Do Disabled People Belong in Sci-Fi/Fantasy?

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 ma

kes 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 fanta

sy 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 be

cause 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 r

ight 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 r

easonable 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 kind

s 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 hav

e 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 desp

ite 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. An

d — 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 comeba

ck 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 remembe

r 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 t

he 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: V

oyager 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 i

t 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 t

he 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 piss

y entitlement, and your fragile, feeble, one-dimensional  reading comprehension the fuck to yourself.