3WFDW: The People with Disabilities Being Awesome Commentfic Fest

[terajk]

 Welcome to the People with Disabilities (PWD) Being Awesome Commentfic Fest!

I love people with disabilities doing awesome things. In the spirit of  Festibility at access_fandom  I thought: "What better time to celebrate people with disabilities being awesome than three_weeks_for_dw ?" (In the shower this morning, because I am the best planner ever.)



How it works:

This is a multi-fandom fest celebrating characters with disabilities doing awesome things! Prompts can be from any fandom, and can feature canonically, non-canonically or supernaturally disabled characters. (Are Remus Lupin and Sookie Stackhouse awesome PWD? You betcha!) You can interpret an undiagnosed character as a PWD, or reimagine someone as one. 

ETA 4/28: No restrictions on rating. Sorry that was unclear!

But what do you mean by "being awesome?"

I  mean a lot of things: Saving the world, going on adventures, facing off against ableism, hanging out with friends, struggling with changes in identity. A prompt/story doesn't have to be happy to be awesome.

Prompting: 

Prompts should have the following format: 

Fandom, character/paring, prompt.

For crossovers: Fandom 1/Fandom 2, character/pairing, prompt.

You can leave as many prompts as you like. Also, please use respectful language in your prompt.

Filling Prompts:

If you fill a prompt, either post your story as a reply to the prompt-comment, or post a link to your story as a reply to the prompt if it's hosted elsewhere (say, your journal). Also, prompts may be filled more than once.

ETA: You may also fill your own prompts, if you wish. 

Warnings:

You may use "Choose Not to Warn" or "No Warnings Apply," or use warnings/content notes for any triggering material.

Questions?:

Feel free to ask me questions! I've never, ever run a fest before (I'll plan this better next year, I swear), so I probably left stuff out. 

Comments

[tiamatschild]

Patrick O'Brian, Padeen Colman, fluency

[tiamatschild]

Arthur King of Time and Space, Bedivere, questing with Kay

[esmenet]

Fullmetal Alchemist, Roy Mustang, being blind doesn't cut off his ambition, even if he needs Riza to aim for him.

[jalendavi_lady]

Blind Ambition

PG, only spoiler besides that in the prompt is which side wins at the end of the series, no content warnings needed.

Set during the final battle.

[alexseanchai]

Supernatural, Pamela, still got more senses than most

[alexseanchai]

Supernatural, Bobby, hiding an armory in his wheelchair

Filled: Friends Don't Let Friends Kick Their Butts (G)

[terajk]

Warning: One use of ableist language

This is all Zuko’s fault.

Okay, maybe she should’ve said her name instead of just “It’s me”--she forgets that seeing people don’t recognize voices like she can. But still, who lights random people on fire for no reason? Does she go around throwing rocks at people all over the place?

“Well, actually...” Katara would say, even though she hadn’t asked. Katara does that, sometimes: pops into her head and argues, because Katara has so many opinions that real life can’t hold them all. And, okay, Toph is like that, too. Sometimes.

It had been Katara’s opinion (in real life) that Aang was doing so well in his training that he should have a reward. For once, Toph had to agree; he didn’t hesitate to stop boulders with his body now, and his stances were getting so Earthbendery that she could find him better when they fought. She might even have to stop calling him “Twinkletoes” soon. The plan had been to let Aang watch his earthbending and waterbending teachers fight--as a form of study and all.

“But I see you guys fight all the time!” he’d told them.

“Not argue, Toph had said. “Fight. Like this.” She’d punched Katara in the arm.

“Oh, thank you, Toph. But I love you more.” Katara had punched her back, harder.

Now Katara was asking if she really wanted to do this, because, well, you know.

Toph puffs her bangs out of her face; she’d rather get her feet burned again than not do this. “I can wipe the floor with you any day of the week,” she says.
,
“Just try it,” Katara says, and Toph is relieved that the tiptoeing, the carefulness, is out of her voice now. She’s already her parents’ dress-up doll; she doesn’t need to be Katara’s, too. Toph cracks her knuckles.

Perhaps she’ll start with an earth-crack; those are quick and catch even experienced Earthbenders off-guard. Katara’s weight pulls her northwest. But that weight doesn’t have the satisfying thump she expects. Soon she is blasted with cold and wet, because, like fire (stupid Zuko), water doesn’t always come from the ground. Spitting and gasping for breath, Toph doesn’t know what to do. Katara’s water-waves have never come so totally out of nowhere before.

Actually, Toph does know what to do. She can be fragile and helpless and confused, like she was before the Badgermoles showed her how to interact with the world. But she won’t do that, because she is the Avatar’s teacher and Katara’s friend, most of all. Friends don’t let friends kick their butts without a fight.

She puts her weight on the left side of her left foot, where there’s fewest bits of knitted scar tissue. She feels the half-circle Katara’s standing at the end of, the shape she imagines is the arc of a flying boulder. She pulls one to her hands and lets it go.

It doesn’t thump where it should have.

Katara makes a noise then, and Toph steps sideways, twists her body slightly. But such small movements don’t dodge water-waves, and Katara’s attack hits her in the ear.

This sucks. Toph bets Aang is asleep by now, or asking Momo what the point of this fight was, or wondering why he’d asked her to be his earthbending teacher at all. She listens to herself breathe...and then wonders if that’s part of the problem. Pushing all that water around must take something out of you, right? For a moment, Toph wills herself to stop breathing, and listens.

There it is, like the jerking of an injured bird’s wings in her palm.

Follow the bird, she tells the earth as she stomps. There’s a thump, a squeak of surprise.

Toph smiles, and she hears Katara laugh.

[terajk]

First prompt fill! Eee! :D

[raven]

Oh my god I WANT THIS SO MUCH. I should re-read Memory and write it myself.

Re: Filled: Friends Don't Let Friends Kick Their Butts (G)

[jadelennox]

Katara does that, sometimes: pops into her head and argues, because Katara has so many opinions that real life can’t hold them all. And, okay, Toph is like that, too. Sometimes.

There is no part of this quotation which is not awesome. And true. Awesomely true about both of them.

Friends don’t let friends kick their butts without a fight.

OH TOPH.

She puts her weight on the left side of her left foot, where there’s fewest bits of knitted scar tissue.

Learning how to adapt physical limitations. So many hearts.

But pull quotes can't explain why I think this is so perfect. She doesn't bend like others do -- she doesn't even perceive bending the way sighted viewers of the show perceive her bending. She doesn't have that visual frame of reference. And sometimes this means that her opponents have an advantage, a way of bending which she can't counter. And sometimes, because she is so awesome, she figures out how to counter it.

Toph smiles, and she hears Katara laugh.

And then you cap it all off with this. BFF awesomeness.

So. Much. Love.

Re: Filled: Friends Don't Let Friends Kick Their Butts (G)

[terajk]

I'm so glad you liked this! It's a truly awesome prompt. (Psst! I've been thinking about it since Festibility, because it is so awesome).

She doesn't bend like others do -- she doesn't even perceive bending the way sighted viewers of the show perceive her bending. She doesn't have that visual frame of reference.

YES--and this is something that's really intimidating to me about writing Toph. I think space and feeling or weight are woven deeply into her perceptions, which is the opposite of how I am. So thank you for nudging me out of my comfort zone and allowing me to play around with it.

So. Much. Love.

<3 <3 <3 I'm so glad. I had lots of fun writing this, and hoped it did the prompt justice.

[mackiedockie]

Highlander, Joe Dawson, once a Marine...always a Marine.

[flourish]

X-files. Krycek. Filling the CSM's shoes as well as he ever fucking well did.

[jalendavi_lady]

Went for the 'helping by trying to fix' variant.

Harry Potter, Severus Snape.

AU for end of Deathly Hallows, with some spoilers for what actually happens in the book/movie.

So far as I can tell, no warnings apply.

The main disability in the story is a form of acquired physical speech impediment.

"The Hard Part" PG

[heartequals]

X-Files, Jeffrey Spender (post-getting shot/alien testing), grocery shopping in December 2012

Re: DC Comics, Barbara Gordon

[rydra_wong]

Is it really weird or inappropriate to mention that I suspect that in a lot of people's heads, you are Oracle?

Re: DC Comics, Barbara Gordon

[synecdochic]

No, but it makes me even more curious now *G*

Filled: Here Be Dragons (PG), ableist language warning

[terajk]

Ranma’s never been so...glad...for stupidity before. As annoying as it is to carry these idiots up a damn mountain (and after they’d tried to ditch and probably kill him--geez, they can’t even double-cross without screwing it up), they’re still keeping his mind on this fight. He can’t very well freak out in front of a pig and a duck, after all.

“Ryu Sei Hisho!” shouts Herb, and Ranma beams the brightness of his (fear) mind onto Herb’s chi: thick like dragon-skin, because there are only dragons and wolf-guys here and not...those. With his muscles tensed to (flee) fight, he leaps away.

“Running already?” says Herb. “And I thought you wanted the Open Water Kettle.”

“I’m not running.” Ranma turns his head, forces himself to look at Herb and not the wolf-guy or....the other one. “And I thought you wouldn’t have such a cowardly attack. Bouncing your chi all over the place--why not hit me like a man?”

Herb must not’ve heard him, because after a pause and a scream he lets the rubber balls of chi loose again.

Ranma is disappointed. “What? Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got, jerk.” He won’t think about how his palms are sweating, how he’s thinking of Akane’s cooking, Kuno’s fake sword, Happosai naked...anything but tiger-stripes and those things in the dark.

Dragons, dragons, dragons. There are only dragons here. Dragons who are about to release more chi.

“Kwak!” Mousse fluffs his feathers, settles himself on his shoulders again. Can he feel him shaking?

“Herb, you know what I just noticed?” asks someone from the direction Ranma refuses to look in. “Ranma has breasts!”

“Lime, you idiot. Who cares about those?” Ranma can tell (even as his brain hisses: cat cat cat) that Herb does. Instinctively, he reaches for the buttons on his shirt.

“But, Herb! Breasts!”

Tiger-stripes fill his brain. Ryoga might have said “Bwee!” but between the not-being-able-to-move and the thing coming closer and closer, there’s no room for anything but

Cat. Cat. Cat. All the world is a cat, and it’s reaching for him. He wants to run. He wants to scream. He wants to make it go away.

“CAAAAAAAAT!” Ranma barrels forward, fists blazing.

[untonuggan]

(Has no one mentioned this character yet? Amazing!)

Star Trek: Next Gen, Geordie, explaining his visor to people

[ladyjane]

Supernatural, Bobby(wheelchair), Sam & Dean need to learn to knock ;)

The focus should be on the boys realizing that paralysis does not mean an absence of sexual gratification. (I'm not against porn, but I'm not sure what the ratings limit is here.)

Re: Filled: Friends Don't Let Friends Kick Their Butts (G)

[sholio]

Oh, this is THE BEST THING EVER. ♥ ♥ ♥ Your character voices are perfect, and I love the way that you deal with Toph's limitations without ever making her weak, and the sense of friendliness and fun throughout.

[sholio]

Highlander, Joe Dawson, saving one of his Immortal friends (again!)

[sholio]

Fullmetal Alchemist, Jean Havoc, gun-smuggling truck breaks down in the desert

[dchan]

Seconding the OMGWANT. I lent a lot of my Vorkosigan Saga books to one of my friends but I think I still have Memory sitting around.... >_>

[terajk]

(I'm not against porn, but I'm not sure what the ratings limit is here.)

Any rating is fine! *off to make an ETA in the original post*