Festibility

[brightknightie]

merfilly introduced me to the "Festibility" event currently underway on
access_fandom, and I thought you might like to have it on your radar, too.  This multi-fandom festival is for all kinds of fanworks (fiction, art, vids, recommendations, etc.) about "canonically disabled characters or canonically able-bodied characters that you reimagine as disabled."  There are no length requirements and no commitments; the moderators do require labeling and warnings where applicable.  The timeline is 07/15 to 09/15, with prompting and posting both open for the full span.

• Announcement and Description
• Prompts
• Index of Posted Entries (updated as entries are added)
• AO3 Collection (updated as entries are added)

When I read through the prompts on Sunday, there were many fascinating and compelling prompts across a multitude of fandoms, but none yet for FK (and precious few for HL).  That makes sense for FK; in addition to being a small and sleepy fandom, we're short on canonically disabled characters (Nick's "allergy to the sun" isn't the target here, though it has its relevance), and we're also stuck with that "magical cure" canonical possibility in the way (so not the target).  Off the top of my head, the characters we do have with incontestable canonicity are: 
Tracy's Uncle Sonny ("Let No Man Tear Asunder"), Joey Ellis ("Fallen Idol"), Christie Black ("Strings") and Alexei ("Strings"); and Don Constantine ("Father Figure"), Jody Fraser ("Blind Faith") and Elizabeth ("I Will Repay") before they are brought across.

However, the fest allows for alternate realities:
What if Tracy had been the one hit by the train as a child ("Dead of Night") and had lived, with a resulting disability?  What if Tracy ("Last Knight"), or Natalie's brother Richard ("I Will Repay"), or Janette's lover Robert ("The Human Factor") had lived, with a disability resulting from their respective shootings?  What if Nick had not rescued Schanke from the bomb ("Hunted") in time but he had lived, or Schanke or Cohen had survived the plane crash ("Black Buddha"), with disability resulting?  What if Erica ("Last Act") is assigned a concrete mental illness behind her suicidal inclination?  What if Natalie has PTSD (from goodness knows how much in her past and present) or there are long-term consequences of the draining in "Last Knight"?  What if Jenny Schanke -- or one of the other Schanke, Stonetree, Cohen or Reese family members whom we never see on screen -- has a disability?  What if the lydovuterine ("The Fix") or one of the other possible cures had given Nick his mortality along with a disability, or a cured Nick (or one of the human characters) simply discovered one in the ordinary progress of living human (not embracing vampirism for a "magical cure," as that wouldn't serve this fest)?

If someone were willing to do the research, it could be fascinating to have a story with an accurate take on life with a disability in a historical period.  The only canonical ones are Elizabeth's leprosy ("I Will Repay") and Alexei Nikolaevich's hemophilia ("Strings").

(I'm not listing the many killer characters with mental illnesses; that's a wimpy pop culture shorthand that shortchanges us all by minimizing evil and demonizing illness.  It doesn't deserve support, especially not in the context of this fest.  But if someone would like to reimagine one of those characters as making better choices, that could be good, too.)

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