Maybe don't write a plot where you send a wheelchair user to a tropical island with no wheelchair access! How hard is that?!
So let's discuss how this ridiculous trope is why people think disabled people will be magically healed!
How this trope has contributed to people actually pulling disabled people out of their chairs and taking away their mobility aids because abled people think we just need the right motivation or situation to be normal!
This weekend my mom and I had a long talk about accepting our bellies.
My mom was barely 100 pounds until her mid thirties but she never had a flat tummy.
I was bigger than my mom by 6th grade and I've had a pooch ever since.
Id never told my mom before that I'd realized my obsession with hiding my tummy and being insecure about it came from her.
She lives with my nieces now and how will they believe us when we tell them their bodies are beautiful if they know we don't even think that about ourselves
I told her "mom why try to hide your tummy? You still know it's there & so does everyone else!"
I told her I used to live my life tryin to hide my tummy like a pregnant actress in a sitcom... Strategically holding sweaters, carrying a large purse, trying to hide it behind plants
Before you write that scene where a villain stands up out of their wheelchair and reveals They Could Walk The Whole Time... I'm going to quickly explain to you why that trope has serious and dangerous real world consequences
Disabled people are publicly confronted by strangers that don't believe they are really disabled, because we can walk, all the time.
Violently and aggressively confronted. Threatened even.
This reaction is doubtlessly tied to the media erasure of ambulatory wheelchair users and these wreckless and abelist plots