Given that most popular science fiction and fantasy stories are set in worlds where,
thanks to the existence of advanced technology or magic, problems which we find challenging
or even insurmountable in the real world can be easily overcome, does it make sense for
characters to have visible disabilities at all? Do disabled people even belong in sci-fi/fantasy?
. . . Yes! What the hell kind of question is that?! Should there be disabled characters in
sci-fi/fantasy? Yes! Easy! I’ve got a far more vexing question to ask in response:
what the hell is wrong with people?
Here’s what got me on this subject — or back on this subject, I should say,
since I already addressed it awhile back when I did a video in my Trek,
Actually series about disability representation in Star Trek, and what I said there applies more
broadly, beyond Star Trek, as well. The other day I saw some folks reposting and
responding to this tweet. Please bare with me as I read the entire thing:
“It literally makes no sense to have disabled people in a fantasy setting. One: Why can’t the
disabled person cast a spell on their broken legs that fixes them instantly so they can walk again?
Two: If the mage’s lower body is paralyzed rather than physically broken then why can’t they remove
the paralysis using magic? Three: Why can’t the mage cast a spell on themselves which allows them
to float or to fly so that they don’t have to worry about walking? Four: Why is there
a normal looking wheelchair in a medieval-esque high fantasy setting? Shouldn’t the chair be made
out of crude dwarven technology or be replaced with an animal with a saddle attached to it?
“Once you have magic in a setting, it makes no sense to have disabilities. The only way
you could make this work is if you make the magic extremely rare and difficult to obtain or make it
so that magic is so dangerous and unreliable that it rarely gets used. In other words you
would have to heavily tone down the ‘fantasy’ in high fantasy which kind of defeats the purpose.
A ‘low magic’ fantasy setting can work but it requires good writing to make it interesting.”
First off, good to know that there are apparently subgenres of fiction
that don’t require good writing to make them interesting. I bet that saves time.
So, I shared a screengrab of this tweet — because to hell with retweeting this ableist clown — where
I pretty much torched this person, pointing out that disabled people can exist in fantasy
or sci-fi settings because they, ya know, exist in reality, and good stories aren’t just about
what they’re literally about, they’re also about real people and real stuff. Metaphor, allegory,
symbolism — these are not exactly rarely utilized devices in fiction,
particularly fantasy or science fiction. If the world of a fantasy story represents our world,
and our world includes people with disabilities, why shouldn’t the world
of the fantasy story include them, also? This really isn’t that fucking hard, is it?
But, I got a reply to my series of tweets.
And this reply informed me that I had it all wrong. The reply says:
“Steve you’re wrong on this. No one wants to be disabled, but in a fantasy or sci-fi
setting with either magic or space tech, we'd eliminate these kinds of problems.
It takes a greater imagination to justify disabled people, rather than just include disabled people.”
Let me take this a piece at a time. “Steve you’re wrong on
this.” Always a possibility — generally speaking — I’m right as fuck about this,
but I’ve been wrong about lots of other stuff, so an understandable mistake on your part.
“No one wants to be disabled” — I find this to be a presumptuous statement. I can say,
as a typically abled person, that I would not want to be disabled. Perhaps,
if you are also an abled person, you can make a similar declaration for yourself. Perhaps,
if you are a disabled person, you can say “I don’t want to be disabled” or
“I wish I was not disabled” — that’s a perfectly reasonable thing for you
to say about yourself and no one would ever have the right to argue with you about that.
But, is it so unfathomable that there are people with disabilities in this world who, despite their
disabilities and despite the additional challenges created by those disabilities, are fine with who
they are and would not choose to be different even if they could? I have no idea how many disabled
people emphatically don’t want to be disabled — I would guess it’s probably a high percentage of
the group, but I don’t know if that’s true, if it is, how high. Most? Maybe. Almost all? Maybe. But
one hundred percent? No one wants to be disabled? No one? That’s an awfully sweeping statement.
Also, it’s fucking irrelevant to the conversation we’re having, as I will explain in a moment,
possibly sounding as though I’m talking to a child because that seems to be the level we’re at.
“But in a fantasy or sci-fi setting with either magic or space tech,
we'd eliminate these kinds of problems.” Says who? Do you speak for all sci-fi/fantasy authors,
everywhere? Are those who have included disabled characters in their stories simply doing it
wrong? Let’s say you create a fantasy setting for your story where, thanks to technology
or magic or whatever, disabilities have been completely eliminated. Okay. You’re the writer,
you tell the story how you want to tell it. But, let’s say I create a fantasy setting for
a story I’m writing, and in my story some people still have disabilities. What now?
What are you gonna do? “We’d eliminate those kinds of problems” — unless the author who's
making up that story says different. Again — this really isn’t complicated.
Last piece: “It takes a greater imagination to justify disabled people, rather than just include
disabled people.” Perhaps. And you know what? If someone is writing a sci-fi or fantasy story,
and as a part of that story they invent an in-universe explanation for why there are
still disabled people despite the existence of advanced technology or magic or whatever — if
a writer does that, more power to them. I have no objection to that in principle.
But if a writer is telling a sci-fi/fantasy story, and that writer wants to include characters with
disabilities, and that writer doesn’t feel like explaining why disabled people still exist in this
fantasy world — maybe because the story they’re telling doesn’t actually have anything to do with
that and inserting exposition solely to justify the presence of disabled people would be a waste
of time and, ya know, bad storytelling — guess what? They don’t have to explain a goddamn thing.
Explaining every tiny little detail about why things are the way they are in the fictional world
is not storytelling. That is pedantry — and I know pedantry is the official sport of online fandom,
but that only makes me more determined to take a fucking bat to it whenever I encounter it.
Disabled characters can exist in sci-fi/fantasy stories for no other reason than the creators of
those stories want them to be there. The existence of disabled people in fiction
doesn’t need to be justified, because the existence of disabled people in the real
world doesn’t need to be justified. Disabled people have a right to be here. Period.
And, no, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not disabled people as a group,
or any particular disabled person, wants to be disabled. Representation can be a form of
wish fulfillment, but it doesn’t have to be. Some disabled people, I assume,
enjoy sci-fi/fantasy stories as a form of escapism, where they can imagine themselves
living in a world where their disability would have been prevented or healed or accommodated
in some way that’s impossible in reality. But, some disabled people, again I assume,
enjoy sci-fi/fantasy stories that include disabled characters, because they like the reminder that
having a disability doesn’t mean you can’t have an exciting, adventure-filled life. And — I’m
about to blow your mind, grab onto something — I also assume that there are some disabled people,
perhaps even a great many, who enjoy both of those things, at different times, in different stories.
Oh, but I can hear the swelling cry even now — “Internal consistency, Steve! What about internal
consistency? How will we ever maintain immersion in the story without internal consistency?!”
Someone a bit further down in the replies to my tweets about this
came up with the perfect comeback to that whiny-ass bit of fan entitlement:
When you see someone using a manual wheelchair, knowing that mechanical wheelchairs exist,
do you demand an explanation? Does that break your immersion — with fucking reality? Or
do you just assume there must be a reason and get on with your life? Or better yet,
does it not even occur to you in the first place because who the fuck even cares?
I’ve got another rebuttal by way of example to the “but mah internal consistency” objection:
You remember how, when Arnold Schwarzeneggar first started making movies where he played American
characters the writers always felt the need to throw in a little explanation for why he had a
heavy Austrian accent? They’d throw in a line about how Arnold’s character was an immigrant
or something. But, eventually the writers and directors of Schwarzeneggar movies stopped doing
that. Why? Because they realized that it didn’t matter. If the origin of Arnold’s accent wasn’t
part of the story being told — and it almost never was — then explaining it was a waste of time.
Why does an American cop or a killer robot from the future speak with that accent? It
doesn’t matter — and if you’re hung up on that, you’re paying attention to the wrong thing.
When you watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, does it destroy your immersion whenever the
supposedly French Captain Jean-Luc Picard speaks in the very British accent of Patrick Stewart? Or,
no — I bet you have a head canon to explain away that world-breaking inconsistency,
don’t you? I want to drown you in a toilet.
By the same token — as the Schwarzeneggar bit, not the toilet-drowning bit — which was hyperbole,
I don’t literally want to drown you in a toilet, I don’t even know you — I’m
only speaking in second person as a rhetorical device anyway, so you don’t even exist — but,
if you’re watching a sci-fi/fantasy movie or TV show where there just happens to be a character
with a disability, and there’s no explanation for it because the story isn’t about their disability
or why they have it, and you’re stuck on that because the story takes place in a
high tech or magical setting, that’s on you. You are paying attention to the wrong thing.
Let me also pause a moment before I wrap this up to note that “disabled people don’t belong
in sci-fi/fantasy” is fundamentally no different than saying “Black people don’t
belong in sci-fi/fantasy.” I’ve been a Star Trek fan pretty much my entire life. I was fourteen
when Star Trek: Voyager premiered. I remember how some Trekkies reacted to the presence of Tuvok,
a Black Vulcan, in the cast of that show. I was online by then, and there was enough
quote-unquote “controversy” within certain corners of the fanbase regarding whether or not Black
Vulcans “made sense” that Kate Orman — herself a published sci-fi author — felt the need to publish
a “Black Vulcan FAQ” to the rec.arts.startrek Usenet newsgroup. It’s still accessible in
Google’s Groups archive, you should check it out — there’s a link to it in the video description.
Anyway, because I remembered that “should there be Black Vulcans?” bullshit, when I saw the “should
there be someone using a wheelchair?” bullshit in response to a background character in Star Trek:
Discovery a few years ago, I recognized it for what it was right away, just as
I recognize this “do disabled people belong in sci-fi/fantasy settings” bullshit for what it is.
You can try to disguise it in a concern for internal consistency or verisimilitude,
you can say you’re just asking for writers to be more imaginative and provide explanations
for why disabilities still exist in their magical, fantastical, futuristic worlds,
but you can’t hide the truth of what you’re doing: treating people with disabilities like
trespassers in your fantasy — or people of color, or queer people, or any other group
of people you’re not comfortable with. Because in your fantasy world, those people don’t exist.
We know what’s going on.
If the mere existence of disabled people in such a setting reads as a plot hole to you,
if it breaks your immersion, that’s not bad writing — that’s your pedantic bullshit.
Writers are under no obligation to cater to your pedantic bullshit — and if you ask me,
they do it too much already, which is a favor to you, if you think about it,
so maybe you should pay it forward and do the rest of us a favor, stop complaining,
and from now on keep your pedantic bullshit, and your bigotry, and your pissy entitlement,
and your fragile, feeble, one-dimensional reading comprehension the fuck to yourself.