Read on Twitter
I want to push back on this a tiny bit—
Making disabled villains is ableist if they are:
1) rooted in awful tropes around disability
2) the only, or one of the only, disabled characters in the story/world. As with any marginalized group, we are disproportionately (1/) https://twitter.com/mustangsart/status/1324840351547445248
Making disabled villains is ableist if they are:
1) rooted in awful tropes around disability
2) the only, or one of the only, disabled characters in the story/world. As with any marginalized group, we are disproportionately (1/) https://twitter.com/mustangsart/status/1324840351547445248
villainized and othered, and are usually relegated to one or two characters (if we are lucky). But when a world is FULL of marginalized characters, when they exist as multidimensional, diverse people within the narrative, when we have complex stories about individuals with (2/)
varying perspectives and ideas, who hold different jobs and have families and hobbies and passions and love interests, then someone can emerge as a villain because they are part of the whole of the world. They are not “special” for their marginalized qualities. (3/)
But to get to a place where we can have those stories, we have to come to a place where disability is normalized and not a characteristic that singles out a person from the rest of the world. It can’t be isolating. You can’t have only a peppering of those characters. (4/)
Disabled people are complex and multifaceted and have numerous identities. Until disabled characters can be unremarkable in the story world, placing them into villainous roles furthers the trope. (5/)
Essentially, if you want to be able to tell stories about disabled villains, you need to have disabled PEOPLE (which is usually an understanding that comes initially through the lens of disabled protagonists/heroes), normalized in stories first. (/6)
