Special Needs in Strange Worlds

[ysabetwordsmith]

I found a column online by Sarah Chorn that features characters with special needs.

The piece that led me there was about a recovering addict.  It's an interesting look at how a past problem can cause present difficulties.  Even a character who finds a "cure" for their condition will always be someone who had a disability; they'll never be the same as if they had skipped that experience.

This installment explores how disability can come, not just from a lack of ability, but from an extra  ability that causes problems.  I've written about this kind of reverse-disability before.  I'm also particularly fond of special abilities that make it possible to do things other people can't, but also create serious limitations.  Frex, super-hearing is great for eavesdropping but leaves a character terribly vulnerable to loud sounds, the way dogs howl at sirens.

Magical disabilities may be similar to or different from analogs in ordinary life.  This installment features a werewolf who can no longer shift shape.  By the way, there are too  people with this problem in our world: plenty of otherkin have species dysphoria, and morphlocked shapeshifters can be very unhappy in human form, even if born that way.  Doesn't help if you're transgender, doesn't help if you're transspecies, if your soul doesn't fit your body that's uncomfortable at best and life-wrecking at worst.

Elizabeth Bear writes a lot of disabled characters, and discusses why that breadth of representation matters.  Basically this is my stance: you can do darn near anything with a character as long as it's not the only representation of that in your work so as to discourage readers from leaping to the "All X are Y" fallacy.  It just doesn't occur to me to write characters as NOT having a disability if they've gone through something that is likely to cause one.  Many of my trauma survivors have PTSD or some other mental injury, sometimes a little, other times quite a lot.  It isn't something that can be handwaved away, but is something they can work through.

Here's a rec-reading list.

Comments

Bookmarked

[dialecticdreamer]

I see, I just needed to be (a) an adult and looking in the adult book market and (b) thirty years older to really FIND "people who look like me". Sadly, it's about twenty-five years after I'd completely given up looking, instead focusing on the STORY instead of quibbles like color, gender, etc. I just shoved 'em all under "quibbles" because really, I think I lost all hope for finding even a partial reflection of myself in fiction who wasn't the body on the floor in the opening bit of a crime drama.

I just got too tired of hunting, and moved that energy to something else.

I know I'm not the only reader who did this, but am I the only one who dreams (literally) sometimes that I've woken up in the library of books I needed or wanted, but never managed to find? Like "Conversations with Surak", recorded in convenient translation to my non-Federation Standard dialect. Or the school records of the boy who later took the name "the Doctor"...

Re: Bookmarked

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I just got too tired of hunting, and moved that energy to something else. <<

I think a lot of people have done that. So, one reason I write what I write -- and especially, offer prompt calls -- is to reduce that number.

>> I know I'm not the only reader who did this, but am I the only one who dreams (literally) sometimes that I've woken up in the library of books I needed or wanted, but never managed to find? <<

No, I've done that too. It is one of the places I've gotten some of my ideas. I have a habit of copying down the dictionaries of languages I love ...

[thnidu]

I'm also particularly fond of special abilities that make it possible to do things other people can't, but also create serious limitations.  Frex, super-hearing is great for eavesdropping but leaves a character terribly vulnerable to loud sounds, the way dogs howl at sirens.

Even quasi-supernary abilities have this drawback. You know how good I am at spotting typoes and other language slips; it means I ALWAYS see them, and they can interfere with or ruin my reading enjoyment. Another disadvantage of my language "kink" is that it's almost impossible for me to tune out the TV or radio, or the five different items constantly showing on the news crawl + closed captions (with errors!) + "coming up next", etc., on the TV(s) in a restaurant.

By the way, there are too people with this problem in our world: plenty of otherkin have species dysphoria, and morphlocked shapeshifters can be very unhappy in human form, even if born that way. Doesn't help if your transgender, doesn't help if you're transspecies, if your soul doesn't fit your body that's uncomfortable at best and life-wrecking at worst.

(1) E.g., "if your transgender". :-$
(2) Um. Second sentence, full agreement. First sentence, not part of my worldview, but as I said recently, "aggy-nostic".

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Even quasi-supernary abilities have this drawback. <<

I am very familiar with examples of that.

>> You know how good I am at spotting typoes and other language slips; it means I ALWAYS see them, and they can interfere with or ruin my reading enjoyment. <<

Yep.

>> Another disadvantage of my language "kink" is that it's almost impossible for me to tune out the TV or radio, <<

I can tune out some types of TV or radio. But I can't write poetry if something with a rhythm is playing.

>> or the five different items constantly showing on the news crawl + closed captions (with errors!) + "coming up next", etc., on the TV(s) in a restaurant. <<

That shit is why I don't watch television anymore. I can't stand things that pop up. And animated billboards drive me bugfuck. People worry about cellphones, but somehow it's okay to have blinking, moving images right beside the road, and that's not a distracting traffic hazard?

>> (1) E.g., "if your transgender". :-$ <<

Sorry, I'll fix that.

>> (2) Um. Second sentence, full agreement. First sentence, not part of my worldview, but as I said recently, "aggy-nostic". <<

You're entitled to your own worldview.

However, this is one of those places where believing the person's stated cause of distress is not necessary, given that the model works if you follow it, regardless of how it got that way. Suppose you have a person who thinks of himself as a wolf, a pack animal. He's likely to have trouble interacting with primates who use a troop structure. But once you know that he thinks of himself as a wolf (whether you consider him to be a wolf in a human body, or a human with a delusion of being a wolf in a human body, or whatever) then you can pick apart the issue and figure out where the conflicts are so they can be resolved. Maybe you can explain primate stuff that hasn't previously made sense. Maybe you can find people he'll get along with better -- dog people are a better bet than cat people, for instance. But if you keep trying to relate only on human terms, without accounting for the person's subjective experience of difference, it is likely to be much less successful.

And that's exactly the problem that transfolk have: many people simply don't believe their experience is real or worthy of any consideration. They believe it's a lie, and act with the same resentment people usually feel when lied to. It's very frustrating.

Re: Yes...

[thnidu]

However, this is one of those places where believing the person's stated cause of distress is not necessary, given that the model works if you follow it, regardless of how it got that way. …

Oh quite, I'm not disagreeing with that. And w.r.t. transfolk, no disagreement at all!

And... I think I'd better take a lesson from this about checking my own comments on other people's worldviews before uttering them. Sorry about this.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's okay. I want folks to feel free to discuss things here. Doesn't necessarily have to agree with me, or other folks on the blog.

Identity and worldview are intimate things, yet they interface with public all the time. It can be very difficult to navigate lines of courtesy and accommodation. Take transfolk again: they often ask people to use a set of pronouns that is not what the speaker would naturally choose. They have a right to ask people to respect their identity in that way, and transfolk tend to be very bothered by those who don't. But they often don't realize how HARD it is to make that shift. It's like trying to write with your non-dominant hand. Some people can do it, others can't. So that determines who is willing to be friends, quite often: transfolk and less-linguistically-flexible people are likely to rub each other all the wrong way, and they may not either of them understand the hardwired reasons why, just think someone is being snotty. But it's very different than someone who actually IS trans-hostile in general.

There are a lot of beliefs people hold that I don't. I think mainstream society is beset by a number of delusions ("Climate change is a hoax!") that are extremely dangerous. Those I'll oppose. Things that harm no one? Are not my problem. I don't get exercised over other people's harmless beliefs, and most beliefs are harmless or just trivially annoying. So I'm inclined to be tolerant.

I am rather fascinated by how humans work, and the ways in which beliefs influence behavior. Knowing what someone believes can be very useful in predicting their behavior, and finding ways to work together, regardless of whether I agree with it.

I think part of that is my early activist training -- which hardly anyone follows these days -- that you didn't pick fights with people, because you might be allied with them on a different cause next week. You worked with the people at THIS rally for THIS cause, and the next one might have a substantially different crowd. Didn't matter if you disagreed on other topics as long as you agreed on today's. Now things are more polarized, few people transit across the lines, and there's a lot of pressure for everyone to hold widely separated clusters of beliefs. It's frustrating.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Just being mortal is enough of a disability, the whole life/death cycle. You're born, you live, you die, you're reborn... and the worst part is you forget!

Bad enough if you're born mortal and don't remember anything at all. But to just remember enough from incarnation to incarnation to know it wasn't always so. It's like loosing your mind, over and over again..

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That can suck.

Fortunately some of us have partial or complete farmemory ... which can be an asset or a liability.

Re: Yes...

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

it depends on incarnation... this time around, near complete recall of most of the important bits. Other times... zip, nada, nothing. It's the times in between that are worse, like having a half remembered song earworming you.

[zeeth_kyrah]

For me, it's like diving into fresh waters before I go to the deep and swim for the light. It's nice NOT to know sometimes, and every life's challenge is how to wake without destroying things.

That said, of all the things that could be said positive, I always miss being with all my beloved ones. Not knowing that I am deeply loved is the worst part.

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Heh. Seeing as how our disability seems to be basically caused by our brain aggressively over-adapting to all traumas, only to burn out of fuel, I can definitely sympathize with superpowers-gone-wrong. My brain ALREADY seems to be adapting to the fatigue issues.

--Rogan

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Your icon cracked me up. "Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Yeah, I can relate to the hyper-adaptation. I hope you come out okay.

*ponder* Wolverine has that problem in X-Men, where it's very difficult for even an epic-telepath like Professor X to get past his instinctive shielding, and that's with Wolverine very much wanting help to recover lost memories.

Re: *laugh*

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite authors had at the front of his book the following quote by Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it..." So far, this has been a sturdy litmus test for me.

And I think we are handling okay, now that things are getting better. Our brain gets a lot less draconian when our environment is safer. Wolverine is a good example; Deadpool is even better, since from what I understand, his healing factor is so hyperactive that it might've influenced his mental state.

--Rogan

Re: *laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> One of my favorite authors had at the front of his book the following quote by Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it..." So far, this has been a sturdy litmus test for me. <<

Agreed. As climate change deniers are discovering to everyone's disappointment.

Basically I will use whichever model yields the best results. I don't care about other people's thoughts unless they have the power to attack me for not agreeing with them.

>> And I think we are handling okay, now that things are getting better. Our brain gets a lot less draconian when our environment is safer. <<

That's good to hear. Really, everyone's brain does better in a safe environment.

>> Wolverine is a good example; Deadpool is even better, since from what I understand, his healing factor is so hyperactive that it might've influenced his mental state. <<

Agreed. Some versions of canon indicate that Wolverine's power blocks out telepathy, even when he wants it to work as when Professor X is trying to help him recover lost memories.