Oh, thankyou for writing this. I was just pondering these issues today: one of my protagonists is chronically ill, and I'm trying to figure out how to have her take charge of her life more (mostly for reasons unrelated to health) and have SOME improvement in her condition without it being "And then she got a positive attitude and got better and lived happily ever after, the end!". It doesn't help that I've only been really debilitatingly ill for a year and a bit so am still working through a lot of internalised unchallenged ableist attitudes myself. But yes, while I haven't got any negative feedback on the illness-related parts of my fic yet, I do wonder how people will react at the end when she (spoilers!) neither gets (significantly) better nor dies.
A fic I read which I felt did a good job of not falling into any of these traps is Finding Himself, a HP AU where Cedric doesn't die but is disabled by the confrontation with Voldemort (and then saves the day! And finds love! And has a cool pet raccoon!...and is maybe a teeny bit of a Gary Stu :) But he doesn't get better!)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-09-14 01:17 am (UTC)A fic I read which I felt did a good job of not falling into any of these traps is Finding Himself, a HP AU where Cedric doesn't die but is disabled by the confrontation with Voldemort (and then saves the day! And finds love! And has a cool pet raccoon!...and is maybe a teeny bit of a Gary Stu :) But he doesn't get better!)