Futuristic Settings and the Erasure of Disabilities

The common theme in a lot of futuristic, sci-fi or not, settings, is the abundance of cure tropes that are thrown in there. Disabled people either don't exist, or aren't actually disabled - they get a magical device that undoes their injury, or get a mech suit that basically does the same thing.

Often the setting is treated like an excuse that can't be rebutted in any way: “but my story is set in the future where medicine is better!”

So: is that true? Does better medicine actually mean less disabled people?

Historical Accuracy

[large text: Historical Accuracy]

In 1900, the life expectancy of a person born with Down syndrome was 9 years. Try putting yourself there and imagining that 2024 is the Future - better medicine, basically sci-fi in comparison to what they had back there. In that future, what is true?

a) There's no people with Down syndrome.

b) People with Down syndrome live to be 60 years old on average.

Answer? B. The only countries with fewer people with Down syndromes are the ones engaging in widespread eugenics, which is a topic I will not be getting into in this post, but I'm mentioning because the only places without disabled people are eugenicist.

The “better medicine” of the future didn't make Down syndrome curable, it made people with it survive longer. 50% of people born with it today will live to be over 60 years old. In the future, there will be retirees with Down syndrome. In the past, 50% of them wouldn't have made it into their teens.

Why does that matter?

[large text: Why does that matter?]

Future medicine won't make disabilities disappear. It will make them more manageable. Less deadly. Easier to survive.

If you base your knowledge and perception of disability throughout the times on sci-fi novels by able-bodied writers, you're going to hate how it actually works in real life.

Have we magically- technologically gotten rid of diabetes? No, 11% of Americans have it. 103 years ago, diabetes were lethal. There aren't fewer diabetics compared to the past. They live longer. You probably know or heard of someone who has diabetes.

You need to expand your understanding on how disability and medicine work, because “future = no disability” is genuine nonsense. It doesn't work like that, and it really frustrates me how writers dead-set on “logic” in their setting fail to see this.

Are paralyzed people walking around in various mechs, or are they using better wheelchairs than those from 100 years ago? Wheelchairs that make it easier to be independent? That help with symptoms of their disabilities by preventing pressure sores, or providing alternative methods of maneuvering?

In the future, why would there suddenly be those futuristic transplant* spines instead of wheelchairs that can be used with one's brain or eyes, for those who can't move their hands, mouth, or head? Why wouldn't there be wheelbeds for those who are currently bed-bound because they can't manage being upright in any way?

*Also, how are all of these magic disability-fixing transplants never actual transplants? Receiving a transplant basically always ends up in being immunocompromised because of the very way the body works. If you're writing about humans, this isn't going to change?

Things like sign language or wheelchairs have been used for thousands of years, they're not going away anytime soon or not-so-soon.

Future = More Disabled People?

[large text: Future = More Disabled People?]

We already discussed that there are presently common disabilities that used to be lethal a century ago or even less. If we use this fact for a futuristic setting, you suddenly have a myriad of new possibilities.

There's vastly better medicine? A lot of people deal with post-rabies syndrome because it's finally survivable, but it leaves people with the effects of the meningitis that rabies cause. There's way more quadriplegic people because the survival rates are much higher. Cancer survivors are more common because people live longer. Physical therapy for people who had prion diseases because they aren't fatal anymore but cause severe disability. Head trauma is more treatable, so there's more people with TBIs and less people dying in vehicular accidents.

The technology is super advanced? People with locked-in syndrome can operate an AAC device with their eyes, fully customize its voice to their liking, and not have to worry about battery life of their powerchair because it has sonar panels. Canes that can fold themselves with the click of a button so that they can fit in one's pocket.

There could be so many more adapted sports! Tools and technology that can adapt a house exactly to one's needs! Wheelchairs that are actually affordable! A portable pocket sized device that makes ableds behave normally around disabled people!

The point of this post isn't to completely shit on sci-fi settings, but instead to urge abled writers to think a bit more and try to be creative in the way they go about speculative fiction. Write something new! There's one billion stories about how impossible it is for disabled people to exist in the future, and it's upsetting at best to read that constantly when you're disabled. As long as there are people, there will be disabled people.

mod Sasza

there's something so compelling about stories where a character's virtues intensify into flaws that lead to their downfall. loyalty and love becoming so all-consuming that compassion outside of them ceases to exist. duty overwhelming any moral compass until order becomes more important than justice. selflessness so intense it becomes self-destruction. let me watch while whatever saved the hero in the beginning destroys them. let me see them fall to their own worst impulses disguised as what once made them good.

More favourite tropes:

The more I think about it, the more I want Amy to convert to Judaism for Jake. Not because I have any issues with their relationship, but because I think it would be a ~hilarious~ plot line.

Jake is a secular Jew whose connections to Judaism are more cultural than anything else. Meanwhile, Amy is the most intense pupil/researcher on the planet who has never half-assed anything in her entire life. Can you even imagine how seriously she would take Judaism and her conversion and how much that would drive Jake up the flipping wall?

Imagine Jake buying that one T-Rex menorah and Amy telling him they can’t use it because it’s not a kosher Chanukiah. And Jake’s like “huh? What? It’s a dinosaur, Amy, not a pork chop.”

Imagine Jake offering to sound out the Hebrew in a siddur for Amy with his remedial Aleph-Bet skills to discover she’s already mastered how to read the letters without vowels and is also becoming proficient in modern conversational Hebrew.

Imagine Amy hosting a THE PERFECT Seder (that Charles has enthusiastically cooked for after learning all about kosher laws, having his kitchen completely kashered, and making a menu that includes Jewish cuisines from around the world) that Jake ruins after being caught eating doughnuts in the bathroom because he hates matzah.

Bonus points if Amy finds out she descends from Sephardim and lectures Jake about his Ashkenazi centrism!

Just…imagine how amazing that would be. Please.

C’mon, B99, the episode writes itself!

(Bonus: Holt tells Wuntch, “You think this obsession with legalistic technicalities will dissuade me, Madeline? Try again. I’ve read the Talmud. The entire Talmud.”)

OH HELL YES

This would be an amazing episode, but only if at the end Jake told Amy she didn’t have to do this and Amy either drops it or decides she really likes Judaism and takes it at her own pace, because the stereotype of the proselyte wife is overplayed

Oh yeah, it would totally be Amy’s choice. Jake wouldn’t have any expectation, it’s just something she becomes interested in, maybe when they’re trying to find a rabbi to officiate their wedding.

OH MY GOD @attackoftheskydancers 

Ok, question though, is the stereotype of a the wife converting overplayed? Because…i don’t know, I can’t really think of it happening in any show other than sex and the city (which is a garbage show in every respect other than Charlotte’s conversion actually being well done, iirc). And so long as it was done well, with Amy actually choosing to convert on her own, maybe at first only doing it for Jake but then finding a love of Judaism all her own, I think that’s what would actually be stereotype breaking.

Look, aside from the aforementioned SatC, the ONLY other modern tv show I know of that showed two Jews being endgame for one another is Will and Grace (which was retconned in the reboot!)*. We have plenty of media showing interfaith couples, but two Jews ending up together is really, really rare inedia and while interfaith couples are great, the fact that Jewish protagonists always end up with non-Jews, with literally just two exemptions is honestly really disheartening.

*look, I could be wrong, so let me know if you can think of any other tv show in the last let’s say 25 years in which a confirmed jewish main character ended up with a confirmed jewish love interest.

Yeah, I mean, if anything, the TV trope that’s really played out is “Secular Jewish guy who doesn’t really care about being Jewish that much.” It’s always just kind of a throwaway identity, and doesn’t do justice to all of us who are so proud and devoted to our culture. I feel like TV makes it seem like Jews being passionate about their Jewishness, and also Jews marrying one another, are things of the past, and that’s not true at all. 

I love ideas, and story tropes, and headcanons. But what I really love is the fanworks that explore these things. The idea, the trope, the headcanon…those alone don’t give the work value, for me. What I love is your unique perspective.

I would never tell the story the way you would. We all have completely different lives and experiences and values. You’ll think of things I’d never think of, and beyond that, you have skills I don’t have. Your craft has developed differently. The way you structure your story or render your art…it’s unique to you. No one else can do it your way.

I love seeing creators leverage their individual skills, the culmination of their lives up to the point of creation, to bring forth a wholly unique work.

It doesn’t matter to me if there are 500 bedsharing fics. I’ll read yours because it’s yours. It doesn’t matter if a thousand people have drawn a bridal carry. Yours will delight me because it will show me you.

You don’t need to have a completely unique idea. That’s impossible. What you need to do is put the effort into developing it and creating a finished work. That work will be yours, a work only you could have made, regardless of the original idea.

“There’s already a fic about…” Doesn’t matter. There isn’t already your fic about it.

Show me your art. Show me your craft. Create something.

How about (this would only work if the blind person is standing on a wooden floor with floor joists, but): Hearing footsteps approaching, but not feeling the floor give way a little bit, underfoot, or not hearing the floorboards creak (because a ghost has no weight).

Maybe the ghost has “body odor” that smells like moldy earth.

There’s the old cliche of repeated/stereotypical noises, like “rattling chains,” or repeated phrases of music.

Or maybe the ghost’s “body” (the volume of space their physical body took up in life) is a markedly different temperature than the ambient air (either warmer or hotter).

–

It’s not that blind people have “super senses” other than sight, but that sighted people rely on sight so much that we tend to ignore other information. …Also, the ghost stories we tell through TV and movies tend to rely on visual effects, for obvious reasons.

But if you check out old ghost stories from folklore – or better yet, regional legends linked to actual places / history, you might get some cool ideas.

How do I make it clear that my Neo Nazi Elf Bankers Aren't Jewish?

The idea of predatory “Aryan” (in quotes because the Nazis were using the word inaccurately) elves amuses me because it’s definitely an inversion of the existing tropes. I have a question: are your oppressed humans dark-haired and dark-eyed? Because that would be the other half of the “Northern European gentiles at the top of the racial privilege ladder” coding you were going for. I think if I saw blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned elves oppressing human characters with darker features I’d definitely get that what you wrote is not anti-Semitic but instead a condemnation of white privilege. It would also feel disingenuous to condemn white privilege by having your oppressed characters be white, light-featured, and not ethnically coded anything but Anglo and Christian/fantasy-pagan; that’s how we wind up with “Mutant oppression in X-men is a metaphor for homophobia, but the main characters are still totally straight!”

So tl;dr you’re fine, just consider making your humans not blonde/blue-eyed/Christian-or-fantasy-pagan-coded so that the trope-skewering is complete.

If you want to add some more layers to make sure nobody “goes there”, you can always have the elves doing things like eating pork or shellfish (shellfish seems more elflike than pork somehow; pork is so earthy! Imagine elves eating oysters off of fancy platters. So delicate. So refined) or participating in some kind of cultural ritual that evokes Christianity or paganism, like, putting up a wreath as a decoration when it’s cold.

I want to point out something: if the bankers at Gringotts had been fairies or elves nobody would have thought of us. That’s another reason I think you’re safe. Nobody is going to associate a beautiful banking class with us, sadly. (I know this is different from Mother Gothel but in her case it’s a combination of hair + the stolen baby trope which probably works differently from the banking trope. Tropes don’t all work the same way.)

–Shira, more hobbit than dwarf

Black Misfortune: Dead Grandparents & Mother & MIA Father

As long as you don’t overdo the pain and suffering in the MC’s life, your story can work just fine. When it’s tragedy and hardship after tragedy and hardship, it starts reading like the writing exploits Black women’s pain for entertainment purposes or is treating great amounts of pain as a necessary reality for Black women. 

Solutions: 

More Reading:

~Colette

gay ppl who inject the concept of homophobia into the social structures of their magical fantasy worlds bc they want to use their own work as an outlet to talk and vent a little about their personal experiences:

straight ppl who inject the concept of homophobia into the social structures of their magical fantasy worlds bc the concept of gay ppl being happy and accepted is too “unrealistic” and they have absolutely nothing to actually say about the issue and just included it for the sake of watching us suffer: 

I’m putting it out there that using round wide eyes to implicitly state innocence and purity in a character; and small “slanty” eyes to convey dishonesty and deceit in your antagonist is actually racist lmfao.

I see some of you bring out this concept in you character designs over and over and yeah it’s not a conscious thought process but thinking “this is the evil character who is morally decrepit - how should I really bring that out in their image?” And then linking that immediately to drawing smaller eyes is racist yellow peril derived stereotyping.

I’m sure most of us have been guilty of this at some stage including myself so can we all just grow up and leave this bullshit behind in this year? 谢谢

Other “evil” looks based in bigotry:

- dark/heavy/thick eyebrows (racism/antisemitism)

- hooked noses vs “cute”/button/patrician (ditto)

- faces described as angular (as opposed to like strong-boned or whatever)

- “swarthy” complexion (thanks tolkien)

- blonde hair/blue eyes = hero/ine

- accents.

- “shifty eyes” iirc, I remember learning they just indicate a lot of thinking, which could be lying, yes, orrr dealing with a second language/unfamiliar dialect, or dealing with NTs as someone who’s not, or trying to figure out if the authority figure is trying to get you to agree to something they can use against you, or…

Bigotry around disability that often intersects with racism includes making villains or “shifty” characters dramatically scarred and/or having acne/acne scars, missing eyes or limbs/digits, walking with a limp and/or cane, missing and/or crooked teeth (this one can also be pretty classist, and “buck teeth” and a gap between the front teeth have a history of anti-Asian and anti-Black caricature behind them, respectively), overweight in a way that’s portrayed as “disgusting” proof of their “greed” or like moral decay or whatever, etc! 

These visual markers often get layered on top of the above racist stereotypes to make a character’s design seem more “untrustworthy” or “creepy” or “unsettling,” hypersexualized/fetishized/desexualized, “aggressive” or “passive”, “mean and “scary” or “cowardly and despicable”, and so on and so on - always ask yourself and your subconscious WHY they do these things!  And ABSOLUTELY hold yourself accountable for this, (my fellow white artists especially!!!)!  Fighting the racist messages we’ve taken in our entire lives takes work, and it takes time, and it’s always worth doing. 

a cool idea: whenever you’re tempted to say “xyz trope is overdone and trite” simply because you see it often in white cis hetero romances, consider that not everybody else gets to have visible love stories, so the same standards can’t be applied. 

i see people on here talking about how it’s, like, damaging to write romances with a fairytale ending, or soulmate stories, or first loves that last forever, or childhood-friends-to-lovers, whatever the hell. all that cute, sometimes corny stuff. people try to frame it like it’s a terrible, bad thing, and why? because it doesn’t scratch your specific narrative itches? because it doesn’t perfectly represent your specific experiences, and you don’t think it holds water? it’s unrealistic? it gives people false expectations of ease and happiness?

if you’re not cis/het/white/abled you already know life isn’t easy and comfortable all the time, and as a matter of fact, nobody ever wants to remind you otherwise. if you’re not cis/het/white/abled, you probably don’t have many (if any) love stories in media that you can consider a fairytale. most of them end sadly. many of them are excessively edgy and nihilistic. nicholas sparks novels aren’t written about all of us. 

so like in the case of, i don’t know, soulmate AUs? you (an intellectual) might want to write 10 pages on why it’s a Bad Trope with Problematic™ Narrative Reliances, and Rote, Soulless Methods of Building Relationships, but you know what? some gay brown kid out there is reading about a world where they get to find the love of their life without any fear and pain involved. it’s escapism and wish-fulfillment, and they’re probably fully aware of it. again: nicholas sparks novels are not written about all of us. 

chances are, most people will never assume that they can walk into a flower shop and find the love of a lifetime behind the counter, neatly arranging bouquets. they’ve been reminded their whole lives that certain things for certain people don’t come easy. when you act like people will be given false expectations through cheesy stories, because life doesn’t work that way, you’re preaching to a very, very tired choir.

if somebody wants to write stories that makes the world more bearable for them, there’s nothing wrong with that. that is the opposite of damaging. leave those stories alone, lmfao. you think it’s boring? admit that you think it’s boring! move on! don’t try to frame it like it’s anti-progressive. 

Slash Fic Gothic

You have blond hair, he has brown hair. You always have blond hair, he always has brown hair. You dye your hair brown, but suddenly his hair is blond, and you feel as though maybe you are him, and he is you, and you have blond hair again, and he has brown hair.

His gaze is impossibly fond, his eyes are impossibly blue, he pulls you impossibly closer, your heart beats impossibly fast, the bulge in his pants is impossibly hard, he should maybe get that checked out.

You don’t remember ever working out and yet you look down and see you have a six pack. When you next see yourself in the mirror you have an eight pack. When he takes of your shirt you have ten, twelve abs. You’re scared to look again in case there are more.

His eyes change colour depending on his moods. At first you thought it was a trick of the light, but now you’re not so sure. They switch between blue, green and grey. Once you thought you saw a flicker of red. You make sure to kiss with your eyes closed now.

You’re white, and so is he. Sometimes he’s your enemy, but you still love him, don’t you? Of course, it makes sense. You’re not sure what you like about him, exactly, but there must be something, right? There’s this intangible thing between you, isn’t there? You feel like you may have more chemistry with your non-white friend, but that can’t be right.

You don’t remember taking your clothes off but you’re naked now. Well, all you remember is toeing out of your shoes. You always toe out of them, although you don’t quite know what that means.

Your pronouns mix into a blur and you no longer know where you end and he begins… You reach out your hand to his hand on his arm… your arm… his… You are sitting and he straddles you but is facing away… There are hands everywhere…

Unlikely Scifi Novels

WWC: Clearing up Misconceptions

Hi all. We’ve decided to address some common misconceptions we’ve seen within the Asks we receive.

1. The Magical Negro: Magical Negro doesn’t refer to a Black character having magical powers; it refers to the Black character being a “magical” force in the White person’s character arc (whether the magic is literal or figurative.)

If you have a Black character (with or without) magical powers who has no agency or motivation other than using those powers (whether it be wisdom or actual magic) only to save White characters, you may be falling into the “magical negro trope.”

See the Magical Negro tag for more details and on how to avoid this trope.

2. Names. We get a lot of questions asking about specific names that we can’t really answer. While it’s true that some cultures that have specific naming traditions, not all people within that culture participate in these naming traditions.

A simple google search on “specific group” + naming conventions would be a good place to start. But remember, for every one person who follows traditional naming conventions, there is another who doesn’t. 

3.“How do I write X group?” is too general to answer EASILY, especially from people volunteering their time on the internet. I mean, try answering that question for your own group! See how it’s hard to know where to start? Do a little research first, read some blogs or literature by people in the group, then come back with specific questions.

"What are some things you wish writers not in your group would stop doing when writing your group?" is a more effective question, if you must be general.

4. People of Color are not a monolith. Here at WWC, we get a lot of questions saying “I was thinking of making my character a PoC, what are some tropes to avoid?” or “My PoC character does X, Y, and Z. Is that bad?”

First of all, people of color are not a one size fits all category and the word is not interchangeable with one specific group of people. We use it when we are referring to general or encompassing topics, but if you want a true answer to these types of questions, you need to be more specific. Also note that just stating “biracial” doesn’t denote any race.

Thanks for reading!

—WWC