Young Writers Society

So I have this species in my story who have the innate ability to fly. But one day this ability goes away. The crew are tasked with going and fixing this. This is my description of the first time they meet a member of that species:

"They were greeted by a short dumpy figure who shoved the enormous arched door open, while barely even reaching the doorknob. This wasn’t any great indication concerning the figure, however, as there were at least two metres between the doorknob and the ground. As the figure started shuffling towards them, Margo realised it was doing so in a series of short hops. Even Treego Dart had to be forced to admit this highly resembled the movement of a frog.
“Jungle Force?” The being’s voice was deep and gravelly, which felt massively out of proportion to its rather diminutive stature. Its height, it turned out, was not much taller than that of a child.
“Yes … yes, we are,” Chip said. He seemed to be searching for something, presumably a name or a title with which to address this being. It had no legs, its arms were long and its fingers looked dextrous. It seemed to waver slightly in the breeze, but also didn’t seem at all put off by this fact. In fact there was a fluid sway to how it held itself that suggested it revelled in the air’s movement."

I don't know what made me at first want to make the species seem pitiful, but I guess everyone has subconscious biases. I have tried to edit this to give more dignity to the species and I'm going back through the rest of the chapter too.

If anyone has or knows anyone with a disability (having no legs or other mobility issues would be best) it would be amazing if you could ask them if this seems offensive. Or even if you don't, the whole point of this story is going to be not to generalise people, so I want to take all measures possible to ensure I don't.

Thanks in advance,
Biscuits

I think anyone offended by this would have to be actively searching for reasons for it to be offensive. Offensive would be to create a race that looks exactly like people with dwarfism and portray them all as greedy gluttons who take advantage of others' generosity and goodwill.

Plus, if you did that you'd be ripping off Tolkien. You aren't a thief, are you?

I'm actually going to agree with Prok for the most part on this.

This species obviously isn't a dig at people with disabilities or others who need accommodations. You gave us a reason for why they look and move this way: They have been able to fly, as a species, for the course of their evolution. Since that's their primary mode of movement, of course they're going to look clumsy or such when they're deprived of it.

To put it shortly, when you're writing this species, you're writing people who are, we'll say, "newly-disabled" (even if disability isn't the parallel you're trying to draw here, it's one that'll be drawn by readers). And yeah, there's going to be a clunkiness or an awkwardness in getting used to your body not working like it has for your entire life up until this point. Especially if it was a sudden change, like I'm presuming this was.

The important part about not generalizing people: Give us multiple people from this species with varying personalities and personal reactions to this change. Show their humanity (er, alienity?) by giving us more than just one or two token horrified characters. I mean, with an entire species being affected then doubtless within the people your main cast will see there will be different kinds of reactions to their new landbound state.

Best of luck!

Thanks guys

This triggers me.

(Just kidding, you're all good)

I actually think you got what you were going for, because it's probably right for us to go through the same emotions your characters go through from this is almost funny - oh wait this is so sad - boy I bet they were beautiful before they lost the ability to fly. Aliens are aliens!

I've been reading A Closed & Common Orbit by Becky Chambers who describes a scene where all the different alien races get onto different carriages of a train (or train like transport) and the MC is a bit like "What? Segregation? This is awful!" and one of her companions says "Different species, different butts" (I think that's the direct quote) and points out that the seats in each carriage are designed for each species - they are in big comfy human seats, but that wouldn't be so good for a species that walked on six legs, or were giant, for instance.

I just thought that was a really great scene, and hopefully it can help reassure you that we can accept that alien species are different, without anyone taking offence at the idea

Aw, thank you so much Stella! That really helps