In Brightest Day: Characters Are Never Born With Disabilities

Last time I discussed how often characters with disabilities are cured of their disability. Today I will discuss a similar problem: the lack of characters born with disabilities. I first noticed this problem when watching Season 3A of Teen Wolf. Deucalion became one of my favorite characters when he first showed up as a badass blind villain. I loved him. But then I saw the flashback episode of Teen Wolf, “Visionary”. I was shocked to discover that Deucalion was only blind because Gerard had stabbed his eyes out. I was disappointed because I had been imagining Deucalion as being blind from birth, and while I have many other problems with how Deucalion’s character was handled, you’d think not being born blind wouldn’t be such a big deal. But this minor point nagged at me, and I started thinking about characters with disabilities. I realized that almost all of them have some traumatic event happen to them that leads to them being disabled.

Professor X, Oracle, Bobby Singer, Daredevil, Hiccup, Bran Stark, Jaime Lannister, and many more characters all become disabled after some tragic event and/or an occasionally heroic event. And while having characters who become disabled is important representation, especially for people who have become disabled themselves, having so few characters who are born with disabilities is a major problem. It also says something about how our society views people with disabilities.

Trailer Tuesdays: How to Train Your Dragon 2 Teaser

It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen the first movie—which was all sorts of awesome—and I’m even more excited for this one. The movie is based off a series of twelve books by Cressida Corwell, and from what I know about the books, since I haven’t read them, is that they don’t have that much in common with the movie, outside character names. Unfortunately, I’m also further lacking in my How to Train Your Dragon knowledge, as I haven’t watched the television show either. I probably won’t get caught up on that for a while yet.

What I do know is that the first movie was amazing—and though we can’t tell much from this teaser, I hope this one will be just as awesome. One of the things that I liked about the first movie was Toothless. Not because he’s cute, not because everything about him is endearing, but because he’s disabled. Due to Hiccup’s own actions, Toothless’s tail is injured, and now Toothless cannot fly without the aid of a prosthetic that Hiccup made for him. Additionally, at the end of the first movie, Hiccup loses a leg, making them both disabled characters.

Though we see Toothless as disabled for most of the movie, Hiccup isn’t injured until the very end, and I really want to see how How to Train Your Dragon 2 will handle that. There doesn’t seem to be much out in the way of a synopsis for this movie, but according to Wikipedia, it is the second in a trilogy, and so far, the plot seems to be as follows:

[Hiccup] discovers a larger conflict brewing between humans and dragons and he finds himself at the center of it.

Hiccup is also going to come across new dragons and meet different people from other cultures. So far, it sounds like a bundle of everything I love.

Announcement: The Fun has Been Multiplied

Guess what?

There is a How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular!

Here is a link to the official page, and it is a traveling production so it may/probably will come to you! Ticket prices aren’t that bad (starting at $30) and there are going to be dragons!

 

Dragons! Can you tell that I am super excited for this?!