But falling somewhere between these extremes is Disability Distress, which is when characters with disabilities feel some sort of angst over their disability. This might range from having to cope with physical pain to the realisation that their disability may mean that they won’t be able to fulfill certain goals or ambitions.
Disability Distress need not be confined to the character’s own internal issues. They might be perfectly comfortable in their own skin but struggle with how they are treated by people in their lives, such as being regarded as an object of pity. One of the pitfalls of the Inspirationally Disadvantaged trope is that it often doesn’t allow for characters to express frustrations they might have about their disability without being told that they just have a bad attitude.
However, it's also worth emphasising that having a disability does not inherently entail Disability Distress, particularly if you view it in terms of the social model of disability. This defines disabilities in terms of society's failure to meet people's needs in order to allow them to fully participate rather than as something that is "wrong" with the individual.
May give rise to a Disabled Snarker. If a character’s feelings shift in a more positive direction over time, this could be part of a Mental Health Recovery Arc. Throwing Off the Disability might be the end result of this in a work where Status Quo Is God (or "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome, in the case of a normally-disabled character seeking out a cure in such a work). If the only solution to solve this angst is invasive surgery or some form of transformation, it could result in the character Bemoaning the New Body.
Supertrope to Sense Loss Sadness. Compare Gayngst, Trans Tribulations, and Intersex Tribulations for other minorities experiencing personal distress due to societal attitudes and prejudices. May overlap with Internalized Categorism (specifically its Internal Subtrope, Internalised Ableism) or I Just Want to Be Normal. If a character's emotional distress is caused by their disability infringing on what they'd like to do with their life, that's either a Career-Ending Injury (if it involves a job they did in the past before a disabling injury), or a Dream-Crushing Handicap (if their condition would prevent them from getting into their desired career to begin with).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Candy♡Candy: Susanna's abusive Stage Mom has always pushed her to become an actress. When she breaks her leg, she crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
- Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure: Nodoka Hanadera starts the series recovering from a mysterious illness that left her bedridden for years. She bemoans the lack of energy she has because of this but is overjoyed at the energy and strength her Cure Grace form gives her. Unfortunately, the Byo-Gen General Daruizen cruelly tap dances on her weakness especially since he was the one who left her bedridden in the first place, living inside her as a parasite before King Byo-Gen recalled him. After a failed attempt to kill King Byo-Gen, Daruizen attempts to convince her to let him reenter her body to recover and hide, only for Nodoka to freak out and run for the hills.
- I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)!: Before the titular reincarnation, the protagonist was a girl who was born so sickly that she was more or less confined to a hospital bed for her entire life. While she was a determinated person despite (or even because of) her condition, when she is finally dying at the age of 16, she starts to angst what she couldn't do in her life and wishes that, if reincarnation is a thing, she'd rather reborn in a healthier body. This is the Freudian Excuse for her behaviour after the titular reincarnation into the healthier Elizabeth Maxwell since she seeks to compensate for what she couldn't do in her past life, to the point of overcompensation. Her recollection of her past life shows the trauma of her past life lingers:
Elizabeth Maxwell: My past life just ended with me I unable do anything, let alone having done anything.
- My Hero Academia:
- In the future that the story takes place in, 80% of humanity possesses some form of superhuman ability known as a "Quirk" (kosei in the original Japanese, literally 'individuality'). Our protagonist, Izuku Midoriya, is not one of these people and carries a heavy amount of angst because of it, due to the fact that being a hero is the only thing he wants to do. (And that's not even getting into the Fantastic Ableism he regularly faces.) While he does get a Quirk bestowed upon him in the form of Super-Strength from All-Might — the greatest hero in Japan, and one of the most powerful in the world — the power of the Quirk, One for All, is too much for Izuku's body to handle, and the majority of his fights early on result in one or more extremities being shattered from the force of One For All's blows. Eventually, after Izuku almost literally breaks his arm punching out Cthulhu, a doctor tells him that if he keeps using One For All at its full power, he could end up paralyzed.
- Among those who do have Quirks, one of Izuku's classmates, Yuuga Aoyama, has literal Power Incontinence, due to his Quirk — a laser that can be fired from his belly button — generating too much heat and putting pressure on his intestine, causing a bevy of health issues. He and Izuku end up commiserating and becoming friends because neither of their Quirks are suited for their bodies. It's revealed in the final arc that Aoyama actually had his Quirk given to him by the Big Bad, All For One, in exchange for acting as The Mole at the UA Hero Academy and the servitude of his parents.
- In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Kyosuke injured his wrist in an accident and lost his ability to play the violin, and is not coping well, to put it lightly. His childhood friend Sayaka became a magical girl for him, sacrificing her life in exchange for his wrist being healed. Unfortunately for her, this does not turn him back into the cheerful boy he used to be.
- The Secret Garden (NHK): In the anime adaptation, Colin Craven never got to experience a normal childhood because he was born Delicate and Sickly. This leaves him bitter and causes him to be cold to Mary and Dickon at first.
- Witch Hat Atelier: Custas, a young boy Coco meets early in the story, loses the use of his legs after an injury, and finds himself confined to a sealchair and crutches. It hits him particularly hard, as he had been a traveling minstrel, a role he can no longer perform, and Dagda, his parental figure, now had to take on more dangerous mercenary work in order to pay for Custas' medical fees. The whole experience of needing to live in a world not accommodating for the disabled, combined with his origins as a homeless orphan, leaves him growing more cynical, barely hidden behind an increasingly false smile. Things seem to take a turn for the positive when Coco and their mutual friend Tartah make a magical cloak for Custas that not only gives him better mobility but lets him fly. Unfortunately, a bandit attack that leaves Dagda on the brink of death, followed rapidly by a revelation from some nearby Brimcaps about The Masquerade behind magic, causes Custas to turn on Coco and Tartah.
Comic Books
- Bloodlines: Eddie Walker was once a member of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit until an attempt to chase down a fleeing suspect led to a car crash that crippled him. Eddie struggled to cope, to the point where he considered suicide. Fortunately, an attack from an alien creature gives him the ability to transform into a superpowered (and fully mobile) form he dubs "Loose Cannon". Unfortunately, the transformation only happens at night, meaning he is forced back into his crippled self during the day.
- Darkhawk (2021): Conner Young was an up-and-coming basketball star until he learns that he has multiple sclerosis. He is absolutely terrified of the press learning of this as it would derail his entire college future.
- Knightfall: Already in a Heroic BSoD following his Curb-Stomp Battle with Bane, the crippled Bruce Wayne spirals further when he can't save Jack Drake and Dr. Shondra Kinsolving from kidnappers due to his disability and weakness.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): "Tempest's Tale" (issues 67-68) slightly reinterprets Tempest's backstory from the 2017 movie that introduced her: After losing her horn to the Ursa Minor, Tempest's old friends made an honest effort to include her in their activities (contrary to what she had claimed in the movie). But as she struggled to control her magic with her broken horn, watching her suffer became too much for them to handle. This, combined with them losing contact with her after washing out of magic school, ultimately led her to think that they had abandoned her in her hour of need.
- Smut Peddler: 2012 Edition: The protagonist in "Just Friends" needs forearm crutches to get around, has a certain level of numbness in his lower half, and it is even implied to be hard of hearing, having trouble hearing the other guy talking at the party. It's implied that the accident that left him like this happened recently, and he's having trouble opening up because of it, made even worse due to his lingering Gayngst.
- Superman: Jose Delgado's first run as the superhero Gangbuster came to an abrupt end when his back was broken during a fight with a super-powered thug named "Combattor". Left unable to walk, the despondent Jose struggled to adjust, and told Lois Lane (with whom he had started a tentative romance) to leave, not wanting her to waste her time on a "half a man" like him.
Fan Works
- In the Torchwood fic "Breathe Your Words in Pain
", Ianto is involved in a car crash and left with a brain injury, making it more difficult and painful for him to use his left limbs and giving him a fairly severe form of aphasia. This is a great source of distress for Ianto as it robs him of the ability to speak clearly and even read, with him crying when it became clear that he couldn't read or even spell out his lover's name. He also becomes annoyed with the way the others treat him, to the point that when he briefly loses his disability via swapping with Jack's body, he takes them to task for trying to make him regain skills that he knows will never happen and speaking over him. When Jack and Ianto find a spaceship, they chose to fix it up and head to their new life, with Ianto further reasoning that, since there are alien races out there who talk like him, then no one would care about his disabilities.
''“I want me, I, mmmmm… my...” He turns in Jack’s grip, looking him directly in the eye, sadness and longing written in his face. He takes a breath and says it again. “I want my words.”
Jack pulls him close, presses their foreheads together, holds him with one arm and rubs his other hand behind Ianto’s neck.
Jack pulls him close, presses their foreheads together, holds him with one arm and rubs his other hand behind Ianto’s neck.
That is the best sentence Ianto has said. No slurs, stammers, pauses. Perfect. Yet it breaks Jack’s heart in ways he cannot begin to explain.''
- The Torchwood fanfic series "from fertile soil" has Ianto survive the 456's virus, but is left with long-term damage to both his brain and lungs. By "salt the earth", the second fic in the series, even though he has emerged from the coma he was in and has recovered a fair amount in the approximate year and a half since, he still tires easily, struggles to breathe when doing anything remotely strenuous, and needs an inhaler with the occasional need for a nebuliser on bad days. This is a source of angst for Ianto due to his formerly active life working for Torchwood, with Gwen recalling him crying after every physiotherapy session, screaming and raging on his worst days, and even getting into such black moods that he kicks Jack out. He also expresses frustration with the others hovering around him, leading to one shouting match with Jack that ended with him having an asthma attack and going back into the hospital.
- Maverick Solutions: Ash becomes melancholic in the aftermath of the attack against Sublime as a result of losing her right arm and right eye.
- More than Meets the Spy: Bumblebee's lack of a voice box is a source of angst for him, as having had it violently torn out resulted in him dealing with a constant pain in his throat that's dulled, but never went away. In Mission 9, when Anya describes him as "perfect just the way he is", she finds that his thoughts turn rather sad and focus on his missing voice box, indicating that he suffers from dysphoria due to lacking one.
Films — Animation
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): During Tempest Shadow's Villain Song "Open Up Your Eyes", a flashback shows how her horn was broken when she was a filly (rendering her unable to cast spells normally), and her friends (allegedly) rejected her over it, leading her to swear off the very idea of friendship and turn to villainy on the promise of getting her horn regenerated.
Films — Live-Action
- 50 First Dates: The film is about a young woman who suffers a car accident and develops a form of anterograde amnesia that prevents her from forming long-term memories. When she finds out about her condition, she breaks down crying and screams in anguish, with her family's dialogue implying that she suffered similar bouts of despair previously. The film's plot then revolves around her boyfriend's efforts to remind her of her condition and help her cope with it every day.
- Forrest Gump: Lieutenant Dan fully expected to die in combat while deployed to Vietnam; both his legs are grievously wounded and he calls in an airstrike on his position, but he gets an Unwanted Rescue from Forrest. Now a double amputee incapable of finding work and feeling cheated out of his purpose in life, Dan becomes a depressed, embittered alcoholic, though he later gets better with Forrest's help, getting prosthetic legs to walk with and being in a relationship with a woman by the end.
- Psych 2: Lassie Come Home: After Detective Lassiter is shot, he suffers a stroke on the operating table and becomes paralyzed, needing to learn to walk again, on top of hallucinating as a result of a side effect of his drugs. He feels that he's failed as a detective due to his injury and inability to recover in what he believes is a timely manner.
Literature
- American Girl: One of the things that frustrates Joss, who has hearing loss, is that people around her often forget to face her when speaking (or speak when their mouths are full) so she can use lip-reading to assist her hearing aid. She's also annoyed by people learning she's deaf and speaking louder or slower for no reason, as she's able to hear normal speech as long as it's not too noisy. She gets upset when Sofia, who she's arguing with at the time, deliberately turns away from her or refuses to face her so she can't understand her clearly.
- Animorphs: For the first few books, Tobias is modelocked as a hawk, meaning he can't go on missions with the team and is stuck being in the air to warn them when they being snuck up on. He later regains the ability to morph thanks to working for the Ellimist (though his default Shapeshifter Default Form is still a hawk), greatly reducing his sense of disability.
- The Dresden Files: Several members of the cast go through this:
- In Blood Rites, Harry's shield bracelet manages to protect his friends from the heat of a flamethrower wielded by Black Court thralls... but his own hand ends up a barbecued husk in the process, and the pain traumatized him from using his signature fire magic for the rest of this book and the subsequent volume. It's not until several books later that it starts to function back to its original level, and it's solely because wizards have a Healing Factor that normal people don't.
- Following the climax of Small Favor, Knight of the Cross Micheal Carpenter is riddled with bullets, is forced to walk with a cane, and becomes blind in one eye. However, it's ultimately Downplayed, as he lives, and gets to retire and settle down with his family, rather than spend the rest of his life fighting the forces of evil; the worst that comes of it is that he needs help to save his daughter Alicia when she's kidnapped by a zealot in the short story "The Warrior".
- In Changes, Harry's back gets broken after he attempts to rescue his landlady from his apartment burning down, resulting in him being paralyzed. This, plus some encouragement from a Fallen Angel, drives him past the Despair Event Horizon, and causes him to take up the mantle of the Winter Knight, because he has no other way to save his daughter otherwise.
- In Skin Game, Murphy's misuse of Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, causes it to shatter and severely injures her. In the next book, she's described as being in pain and having to deal with the fact that she can't help Harry. Though Harry's Banner enables her to fight in Battle Ground (2020), her decision to do so costs her her life.
- Thursday Next: The Seventh Book, "The Woman Who Died A Lot", has Thursday in severe pain and walking with a cane due to being involved in a near-fatal crash in the previous volume. This, combined with the fact that she's in her fifties by this point, leads her to fearing that she's over the hill and needs to retire from both SpecOps and Jurisfiction.
- Warrior Cats:
- Brightheart lost an eye as an apprentice. Although she is able to learn how to hunt and fight again, she still has to deal with strangers' horrified reactions to her scars, and always feels like she has to prove herself: when her only apprentice Jaypaw switches to being a medicine cat, it especially hurts because she feels like she's failed.
- Jaypaw was born blind. It is normal for him, so he hates how other cats always make a big deal out of it, and prefers not being coddled. While he dreams of being a warrior and does start training as one, after being in his first battle he realizes it would be impossible to fight properly, and has to accept that this (plus his knack for remembering herbs) means that he is more suited for the medicine cat role.
- After Briarlight's hindlegs are paralyzed, she struggles with feeling like a burden to her Clan.
Live-Action TV
- Baywatch: The season 3 two-parter "Shattered" was A Very Special Episode where Mitch was paralyzed from the waist down after his back was broken while attempting a dangerous rescue, and he's in severe angst as he attempts to learn to walk again, unable to rescue innocents. He even lashes out at his son, Hobie, at one point. This being Baywatch, he's cured by his own Heroic Willpower by the end of the two-parter, and the next episode sees Mitch kick-boxing.
- Glee: Artie, who became a wheelchair user as a result of a childhood car accident, occasionally experiences this as he sometimes fantasises about being able to walk and dance again.
- The Golden Girls:
- In "Blind Ambitions," Rose's sister Lily comes to visit having lost her sight in an unspecified incident six months previously. At first she claims to be totally fine and not need any help, especially considering that she lived a full, active, and totally independent life before going blind. Midway through the episode, though, Lily admits that she's terrified of what's happening to her and begs Rose to move back to Chicago with her and be a full-time caretaker. Rose (acting on advice from Sophia, who struggled with similar problems after having a stroke) goes with a Tough Love route instead and encourages Lily to find a balance between needing help and living on her own; Lily agrees and takes courses at a school for the blind which help her immensely (as proven when, at the end of the episode, she tells Rose that she'll be driving them home!).
- In "Like the Beep-Beep of the Tom-Tom," Blanche learns that she has a heart murmur that requires a pacemaker to manage. She's so terrified at the thought of growing old and endangering herself that she swears off sex—and given that Blanche is the pinnacle of Really Gets Around, the other girls are shocked. Thankfully, one of her dates shows her that it's possible to have a sexually active life while still using a pacemaker, and the episode ends with Blanche back to her old and proudly promiscuous self.
- In "Hey, Look Me Over," Dorothy thinks that Sophia is losing her hearing after noticing some unusual behavior—but the tables are turned when a trip to a doctor reveals that Dorothy needs a hearing aid. At first Dorothy refuses to get one, as she thinks that only old people need hearing aids. Sophia gently chides her for her stubbornness, and Dorothy ends up with one so small that the other girls don't even notice (much to Sophia's chagrin, as she can now hear her insults from out of the room).
- Law & Order: In the episode "DNR", a civil court judge is left paralyzed following a failed assassination attempt by her husband that also destroyed one of her kidneys. With no chance of recovering her ability to walk, and facing the prospect of spending the rest of her life undergoing regular dialysis, she demands that the court allow her to be taken off dialysis, effectively granting her a physician-assisted suicide.
- Monk:
- Adrian Monk himself suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a myriad of phobias that have left him relatively incapable of having a social life. It somewhat crosses over into Disability Superpower, as his brilliantly analytic mind allows him to solve all kinds of crimes, but it's also clear that he's enormously frustrated by his condition and recognizes that he can be a tremendous burden to his friends.
- Ambrose Monk shares his brother Adrian's genius intellect (and may be even smarter than him), but has a disability of his own—he has such acute agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) that he cannot leave his house for any reason. In the episode that introduces him, the brothers express envy for each other: Ambrose is able to live alone while Adrian needs a full-time assistant and frequent therapy sessions to function, but he's also able to go out and explore the world in a way Ambrose can never experience.
- Monk's Arch-Enemy Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck is an enormously fat—as in 800 pounds—financier and Diabolical Mastermind who has become one of the world's richest people thanks to his work as a Knowledge Broker and expert blackmailer. However, his size has rendered him immobile, and though he usually puts on a Fat and Proud act, the mask occasionally slips and he reveals how frustrated he is at being unable to leave his bed.
- The Singing Detective: Philip suffers from debilitating psoriatic arthritis that’s left him confined to his hospital bed. At one point he says he feels like "a prisoner in [his] own skin." Dr Gibbon, the psychiatrist who Philip sees while he’s in hospital, mentions that dermatological illnesses can be particularly tough on patients because society tends to see the skin as an external manifestation of a person’s internal moral character i.e. with Beauty Equals Goodness at one end of the spectrum and Evil Makes You Ugly at the other.
- Torchwood: Owen Came Back Wrong from being resurrected by a Resurrection Gauntlet, losing the ability to sleep, drink, have sex (all of which he considered his favorite things), eat, and feel. "A Day in the Death" explores his angst over this — the fact that he can also no longer heal means that he is confined to doing tedious work at the Hub, and he is shown sadly throwing out all the things related to his former interests, culminating in him breaking his finger in front of Tosh to prove that he is "broken" to her and trying to kill himself via drowning, only failing because he no longer needs to breathe. He has for the most part started moving on by the end of the episode, although material in the Expanded Universe (such as the novels "Pack Animals" and "Skypoint") shows that he still experiences angst over his loss of ability.
- Unforgotten:
- Eric Slater was paralysed in his mid-thirties. He deliberately crashed his car in a Bungled Suicide attempt after the second time his wife Claire killed a man she caught having sex with him in a fit of postpartum psychotic rage. He made himself an accomplice after the fact by disposing of the bodies in both instances. He says that he feels like his paralysis was a more fitting punishment for his actions than death. He doesn’t spell it out but presumably he means that his injury rendered him unable to act on his sexual feelings for men when doing so in the past led to two people losing their lives, even if he wasn’t the one who killed them.
- Claire herself is devastated that her dementia means that she can’t fully understand the few memories that she does have of her and Eric’s actions, saying in her police interview that she wants to help them but is no longer capable of remembering information that might be useful to them.
Video Games
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The mage Hloval Dreth had a Fictional Disability that cut off his Regenerating Mana, which left him unable to fight against the invaders who slaughtered his hometown. His failure left him trapped as a ghost, reliving the battle over and over, but he can be set free by providing him an external mana source.
- La Corda d'Oro Starlight Orchestra: Takuto Akabane is permanently mobility-limited from a stage accident. This caused a period of angst as he can no longer play sports normally like he used to.
Web Animation
- Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City: In the episode "Following the Recipe", Blueberry Muffin is revealed to be dyslexic, hence her inability/unwillingness to read or use recipes (ironic due to her previous counterparts being bookworms), so she made up new ones. She avoided mentioning this due to the disability embarrassing her, but is told by Strawberry Shortcake that she shouldn't be embarrassed with her dyslexia because it hasn't stopped her from running a successful business.
Web Original
- Revenge Films: In the episode "My wife went on vacation while I was hospitalized with a guy and almost died…" Karen becomes paraplegic after getting hit by a car in the middle of her affair trip with Kevin. When her parents told her what happened, she went blank and then broke down into incessant bawling. After Kevin lost his job following the revelation of his engagement to the daughter of a parent company's CEO, Jacob forced Karen to sign divorce papers. Afterward, Karen spent the rest of her days abusing her parents and caretakers out of anger at her own disability, with Jacob implying she'll be eventually kicked out.
- SCP Foundation: The character of Dr. Justine "Jay" Everwood lost theirnote left arm in an unspecified Noodle Incident that they literally cannot talk about or even properly remember due to some kind of memetic anomaly. A portion of SCP-8787 implies that the process was deeply traumatic, as when The Magic Goes Away in the Foundation universe, they briefly remember how they lost their arm, and have to resort to Drowning Their Sorrows to get out of a fugue state they get sent into.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: Through the course of the show, Joe's trait of being a wheelchair user got exaggerated to the point where many episodes that center on him revolve around his suicidal depression over being a handicapped person.
- In "Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air", Joe grows self-conscious after being the only man who is unable to dance with his wife during a party and decides to get leg transplants. The procedure works but he is paralysed again at the end of the episode.
- In "Brokeback Swanson", Joe suffers another spine injury and is rendered tetraplegic. The entire episode is about how his life falls apart due to his new condition, as both he and his loved ones are consumed by despair.
- In "Cool Hand Peter", Joe distracts some guards by pretending to fall off his wheelchair. Halfway through his act, he starts crying genuine tears.
Joe: I can't walk! Why the hell can't I walk?! This isn't part of the act anymore!
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Scootaloo's inability to fly despite her age is treated like a disability (though it's a bit ambiguous as to whether or not she's disabled or just a late bloomer).note
- "Flight to the Finish" shows her deeply self-conscious about her trouble flying after Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon harass her over it, though she does come to terms with it and is glad that she's still great at scooter tricks.
- In "The Washouts", Rainbow Dash objects to Scootaloo losing interest in the Wonderbolts in favor of the titular stunt team. When their conflict comes to a head, Scootaloo reveals that being expected to look up to Rainbow and Rainbow alone (despite there being no realistic hope of following her into the Wonderbolts) was making her feel like she would never amount to anything. Her interest in the Washouts was motivated by her wanting something noteworthy that she could do with her life despite being unable to fly — so much so that she was willing to join a stunt team with a devil-may-care attitude towards safety.
- South Park: Parodied in "Raising the Bar": Eric Cartman intentionally gains weight to qualify for a mobility scooter through his mother's insurance. In a montage shortly thereafter, he bemoans how humiliating it is to live with severe obesity while acting like an Entitled Bastard, doing things like holding up traffic by driving his scooter in the road.
