#magic aids

[cripplecharacters]

Sorry if this has already been asked before but as a general statement do you feel like the trope of having mobility aids doubling up as weapons in a fantasy story is ok? I’m disabled myself so I have a lot of disabled characters in my story so there’s a wide variety of mobility aids. Since a lot of characters fight in the story because of the genre I was thinking of making mobility aids weapons (cane as a magic staff or like prosthetics with built in powers etc) but I’m not sure if it falls into the category of ‘character is disabled but it’s actually their superpower!!!’ because I want to avoid that trope at all costs. Hope this makes sense to you since communication isn’t a strong point of mine. Love your blog btw:)

Hi! I'm glad you enjoy the blog:-D

I really feel like it depends. It can be done well and respectfully, but in my experience it usually isn't.

If you're a mobility aid user writing about the aids that you're using, you can do whatever you want! For my deeper thoughts that are too long:

The main issue that I have with the "magic aids as weapons" is that often it feels like the author doesn't actually like the aid because it's "too boring" and thus wants to "improve" it by making a cane into a wizard staff that shoots fireballs or whatever. But I don't feel like that's a good way to go about it at all. Mobility aids are cool in itself! They allow use to be more mobile! Why do they need to be made into something else?

The something else part is also what bothers me a lot around magic aids, aids as weapons, all that. Like the old "replacing a wheelchair with an animal" thing. Why not have a wheelchair? Why not a walking cane instead of a staff, you know? It sometimes feels like the author tries to distance whatever they're writing about from disabled people and our actual experiences because they're "too boring to fit their fantasy story". Like it could be done effectively, but it usually really isn't.

To finally get to the combat part of the question, it again depends (...sorry). If the character with a cane has to fight using it, then I do find it weird, I guess. "Doing cool explosive stuff" shouldn't be a requirement for a disabled character to be included, especially because a lot of disabled people can't do the things that writers want them to do! Sometimes we are weak and unsteady and fragile. Fighting isn't for everyone, and I feel like that's where some of the annoying fantasy tropes appear.

"Hm, my blind character can't fight because they're blind.. oh they have a superpower that lets them 'see'! solved!"

"Hmm, I don't know how to include a wheelchair user… I'll give them a Magic Mecha Exoskeleton, now they can fight!"

"Hm, real life prosthetics seem inconvenient. I'll just make them Magical so they're just like meat limbs but with a gun!"

...and all these kinds of "solutions" that make one wonder if the author even wants to have an actually disabled character. It's not even that the disability is a superpower, it's more that it's non-existent. Sometimes the better solution is to have us in other roles and not make us do things that our disabilities prevent us from doing, which fighting can fall under.

If the above isn't what's going on, then I think it comes down to how the whole thing is even supposed to work. Are the in-universe rules for magic centered around the idea that the Body makes magic? In this case, it could be interesting to have a character who uses a mobility aid and considers it a part of their body to be able to use it in a magical way. Because a lot of people do consider their cane or wheelchair an extension of them, so it could be actually interesting to see it validated by the magic system. But if it's like, "anything could be used" and then every character with a mobility aid ends up using their aid for that, that's... somewhat weird. It does feel like reducing the character to their disability if abled character 1 has a spell book, abled character 2 has a magic necklace, but the disabled character has their disability aid as their magic weapon. To use the example that you did, if the character's prosthetic is the only way they can use magic, I do think that's weird, because like. why… it's both reductive and "disability as a superpower". But if they can use magic through, let's say, both of their legs, and one of them happens to be a prosthetic, then I think that's cool.

I also believe that it depends on what kind of weapon you are talking about at the end of the day - in real life, mobility aids are already treated as potential weapons. I'm under the impression that no one would assume that a walking cane could cast a spell, but people do very much think of a cane as a potential tool to fight with, of a prosthetic as a potential bomb, of a wheelchair as a potential way to smuggle something illegal. I have very much seen and heard of situations where a disabled person wasn't allowed to enter somewhere because their aid was seen as a threat - you don't want to make more people think that this is a reasonable conclusion to come to. If you want to go for it without doing any kind of retrospect on that, I would keep it as a fantasy thing.

I hope this helps! Apologies for the answer length.

mod Sasza

[curapicas]

Idk I just think it's a crazy thing that on the foreground the magic broom of flying is side by side with Percy's cane, which is way more down-to-earth but no less a reminder of a miracle

[screechingfromthevoid]

AND ANOTHER THING

Dorian has always been super specific about his love for Orym.

In the threat scene Dorian says "I care about you more than this" which, I thought before I rewatched the scene, I was misremembering. I thought he really said "I care about you all more than this", making it about the collective, not wanting to leave the group. But no. He said he cared about Orym more than he cared about the crown.

Another thing I thought I misremembered was "no debts between us". For whatever reason I thought Dorian said "no debts between friends" but no. He was very specific with his words and inflections. "There are no debts between us"

"my heart aches that I cannot be there to help you" "sending you fairer winds" "I just like to see you happy" "you're the reason I'm here" "let me comfort you for once."

It has always been about Orym. It has been. It always will be.

[and-her-saints]

it has not stoped raining in Costa Rica. the tropical wave caused by hurricane Rafael has turned into a tropical storm. we are in state of emergency. the entire Pacific Coast is under a red alert, and the Central Valley and Northern regions are under an orange alert. we are talking floodings, landslides. a 23-year-old student at my university died on campus after a tree-branch fell on him. so many more people have died, or are missing. there are 1,400 displaced people. especially in Guanacaste and throughout the Pacific. countless more people have lost their homes, their pets, their cattle, their crops, their livelihoods.

this is not normal.

[stars-obsession-pit]

(Another) Ghost in the Machine

DP x Hellblazer (the original John Constantine comic)

Ritchie Simpson continued to search frantically for the connection out of the computer and back to his body as he begged John to explain what he meant by saying “Goodbye.”

Had John disconnected him? He knew John’s sense of humor wasn’t the lightest, especially after Newcastle drove them all a bit insane, but that felt too far even for him. Nah, he’d probably just gotten himself a bit lost in the wave of energy he’d experienced in the Tongues of Fire network and was accidentally looking for his body in the wrong spot.

He pulled himself back and let his mental connection to the digital world expand outward, probing the rest of the machine for the connection. He knew he was in the right system, so as long as he looked thoroughly he’d definitely fi—

Everything flashed a surge of blinding white and then was replaced by pure darkness. He thought he screamed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Couldn’t even feel his own thoughts. Trapped in one single instant that stretched for indeterminable eons. Then, eventually (or was it immediately?), awareness began to trickle back.

He was still in the computer, though it felt… different, somehow. His thoughts still weren’t entirely in order. The first possible hints towards his location he found were the sound voices trickling through from the outside world. Voices he didn’t recognize. Young voices.

“I’m happy to help, Tuck, but I’m not really sure what you expect me to do here. You’re way better than me at this computer stuff than me.”

“By all means, feel free to keep complimenting me, but this has been frying my brain, man. I got this thing secondhand, and the system should be quite powerful, but there’s something using up a ton of its processing and I can’t figure out what. I was hoping you could do your ‘enter into the computer’ thing and see if you see anything.”

[sharkdrawers]

on a scale of siffrin to melinoe how well can you handle being trapped in a cycle trying to kill time and rescue a home you don't remember

[fishcop]

MY OC THEIR NAME IS BOBBIN AND ITS DEXTERITY IS SHIT

[vintagerpg]

Friends, our time with Mayfair’s Role Aids line of D&D supplements is rapidly coming to an end. It’s been a wild ride! There is some terrible crap and some works of sheer genius (many of the latter are criminally overlooked), and honestly a surprising trend of beating TSR to the punch. It was a good line, all in all, and I will miss it.

This is Arch Magic (1993), one of the very last Role Aids box sets. It is an ambitious product. That’s fucking Dave McKean doing the cover art, a clear acknowledgment of how the ’90s had changed the aesthetics of RPGs. The interiors are all Roger Raup.

There are lots of things inside, which divide into two piles. The first is source material that seeks to push D&D magic far past the standard power levels into the astounding. This box wants ultra high level spells (reaching to 15th level) to inspire awe and I think it mostly works, at least on a conceptual level. The sample spells are suitably muscular. Enslave the Sky, for instance, gives the caster control of the weather, the ability to fly and active surveillance of any creature out under the open sky. There are new wizardly abodes, rules for grimoires and incredibly powerful new artifacts (like the Singularity Engine, which can make anything).

Then there is an adventure that takes players on a whirlwind tour of some of the wildest places I’ve seen laid out for a D&D game this side of Planescape. And on the other side, too. The Macrodome, the City of Bone and the Gibbering Cave maps are all instant favorite RPG maps. Holy crap this stuff is good — a suitably grand swan song.

[sofiaruelle]

Sooooo the last few days i’ve been seeing stars and suddenly i’m juggling 6 sorcerer boyfriends. Whats a polar bear to do?

Also this is my MC, 🍨✨ Sorbetes ✨🍨.

Context why my MC is a sentient polar bear.

The MC doesn't have a set appearance and then there was this dialogue. And the emotes are polar bear themed 😂😂😂 is also literally its own spoiler

[oldschoolfrp]

Wizard’s Aide, 1977, a self-published third-party OD&D supplement by Matt Whalley, with Emmanuel Bautista's illustrations

[undeadvinyls]

oh yeah abt 1970s crk au........heres pure vanilla and white lily in some pretty 70s clothing..... <3

heres a list of all the sources i used for their clothing under the cut! im p passionate abt 70s fashion so it was a joy to research

vintagedancer.com - 1970s dress styles

revivalvintage.co.uk - guide to vintage 1970s

fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu - 1970-1979

ofc there was also a lot of images i got from google images by googling phrases such as "hippie fashion 70s" "70s dress" etc. etc.

[cripplecharacters]

got a char w generational geokinesis. he’s disabled his brother is not. mixed magical/medieval/steampunk environment. he walks w canadian crutches (4 point gait) but uses his powers to create flat surfaces to walk on or skip inclines (ie creates a path of crystal over sand, or a rising platform of stone to get over a hill). he never stops using his crutches, just creates accessibility. is that erasure or?

Hello,

No, that's not erasure, this is actually what I recommend people do when they're accidentally doing something that's erasure. When someone gives their disabled character a magical fix that negates their disability, this is the kind of alternative we look for. Instead of moving the iron in the blood of his legs to walk (which is bad,) he's creating accessibility for himself and just going about his disabled way.

Erasure would be giving him a power that lets him walk around normally, like a character with telekinesis using it to move their paralyzed legs to walk. This isn't doing that, he's just got a good way of adapting to inaccessible locations and terrains.

Mod Aaron

[brain-rot-hour]

Day 2: Moonlight

(Or lack there-of ishdksdksksk)

You ever wonder what WOULD happen if the sun didn’t come up in time?

@inukag-week

[pisshandkerchief]

why do you mean you have trouble discovering new music. back in my day we got our obscure music recs from the welcome to night vale weather and we fucking liked it

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[lleeprechaun]

Fluttershy wheelchair user!! 👩‍🦽💐

Finally my disability stopped stopping me from draw my disabled homies so here it's my girl🥺