lemonsharks:

annlarimer:

annieelainey:

therosielord:

Imagine this for a second: you’re a kid in a wheelchair.

It’s pretty isolating. You love reading, but every book you read has a hero who can walk. After a while, you start to get the message: only kids without disabilities are allowed to have adventures. Because of your condition, you’ll never be able to have a story worth reading.

Now imagine you discover a book about a kid in a wheelchair.

It’s fantastic. All of a sudden, there’s someone like you who gets to go on awesome adventures. Maybe your story actually is worth telling after all!

But then the hero gets their greatest wish granted: their legs are fixed and they rise from their wheelchair, healthy and strong.

And there you are, the reader, still stuck in your wheelchair.

Your legs will never be fixed.

You will never be granted that magical wish.

And the character who used to just be like you is now something you can never be. The writer has decided that their story is only worth telling if they end up magically abled.

But you will never end up magically abled. So what does this tell you?

Your story will never be worth telling.

Now do you understand?

Disabled people do not need to be “cured” for their stories to be worth telling, they do not need to hate themselves or their disabilities for their stories to be worth telling. DISABLED PEOPLE ARE REAL MULTI-FACETED, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL PEOPLE AND THEIR STORIES ARE WORTH TELLING!!!

Character with psychosomatic paralysis who gets over it just in time to walk down the aisle for her wedding/graduation/etc is a trope that needs to be set on fire. 

(what I want: a romance novel with a character who uses a wheelchair sometimes, who gets her dress made specifically for to look amazing in her wheelchair, and who then feels good enough to walk down the aisle

and doesn’t

because she cannot count on the duration of feeling good enough to walk for extended periods of time

her dress was made to accommodate her chair and would look silly standing AND she’d lose the nifty custom train and

the point where it’s an hour before your wedding and you don’t actually NEED another dress but you COULD wear a different dress is not the time to choose a different dress

and maybe her mom is like “I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING WOULD BE OK YOU SHOULD’VE LISTENED” and she is like, “I’m wheeling down the aisle and I changed the cake to the cake I ACTUALLY WANTED without telling you OH LOOK TIME FOR MOTHER OF THE BRIDE TO TAKE HER PLACE”

and her spouse gets on one knee for her wedding kiss and it’s beautiful and perfect and the maid of honor runs interference with mom for the the entire reception because THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE FOR)