Are there Fraggles with disabilities/handicaps?

We know us people have disabilties like blind, deaf, not able to walk and other things.

So do Fraggles have disabilties?

Well Wembley is unable to make up his mind so dose Conveing John!

Yeah I'd like to think Wembley and Convicing John have a form of OCD, hehe. Technically Boober too and Dave Goelz even joked about that on the DVDs, lol.

What's OCD?

It stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's mainly about having an exaggerated sense of anxiety. Like the way Boober gets upset if everything isn't all neat and clean and safe. Or how Wembley and Convincing John can't make any decisions without obsessing over every little choice.

Well the World's Oldest Fraggle is very old, but he's also very nimble so he doesn't really count. Though there is a possibility he had some condition that made him grow old before his time.

Large Marvin is, ahem, rather large, which if we look into it deep enough, could mean he could have some glandular or endocrinal disorder.

Of course the fact he's always stuffing himself with food is the most likely explanation.

Anyone remember a show called Dragon Tales? (not a fan, by the way) You know, a show about mystical, magical beings that can only exist in the imagination? Well, one season they decided to add a dragon that was in a wheel chair.



Sure, if they added a new human character in a chair, I wouldn't say a word.. but a magic dragon in a world of magic? Can't... can't they just magic her to walk again?

I'm glad they didn't make a wheelchair Fraggle, lemme put it that way. First of all, it would add a cloud to the show that shouldn't be there. This is a fictitious, magical realm... and while the Fraggles don't actually do magic on each other, adding that sort of realism to a bunch of fun and fancy free characters like that would seem depressing and out of place. Secondly, I hate how wheelchair characters are treated in kid's shows. They're the "Oh look how normal they are" characters who exist mainly to tell kids that some kids are in wheel chairs and that's it. They're added to the cast without thinking, and we're stuck with personality devoid characters representing a group. That's no way to represent a group. Heck, most of the time they have a character with a disability, they use them for little else than an educational footnote. That's why I loved Linda on Sesame Street... the character wasn't all about being hearing impaired... she did OTHER things.

Boober would appear to have some sort of anxiety disorder, but then he can keep it together under remarkably stressful situations, like the cave-in in Marooned and when Wembley's sick in Pebble Pox Blues. Perhaps the fight or flight syndrome kicks in when it gets really tough.

Boober is high-strung and, especially in the earlier episodes, cowardly, but he is capable of bravery when he has to do it for someone else. When someone else's life is in his hands he can hold himself together. When the fate of the colony depends on him he can face his terror of outer space and plead for mercy.

I don't think we can call Boober's anxiety a handicap. I think if it simply as a personality trait.

Well that's where the TV storyline element comes in. A character has the same kinds of hang ups we all can identify with and it's a handicap for the purposes of setting up the problem. But when it really counts he/she manages to get past them in order to serve as inspiration for us.

Perhaps his anxiety isn't a disability, but it can be disabling at times. (English major semantics right there!) It's right there with Wembley's wembling; it's what makes the characters endearing and gives them some of their best qualities (Boober's knowledge of medicine, and Wembley's need to make sure that everyone is happy), but it also results in them tying knots in their tails (that must really hurt) and needing to be tipped upside-down to talk sometimes. It's what makes the characters so three-dimensional, that their personality traits can have both good and bad aspects to them.

Well, Marlon ain't right, but I suppose that's just general weirdness and not an actual personality disorder.

He just has a bad case of Peter Lorre Syndrome, lol.

He developed DID (used to be called Mupltiple Personality Disorder, and yes, I used the acronym because I despise having to spell it, LOL). I don't think that's "keeping it together."

Narcissism doesn't seem to fit. He's not particularly antisocial, though he does have some qualities of such. It's not quite like he's the mirror image of Fraggle traits (such as the Cave Fraggles might be). It's hard to pin him down.

Good point. Dissociative Identity Disorder (yeah, I knew that off the top of my head, don't speculate on what that says about me) can be considered a mental handicap. However, Sidebottom and Boober are co-conscious, and Sidebottom willingly acknowledges that Boober is the one in charge. Thus, Sidebottom never actually takes over; he just jumps out and acts bratty when Boober gets too un-fun even for himself. You could even see him as a form of corrective mechanism, because he pushes Boober back toward the whimsical Fragglish norm, then disappears when his work is done.

One wonders what created Boober's extra personality. In most DID cases, the original person was subjected to such severe, extended trauma during childhood that they compartmented their personalities in order to contain the damage and protect the core. There's no evidence of that with Boober, and in any case I hate to think of anything like that happening in Fraggle society.

Well, if you want to be cynical, all mental disorders are "corrective mechanisms". It's just that they don't work very well.

Considering we don't see Sidebottom from the very start, the origin might very well be some time during the series itself. *looks up episode list* Hmm, Marooned and Boober Cave happened before Sidebottom's introduction. Even if you don't count all the episodes where a friend of Boober is in mortal danger (real or imagined), these two episodes COULD be the likely culprit. During Marooned Boober admits he secretly likes playing games. In other words, we already are starting to see that he is compartmentalizing his personality, though not distinctly yet. Red admitted to being afraid, but other than LARPing later on as Princess Gwenalot, she never really goes to the extreme Boober does. In Boober Cave, Boober not only gets so fed up he wants to leave, but the amnesiac pollen ... MAKES HIM FORGET HIMSELF. I think this is vital to understanding how we finally see Sidebottom: it opened the door for a complete though subordinate personality to emerge because he lacked one. Yes, Wembley and the others were exposed to it too, but Gobo and Mokey don't really have Boober's problem and Wembley's wembling may give him some immunity since he's rather, uh, flexible cognitively anyway.

Hmmm... looking at this explanation from a clinical point of view, it doesn't add up, but looking at it through the lens of Muppet reality, it does. Amnesia is a part of DID, after all. I could see Sidebottom developing in the back of Boober's mind out of the fun and silliness he felt obligated to deny himself, and when it came to a head Boober personalized these elements into a "not-me" persona.

Heh, I guess I don't have much room to speak when it comes to clinical versus Muppet psychology, especially when it comes to Sidebottom. After all, I perpetrated an Animated Fraggle Rock fanfic introducing Sidebottom, and the origin I gave him was simply that he was born from Boober's wish that he could be as brave, happy, energetic, etc. as his friends.

LOL, yeah, it'd work in a Muppetverse, even if not in real life.

Looks like you guys got Boober well covered. /lol

I did see Marlon mentioned, he's strange, and one has to wonder what's going on upstairs. I'd have to say he's got some sort of disability, but what is the question.

I do recall seeing a Fraggle who appears to be missing a foot, you see him during the intro of every Fraggle Rock episode near the end. Around 0:50 to 0:57 according to my timer, there seems to what appears to be a Fraggle missing a foot sitting on a ledge in the middle slighty above the Fraggle pond a tad center left. And again during the closing credits, sitting in the same ledge above the Fraggle Pond. Am I right? This Fraggle does have a handicap missing one foot.

Can you please send me the link to that fan fic? I'd very much like to read it.

Sure. Sidebottom Butts In.