Shadiversity vs Wheelchairs, Featuring Extra Ableism! 

At this point they’re not even bad takes. They’re Shad Takes

I noticed that Shad wears glasses. If his vision is blurry, why doesn't he just get laser eye surgery? Could it be that just because it's possible to fix a disability, it doesn't mean that everyone has the resources necessary and/or the desire to do so?

Toph is blind. She's in a fantasy setting with water benders that can heal people. Geordi is blind. He's in a sci-fi setting where limbs can be regenerated. The point is: even in wild settings there would still be people with difficulties to overcome or live with. Shad's a moron.

It's all just a self report. "What kind of weirdo would make their self-insert power fantasy with a weakness?! Don't they know that D&D is explicitly for flacid emotional projection?!"

One of my favorite moments in the _Wolfenstein_ game series was when (spoilers) William Blazkowicz, the character you play as, is critically injured after the last game's final boss battle. While your submarine is being boarded by a bunch of nazi soldiers, William is completely wheelchair-bound. You have to navigate the area in a wheelchair, unable to climb up stairs or ladders, moving at a snail's pace, picking off nazis wherever you can. And you kick their asses. Blazkowicz, already half-Jewish, is now more the antithesis of the nazi ideology than ever, and he slaughters dozens of them and retakes his vessel without the ability to stand. The nazis were pushed out and toppled by the very thing they declared subhuman, useless, and a waste of space. But I guess I was wrong then, according to Shad. Blazkowicz didn't beat the odds and come out on top. I must be misremembering.

"Fantasy combat wheelchair heroes? THAT'S NOT REALISTIC! Everyone knows that people in wheelchairs belong locked away in old folks' homes where I don't have to see them! Now let me gush over lightsabers and fantasy spaceships and magic spells and..." Reminder: Starcraft 2's "dragoon" units are basically veteran combat wheelchairs in a sci-fi setting. EVERYONE loves this trope right up to the point where they realize that it involves characters with disabilities and then they start freaking out about how "woke" it is, not because the trope isn't interesting or cool or "unrealistic," but because they don't believe people with disabilities should ever be placed in a starring role.

I would also like to point out they're massively oversimplifying mobility problems as paralysis or "legs not working". Most wheelchair users are ambulatory, meaning they can move their legs, stand up, and even walk around to an extent. It's just that they can't stand up or walk for as long as an able bodied person, so they take their wheelchair to conserve energy or avoid passing out. Disabilities can be complicated and dynamic, and not at "easy" fix like healing your legs. Some examples are POTS and EDS, they're not inherently injured, their bodies just do that.

Shad keeps saying he wants to "overcome disabilities" when he really just wants to erase them. What would be more empowering than capitalizing on a trait that others would assume is a flaw?

Super-Genius Shad can't even fathom the idea that someone in a wheelchair getting out and going adventuring *_**IS**_* "overcoming" their disability. Like...how hard is that to grasp?

First of all, there are infinite interesting ways to roleplay a knight with chronic fatigue. Ever heard of a curse?? Second, the inability to imagine that someone like you could be a hero betrays such low self-esteem and commitment to disability as a character flaw it’s actually crazy. Bro literally calls his shit the knights watch - there’s a disabled fantasy character in the series that inspired his show!!?? Edit: the more I watch this the more I realize how insidious and gross this is. In Shad’s worldview all people with disabilities should feel broken and ashamed and basically never learn to like themselves and the way that they are. They should take any opportunity to be “better,” even if it’s make believe in a game. If you are chronically disabled, your ideal self is not able-bodied unless you have not accepted your disability and learned to live with it. He literally says that he’s anti-acceptance. Wildly cruel and sick belief system.

Toph Beifong would like a few words with Shad.

I think all but one of the PCs in the party I DM are disabled? Our wizard is blind and uses Detect Magic to see. The barbarian lost an arm, the prosthetic comes from druidic-influenced artificing (so it could grow with them, they lost it at a pretty young age) and it pops out if they take necrotic damage and fail a con save. The bard has thermoregulation problems from a traumatic brain injury so the wizard made him a special amulet to help get his temperature under control. Your PCs CAN be disabled! It's not that hard! Even outside of this 5e context, in The Second Citadel storyline of The Penumbra Podcast, Sir Mark is disabled and can't use his legs, he's just always on horseback, his horse is basically his wheelchair.

What a great idea for a character. Imagine an artificer, spine obliterated in a horrible accident, develops a suit of armor to return his mobility and fighting prowess. But there's a catch, the magics required are painful, sending metals and energy deep within his nervous system and it is killing him. Every time you use your Mobility Suit, your health is temporarily doubled, but you will lose health every turn, when you deactivate it, you will permanently lose the equivalent percentage of your normal HP. This HP can not be restored.

Guts is disabled, going blind, missing an arm, missing an eye, along with his body basically decaying with the constant battle and use of the berserker armor, and yet, like using his missing arm as a cannon is seen as the coolest shit ever, also that berserk is like super old, I wonder what shad would think of Guts and what justification he would give to toss him aside from the conversation

I had a fighter/bard in a 5e campaign that was deaf. The DM made him immune to thunder damage and allowed him to use sign language for his spells, so our strategy was to put my character in front while the wizard and tempest cleric blasted his area with thunder spells or used silence. The campaign went from levels 1-20 and it never stopped being fun to just ignore allied AOE spells.

“I would get rid of my disability in a second” good for you, Shad. But have you considered: -not every disabled person feels the same way, some may want to play a disabled character because that’s what they enjoy being and playing. -Some disabled people who feel the same way are also aware that it won’t just happen like that, so would rather explore their current experiences in their fantasy and feel badass as they are instead of feeling like they can only be badass without that disability. -Not every disability can be healed, even if on surface level they’re the same. Someone born unable to walk probably couldn’t gain that ability with a healing spell, but someone who got a spinal injury might. Someone cursed with chronic fatigue could have that lifted but that wouldn’t stop natural chronic fatigue. Just not having the biology to do something can’t be “fixed” by something that restores your biology, because there isn’t anything to restore. Most spells for drastic healing also have time limits, because after long enough your body just adapts and that’s no longer just hit points to be healed. Even when it’s right after, some injuries (like missing limbs) straight up aren’t the same as just missing hit points, you need high level spells to reverse it at all. -It isn’t all about wish fulfillment for everybody, sometimes it’s more about an emotional story. Stories like those in DnD can be used to explore disability in narratively interesting ways. I wish I didn’t have severe sensory issues, but playing them in ttrpgs is still enjoyable because it can create incredibly touching, tense, or tragic moments. -Some people like grittier/lower magic DnD settings, where these rules will be more pertinent because healing magic won’t be common -Actually thinking about how disability interacts with magic, class, and culture can really make a DnD world feel fleshed out -Most small towns don’t have Clerics strong enough to do that, even a first level healing spell can only be gotten by first level characters, which are *already* supposed to be above the average Joe in ability. Something that can negate a disability would be even more uncommon, even in a high magic setting.

Using a wheelchair IS overcoming a disability! We are tool users. The wheelchair is a tool, much like armor and weapons. We use tools to overcome our limits.

"The Wokes would hate Toph today because she's a rich girl who goes around beating up poor people" is such an amazingly Shadbrained take, when the whole point of Toph's character is that she rebels against and rejects her upbringing, social status, and family wealth at literally every opportunity. She literally runs away from home because her wealthy father is stifling her with his rich guy bullshit. Shad's take only makes sense if Toph was using her wealth to help her beat up and oppress lower class characters, instead of, you know, fighting for justice with her fists and feet alone and beating up characters who stand for reprehensible ideas and causes, regardless of class. How is Shad THIS stupid? It's gotta be an act, right? ...Is it an act? You want to criticize Toph for something? Call her out for her actual sins like becoming a cop.

OH CRAP: one more thing to add to my MANY opinions on this subject. *Party of adventures is travelling towards a dungeon. One of them is in a wheelchair. The party finds that the dungeon is not accessible via wheelchair.* Non wheelchair user: "Uh oh, how are we gonna..." *Wheelchair uses gets out of their wheel, picks it up, walks into the dungeon and then sits back down. The rest of the party stare at them in shock.* Wheelchair user: "What? I can walk. I just can't walk for as long as you guys can, or consistently rely upon my ability to do it." *Wheelchair user looks at the wizard* Wheelchair user: "C'mon Gary, you can only cast fireball once and then you have to nap before you can do it again. You understand this concept, right?"

Shad: I don't wanna see characters in wheelchairs!! Also Shad: WTF I'm being oppressed people are trying to silence me for being ableist!

Funny enough, I'm technically on disability for ADHD, because I couldn't get on it for my crushed spine 🙄

"You can be anything you want!" Shad says with conviction. "The sky's the limit." "Right" says Mayo boy. "Thats why I pick Human male, fighter." Says Shad. "And he HAS to be a hero, otherwise what's the point." "Same." Says Mayo man. "Same."

Meanwhile Pathfinder 2e: "Yeah we got rules for wheelchairs. Wanna add some spikes and blades on wheels or make it shoot magic and climb walls?"

"Being in a wheelchair would make things harder!" Yeah? Make it harder as the DM then. Make puzzles where they need to get that party member somewhere with the wheelchair. Make combats with verticality, so the team needs to figure out how to get their caster where they need to go quickly. Make situations where the caster could probably use a spell like misty step, but they'd leave the wheelchair behind. There's so many things you could do with something like that, and then there's things like druids! Shapeshifting to be "free" of the disability temporarily, even if you go back in the chair when you're done. Any sort of "I don't want it in my game" is just an admission you can't design around it.

"Why would any minority be represented in fantasy?! I usually play the most bland default stock character and I love it!?" Thanks shiddeversity very cool, you definitely understand what you're talking about...

I don’t need to see myself represented in media says man who cries that society is collapsing every time something in a movie isn’t for him.

To Shad and people like him, their whole worldview seems to be "Fuck anyone who is even slightly different from us."

I personally consider my experience with ADHD to be disabling in many ways, especially because I cannot afford medication to help me manage it. It's completely destroyed my motivation to do literally anything at times and sent me into deep depressions. I was diagnosed with it when I was very young, and I'm AFAB. That's how you know it's severe. There are ways to cope, and there are good and bad days. I feel I often need extra assistance more than neurotypical people. But I wouldn't necessarily compare myself and my situation to someone in a wheelchair, nor would I think it's appropriate or necessary for me to speak for someone who is disabled in that way. edit: I also want to add that I've seen many people with ADHD (not specifically you, Jake) speak for everyone with ADHD as though their experience is exactly the same. There's more to it than stereotypes or those with less severe expressions, and having a halfway decent upbringing greatly helps. I didn't have that luxury, so I find coping much harder than many.

Imagine pissing your pants this much over options that you don't even have to take.

Shad would shit himself if he saw Johnny Joestar's insane getaways

Shade is complaining about RU-vid "trying to silence him" Meanwhile, he releases dumb shit like this. Nothing is his fault. Ever. You can easily say " i canot afford the healing Magic" as to why someone is in a wheelchair. In my game, I have a NPC that has a war injury that effects his walking that he CHOOSES TO KEEP to remind him of those who fell in battle and he survived. I played an Air Genasi Monk with synesthesia related to the air and she was always distracted by different smells and sounds, giving them weird descriptions, tastes, and emotions associated. The BEST artificer in my World is a dwarf that has a Robotic arm and he keeps it to show that "YES. I blew my arm of in an accident BUT built myself a better one BECAUSE I"M JUST THAT DAMN GOOD." and uses it as a work of pride! There's very easy reasons to write this in. But I wouldn't expect Shad to have any knowledge on how to write.

I would love to play myself as a character in a game. I have cerebral palsy and epilepsy since childhood and developed other conditions later in life.

Shad seems to think that somehow exoskeletons or some magic solution to mobility impairment would be fine, but wheelchairs as a solution to mobility impairment are not. He's entirely driven by aesthetic.

Shad is assuming magical healthcare would be decommodified? Interesting...

"It wouldn't be interesting or realistic to have a hero with mental or physical difficulties." - Shad

It's not exactly fantasy, but anybody remember Bentley from the Sly Cooper games. He's a playable character in a stealth platformer, who is in a wheelchair after Sly 2.

The wheelchair _is_ "overcoming the disability" someone who cannot get around is able to get around.

They act like it's impossible to be an adventurer if you can't easily climb a rope. I think the 6 str wizard and the centaur who moves at 1/5th speed climbing have some things to say regarding that point.

If my DM can figure out how my centaur barbarian can crawl through dungeons and travel through mountains/climb ladders.... you can fight in a wheelchair.

I can literally turn myself into a large dragon and eat my enemies but being an adventurer in a wheelchair is too unrealistic?

You can have wheelchairs in D&D? That's so fuggin' cool! This game gets more and more appealing the more I learn about it. From pissing off Christian fundamentalists to the existence of the Bard class, and now this! Awesome!

I saw an article a few weeks ago about a local paralyzed woman who actually got an exoskeleton that made her able to stand up and cook dinner, or walk around her apartment. She had it for about a year, and then some tiny bit broke, and now she has been stuck back in her wheelchair for 8 months. So now the battery is dead, and even if she got the exo-legs to not be broken again, she will have to wait about two years for a new battery to be custom built for her. Don't know what Shads point was about, but that story and these takes makes me about the same amount of aggro.

DnD is not usually, nor the Forgotten Realms, accurate to real world middle ages. Magic is a usually expensive but existing technology. And I am pretty sure it is in the mission statement to be inclusive, including people with disabilities being represented.

since the elder scrolls got brought up i will point out that there is a canonical dwemer character who has steam punk mechanical spider legs so if people really wanted they could 100% have a sort of wheelchair in an elder scrolls setting and it would be lore accurate. people have even made mods with mechanical dwemer limbs

Fluffy and skim milk were never that remarkable but it’s astonishing how hard-stuck in the most cringeass variety of 2008 “humor” this guy is

Why is he so mad at things that don’t matter

Some time ago Shad re-tweet a post from a disabled person saying how great AI images are because it lets them create without having the physical ability to do so, I think they had hand tremors. I remember Shad calling it a "side of the debate people like to ignore" que then a number of disabled artists speaking up on how they, despite being handy capped have managed to overcome or work with there distality's and still manage to be artists. I think the lesion there Shad has clearly failed to learn is people with disability's is a large, diverse group of ppl all with there own views, attitudes etc, Shad saying here disabled people don't want to see disabled people in fantasy is basically taking his own views and applying it to the whole spectrum of people. Some people may hate being reminded of it in fantasy, others may like it. My sister was telling me the other day how she liked reading about a character with a knee problem in a fantasy book because she also has a knee problem and she related so much more to said character. He just assumes he knows all there is to know about anything he's on about and not considering that there are disabled people who might think defiantly to himself.

It’s uncanny, this man is ALWAYS wrong.

Disabled man here. Having a technology that enables me to walk without a limp would have been seen as a fantasy not too long ago

Wheelchair combat is so fucking cool why are we complaining about this

I had a character that was significantly slower than the rest of the party due to being very short and that affecting speed in the ttrpg we were playing so instead of travel at my speed one of the other characters carried in one of those baby carriers and it gave me advantage on perception checks because I had really good vision and I could obviously see farther being up higher. This literally saved us from a giant sand worm that would have eaten us if I hadn't warned the party. Later I spotted an ambush because of it that would have wiped the party if we hadn't been prepared for it. Our DM took a simple detail about my character and used it to create a more narratively interesting story. An half way decent DM can and will do that.

The reason these people harp on about "overcoming the wheelchair" is because they want it so that if you, for any reason, remain wheelchair locked that's a moral failure.

Would healing spells actually work on someone born with a form of paralysis? I could see it working on paralysis caused by injury, but paralysis you're born with is your body's uninjured state. There's nothing physically wrong there to be cured.

I was already not thrilled with them, but as soon the guy whipped out the fucking voice (you know the one) I was livid.

This reminds me of an actual faction in the world building of Eclipse Phase (a transhuman cyberpunk/espionage rpg) - the mercurials - whose deal is to fight for a civil right called "morphological freedom". They also include people who intentionally inhabit bodies which have less or more limbs, have different senses, are modular (you got 2 or several mechanical "units" who can move relatively independantly and also combine like Voltron), are a swarm of microbots, or generally are non-humanoid shapes. Some mercurials are emergent AGIs, uplifted animals and human-socialized AGIs, but a fair deal of them are just freedom-loving humans who like to experiment with the freedoms afforded to them by mind-uploading technology. Shad is taking the Bioconservative take - that all this diversity is inhuman and that humans should aspire to a traditional humanoid morphology. They are represented in the setting principally by Jovian fascists.

Shad strikes me as the most boring guy. He's just so committed to never genuinely looking at anything that challenges what he already believes that nothing can get in. Like, damn man, I hear about fantasy wheelchairs and I just WANT to generate ideas for that, he looks at the same thing and just thinks "no, not possible." I once played D&D with a wheelchair-bound artificer who used the kickback from his projectile weapons and bombs to get around and dodge stuff in combat. As the game went on he'd like incorporate loot and weapons that we found into the wheelchair expressly to facilitate that, and to express it mechanically we'd lower the attack bonuses a little (the gear had to be tamped down somewhat to fit in/not immediately blast the chair apart when fired) but in return give him bonuses for like acrobatics rolls or dex checks in combat. Dude ended up being one of the more nimble members of the party despite being unable to walk more than few steps. It's almost like storytelling thrives in limitations and attention to detail, and not in blithe refusal to consider ideas you don't immediately like.

It's weird how these type of dudes can't stop mentioning people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

Speaking as someone who has "chronic fatigue syndrome," it absolutely can be disabling to the point where no accommodations can help one live anything close to a "normal" life. I have severe ME and have been bedridden for many years. While the mobility issues and fatigue could be accommodated for and the pain medicated away, the brain fog can't be helped. My memory and focus are so terrible that I can no longer read or write more than a few paragraphs. I can no longer draw. I have lost the ability to do everything I used to love and there are no accomodations that can help me do them again. I have accepted that this is my life now and I mourned the death of my "old self" long ago. I don't need tools or acceptance or access - I NEED a cure. However, I'm 100% behind representation in media. Maybe if there were characters accurately portrayed as having ME, there would be more support, more funding for research, and less jokes about "fatigue." Also, if I ever get well enough to roleplay again, I could totally think up some cool ideas for disabled characters. A paraplegic druid that rides around on a bear or mountain lion would be badass. This guy just has no imagination.

1. A paraglegic wizard on a Permenant Tenser's Floating disk. 2. A Halfling/Gnome Ranger w/ leg/nerve damage, that gets around strapped to their wolf companian. 3. A City-Speced Warforged that was built with wheels instead of legs. 3 Wheelchair adjacent character ideas of the cuff. And I really want to play one of them. Just shows how lazy Shad's imagination is.

In D&D or real life, having a disability isn’t always a bug; sometimes, it’s a feature.

He should have started this with disclosing he always plays a human warrior fighter, not nearly 10 mins in. Really lets me know what he wants in a fantasy setting.

The mimic has a very strong adhesive it can dissolve at will, it's body is very malleable, and it's quite physically strong. A stead that can take many shapes and also climb up walls. Stick your spellcaster or ranged fighter to it and spider climb to victory. Limitations can lead to very interesting situations and characters.

if we go by shad's logic that a disabled character would work to get rid of a disablity, which isn't accurate for all disabled people but if we accept that premise, you could easily write a character who is an adventurer trying to level up to gain the wish spell to overcome their disablity. It could form part of a character arc for them, or set a goal for them to achieve across the campaign.

10 year old Shad reading X-men and going "WHEELCHAIRS, WOKE" No, wait, wokeness and wheelchairs were invented in 2016 😂😂

"How would get up high hrothgaur in a wheelchair?" Um, Lydia helps pull your wheelchair up the steps. Why do you þink she's given almost right off the bat

A few years ago during a stream I told Jake about my quadriplegia from SMA type 2 and that I wanted to be me in a campaign as myself, he instantly began theory crafting how to make it work as a DM. Know what he didn’t do? “Durp, why you wanna do heroic stuff in the only form you have known? Durp dee dur!”

if i was playing dnd my character would just be a mask animated by a swarm of butterflies :3

"as someone who isnt in a wheelchair, I think its wrong to portray yourself in a wheelchair" - Shad

Shad: "it's ridiculous that they took Davros out of his wheelchair, what about disabled people?? Anyway here's why i think wheelchairs shouldn't exist in fantasy." Like does he _LISTEN TO WHAT HE'S SAYING_

The Davross one pisses me off so much because Shad uses it to feign giving a fuck about wheelchair users but the clip he talks about is Davross *before he was in a wheelchair* like he can't grasp that Davross wasn't always in the wheelchair and that when he made the Darleks he hadn't been disfigured yet. Just as a lore nut this constant use of Davross is really grating cus Shad doesn't know what he's talking about

So in Sly 2 the character Bentley is crushed by an overly complicated clock bird... thing... leaving him paralyzed waist down. Sly 3 is about how he can overcome it and he is playable (also does an *AMAZING* roast at some point). The character Lynx-O in OG Thundercats is blinded early in the show, the cast helps him with a braille computer with which he does *navigation* in an 80s show. The anime Saint Seiya has one of the main characters, Shiryu, fight blind more than once, he is blind at the start of the final arc even, where he can only see because the next parts are in the Underworld. Some filler episodes are about him learning to use his able senses, which he does. He actually fends off a very powerful warrior almost entirely by himself later on, even blind. The manga version has a pair of enemies where they're twins, one of them able-bodied and the other blind; the battle takes place in a cave where the blind brother is the able-bodied's guide because of his much better hearing. The enemies lose when Shiryu manages to defeat the blind twin, as that's how he turns the tide. I almost forget, blind Shiryu is able to dispel a mirage foe since he doesn't feel any other presence beside himself and companion Seiya. And of course, Professor Xavier is also disabled yet is a very powerful mutant. A ton of portrayals of pirates draw them with some form of disability. The titular character of Sekiro loses his arm at the very beginning, the entire game he uses a prosthetic arm. One of the final bosses of Bloodborne is in a wheelchair and uses a prosthetic when the time to fight happens. Futaba Sakura in P5 is autistic, the biggest heists happen because of her help. She was my awakening to just how much representation matters. One of the hardest battles in Demon's Souls is a blind boss. Also one of the best fights in the entire game.

I'd be fatigued if i had to be shadiversity too. It seems like a tough job to navigate that confidently into any wrong take possible all the time.

Also, I really like the concept of healing magic; the ability to repair wounds, and heal people from that which would normally kill them, but I always like to temper it with limitations--because the ability to just heal from anything makes very little sense to me, honestly. So I like separating healing magic from what I think would be best called temporal magic because when you think about it, you're not returning to the same state you were before you were hurt, when you heal from something. You might not recover from something that hurt you, and be exactly the same way you were before. To really do that, you'd have to reset, or rewind time, or even getting more technical, you'd need to have an entirely new body in some cases. In an RP that I run, there a couple handicapped characters, there's one in a wheelchair, there's my rider princess who lost all of the nerve feeling in her dominant right arm after an assassination attempt on her life. Both are in very different sort of spheres where healing magic doesn't necessarily help them directly. In the case of the wheelchair girl, her body in technical terms is perfectly fine, there is nothing to heal there, but she has a illness relating to an overabundance of magical energy in her body--a severe version of an ailment that a lot of people in her region of the world have. The mana inside of her blocks brain signals to her legs, right arm, and right eye, and the treatment for something like that isn't something that they have come up with yet, though it is planned that the young woman will eventually regain what she's lost from her aliment when they do. The rider princess however cannot get the feeling in her arm back for two compounding reasons, first is that the damage done to her arm was extremely severe, and it took a while for medics to reach her, and two, even if there is magic that can reverse time to achieve that sort of feat, there were no mages at the time who had magical reserves wide enough to be able to reverse the damage. They saved her arm, but she'd lost all feeling it, and there isn't a way currently for them to fix that for her. I really do like the idea of there being issues beyond the reach of just being healed away, or if you can, it's _extremely_ difficult magic to use. And, I also like the idea of characters, having these aliments, and deciding that they want to, or can, work around them. Some of these chronic aliments can't just be magically healed, easily. There are so few people actually capable of just, removing chronic aliments, or fixing body parts, or stuff like that.

I know a girl who is disabled from birth. She once told me that she is not sure if she would remove it, if it was possible, because it kinda is part of her identity her whole life. I don't have to understand it, but I think one has to respect that statement.

Not every setting with magic is going to have the magic leg potion that fixes your nerve damage. Shad knows this because he's literally talked about Hard Magic vs. Soft Magic systems before, but because it's conservative discourse now, he HAS to ignore the things he's literally said before to agree with the ableist party line. I get the impracticality of using a wheelchair in a dungeon. But if you're doing D&D then that's something to deal with and work around in the actual campaign. It's literally a roleplaying game, just let people play it out in the actual story. If someone can't get up stairs easily then you can just run that as-is and make it part of the actual narrative.

"The sky is the limit" and at the same sentence he said "you cannot have a wheelchair" wtf!

Did they ever say WHY we can't have wheelchairs in fantasy settings? Because all I heard was "we're just gonna use this as an excuse to be ableist"

Shartiversity makes content like this and wonders why he's losing subscribers.

I wanna admit here that it took me 5 years or so to realize that the name means University of Shad and not Diversity of Shad. Propaganda is real.

The guy Shad needs to read himself some scripture... by which I mean the Discworld books.

"I have chronic fatigue and need to use a walking cane sometimes" So... not a wheelchair user. Every wheelchair user in Doctor Who fandom spaces (in my experience) were fking so excited about Shirley!!! She smashed so many misconceptions about wheelchairs it was amazing! ALSO the actress is literally an actual wheelchair user, guess she shouldn't allowed to be an actress. We are allowed to celebrate our lives, go absolutely f**k yourself Shad. 31:47 Wow the mocking of using a wheelchair. I made the mistake of going to the actual video and the ableism in the comments..... and jfc, but I shouldn't be surprised.

The disabled mage in fate apocrypha is amazing, they take her paraplegia and and depict it realistically while also using as an opportunity to give her really cool magic

Roleplaying games: We can have magic, dragons, gods, demons, races of all means. But we can't have any disability aids of any kind. Potions to help alleviate chronic issues, wheelchairs for those who require it, items to help with prothetics or some other sense What is Shad's issue with letting people enjoy fantasy the way they want to?

if you make it 1-20, thems the homies, protect them with your life, DM (possibly) included

Gotta love people offended by how they perceive people are telling them how they should play their fantasy game While actually telling people how they should play FANTASY GAMES

I just wanted to add that disability isn't either 0% or 100% It can be more or less severe and how much you are handicaped by it also depends a lot on your surroundings. The way you deal with it can also be very different from person to person. To simplify the matter too much would just not do it justice. If anyone is interested, Oakwyrm does discuss topics of disability and its visibility in media quite a lot. It's really interesting.

The wheelchair is actually older than the piano. The only reason the former seems more anachronistic to the high fantasy genre than the latter is vibes. We associate wheelchairs with modernity and pianos with the past. So these neckbeards play themselves by claiming to be arguing from a basis of historical accuracy with regards to gatekeeping what does and does not fit a fictional setting that is based on a real life historical period, but that "historical accuracy" is just the slurry of memories of the fantasy media they've already consumed, 50-75% of which had a piano somewhere as background dressing, but none of which had wheelchairs.

The thing about people who want limbs or other stuff removed is that they often do have structural differences in The parts of their brain connected to limbs and whatnot, think of it like a reverse phantom limb which is where a person who has lost their limb still has their brain wired to have all 4, It's horrible, brains are super weird and we need to be considerate of people even when it does just come down to psychology.

For a Dragon Heist campaign, I played a gnome where constitution was my lowest stat. I wrote it so he was heavily immunocompromised and physically fragile (things mostly outside of my lived experience). It was humbling to handle my character struggling with things that the rest of the party wouldn't think twice about, like having to avoid physical altercations at all costs, or having to over prepare for even basic, safe travel... only to be physically unable to carry the supplies I needed and constantly relying on my party to help carry my weight. We were in Waterdeep, and I was something of a tinkerer, so I ended up creating a small ballista that I could disassemble and carry around in a suitcase, like a sniper rifle. My party would scout out a location and often carry me to the top of a building, where I would be safe and have a vantage point to shoot from. It took a lot more thought and planning than just running in with a big axe and it has easily been one of my favorite characters/campaigns.

Shad giggling and being a goof with Oz makes me think he has a major crush on him.

"Wheel chairs and prothetics wouldn't make sense in skyrim" The dwarves, and sothasil had been making that shit since forever ago. feck dwarven spiderchairs, and rollyball thingies exist, but a wheelchair being able to get to highwrothgar is too unbelievable for him?

I remember when I played a blind bard, built them around it, and another player forcibly healed me. The DM was willing to back track it, but then played a character who had to learn how to read and adjust to seeing. Currently playing an Artificer who was born with underdeveloped arms and has prosthetic arms. And they're always striving to improve them. I also play them as having ADHD and anxiety because I have it and maybe I want to play a hero like me.

"tHiS iS fAnTaSy!" Exactly Shad, that means you can write whatever you want and maybe if I want to roleplay as someone who lost a leg because a monster bit it off, so it was unrecoverable for the Regeneration spell (even if for some reason I had the money to afford such high level magical treatment), that makes for a good story and I shouldn't be barred from playing that character by an Australian Mormon who makes CP adjacent AI girls.

These guys are the most unimaginative bunch I've seen. I mean, how about a druid with a gd ostrich mount? It's dnd, you can be/do what you want! That's what makes it fun!

Shads argument about the healing is a bit same as saying you do not need graveyards because there is spell like resurrection..

Jake from Avatar is a good example of this there are way to fix his legs but he can't afford it

Isnt professor X in a wheel chair in a superhero comic series?

In one of my dnd games I’m playing a one-armed druid who’s whole goal is to get strong enough to regenerate himself. I’ve noticed while playing him that DM’s LOVE when you take a disability for your character! It honestly adds so much depth and gives them more to work with for the story.

Ffs DnD is Tolkien with Robots and Soace travel, where chaotic evil demons are eternally at war with lawful evil devils. And it's inclusive from the beginning because it is a RPG setting where everybody can be anybody they want and do anything no matter who they are or who they roleplay.

I'm a blind person and I've been seeing a lot of people taking extremely hurtful positions on this online (particularly lately) and it was really getting me down. Then, for totally separate reasons, I fell into a pit of self-hatred that I haven't been able to climb out of for the past four days. Been mentally preparing to watch this vid for a while. I reckon it's either gonna make me feel even worse hearing yet more all-too-common bigotry, or hearing Jake systematically demolishing that bigotry is going to help. Could go either way and I'm taking a risk, but I gotta do something to try and fight this pain I'm feeling. It's exhausting me, and nothing else's worked so far.