#david will experience limited mobility and chronic pain for the rest of his long life full of love and adventure

[giantkillerjack]

This is the kind of shitty trope that can only be worth anything but a purposeful and mindful inversion of the trope, which not everyone can pull off well, though I believe it is possible.

Another separate example of a shitty harmful trope that only truly becomes worth anything when it is inverted is the trope of "a timeskip has happened, and now to show that the character has turned into a pathetic disgusting loser, they have become FAT." -- This is my least favorite trope of all time, and it genuinely makes me lose some of my will to live.

But the inversion of that trope is like the end of the novel series my wife is writing, in which there is a timeskip and the main character is now chubby -- and this is framed as a clear sign of healing and growth for this character who has been underweight and malnourished for 3 books up til now!! -- As a fat person trying to recover from an eating disorder, this makes me feel seen and happy and loved! (I LOVE MY WIFE.)

Similarly, with the "disability reveal illiciting fear and pity" thing, it's like @cripplecharacters said: the issue is the fear and pity, especially when framed as an obvious and natural reaction from neutral or good characters.

And now before I list some ideas for inverting the trope, I wanna give the caveat that if you are not representing a disability that you have, you should first and foremost ask yourself why you want a remarkable reveal of the character's disability in the story in the first place:

-- What function does it serve? What feeling is it meant to evoke from the audience? (Fear, pity, shock, or disgust = bad answers.) Is this a matter of making disability a spectacle[bad]? Is this a matter of body horror[very bad in relation to disability]?? or is it a genuine educated attempt to represent someone from a community you aren't a part of[has the potential to be okay]???

Ideas for inversions:

The people expressing shock/pity/disgust/fear are explicitly framed as FUCKING ASSHOLES for doing this, who are eventually INVALIDATED by the larger narrative, which is committed to proving them to be in the wrong by centering the disabled character as a hero. -- The disabled character is a bigger character than any of the assholes, with their own inner life, active agency in the story, and pain response to being treated poorly. Perhaps they make the assholes look like ignorant fools in the very same scene! (Note: if you are representing a community you are not a part of, this kind of nasty prejudice is NOT OKAY TO PUT IN JUST FOR ~FLAVOR~. You need to have something to SAY about it with your storytelling beyond "isn't that just so sad that some people are mean to cripples??", or else you're a hack for ***exposing your disabled readers to a painful reflection of their own trauma for no good reason.***)

The disabled character has their own inner life and active agency in the story; and when they reveal their disability, it is met with delight and excitement - perhaps by another major character with a disability who feels pride and comradery over this in their current situation.

It's possible to have a good scene where someone reacts wrongly with pity/ignorance to a disabled character, and then the disabled character (a full character who is in the story for more than just this purpose) carefully and generously explains why this is harmful -- with the ableist character apologizing and meaningfully changing their behavior. But tbh it is more likely that this will end up as a stilted and unnecessary scene if you are not a disabled person yourself. Especially if you aren't consulting actual disabled people.

There is no grand reveal, but rather a simple acceptance and even celebration of disability. Characters have totally awesome wheelchairs; people with scars and unusual body types have loving partners and active sex lives; characters are not considered unworthy of being the story's hero just because they are disabled!

The Jaws Effect is dangerous and even deadly, but the flip side of that coin is GOOD representation for us, in which we get to be full characters that have hopes and dreams and fears outside of just being disabled setpieces for abled characters to react to!

If showing wheelchair users as inherently miserable only serves to make real wheelchair users actually miserable because abled people end up thinking that our lives are hell and therefore we need endless harmful "hLep" and dangerously dehumanizing pity that veers into eugenics......

Then the opposite of that would be to show how FULL our lives can be! How we are still entire complex humans, who don't need to be magically turned into abled people to remain a part of the story!! Our chairs are GOOD and offer FREEDOM, and showing a wheelchair user going about their life and being part of the story can go a long way towards communicating that, even without focus on the disability itself as part of the narrative!

How could I do a "classic disabled reveal" (Example: The guy reveals that he has a mechanical limb and the spectators feel pity/scared) in a better way, without using the tiring tropes and drama?

The thing is, you can't.

The tired trope and the drama, is, in fact, the 'pity' and the 'fear' spectators feel at seeing a disabled person and a sign of their disability.

That is what's tired, not the dramatic moment of the reveal. The reveal itself is whatever.

The tired trope is that disabilities and signs of them are something you should be scared of, that you should pity, that you shouldn't be seeing or have them being shown to you.

And this trope is not harmless, and it hurts real disabled people in the real world. It extends to people's feelings about real disabled people, the way they treat real disabled people. It contributes to thinking that disability is something inherently scary, bad, and required to hide. Disability is neutral, not the end of the world.

Someone having a disability is not automatically scary nor something to pity. Someone having a visible disability is not automatically scary nor something to pity. Disabled people are just people living life. Disability is a part of their life, our life.

Here is a post on the "Jaws Effect." Please read it and take it into consideration.

Hope this helps you understand.

– mod sparrow