Casper Sutton-Fosman, Author at The Mary Sue

Casper Sutton-Fosman

Casper is a queer, disabled and Jewish artist with a passion for LARP. They live in upstate NY with their perfect baby dog.

All Posts

Geralt and Yennefer in Netflix's The Witcher.

How The Witcher Falls Into Fantasy’s Trope of Comparing Disability and Monstrousness

I love a good monster, and Netflix's The Witcher has lots of them. Something I also generally love is a blurred line between monster and human; it’s a narrative device than can lend itself to really interesting explorations of morality, identity, and what it means to be a person. Unfortunately, throughout the comparatively short life of fantasy as a genre, it’s mostly been a less than productive trope, often exposing the biases of the writers more than anything.

Yennefer in Netflix's The Witcher.

We Need To Talk About The Witcher’s Yennefer: Magic, Disability, and Motherhood

A main character in a prominent fantasy series with a visible disability! More than that, she’s a love interest! As a disabled person, I was really excited to see a disabled character whose storyline doesn’t revolve around her disability, and who’s allowed to have romantic and sexual relationships as part of her narrative. Except, well, as soon as she appeared onscreen, I knew I was wrong.