Disabilities in fantasy lit?

[Aravelle]

Anyone seen them? I sure haven't, especially with the antagonist. The worst I've seen is them getting a bad injury and it eventually being healed, sometimes miraculously.

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

Look at The Highwayman by R.A. Salvatore

 

[Ireth]

One of my roleplaying characters is a vampire with a clubfoot, and another is a profoundly deaf werewolf. Both were born with their disabilities, and neither of them are healed at any point.

 

[Telcontar]

I've seen plenty, most often in the case of amputations necessitated by battlefield trauma. I vaguely remember a man who was paralyzed from the waist down, cared for because of his vast knowledge and wisdom.

That, of course, is the trick. Who cares for them? Generally fantasy is set in a pseudo-medieval land of some sort, and life was a bit less forgiving then. People who could not contribute in some way did not tend to live long, because the care could not be spared to tend to them.

 

[Ireth]

*shrug* My RP is modern fantasy, so my disabled characters take care of themselves.

Another example of disabled characters in fantasy are Maedhros and Beren from The Silmarillion, both right-hand amputees. Maedhros had his hand cut off in a life-or-limb decision by his friend Fingon, and Beren had his hand bitten off by an evil wolf. Neither of them regained their hands, but Maedhros learned to use his left hand with even more skill than he'd had with his right one. It's unclear how much Beren had adjusted to losing a hand before his (first) death, or if the body he had when he was brought back to life retained the injury.

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

There are at least a couple in ASOIAF as well. There are many clubfoots (clubfeet?) in fantasy, such as Vanek from Waylander. Blindness is not uncommon.

 

[Feo Takahari]

It seems pretty common for a character to be missing a hand or an arm. (Other examples include Dag in The Sharing Knife and Tenel Ka in a variety of Star Wars-related media.)

 

[Telcontar]

Yes. It's a common, serious-yet-non-mortal wound for characters to receive.

 

[Ophiucha]

Even in actual mythology, it was pretty common. Tyr and Nuada as a couple of examples of people losing a hand/arm.

On a slightly different calibre, sensory disabilities are rather common. Blindness, deafness, etc. Muteness, as well. Usually, those sorts of disabilities in fantasy are sort of... serving some greater, fantastical purpose? The blind seer, can't see what's in front of him but can see just about everything else. Most mute characters are also telepathic. Toph, a blind girl from Avatar: The Last Airbender, learned from a bunch of moles the secrets of earthbending and could 'see' by feeling the earth beneath her. Even other disabilities often have that. Characters who are missing an arm or a leg tend to get them replaced with badass steampunk ones.

In the Percy Jackson series, I seem to recall the main character had dyslexia? Except it wasn't really dyslexia, he just could only read Ancient Greek (since his dad was Poseidon - no, that doesn't really make sense, but hey, fantasy), so English words looked weird and skewed to him.

 

[Sheilawisz]

In one of my stories (even though it's written in a style different to my other stories) the main character was born with black and white vision, so she had no idea what colours were and they were a mystery for her!!

Then, she got a special medicine for her eyes as a birthday present when she turned seven years old, and when she finally discovered a world full of colours she nearly went crazy with joy and excitement =)

She called them Magical Light.

 

[Ankari]

Rand had the insanity issue in Wheel of Time. He also suffered a wound that would never heal.

Jaime Lannister (I won't say more because people may be reading/watching the series)

Tyrion Lannister is a dwarf.

Brandon Stark is paralyzed from the waist down.

Hodor


It's been done. Seems like George Martin seems to consider it a lot more than other authors, but its common enough.

 

[Kit]

I'm making a point of putting a whole bunch of disabled characters in my WIP. Their duties are very dangerous, and injuries/deaths are common. It wouldn't be realistic to have everyone still be able-bodied. Most of them can still contribute to their community.

 

[Jess A]

There is a character in my story who is mentally handicapped - similar to Downs Syndrome, I suppose. She's of high birth.

Chade, the fellow with the poked face - Robin Hobb. She is most unkind to her characters in general (to help them 'grow'). Nicholas who has a club foot - Raymond Feist (but the character 'healed' himself later). As mentioned above, Brandon Stark. I do see blindness a lot, and burned faces/bodies, also scars and missing eyes (usually the antagonist or due to battle scars). Leprosy is another. Even Sara Douglass, though on a different level. Some of her winged people lack wings. It could be considered a disability in their culture. Having wings and cumbersome bird feet was a 'disability' as far as Kate Forsyth's character Lachlan was concerned - he failed to fully return to human form after being cursed into the shape of a blackbird by a witch. Sickly children/adults is another I see, particularly with the higher classes and royalty (also notable in our history).

 

[Chilari]

Fantasy does not easily lend itself to dealing with disabilities, because the nature of stories often involves characters travelling great distances, getting involved in fights, living in locations unsuitable for disabled people, or other plot requirements that mean you need able-bodied characters. Often when disabilities are used, they're used as a plot point rather than just a character facet - someone has had an injury to their shoulder which means they can't lift their right arm above their head, so when someone attacks from above they cannot defend themselves easily, for example. In terms of learning difficulties, something like dyslexia just wouldn't crop up in any fantasy story whithout 21st-century Earth elements, because in most pre-industrial societies, literacy is fairly limited, usually to elites, so most people never get the opportunity to discover it and those who do don't stand out as having a learning disability because they've been taught something so few people know that there's just not the sample size there to differentiate between someone who has had limited education and someone who has had more buy struggles with it.

It would be good to see more examples of characters simply living with disabilities without their disability being a plot point - or a source of bitterness for the character. I'm planning on having a character in the story I'm currently planning who is a war hero but was injured in that war to the extent that he has difficulty walking. After a decade of living with it, he has gotten past the bitterness and just learned to live with it, finding ways to be useful and productive to his family and community without needing to use his legs too much - by decorating ceramic vessels and teaching elite young men about military strategy on a theoretical level, including things like morale. Dispite being a commoner, because he's a hero he has access to and influence over the military side of the government of the town and is a community leader. He still lives in a house that has steps between every room (the whole town is built on the side of a steep hill so this is standard) and getting to the palace at the top of the hill takes twice as long for him as anyone else, even with help from his nephew, but he has learned to deal with it because he will not allow himself to be a burden on his family (except his nephew) or his community.

It would certainly be interesting to see a character who is autistic in a fantasy story, but would take a lot of research - and probably personal experience - to get it right.

 

[Jess A]

Fantasy does not easily lend itself to dealing with disabilities, because the nature of stories often involves characters travelling great distances, getting involved in fights, living in locations unsuitable for disabled people, or other plot requirements that mean you need able-bodied characters. Often when disabilities are used, they're used as a plot point rather than just a character facet - someone has had an injury to their shoulder which means they can't lift their right arm above their head, so when someone attacks from above they cannot defend themselves easily, for example. In terms of learning difficulties, something like dyslexia just wouldn't crop up in any fantasy story whithout 21st-century Earth elements, because in most pre-industrial societies, literacy is fairly limited, usually to elites, so most people never get the opportunity to discover it and those who do don't stand out as having a learning disability because they've been taught something so few people know that there's just not the sample size there to differentiate between someone who has had limited education and someone who has had more buy struggles with it.

It would be good to see more examples of characters simply living with disabilities without their disability being a plot point - or a source of bitterness for the character. I'm planning on having a character in the story I'm currently planning who is a war hero but was injured in that war to the extent that he has difficulty walking. After a decade of living with it, he has gotten past the bitterness and just learned to live with it, finding ways to be useful and productive to his family and community without needing to use his legs too much - by decorating ceramic vessels and teaching elite young men about military strategy on a theoretical level, including things like morale. Dispite being a commoner, because he's a hero he has access to and influence over the military side of the government of the town and is a community leader. He still lives in a house that has steps between every room (the whole town is built on the side of a steep hill so this is standard) and getting to the palace at the top of the hill takes twice as long for him as anyone else, even with help from his nephew, but he has learned to deal with it because he will not allow himself to be a burden on his family (except his nephew) or his community.

It would certainly be interesting to see a character who is autistic in a fantasy story, but would take a lot of research - and probably personal experience - to get it right.

Why does this bring Bates to mind (Downton Abbey)?

In any case, I like the sounds of your character. In real life, such a person would gain my respect.

 

[Chilari]

Ha, Downton Abbey is awesome. When's season 3 coming? They do make us wait! Bates is one of the best characters in that.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Would black and white vision be considered a disability for a Fantasy character??

 

[Feo Takahari]

If we're talking about our own characters, I'm using alexithymia as a model for a disorder one of my characters suffers. (It's a magical curse, so it's not true alexithymia, but I think research on alexithymia will help me write the curse in greater detail. Basically, this character is incapable of directly recognizing what emotions she's feeling, though she can puzzle them out from her physical reactions--for instance, she might not realize she's sad unless she starts crying.)

 

[Aravelle]

My two heroines in my WIP each have a disability [at least I think they'd count as one]. One is dyslexic and another has albinism.

 

[Jess A]

Ha, Downton Abbey is awesome. When's season 3 coming? They do make us wait! Bates is one of the best characters in that.

I've only seen the first episode (and bits of later ones) so far. I just got season 1. I already like Bates' character quite a bit - he just gets on with the job. I particularly liked the end of the episode when the earl practically dragged him out of the motor vehicle. We get things late here in Australia; season 2 has only just been advertised. That's not to say I can't order it from the UK or elsewhere. Do you have season 2 on DVD in the UK yet?

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Would black and white vision be considered a disability for a Fantasy character??

I think it would be considered something of a 'disability' if the rest of the people in the character's society (or species) have colour vision, particularly if having colour vision makes life that little bit easier. A disability depends on the society. As I mentioned earlier, Sara Douglass has a race of bird-winged people. Not having wings would be a disability in their culture/society, but as they otherwise appear to be human, an Icarii lacking wings would function perfectly fine in human society (in the context of her novels).