistic but who are coded as such. Since there were some comments about this, in this … read more »
