Writing/written diversity in fire emblem and hacks disability wise

I think subtly is overrated in regards to representation of all kinds and it’s this kinda detached from reality approach. In the real world people say their sexuality, their gender, their disabilities and they come up with names for them. People naturally name things, if it’s the standard for people to do a thing, having a word for not the standard makes sense. It would not be weird for a character to mention to a friend their autistic or whatever. It is honestly weirder if they never tell anyone about a thing they know they are. Obviously, a character may not know their autistic but that also can be an interesting piece of story telling. There is this strange aversion to using labels because “the word wouldn’t exist in this world”. Why does English exist in your world, do the English people exist, a lot of words exist because a particular culture or person or place exist, why is it only when it come to marginalized people we need to point out this disorder is named after a real world guy or that lesbians are named after the isle of lesbos? If we’re communicating a game in English we can assume this world is using the language for our understanding but would likely have some other language because that’s just how reality works. We are writing for our audience who exists in the real world and knows about these things.

In terms of physical disability in a magical fantasy setting there is tons of ways to represent things. People who lost limbs and use mounts of chairs or prosthetics all make sense. There is really nothing that is off the table in a world where sometimes people turn into dragons or horses can fly. If it is less believable that a character has a all surface wheelchair then the person is the one with the issue that they fail to imagine really possible things over literally impossible stuff. Even without chairs prosthetics have existed for a long time, we all know the peg legged pirate or hook armed pirate right, like this tech has exist for a very long time and that’s without magic.

I think it is important to go beyond “I just write them as people” in so much that there are tropes around disabled people and you can very much write harmful representation by following the natural flow as a person who doesn’t have that disability. Like writing a blind person because “it be cool for this warrior to be blind” without thinking about blind people at all just thinking about how cool it is for a guy to kill people and be blind can lead to a lot of recycled tropes. There should be some thought put into the representation.

It’s also not wrong to seek out writing representation actively. If we don’t think about the diverse richness of people we are far more likely to write our mental defaults. We will pull from our communities and our social norms. Meaning we’ll get worlds that look very similar because the cultural default isn’t really reality either. It is perfectly fine for a writer to actively seek out people from communities they want to represent and talk about what they would want to see. It’s good for a writer to do research and consider how they could do representation. It is good for a writer to think “I am making a game for a wide audience, I want people to feel seen, let me represent this group of people, how can I bring a character like this to life in my world?”

There is even disability rep people don’t think of as disability because disability is socially constructed like Glasses. If their life would be actively worse to impossible without glasses that is a disability. If their glasses break on the battlefield they will not be able to fight that is a disability. We just see glasses are normal because they’ve existed for a very long time and we as a society have decided it’s not really a disability because it’s so common and glasses are available for many people.

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Honest thoughts here - I am more in favor of writers/hackers writing what they are more confident/comfortable in writing (learning along the way and trying things out) instead of adding characters like a check-list, be it due their potential lack of experience on specific subjects, them being unsure of how it will be received, and other potential reasons.

Me yapping

I could agree that ‘subtlety’/not being clear enough about things might not be the best option, but trying to single things out heavily by what they are/their disability isn’t what I think is the best option either.

Of course I won’t be happy if the so-called blind character doesn’t feel blind whatsoever, but I won’t be either if 90% of the runtime is being used as a “Hey, I’m Blind”.

While writing them as “just people” might come as ‘they end up troped’, trying to overwrite them while ignoring any other potential trait they could have - any other part of their own personal growth, acquaintances or personality is just the other side of the trope. Two “blind” people could even be “blind” for two entirely different motives, or come to terms with it/developed different responses, well before the story’s beginning, even - so trying to sell these characters as their own “cope with X arc for the story” hardly feels… right - worse if such solution is tied to “the right one”.

They are still people, not problems put on a schedule and fixed/coped with by the end of the game. Most people with their own struggles, needless of them being disabilities or not - can come unresolved, uncoped with, or generally sidestepped and put under a rug for multiple reasons, and endings leading to “They were able to see again” or “Their kingdom became a track-set for them to be able to move freely” or “Honed their other senses and learnt to live being blind” seems like a huge miss around the mark - beyond ignoring all else they could be as a character.

In short, I just want to say that hackers should write stories including the contents they are comfortable with.

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