There are many reasons I’m utterly disgusted with the direction that an entertainment industry which is almost the only viable socialization many disabled people have, is making it even harder to, without ‘houseruling’ properly represent characters with distinctly imbalanced abilities as potential heroes. Yes, I know some people get tired of my argument, but I’m going to make it again, and make it clearly. You see, if we have to *houserule* ourselves into a game, because, RAW we cannot be counted ‘heroes’, we aren’t being represented, and we aren’t being seen. And the last is scarily important, not only for *us* to see ourselves, but for the rest of the world to start seeing that we have value.
It's only been a handful of years since Fox News was trying to say that poor people having a refrigerator and a microwave meant that they weren’t ‘really poor’, or ‘really needy’. I regularly end up encountering people online in intellectual discussions (wherein I usually am more than capable) who seem to think that my relying on disability payments to survive, when I cannot work a standard job is ‘stealing from them’. I often see people judging me when I walk into a store, force an electrical shopping cart out of where they’ve been jammed so that they’re otherwise unable to be gotten so that I can ride it. Yes, I’m physically strong enough to pull it out a few feet. One of the many things that I deal with is asthma, as well as severe coordination issues that often leave me slipping and falling unexpectedly. But, because I don’t ‘look disabled’, people act like I’m some kind of monster taking services from other people. And that’s why letting *them* see that we come in all forms, and can be the pivot ‘hero’ position in a difficult situation is important. If they do not see us as having a valid, viable, part of their regular media consumption, they’re likely to assume that we’re worthless, helpless, a waste of space and drain on resources from ‘normal people’.
When you cannot see someone else as a valuable and valid person, that’s when and where abuse comes in. If people do not regularly see that broad judgments about a person’s abilities is wrong, they won’t ever learn to value those who are unlike them. It creates or increases poor treatment of those othered, and that is never a good society. So, really, it is in everyone’s best interests to start showing people of mixed abilities in media forms, and yes, gaming is a media form.
I personally feel disenfranchised by the hobby of roleplaying as a whole because it’s so much harder, without instituting house rules (which doesn’t get the spotlight that’s needed on the issue) to play a character with a realistic (as in, mimicking our real world) set of strengths and weaknesses. I feel betrayed when I see a major company claim that they’re ‘promoting diversity’ but have built rules around systems that do not allow for characters to have those significant differences in ability. And, further, I feel that I should no longer financially support an industry that is silently sending the message to the world that *I* and those like me are not worthwhile, that we’re worthless, and a waste of resources. Considering how much money I put into ttrpgs over the years, I’d say that the industry has benefited from my support. I’m certainly not the only one who feels this way, either. We’re tired of being told that we’re ‘too much effort’, when we’ve been having to adapt to a world our bodies and minds aren’t built for. We’re the ones who have been making adjustments for others, and the ones we’ve been making adjustments for are the ‘normals’. It’s time that we got some reciprocity.
As for showing absolute viable disabled characters? I do that, repeatedly in my writing. Of characters in books I already released (self-published on amazon), I have quite a few characters with distinct limitations, differences. Heck, the very first of my books, Dragon Fang, Phoenix Fire, had the battle priest who was also the tactician of the group having the distinct limitation of being both near-sighted and night-blind. More, that the big trial he had to pass when they’d gone into the tomb of the Dragonmage? He had to face the weaknesses of his faith wherein he could summon *no light*, and had to just have faith as he moved, to recognize that sometimes we don’t have the answers, or can’t use them. But he’s far from the only one.
Selah Calasti spent the time from about 2 years old to her mid 30s suffering from a curse which left her physically withered to the extent that she had little muscle mass, almost no fat at all on her body. Her stats would have had at most a 6 in both str and con, average dex at that time, and a penalty to charisma due to the physical appearance her curse left her with. Years before they found a way to remove the curse, she saved *twice* saved the lives of both a man who was treated as the son of two gods (Kelu’s status there was ‘odd’) and her own husband, not with strength, but learning how to act from a position of weakness, and find ideas, methodology, which worked with her limited abilities, and did all of that within about a 2 month span. By the time she’d had the curse removed, she’d faced death so many times that she was no longer fazed by the idea of dying, because she knew that she should have died many times already.
Beyond that, in books already released: Innovator Reliss, who had the minor disability of having lost the final joint of her pinky on one hand due to an accident when experimenting with a machine. Rhiann, son to Selah and Telin, lost his left foot just above the ankle due to a magically enhanced serpent’s bite, and lives with the limp and movement difficulties, despite having an extremely well-crafted prosthesis created by his adopted daughter, within finding out the truth of her knowledge. That prosthesis is actually melded to his leg, which helps, but is not perfect. His biological daughter, Yossa, was blind from birth, though later regained sight, and I went into the difficulties she had, when she and a cousin were torn from the world they knew and trying to find a way back, including her emotional response to a rescuer saying that she looked like her mom, and she told him that those words meant nothing to her, couldn’t mean anything to her. Because she had no reference point for it.
A couple of books I’m not ready to release have another character, Qedel, who is completely aphonic. Considered cursed by his mother, he’d had to be fostered to Rhiann, and honestly saved his mother from a very dangerous manipulatory game by some assassins from the same group which had initially trained both of his birth parents (they’d left that group long before his birth, changing sides pretty dramatically). Later in his timeline, you see him as a widower with a half-grown daughter, and he ends up courting and redeeming a demon cultist who hadn’t had a choice in what she’d become. Yes, a *mute* person courting, and who has a half-grown daughter that he’s raising, and trying to get things to work out.
So my upset at games refusing to show us without sugar-coating us if we even appear makes a lot of sense. I want us to be seen, accepted, as what we are, and the most important stage in that is to show people that we can be capable, heroic, as we are, and that recognizing that the world is not fair is the best first step in making it a touch fairer. I’m tired of being told that I’m ‘too much effort’. I’ve spent my life trying to cater to normal people, and I’m no longer going to be supporting organizations which pretend to be ‘diverse’ while not supporting our visibility or existence as viable people.
In the end, it's this simple: if we are not allowed at the gaming table without having to 'pretend to be normal', we're not invited in the first place. If we aren't treated as equals, including equal access and appearance, you aren't supporting true diversity. Just as, being a left-handed person, I'm treated as a second-class citizen by companies making a lot of physical tools, I'm being treated as a second-class citizen by companies that do not make accessibility and representation the default, rather than an 'accommodation'.
