Let me tell you my story - Disability Tropes

[ID: A thumbnail showing Neve from Dragon Age: The Veilguard from the shoulders up. Neve has brown skin, brown eyes and long, strait black hair. The image fades to a purple background and white text reads "Disability Tropes: Let me tell you my story" /End ID]

In a lot of stories that feature a disabled character, especially a visibly disabled one, if they don't acquire their disability throughout the course of the story itself, there will inevitably be some kind of reveal about how they got it. Sometimes it will be a simple "I was born with it" like with Toph in Avatar the Last Airbender and other times it will get an entire, dedicated flashback episode or more, like Ed (and Al) in Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood.

In a lot of cases, authors and creators treat the story of how a character became disabled as some inevitable story beat that has to happen at some point. Disabled characters are rarely allowed to just be, they always have to explain why they look the way they do and how it happened.

James Cameron's Avatar is a pretty good example of this, in my opinion. Jake Sully is a wheelchair user due to a spinal injury, and we're told in the literal first line of narration that he was injured during military service. It's brief, but the fact that it's the literal opening line, before we know anything about him, his name or even the fact he's in a wheelchair yet, makes it a stand-out example to me of it feeling like an expected, inevitable thing. We have a disabled character, we have to explain how that happened, let's just get it over with.
Other stories leave it until later on, and in a lot of these cases, it's almost always treated like a big emotional reveal. Fizzeroli from Helluva Boss, Zuko from Avatar the last Airbender, Rivet from Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Ed and Al from Full metal alchemist (both the manga and the Brotherhood anime) all have these big emotional reveals relating to their disabilities and disabling events. While I think it's handled decently in all these examples, you can see just how common it is.

It's also often used as a marker to show just how close the disabled character is to someone else.
Neve from Dragon Age The Veilguard is a stand-out example of this, and the inspiration for this post even existing. She is a sarcastic, closed-off person at the start of the game, and she won't tell you how she became an amputee until your approval rating with her is high enough. For Neve, it's quite literally used as a marker by the game to signify your friendship with her is good, and when you do get it, it feels... very forced, at least to me. It feels like, "Congratulations, you're now friends with the disabled person, so they must tell you how it happened, because that's just what's expected. Obviously, there is no better way to show how close you are to disabled people than telling you about their history with their disability."

I love Veilguard, and I do think Neve's disability was, overall, handled fine (not perfectly, but better than most games at least) but her cutscene where she tells you how she lost her leg really stood out to me, specifically because I didn't get it during my first playthrough. And honestly, I preferred it that way.
It was so nice to have a disabled character who's disability wasn't just brushed off like it is for so many amputees, it mattered, it was acknowledged in-game both directly and subtly, but she still didn't feel the need to explain how it happened or why she has it. She was allowed to just be disabled without having to explain herself, something that is pretty rare in media.

When you're visibly disabled, you're expected to explain how "it" happened all the time, often to complete strangers; which is part of why I find it so weird when it's used as a way to show trust and vulnerability in media. When I am with other disabled people or even my friends who were already knowledgeable about disability before we met, it rarely comes up. I've known some of my disabled friends for 10-15 years, and to this day, I don't know how a lot of them became disabled. I never felt the need to ask. It didn't matter. Their disabilities themselves did, but how they got them? 90% of the time, not really.
When I first played through The Veilguard, My character's relationship with Neve felt pretty reminiscent of those relationships with my real-life disabled friends in that regard. It was so nice to see a disabled character in media who was allowed that same chance to just be, that same chance I got with my friends. But in reality, it wasn't that. The fact I didn't know what happened was just a sign she just didn't trust my character. It was the sadness that came after learning she does tell you about it that made me realise how common this trope is, and how much I just desperately wanted a disabled character who just is disabled. Where it's not connected to some tragic backstory (or a tragic event in the story itself), or even brought up. They're just allowed to exist as they are without explanation.

So, if you're writing a disabled character, ask yourself: Does the audience really need to know how your character became disabled? Why does it matter to the audience? What does it add?

However, if your answer is no, they don't need to know, this doesn't mean that you as the author or creator shouldn't know how it happened.
How a character acquired their disability can impact things further down the line that might effect your story, even if you don't spell it out. An amputee who lost their arm in a fire will have a very different experience to someone who elected to get their arm amputated to stop the spread of an infection. Their stumps will look different, they may need different features on their prosthetic, the burn survivor will take longer to heal initially, may have to be more cautious about taking care of their skin even when it's healed and may experience more intense phantom pain, while the infection survivor may have a smoother initial recovery but run into more problems and complications down the line like chronic but mild re-occurring infections from the irritation of the prosthetic on skin.
If a character's disabling event was traumatic, it may influence their behaviour throughout the story in subtle ways that might not need to be spelled out, but can still influence the situations the character finds themselves in.

However, sometimes, the answer will genuinely be yes, it is important for the audience to know how it happened. Full Metal Alchemist is a good example of this. Ed lost his arm and leg because he tried to break the most important law of alchemy, equivalent exchange, when he tried to resurrect his mother. But a human soul isn't as easily valued and replaced as the components of the body, which resulted in the exchange being unbalanced and more needing to be taken. First it tried to take Al's, body but Ed saved him by sacrificing his arm and leg to at least keep his soul there. This law of equivalent exchange and the value of the soul vs the body is a core theme of the story. Showing the horrific way that attempt goes wrong and the consequences for doing something like human resurrection is pretty important in setting up the stakes for the series' plot, as well as it's moral message.
It doesn't always need to be for some big, important reason like in FMA, but it is a good example of what I mean.

If you are going to bring up how your character became disabled, here are some things to consider:

Timing

A lot of the time in media, creators and authors will hold off on telling us how a character became disabled and often make the actual reveal into this big emotional scene, but like I mentioned before, this is very, very far from how the real-life version of these kinds of conversations usually go.
In my experience, it will be the first thing someone asks me. That's not an exaggeration, people will often ask me, "What happened?" "What's wrong with you?" "What happened to your legs?" before I even tell them my name, if I even get the chance to. I suppose you could make the argument James Cameron's Avatar was trying to make some kind of comment or commentary about that with Jake's opening narration about his spinal injury story, but even if that is the case, I think there's better ways that could have been handled.

Avatar aside, for some reason, non-disabled people think my disabling event is a great topic for casual small talk. I've been stopped on the street by passers-by, I've been asked in line at the grocery store while going through the checkouts or as something to fill the silence while I fill out forms, I've been asked on the bus and on the train by other passengers, including in the quiet carriages, I've been stopped and asked mid-workout at the gym, during job interviews as an ice-breaker (and yes, I'm aware that's illegal but it still happens very frequently), even once while I was crossing the street, by someone going in the opposite direction. They just yelled it out and expected me to yell back while navigating crowds in one of Sydney's busiest intersections. And I'm not alone in this, pretty much every visibly disabled person experiences this, or something similar.

Because of that, very few disabled people could keep it a secret to reveal, even if they wanted to, because if you refuse to answer these people, it makes an even bigger scene and most of us just want to get on with our day. For people like myself who initially didn't mind talking about "what happened," the sheer frequency at which I get asked this, before anything else, has made me hate being asked. I am used to it though. It annoys me, but I've found it's easier to just say "I got sick as a baby" and move on. I still don't mind talking about it on my own terms or to little kids, since they often don't know any better, but I despise being asked by adults who should know not to start a conversation with "hey total stranger, tell me about the potentially most traumatic thing that's happened to you as small-talk". Unfortunately, the reality is that very few people actually know that though.
This is even worse for people who's disabling event is more traumatic and actually is a touchy subject for them because unfortunately, these kinds of people don't tend to accept "I don't want to talk about it" as an answer. So a lot of the folks I know who fall into this category also just get used to being asked and telling people the spark-notes version, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them. Eventually, a lot of us just become numb to it either way.

And I'll be honest, As much as this annoys me when it happens in real life, I'd love to see it reflected more in media with visibly disabled characters, because at least you can do something with the absurdity of it all, and it is a common part of the visibly disabled experience that's overlooked a lot. It also gives you a good excuse to bring it up, without the big, tragic backstory scene that can derail the pacing if you're not careful, and be used to tell us a bit about the character through how they react to it. Also, maybe if it shows up enough in popular media and is actually called out, people will stop doing it as often. That might be wishful thinking, but I can dream haha.
Speaking from experience though, I recognise this can be a bit harder to pull-off than it sounds, because the whole point is that these conversations are weird, jarring and out-of-place. I'd love to see more people try it, but it can be hard to get it right depending on your story's pacing, so do so carefully. Something else to consider is that if you do use this approach, you don't actually have to tell us what happened to them. Some people I know, especially those who are more on the laid-back/jokey side, will just make stuff up to mess with people. This is something I've done with some of my webcomic protagonists, I never intend to tell the audience what happened to them, because the "how" isn't really relevant to their stories but I wanted to have some fun with people's nosiness.

The other way this usually tends to go in my experience is that it's eventually brought up extremely casually.
Like I mentioned before, I have disabled friends I've known for years and I genuinely have no idea how they became disabled, and they also didn't know how I became disabled, because it just doesn't matter. There were some exceptions though. I knew some of their stories because they were public figures, and that's the first thing they always get asked about in interviews with non-disabled reporters when they're first getting their name out there. Outside of that, only a few of them very casually mentioned "after my accident" or "after I got sick" if it was tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, but it was very rare that the topic ever came up directly even if we were close. It wasn't because we didn't trust each other enough or didn't like each other, it's just that it didn't matter for most of us.

The difference between situations like what I was just describing, and, for example, the scene we got with Neve in Dragon Age, is that, it was pretty obvious that that scene was there to tell us what happened, even if Neve herself just mentioned it pretty randomly. In this case, it was less of how the characters were acting, and more how the whole thing was set up and framed. That whole scene's reason to exist was to tell us Neve's backstory. It happens during a conversation about coffee and insomnia, but it's pretty clear that's all filler. There's not really new information about her in that scene outside of her disabling event story, it doesn't tell us anything else we don't already know.
A scene depicting a situation like what I'm describing though would have it be just part of another conversation that's equally as important to the plot or characters, or ideally even more so. If you want to bring it up casually, actually do it casually and don't make it the central focus of the scene. In Dragon Age The Veilguard's case, this could have happened during one of the group scenes where they're discussing how to move forward. As an example, maybe they needed to go to a new area in Minrathos for something, and Neve mentions that the group needs to be careful, a mage she was chasing ambushed her in that part of the city once, and she came away with "a new accessory", with another character agreeing and the group continuing the planning from there. I still would prefer it not be brought up at all mind you, but I feel like that would have been a better way to bring it up casually like they were clearly trying to do. and don't tie it to her approval of the player character either.

The reactions

Another thing to consider carefully is other characters' reactions to the disabled character talking about this. Real-life people tend to get weird whenever I tell them how I became disabled, and I suppose media mimics that pretty well, but it would be nice to see some more non-disabled characters react in ways that aren't either getting really uncomfortable, telling the person that they're an inspiration, or getting all sulky and sad about it.
In real life, when I do bring the subject up to people, especially if I do it casually, you don't need to stop what we're talking about to "check if I'm ok" or comfort me or derail whatever we're talking about. If I bring it up casually, it's because I want you to treat it casually. If your character in your story is bringing it up casually, they will probably want the same, so don't make everyone else stop and go quiet in response. This goes the other way too, if the character does bring it up and is trying to be serious, make the other characters react accordingly, but I don't tend to see that as often.
Of course, sometimes the point is that characters react poorly, but if that's the angle you're going for, actually point that out. Have your disabled character call it out as being kind of weird and uncomfortable, and don't just sweep it under the rug. Or have someone else point it out. I know I've said you don't need to spell it out for people all the time, but when you're going with a stereotype or playing into a trope, especially one like this that a lot of people don't understand as being a problem, it does need to be addressed.

Other character's reactions is an especially important thing to keep in mind for anyone writing for or creating video games, specifically where the player can choose how their character will react to a someone telling them this. A lot of the time, there are few to no good ways for a player to choose to respond to the disabled character's story when it is an option.

Conclusion

A lot of the time, real-life non-disabled people feel entitled to know what happened to us, and to some extent, I think this is why this trope is so common. I don't think this is intentional, or even a conscious thought on the behalf of people in real-life or creators, but many are so used to getting that explanation, that when it's not provided, it feels weird to them.
As far as disability tropes go, "let me tell you my story" isn't the worst one out there, not by a long shot, nor am I saying you should never, ever use it. But it is a trope that I think flies under a lot of people's radar and I wanted to talk about it. Of course, do what works for your story and your characters, but I do encourage you to stop and consider how much it's really adding.