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Kid Blink is a supporting character in Disney’s 1992 musical film and modern stage musical Newsies. He’s also one of the few newsies with direct historical counterparts. And, both historically and fictionally, he’s disabled. Sort of.

Kid Blink, also called Red Blink, was legally Louis Baletti, although at times he anglicized it to Ballatt. He was about 16-18 years old, an Italian immigrant (probably with Irish background as well), and the face of the 1899 newsboys strike. It’s also possible that he was known as Blind Diamond and Muggsy McGee. I know all of this from a Tumblr blog*, which is usually not the most reliable source, but I’ve seen where they pull their research and I trust them. He was the main inspiration behind the Newsies lead, Jack Kelly.

The main argument I’ve seen for the main character being Jack and not Blink is concerns about dancing with an eyepatch – the reason Kid Blink is called that – but earlier versions of the script, prior to the plans for a musical, also featured Jack as the lead (albeit with the last name Kelley), and Trey Parker still does some pretty neat tricks wearing an eyepatch. You know, like swinging from a balcony. And maybe some flips, if I’m remembering right? Most people don’t even seem to realize that he has a role in the stage musical. I only know that people have identified him in it because Newsiepedia claims he scabs on page 42 of the script**, but I’m not seeing his name in there, so for all we know, the actor’s eye just happened to twitch. Maybe they guessed he was one of them because Baletti was accused of scabbing.

One big question you have to ask when looking at Kid Blink is whether or not he was actually disabled or just faking it for sympathy to sell. The next question you have to ask is whether, in a modern portrayal of him, it really matters that he may have faked it. The legacy he’s left behind portrays him as disabled, through name and story. He had a difficult life for a multitude of reasons, and disability may or may not have contributed to that. Faking a disability would still lead to ableism, however misguided it is. It’s an important part of his narrative, and it’s probably the reason he was ignored in Newsies, which just makes it even more significant.

A couple*** of online interview archives include an interview with Trey Parker, who played Kid Blink in the 1992 film. The interviewer asks how Blink lost his eye, and Trey replies that he tells people of his character that “he was born that way” but that the Kid Blink of history used it as “a handicap to sell.” The stage musical’s production handbook**** says Baletti was blind in one eye. However, despite the handbook using Kid as an example of the importance of disability in Newsies, nowhere else is he mentioned outside of a historical context. When talking about the sidelining of the character and the historical figure, do we draw from the fictionalized portrayal or what little we know of the real person? A bit of both?

As a spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided to check an upload of the Hard Promises script***** – an earlier version of the Newsies film. The first description of Kid Blink describes him as having a “bad eye-tic.” That is to say, he didn’t even have an eyepatch before it was a musical.

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I watched Team StarKid’s 2016 musical Firebringer less than a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.

A big part of that is the fact that this is the first work of media I’ve seen or read with an explicit portrayal of polyamory and the first to use it/its pronouns for a character while still treating them like a person, and goddamn, watching it made me feel so good about myself. But… I’m still hung up on it, and I’m not sure how to feel.

Firebringer is a comedy, but its focus is relationships, I think. Many of these relationships are ambiguous, and I loved that watching it. Zazzalil (she/her) kisses Keeri (she/her) on the cheek, but what is their relationship? We don’t need to know the nature of it. We know that they’re close and we know how they interact, and that’s what matters.

One of the last scenes of the musical is Jemilla (she/her) proposing to Zazzalil, and Zazzalil taking the ring and proposing right back. I love that scene, them promising to take each other’s opinions into account and to move forward improving their relationship and lives as wives. Firebringer is unapologetically sexual, as well, but never explicit or pornographic, something I rarely get to see.

In some ways, Firebringer takes place in a sort of queer utopia. It’s not a utopia, not by a long shot, but it’s set at the start of the Stone Age, before humans have had the chance to create unneeded and unbacked prejudices amongst themselves. There is no queerphobia, but there’s certainly danger. Jemilla is banished from the tribe, for fuck’s sake, but for once, it’s not because she’s queer – it’s because she’s afraid to move forward.

It’s what happens after Jemilla’s banishment that I most want to talk about, I think. She comes across a Neanderthal named Clark (he/him), who asks her if she’s lost. He leads her back to his tribe, where she finds a new home.

When Zazzalil goes to search for Jemilla to ask for her help, she also finds Clark, and the scene starts out the same way as it did with Jemilla, both expressing physical attraction to each other in what appears to be leading up to a romantic scene, but it doesn’t. Clark finds out that this is Zazzalil, and immediately all intimacy stops. But that’s not because he might be found out for “cheating.” When we follow Zazz to the home of the Neanderthal tribe, we learn that Jemilla is their new leader – and she’s married to all of them. Or, most of them, at least.

In fact, the audience is treated as being among her spouses, as she tells Zazzalil that she doesn’t want to leave behind these people. Zazzalil offers to be Jemilla’s wife in order to entice her to leave. One of Jemilla’s Neanderthal wives brings their children, and Jemilla says goodbye, kissing both Clark and this unnamed wife.

A number of feelings cycled through me as I watched this scene. I loved that Jemilla’s relationships were treated as normal and that no character appeared to be jealous, something which many polyamory-adjacent portrayals play up for drama. I didn’t like the way that Jemilla immediately moved on from her Neanderthal spouses, saying, “I’ve got a new wife now,” instead of taking any time to miss them. It gives the implications that she’s only marrying people to be married, not because she wants to be with them specifically. But… is that actually bad?

I am aromantic and asexual. I am also polyamorous. I am not attracted to anyone, but I am dating three people. I’m dating three people, specifically, because I like the number three. Occasionally, I feel like I should date a fourth, because I like the number four more than the number three. These relationships are fulfilling for me, but little would be different if we were “just friends.” Is that a bad thing? We’re all emotionally fulfilled, we all get to say we’re dating people, we’re all happy with the level of intimacy we’ve established in these relationships. And, although I don’t want to break up with anyone, if I did, I don’t think I’d be sad. I might not immediately start dating someone else, but I would be open to it. Why do I judge Jemilla for seeming to do the same thing?

I just have a lot of thoughts. I don’t know. I definitely find it interesting that Jemilla and Zazzalil don’t really seem to be “in love,” in the traditional sense. I like that! They’re not getting married without thinking it through first, but they’re also not marrying for romance. It’s nice. That sort of relationship-first mindset, prioritizing fulfillment over romantic love, is something we should see more of, I think.

Besides relationships, I have one more thing to talk about: Chorn.

Don’t get me wrong – I love Chorn. It’s a fun character, an iconic, its final form looks really cool… And what’s more, it’s non-binary! Or otherwise gender non-conforming. It’s referred to with it/its pronouns from its first appearance to the end of the musical. But… it’s an alien, and while that’s not revealed until the end, the other characters mention thinking that it’s not human, and I don’t really know how to feel about that. I’m glad that it’s still referred to with neutral pronouns while disguised as a human, but it seems to be enforcing the “nonhuman nonbinary” trope, still. It’s an improvement on the normal portrayal of that trope – usually involving the character being “emotionless” and often with them being nonbinary explicitly because they “exist outside of gender” – but the fact that Chorn is the only nonbinary character and the only nonhuman tribe member leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

I still love Firebringer and I still love its queerness. It’s a step forward in the representation of diverse relationships, but we still have a ways to go when it comes to nonbinary characters.

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Disclaimer: I haven’t read the books in a few years and I didn’t watch the first season. I have not yet watched the season two finale.

His Dark Materials is a middle-grade fantasy book series and, more recently, an HBO TV series. It follows Lyra Silvertongue’s quest across worlds to understand Dust – her world’s name for dark matter. I love Lyra, but my favorite character by far is Will Parry, her primary companion in the second and third books (and, thus, the second and third season, hence why I skipped season one).

Elaine Parry, Will’s mother, has unspecified mental health problems. Since childhood, he’s taken care of himself and her, keeping her problems quiet out of fear of her being institutionalized. Her parents-in-law are distant, and we know nothing of her biological family, so the same can be assumed for her.

In the show, Elaine’s mental illness(es) continue to be unnamed, but they are described. In one scene, Will and Lyra are talking about the cruelty of the children of the world of Cittágazze, who attempted to kill the pair after they were responsible for an older boy’s death. Lyra says that she has never seen children behave that way before, but Will says he has.

Will explains that his mother believes things that aren’t true and sees outcomes that aren’t possible. To cope with these obsessions, she does things like touching all the railings in the park or counting all the bricks in the wall – compulsions. He says that when he was younger, a couple of boys discovered that she did these things and began to harass both of them because of it. This was why he learned to fight.

The way Elaine’s mental illness and the ableism of those around her is presented is refreshing to me. Will has certainly suffered because of his mother’s OCD traits, but he respects her and her coping mechanisms, and he doesn’t portray it as something wrong or inherently harmful. He doesn’t bring up ableism just to teach Lyra that it exists; it comes up in a context that makes sense, and it’s not meant to center his mother as a victim deserving of the viewers’ pity. The respectful way mental disability is treated in this scene just made me love the show even more.

Not only does His Dark Materials have a mentally disabled character, it also has someone who’s physically disabled – Will. In the second book, and the second season, Will comes into possession of the Subtle Knife, a weapon with the ability to cut anything, including the fabric between worlds. To symbolize that the Knife has chosen him as its wielder, he loses two fingers in his fight to gain it. In the books, they’re on his left hand; in the show, it’s his right. I’ve yet to see if that will impact the plot later on.

The show doesn’t shy away from reminding us that Will has lost his fingers. We get numerous shots of his bandaged hand, both casually and in the context of worries about the bleeding. The fingers don’t appear to be completely cut off, in the show, which does make me wonder, but the fact that his disability isn’t treated as shameful is just as relieving as the treatment of his mother. Because he’s losing so much blood, the witches he and Lyra have joined perform a healing ritual. Rather than regrow his fingers or something similar, as I feared, they simply stop the bleeding. This is something so rare to see in visual media, or in any form of fantasy media, when a disability-related issue is causing problems.

As I have yet to watch the finale, I do still have worries, but the way disabilities have been presented so far is both relieving and comforting. I hope they continue this treatment in the third season - and, hopefully, they will remember to edit his fingers out in shots from a farther distance. It's very frustrating to see them there.

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DC and Webtoon’s collaborative comic Batman: Wayne Family Adventures has shown just how much the internet loves the Batfamily’s domestic dynamics. A recent two-part episode centered on the Batgirls showed me why I, personally, love it.

“All-Seeing” Part 1 and 2 centers on Barbara Gordon (Batgirl #1), Stephanie Brown (Batgirl #2), and Cassandra Cain (Batgirl #3), and how they interact separately from the rest of their family. Cass’s introduction in the first episode really tells you what this is going to be like – Batman (Bruce Wayne) needs backup, and Oracle (Barbara Gordon) tells him not to worry, because the cavalry is here.

Cass, her mask completely covering her mouth and nose, drops down out of a skylight and instantly scans the surrounding attackers for weak spots. As she says in her internal narrative, “I see… everything.” And she can’t turn it off.

Growing up, Cass was completely cut off from the rest of the world. Her father, David Cain, raised her as an assassin from birth, and a core aspect of his training to create the “perfect weapon” was for her to learn body language as her first language. She knew very little English when she was brought into the Batfamily. Even now, years later, her sentences are stilted and simplistic. She only says what she needs to say.

Cass arrives at Barbara’s home after rescuing Batman and the door is opened by Babs, the first Batgirl, in an active wheelchair, unlike the hospital models she’s usually depicted in, much to many readers’ frustrations. Stephanie arrived before Cass, and she’s looking forward to putting aside her troubles and improving the day with her almost-sisters, but Cass can tell from her body language that something is wrong.

This scene is something I relate to a lot. Cass wants to know what’s wrong and to help, and doesn’t understand that Steph would really be helped more by not talking about it. I frequently do the same thing, and it’s reassuring to see that perspective in a sympathetic light. Cass can tell from Steph’s body language that she hurt her, and she feels terrible.

At the start of Part 2, we get a wonderful panel showing Babs moving from her wheelchair to the couch. No more attention is given to it by the story than to changes in people’s stances, but just showing it in the webcomic gives the reader a reminder that yes, wheelchair users sit too, this is normal, without making it seem painful or exotic. Barbara has her legs resting on the chair’s seat as she talks to Cass, contrasting Cass’s position, curled up with her knees pulled to her chest.

Babs guides Cass to her full-length mirror and asks her what she sees. Cass says she sees someone made to fight. Babs says she sees someone strong and determined. Reading this makes me wish that I had a disabled mentor figure like that, who could have reassured me and helped me out as a kid. Solidarity in disability as a teen is good, but I can’t undo the damage of childhood.

As the episode ends, Cass goes to Steph to apologize. Steph forgives her, and they hug, and I wish that more media would display healthy female friendships. I’m so happy this webcomic exists, and reading it almost feels like it’s righting the wrongs done by the comics.

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The stage adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie has a long and convoluted history.* I recently watched a performance of the 2012 remake, and I can say confidently that I loved it.

For anyone who has been living under a rock (like me, until recently), Carrie is a horror story about a teenage girl who is bullied by her peers and traumatized by her extremely religious mother. After she begins menstruating, she manifests telekinetic abilities.

I haven’t read the novel. I haven’t watched any of the films. I’ve only watched the musical, and not the version performed at Stratford-Upon-Avon way back in the day.

Carrie White attends a public school, where she is shunned by classmates as a “freak.” Her mother forces her into an extremely restrictive lifestyle based on Christian views. Interestingly, many of the characters start out the story already traumatized. This isn’t about them becoming traumatized – it’s about the aftermath.

Carrie was conceived through rape. Her mother refuses to let her date anyone out of fear that Carrie, like Margaret, will be tricked into a relationship she will regret. Margaret insists that children are inherently wicked, that all people are, and her restrictions and outbursts have contributed greatly to her daughter’s ostracization.

When Carrie’s period starts, she’s at school, in the showers. The other girls laugh at her as she panics, afraid that she’s dying. Her mother never taught her about menstruation.

After school, Carrie goes to her mother to tell her what happened. Margaret’s response is to tell her about the curse of blood: because Eve was weak, all women are cursed with her sin. Margaret’s aggression and unkindness makes Carrie scream for her to stop. This is something we see over and over – really, it’s a key part of Carrie’s arc.

The climax of the movie happens when two students pour a bucket of pigs’ blood on Carrie’s head during the prom. She defied her mother’s wishes to go with a boy who asked her out at the request of his girlfriend, who hoped to begin to right her wrongs against Carrie. The blood, and everyone’s reaction, triggers Carrie’s abilities and her trauma. All of the shame she’s built up because of her classmates and her mother explodes in the form of telekinetic powers.

At the musical’s end, Carrie’s classmate Sue is left traumatized as well, the only surviving student. As she sings, “Once you see, you can’t unsee.” Trauma always stays with you, and it can push you over the edge. Continued mistreatment can make you hurt those around you. We see this in Carrie’s classmate Chris, whose father “taught” her that you get nowhere being nice; Carrie’s mother, Margaret, whose trauma from her own abuse and rape led to her traumatizing her own daughter in an attempt to protect her; and, most significantly, Carrie, whose trauma and fear led to the deaths of all who hurt her, because now that she could let out her emotions, she couldn’t hold them back.

ETA 5 Mar 2023: I think it’s especially important that while puberty triggers Carrie’s abilities, their purpose is to deal with her trauma. Like many traumatized young people, she doesn’t realize she can get out of her situation until she reaches the pivotal transition point in teenage life. She starts her period late, too, in her senior year of high school. Her abuse delayed her development, so when she does “enter adulthood,” everything happens at once.

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Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence is a fantasy novel series published between 1965 and 1977. Surprisingly, her books feature an albinistic protagonist, who makes his first appearance in the fourth book, The Grey King, originally published in 1975.

Part of what made The Dark is Rising stand out to me when I read it was the lack of a consistent single protagonist. The first novel follows the Drew siblings, Simon, Jane, and Barney; in the second, the lead is Will Stanton and the Drews never appear; the third novel stars all four; the fourth novel follows Will once more with Bran Davies introduced as a secondary protagonist; and in the fifth, all five lead.

While I have a few major issues with the books, particularly the character Merriman, which are shared by most fans, Bran’s portrayal is not really one of them. As a disclaimer, I am not albinistic, nor do I have any other skin condition. This is coming from the perspective of a differently disabled person who loves this book series dearly, particularly the character Bran.

The Grey King was the first book I read in the series, sparking my love for the characters of Will and Bran in particular. I will be focusing on that book, mostly because it’s the one I remember the most, as I have read it more times and more recently than Silver on the Tree, the other novel that features Bran.

Bran first speaks on the 23rd page of my copy of The Grey King. Will describes there being “a quality of strangeness about him […] for this boy was drained of all color.” This idea of albinistic otherness is nearly always present in stories with albino characters. Will originally thought that Bran bleached his hair specifically for a startled reaction from anyone meeting him.

The color of Bran’s eyes have been a point of contention, both because he is albino* and because their description changed between books. Bran’s eyes are “a strange, tawny golden colour like the eyes of a cat or bird,” a far cry from the way albinistic eyes are usually thought of. Oddly enough, some claim that golden eyes are likely for albino people with dark skin tones**, and while Bran is portrayed as racially white, he does describe the Welsh as being typically darker in color.

On the subject of Bran’s eyes, he frequently covers them. He is light-sensitive, as stated on multiple occasions, and he wears dark sunglasses both for protection and to avoid attention. He also uses them for dramatic effect, as shown on page 24, where he takes them off to add to the effect of what he’s about to tell Will.

One complaint I and others often have when it comes to disabled supporting characters is that they tend to exist seemingly for the sole purpose of teaching the main character about ableism or disability or compassion. The Grey King subverts this in part not by taking out that “teaching moment” completely but instead by dedicating nearly three pages to Bran teaching Will (and, by extension, the readers) to pronounce Welsh words. More time is spent on this than on Bran’s disability, and it’s truly a relief (and, as someone who is not Welsh, a lifesaver).

Throughout the book, including during teaching scenes, Will and Bran banter like any friends. Will doesn’t worry about Bran because he’s disabled, but because he’s human, and this world of High Magic is entirely new to him. Bran stops to let Will rest and encourages him to slow down when his legs give him trouble, a side effect from his illness prior to the book, but he doesn’t pity him or patronize him. This is a friendship that truly works, in ways that many relationships with disabled characters often don’t.

Bran isn’t patronized by his family or the narrative, either. His father is as hard on him as most fictional fathers, which is to say just enough to be encouraging, but he also trusts him to make his own decisions and look after himself. Bran spends a lot of time wandering, but that’s of his own choice. He works, and he’s comfortable doing it, and no one questions that a disabled teenager is working. He’s not identified by his albinism, either. It’s described, and he’ll occasionally be referred to as “the white-haired boy” the way you’ll see with any character, but when Will recognizes Bran as the boy of the prophecy, it’s through his dog, the eyes Will saw in a vision, and his name, which translates to “crow.” Bran is the raven boy, not the white-haired boy or the albino boy. He’s not defined by his disability, but by his name and his home.

When we first see other characters being ableist towards Bran, it’s Caradog Prichard, a man we’re already meant to dislike, on page 34, blaming Bran’s dog, Cafall, for the death of his sheep. Cafall’s appearance is considered an oddity and he appears to be albinistic like Bran but it’s never outright stated. Bran is unhurt by Prichard’s attacks, using the man’s superstitious fear of albinism against him. The ableism Bran experiences is partly rooted in folklore – the Tylwyth Teg, fair-skinned spirits, are thought of by many as the only pale creatures in Wales, and to many of his classmates and neighbors, that’s what he is.

Another interesting aspect of the book’s portrayal of ableism is how Caradog is described as an animal. He goes from distrusting Bran and Cafall to threatening with a gun and demanding Cafall and Pen, another dog, be brought for him to kill. Caradog’s ableism is not portrayed as a logical response to a suspicious character, or even as something completely ingrained from a young age – it’s an instinctual reaction to his rage, and it’s not limited to solely the disabled characters, as seen in the way he targets John Rowlands, Pen, and Will. It takes another farmer arriving and yelling at him to snap him out of his anger so that he can help fight the fires.

Prichard’s villainy is not confined to ableism, either. He holds a grudge against Bran’s family. Bran’s mother, Gwen, was a stranger who came out of the mountains and disappeared just as oddly, and while she lived with Owen Davies, Prichard attacked her, and is implied to have assaulted her. Prichard isn’t an all-powerful villain – he’s a terrible human being, and he keeps trying to make up excuses. Owen is ashamed of Bran, not because he’s disabled, but because his son is not his by blood and Guinevere not his wife by law.

Bran enjoys his strangeness. He likes how people fear him, and he intentionally contrasts his dress with his paler features. “You will find out,” Bran says, “that people like him are a bit afraid of me, deep down. It is because I am albino, you see.” Will, and thus the reader, are led to believe that this is a defense mechanism – he’s arrogant so he’s not ashamed. It certainly helps that his unsettling attributes extend past his albinism. A lot of his speech and his behavior in general would be off-putting to hear and witness, which helps to put him on the same level as Will.

Bran is unique among fictional boys, disabled or not, in how he is able to show is grief. When Cafall, dies, he’s in a panic. He cries and he screams and he’s blatantly detached from reality. He just lost his best friend, and it shows, plain as day. He’s not emotionless, as many portray albinistic people to be, and he’s not stoic, as many male heroes are written. He’s human and emotional and he reacts as any person would. He doesn’t move on quickly, either, and it’s a relief. He snaps at Will, telling him he never wants to see him again.

Something else that stands out is that Bran doesn’t hate himself. He may not be entirely confident, but he only begins to think of himself as a freak when he’s being influenced by the Grey King’s warestone.

You are different. You are the freak with the white hair, and the pale skin that will not brown in the sun, and the eyes that cannot stand bright light. Whitey, they call you at school, and Pale-face, and there is one boy from up the valley who makes the old sign against the Evil Eye in your direction if he thinks you are not looking. They don’t like you. Oh, you’re different, all right. Your father and your face have made you feel different all your life, you would be a freak inside even if you tried to dye your hair, or paint your skin.

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Disclaimer: I am not deaf, nor am I particularly involved in the Deaf community. This comes from an outsider’s perspective, as do many of my posts. My perspective may not reflect the opinions of others, and I will definitely have room to learn.

Wonderstruck is a 2011 “novel in words and pictures” about two deaf children, Ben and Rose, with their stories taking place fifty years apart. Rose’s story is told in pictures and Ben’s in words.

Brian Selznick is hearing. His brother was born deaf in one ear, but doesn’t personally identify as either deaf or disabled. The idea for a story in pictures was based on Selznick’s realization that, to many deaf people, the world is visual. Since Ben becomes deaf while Rose was born deaf, Ben’s story is in words and Rose’s is visual.

Ben Wilson’s story starts in 1977, and one of the first paragraphs is “What? What? Can’t you hear me? Are you deaf?” This is said by Ben’s cousin Robby, waking him because he was screaming in his sleep. Ben is deaf in one ear and sleeps with his good ear on the pillow to block out noise, which is helpful since his cousin leaves the radio on all night. Ben’s mother died recently and he’s been having nightmares about wolves ever since.

Ben’s partial deafness isn’t glossed over, however temporary the partialness of it is. He covers his good ear for quiet and turns his head to hear better, the same way Selznick’s brother would have. The reader is not allowed to forget that Ben is hard of hearing, but it’s not made particularly significant in the first part.

Rose, living in 1927, appears in visual sections that alternate with Ben’s written ones. Her first part gives no indication that she is deaf, but there is no noticeable dialogue and, as Selznick intended, the visual format gives it a feeling of silence. A tutor arrives at her house and she runs out, holding a piece of paper with the words “Help me,” which she folds into a paper boat and sends down a waterway.

Ben runs to his and his mother’s old home during a storm, having seen a light inside. He discovers a book called Wonderstruck about the history of museums. In it is a bookmark with a note addressed to his mother from someone named Daniel, with a phone number under it. Hoping that Daniel is his father, who he never met, Ben calls the phone number.

He wakes up smelling something burning. He thinks the storm has stopped because he can’t hear anything, but when he looks outside, it’s still raining. When we come to him again, he’s in a hospital room. His aunt Jenny gives him a note saying the house was struck by lightning. He’s lost his hearing completely.

Rose returns to her room through the window, soaked with rain, and sees a book on her bed: Teaching the Deaf to Lip-Read and Speak. The introduction leaves a lot to be desired.

“In this volume we will discuss how best to teach the deaf child to communicate. We must remember that spoken language berings a child more closely into contact with the world. A deaf person who cannot lip-read or speak has only one means of communication with the world – pencil and pad. […] In the uneducated deaf-mute we see the mind confined within a prison. He knows nothing of the touching power of the human voice.”

Rose cuts up the pages and makes them into paper buildings.

Neither of their stories are about them learning to accept their deafness. It affects how they interact with the world, but it’s not their driving factor or the source of plot development. Rose is escaping a neglectful home and trying to gain the affections of her actress mother, and Ben wants closure about his parents and to know the family he never met. These aren’t goals unique to deaf people.

Ben forgets why it’s so quiet. He forgets that he can’t hear; new places are overwhelming and there are many things to draw his attention. He tries to imagine the noise but all he can hear is David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” his mother’s favorite song.

When Rose reaches her mother, she’s scolded for leaving home. Her mom writes that she promised she would visit next month and that it’s “too dangerous for a deaf girl to be outside alone.” Rose responds that anyone could be hit by a car or kidnapped, the examples given, but her mother doesn’t write anything else about that, instead writing that she has to get back to work and someone else will take Rose home. Despite her daughter’s obvious desperation, she’s unwilling to change her routine or to respect Rose.

Unlike Rose, Ben isn’t used to navigating a silent world, but he manages. Someone pulls him just out of the way of a car, but it’s not specified if he didn’t realize there was a car because he couldn’t hear it or because there’s so much happening. He holds the bookmark out to a woman as a way of asking for directions and follows the way she gestures. He tries to talk to the woman at the address but struggles to understand any of what she’s communicating. When he misinterprets a question in his struggle to lip-read, she shuts the door on him. We learn that Ben used to practice lip-reading but struggled beyond understanding the simplest words.

In the Museum of Natural History, Ben meets a boy named Jamie, who writes in a notebook to ask if he’s deaf, since he didn’t seem to understand anything Jamie said. Jamie finger-spells something, but Ben hasn’t learned sign and doesn’t understand what he’s doing. They manage to talk, Jamie mostly writing or using gestures and Ben speaking out loud or using signs in the museum. Sitting in a small room that Jamie leads them to, Ben begins to learn the alphabet. The two bond over Ben’s museum box, a collection of items he’s saved in a box with a wolf carved on the outside, and at the end of the day, Jamie gives him instructions for if he wants to stay the night in the museum.

It’s difficult to describe Rose’s story in words. Maybe that’s part of the point of the images. We see what happens, we see her emotions, but nothing is put into words. Ben and Rose both spend the second part of the book mostly in the museum. Their stories parallel each other in many ways, and some of what I describe happening to Ben simultaneously happens to Rose.

The next day, Jamie puts on a record and Ben puts his hand on the speaker and feels the music. Rose’s brother Walter sees her in the museum and takes her to his office. Ben finds records of Daniel in the museum but again struggles to communicate with the staff, only being able to tell that they don’t know who he’s asking about.

After a fight with Jamie, Ben runs to where the store Daniel was connected to had relocated to. A woman he’d seen in the museum – Rose – and the man behind the counter – Walter – are signing to each other. The man is hearing and the woman is deaf. The man speaks to Ben and switches to sign when he says he can’t hear. Ben has to clarify that he doesn’t know sign either and the man uses a notebook.

Walter helped Rose find a boarding school for deaf children. They were still taught to lip-read and speak, but the other students taught her to sign. She met her husband Bill there and he went on to work at a printing press, which many deaf boys did because they weren’t bothered by the noise. Rose worked making exhibits at the museum. Bill had become deaf at nine due to an illness, and his parents struggled with having a deaf child. Their parents disapproved of their marriage, especially worried they would pass their deafness on to their children. Danny, their son, was hearing, and with help from friends, the radio, and their parents, he learned to speak.

“Even though he could hear, I don’t think it was easy for Danny. In many ways he ended up in the same position Bill and I were in growing up. We were so different from our parents. But Danny became a child of two worlds, the hearing and the Deaf. He could sign so beautifully, better than many deaf people.”

Elaine, Ben’s mother, learned some sign from Danny and at his memorial service, she used it to talk to Rose.

Jamie arrives in the Queens Museum of Art and Rose asks, in writing, who he is. Ben replies, finger-spelling, in full-page art, “My friend.” And, god, it’s such a sweet moment. The book is really sweet, and it has the added benefit of not being meant to inspire the reader. It’s more of a celebration of deafness than anything.

The original inspiration for Wonderstruck was the documentary Through Deaf Eyes, particularly a part about “cinema and the new technology of sound,” which plays into the narrative through Rose’s story. The acknowledgements also includes multiple paragraphs about how Selznick went about learning about deaf experiences and Deaf culture, and the selected bibliography at the end recommends meany books on the subjects.

I highly recommend the book. As a kid, I was hesitant to read it since it’s so large, not realizing how short it really is, but I loved it as soon as I did. From my perspective, it handles its subjects very well. The art is beautiful and the writing works very well. Brian Selznick’s other books, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and The Marvels are also well worth a read.

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The James Bond franchise is recognizable to every American, Brit, and possibly simply every English speaker, with few exceptions. The films are massively popular and the character of Bond is iconic. Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels have been adapted into twenty-seven films, beginning in 1962 and continuing to the present day. He’s been portrayed by twelve different actors, but everyone is familiar with his character.

The James Bond films are notorious among disabled people because nearly every villain is disabled, usually including some sort of facial disfiguration, and the protagonists are always abled.

Ian Fleming published the first James Bond novel in 1953. Fleming worked for the British Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. While I can’t say from first-hand experience, I’ve heard that many supporting characters in the novels are disabled due to wartime experiences. One character who becomes disabled over the course of the series is Felix Leiter, “James Bond’s favorite American.”

Leiter is a former U.S. Marine who works for the CIA. In the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, Leiter gives Bond thirty-two million francs to make up for money stolen from him, saving him in the process. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, Leiter loses an arm and a leg in a Great White Shark attack. In Diamonds Are Forever, the fourth novel, he has a hook and a prosthetic leg. He lost his gun hand, so he’s now a reserve agent, but he’s become a private detective.

Leiter appears in eleven films but he’s never portrayed as disabled. He’s remembered by many as Bond’s best friend but academics usually describe him as more of a sidekick.

In 2017, Dynamite Entertainment published the comic miniseries James Bond: Felix Leiter. This was the first time Leiter ever had a solo story. The cover of the collected edition shows Leiter holding a gun with two hands, with the more visible one being a (rather unrealistic-looking) prosthetic. One Amazon reviewer praises it for avoiding the “overcoming disability” trope*, and I have to agree.

The second issue shows Leiter sitting on the bed in his hotel room with his prosthetics off. The art draws little attention to the fact, looking much the same as it would if he weren’t an amputee. His prosthetic arm was damaged in a fight in the first issue, but the fingers and wrist still work.

In a flashback, Leiter and Bond go for a drive to talk. Leiter acknowledges that he’s a bit less happy as an amputee, but he wouldn’t have been very happy either way. Bond reveals that he’s brought with him state-of-the-art prosthetics, which will hopefully last longer and work a bit better than the ones he’s currently using. They don’t dwell long on the subject. It’s nice.

Leiter references parts of his body “not working right” on multiple occasions, but he doesn’t specifically mean his amputated limbs. It’s implied that he experiences permanent injuries and pains due to his work, as would be expected but which many writers prefer to ignore. It makes me wonder if that’s included specifically because he is visibly disabled or if it would be included either way. When he thinks about how inept he is, it’s not because he’s disabled – it’s because he doubts his own skill when he compares himself to Bond.

In the third issue, Leiter wakes up in bed and both of his prosthetics are off. Many writers and artists seem to forget that most amputees sleep with their prosthetics off – it’s extremely uncomfortable to leave them on, I’m told – but this comic doesn’t. It’s abnormal to see an amputee behave as they normally would in fiction, so it’s relieving to see that.

Interestingly, Leiter fantasizes about before he was disabled, but not because of that. He thinks often of his ex, Alena Davoff, including intimate moments with them, images of which include no prosthetics. He says he doesn’t even love her, just misses what they were good at together. A disabled person fantasizing about something other than not being disabled seems almost unheard of to nondisabled writers, so this is again a comfort.

Leiter frequently wears gloves to hide his prosthesis. It both protects him from ableist microaggressions and hides an identifying feature which could be dangerous for him in the field.

I am focusing on Leiter’s disability in this, but the comic does not. It’s treated as a part of his life, not ignored but also not the most important thing. His hand is always drawn as a prosthetic – something that some artists seem to miss. It also skips over the issue many seem to have with referring to one hand as a “flesh hand,” “real hand,” “human hand” – they’re both just his hands.

When Leiter meets Davoff again, in the fifth issue, she says it’s heartbreaking that he is “lacking” much of the man he was, which Leiter takes to mean his arm and leg. He brushes it off, seeming to say it’s not that significant, and she says she’s sad for him. That’s what happens before he’s thrown off the ship.

Stuck in the water, struggling to stay on the surface, Leiter pulls off his prosthetic leg, remembering Bond saying his prosthetics have “a few handy secrets.” Unlike how prosthetics are frequently shown pulling down characters, his leg helps him float, which serves well as a metaphor for how prosthetics help more than they hinder. There’s a compartment in his prosthetic leg, which he never put anything in, and the air in it helped it to float. It works long enough for him to be picked up by a helicopter.

James Bond: Felix Leiter isn’t perfect but it’s certainly among the best examples of disabled characters in comics I’ve read so far. I enjoyed the story and characters a lot and the aspects of disability portrayed are well done, although there may be a bit of a low bar. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for more disabled representation in comics.

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BBC’s Torchwood is a TV show spin-off of Doctor Who that ran from 2006 to 2011. One of the lead characters, Captain Jack Harkness, has been described by creators at differing times as both omnisexual and bisexual, and it’s not ignored on-screen. That’s part of why I decided to watch this show.

Jack Harkness’s first line is about estrogen in the rain, which he says feminizes fish. “At least I won’t get pregnant. Never doing that again.” Of course, this is part of Doctor Who's charm. The show bends species and sex over and over throughout its run. That’s my understanding, anyway. As the title says, I’ve never watched it.

Captain Harkness flirts with many people. Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, whoever he wants. Jones is used to it; he teases Harkness, saying it’s “harassment,” smiling. Cooper hardly notices, overwhelmed by everything she’s seeing.

Torchwood is far from a perfect show, with far from perfect characters. Their tech expert is an East Asian woman, the only major character of color. Dr. Owen Harper uses alien technology to seduce a woman, and then her boyfriend, when he finds them. This is in the first episode, though – the consent is certainly dubious, but this is open bisexuality (with a same-sex kiss) on-screen in the first episode of a show.

Torchwood also uses a great trick to subvert burying their queers. They made Harkness immortal! He gets shot in the head in the first episode, and then he stands back up. The rest of the team are human, mortal, easily swayed by the alien technology. He has to handle that constantly.

Dr. Harper is a regular misogynist. Captain Harkness is the opposite. He flirts with respect. Two different bisexuals, and one more likeable than the other. It’s nice to see. I like problematic representation better when there’s a mix of likeable and unlikeable characters. It shows something like a balance of bisexual experiences. There’s misogynistic bisexual men; there’s respectful bisexual men. There’s bisexual men! That fact alone is worth praise.

Sometimes, though, Harper is the more likeable of the two. Harkness struggles with human emotion, but Harper sometimes feels things he doesn’t. They’re dynamic characters; they’re not purely good or purely bad.

In the second episode, Dr. Harper says Harkness is gay. Jones doesn’t care. Toshiko Sato says he’ll shag anything “gorgeous” enough. Harper’s reason to believe Captain Harkness is gay is the fact that he wears “period” clothing and that that’s not something straight men do. According to the Torchwood employees, all they really know about Harkness is a vague idea of his queerness.

The villain of the second episode is a heterosexual alien. Not an alien that “rises above gender” – an alien who will make out with a woman to get out a cell but will only have sex with a man. Really, it helps the show a lot. Both clearly and vaguely bisexual characters make up the main cast, so having a heterosexual enemy makes things stand out more. When they kiss, Gwen’s into it. The alien’s really not.

The alien tries to use the sex pheromones she secretes to seduce a gay man, and when it doesn’t work, she forces herself on him. That’s as clear a confirmation of Gwen’s bisexuality as any, especially when we’ve only just started the episode. It’s a fascinating episode to me, really.

Nicely enough, the occasionally “romantic” framing of Cooper and Harkness’s relationship doesn’t look to be “endgame.” They’re sweet and intimate, but they don’t overstep those boundaries. Cooper is monogamous with a boyfriend; Harkness respects that.

I have little else to say. It’s a bit problematic, but it’s a good show. Very queer. Very interesting. Very nice.

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Brian Selznick adapted his 2011 novel Wonderstruck into a screenplay, which then became a film directed by Todd Haynes. Rose, a deaf girl, was played by a Deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds; Ben, a boy who starts out deaf in one ear and later becomes fully deaf, was played by a hearing actor, Oakes Fegley.

Amazon Prime, where I am watching the film, has subtitles available in 28 different languages, and they seem to be on by default, although whether that’s the movie or my account is anyone’s guess. Audio description is also available. As the screenplay is adapted directly, many aspects of deafness included in the book are also in the film, so I won’t bring them up if there isn’t a change.

Rose’s scenes are black and white, without any sound beyond the basic instrumental music, which changes to fit with Rose’s mood and behavior. The film manages to make it seem natural by contrasting it with “Space Oddity” playing in many of Ben’s scenes.

The acting in Wonderstruck is not the best. Watching it, particularly Ben’s scenes, I feel like I’m watching one of my Video Studio classmates’ short films. The dialogue is stilted and it’s a bit too directly adapted; the way children speak in books is not always suitable for films. Ben’s scenes are extremely dark, as well, which also serves to make it less accessible to many viewers. Much of the film is still visually stunning, but it could be more so if it was really able to be seen.

When we get back to Ben after he’s electrocuted, the audio is a lot like in Rose’s scenes, but the style is different enough to make them sonically distinct. When Ben tries to talk, his speech is inaudible, and captions are provided to accompany it. The music is much less lively than Rose’s, which, to me, serves to add to the distinction between how Ben and Rose experience the world. Rose’s world is dynamic, while Ben’s is muffled, because of how they have each experienced their deafness.

Ben wakes up again in the hospital, and we can hear the heart monitor, his breathing, and the bus on the street outside. We come back again, and his family is heard shouting, but he’s no longer there. The scenes after he leaves the hospital vary in sound, seemingly based on his awareness of what he can’t hear, or simply to contrast what hearing viewers would hear. Ben’s scenes also have recognizable songs, presumably because he hears them in place of outside noise.

Simmonds’s acting is much stronger than Fegley’s. Her scenes are more engrossing and she’s better at showing her thoughts without needing to speak. This may be brought out more by the disconnect between Fegley playing a deaf character as a hearing actor and Simmonds playing a deaf character as a Deaf actress.

In the final quarter of the movie, an older Rose is played by Julianne Moore, a hearing actress. Her demeanor is a bit oddly changed. I can’t say anything on the accuracy of her and Walter’s signing, but they at least seem mostly fluid in their motions. Walter acts as an interpreter for Rose, signing to her after speaking to Ben.

In the credits, hands fingerspell the names of the people who worked on the film, most just the first name. It’s reminiscent of the pages of the book where Ben calls Jamie his friend in ASL.

Wonderstruck is a beautiful movie. It’s not the best it could be, but I enjoyed watching it a lot and I recommend it for anyone looking to explore disabled representation in film.

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“Serenity” is the twenty-ninth episode of the Big Finish Productions audio drama series inspired by the TV show Torchwood. In it, bisexual couple Ianto Jones (called “Ifan”) and Jack Harkness (called “Ken”), both men, go undercover as a married couple in the “ordinary” gated community Serenity Plaza in search of an alien sleeper agent from Cell 114.

Ianto and Jack’s days are repetitive and domestic. Jack calls Ianto “honey” when he gets home from work and they flirt a little bit, and then they argue about the front lawn and bathroom. Their voices strain frequently as they force themselves to hold up their covers as a “normal” gay couple, fitting as well into heteronormative middle-class life as they can as supposedly-married men. As Ianto says when Jack asks about his day, “Boring is safe.” When the neighbors are safely in their homes, Ianto pointedly calls Jack his boyfriend, rather than his husband.

Bob and Mary come over and ask if Ifan and Ken plan to have children. Bob comments, after Mary reveals they can’t have biological children, that Ifan and Ken will “probably have first dibs” on adoption. “They do like to be modern, don’t they?” Ianto, obviously uncomfortable, barely manages to agree with him.

Ifan and Ken win the “best front lawn of the month” award, complete with condescending homophobic comments from their neighbors. “Every garden is different,” Bob says. “It’s nice to see the committee awarding some out-of-the-box choices, for once. They don’t always go for something so… flamboyant.”

Later, Mary pulls Jack and Ianto aside and says that “everyone’s noticed” that Ken fancies Bob, which he does not. She says she knows they respect her and her husband too much to do anything, but that Bob is “a bit curious.” It’s a very uncomfortable scene, both for the characters and the viewers.

It’s a bit funny that the inhabitants of Serenity Plaza are casually homophobic – mostly Bob and Mary – while being oddly sexual in day-to-day conversations. An older woman named Vanessa, in particular, seems to drop innuendo into every sentence she utters. At one point, Ianto says that if he and Jack say they’re going to have sex, the neighbors will all want to join in. It’s entertaining but realistic that they have these sorts of double standards.

Nothing much else to say. Jack and Ianto are a sweet couple and the episode has a solid story.

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Dragons: Race to the Edge was an animated TV show based on DreamWorks’s How To Train Your Dragon films. It’s a Netflix original and ran from 2015 to 2018, with six seasons.

For those who somehow never watched the movies, or forgot, or just didn’t quite process it, the lead characters of the franchise, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and his dragon, Toothless, are both amputees. Toothless lost his left tail fin and Hiccup the lower half of his left leg, both in the first film, if I recall correctly, and they both use prosthetics.

Berk, the island on which they live, is accepting of disability. Many inhabitants are amputees or severely scarred due to their history fighting dragons. One major supporting character, Gobber the Belch, is a double amputee.

This will be written as I go through episodes, with references to later things I can remember from the last time I watched it, years ago.

Dagur the Deranged is introduced as a villain in the first episode. He has a lot of scars, including multiple notable ones on his face. Despite the problematic aspects to facially-scarred people being commonly portrayed as villains, Dagur’s a fun character and very likeable – and later becomes something closer to a hero.

Toothless’s prosthetic tail fin is bright red and designed almost like a flag, making it impossible to miss. It works well both aesthetically and as a symbol for disabled visibility. Hiccup’s leg is entirely metal and shaped in a way that mirrors a flesh leg in function more than design.

At one point in the first episode, Hiccup’s leg is caught in a dragon trap, but since it’s his left, he can easily pull it back out. “One of the benefits of a metal leg, I suppose.” At the start of the second, he takes it off – leaving it unclear as to whether part of his prosthetic is detachable or if it’s just that easy for him to remove it – and uses it to pry open a cage door. We can see that the top of it is, in fact, wood, and it appears to have rope incorporated in some way. When the Riders fall out of the cage, Tuffnut manages to grab Hiccup’s leg so he doesn’t lose it.

One of the great things about DreamWorks’s Dragons universe is the way they easily incorporate disability. It’s treated as a casual part of their lives, like Fishlegs’s scrolls or Astrid’s axe or their bonds with their dragons. Attention is drawn to it when it’s called for but it’s not forgotten.

Later in the second episode, the Riders bring the newly-discovered Dragon Eye to Gobber to see if he can open it, particularly with the help of his hook prosthetic. Following that, they go to see Gothi, a mute woman who acts as Berk’s healer and communicates primarily by drawing in the dirt with her staff. The characters seem to think nothing of it and speak directly to her, not to Gobber, despite him acting as a translator. If he gets something wrong, she wacks him. When Gobber says she doesn’t like to talk about her scar, Fishlegs says she doesn’t like to talk about anything. “Oh, that’s why she writes in the dirt with her stick,” Tuffnut says. “I thought that was just, like, her thing.”

Gobber acts as a healer while Gothi is out. One Berkian comes to see him about a thorn in his foot, and Gobber grabs an axe to cut off the foot. “This is what my mother used to do for me,” he says, which brings up some questions about how, exactly, he lost his leg.

We meet the Snow Wraith in the second episode, a blind dragon that uses heat perception to detect its prey, which Hiccup compares to Toothless’s echolocation. The Riders are able to hide by burying themselves in the snow and later by lighting fires to distract it.

Hiccup and Toothless both sleep with their prosthetics on. While uncomfortable and not true to real life, it does make sense for them to do so, as they live in a warrior society and must always be ready to run or fight. It also avoids the problem of figuring out how Hiccup’s prosthetic even works. I love the guy, but it makes no sense at all.

In the third episode, Toothless grabs Hiccup by his left leg and runs. Unbeknownst to the dragon, Hiccup is no longer attached to said leg, so Toothless is just running with the prosthetic.

There are a number of dragons that would be disabled from a human standpoint, while their “disabilities” are normal for their species. Besides the blind Snow Wraith, we also meet a Thunderdrum in the third episode, a species which Hiccup describes as “hard of hearing.” (Points for term choice.) Thunderdrums hear very little, which is useful on an island where dragons are being lured in to be eaten using sound by another dragon called a Deathsong. Race to the Edge does well with portraying both positives and negatives of disabilities.

All I have to say about the fourth episode is that Snotlout tries to use Hiccup’s leg as a weapon. It’s great.

In the sixth episode, Gustav goes into Hiccup and Toothless’s hut, where he finds a lot of backup prosthetics, including many different designs for the cloth part of Toothless’s tail. It took me a while to realize that this is still during the period where Toothless’s tail fin can’t open without Hiccup’s foot in his stirrup. Presumably, this was originally to keep him from flying away? It’s changed later.

In episode seven, Gobber replaces his hook with a hammer temporarily, since he needs a hammer and it’s easier to carry long distances that way.

In episode nine, Hiccup is working to strengthen the iron in Toothless’s tail fin, since it keeps bending when he turns.

I have no idea how to end things I write.

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Iron Widow is a 2021 young adult fantasy novel by Xiran Jay Zhao (they/them). It’s an imaginative futuristic retelling of the story of China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian. It’s particularly notable for Chinese and queer representation, but I’d like to highlight the disabled representation presented by Zetian.

Zetian binds her feet, as was custom for Chinese women of her time, and because of that, she is physically disabled and uses a cane. On page 20, she describes how it happened – “Two of my aunts held me down against the floor as my grandmother broke every bone along the arches of my feet to crush them in half.” Zetian’s disability in part serves to show how women can reinforce patriarchal standards. The women of her family forced her to have lotus feet because they are what the men in their society want.

Zetian experiences chronic pain because of her feet. “A lightning strike of it shoots up my legs with every step I take” (20). She lost multiple toes due to infection, so she can’t balance on her own, adding to the need for a cane.

The women of Huaxia are intentionally disabled to keep them from gaining power. However, physical “weakness” doesn’t affect the mind, so the government is forced to kill and disguise powerful women so they can’t disrupt the power imbalance.

Zetian is eventually partnered with male pilot Li Shimin, who killed his family after they raped one of the few people who treated him kindly. His room, which Zetian now shares, is more like a prison cell. On page 139, when Zetian and Shimin are being dressed up to make a public appearance, Shimin is given glasses which Zetian describes as being “thicker than liquor-bottle bottoms.” “He is basically blind.” His right to visual aids was refused after he smashed his lenses, sharpened a fragment of the glass, and used it to stab one of his guards. This also leads to the realization to the reason he seemed to have been scowling constantly: he was squinting to see.

Zetian isn’t allowed a cane for their appearance, which she guesses is to keep her from having a weapon, so Shimin has to hold her up to support her, which makes both of them uncomfortable. She recalls her grandmother saying that bound feet teach girls “the value of bonds between family” (143) because they need other people to hold them up, a disgusting sentiment that really just drills in the misogyny of their culture.

Zetian and Shimin are introduced to ice dancing, meant to improve the bonds between pilot matches. It’s supposed to force partners to lean on and support each other, but they just fall the whole time, which is to be expected, especially since Zetian hasn’t been able to use a cane to take some of the weight off her feet and make the day less painful.

Later, when Shimin is going through alcohol withdrawal, we learn from Gao Yizhi, a close friend of Zetian who we met early on, that Shimin lost half a liver and a kidney when he was on death row. Apparently, they take them from healthy inmates for transplant, so “Li Shimin’s healthy lifespan has essentially been slashed in half.” As he’s a pilot, Shimin is forced into battle despite his withdrawal, which Yizhi and Zetian are worried may kill him.

It’s revealed that the army has used Shimin’s alcoholism to bribe him into fighting in the war. His withdrawals are terrible, both physically and mentally, and they use them against him, only providing him with alcohol if he fights. It’s disgusting and exactly like the rest of what Huaxia’s government does.

After being injured in battle, Zetian begins using a wheelchair. She hates the feeling of being restricted, but accepts the chair because she needs mobility. “I hate that the world keeps stripping me of my ability to do things for myself” (252). You may be happy to know that she continues having sex and torturing misogynists.

Very good book. Hot people killing people. It’s great. Chinese representation, for one, along with queer and disabled representation (in the same characters, the leads). You won’t regret reading it.

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I’ve written about the second season of the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, so I think it’s only fair that I write about the second book. The show is a close adaptation in many ways, but it’s been a while since I read the trilogy, and I’m curious about how it compares.

Will Parry has been looking after his mentally-ill mother for years. On the day this book starts, Mrs. Parry has makeup on one eye but not the other. Her clothes are “slightly musty, as if they’d been too long in the washing machine before drying” (2). Will insists to Mrs. Cooper that she’s not ill, just “confused and muddled,” and he can’t properly care for her. He doesn’t want to leave her with anyone he doesn’t know he can trust.

Will realized his mother was neurodivergent when he was seven, and has felt obligated to look out for her since then. When they were in stores, they could only put items in the cart when people weren’t looking. “When things were in there they were safe, because they became invisible” (7). To Will, it was just a game, but when his mother couldn’t find her purse, it became too real. “This time they had to be extra careful because the enemies were tracking them down by means of her credit card numbers, which they knew because they had her purse” (8). At first, he thought she was disguising real danger as a game, but as time passed, he came to understand that “those enemies of his mother’s were not in the world out there, but in her mind” (8). He pretended to be unaware so he wouldn’t worry her, all while doing his best to keep her safe from her “anxieties.”

When his mother was “calmer and clearer,” (9) Will would learn to do household chores and buy what they needed, so he could handle those responsibilities when she couldn’t. He’d never known his father and they avoided the neighbors, so it fell to him. “What Will himself feared more than anything was that the authorities would find out about her, and take her away, and put him in a home among strangers” (10). He didn’t resent her for her mind and he loved the time he spent with her, saying he “wanted nothing more than to live with her alone forever” (10).

When the men starting coming by and asking questions, Mrs. Parry became more distressed. “She had to teach every separate slat in every separate bench beside the pond” (11) before she could leave the park, so Will would help and his touches would count as well, making them able to leave quicker. His practice trying not to be noticed comes in handy after he kills a man.

While Will’s history with mental illness comes up from time to time and clearly affects his life. At one point, he struggles to breathe when a building reminds him of a place his mother broke down. He uses his experience hiding his mother’s illness to help hide Lyra’s otherness. He’s used to avoiding notice, so he can handle the police searching for him to an extent.

It’s not until Will acquires the knife for which the book is named that disability expands beyond Mrs. Parry. At some point during the fight, two of the fingers on Will’s left hand are cut off, which he only realizes after he undoes the rope around his hand. “Blood was pulsing strongly from the stumps where his fingers had been” (156). His fingers themselves are on the lead floor. The loss of those two fingers is, as Giacomo puts it, “the badge of the bearer” (159).

Disability as symbolism is not uncommon in fiction, but this in particular stands out. Disabilities are frequently portrayed as visible representations of someone’s “ugly inside.” Alternatively, they represent one’s status as an “outsider” or something metaphorical to “overcome.” Here, Will’s amputation is a neutral symbol. If you have the knife, you lose the fingers; it’s simply a fact. It doesn’t represent the knife’s power or the bearer’s sacrifice. It just is.

The cuts on Will’s hand are clean, but they’re bleeding and they ache. “When he looked at them he felt sick, and his heart beat faster, and that in turn seemed to make the bleeding even worse” (168). Lyra bandages his hand for him so the bleeding will hopefully stop. Since it doesn’t seem to be improving, the likely guess is that his hand is infected, although it may be something tied to the knife.

Then… we reach a bit of a problematic moment. Will theorizes that the Specters that terrorize the adults of Cittagazze, stealing their souls and essence, are from his own world, which he bases on Lyra’s description of Tullio’s last moment: “He started counting the stones in the wall. He sort of felt all over them…. But he couldn’t keep it up. In the end he sort of lost interest and stopped” (199). Directly contradicting Will’s belief earlier that his mother was capable of care, kindness, and general personhood, Will now appears to believe that his mother’s mental illness means she is lacking her soul. This could be a convoluted coping mechanism, a way of dealing with his separation from her and disillusionment with his world, but no matter the purpose, it’s an uncomfortable scene to read.

When Will jumps off the roof, he tries to “protect his hand” (207) as he rolls, especially now that the bandage is gone. “His hand was throbbing badly, and with each throb, a little more blood was leaving him. He held it up across his chest and tried not to think about it” (208). Will describes his fingers as “mutilated” (209).

The witches, led by Serafina Pekkala, perform a spell and create a medicine to heal Will’s hand. As his amputation is not easily healed and serves as a symbol, the aim is not to regrow his fingers – a far stretch for Pullman’s series – but to “build a clotted wall” (227) and seal the wound. The spell is ineffective, despite clearly working for the plants and animals the witches test it on.

Lyra tells Will that she’d never seen children be cruel the way they were in Cittagazze, but he tells her he has, when he lived with his mother. “Every so often she’d start thinking things that weren’t true. And having to do things that didn’t make sense – not to me, anyway. I mean she had to do them or else she’d get upset and afraid, so I used to help her. Like touching all the railings in the park, or counting the leaves on a bush – that kind of thing” (231). One day, while Will was at school, his mother went out and some boys he knew found her. “They thought she was mad and they wanted to hurt her, maybe kill her, I wouldn’t be surprised. She was just different and they hated her” (232).

Will explains to Lyra that he thought the Specters were from his world because it didn’t make sense that his mother was so afraid. “She wasn’t mad” (232). “She had to do things that looked crazy; you couldn’t see the point of them, but obviously she could” (233). He was looking for an answer as to why his mother behaved as she did, and since Tullio behaved similarly just before the Specters got him, he thought maybe she was distracting herself from the Specters. It’s scenes like this that remind the reader that Will is a child – he’s making false connections because he just wants to understand.

The Subtle Knife ends on a cliffhanger. It’s a very good book. It does pretty well with its handling of disability. It does very well in its handling of “experimental theology,” in multiple senses of the phrase. I would absolutely recommend it, but not on the basis of disability representation.

Chapter Text

So, after ages of being told to watch it, I’ve finally started The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. And, of course, I have thoughts.

Kusuo Saiki was born to a passionate married couple, who were originally loving but soon grew to seemingly hate each other. Both of his parents consistently manipulate their son’s psychic powers to try to gain advantage over each other. They fight all the time and he spends most of that just ignoring them. Saiki ends up helping them fix their newest fight, but primarily because it’s easier to just get it over with. “Normal people are complicated. At least now I can finish my desert in peace” (1×01).

Saiki doesn’t have any real friends at school, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s indifferent to any social interactions, but he’s nice enough to the students that are friendly to him and he doesn’t want people to get hurt. It’s a lot better than most portrayals of aplatonic-coded characters – that is, he’s not actively harming people and his actions aren’t purely selfish. It’s a low bar, but it’s what we have.

Still in the first episode, we meet a “perfect” girl at his school who expects him to fall in love with her upon their interactions, as that is apparently the typical experience for her. Instead, he greets her and continues walking. She’s “a perfect pretty girl,” as she thinks to herself numerous times, so she assumes he’s uncomfortable expressing emotions in public. Really, he doesn’t get strong emotions often at all. “She is very pretty. In fact, everything Teruhashi thinks about herself is actually true” (1×01). He simply isn’t attracted to her.

Saiki actively avoids doing well in sports. He can win, but he doesn’t want to reveal his powers – but more notably, he doesn’t want the attention. “Problem is, if I do, my likability will skyrocket, and everyone’s gonna be watching me 24/7, which sucks” (1×02). He spends the latter portion of the game trying to keep his “likability meter” rating around fifty, which will just make people mostly ignore him in a friendly way.

“In high school, love is always in the air, which is something that I consider entirely pointless. These romantic feelings elude me” (1×02). It turns out, the main reason he doesn’t want a relationship is because he can always see through people, both literally and metaphorically. He hears their thoughts and sees their organs.

Saiki does a flip over a girl who has a crush on him so he can avoid the first step in her plan to confess.

In the third episode, Saiki describes himself as Kaidou’s friend, despite not being very friendly with him and previously saying they weren’t friends. Kaidou’s new friend is taking advantage of his fantasies to steal from him, so Saiki scares him off. “Kaidou, as your one friend, I’m telling you to do a better job choosing your other friends” (1×03).

At the beach, Nendou wants girls to like him, but instead they fawn over Kaidou. Nendou’s jealous, but not too jealous to help both Kaidou and one of the girls when they struggle to swim, and he isn’t bothered by not getting the girl’s number.

Saiki’s parents attend a wedding in the fourth episode, which Saiki refuses to go to. His reasoning is that under all the superficial happiness, everyone is suffering, and he’ll have to hear it. Later, Saiki describes romance as being a “mystery” to him.

Chiyo, the girl who’d had a crush on Saiki, is starting to be unhappy with her boyfriend, so Saiki assists in their relationship so she doesn’t start pursuing him again. He reminds her boyfriend of their anniversary, swaps in a decent gift, and mentally suggests a restaurant Chiyo likes. Despite Saiki’s efforts, their experience in the restaurant is too much for Chiyo, and she runs away from their date.

The fifth episode starts out with Saiki attempting to leave school while avoiding everyone who wants to see or talk to him. This is difficult, because a lot of attentive people are looking for him.

In the seventh episode, all of Saiki’s sort-of friends wish to make new friends (or, in one case, a rival) for New Year’s. Saiki, on the other hand, wishes to be left alone. Saiki’s friends get to know each other better throughout the day, and he doesn’t get left alone. It’s relatable.

“Wait, who are you again?” (1×08)

On Valentine’s Day, in the eighth episode, Teruhashi, the “perfect girl,” is constantly followed by boys who want to gain her affections – specifically because they heard she had chocolate. While normally she’s happy with their attention, and even seeks it out, she’s extremely uncomfortable this time. It’s left unclear as to what in particular made this stand out.

“What’s so great about seeing naked bodies? I see them all the time and I don’t get the point” (1×12).

When Saiki turns Nendou to stone in the fifteenth episode, he’s disguised as a statue for their class’s rock display. Their classmates guess that Saiki sculpted it, with one saying it seemed romantic, and Saiki does nothing to correct them, although one person comments that “Saiki could do way better than Nendou.”

In the sixteenth episode, Teruhashi asks Saiki out on an unofficial date, which to him is rather pointless but he knows she views it as a date and he wants to avoid her brother. She continues to worry about the fact that Saiki shows no attraction to her, as she’s worried throughout the show, but she also continues to imagine that he’s just shy. As her brother repeatedly ends up near them, Saiki is forced to go along with her extensions of the date, which he uses as an excuse to attempt to worsen her image of him. At one point, he thinks that he’d like to be reincarnated as a pretty girl so people will buy him coffee jelly.

Later in the same episode, Saiki dresses up as Santa Claus and grants wishes for the kids in the neighborhood. He’s reluctant, but he goes out of his way to make them happier. It’s cute.

In the twenty-first episode, we meet Kusuke, Saiki’s brother, with whom he has had an antagonist relationship since early childhood. Kusuke is a genius and Saiki is a psychic, so they clashed frequently. The short trip to visit Kusuke in London does not change that one bit.

Saiki’s friends mistakenly think his birthday is months earlier than it is in the twenty-fourth episode when it’s actually his father’s birthday, so he sends his dad in his place, making him appear to be Saiki. He sent him primarily because he was uncomfortable with their passion. His friends have created elaborate gifts for him and he doesn’t know what to do.

Saiki K is a lot of fun to watch. I’ve only watched the first season, and it’s unlikely I’ll watch the rest, but I enjoyed it a lot.