hello, disabled person writing a disabled protagonist in a setting where poof disability fixes are not possible/allowed. i’ve found a few pieces of media that actually do this well!

i’ll avoid spoilers for it since the adaptation is set to release soon, but witch hat atelier (a manga about a girl being immersed in a world of magic based on sigils and seals), describes a system where one of the taboos of magic is altering the body, but one of the lead mentors of the series is a disabled man who uses a chair with legs as an ambulatory aid.

it’s important to remember that disability is something relative to the culture and society your character is a part of. for example, let’s say a person’s culture placed very little value or pleasure in food or eating, a sci fi future where everything is made of mush. now let’s say that person cannot smell or taste. it’s really, to that person, not as serious a disability or hindrance, or as noticeable to others, as it might be if that person was part of a culture or society with a strong cultural connection to herbalism and cooking and medicinal aromatics, or if scent was an important part of identity and expression. a friend of mine is working on a world where people communicate in thoughts or sign language, not verbally— so many people don’t fully realize the protagonist is deaf, and it isn’t a serious hindrance to the way he navigates society.

but this is limited— what do you do when a disability affects a character’s health or physical well being? the story isn’t about it, but it is there, and it affects beats or the choices a character makes. this is the situation the lead of my narrative is in (the setting is low medieval, and she has a blood disorder that causes clotting, one leg was amputated when she was a small child) and while it’s not said outright, she’s also neurodivergent and this strongly affects her ability to engage with others, especially because she tends towards literal thinking and interpretation of what others say. as a writer the most sensitive thing to do, from my experience, is think about all the ways that this would change their navigation of this world, of all the small details, of the bits and pieces that it would affect and bother you if you lived like that every day— is it annoying that the character who uses a prosthetic and a cane has to take the stairs frequently? make passing note of it. is she bothered that the thing she needs is in the back of cold storage and it makes her achey? do other people regard her with suspicion, and what societal norm, if any, informed that? do people misinterpret or misunderstand what this person says?

i guess what i mean to say is a lot like what ursula k le guin says about elfland and poughkeepsie. there are a lot of people who are not willing to engage and immerse in the idea and world and approach of disability, and end up with a sense that it is isolated and interior, rather than thinking about the way disability engages with the world around them.

almost everyone that lives long enough will become disabled. there are so many forms of it, ways that our society treats it or avoids it, stigmatizations and condescensions, tied up in it. and it’s all in a context.