#ableist tropes
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On the one hand yeah, Tim faking a temporary disability to get Vicki Vale off his back as she tries to prove he’s Red Robin is ethically dubious. But like... vision impairments are a disability, which means in continuities where the glasses don’t block out his excessive sensory input and he’s not claiming they’re a fashion statement, Superman is faking a disability every time he goes out as Clark Kent. So if we’re gonna be all “Tim wtf” we should also go “Clark wtf”.
On the much more interesting hand, asplenia is also a disability, which the writers canonically gave Tim. While he totally can be a vigilante with it, he needs to take more precautions than he would otherwise, and it wouldn’t be too hard to convince the general Gotham public that actually no, Tim Drake-Wayne being asplenic means he’s definitely not Red Robin, Vicki, what are you smoking, don’t you know how often the vigilantes get tossed in Gotham Harbor? Do you know what’s in that water?
Which means that now I want an AU in which instead of faking getting shot, Tim just has Wayne Enterprises launch an Asplenia Awareness campaign in conjunction with the Martha Wayne Foundation starting a program to get other asplenic Gothamites their antibiotics, throws a bunch of fundraisers for it, and stares Vicki Vale dead in the eyes while taking his new meds on camera.
#disability in media#ableist tropes#they already do a lot of shit like invasion of privacy and aggravated assault so like#the faking of a disability is messed up but it's not really any more messed up than anything else they're doing#Tim Drake#Red Robin#DC#Batfam#the writers did not explore the full potential of what that stabbing did to Tim#and my asthmatic ass is very disappointed in them#get out of our way we're disabling the text
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using "sanity" as a stat that lowers... great, so hopeful. what an accurate and not outdated concept.
oh look, now some of you are making higher aggression and scary monstrousness go hand-in-hand with lower sanity... "insanity 100%"... wow so suprised, truuuly an improvement from all those shitty "character go INSANE AND KILL BC INSANITY = VIOLENCE" you used to make all the goddamn time.
#sarcasm post#mlp infection au#mlp infected au#ableism#sanism#ableist tropes#losing “sanity” doesn't have to mean being an aggressive and/or scary monster#mlp#mlp fim#shout out to you all who DON'T lean into this bullshit for your au's#the “less sane = more violent and aggressive towards others” stereotype LITERALLY GETS MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE KILLED.#you CAN lash out during a breakdown#but portraying those of “lesser sanity” as agressive mindless monsterous creatures to be terrified of?#IMPLYING THOSE THINGS GO HAND-IN-HAND?#i'm sick of it!!!!!!#even if we're “going ins^ne” we're still human beings#and the mlp cast is just human beings shaped like animals
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Hi! You always talk a lot about DC’s Ableism with handling Babs, but I never understood why (other than getting her out of the wheelchair for the New 52). Is there maybe any threads/posts/articles you can link that break the ableism with Barbara’s character down even pre-2011? I would really love to understand the problem!
Are you asking why it is ableist? or why I talk about it? Or why DC chose to be ableist?
I'm going to try to be as informative as possible. There will be some italics, but i'm passionate (about the topic), not mad at you.
First just to recap what happens with Babs:
TKJ (the killing joke): Babs is shot and paralyzed to make male characters sad in TKJ.
Suicide Squad + Oracle: Year One: John Ostrander and Kim Yale make an effort to make Barbara's story focus on her, and on how she feels. This addresses how she feels being used as a tool and her recovery, and how she can't talk to her dad about it.
Much of New Earth (1986-2011): Babs acts as Oracle, an indefensible information broker of the superhero world, runs her own team, and is prominently physically disabled (a full-time wheelchair user). The writers sometimes flirt with magicuring her (removing her disability) but it never sticks. There is still ableist writing, there is no denying that. But she is a very important character
New 52: Barbara Gordon is 'magicured' - her disability is removed, and some of this involved retconning previous details (from her spine being severed completely and severely damaged, to something they could fix with a chip). Many disabled people talk about how damaging this is. I'm going to be pretty clear: from my perspective (as a disabled lesbian) changing babs from someone who has ha permanent disability to an able bodied person is similar to changing a gay character to a straight character. (link)
Sometime in Rebirth: DC starts trying to say ~uwu well she's still disabled, she just has an invisible disability, it's not ableist~. Two things must be acknowledged: Yes, invisible disabilities are still disabilities. this is not saying that they are not, my disability was invisible for a long time, and I sitll have some invisible disabilities. but also two: that does not make this writing not ableist, DC does not genuinely want to represent invisibly disabled people, they want to be perceived as not-ableist while being able to use Batgirl Babs in stories.
Ok so to answer the first possible answer of your question:
Why is it ableist?
Changing a character with a disability that is permanent to an able bodied person is ableist. Disabled people deserve to see themselves in stories too, and I'd argue abled people need to see disabled people in stories, because abled people need to understand that a disabled life is not worth than death (I have had people straight up tell me 'oh I'd never be able to do that (exist as a wheelchair user)' to my face. in public).
To answer another question that has been debated somewhat recently: why is it still ableist even when Babs is disabled, just not the way she initially was? I have lots of reblogged links on that:
Babs being invisibly disabled (instead of visibly disabled and a full-time wheelchair user) both erases her previous disability and erases other invisibly disabled characters (link)
The treatment of Babs, in her Rebirth era, is still ableist (link)
Babs, as written as part-time Batgirl part time Oracle, still is written without consideration of her disability (link)
abled people care more about the apperance of able-bodiedness than they do whether someone is disabled (+how that harms disabled people at the bottom w/ my own experiences) (link)
replacing one disability with another and hoping no one notices is still ableist (link)
So for the other option of your question:
why do I talk about it?
I talk about a lot of things in comics, and this is a very important one. Barbara Gordon as Oracle is important to me, because she is a character with an acquired disability (I also have an acquiered disability, not the same one). who still is active in what is important to her and says that her life is better now and that she can do more. That is so important for disabled people (and abled people too) to hear. That your life is not over when you have a disability.
Thirdly, why did DC do it?
Well, the sad answer is really... ableism. I'd argue that a disabled person having a better QOL as a disabled person than they did as an able bodied person, or being able to do more than they could when they were able bodied, is straight up threatening to abled people (link)
More people no doubt know the interior workings of DC at the time, but Didio is not shy about not liking legacy heroes and wanting everything to be back in 'the good old days'. getting rid of batgirls that came after Babs does that (and it gets rid of the uncomfortable fact that she is disabled).
I hope this answers your questions and provides you with reading, and if you have any more feel free to ask
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I want to cry why are abled fans so disgusting
OP blocked me the literal MOMENT I told them to stop being ableist
Likes are good, but reblogs are better.
#actually mentally ill#tw ableism#ableist stereotypes#sicut screams#ableist tropes#cult of the lamb#cotl#update: the gaslight gang has arrived
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“Fuck you” and “go to hell” are both boring. Tired. Unoriginal.
Now, “I hope your favorite character has a disability that is incredibly important to how they navigate their world, their life and their story, and then their disability is immediately is reversed at the end of the story”? It’s terrifying. It’s possible. It happened to me.
#this post is about hunter the owl house but it can also be about whoever you want it to be#disability representation#disabled representation#media#tropes#disabled characters#ableist tropes#ableist nonsense#azure does a thing
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Ok, I'm in the last chunk of Valdemar, the third in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy, and a companion quite literally just went "We want and need our Chosen to be healthy, in mind, heart, and body," and y'all...not only does this ping my ableism bell, but it also seems to be rewriting Valdemaran history a little bit???
Like, let's be absolutely real here. On the page, heralds in other Valdemar books have experienced depression (Vanyel), PTSD (literally most of them, but Vanyel, Thalia, and probably Mags), hypervigilance (Vanyel again), anger management challenges (Tylendel), anxiety (Lan), and a host of varying physical disabilities (Jadus, Thalia, Amily, Pol, and the heralds whose name I forget who ends up severely burned in the Arrows of the Queen trilogy). I haven't always liked how the physical injuries and disabilities are handled, but they've always been present and they've never actually disqualified anyone from being a Herald, even if Amily had to be partly cured before being chosen and Jadus retired after losing his leg.
This new statement about how companions prefer explicitly abled heralds feels like a really icky attempt to rewrite history, and this book has handled disability in general really poorly, even for a Vakdemar novel. And no, this book doesn't even get the excuse of "it's a survival situation" because they've been in Haven for ten years, they're fine. They aren't actively traveling, they've succeeded in building a sustainable and defensible keep, everything else is details and time.
This whole passage is really problematic in the context of the Valdemar universe:
So there are a couple of key issues. First, we really, REALLY need to address why casual sanist language is not ok. The companion isn't talking about quirky behaviors or idiosyncrasies when they say "madness," and we shouldn't be quick to elide what I am choosing to interpret as clinical madness (mad studies scholars, help me out here, I know definitions can be slippery, but I don't have a good one for fantasy contexts) with personality quirks--which is what Restil is doing here. Be CLEAR about your term use and watch where you're using sanist language and maybe stop.
Second, I really dislike the whole idea that madness can spread. Yes, I know, companions are magical and have a weird hive mind thing happening, but I dislike the perpetuation of the myth that madness is contagious or that associating with mad people can make you mad out of nowhere. That's a deeply harmful, isolating idea that is kind of antithetical to heralds as I understood them in other books--particularly Vanyel's trilogy. Community strengthens and supports, it does not ostracize and isolate. This was actually WILD to hear in a heraldic context in a Valdemar novel, because I think every other Herald would rightfully lose their absolute shit over this. Whatever happened to "there will never be another Tylendel?"
Third, the swimmer and drowning man analogy is bad here, for the same reasons that perpetuating the idea that you can "catch" madness is bad. We do not leave people to drown, and the analogy oversimplifies the ever-loving hell out of mental health crises and what can be done to support the person in crisis. We do not just leave them to drown, and again, the Heraldic Circle literally would never.
Fourth...that last sentence is just straight ableist. It is very much expecting what Rosemarie Garland-Thompson defined as a normate: a 20-something cishet white man who is athletic. Literally the normate is so narrow and focused as to barely exist in the real world, and it completely negates the value of anyone who doesn't fit that mold. It's also contradictory to the "we take the weird ones" ethos the companion expressed earlier, so the writing itself is wishy washy on the whole thing.
I am just...floored and kind of disgusted by the blatant rewrite of what companions look for in their chosen here, and I cannot square it with other Valdemar books that handled this better (although not perfectly). Like, as someone who lost communities to chronic illness, I'm very much soured on companions after this book. I will take Yfandes or Kalira or Rolan over any companion in this book, and I'm pretty sure the circle in earlier books wouldn't have stood for this.
#mercedes lackey#valdemar#heralds of valdemar#the founding of valdemar trilogy#ableism in media#ableism#ableist tropes#ableist nonsense#ableist bullshit#fuck ableism#heralds#herald mages#companions#adult fantasy#adult fiction#books and reading#books & libraries#books and novels#books
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People acting like I can't tell the difference between villains or other antagonists being assholes and the author herself being a bigot are so annoying.
Yes, asshole, there IS a difference between characters being antagonists and the author being a bigot!
Guess what! The author is being a bigot! Which is why I'm criticizing the bigotry!
You do not get to pretend that every instance of bigotry in media is nothing more than a storytelling device as though the people writing the story are incapable of being bigoted.
If a writer uses the trope of "scary" disabled people who can't feel pain to show that they're unstoppable in combat, and that means it's not only fine, but encouraged and supposed to be funny when horrible levels of violence are enacted against them, guess what???
That's not the villains being evil. That's the author being ableist.
Martha Wells chose to make those two nameless characters not able to feel pain to make them seem like scary and unstoppable murder machines. Martha Wells chose to treat them as non-human objects that are "less sentient than hauler bots" and said they "weren't people even before the first time they were killed". Martha Wells decided these literal slaves who were brainwashed and sent on a suicide mission don't deserve any consideration at all, not even anyone /trying/ to help them.
Do not give me any fucking bullshit about how this is totally the most in character and logical reaction for all the characters to have. It's literally not. Murderbot cares about humans even when it puts it in danger. It is not fucking impossible or even improbable that it would be fucking horrified for these people and want to help them. Murderbot's an asshole but it literally makes more fucking sense for it to feel bad for these people than it does for it to just not consider them people.
Martha Wells chose to use an ableist trope and then chose to make everyone /including the good guys/ treat these human beings as disposable the exact same way the villains did. Martha Wells chose to not even dignify these characters with names except Hostile One and Hostile Two. The same designation given to the giant, people eating space worms. Martha Wells chose to treat these disabled characters as disposable,and unlike other instances of characters being ableist in the series, this time, it wasn't done so that the audience goes "wow what an asshole". You are not supposed to give a shit about these people or spare them a second thought.
Martha Wells chose to be ableist in regards to these two characters that no one cares about and no one is supposed to care about. This is not another instance of Murderbot or any other characters being an asshole where the Whole Point is that we all know they being an asshole and we're supposed to be mad about it. We're not supposed to care about these people. We're not supposed to give a shit.
Martha Wells chose to introduce people who mirror real life disabled people who are already demonized, and chose to do what every other ableist jackass does with characters who can't feel pain: make them seem terrifying and unstoppable killing machines who are sub-human and disposable and scary.
There is a difference between characters being assholes to show that bigotry is wrong, and the author being a bigot.
Do not fucking equate them so you can argue the author is never a bigot.
If this were just the villains being bad guys as always, where the whole point is we all know it's wrong and feel sorry for the victims, I wouldn't be mad. But that is not what this was. This was literally just ableism, pure and simple.
#ableism#Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries#The Murderbot Diaries#tmbd#the Muderbot diaries ableism#ableist tropes#ableist stereorypes#ableist myths
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youtube
The Crowded Room CAN'T Happen
#youtube#the crowded room#tom holland#dissociative identity disorder#billy milligan#ableism#ableist bullshit#ableist tropes#damaging tropes#why you shouldn't support the crowded room#I've seen psych students wondering if they can/should watch this and uhhhh don't
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very glad that they've removed the curse from lydia but i really hope this doesn't mean she's just magically totally healed and no longer disabled because that. sucks as a trope
#like there arent that many physically disabled characters in fantasy high and it would just. suck kinda#if they went 'and now by magic the wheelchair user no longer needs a wheelchair!'#like thats such a tired ableist trope yknow#idk i just. i have a lot of feelings about physically disabled characters and i hope they treat lydia right#my post#d20#fantasy high#fhjy
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Ok, but what about wheelchair-bound Eddie who’s marrying Steve. And there’s no way in hell he won’t give Steve his first dance.
So every time the kids (young adults now) come over for a campaign, they practise the best way to support Eddie’s body, so he’s able to at least sway into a rhythm of a song. It’s not perfect by any means and they all get tired, but it’s doable for a song.
When the time comes, Steve has no idea. He’s chatting with Will (bless him for making sure Steve’s turned away from Eddie) when their song starts to play. And Steve instinctively looks around to find Eddie standing with the help of Dustin and Mike.
Steve runs to them so fast, his vision blurry. It’s the highlight of their wedding. He gets to put his hands around Eddie’s waist and feel him press close as they dance to their song.
And Steve’s gonna be fake mad at Eddie for pulling this, because now all the photos will be of him with red eyes. But it’s okay because he’s not the only one crying.
(Mike will fight anyone who will mention that he cried.)
When the song ends the boys carefully sit Eddie back down. All of them hug. Steve keeps on drying his face with a sleeve of his suit as he sits next to Eddie, kissing him.
It’s perfect.
#steddie#wheelchair-bound Eddie#yes this was inspired by those youtube videos#im debating whether Wayne or Hop would walk steve down the aisle#tw: ableist trope#sorry I didn't mean to hurt anyone by posting this!
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I only realized like looking back abt a week ago how incredibly ableist Yansim is like, even aside from the yandere trope being ableist as hell (demonizing BPD), Ayano's whole backstory is just. Awful on many levels. Wow you're telling me this girl lacked empathy and felt nothing and learned to fake having empathy and emotions and pretended to care about her friends but in reality she lacked empathy and could kill a cat without feeling anything because she lacked empathy. But then she briefly bumped into a random guy and that changed everything. Wow that's soooooo crazy you're sooooo original tell me more about how original your game is
#like girl fuck off#damn yandev managed to be misogynistic AND ableist towards low empathy folks while basing his whole game off of an ableist trope!#you want a medal for being a piece of shit? here's your medal for being a piece of shit!#cassie rambles#yandere simulator#i don't like this game
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ive been thinking a lot about how adrien was supposed to be disabled during his concept development and how much of a missed opportunity the whole thing was, like. on one hand I honestly respect the writers for backing out of a topic they thought they wouldn’t be able to handle well; not to say the representation in miraculous is anything great but it shows they do care about it at the very least, which is more than most media can say. I also know this was a decision that came way before the show even started, but I feel like Tomoe Tsurugi is proof that they can write disabled characters and do it in a way that’s fairly decent, so i feel like they could still incorporate it in now since their prior concern is pretty much ruled out (they’re never gonna do this).
and narrative wise I think it would add very much to the entire Agreste family arc, like idk. you could have his disability be a result of the peacock’s damage, or damage to his Amok. have it be part of the reason why Gabriel is so controlling and isolating (ie; viewing his son as frail and made of glass now) and distant/abusive (viewing his son as now “less than perfect,” at least in terms of what he’d envisioned for a perfect child, and blaming Emilie’s sickness/death on it). Adrien’s modeling career is entirely just inspiration-sensationalism with a “hopeful ray of sunshine” public persona. it can even be important to cat noir, too! it’s still an escape from his home life and career, but it’s also a chance for adrien to show that he’s not as fragile as gabriel thinks. It’s his own way of having independence and autonomy and for once being someone that isn’t constantly pitied or made to pretend he’s a docile ray of sunshine constantly.
I’m also deeply autistic enough to say it could match with him being the holder of destruction; half of his life is centered around preserving him and, again, treating him like he’s made of glass. so why not give him the power to literally crack and shatter that glass? poetic cinema and all that. additionally it adds to both why he’s so unserious with his role as a superhero and why he values his partnership with ladybug so highly—he’s indulging in this new freedom while also recognizing that the partnership it comes with is about the only one where he’s genuinely treated as an equal and trusted to take his own part in something. that’s not to say I think all of his friends would instantly change personalities and baby him (especially not Nino) but let me tell you, even as someone who’s not physically disabled, the distinct feeling of being othered or unequal is there no matter how much support you have.
everybody knows this already but there’s just so much potential in everything that the writers don’t do reagghhhhhghhhh
#I could take it a little bit further and say he’s autistic because of the damaged peacock/amok/whatever but that feels weird so I won’t#could it have affected his nervous system developing?? maybe. idk. but overall . what if he’s just like that#cal.txt#adrien agreste#cat noir#miraculous ladybug#disability representation#yes I am very spiteful about the entire ray of sunshine characterization he gets#him and jack too. like they’re literally just nice. Literally that’s it#and not even that they can be HUGE cunts sometimes 😭😭😭😭#if I said that the ray of sunshine trope is vaguely ableist would that make me a keyboard warrior ……#idk
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I forgot just how cringe and ableist the commentary in the knightfall comics is
They have 1 TV personality going on about how the Arkham escapees are mentally divergent and deserve our sympathies and might feel slighted and he's portrayed as an obtuse idiot. It's like. You can tell bat writers/editors must have seen someone pointing out that maybe it's slightly ableist to have all your villains be mentally ill people incarcerated in an asylum and those creators reacted to criticism with the least amount of dignity possible
#well not actually the least amount of dignity possible#twitter wasnt invented yet so they couldn't throw tantrums on twitter or block disabled people for pointing out ableism#dc comics#fade reads dc comics#ableism#ableist tropes#batman: knightfall
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I did not find Izzy's death ableist in any sense. Before I saw the episode I did have a fear that they would portray him sacrificing himself for the crew because he was "too broken to go on" or some other ableist bullshit. But instead he dies at a point in his life where he's probably happier than he's ever been. That's what makes it so affecting! He has community, he has friends, he's valued and knows it. And all this happened after he lost his leg. His life was not only still worth living, it was more joyful. And he doesn't die sacrificing himself or due to his disability. He dies in a twist of fate during a dangerous situation.
I didn't read him telling Ed at the end that he wanted to go as suicidality. He was bleeding out already. Ed continuing to apply direct pressure to the wound might have kept him alive for a little longer but it was causing him significant pain. He preferred to go a little more quickly but much more comfortably in the arms of someone he'd finally made his peace with.
#ofmd#ofmd s2 spoilers#death cw#blood cw#suicide cw#ableism#but not ofmd being ableist#discussion of ableist tropes in other media
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I got some new colored pencils and I drew Ojo from Lost in Oz because there’s not enough art of him.💕
#he’s such a silly little guy#Ojo#lost in oz#fanart#I think the unusually tall munchkin trope is a bit overused#I don’t know if it’s to avoid ableism or if it is ableist in itself#I’m personally not a little person#but I like how they made him look more disproportionate in comparison to his friends#like how he has a big head and ears and eyes with short legs
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