How do you handle disability and difference in you fics?

[K_S]

Be it learning, physical, emotional, or cognitive... How do your works show, deal, or talk about disability or difference?

Anything you hope to see or tried to do on this topic in your own works? See an awesome example in someone elses? This can also be a place to share and care.

Helpful resources also welcome.


From my own work...

Ive tackled PTSD in many characters. All the cast in "roost" have serious psychological issues theyre trying to deal with as well as just dealing with the new crisis that are cropping up. Green and silver have flashbacks and dissociation episodes for example. Unfortunatly they arent in a place to get much treatment but that likely will change later in the story.

Silvers scenes in "transversal" that I am rewriting show some of his trauma and I try to show what child trauma looks like vs gios very adult version of it. Gios got plans to haul his kid to therepy once they both get out but survivals an immediate concern still hes trying to help on his own... and starting to realized how damaged he is from his own life choices and that he might not be that good at helping that hed like to be..

Physical disability hasn't been mentioned in my pokemon fics yet... But one of my characters, Yashin, from TOS fanfic has chronic fatigue, limited mobility, and chronic pain, due to an arcane illness he contracted that has no cure. Its end results are worse then death (turning into a monster actually) and hes on treatments to buy time/quality of life but is aware at age 15 hes going to make it to 35 best case scenario and likely going to lose his ability to walk in a few years... Hes taking it as well as he can and has a reliable support. Family. Friends. And a screw fate I am going to be useful/do good until my last day just watch me attitude... But he also gets low periods of hopelessness/exasperation as his symptoms spike.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

One of the biggest issues in Obsession is Jirarudan's undiagnosed autism. Considering that the story as it is right now is still the early 1980s, and he likely wouldn't see a shrink unless he was forced to (idk maybe he's brought up for a mental assessment after the events of the movie), there's no way he would ever have a diagnosis during the events of the story.

It impacts his relationships and how he sees and interprets the world. He reads people by rote, looking at how they act and their expressions and comparing them to what he's studied. If someone's expression is outside what he's researched, he's usually stymied by them and can't make sense of them.

Those studies included looking at photographs that are said to typify different expressions, and copying the expressions himself in a mirror to understand how to do them. And usually it's enough to pass through society, especially with his comportment training.

But on a more personal level, he doesn't get a lot. Veronica needs serious help and he doesn't understand that, just chalks her behavior up to being something he doesn't understand. Asaph is...well, if you read chapter 32 then you know the sort of stuff he's been doing and how manipulative he's gotten, and Jirarudan doesn't pick up on that.

 

[Katanaeyegaming]

I handle it as a challenge for the characters to overcome and build from.

PTSD is very common in my characters as is some physical disabilities.

I can't stand people spreading these things in a bad light. It's distasteful.