Basic Trope: Being disabled makes you an inspiration to us all.
- Straight:
- Alice never lets her life in a wheelchair keep her from dispensing wise and spiritual advice, nor does she ever dim her smile. Sweet little thing.
- Despite his crutches, Bob excels at any sport he puts his mind to. He's just the best!
- Exaggerated:
- Alice moving on her own causes people to come around for miles.
- The daily activities of a disabled person are written up as front-page news because that person has a disability.
- Downplayed:
- Alice leads a movement aimed toward disabled people.
- Alice has at least one unusual talent that inspires people on its own, and just happens to have a disability too. Everyone focuses more on the talent.
- Justified:
- Alice comes from a family that has a very positive outlook on life, and she is naturally The Pollyanna.
- Bob is a perfectionist, and a member of a local sports league that focuses on the disabled.
- Alice or Bob come from families that think disabled kids are useless, so the fact that they live their lives in a positive manner actually is inspiring to people.
- Alice or Bob's parents expect them to inspire people and have perpetually good attitudes, so they do, to please Mom and Dad.
- Alice or Bob got the disability in an unusually inspiring way, such as through being a Marine and saving a buddy from a car bomb.
- Inverted:
- Alice is actually quite cynical and sharp-tongued, but her friends rely on her insight and honesty no less for that.
- Bob's not great on the sports field, but he has a sense of humor about it, and puts everyone at ease around him.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap is the Surprisingly Realistic Outcome version of this.
- Charles is actually dismotivated by Alice and Bob, because "Why even bother doing anything, when even they can do better than that?".
- Subverted:
- When we first meet Alice, she's full of smiles and tugs at your heartstrings — because she's ten. When we fast-forward to her life six years later, she's going through adolescence like any other girl.
- Charlie's mom wants her son, the local jock, to like and befriend Bob, so she tells Charlie that Bob is a stellar athlete "in spite of his handicap." Bob turns out to be an average-caliber athlete, and remarks that he hates it when people exaggerate his skills.
- Alice or Bob respond to remarks about their inspiration with Deadpan Snarker attitudes.
- Double Subverted:
- ... after her tumultuous sixteenth year, Alice reverts to her previously cheerful and upbeat attitude.
- ... when Bob and Charlie start training together, Bob's drive leads him to become the superior athlete.
- Parodied:
- Alice's wheelchair is the source of everyone's inspiration, not Alice herself. Anyone who sits in the wheelchair will automatically be revealed as a hero.
- Bob sucked at everything before he obtained his disability. Now he's The Ace—star student, great Paralympic athlete, and Friend to All Living Things with a hot girlfriend.
- Until they obtain disabilities, everyone in Troperville sucks at everything.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is morally grey and performs acts that would not be considered moral while disabled, but people still treat her like an amazing influence.
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob are both shown as normal characters, not particularly wiser or any more talented than anyone else in the cast, and story arcs that have nothing to do with their disabilities.
- Alice and Bob are not inspiring at all; in fact, they regularly employ Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery.
- Alice is an Evil Cripple plotting to take over the world and make everyone unable to walk so they'll be just as miserable as she is.
- Everybody in Troperville is disabled, so what's the big deal? And/or, the non-disabled are the ones treated as Inspirationally Disadvantaged.
- Enforced: "This show isn't just inspirational enough - let's put in a disabled character."
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked:
- Daisy, for purposes of her own, tries to emphasize and highlight how cheerful and angelic Alice is, how tragically beautiful, probably for purposes of emotional manipulation on a third party.
- Bob, an average-caliber athlete, enters in an athletics competition, hoping that, in the judges' eyes, the fact that he's performing as well as the other athletes, but on crutches!, will give him an edge.
- Exploited:
- Alice claims that Bob (who has no disability) is an inspiration to all as a form of Stealth Insult.
- Bob uses his inspirational status to manipulate non-disabled people and earn a lot of money.
- Defied: Bob's parents raise him to think that his disability is not inspiring and he is not anymore special than anyone else, because they don't want their son to be a stereotype, so Bob grows up as The Generic Guy except with a wheelchair instead of legs.
- Discussed:
- "Everybody acts like it's a big deal every time Alice breathes, just because she's in a wheelchair."
- "What the hell do my achievements have to do with my disabilities??"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- When Alice was a little girl, she was very sick and everyone thought she would die, including her. That led to her thinking from a very early age about the afterlife, death, and the meaning of it all. She is very used to putting on a brave and smiling face for her parents, and hardly ever lets her real feelings show.
- Bob is a perfectionist, driven by his desire to be great because he hates being pitied. He internalizes hurtful ideas about disabled people and becomes convinced that other disabled people must be weak if they aren't as good as he is. Eventually, this leads to a breakdown, as he has still defined his entire life according to his disability.
- Furthermore, both Alice and Bob's disabilities aren't left vague and formless; Alice suffers from the long-term effects of rickets, with accompanying symptoms, and Bob has cerebral palsy from a birth defect, with accompanying symptoms.
- This attitude leads to most able-bodied individuals spending most of their time cooing over how 'inspiring' disabled people are, and doing very little in way of actually helping/accommodating disabled individuals.
- Alternatively, it creates the toxic belief that disabled people who don't push themselves beyond their limits are automatically helpless and lazy, and that
only by pushing themselves beyond their normal limits can a disabled person be something of worth to others. Disabled people who manage to push themselves beyond their limits are deemed to have 'overcome' their disabilities, and denied accommodations. - Being constantly praised over his "inspirational" status turns Bob into a Spoiled Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, so he can use his Disability as an Excuse for Jerkassery and get away with it by pretending that he is a victim of ableist assholes.
- Bob pushes past his limits, wins a marathon... and wrecks his remaining health in the process, ending up bedridden and in severe chronic pain for the rest of his life.
- Bob, a runner with a prosthetic leg, hates being viewed this way and wants to be treated like any other athlete. He doesn't treat what he does as exceptional, because sport is perfectly possible for many disabled people with the right accommodations, but others harp on about "how far he's come since his tragic accident". He reluctantly gives up running, since he doesn't want to be known for his disability first and foremost, or risk pushing this stereotype.
- Alice acts perpetually cheerful because it's the only way she'll avoid pity (short of deliberately acting like a jerk).
- Reconstructed:
- ... but then, after a tumultuous adolescence, Alice's experiences have led her to develop a wise and open-hearted view of the world. She is able to express her true feelings, including anger, fear, and sadness, even to her parents. Since her friends rely on her so much for advice, she decides to become a therapist.
- ... but then, Bob finds out that his teammates (and his buddy Charlie) are still there for him, whatever he needs. Secure in their friendship, he lets go of his need to be perfect and tries to gain a new perspective on life.
- As with Deconstructed, Alice and Bob's disabilities aren't vague and formless. Also, they both have a complete, visible life outside of their disability, or else there'll be a very good reason why.
- Bob doesn't quit running. Instead, he gives a public speech about how he hates being called "inspirational" just because he has one leg. He mentions a few of the times he's goofed up, and says there's only one thing he wants to inspire the able-bodied to do - treat disabled folks as the ordinary human beings they are.
- Implied: Bob has an unspecified mental disorder and people are a lot more friendly to him than other people.
Back to Inspirationally Disadvantaged
