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How to write a cane user character

(Written by a cane user)

A few months ago, I wrote a small guide on good disabled characters and why they were good that gathered quite the attention, and I thought that doing another more specific guide this time would be interesting for writers or just people that are curious ! This guide will include general informations, some things to do, some things to avoid and some ideas that might revolve cane users's lives.

Things to know about cane users

Cane users are pretty diverse, and putting us in little boxes usually isn't the best idea if you want to make a character that has substance and isn't just "the disabled one". Here some infos about cane users that might be helpful knowledge !

Canes don't have ages. Most cane users in media are portrayed to be old, but truly, anyone can have the need to wield a cane ! I've been using mine ever since I was 17.

Can users can have a large variety of problems for their canes. Some canes are used to avoid pain from effort. Some canes are used for balance purposes. Some canes are to make walking less exhausting (works the same as walking sticks !) And sometimes, it's multiple problems at once.

Not everyone needs their cane 24/7. Some always need it, some can make small efforts without it but overall often need it, and some people, like me, can spend quite a lot of time without it. I almost never use my cane in my house, and mostly take it outside !

People with canes can run. We're not necessarily slow, I'm even faster than a lot of my friends.

Not using a cane can come with consequences, but not always. Some people might be able to walk without a cane but then suffer horrible consequences, but for others, canes are just a commodity for specific occasions.

Canes don't have to be looked down upon. Look at some characters with canes that look cool as hell ! Arsène Lupin, Roguefort Cookie, Brook ... Their canes serve their style !

We can be pretty healthy. Some people can have canes just because they were born with a bent leg and that's it. Our cane doesn't define our health status.

Canes aren't a curse. Think of them as something positive. It's a tool to make our lives better. You don't see someone sitting on a chair and think "awh, it's sad that they need a chair". It's more something like "hey it's cool that this chair is here so they can sit down"

Things to do

Make them use their cane. And when I mean use, I mean that canes are just funky long sticks usually made out of metal. Have fun with it ! Let them use it as a weapon ! Trust me, one hit in the knees with a cane and you're DOWN. Use it to reach stuff that's too high for everyone ! Have fun. Be creative.

Let them decorate their cane. It's an extension of their body ! You usually put on clothes that you like, don't you ? It's the same for a cane. If they like cutesy stuff, let them paint in it pastel colors ! If they like a more flashy style, add some stickers on it ! If they're a fancy person, give them a beautiful crafted cane with jewels on it !

You can make them a little shy or uneasy about their cane. Some people don't feel worthy of confident enough to wield one. It's not rare to see people think they're "not disabled enough to do so"

But on the other hand, you can do the complete opposite !! Make them proud of that cane ! Make them act like they're feeling pretty and more confident with it ! One thing i like to think about with my own cane is that I look like a cool gentleman. That boosted my confidence immensely.

Things to avoid

Don't make it their whole world. And by that, I do not mean that their cane shouldn't be a defining trait of their personality. Think of Toph from ATLA. She is blind, and you usually can't think of her character without describing her as blind. However, that isn't her entire personality trait. Make cane users have a goal in life, friends who enjoy them for who they are and not just pity them, have fun ... Don't just make them the disabled one.

Don't try to make the character's life just a plain disaster unless it's the focus of your story and you really know what you're talking about. Having a character who's always in pain, who feels bad about relying on their cane and/or who's angry at the entire world for being disabled is a REALLY tricky subject to use if you don't want them to be either a mass of unhappiness and angst for no good reason or some inspirational porn of the character who inside is deeply tortured but outside keeps up a facade because they shouldn't cry to avoid making others uneasy.

Do not, and I repeat, do NOT try to heal them, especially in a magical way. Bad idea. A lot of disabled people's goal isn't to be healed. It's to live a normal life. Making it so the ultimate goal for them is to be healed makes it as if they were worthless as long as they were disabled. Making their situation better physically or mentally is one thing. Curing them completely is really bad. "But some disabled folks want to be cured !" True, true. But if you are able bodied, I'm not sure if you can have the right mind to understand all of the complex details about this situation that leads to someone's life choices and the end result may look like you think the only thing that can make disabled people happy is being freed from their condition. I think it's best to just avoid it altogether. If you need a more nuanced idea, try to give them a solution that still has a few downs ! For exemple, a prosthetic that feels like a real arm, acts like a real arm and basically replaces it perfectly is a full cure. But a prosthetic that takes time to adjust to, needs repairs sometimes and doesn't look 100% like an arm can be a better narrative choice

Smaller thing, but don't make the handle uneasy to wield if you draw the character design. You can decorate most of the cane, but if you have chunky spiky decorations on the place you're supposed to clench your hand over, you're gonna hurt yourself. I've seen quite a lot of jewel handles or sculpted metal handles and usually their not good. If it's detailed metal, your hand will end up cramped in little parts and it can hurt. If it's a jewel, it's so easy for it to slip out of your hand it's unpractical.

List of tropes/ideas of scenes/details about canes to help you write new situations !

If you walk with a cane during winter, you can't put your hand in your jacket to get warm and there's a high chance your hand will get freezing. So after a long walk, you get an excuse for another character to hold their hand and warm them up.

If the handle is metallic, you get the opposite problem during summer. You can burn yourself so easy ! Easy accident if you want someone to help and get closer to the disabled person without it necessarily involving their disability.

Canes are SUPER useful when you're walking upon heights. They make things really easy, just like hiking poles on mountains ! I live on volcanoes and whenever we clim on a harsh slope, I'm always the first to get up there. Good moment for your character to get a boost of confidence if they get all the way up somewhere before their friends !

The first time using your cane feels magical. If you have chronic pains, it makes you feel like your pain disapear. If you can't walk right, it feels like everything is suddenly alright. The moment where a character chooses to wield a cane can be huge for character development. It's a moment of fear because of the impact a cane has on their appearance, but also a moment of confidence and relief.

Canes fall. All the time. And after a while, it becomes fucking comical. Trust me, putting a cane against the wall, seeing it fall and doing it three times again in a row while it doesn't want to stay up makes you embarrassed but also makes you want to laugh because of how stupid it looks.

When you get a cane, you stop being invisible. When you walk outside, generally speaking, people don't look at you. They don't care about you. But when you get a cane, people start to stare at you for no other reasons that you have a cane. Half of them are just curious, especially if you're young. The other half has a very specific look. The "oh, you poor thing" look. Which is, trust me, particularly awful to get, especially when you're just existing and doing nothing special. How does your character react to this ? How do they feel about it ?

I believe that is all I had in mind. I may add some more details in the future if I get other ideas, but this should already be a good start. I would be thrilled to answer questions if you have some, either in my askbox or through DMs.

I will tag this post with characters holding canes that aren't necessarily considered cane users but that some people may be interested in writing as such. Feel free to tell me if you'd like to see tags being added !

Edit : I'm highly encouraging everyone to look at the tag section under this post where a lot of other can users are sharing their experiences !!

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• Episode 1 • Posted March 2nd, 2022 •

Emmy's Night at the Circus

It was a hot and humid evening, and young eight-year-old Emmy, having come to the carnival to see the Circus of Nox's last show of the night with her mother Aneta, excitedly bounced up and down at the stand of a carnival game, this was her third try to win a stuffed elephant for knocking down a tower of bottles with a baseball. She was handed a new ball, got herself ready, and then threw it with all of her might... and missed. The worker in the stand apologized, and her mother gently grasped her hand and told her she would buy her cotton candy. Emmy reluctantly accepted. The night was growing a bit later now, and it seemed a few things were beginning to pack up for the night. Even with the temperature dropping a bit, it was still a very warm night. At the cotton candy stand, Emmy stood a bit stubbornly. She looked around herself, and some activity caught her eye. A tent closer to the big top, tucked into the back, with a sign reading "FREAKSHOW! ODDITIES AND CURIOSITIES!" in a rather playful font. Out of the tent ran two older preteen boys, laughing and commenting about some "thing" they saw inside. She became very curious and ran over to the tent. There was a sign hung on a chain in front of the opening that the older boys had lifted and ducked under. The sign read, "Closed, On Break".

There was a gust of unusually cool air coming from beneath the curtains. Emmy paused, welcoming the difference in temperature. She became curious about the interior of this rather well decorated small tent, and with the cool air being an additional draw, she approached, lifted the curtain, and looked inside. Walls had been set up on opposite sides, with the front and back having an entrance and exit, with shelves set up against each wall, and an individual stand in the middle of the tent. Along the shelves were lines of jars, odd boxes, and various items. Sitting at the back of the tent was a rather large electrical fan, set at a gentle speed. Emmy walked into the tent hesitantly, she was nervous but much too curious to resist. As she walked slowly, she saw that the jars contained mostly odd aquatic creatures, all of which she hadn't even heard of in school yet, some of which she didn't wish to approach. One fish with particularly iridescent scales caught her attention, they looked as if made of glittering diamonds, and she stepped up to it for a closer look. She wondered at the creature. She then glanced to the side of it, and its neighboring creature was not quite so pleasant, propped up on a box, it looked like a fish with a human face. She backed up in repulsion. Looking around her, up on the walls, hung too high for a child her height to get a good look at, were curious artifacts and a couple of what looked like the heads of animals with bizarre deformations. Multiple features such as noses, sets of eyes, or even heads. Mounts of creatures mixed with other creatures. Pieces of what must have been fearsome beasts, preserved in more jars. She started to become very unsettled by the things in that tent. She then heard a soft "Meow?", and turned to see a black cat with tuxedo-like white markings, wearing a collar.

Eager for pleasant interaction, she followed the cat out of the tent's exit and, without noticing, bumped into the back of a small person who was standing talking to someone else just outside. The person, only roughly a foot taller than her, turned and when she looked at their face, the face of a young canine was there instead of that of a human child. She gasped and stumbled to the side. It was the wolf boy she had seen in the posters around the carnival. "Hey! are you okay kid?" He spoke. Next to him stood something even scarier - A bizarre, startling creature that had features of multiple animals. The size of a dog, with a deer's back legs, paws on its front legs, tail and head like a fox, a pair of bat wings, antlers upon its head, and most disturbingly, a third eye in the middle of its forehead. Emmy let out a small scream and ran, running further to the back of the circus, where only those who worked for the circus went, among the caravans and cars. She stumbled, and fell, looking around her, she realized she was lost. She began to cry loudly, bawling for her mother. A gentle hand touched her shoulder, she looked and saw the lady from the fortune teller poster. Esmeralda, in her ornate clothing, smiled warmly as she knelt down to the little girl. "Hiya, sweetie, are you lost?"

Emmy nodded through her tears. Suddenly, the dog boy came running, stopping as he saw Esmeralda helping the little girl stand up. "Oh good, you got her." He said. Emmy shrunk away from him a bit. "Easy, Paxton, she's scared..." Esmeralda said softly as she held her hand. Then, the ringmaster from earlier, Elijah Nox, came up to them, accompanied by the strange deer creature and another lady, his wife Molly Nox. "Looks like someone got a little lost, eh?" Elijah said in his slightly gravelly voice. Molly approached the girl with open arms. "Oh little darlin', come here, we'll make those scrapes all better, and find your momma for you, okay?" She was so warm and welcoming, that Emmy let Esmeralda pass her hand to Molly's. As she approached, she looked over at the deer-like creature and cringed a little bit. Elijah noticed this. "Are you scared of little ole Whimsy?" He said, as gently as he could sound. He crouched down to her level, then looked to the animal named Whimsy and called it over to him. It approached slowly. "What's yer name, kiddo?" He asked the little girl. "Emmy Melnyk..." She said hesitantly. "Emmy, this is Whimsy. I promise ya she's gentle as a lamb." Whimsy walked up closer to Emmy as he said that. "Can I have your hand?" Elijah asked. Emmy hesitantly obliged and closed her eyes out of nervousness. Very soon she felt a cold nose, followed by soft fur, followed by the wet touch of a deer-like tongue. Emmy opened her eyes to see Whimsy gently nuzzling and licking her hand, and she couldn't help but giggle. The little creature didn't seem so scary anymore, even when she blinked all three of her big eyes at the little girl. And everything else didn't seem quite so scary anymore, either.

Back behind the big top, Emmy sat on a stool, her legs dangling. Molly proceeded to bandage the girl's knee. "There we go, missy... All better." She said with a smile. "Thank you..." Emmy said, now smiling. "Of course, dear. But you have to stay by your mother from here on out, okay?" Molly requested. Emmy smiled and nodded. As if on cue, her mother came through the large curtains at that moment, "Emmy!" She said with relief and excitement. "Mommy!" The little girl cheered as she hopped off the stool and ran to her mother, into a tight embrace. Molly couldn't help but smile. Beside the mother came Willy, the young clown, and Elijah. Emmy's mother looked to Elijah and then to Molly, "Thank you so very much for finding her... I don't know how to repay you for it." She said. "No payment needed, dear." Molly said. "Nah. In fact..." Elijah said, reaching into his sleeve. "What would this be stuck in here?" He said playfully, shaking out a very small stuffed toy elephant. He gave the toy to Emmy, who cheered. "Oh thank you thank you!" She smiled and hugged the toy. "You are very dear people. Thank you." The mother said as she then left with Emmy, holding her hand. As Emmy looked back as they left, she saw Elijah hug his wife. They were kind. They weren't scary like some people say, they were just a family. They weren't like rumor said they were, and Emmy would remember that, and this night, forever.

Thank you very much for reading! This is the very first story of a series. More is in the works!

Logo Art and Story by @werifesteria-art

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

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~• A Family of Misfits •~

Elijah Nox, a small time ringmaster, could be seen as a bit of a graceless man. And yet, he means well, and his kindness towards the troupe of his rather small show is envied by those under the employ of some other proprietors, especially those employed by his deceitful rival, Alexander "The Great" Dagny. During the winter, he and some of his troupe and their small but unique menagerie spend the colder months at his wife Molly's family farm. But as soon as warmer months roll around, they're off again. to travel from place to place, putting on a show and exhibiting Elijah's collection of oddities. all the while seeing new and interesting places along the way.

There is more to be seen, coming very very soon! Please do check back!

Logo Art by @werifesteria-art

Dividers by @firefly-graphics