Some more examples!

Hm. I should redraw this.

That'd be so cool! I love your art style :D

ta-da! i tried to do the green lighting but i'm not sure how well it turned out

by the way, this post was inspired by some writing i was doing last night where i wrote "that that" and got so mad that i had to take a break for the rest of the evening

it's understandable that that "that that" that ended your writing session would inspire a post like that

Yu Yu Hakusho (1990-1994)

still thinking about how perfect a flag this is for human space exploration. Shapes and symbols can change meanings between people and cultures currently, let alone hundreds or even thousands of years into the future.

And what is the purpose of placing a flag on a foreign planet? It’s a way to say “we were here.” And the one, immediate symbol that any other human who came to the same spot any number of years later would be able to recognize a human hand. Even if governments change and collapse, we all understand a handprint.

and if you found yourself somewhere where you wanted to mark humanity’s presence, but didn’t have a flag with you? Well, you have your own hand.

Good news! Elementary schoolers of the modern day still believe this is part of vanilla minecraft. I have borne firsthand witness to these discussions.

the folkloric gate to heaven requires journeying to hell to get its building material

yo what's the handle of the fancy calligraphy guy can we get them over here that's a line

@theshitpostcalligrapher

oh good i needed a warmup piece

#listen i dont mean to be that guy but#you can make glowstone by using glowstone dust#and witches drop glowstone dust#no hell needed

buddy not to be a ridiculous nerd about it but you realize that seeking out dark magic users to kill them and pry potion ingredients out of their dead, cold hands isn't exactly non-hellish behavior? maybe the journey to hell is internal idk your playstyle

Nobody appreciates the sacrifice of the little lash wizards 😔

I mean yes but... like, did you read the whole list or just nope out at the 'spell on their broken legs' because the actual list is 'disabled character riding a battle cat and disabled mages floating around with magic'.

And it's literally a 'modern wheelchairs are boring, you should have a dwarven forged chair instead'. which let's be honest, riding around in a magitech wheelchair sounds fucking dope.

Which are literally both awesome ideas for disabled characters AND more fitting for high magic settings.

those cool ideas do not negate the ableism that pervades the whole post.

"disabled people in fantasy should be either cured, or meet my standard of coolness" is an ice cold fucking take

Yes, which is why the concept here is instead 'People in fantasy settings where there is plentiful magic have access to options that we do not.'

In a world where lost limbs and permanent disabilities are one wandering priest away from being restored to perfectly whole, and where magical replacements are a viable and sometimes even cheap option? One cannot just linearly transpose our version of society onto it.

And to say otherwise is to assume that people with disabilities should NOT avail themselves of perfect healing when it is widely and readily available.

Yes there should be disabled people. No they shouldn't get wheelchairs. Your ass is not adventuring.

Literally everyone in a fantasy world has to be an adventurer suddenly lmao

Also I love the idea of "widely and readily available" healthcare apparently just being... waiting for a wandering priest with sufficient magic skill to happen to come around.

You people are a joke lol

Not even the point at all but I take offense to the idea that modern wheelchairs are boring. They aren't, the only reason you think they are is bcs a bunch of artists are lazy and refuse to even consider learning about disabilities and always draw the exact same kind of chair, namely one you can't do anything in including wheel yourself around bcs it's a big fucking hospital transport chair like this and weighs like 50lbs at the lightest:

But this is what my wheelchair, one meant to be used everyday by the person in it and is thus light and built in a way that doesn't restrict your shoulders or arms, looks like(minus the arm rests I took those off):

And this chair is even still pretty heavy, 20lbs or so, and set up to have as much adjustability as possible and it can be folded so it fits in trunks better, next time I wanna get a rigid frame one like this that's actually much lighter and less bulky/prone to breaking and can't be folded:

And sport wheelchairs are even lighter, closer to just 10lbs or less, and made for complete freedom of movement. People can do backflips in these things, they race and play basketball and rugby in them:

This chair frankly does look a little weird as it's basically just a hospital chair with an elf in it, the artist did nothing to actually marry it to the design of the setting and it clearly is set up in a way where the elf would struggle to get around herself in it and probably couldn't fight without being stationary:

But there's nothing stopping you from actually researching different kinds of wheelchairs, how they work, what they work for, and checking out the Paralympics or other disabled sports. Contrary to what you'd expect, disabled athletes routinely outperform abled ones. Wheelchair racing is just as hard as running if not harder (I used to be able to run, got my disability in adulthood, and trust me running is easier), and there are even wheelchairs you can go fucking hiking off road in and dozens of different kinds of motorized options to give the user the most mobility possible:

These ones are also motorized to assist but it's just the wheels themselves, isn't that cool???

You could absolutely design some wicked ass magic wheelchairs in your fantasy setting. And hell you can even do "rides an animal" or whatever those are cool too, but there is nothing stopping you from adding disabled people to your fantasy stories outside of a lack of imagination, wilful ignorance, and ableism.

And as for the "why wouldn't you just cure yourself with magic???" Well some of us don't hate being the way we are! There are health issues I would love to heal like my POTs, but I love my wheelchair! I don't mind my hEDS most of the time! And it sucks that I never get to see myself represented in fantasy bcs people either just draw a chair that most people can't really use and doesn't mesh with the world building or design, especially since the excuse is bullshit. Disabled people can be athletes and heroes, and we deserve to see ourselves in fiction.

Also plugging my favorite anime that deals with this so well, Ascendance of a Bookworm!! The main character has a mysterious illness, and it's revealed that the nobility in her society have a monopoly on magic and it's basically illegal for anyone who isn't nobility or a priest to learn to do magic or use magic items...but the illness is actually just the child's body producing too much mana which will ensure they die young. But only the peasants, the nobility can donate their mana by having magical items absorb it, and if you're a peasant but rich you can buy those items from nobility, but only if you offer the child up to them to be mistresses or take on other such roles. And the kicker is that their society is actually running out of mana, and these kids could be the solution, but the nobility doesn't want them to have magic so they just let the kids die and deal with the mana shortage. It's so interesting!! Such a fascinating way of addressing disability in a world with magic!! I want more stories like this ffs!!!!

Oh and spoilers, but my other favorite example of disability in fantasy is Order of the Stick! Much later on we meet the mother of one of the main characters who's missing an arm. We know she lost it in an accident that killed her husband, but we see her son repeatedly offer to help her heal it so she doesn't have to struggle, but later we discover the reason she never got it magically healed even though she could is because the last thing her hand did was hold the hand of her husband as he was crushed in the cave-in. She refuses to let go until her hand is physically ripped from her body, and she refuses healing because healing it would be like she stopped holding her husband and she said she'd never let go. She also gave up a ton of money that could have saved her arm to save like five random people who died and could still be resurrected. And this is a DnD webcomic so like. The most basic fantasy you can get! And they do it so well!! (Probably bcs the author, Rich Burlew is disabled himself.)

So yeah. There's no excuse. You just don't want to have to do the research it would take to represent disabilities properly because it's easier to just wave a magic wand and make sure a huge portion of our population never gets to see themselves being the heroes in stories we absolutely belong in. Hope this helped change some minds, you can get creative with this, I promise you! It's not that hard!! It's fun even!! Give it a shot!!

Like my only follow up question to "they could never do all that fighting and stuff in a chair" is you know there are people who can pick up a 300+ lb weight like they're made of styrofoam, right? Why couldn't someone strapped into a chair that's only 10 lbs do sports? If they have the right core and arm strength you can do all kinds of stuff in a wheelchair. It's hard, but not impossible. Expand your imagination to include disabled people, I beg you.