Comments | upstart_crow: For WisCon Chronicles 7: Disability-friendly SF/F/H

upstart_crow

For WisCon Chronicles 7: Disability-friendly SF/F/H

Jul 31, 2012 01:46

So I've been busy with a number of projects, including keeping my head above water as a freelancer and putting together WisCon Chronicles 7, which is, as you may have noted, disability-themed ( Read more... )

Comments 21

dramaturgca July 31 2012, 07:06:09 UTC

Oracle in DC Comics has a physical disability and is one of the strongest best loved characters.

upstart_crow July 31 2012, 17:30:15 UTC

Before the reboot though, yes? I don't really follow DC but from what I understand, they retconned that?

corinneduyvis July 31 2012, 19:58:44 UTC

They did. She's back to being Batgirl now. (Apparently in this new history, she *was* in a wheelchair for a bit, but she's healed now. Sigh.)

sovay July 31 2012, 07:13:33 UTC

(Wembly and Boober)

Boober was my favorite character from that show. I liked finding out he evolved from a remark Dave Goelz made about working on The Muppet Show: he was so busy, all he had time to worry about was death and laundry.

The floor is yours!

Kyle Murchison Booth, protagonist of the short stories collected in Sarah Monette's The Bone Key (2007) and Unnatural Creatures (2011). He is desperately uncomfortable in his own skin and even worse around other people and this would be true even if he were insensible to the supernatural influences that permeate his world; as it is, he is keenly tuned in to them and they don't help. He is still the sort of person who deals better with malevolent hauntings than with any social function you care to name. Regardless of his relevance to this discussion, if you haven't read either collection, you should both. They're the work of hers I like best by miles.

I thought also of Fujimoto from Ponyo on the Cliff (2008), but he may only be overprotective and high-strung and sympathetic, at ( ... )

Omaha! bibliofile July 31 2012, 08:00:54 UTC

Omaha the Cat Dancer, comic for adults by Reed Waller & Kate Worley. http://www.omahathecatdancer.com/

The Indecent Publications Tribunal of New Zealand declared Omaha okay for sale in NZ, stating: "Given…the dominant effect of these books as intelligent, reasoned social commentary, their social and artistic merit, their educative rather than corrupting influence, and their honest portrayals of human relationships, particularly those involving disabled people and gays, it cannot be said that anything in these books would be injurious to the public good.”

dichroic July 31 2012, 11:46:10 UTC

Well, there's Diane Duane's "A Wizard Alone", in the Young Wizards series. On the one hand, to some degree it's *about* his autism, which might not be quite what you want. On the other, he's a good guy with real power, and when he's freed from the chains that bind him, it isn't the autism.

prezzey July 31 2012, 15:01:02 UTC

I really disliked that one, IMO it really misrepresents autism and the experience of being autistic (desert scene? lol?). Google it, I'm not alone with my opinion.

mariness July 31 2012, 12:40:06 UTC

This is slightly self-serving, I realize, but I have a positively depicted disabled protagonist in this story, Trickster:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ness_06_11/

On a less self-serving note, the television show Alphas features a character with autism, played by Gary Bell. I don't know anything about actual autism, so I don't know how accurate the depiction is (I'm guessing not very) but the character is depicted as both useful and annoying, his autism is treated matter of factly, and he is not an object of pity.

HBO's Carnivale had a blind character who was also one of the carnival psychics. I am totally blanking on the name.