#character disability headcanons

[the-maddened-hatter]

Ngl poof floated lower than his parents as a baby in the original seried too

Interesting! Like I said it could easily be nothing more than an animation choice, but it would be interesting if it ends up being significant!

[eldritch-ace]

I present some nerdy prudes (oh and Max)

(I really wanted to take a shot at giving them all more than 1-3ish outfits that I think fit their styles)

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

It’s disability pride month, you know what that means, you are now legally obligated to make all of your favorite characters disabled

[fishblings]

My headcanons for Ruth! I put her in a wheelchair cuz she deserves it <3

[keebiecoo]

I really do think the reason we never see the others communicate with Curly post-crash is because of us seeing through the eyes of Jimmy, who is such an ass he couldn't even be bothered to listen when Anya told him how their improvized AAC works.

Anyway, AAC user here, coming at you with the Curly headcanons.

I think in their situation, they wouldn't have buttons or tablets or anything to give him, so it would be fully gestural AAC. Since he can't really move his jaw & neck, & he's usually lying more on his left side, I think he would "nod or shake" his right arm for yes & no, & he'd point using his eye or whichever limb is easiest at that moment.

I also think most of the crew would know some basic morse code already from working out in the middle of nowhere on a cargo ship (at least that's my experience) & he would use that sometimes by making verbal noises or by tapping one of his limbs, but they'd probably mainly use the "yes/no" style to make it easier for Curly because the morse code method would probably be pretty uncomfortable & frustrating for him, & I think the others would understand that & try not to push him.

I think they'd eventually figure out some "house sign" gestures that would mean specific things that Curly thinks about a lot. Probably because it's Curly, one would be "sorry", another would be "is everyone safe?" & when he's in more pain than usual, he can't really think straight, so he just makes upset noises, & all of them know that means he needs his medicine & some rest.

[marlshroom]

[cupidsbeaux]

it's my personal belief that Gillion needs glasses while on land but doesn't realize his vision is even different from everyone else's.

in the water he sees great! it's what tritons are made to do! but above water things are blurry and he's nearsighted. tritons can survive on land, but it's not an ideal situation (as shown by the fact that Gillion sleeps in barrels and bathtubs). he assumes that's just how land creatures are because how would he know any better? this is just another challenge that he's willing to face.

so yeah, he's totally visually impaired. lots of fish and amphibians can't see well outside of water, and i'm choosing to believe that Gillion is the same way.

[aggro-my-beloved]

yeah non-hetero redacted characters are cool and everything but…

autistic!david?!?

adhd!asher?

chronicpain!milo??

deaf/hoh!huxley?!

ocd!lasko???

bipolar!damien?

schizophrenic!gavin?!

it’s pride disability month for crying out loud, don’t let the inclusivity stop at sexuality!

[varyathevillain]

no joke but what I really want for Buddy Daddies as a fandom is to make fanart and fanfic post present time ep12 where Rei wears an arm orthosis when working.

I think varied disability aids being represented would be fantastic, and personally would write Rei as someone being deeply proud of something he's done for his family, but also understanding with time that using an orthosis also helps him at work and in raising Miri. with a giant portion of mobility/motorics aids being represented by prosthetics, seeing more variety and exploring it in fiction would also help making a step in normalising disability treatments.

[futuristichedge]

Some more aggie doodles

[heimeldat]

I've been thinking about how often Five falls over and the way he just sort of collapses like his legs stopped working, and I've ended up with a new headcanon that his legs do just stop working sometimes. He's the only Doctor whose regeneration came so close to failing, and that's got to have some side effects. His new body got a few wires crossed, and sometimes there's a brief interruption of signal from brain to limbs that makes his legs give out without warning for a second. He wears some sort of fancy gadget under his clothes that usually compensates for the signal interruption and keeps him on his feet, but it's not 100% effective, so when he's under stress or in pain or for whatever reason his nervous system is under more strain than usual, he still has a tendency to just fall over.

[the-maddened-hatter]

I made a version with forearm crutches just for fun and ngl it's kind of a slay for him

Hero Forge Peri (FOP)

I'm not totally happy with the way his face came out, and if they end up doing hair closer to his he'll get this style replaced, but I'm pretty happy with the threads, wings, and his cane! (and the perfect lemon cupcake!)

[howlsofbloodhounds]

This is something I’ve been turning over in my head so I’ll just make a poll out of it.

Very high as in cannot live on his own, take care of himself, or survive/thrive/live without support in any meaningful capacity. And could be an active/passive danger to himself/others.

[saturnniidae]

you say you have disabled hiccup headcanons? :3 *ears get really reall big. how are they doing that. why*

id love to hear them :D

Yes! Okay you've opened the floodgates my friend, I've been waiting to talk about this for so long.

He's autistic and has adhd! Obviously.

stims by tapping his fingers against things, waving his hands around, quickly taking apart and putting back together trinkets he's made, mimicking dragon noises (tho over time he's realized their vague meaning and stopped doing it randomly bc it was confusing them), running his hands over toothless' head to feel the texture of his scales and (when he was younger) petting his fur vest

His 'obsession' with things (trying to one up viggo, and when he was working on his sword) is literally just him Hyperfocusing on things

Easily loses track of time when he's locked in (Hyperfocused) working on inventions

Has that random 'I need to info dump NOW' thing and wakes Astrid up in the middle of the night like to randomly talk about abnormal behavioral patterns in a new terror flock on berk and Astrids just like 'babe I love you but it's three am'

Dyspraxic. When he was a kid he spent so much time practicing coordination for things like learning to write then later working in the smithy, and almost gave up more than once before continuing out of spite.

immunocompromised. Like seriously Hiccup has a weak ass immune system and would get sick every winter as a little kid, to the point of it being fatal. The villagers would always talk in hushed tones (bc of stoick caught them they'd get yelled at) and wonder if that years gonna be the one where he doesn't make it but he always ended up pulling through (also out of spite)

After meeting Toothless he developed tinnitus. Didn't think much of the ringing in his ears at first bc. Yknow, dragon roared at full volume directly into his ear. Then it didn't go away and he was like 'huh maybe this is an issue' then it just got worse as he continued to be in close proximity to loud noises like, even more roaring, and explosions etc.

Despite this he's got that weird "I enjoy loud noises like dragons roaring and the sound the wind makes when you're flying at like 40 mph, but if I hear the noise of lots of overlapping voices all having different conversations in a large room I need to die."

Chronic pain. The obvious, phantom pains in his leg of course, but fun fact! The human body really doesn't like it when you've broken bones repeatedly especially in the same area, and with how much this kid gets thrown around in rtte it's safe to say he's broken, fractured, and dislocated a lot of things.

When he comes home/gets back to the edge after a long day of traumatic or ridiculous events, first thing he does is take Toothless' saddle and prosthetic tail fin off, then he tries to crash in his bed, but either Toothless doesn't let him sleep until he's taken his prosthesis off (I hate that he sleeps with it on in canon looking at it makes my body hurt imaging how uncomfortable that'd be), or Astrid comes in to make sure he does (and also to make sure he eats bc he forgets to wayyy too often).

Asthma. No explanation. I just know he has it

I hope not all of these came off as super angsty, they aren't meant to completely. Like sure it sucks but he's allowed to not be miserable constantly (disabled people are allowed to not be miserable constantly, it doesn't make our pain any less valid. We're allowed to be happy).

I just love when characters are permanently, physically, changed by their story. Tbh if it weren't for rampant ableism, I think a lot of characters in action/adventure stories would be disabled, but people aren't ready for that discussion yet. Ty for the ask I had so much fun answering and writing these!!!

[aroaceleovaldez]

what do you think about the charters (Nico, Percy and others) using mobility aids? (Especially after all the wars, fights, and other general injures they've probably got over the years)

I may be biased as someone who uses mobility aids, but I definitely think more demigods should have mobility aids in general. Nico in particular definitely could use it with how often he collapses and with how he generally exhibits some symptoms of low blood pressure at the very least if not POTS or EDS. I'm particularly biased to drawing him with my own crutches, lol (they have knee rests!!!!).

Also I always love seeing Grover with crutches. He was introduced as having a muscular disease - i know that's implied to be just cause he's actually a satyr, but also he's the only satyr to be described as "walking like every step hurt." So give him crutches!!!! He needs them!!!

I dont have any particularly strong opinions for other characters, except maybe usually giving Leo a prosthetic leg so he can thematically match his dad and sometimes crutches alongside that, and my friends and I have talked about Jason using a rollator before, particularly in Jason Lives!AUs. But regardless I always love discussing comorbidity between various other conditions and disabilities with ADHD and dyslexia and a not insignificant number of those comorbidities may require mobility aids. Functionally demigods are kind of more like intensive athletes with magic healthcare, and very few are on the level of like Nico where they've been through the wringer so much that it has lasting effects on them - actually very few in general seem to get a lot of physical damage that doesn't get healed quickly (i think in part cause most campers don't actually go on quests). mostly just psychological damage - so i don't think every demigod would need mobility aids, but like statistically there should probably be more just given the comorbidity stuff to begin with. Everybody who's come back from the dead should probably have more going on with them though imo.

[lostyesterday]

It’s interesting to me that Voyager has so many episodes where Tuvok becomes disabled and then stops being disabled by the end of the episode. The obvious examples are Year of Hell where he becomes blind before the timeline is restored, and Riddles where he experiences a major brain injury whose symptoms are cured at the end of the episode. But then there’s also Endgame, where alternate timeline Tuvok is in the later stages of a degenerative illness, and Meld, where what happens to Tuvok when he mind melds with Lon Suder could arguably be considered a disability (especially from a Vulcan perspective). Arguably Flashback counts too. These types of plots aren’t uncommon in Star Trek, but I think it’s interesting that such a large proportion of these storylines in Voyager happen to Tuvok in particular.

So, why Tuvok? I think it partially comes down to the fact that many people find it narratively interesting to see the most in-control, stoic, and independent characters stripped of their skills or strengths in some way. In other words, disabling them. How does a character who is defined by their self-control and discipline deal with a sudden loss of ability to control themselves? How does a character who deeply values their independence deal with a sudden necessary dependence on others? Tuvok is arguably the Voyager character who most represents competence, ability, and control. If being disabled is to be unable in some way to measure up to the standards of what a person “should” be able to do in society, then Tuvok in his typical state represents or possibly strives to represent the opposite of that. So, from this perspective, making Tuvok disabled affects him as a character more fundamentally than it would other characters, which is theoretically more narratively interesting.

From an able-bodied perspective, it could be argued that such a storyline represents a deep-rooted fear of becoming disabled. Able-bodied people fear disability because it represents the weakness and dependence that anyone can find themselves embodying under the right circumstances. Accidents and illness and old age can happen to anyone, and happen to almost everyone in time. Disability is a fact of life, but for many people, it is a looming cloud on the horizon – something they might ordinarily choose to ignore. To explore such a theme in fiction is to thus look at a subject tinged with discomfort. To give such a storyline to a character that represents the peak of control and ability could serve either to heighten that discomfort by showing even the “strongest” person being vulnerable to disability, or to lessen it by displacing that fear from an “ordinary” and thus more relatable character to one who is unusually skilled or strong (in this case, Tuvok being Vulcan on a ship of mostly humans). Either way, though, if the character is cured in the end and their disability is gone by the next episode, that discomfort is narratively relieved. Disability affects able-bodied characters only temporarily. There’s nothing to fear – they’ll be returned to “normal” next episode.

This might make it sound as if I entirely dislike the disability storylines centered on Tuvok, but that isn’t true. To a certain extent, the cures or time resets that bring Tuvok back to his able-bodied state after every episode are an inevitable part of a mostly episodic show like Voyager. Beyond able-bodied fears and miracle cures, I do think there can be something compelling about telling a disabled story centered on a character like Tuvok. I like that Year of Hell shows Tuvok skillfully using a tactile console and navigating the ship while blind, while at the same time having much more difficulty with certain tasks than he did before, because that’s realistic – that’s how it often actually feels to become disabled. Some tasks that were easy before become impossible. Some tasks seem at first to be impossible, but over time become possible as you adapt and learn new strategies. A skilled and resourceful character can be skilled and resourceful in adapting to disability, but they are still disabled. I also like that Riddles asks the question of what it means for a person to feel less valuable when they become unable to perform the tasks they did before. That kind of question can become more profoundly unsettling when applied to a character who defines himself fundamentally by the abilities he has lost. I do think it would have been interesting if Tuvok had been disabled for longer – if disability had been a more defining element of his character rather than merely a frequent theme. But I also think that what is there in the text has interesting elements as well.