This is a great post. I spent a lot of time working on a 15K fic about disability recently, and I tried to do a good deal of research into things like this before I started, to make sure I didn't fail. The H/C tropes, and how to avert them were heavily on my mind.
The character I worked with was Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. In the story, she was training on a planet where she doesn't have powers (as they do in the comics sometimes), went swimming, and injured her neck diving into shallow water. The accident left her with a C4 spinal cord injury, and she was paralyzed from the shoulders down.
I actually wound up writing a lot of the same things into the story that you talk about here. There was a romantic/pairing element to the story (with Wonder Girl), but they were in a romantic relationship before the accident and they stay together, working out issues with their relationship and figuring out the physical part (although not anything beyond PG-13). It's a sci-fi fandom, obviously, so I did include a lot of stuff about Superman trying to develop a "miracle cure" for her. They just didn't work, and Kara was forced to slowly adapt to her disability, such as learning to drive a wheelchair via sip-and-puff. I ended the fic with acknowledging that Superman was still trying to come up with the cure, but by then Kara had adjusted and was going to be okay either way, despite that she still had no movement below her shoulders. There was even some action stuff where she got to play the hero using her mind.
There was some ableist language in the fic by the disabled character, just because it felt right during those early periods of intense anger that are pretty common in situations like this. But overall, I'm really glad I tried to read a lot of meta on disability fic before tackling it. I didn't get too many reviews, but those I did seemed to think I did a good job with those elements.
So in conclusion, thanks for writing this - both the commenter and the OP. There are those "disability fic" writers out there who really try to do a good, respectful job, and we appreciate it immensely.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-08-13 08:08 pm (UTC)The character I worked with was Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. In the story, she was training on a planet where she doesn't have powers (as they do in the comics sometimes), went swimming, and injured her neck diving into shallow water. The accident left her with a C4 spinal cord injury, and she was paralyzed from the shoulders down.
I actually wound up writing a lot of the same things into the story that you talk about here. There was a romantic/pairing element to the story (with Wonder Girl), but they were in a romantic relationship before the accident and they stay together, working out issues with their relationship and figuring out the physical part (although not anything beyond PG-13). It's a sci-fi fandom, obviously, so I did include a lot of stuff about Superman trying to develop a "miracle cure" for her. They just didn't work, and Kara was forced to slowly adapt to her disability, such as learning to drive a wheelchair via sip-and-puff. I ended the fic with acknowledging that Superman was still trying to come up with the cure, but by then Kara had adjusted and was going to be okay either way, despite that she still had no movement below her shoulders. There was even some action stuff where she got to play the hero using her mind.
There was some ableist language in the fic by the disabled character, just because it felt right during those early periods of intense anger that are pretty common in situations like this. But overall, I'm really glad I tried to read a lot of meta on disability fic before tackling it. I didn't get too many reviews, but those I did seemed to think I did a good job with those elements.
So in conclusion, thanks for writing this - both the commenter and the OP. There are those "disability fic" writers out there who really try to do a good, respectful job, and we appreciate it immensely.