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From our friends at TV Tropes, Disability Superpower, the idea that a character with a disability gains something that makes up for (or exceeds) the missing ability. This happens all the damn time in fanfic, and usually by replacing the disability with some other nearly equivalent new ability that no one else has. It's like having the terrible shock of knowing you can never sugar your tea again, but then being handed some Sweet-N-Low that also gives you the ability to fly.
And on that note, here's my reviews for the magical curses in two Harry Potter fanfic stories that cause a main character to be unable to speak:
"Beyond Words" by Steppenwoelfin
Author's summary: "...Voldemort curses Harry during the final battle, and Harry consequently loses the ability to speak and becomes mute. Dumbledore assigns a most reluctant Severus Snape to teach Harry how to overcome this obstacle by means of non-verbal spells, sign language and a lot of training and iron discipline. During their lessons, they slowly learn to respect each other…and more." [Pairing is HP/SS, rating is M.]
"A Thousand Beautiful Things" by Duinn Fionn
Author's written summary: "Draco Malfoy struggles with changed fortunes, shifted alliances, an ugly war, and an unusual spell, with the help of a concerned professor, an insightful house-elf, and an unexpected Gryffindor friend. Rating - R Pairing - HP/DM"
I'll cut this real soon now for possible spoilers, though I'll try not to cover anything that's not laid flat out in the summary or first chapter. I just want to say before the cut that I was amused enough by both of these stories to read them. I liked "A Thousand Beautiful Things" much better than "Beyond Words," most especially for its treatment of this trope, but I didn't think "Beyond Words" was unreadably bad. (And in fact some things in that story unrelated to the trope were quite interesting.)
Anyways,
"Beyond Words" was a fairly standard case of what I'd call "missing ability." Harry is cursed in the first chapter (in a flashback) by Voldemort with "complete silence." Now, obviously, the first solution would be "Break the curse." But that's explained away because Voldemort cast it, and he's extremely powerful, therefore it's impossible to break this curse. (And, of course, no one has ever escaped the full impact of a curse Voldemort cast before, right?) Seriously, I do find "Powerful wizard's last, home-crafted curse is unbreakable" to be reasonably plausible, or at least the idea that people can look for a cure, but in the absence of an immediate one, it's best to go on with one's life.
In this story, Harry is barred by this curse from using his voice or vocal cords to make sound. Early in the story, he learns to use sign language, but of course sign language only works if your audience can understand sign, right? And Harry wants to be a teacher, which means that he has to be able to speak to a classful of students.
Side note: Ever notice how Harry's chosen careers in both canon and fanon mirror what a lot of kids want to do? First, there's Harry as Auror (police officer)-- which lets him "catch bad guys" and be cool; and, for the "Harry is probably burned out on danger" crowd, there's Harry as Hogwarts teacher. Occasionally there's Harry as writer. But you know what childhood dream career I've never seen?
Harry as... FIRE FIGHTER. That would be flippin' AWESOME. Just think, you'd have to learn all kinds of spells to fight fires, ones that would work around magical items (you know, like some things don't work on chemical fires or grease fires mundanely), and you'd get to save people, but you wouldn't necessarily be a target for disgruntled criminals. Anyways, moving on.
Now, this is a world full of magic. There are quills that will write down what you say, at speed; in fanon, there are also quills that you can trace along a scroll or printed page that will read out the words! (And there's the spell Dumbledore uses, that causes a ribbon to flow into cursive with the words of the Hogwarts school song at the Feast.) Would it be so ridiculous to postulate a magical spell or item that would read Harry's signs and vocalize them for non-signing listeners? Even an item that would read out Harry's written lecture notes to the class, or a quill that he could point at words and have it vocalized, or have it appear on the chalkboard. There are a squillion solutions I can come up with using either canon items, or a close inference from canon items. However, the author doesn't want this, because we are being railroaded into...
Plot Event #2:
(a) Professor Snape teaches Harry telepathy, including projecting his thoughts. This is the magical solution that allows Harry to teach.
(b) Teaching people telepathy and getting all up in their personal business like that causes both student and teacher to have an artificially influenced feeling of attraction to one another.
(c) You probably know where the story goes from here. Standard romance plot.
I really did like this story, and the way the author handled the imagery, enough to read through it a second time and see if the problems I listed above were answered and I missed them, and... they just weren't. The author got too interested in leading to the imagined ending to make it clear why things happened the author's way, and not in a way consistent with canon magical theory or rational outgrowths from it. In the story, Harry's inability to speak never got him into any trouble; the worst problem he had was a small amount of impatience with finding a pen and paper.
By contrast, in "A Thousand Beautiful Things," the plot begins by introducing a little-known dark Spanish curse, cast on Harry by Lucius Malfoy (in the presence of Draco, which is actually one of the events which causes Draco to consider defecting to the Light, where people aren't crazy), and eventually triggered into activity by Lucius Malfoy's death. The curse causes the victim, every night at sundown, to begin verbally abusing whoever is with them, and to continue until they're exhausted. As a particularly horrid twist, the victim uses Legilimency (mind-reading) to figure out what their friends' worst insecurities are and insults them with that subject matter. The author goes into detail about how this is not part of the local magical corpus, and thus how such a drastically awful spell is not forbidden by law.
This curse can only be cured by the willing action of another person, who must swear to not speak for a specific time period of a few years. Since Draco is the only one who knows the curse used, he's the only person who can choose to save Harry from its effects.
Unlike so many stories where a character's ability is taken away and immediately replaced by something nearly equivalent, Draco has to swear not to speak, sign, write, nod, or in ANY way communicate with others. He is specifically permitted to laugh, smile, cry, or otherwise express emotions, but not to force those expressions as a yes-or-no communication with others. (In other words, he can laugh at something funny, but he can't "laugh if you want pizza tonight.")
This story covers a lot of the events of Draco's life during the vow, both the highly intelligent setup before the vow-- he explains to his house elf that even if he doesn't ask for dinner, she should bring him some food at dinnertime, and in other ways anticipate his needs without waiting to be asked-- and the crafty choices he makes after the vow. Draco faces the dilemma of breaking his vow several times, for various good and worthy reasons, and he inadvertently hurts some people by his refusal to speak.
I really liked this story, and how it showed someone dealing with something that could either be perceived as an actual disability, or as a serious vow-based restriction. I think we all have cases where we've given our word to do something, and then end up breaking it rather than hurt someone deeply, and this story makes you think about that sort of situation in a new light.
So, anyone else have an example of a pair of stories, or books, or movies, that are on "the same subject" but one is much better than the other?
ETA: I've thought of a name for a particular treatment of disability-- when one character is permanently injured in an accident or act of violence, and it's clear that none of the characters have ANY previous experience with that disability, and perhaps that no one in the entire world does, so they have to come up with, from scratch, ways for the character to deal with their limitations. I think this particular treatment should be called "Re-inventing the wheelchair."
And on that note, here's my reviews for the magical curses in two Harry Potter fanfic stories that cause a main character to be unable to speak:
"Beyond Words" by Steppenwoelfin
Author's summary: "...Voldemort curses Harry during the final battle, and Harry consequently loses the ability to speak and becomes mute. Dumbledore assigns a most reluctant Severus Snape to teach Harry how to overcome this obstacle by means of non-verbal spells, sign language and a lot of training and iron discipline. During their lessons, they slowly learn to respect each other…and more." [Pairing is HP/SS, rating is M.]
"A Thousand Beautiful Things" by Duinn Fionn
Author's written summary: "Draco Malfoy struggles with changed fortunes, shifted alliances, an ugly war, and an unusual spell, with the help of a concerned professor, an insightful house-elf, and an unexpected Gryffindor friend. Rating - R Pairing - HP/DM"
I'll cut this real soon now for possible spoilers, though I'll try not to cover anything that's not laid flat out in the summary or first chapter. I just want to say before the cut that I was amused enough by both of these stories to read them. I liked "A Thousand Beautiful Things" much better than "Beyond Words," most especially for its treatment of this trope, but I didn't think "Beyond Words" was unreadably bad. (And in fact some things in that story unrelated to the trope were quite interesting.)
Anyways,
"Beyond Words" was a fairly standard case of what I'd call "missing ability." Harry is cursed in the first chapter (in a flashback) by Voldemort with "complete silence." Now, obviously, the first solution would be "Break the curse." But that's explained away because Voldemort cast it, and he's extremely powerful, therefore it's impossible to break this curse. (And, of course, no one has ever escaped the full impact of a curse Voldemort cast before, right?) Seriously, I do find "Powerful wizard's last, home-crafted curse is unbreakable" to be reasonably plausible, or at least the idea that people can look for a cure, but in the absence of an immediate one, it's best to go on with one's life.
In this story, Harry is barred by this curse from using his voice or vocal cords to make sound. Early in the story, he learns to use sign language, but of course sign language only works if your audience can understand sign, right? And Harry wants to be a teacher, which means that he has to be able to speak to a classful of students.
Side note: Ever notice how Harry's chosen careers in both canon and fanon mirror what a lot of kids want to do? First, there's Harry as Auror (police officer)-- which lets him "catch bad guys" and be cool; and, for the "Harry is probably burned out on danger" crowd, there's Harry as Hogwarts teacher. Occasionally there's Harry as writer. But you know what childhood dream career I've never seen?
Harry as... FIRE FIGHTER. That would be flippin' AWESOME. Just think, you'd have to learn all kinds of spells to fight fires, ones that would work around magical items (you know, like some things don't work on chemical fires or grease fires mundanely), and you'd get to save people, but you wouldn't necessarily be a target for disgruntled criminals. Anyways, moving on.
Now, this is a world full of magic. There are quills that will write down what you say, at speed; in fanon, there are also quills that you can trace along a scroll or printed page that will read out the words! (And there's the spell Dumbledore uses, that causes a ribbon to flow into cursive with the words of the Hogwarts school song at the Feast.) Would it be so ridiculous to postulate a magical spell or item that would read Harry's signs and vocalize them for non-signing listeners? Even an item that would read out Harry's written lecture notes to the class, or a quill that he could point at words and have it vocalized, or have it appear on the chalkboard. There are a squillion solutions I can come up with using either canon items, or a close inference from canon items. However, the author doesn't want this, because we are being railroaded into...
Plot Event #2:
(a) Professor Snape teaches Harry telepathy, including projecting his thoughts. This is the magical solution that allows Harry to teach.
(b) Teaching people telepathy and getting all up in their personal business like that causes both student and teacher to have an artificially influenced feeling of attraction to one another.
(c) You probably know where the story goes from here. Standard romance plot.
I really did like this story, and the way the author handled the imagery, enough to read through it a second time and see if the problems I listed above were answered and I missed them, and... they just weren't. The author got too interested in leading to the imagined ending to make it clear why things happened the author's way, and not in a way consistent with canon magical theory or rational outgrowths from it. In the story, Harry's inability to speak never got him into any trouble; the worst problem he had was a small amount of impatience with finding a pen and paper.
By contrast, in "A Thousand Beautiful Things," the plot begins by introducing a little-known dark Spanish curse, cast on Harry by Lucius Malfoy (in the presence of Draco, which is actually one of the events which causes Draco to consider defecting to the Light, where people aren't crazy), and eventually triggered into activity by Lucius Malfoy's death. The curse causes the victim, every night at sundown, to begin verbally abusing whoever is with them, and to continue until they're exhausted. As a particularly horrid twist, the victim uses Legilimency (mind-reading) to figure out what their friends' worst insecurities are and insults them with that subject matter. The author goes into detail about how this is not part of the local magical corpus, and thus how such a drastically awful spell is not forbidden by law.
This curse can only be cured by the willing action of another person, who must swear to not speak for a specific time period of a few years. Since Draco is the only one who knows the curse used, he's the only person who can choose to save Harry from its effects.
Unlike so many stories where a character's ability is taken away and immediately replaced by something nearly equivalent, Draco has to swear not to speak, sign, write, nod, or in ANY way communicate with others. He is specifically permitted to laugh, smile, cry, or otherwise express emotions, but not to force those expressions as a yes-or-no communication with others. (In other words, he can laugh at something funny, but he can't "laugh if you want pizza tonight.")
This story covers a lot of the events of Draco's life during the vow, both the highly intelligent setup before the vow-- he explains to his house elf that even if he doesn't ask for dinner, she should bring him some food at dinnertime, and in other ways anticipate his needs without waiting to be asked-- and the crafty choices he makes after the vow. Draco faces the dilemma of breaking his vow several times, for various good and worthy reasons, and he inadvertently hurts some people by his refusal to speak.
I really liked this story, and how it showed someone dealing with something that could either be perceived as an actual disability, or as a serious vow-based restriction. I think we all have cases where we've given our word to do something, and then end up breaking it rather than hurt someone deeply, and this story makes you think about that sort of situation in a new light.
So, anyone else have an example of a pair of stories, or books, or movies, that are on "the same subject" but one is much better than the other?
ETA: I've thought of a name for a particular treatment of disability-- when one character is permanently injured in an accident or act of violence, and it's clear that none of the characters have ANY previous experience with that disability, and perhaps that no one in the entire world does, so they have to come up with, from scratch, ways for the character to deal with their limitations. I think this particular treatment should be called "Re-inventing the wheelchair."
