ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-30 04:25 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-30 04:25 am
Disabled Superheroes
Here's an interesting post about disabled superheroes with attention to combinations of disabilities and superpowers.
One reason I think supports such combinations is that the acquisition of superpowers is often violent. If you don't get some kind of regenerative ability, you are rather likely to sustain permanent damage: Dr. Laser has disfiguring scars. Other times it may be transient but still really uncomfortable: Aquariana has hypersensitive skin so she can't wear clothes comfortably, which might or might not improve. Certain causes that may be less violent can still have negative side effects: Koroleva is a supervillain whose powers probably came from radiation -- her parents were evacuated from Chernobyl -- and her right hand has fused fingers.
Another obvious reason is that superhero work is dangerous. Soldiers, police, firefighters, etc. all work high-risk jobs and have a consequently high rate of retiring due to disability. Cheersquad has Super-Speed but is mostly paralyzed now; he used to drive a zoom ambulance until someone crashed into it. Then again, some people keep working despite disabilities. Dr. Doohickey lost his legs and kept going. Valor's Widow deals with monumental grief.
Factors can combine, too: Groundhog has Flight, but never uses it due to agoraphobia, acrophobia, and weak lungs. It manifested when he was an infant, he went sailing up into the sky, and the altitude injured his lungs before anyone could get him down. Then his parents kept him indoors while he was growing up.
One reason I think supports such combinations is that the acquisition of superpowers is often violent. If you don't get some kind of regenerative ability, you are rather likely to sustain permanent damage: Dr. Laser has disfiguring scars. Other times it may be transient but still really uncomfortable: Aquariana has hypersensitive skin so she can't wear clothes comfortably, which might or might not improve. Certain causes that may be less violent can still have negative side effects: Koroleva is a supervillain whose powers probably came from radiation -- her parents were evacuated from Chernobyl -- and her right hand has fused fingers.
Another obvious reason is that superhero work is dangerous. Soldiers, police, firefighters, etc. all work high-risk jobs and have a consequently high rate of retiring due to disability. Cheersquad has Super-Speed but is mostly paralyzed now; he used to drive a zoom ambulance until someone crashed into it. Then again, some people keep working despite disabilities. Dr. Doohickey lost his legs and kept going. Valor's Widow deals with monumental grief.
Factors can combine, too: Groundhog has Flight, but never uses it due to agoraphobia, acrophobia, and weak lungs. It manifested when he was an infant, he went sailing up into the sky, and the altitude injured his lungs before anyone could get him down. Then his parents kept him indoors while he was growing up.
Disability and superheroes
I mean, /honestly/, could you imagine the hue and cry if /all/ redheads were portrayed as psychic? No one, but no one would tolerate that, even if it were /always/ a positive portrayal.
And what if all blue-eyed people were portrayed as morally 'right' and perf-- (oh, wait... we did that for a long, long time... Sigh.)
Re: Disability and superheroes
Often, yes. Sometimes the body or brain can compensate for damage and create a new ability. Sometimes replacements are better than the original. People have been telling those stories for thousands of years. The problem is that, if they don't tell the other kinds of stories, it throws off the balance and becomes aggravating.
One thing I liked about the Daredevil movie was that, in addition to how beautifully it rendered his echolocation, it also included several examples of the limitations.
When I'm writing about a disabled character who has superpowers or a terrific piece of adaptive equipment or whatever, I try to keep an eye on the ways that experience differs from the ordinary. So if you look at the daughter of Monster House, she has a seeing-eye gremlin and the Eye of Fate which allows her to see everything that destiny touches. There are still things she can't see. She can move through the world about as well as a conventionally sighted person, but not the same as them.
>> I mean, /honestly/, could you imagine the hue and cry if /all/ redheads were portrayed as psychic? No one, but no one would tolerate that, even if it were /always/ a positive portrayal. <<
It's not that far from the truth. There's a very strong trend for using redheaded characters to mark psychic, psychotic, or other unusual motifs.
>> And what if all blue-eyed people were portrayed as morally 'right' and perf-- (oh, wait... we did that for a long, long time... Sigh.) <<
Yep.
What really matters is diversity. If you have enough characters, and you make a point of spreading out the traits, then you can avoid the repetition problem.
Re: Disability and superheroes
Or, deliberately, closely mirror both advantages and disadvantages. For example, if I had someone with your Danso's ability to manipulate powers, I'd make them near the same age (15-18), but of a slightly different background, or maybe with a single supportive adult when everything else went to blazes, and then /deliberately tell/ the story of how they react differently to the same kinds of powers. Erik and Charles in Marvel, IF instead of being a WW2 camp survivor, oppressed Jewish person et cetera, et cetera, Erik had also been a wealthy boy who attended all the best schools and graduated Oxford the way others expect to go to the movies: as a matter of course so obvious it's barely worth mentioning.
Then, the writer can play off personality versus experience, social rejection versus personal integrity. I think it highlights those kinds of stories in more powerful, more intimate ways... but Marvel can't even get She-Hulk's movie a decent freaking writer, so don't expect those stories from mainstream comics for a long, long time.
Re: Disability and superheroes
Well, we've got Danja who has a single facet of Danso's much broader talent. What about loosening the belt another notch, to someone with Average (0) Energy Manipulation? Danso would be better as his own subcategory, but the other person would be more versatile. This could be someone Danso meets at school, or in the teen parent support group, etc. It might be interesting for him to have a friend who is white, middle class, had everything -- and then developed superpowers that kicked him to the bottom of the social pyramid has no ever-living idea how to cope with that.
>> Erik and Charles in Marvel, IF instead of being a WW2 camp survivor, oppressed Jewish person et cetera, et cetera, Erik had also been a wealthy boy who attended all the best schools and graduated Oxford the way others expect to go to the movies: as a matter of course so obvious it's barely worth mentioning. <<
*chuckle* So, so many jokes about "You TOLD me I should marry a nice doctor, nu? Charles is nice, and he has a doctorate."
Also, I'm toying with another aspect of the Charles/Erik divergence across ethical boundaries, whether to fight violence with violence or with peace. Totally different characters but same core conflict, and queerplatonic affinity.
>> Then, the writer can play off personality versus experience, social rejection versus personal integrity. I think it highlights those kinds of stories in more powerful, more intimate ways... <<
I agree. It's really interesting to see how people diverge.
>> but Marvel can't even get She-Hulk's movie a decent freaking writer, so don't expect those stories from mainstream comics for a long, long time. <<
Well, stuff 'em. If they want to leave huge areas of the market open for other folks to develop, I can work with that. I may not have a Tony-Stark-sized development budget, but I can write fast and I have fans who like to buy my stuff. Maybe someday an artist or film student will fall in love with it, and more will happen.
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Or if you want to go down another route, given the sort of will-power that's needed to overcome disabilities and function in a world designed for able-bodied people, imagine that with even a touch of psi or magic! You ccould go a long way with a little of that and lot of stubborn.
My point being, I'm sick of seeing disabilities touted as handicaps to be overcome, or flaws to balance out superpowers. It takes a near-superhuman effort to adapt and move past being disabled into differently able [or so I'm told]... what if they just kept on going? What if, that is what makes them super?
What if they were just people who took the stick they'd just been handed the shitty end of, and used it to beat life with it?!
Well...
This is very close to what happened to Dr. Doohickey. See "Dr. Doohickey and the Problem of Locomotion" and "Dr. Doohickey and the Mad Science Scrambler."
The mostly-paralyzed superhero I have is a speedster named Cheersquad. He hasn't shown up on camera yet but I'm watching.
>> Or if you want to go down another route, given the sort of will-power that's needed to overcome disabilities and function in a world designed for able-bodied people, imagine that with even a touch of psi or magic! You ccould go a long way with a little of that and lot of stubborn. <<
I haven't done that one yet. It's valid in Terramagne; aside from an innate talent manifesting in puberty, another really common path is that it grows in very slowly adjacent to the person's passion or career. Super-Intellect, Super-Gadgeteering, and Telepathy or Empathy are especially prone to that. So anything that makes the person exercise their willpower all the time could blossom into Super-Will. And you might not even realize that was a superpower until you tried to deny them necessary services and got your ass handed to you.
Okay, yeah, I think I could make this work without falling into the supercrip LaBrea. Feel free to prompt for it.
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Yes...
In a way it's ironic. I have a few other characters who can't use their powers; frex, Cheersquad is a paralyzed speedster whose Super-Speed now only works for speed-reading and auctioneering. He used to drive a zoom ambulance until someone crashed into it.
What happened to Groundhog is an example of evolution getting ahead of itself. It doesn't have perfect aim. So as the percentage of superpowers in the population increases, it creates a pervasive problem: a majority of those with innate powers (rather than acquired by outside events) are born to ordinary parents. It is difficult or impossible for ordinary parents to meet the special needs of superkids. Sometimes that's fatal. Other times, as with Groundhog, it has crippling side effects. His parents honestly did the best they could for him, but like many parents of special needs children, some of their efforts went very wrong. I still give them credit for keeping him alive though.
>>I'm going to have to read more of your heroes fiction.<<
Polychrome Heroics has a series page.
Also, next Poetry Fishbowl is this Tuesday on a theme of "first contact." Feel free to come leave me prompts!
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Well...
In Terramagne they are not common but are pretty well known. Many people with superpowers are "crickets" who hide what they can do. Others are "blue plate specials" who use their powers in ordinary jobs, not fighting supervillains. Then supervillains are the next-biggest group, and superheroes are the minority. The rate of superpowers appearing in the population is increasing.
>> you're going to get super-scientists and super-mages and some of them are going to develop super-healing <<
These things are all true ...
>> and then disabilities in general might be a thing of the past. <<
... but this is not. No matter how advanced your science or magic, there will always be some things it can't fix. Dr. Infanta talks about this in "Lifeyears."
Consider that superpowers create new disabilities as well as having the potential to fix old ones. Subwoofer's canine features create a terrible social handicap, and he got those (along with his superpower) from getting caught in supervillain/superhero crossfire.
>> Or a cosmetic thing where your replacement limbs look weird. <<
For an example of this, see "Dr. Doohickey and the Problem of Locomotion" and "Dr. Doohickey and the Mad Science Scrambler."