#but no mention of adhd rep by an adhd author | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kaija-rayne-author · 1 year ago

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I'll put the edits in a different colour for ease of reading and accountability.

Edit. It's the evening of the day I wrote this. 8:30 pm. I refuse to directly respond to the hate filled ableism the OP and a couple of others have responded with about this. I play games and blog about them because it's fun for me. Being accused of the things those people accused me of is pretty typical for NTs, they often immediately make accusations based on specious BS. An ND likely would have read it, asked for clarification if they didn't like something, and moved on. Or not bothered to engage in the material at all.

Example one:

Just another example of NT ableism, and this fandom has far more than it should. Ableism kills people. Whether they're ND or not is irrelevant to me. I explained that I am, that's literally it. Anything else is their assumption.

Apparently, they couldn't even read far enough to figure out that Patrick Weekes, Solas's and Cole's writer, and lead writer on Dreadwolf, is ND. So they're not just insulting me, a fan of Dragon Age. They're insulting the person who made the character. Fantastic showing! Well done, truly. /s

There's no heat in me about this. That's their assumption. All I feel is world-weary acceptance that this is how NDs are always treated.

My original response > Just in case it was my Solas is neurodivergent article, I'd like to politely ask a question. In the effort to communicate clearly, I legitimately don't care whether you believe he is or isn't. It's a fictional character and the most I want out of this fandom (and rarely get) is polite conversation, basic human decency, to not be hurt by people being jerks, and respect for my thoughts.

Edit... well, they certainly proved my point about rarely getting polite conversation and how often I'm hurt by jerks who don't bother to learn, didn't they?

Original response > A wee bit of background on me; I'm professionally diagnosed as autistic, ADHD, and I'm severely mentally ill. All three make me neurodivergent.

The definition of neurodivergent is 'anyone whose brain works differently than the average'. The term originally meant only autistic people, back in the '90s. It has changed to encompass all of us with different brains.

I'm an autistic/ADHD author with bylines in the NY Observer and Bustle on the topic of autism. All of my fiction has authentic autistic/ADHD rep in my characters.

My kids are both like me.

Edit, I should have put this before, but I have explicit permission from my teenage children to mention that they're ND. I do not have permission to put their names and faces out there, and I don't. This is an ongoing discussion in our home. They can retract permission at any point and they're fully aware of anything I say about them.

Also, this is a pseudonym. I do my best to protect my children from this world because, as OP proved so very neatly, people are absolute dicks to neurodivergent people.

Original response > And I've been an advocate for autism, ADHD, mental illness, and other invisible disabilities for over ten years. I actually do know what I'm talking about. I could write actual dissertations on the knowledge I have on the subjects.

I also have several fancy smanshy degrees under my belt that qualify me as a researcher. An actual one, not an 'I looked it up on google' "researcher".

So here's the question.

Are you neurodivergent? Specifically, are you autistic/ADHD or combo? Your bio says nothing to clearly identify yourself if you are. You may be, and we just legitimately disagree, which is fine. I'm not trying to rip your face off.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what you're thinking when you say Solas isn't ND. Which parts of his character do you feel make him neurotypical? Because I don't see it. I'm not sure if the article you're referencing was mine, but few enough people write about the subject.

If you're not autistic/ADHD/combo, (and no, working with autistic people or having autistic family members doesn't count) you have absolutely zero leg to stand on when it comes to saying whether he is or isn't. That is for autistic/ADHD people to do.

Edit, The equivalent of an NT speaking about neurodivergency over a neurodivergent person is possibly like a non-Jewish person trying to tell a Jewish person that Harry Potter isn't anti-semitic, or telling a First Nations person that they haven't been abused, repressed, and terrorized for hundreds of years. It's talking over a person who lives an experience when you do not. It's bad form, at the very least.

I will never understand how telling someone that they're speaking on a subject they really shouldn't be is somehow 'weaponizing' my neurology. How do you even weaponize an ND brain? Did I miss a memo and not get the laser eyes upgrade? Is there wetware that lets me blast silliots with lightning or something? Damnit. I missed out! I could've had magic blasters coming out of my ears or something!

(I don't like the word idiot because it's ableist. My kids came up with silliot, silly-idiot because it doesn't have quite the same connotation. And sometimes, we're quite silly and make mistakes.)

Original response > It's an ableist act to read an article written by a neurodivergent person about a neurodivergent character and go on to claim they can't possibly be autistic/ADHD. If you're not ND, or even if you're an unhatched or baby ND, you especially don't have the knowledge to label him 'the epitome of neurotypical'. Western culture is steeped in ableism. All of us are ableist until we train ourselves not to be.

People cannot do enough research online or in secondary sources to understand autistics because all the "science" is based on either nazi experimentation or bolluxed 1950s studies involving only middle class white boys from a certain level of financial affluence. And the fictional rep is utterly abhorrent to an exceedingly massive majority of us. Atypical? The Good Doctor? Rainman? Dear gods, they're all wretched.

When it comes to neurodiversity, the experts are the people like me who live it.

Obviously, your blog, post whatever the hell you like, I certainly do, but I get the strong impression that you really don't know what you're talking about.

At the risk of being dogpiled, would you even recognize an actual autistic person if we bit you on the nose? Most people wouldn't. The representation everywhere isn't just incorrect, it's utterly reprehensible. TBH, Solas, Cole, and Sera are all heavily ND coded, and DAI is the first triple AAA game where its had decent to excellent rep on the subject. (They're also the most hated characters.) Bioware in general has shitty disability rep, so the credit goes to the author.

And, y'know, as an autistic/ADHD person, seeing a major character in a AAA RPG game showing strong ND coding is really fucking fantastic. It means a lot to me. It kinda sucks for my feelings when people write things like you've written here. It hurts. Why can't Solas be ND? Why do people have to try to take away one of the very few authentically written ND characters in Dragon Age? Why do people have to make accusations of disrespecting the author and the character because we can see ourselves in Solas? Why is that even remotely okay?

Arguably, there are others, but Solas and Cole are the most obvious. Cole is canonically based on Autistic family members of the author, Patrick Weekes. They confirmed it in an interview. Cole is one flavour of autistic. Solas is on the other side of the spectrum. That's why it's called a spectrum.

Are you aware that Solas's author, Patrick Weekes, is neurodivergent? They posted about which flavour on their Twitter a while back. It was either autistic or ADHD, and up to 80% of ADHDers are also autistic. I can't remember which they were diagnosed with.

As an author, I'll point out that Solas is coded (Cole too) autistic/ADHD/mentally ill simply because their author is ND. I'm grateful they're open about it. It gives weight to my educated opinions.

I've been writing for 36 years. I've never been able to write a NT character simply because I'm ND. We're incredibly different from neurotypicals. Our experience of life, our brain wiring, our body language, our writing voices, our facial expressions are all vastly different.

Very few NTs put in the work to learn our languages, while forcing us to learn theirs to survive. It comes through clearly in our work. I don't pretend to be as good of a writer as Weekes. I hope I can write twists as well as they do someday. But it's fact that no matter who we are or how we're wired, it shows up in our writing.

Edit, and it's fact that the OP and friends attacked me rather than learn anything. Once again proving how awfully ND people are treated. Accusations of child abuse? Seriously?

I can usually tell if someone is autistic or ADHD simply based on how they write in fiction. And the number of people I've coded autistic and told them, who later get it confirmed and tell me about it is utterly ridiculous at this point. I stopped counting at 200. I have stereotypical autistic pattern matching. The FBI and Border Patrol both head hunted me out of uni because of my skills in this arena. I'm very very good at putting seemingly unrelated facts together to get an accurate answer.

Is it because you feel Solas is a genius? Neurodivergent people can be smart, you know. I believe that IQ tests are garbage fires of racism and sexism, but if they matter to you, I have an IQ that rivals many historical inventors. While I don't believe in them, my IQ tests placed me as a super genius in the 4th grade. The school didn't believe it, so they tested me 4 times. The results were always the same.

Solas being incredibly intelligent doesn't make him less likely to be ND, it makes it more likely. And the optics on associating genius with 'can't be autistic/ADHD' is, uh... welp. It's not great.

Especially when Einstein was autistic. It's commonly believed that many people who have changed the world were. Tesla, Da Vinci, and Alan Turing all showed strong autistic traits. The list is enormous.

Is it that he's utterly ruthless? I don't like to talk about it much, because we already have so much bad associated with the word 'autistic', but while we're almost hard wired to want to help people, we can reach a line where we can justify evil actions to ourselves. We're as human as anyone else. Trauma and abuse can make anyone cold, unfeeling, and definitely ruthless.

Is it because he's utterly committed to a goal? You haven't met stubborn until you've encountered an autistic on a mission. We can rarely be diverted from it.

You've actually prooved the point of him being neurodivergent by calling him a genius, utterly ruthless, and extremely committed to a goal.

Those are all incredibly common autistic traits. We aren't usually ruthless with people, (just don't play monopoly with us), but as you noted, Solas doesn't regard anyone as people. Honestly, given the way the world treats us, it should be damned grateful we're not generally wired toward hatred.

Secondly, and I've covered it here, a lie of omission isn't a lie. That is such a BS statement. And factually incorrect as well. I also covered why him giving the orb to Corypheus couldn't be an act of betrayal in that one.

The actual dictionary definition of a lie is: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive (from mirriam-webster)

Intent is important to the concept of a lie. You can crow about withholding information being a lie until you're blue, but it’s not going to make it so.

Is Solas sneaky? Yup. Is he far too good at deflection, not answering things he doesn't want to, and misdirection? Also yup.

Is he a liar? Well, it's really easy to say he is, but I've actually read the entire DAI transcript, and Solas doesn't lie by the dictionary definition even once.

Not telling people about yourself immediately isn't a lie. Where in the world is that idea even coming from? It's not anyone's right to know everything about another person. It's rather entitled to say it is. And like, would anyone have actually believed him?

Nope.

'Oh, yeah, uh, I'm this mythical freedom fighter with a really bad rep but um, I'm not really like that?'

Phhhffft.

Even the fact that he sees others as vague ghosts instead of people would earn him the ND designation. That's an example of disassociation, which is incredibly common in mentally ill people. Even those who have 'just' depression or 'just' anxiety. And there's no way on Thedas that Solas isn't mentally ill. You can develop PTSD from one traumatic incident. You can develop C-PTSD from a shitty childhood. PTSD is classified as a mental illness. The elf has been fighting for thousands of years, no way that trauma hasn't marked him. Even if it were just survivor's guilt, it would still make him ND. He's probably got several others but I try not to armchair diagnose anyone. Suffice it to say that he exhibits traits that are incredibly common in several severe mental illnesses.

Ergo, no matter how you slice it, Solas is absolutely neurodivergent.

He's beautifully complex because he is autistic/ADHD/mentally ill. NTs generally aren't very complex at all. That's not me trying to be mean, it's just to illustrate the difference between a polytropic (NT) mind and a monotropic (autistic/ADHD mind). I'd much rather have dental surgery (I'm phobic) than be stuck in a room of NTs talking about NT stuff. Shudder. Edit to expand why it's a hellish concept for me: It's just absolutely mind-numbing to me to listen to NTs talk about what they talk about. Social small talk is something NTs actually need. It's scientifically proven to cause autistic/ADHD folks actual physical pain. The pain centers in our brains light up like a yule tree under certain 'normal' conditions. Normal for NTs. Not us... Just like it's mind-numbing for an NT to listen to an autistic/ADHD person go on about a special interest. Dragon Age and Solas in particular, are very much special interests for me.

It's stripping all of that beautiful, riveting complexity away and doing a massive disservice to his neurodivergent author to say Solas isn't ND. It's so disrespectful to the person who created Solas.

Making yourself feel better for liking or hating him by calling him neurotypical is rather hurtful, if I'm being completely honest.

Edit: The accusations were hurtful too, and just shitty behavior, if I'm honest. Just outright mean. How much more nuanced can a conversation get than me trying to communicate these facts fairly and calmly?

And frankly? Neurotypical people tend to be pretty boring to NDs. I wouldn't classify Solas as boring. I'd classify him as a lot of things, but boring and running with the herd wouldn't be any of it. A common neurotypical fear is to be seen as different by peers. It's why peer pressure works so well on y'all. It doesn't tend to work for long on us. We're not tied to the desire to do what everyone else is doing.

It's... disturbing to me that you apparently feel people who see themselves in a neurodivergent coded character written by a neurodivergent author are 'woobifying' him. It says rather a lot about how you think about autistic/ADHD people.

We aren't children. Seeing Solas as neurodivergent isn't classifying him as 'uwu innocent wittle baby'. It's incredibly hurtful that your words imply that.

So many people buy into the idea that we aren't fully realized human beings. We're infantilized. We can lose our children without recourse with an autism diagnosis in many places. Most of us (88%) are unemployed or underemployed due to stigma and inaccessible hiring practices. Autistic/ADHD children are murdered every day by NT caretakers, and it's always treated as understandable. We're institutionalized against our will, people advocate using damaging levels of electroshock therapy on us, people justify using ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) on Autistic and ADHD children. If you tried to use ABA on a dog, you'd be guilty of extreme animal abuse. We usually aren't allowed to immigrate either. We're socially excluded and rejected for being weird. We're third class citizens. Second class would be a step up. Oh, and our average age of death is 36 years old. Not because there's anything physically wrong with us, but because of the stress of living in a society where something like you wrote could be considered not only acceptable but reasonable.

Edit, And where the immediate reaction was to accuse me of something resembling child abuse. That just put the cherry on the sundae, let me tell you.

It's assumed that we don't want sex and relationships and jobs and lives because we're autistic or otherwise ND. We're not the sweet innocent awkward kid from Atypical. We're not like Rainman. We're definitely not like The Good Doctor.

And again, his author is neurodivergent. So is Solas. I would politely suggest reading some autistic/ADHD authors or the book Neurotribes by Silberman if you want to actually understand, and more importantly, speak about us.

There's a phrase that runs around the neurodivergent community. 'Nothing about us without us'. It means that if you're not us, you don't talk about us or make movies about us or write books about us or enact policy about us without our input, you don't do anything about us without consulting us at the very minimum.

There's far too much misunderstanding and harm to ND people in this world for me to let your comments slide.

I hold no ill will toward you. I hope you can learn something from my shared information. We're not what you so obviously think we are.

Fin~

Edit. I refuse to directly engage in the negativity aimed at me about this by responding directly to the awful comments. My edits here are the only thing I'm going to say or do. And I'm putting them in as an effort to clarify my stance. I'm not angry or attempting to attack anyone. I wasn’t when I wrote the original post, and I'm not now. I'm sad that my kids have to grow up in a world where these things are considered perfectly okay. This was my attempt to educate someone on why many people feel that Solas is neurodivergent. It was my attempt to provide nuance and educated discussion on the topic. And to maybe make people think a little.

The nasty reactions were pretty typical for NTs. Attack, degrade, accuse, diminish. I've experienced it my whole life. It's really unpleasant, but honestly? At this point in my life? I expect it. And no one should expect people to make those kinds of hurtful comments. Especially over a video game. Where is their humanity? Under the couch? Maybe buried under the fridge with all the gunk that accumulates there?

At least they proved my point about how ND people are treated. I guess that's a thing.

Now, I'm going to go play BG3. I have far better things to do than get involved in a pissing match with someone who would do what OP and friends have done.

yikes i just saw a solas post that was like "yall hate solas bc he's neurodivergent coded!" and said that he didn't lie. firstly, solas is the epitome of neurotypical actually, he's just reclusive bc he's surrounded by, in his eyes, shadows of the ghosts of his people, and by some extention sees himself as not a person anymore. not even a fraction of what they used to be. he doesn't see anyone except an inquisitor that befriends or romances him as real people. cole tells you this much about him. his goal once you meet him again is literally to destroy life as we know it to attempt to bring back HIS people.

secondly, solas lied A Lot. A whole lot. Bc a lie of omission is still in fact, a lie. he lied about everything you asked him about in the beginning by not telling the inquisitor the full story. It was HIS orb that blew up the temple of sacred ashes, and he gave it to corypheus bc he couldn't unlock it himself. All you get from him at ANY point in the game is that the orb is elven in origin. If you befriend/romance him, he'll tell you it was his orb. Thats it. BIG lies of omission there. plus I'm almost positive the elvhen artifacts solas has you activate are actually mini bombs that'll shred the veil when he's ready to tear it down, and not, in fact, artifacts that strengthen it. thirdly. I adore solas. He's my favorite character in the entire dragon age series, but I'm so tired of people either completely villifying him bc they only see things in black and white, or completely woobifying him and making him into a sweet innocent uwu elf boy which he is not.

Solas is a genius, utterly ruthless tactician who will use any means necessary to achieve any goal he sets his mind to. There's not a single doubt in my mind he's going to do some horrible shit in dreadwolf in the name of reviving arlathan, but you also need to remember he's grieving. Poorly mind you, because he's using his self assigned duty to the People as a distraction from his pain and loss and sorrow. He's beautifully complex that way and stripping any of those traits away from him to make yourself feel better about liking or hating him does a huge disservice to the writers and the character himself.

#dragon age #dragon age series #dragon age inquisition #solas #solavellan #solas dai #autistic traits #actually autistic #autism #adhd #actually adhd #adhd traits #neurodivergency #neurodiversity #nothing about us without us

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pocketramblr · 4 years ago

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i'm afraid of falling into another rabbit hole but by this point i'm super curious so if it's ok can i ask you what it is the stormlight archive?

oh yes anon, you may absolutely ask... actually yes, come just a bit closer too... yes, closer...

Anyway, The Stormlight Archive is an epic fantasy series inside another, larger fantasy series, The Cosmere. If you’ve heard of Mistborn, that’s in the Cosmere too, just on a completely different planet. Stormlight focuses on one planet, Roshar, where hurricane level storms regularly blow across the continent and everyone just kinda has to deal with it. Magic, or Investiture, comes in two main forms- Stormlight, which is replenished by those storms i mentioned and stored in gems for light and power, and Spren, which are basically manifestations of how people perceive concepts- wind spren are little silvery ribbons and leaves blowing around, awe spren are puffs of blue smoke around surprised people’s heads, and shame spren are petals that blow around you when you’re embarrassed. I’ll be honest, its a very anime aesthetic between the spren sfx and the giant swords people are swinging around.

Plotwise, Stormlight is about a lot of things- Kaladin’s a character with chronic depression even before his tragic backstory, and how he copes with that varies over the books while also being that Fantasy Hero Who’s Driven To Protect People. Dalinar is a character trying to fix a country thats constantly spiraling into war and figuring out what he actually believes in, Shallan is juggling arcs about saving her family, realizing where she is privileged and how to be better, and figuring out her own neurodivergence. Adolin is sunshine incarnate trying to figure out his own morality from the shadow of his father’s rather strict view of the world, and Renarin... i can’t say much about him without spoilers, but he’s just a gem of a character. There’s also overarching plots about war, colonialism, racism, ableism, how absolutely crucial intersectionality is for making anything better, gender roles in various societies, religion, a bit of romance but not a lot and not for every single character. oh, and lotsa found family. OH, and people’s eyes glow when they use magic powers, which. i’m utterly weak for.

This series has, by the end of the fourth book, at least one canonical trans character, a canonical ace character, a canon bi/pan character- and a second ‘twitter confirmed’ bi character, a canon gay man and his boyfriend, another canonical mspec man, a character with the best written depression i have ever seen, a character with anxiety, an autistic character, a character with DID, a paraplegic, a character with body dysphoria, a character with adhd, a character who is mute, and..... ok there’s more rep i cant think of right now, but there’s also a lot of buildup that seems like at least two more characters, if not three or four also hinted at and whatever new characters come in, will be coming out of the closet by the end of the series. The women are, imo, better written than in other fantasy books even by this author (who is Brandon Sanderson, aka Brando Sando, aka Branderson, aka the Sandman, aka Writing Machine Go Brrr. we have a lot of nicknames for him.) There’s also only one main character who would be considered white on earth, though being on a fictional planet the fictional races don’t have a 1:1 match- the Makabaki would probably look Afro-Asian to most of us, the Alethi east Indian or Polynesian, etc.

The thing about all of that- the magic system, the worldbuilding, the characters, the plot, the representation- its all good, but, and this might be important for you: its all slowburn. Very slowburn. the books are HUGE, as in they can’t even be published as one single book in europe, and by the time they got to the third book they had to switch to thinner paper so they could keep it in one volume in the states. Kaladin’s the MC and main POV character in the first book, and he’s not even in the prelude, the prologue, or 90 percent of the first chapter! this is the slowest of burns, and we’re only 4 books published of 10- though there are also 2 novellas, taking place right after book 2 and book 3. But i enjoy slowburn, and i really enjoy fantasy series. So i would recommend it. If any of this has appealed to you... come read it too. just jump down the rabbit hole. come into my little box trap.

#whoops that was a lot of words #anon #pocket talks to people

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msotherworldly · 3 years ago

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Diversity in Fiction: Stephen King & Disabilities

Diversity is a hot topic in the writing industry right now, in both the traditional and self publishing spaces. If you’ve kept up with writing advice columns, or follow other writers on social media, you’ve heard the debates. There are arguments for and against people writing certain types of characters, rules around what certain characters should be or not be, discussions of stereotypes and so on.

While it can be a complex field to navigate, there’s a form of diversity I’ve found that’s overlooked, even by authors with plenty of LGBTQ representation and racially diverse casts. Though it’s a form of diversity that’s mentioned, it often seems to be tagged on towards the end.

To my mind, only one mainstream author has actually tackled this form of diversity in his work, and done so naturally - though Stephen King has taken flak for certain character portrayals, he remains the only major author to include disabilities in his stories and characters. I’m sure there are other writers tackling this overlooked form of diversity, but I can’t name them off the top of my head (which should be telling).

In at least three of Stephen King’s books I’ve encountered a character in a wheelchair. In two of these stories, the characters are major (and in one of the two, the character in the wheelchair is the protagonist).

In The Cycle of the Werewolf, Marty, a boy on the edge of his teens in a small town, attempts to discover who the local werewolf is. The original book is a novella, but the film adaptation, Silver Bullet, expands Marty’s role considerably, making him the hero of the piece. In addition to being one of my favourite films to watch at Halloween, Silver Bullet is also the only film I know where the protagonist has a significant disability: Marty is in a wheelchair.

It’s my opinion that the story treats Marty’s disability with nuance. While his mother worries that his disability could hurt him in life, his best friend and uncle, Uncle Red, believes in Marty - he doesn’t see Marty’s disability as ruining Marty’s life, but as something Marty can overcome. To him, there’s much more to Marty than “him not being able to walk,” and, while Marty’s disability plays an important role in the story, particularly in regards to his bond with his uncle, there are also plenty of instances where Marty functions as a character beyond his disability.

Ultimately, Marty is a little boy trying to solve a supernatural murder; he goes through the typical pre-teen struggles of having a crush and disagreeing with his best friend; like any little brother, he quarrels with his big sister; and he has the same hopes as any kid, looking forward to seeing his uncle or being apart of the town’s local fair and fireworks show.

Silver Bullet offers a solid story about a character with a disability, showing that Marty can still be human or save the day despite an inability to walk. However, Stephen King includes disabilities in his other stories too. In It, many of the kids have disabilities of some kind. Ben has asthma, needing an inhaler, and I suspect that Richie may have ADHD or something similar. In The Stand, Stephen King even allows somebody who likely has Down Syndrome, or something similar, act in a heroic role (despite the disability, the character in question is able to spy on the “bad guys” before returning with important information, making him a crucial participant in the fight against evil). The Stand also features a character who is deaf - again, despite his condition, this character contributes greatly to the forming of a new society, even acting in a leadership role.

I’m not saying Stephen King is perfect, but he’s tackled the issue of disability in fiction in a way I haven’t seen other authors attempt. What’s more, he was including these characters in his work decades ago, before mainstream media was even focusing on the issue of diversity.

Whatever his faults, Stephen King remains ahead of other authors in portraying disabilities, whether physical or mental, and with a surge in rep for gay, trans, or Black characters, it may be time to focus on the overlooked issue of disabled characters in stories - it’s something for us to consider, and I have to thank Stephen King for exploring this form of diversity when nobody else was.

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lassieposting · 4 years ago

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Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying.

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas. There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

#skulduggery pleasant #sp meta #derek landy hate blog #Anon #fire message #anti valitsa #anti val #anti phase two tbh #phase two fans will not enjoy this post

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astralbooks · 3 years ago

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My Dearest Darkest - Kayla Cottingham

Read: 18/03/22 - 27/03/22

Rating: 5/5

Rep: bi main character, questioning lesbian main character with anxiety depression & PTSD, f/f relationship, sapphic side characters, Black side character with ADHD, Arab hijabi side character, Japanese side character

CW (provided by author): abusive relationships, alcohol consumption by minors, anxiety, blood & gore depiction, body horror, burns, coming out themes, cults, dead bodies/body parts, death of a parent, death of a friend, depression, drowning, emesis, emotional abuse, grief & loss depiction, hallucinations, loss of autonomy, mind control, murder, outing (mentioned), panic attacks (mentioned), physical injuries & wounds, ptsd, biphobia (mentioned), racism (mentioned), recreational drug use (marijuana)

I liked this a lot!

My ratings are based pretty much entirely on my own personal enjoyment, and I had a really great time reading this. I liked all the main characters and I liked seeing how their friendships and relationships developed and played out. It was interesting to see Selena’s ‘mean girl’ persona disappear when she had some distance from the toxic relationship that reinforced that kind of behaviour, and seeing how deeply important her friendships and ambitions are to her. Also, watching Finch grow in confidence and go from not being sure of her sexuality to proudly calling herself a lesbian was honestly delightful.

Weirdly, this had a UK feel to it. I can’t put my finger on why this is. Cottingham is American, the book is set entirely in America, and there’s even a homecoming subplot, and yet I found myself double checking all these things while reading because it didn’t feel American to me at all. I do not know why this happened. I’m happy to admit this is probably just a me thing, though, and it’s not like I minded it at all! If anything, I’m glad that a book set in American highschool wasn’t constantly hitting me in the face with the Americanness of it all.

Something that I liked, that probably not everybody will, was that the spooky horror vibes weren’t constant through the whole book. The first chapter is very creepily written, and the scenes directly involving the horror elements are done well! But there are periods of time where the girls are also getting to know each other better, or are going to class, or are doing what every horror movie protagonist should be doing and Not messing with the supernatural thing more than is absolutely necessary. I liked that the scenes depicting their ordinary lives felt like just that. The horror elements aren’t few and far between, this is a horror novel so there are a lot of them (see the laundry list of content warnings), but seeing a scary ghost doesn’t mean you don’t have class the next day. This felt very true to life to me. Something awful can happen, but time keeps moving forwards and daily life goes on. This approach may not be for everyone, but I really liked it!

Ultimately, I think this book has a relatively hopeful tone to it. It’s horror, and it’s also coming of age, and I just think it’s neat.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

#review #book review #my dearest darkest #kayla cottingham #books #booklr

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to-read-or-not-to-read3088 · 3 years ago

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70+ disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill authors COLLAB

This post is in collaboration with several other bloggers whose links are included here:

Artie Carden

Anniek

Hi! It’s been a while since I posted anything, but this post has been a month in the making. I have twenty books by twenty authors for my part in this collaboration, and you can check out the other parts of the collab with the links at the top of the post.

I haven’t read some of these books but almost all of them are on my to be read pile, and I did extensive research to make sure I got this right, but please let me know if there are any mistakes or if anything needs to be corrected.

1. Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

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Meet Cute Diary follows Noah Ramirez who thinks he’s an expert on romance. He must be for his blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem. All the stories are fake. What started off as the fantasies of a trans boy who was afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe. Noah’s world unravels when a troll exposes the blog as fiction, and the only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. That’s when Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place. Drew is willing to fake date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realises that dating in real life isn’t the same as finding love on the page.

The author, Emery Lee, is a kid lit author, artist and YouTuber hailing from a mixed racial background. After graduating with a degree in creative writing, e’s gone on to author novels, short stories and webcomics. When away from reading and writing, you’ll likely find em engaged in art or snuggling with cute dogs.

Emery Lee is nonbinary, and uses e/em pronouns, and e’s debut book, Meet Cute Diary, features a side character who is also nonbinary (and asexual!). Emery is also neurodivergent, and frequently speaks about what its like being a writer with adhd on twitter.

Meet Cute Diary is a book I only discovered last month, when it was published, but I’m excited to read it. It has representation of all kinds, and I love any book that has even a little mention of an asexual character because its so rare to see.

2. Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

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At Niveus Private Academy money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because an anonymous texter calling themselves Aces, is bringing two students’ dark secrets to light. Devon, a talented musician, buries himself in rehearsals, but he can’t escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Chiamaka, head girl, isn’t afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power. Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they’re planning much more than a high school game.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, is the author of the instant New York Times and IndieBound bestseller, Ace of Spades, billed as ‘Get out meets Gossip Girl’. Entertainment Weekly has called it “this summer’s hottest YA debut”. She was born and raised in Croydon, South London, and Faridah moved to the Scottish Highlands for her undergraduate degree where she completed a BA in English Literature. She has established and runs and mentorship scheme for unagented writers of colour, helping them on their journey to get published. Faridah has also written for NME, The Bookseller, Readers Digest and gal-dem.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s book is one that I pre-ordered months in advance, after discovering that I actually really liked this sub-genre of YA, and although I still haven’t read it yet (sorry!), I’m still super excited to dive into it. From what I hear, it has some gay rep, which we all know by now is something I seek out in my books.

3. Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal

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Priya has worked hard to pursue her pre med dreams at Stanford, but a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease during her sophomore year sends her straight back to her loving but overbearing family in New Jersey and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses. When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something very out of character; she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the creature that’s shut in the basement. With Brigid nowhere in sight, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be werewolf – and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid’s unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.

Kristen O’Neal is a freelance writer who’s written for sites like Buzzfeed Reader, Christianity Today, Birth.Movies.Death, LitHub and Electric Literature. She writes about faith, culture, and unexplained phenomena. Her debut novel, Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is based on her own experiences with being chronically ill. Kristen has two autoimmune disorders and “a number of other problems and issues” with her body. According to her website, she is doing much better than she used to, but still has flares somewhat regularly.

I cannot describe the feeling of seeing a published book with the best group chat name I have ever seen. Oof ouch my bones is absolutely something that I would be part of if it really existed, because its just such a mood, and funny at the same time. I pre ordered this book too, but like all the others, I still haven’t gotten around to reading it. I’m super excited about it though and cannot recommend it enough.

4. Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

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Will Tavares is the dream summer fling – he’s fun, affectionate, kind – but just when Ollie thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends, and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realises it’s the same school Will goes to…except Ollie finds out that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted – and to be honest, a jerk. Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts “coincidentally” popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening. The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again. Right? Right.

Sophie Gonzales was born and raised in Whyalla, South Australia, where the Outback Meets the Sea. She now lives in Melbourne, where there’s no outback in sight. Sophie’s been writing since the age of five, when her mother decided to help her type out one of the stories she had come up with in the bathtub. They ran into artistic differences when five-year-old Sophie insisted that everybody die in the end, while her mother wanted the characters to simply go out for a milkshake. Since then, Sophie has been completing her novels without a transcript. Sophie Gonzales tweets about her experiences with ADHD on her twitter.

Only mostly devasted is one of the few books on this list that I’ve read. I read the whole thing in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down, which is weird because I normally don’t read contemporary at all. I have recommended this book to literally everyone I know, and even bought my best friend a copy to convince her to read it.

5. The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd Jones

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Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family, and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meagre existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead. The risen corpses are known as "bone houses," and legend says that they're the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good? Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves.

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. After graduating from Western Oregon University with an English degree, she enrolled in the publishing program at Rosemont College just outside of Philadelphia. She currently resides in Northern California.

Another book on my to be read pile that I’m super excited to read, but still haven’t gotten around to. This one features disability rep, but because I haven’t read it, I don’t know much more, sorry guys.

6. Mooncakes by Susanne Walker and Wendy Xu

📷Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

Suzanne Walker is a Chicago-based writer and editor. She is co-creator of the Hugo-nominated graphic novel Mooncakes (2019, Lion Forge/Oni Press). Her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Uncanny Magazine, and she has published nonfiction articles with Uncanny Magazine, StarTrek.com, Women Write About Comics, and the anthology Barriers and Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability. She has spoken at numerous conventions on a variety of topics ranging from disability representation in sci-fi/fantasy to comics collaboration.

Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist. She is co-creator of and currently draws the webcomic Mooncakes. Her work has been featured on Tor.com, as part of the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibit permanently housed at the Chinese Historical Society of America, and in Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology. She occasionally teaches at the Asian American Writers Workshop and currently works as an assistant editor curating young adult and children’s books.

Suzanne Walker suffers from hearing loss, something that she wrote into her graphic novel, Mooncakes, making Nova hard of hearing. I read this in a few years ago as an advance reader copy for Netgalley and it was honestly one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. The main characters are Chinese American, queer AND magic, which is an amazing combination of representation.

7. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone… A convict with a thirst for revenge A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager A runaway with a privileged past A spy known as the Wraith A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology, The Language of Thorns, and King of Scars—with more to come. Her short stories can be found in multiple anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. Her other works include Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Ninth House (Goodreads Choice Winner for Best Fantasy 2019) which is being developed for television by Amazon Studios.

Leigh grew up in Southern California and graduated from Yale University. These days she lives and writes in Los Angeles.

In the acknowledgements section of Six of Crows, Bardugo reveals she suffers from osteonecrosis and sometimes needs to use a cane; this was a source of inspiration for one of the story's six protagonists, master thief and gang boss Kaz Brekker, who uses a cane.

I read Six of Crows a few years ago and I really loved it. I’m not going to pretend I managed to finish the whole Grishaverse series, because I haven’t even gotten close yet, but it really showed Kaz’s struggles with his disability, and his mental health. This is part of a duology, and the duology is part of a large series of books with another duology and trilogy, but Six of Crows can be read without reading the others.

8. Hyperbole and A Half by Allie Brosh

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This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So, I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Allie is an American blogger, writer and comic artist best known for her blog in the form of a webcomic Hyperbole and a Half. Brosh started Hyperbole in 2009 and told stories from her life in a mix of text and intentionally crude illustrations. She has published two books telling stories in the same style, both of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Brosh lives with severe depression and ADHD, and her comics on depression have won praise from fans and mental health professionals.

Another book on my tbr that I just haven’t gotten around to but really want to.

9. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just must find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...

Patrick Ness, an award-winning novelist, has written for England’s Radio 4 and Sunday Telegraph and is a literary critic for The Guardian. He has written many books, including the Chaos Walking Trilogy, The Crash of Hennington, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, and A Monster Calls. He has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and the Costa Children’s Book Award. Born in Virginia, he currently lives in London.

Patrick Ness has written about OCD and anxiety in at least two of his books, inspired by his own experiences with the two disorders and how it affects him (The Rest of Us Just Live Here & Release)

10. Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children No Solicitations No Visitors No Quests Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter. No matter the cost.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Seanan McGuire has an invisible disability due to herniated disks in her spine. She is slowly coming to terms with this, and talks about it occasionally on her twitter, and about the struggles she faces.

I loved this book, and so did my best friend. We both read it in one sitting and talked nonstop about it afterwards. Although short, its filled with amazing characters, plot, and representation (asexual character!!)

11. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honour they could hope for...and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth. And instead 📷of paper, she's made of fire. In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after -- the girl with the golden eyes whose rumoured beauty has piqued the king's interest. Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, she does the unthinkable -- she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

Natasha Ngan is a writer and yoga teacher. She grew up between Malaysia, where the Chinese side of her family is from, and the UK. This multicultural upbringing continues to influence her writing, and she is passionate about bringing diverse stories to teens. Ngan studied Geography at the University of Cambridge before working as a social media consultant and fashion blogger. She lives in France with her partner, where they recently moved from Paris to be closer to the sea. Her novel Girls of Paper and Fire was a New York Times bestseller. Natasha has a heart condition, and talks about her struggles with her health, and gives updates on her health and her books on twitter.

I’ve heard a lot about this book, but for trigger warning reasons it sadly isn’t on my to be read list. Everything I’ve heard about it says its an amazing book though, and the cover is beautiful.

12. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

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Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favourite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.

Jen Wilde is the YA author of QUEENS OF GEEK, THE BRIGHTSIDERS and GOING OFF SCRIPT. She writes unapologetically queer stories about geeks, rockstars, and fangirls who smash the patriarchy in their own unique ways. Her books have been praised in Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Vulture and Bustle. Originally from Australia, Jen now lives in NYC where she spends her time writing, drinking too much coffee and binging reality TV.

Researching for this collab was the first time this book popped up on my radar as something I might be interested in reading. Jen Wilde, the author, is herself autistic and suffers from anxiety, which gives the narrative “authenticity that is lacking in similar books” according to socialjusticebooks.org.

13. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

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Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love—she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So, she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful. Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back. There’s only one problem: Molly’s co-worker Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?

Becky Albertalli is the author of the acclaimed novels Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (film: Love, Simon), The Upside of Unrequited, and Leah on the Offbeat. She is also the co-author of What If It's Us with Adam Silvera. A former clinical psychologist who specialized in working with children and teens, Becky lives with her family in Atlanta.

Becky Albertalli has generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), and has spoken about it in several interviews, which you can find online. She has also written several characters in her books who also suffer with anxiety. Her first book, Simon vs the Homosapien’s Agenda (or Love, Simon), is the only book of hers that I have read so far, and I loved it. It was the first contemporary book that I read and actually enjoyed.

14. Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

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Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s current gift gives her pain and power—something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows. Akos is the son of a farmer and an oracle from the frozen nation-planet of Thuvhe. Protected by his unusual currentgift, Akos is generous in spirit, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive—no matter what the cost. Then Akos is thrust into Cyra's world, and the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. Will they help each other to survive, or will they destroy one another?

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection), the Carve the Mark duology (Carve the Mark, the Fates Divide), The End and Other Beginnings collection of short fiction, and many short stories and essays. Her first book for adult audiences, Chosen Ones, is out now. She lives in Chicago.

Veronica Roth suffers from anxiety, like a lot of the authors on this list, and talks about it in interviews. A quote from one: "I've had an anxiety disorder my whole life, so I've been to therapy on and off throughout, before books and after books. I went back and tried to talk through some of the things I was feeling and experiencing, and it was helpful."

I’ve never read any of her books, not even the hugely famous Divergent trilogy, though they’ve been on my radar for years. I’d love to get into her books at some point, but it might take me a few years.

15. How to be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe

📷An urgent, funny, shocking, and impassioned memoir by the winner of the Spectrum Art Prize 2018, How To Be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe presents the rarely shown point of view of someone living with autism. Poe’s voice is confident, moving and often funny, as they reveal to us a very personal account of autism, mental illness, gender and sexual identity. As we follow Charlotte’s journey through school and college, we become as awestruck by their extraordinary passion for life as by the enormous privations that they must undergo to live it. From food and fandom to body modification and comic conventions, Charlotte’s experiences through the torments of schooldays and young adulthood leave us with a riot of conflicting emotions: horror, empathy, despair, laugh-out-loud amusement and, most of all, respect. For Charlotte, autism is a fundamental aspect of their identity and art. They address the reader in a voice that is direct, sharply clever and ironic. They witness their own behaviour with a wry humour as they sympathise with those who care for them, yet all the while challenging the neurotypical narratives of autism as something to be ‘fixed’. This is an exuberant, inspiring, life-changing insight into autism from a viewpoint almost entirely missing from public discussion. ‘I wanted to show the side of autism that you don’t find in books and on Facebook. My story is about survival, fear and, finally, hope. There will be parts that make you want to cover your eyes, but I beg you to read on, because if I can change just one person’s perceptions, if I can help one person with autism feel like they’re less alone, then this will all be worth it.’ Charlotte Amelia Poe is a self-taught artist and writer living in Lowestoft, Suffolk. They also work with video and won the inaugural Spectrum Art Prize with the film they submitted, 'How to Be Autistic’. Myriad published Charlotte's memoir, How to Be Autistic, in September 2019.

Another book I didn’t know about until researching for this post, but I really want to read it because I haven’t read many books about autism, and practically none of them were actually written by someone who actually is autistic. Charlotte uses they/them pronouns.

16. Ask me about my Uterus by Abby Norman

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For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issues In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped forty pounds and grey hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands--securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library--that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. In Ask Me About My Uterus, Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. Putting her own trials into a broader historical, sociocultural, and political context, Norman shows that women's bodies have long been the battleground of a never-ending war for power, control, medical knowledge, and truth. It's time to refute the belief that being a woman is a pre-existing condition.

Abby Norman’s debut book, ASK ME ABOUT MY UTERUS: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, was published by Bold Type Books (Hachette Book Group) in 2018, with advance praise from Gillian Anderson, Lindsey Fitzharris, Jenny Lawson, and Padma Lakshmi.

The book was praised by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Book Riot, Toronto Star, ELLE, Health Magazine, Undark Magazine, BUST Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC Radio 5, and other international media outlets.

In 2019, the paperback edition was published in the U.S. and the Korean translation in Seoul (Momento Publishing/Duran Kim Agency).

Her work has been featured in Harper’s, Medium, The Independent, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. Interviews and profiles have been seen and heard, including NPR/WNYC, BBC, Anchor.fm, The New York Times, Playboy, Forbes, Glamour, Women’s Health, and Bitch Magazine.

Abby Norman suffers from endometriosis, which was a large part of why she wrote her book, and why she advocates so hard for fellow patients at conferences such as Stanford University’s Stanford Medicine X and the Endometriosis Foundation of America’s medical conference and Patient Day. She is

Abby has served on technical expert panels including the National Partnership for Women and Families’ CORE Network (Yale University), the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid, The Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), and Health Affairs.

In 2019, Abby contributed to a paper addressing research gaps and unmet needs in endometriosis published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

This book is definitely one I will be adding to my to be read list, as someone who (unfortunately) also has a uterus, it is important to be informed. And Abby sounds like such a badass who wrote a whole book about her chronic illness to help others with the same condition.

17. Stim: Autistic Anthology by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

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Around one in one hundred people in the UK are autistic, yet there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of what autism is. It is rare that autistic people get to share their own experiences, show how creative and talented and passionate they are, how different they are from media stereotypes. This insightful and eye-opening collection of essays, fiction and visual art showcases the immense talents of some of the UK's most exciting writers and artists - who just happen to be on the spectrum. Here they reclaim the power to speak for themselves and redefine what it means to be autistic. Stim invites the reader into the lives, experiences, minds of the eighteen contributors, and asks them to recognise the hurdles of being autistic in a non-autistic world and to uncover the empathy and understanding necessary to continue to champion brilliant yet unheard voices.

Lizzie (Hux) Huxley-Jones is an autistic author and editor based in London. They are the editor of Stim, an anthology of autistic authors and artists, which was published by Unbound in April 2020 to coincide with World Autism Awareness Week. They are also the author of the children’s biography Sir David Attenborough: A Life Story. They can be found editing at independent micropublisher 3 of Cups Press, and they also advise writers as a freelance sensitivity reader and consultant. In their past career lives, they have been a research diver, a children’s bookseller and digital communications specialist.

I wasn’t even aware that there was an anthology out there by an autistic author, about autism, but now that I do I need to read it.

18. Chimera by Jaecyn Bonê

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Creatures unlike you've imagined before! Welcome to a world where myths and legends collide to create a new breed of monster. Savage and soulful, these monstrosities combine to form the mighty Chimera. In this anthology, talented writers weave 10 tales of fantastical beasts. Featuring stories by: Matt Bliss Jaecyn Boné Alexis L. Carroll Chris Durston Dewi Hargreaves Stephen Howard Samuel Logan Vincent Metzo Braden Rohl Michelle Tang

Jaecyn is a queer, non-binary, disabled Asian-American writer and digital artist fascinated by faeries.

Most of their writing involves wlw romance and faery-inspired creatures. Their first novel, Farzana's Spite is a 10-year-old work in progress and the first novel in The Faerth series. Other works include The Killing Song (novel) and Colour Unknown (short), both of which are also part of the Faerth universe.

Jaecyn's art can be described as a neorealistic pop art style with cel shading. They began their digital art journey with a 5-year-old refurbished iPad using their finger as a stylus and immediately fell in love. They do digital download commissions as well as sell prints of their artwork.

Jaecyn is the Co-Editor in Chief of the Limeoncello Magazine, an online Own Voices literary magazine which debuted its first issue on March 21st, 2021.

When not writing, drawing, or chasing after their two children, they can be found either gardening or practicing their ukulele.

None of Jaecyn Boné’s books are published yet as they are still in the stage of querying, but they contributed to the above anthology, along with nine other authors. I had no idea that this anthology existed, and now I’ll be closely following this author to see when their books get published!

19. Forest of Souls by Lori M Lee

Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she’s intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen’s next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack 📷and kill her best friend Saengo. And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life. Unveiled as the first soul guide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood—an ancient forest possessed by souls—to enforce peace between the kingdoms. Now, with the trees growing wild and untamed, only a soul guide can restrain them. As war looms, Sirscha must master her newly awakened abilities before the trees shatter the brittle peace, or worse, claim Saengo, the friend she would die for.

Lori M. Lee is the author of speculative novels and short stories. Her books include PAHUA AND THE SOUL STEALER (Disney/Rick Riordan Presents), FOREST OF SOULS and the sequel BROKEN WEB (Page Street), and more. She’s also a contributor to the anthologies A THOUSAND BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS and COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES. She considers herself a unicorn fan, enjoys marathoning TV shows, and loves to write about magic, manipulation, and family.

Lori struggles with anxiety, and the common symptoms like fatigue but she doesn’t let this stop her writing amazing books. I read Forest of Souls earlier this year, and it was seriously one of the best books I’ve ever read. I loved the magic, the characters, the world building. Everything about it, including the plot twist ending that had me losing my mind at 2am, was just so unlike anything I had read in any other fantasy before.

20. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown

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For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom. But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition. When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?

Roseanne “Rosie” A. Brown was born in Kumasi, Ghana and immigrated to the wild jungles of central Maryland as a child. Writing was her first love, and she knew from a young age that she wanted to use the power of writing—creative and otherwise—to connect the different cultures she called home. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and was also a teaching assistant for the school’s Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her journalistic work has been featured by Voice of America among other outlets.

On the publishing side of things, she has worked as an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing. Rosie was a 2017 Pitch Wars mentee and 2018 Pitch Wars mentor. Rosie currently lives outside Washington D.C., where in her free time she can usually be found wandering the woods, making memes, or thinking about Star Wars.

Roseanne is another author that struggles with anxiety and wrote one of her two main characters with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), despite it being a fantasy. I don’t even think I can name a fantasy that had a character with anxiety represented so well. This was a book I read around the same time as Forest of Souls, and I loved it. The cover was beautiful, the characters were brilliant, and I just loved the world building, the magic, and the plot. It was just different to the usual fantasy books I read, and I enjoyed the variation so much I’ve had the sequel pre ordered almost a year in advance.

So, this was my 20 books by 20 chronically ill, disabled or neurodiverse authors list. Blurbs and synopsis were compiled between Goodreads and author websites, and bios were found either on Goodreads, author websites or on amazon author pages. All the information about their chronic illnesses, disabilities or neurodivergence was found online, where they had either explicitly said it or written about it, but if I have something wrong, please let me know so I can fix it!

If you have any other suggestions or know any other books and authors that should be on this list, please let me know and I’ll do my best to add it to the list as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading 😊

#bookblr #reviews #recs #books

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literaticat · 4 years ago

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I have an invisible disability that is managed with medication. If an agent says they're looking for authors that are part of an underrepresented group (which includes this disability), but the manuscript I'm querying doesn't have the disability appear in it, is it worth bringing up? I technically would be an author that's underrepresented, but it feels wrong to bring it up when it's not in the novel I wrote.

I tend to agree with your assessment -- I think you should go with your gut feeling here.

I mean, let's put it this way -- and here, please know, I am only speaking for myself. I have several chronic illnesses, and ADHD. They are never going away -- but they are well-managed, they are invisible to others, they don't affect my life or work in a major way, and I am not marginalized on account of them. Like, yes, I have to make certain adjustments to my own personal day-to-day life (such as avoiding certain foods, getting good sleep, taking medication, managing my schedule in a certain way, etc) -- but I would feel very uncomfortable claiming to be part of a marginalized group or given anything "special" on the basis of these illnesses/diagnoses. The fact is, I have a TON of privilege already, of which I am well aware, and my own personal health concerns in no way negate any of that or make me part of a historically under-represented group.

So -- I would think it was important to mention that I have [whatever chronic illness/disability/brain situation] IF I WERE WRITING A BOOK with that subject, for example -- just because, like, "hey, I'm not talking out of my ass here, I too share this illness/disability/brain situation!" -- but if I wasn't, I don't think I would bring it up in a query letter.

That being said - I would probably mention it in a call with an agent, either before or after they offered rep, if I thought there was a chance that it might affect my deadlines or the way I work, or I knew I was never going to be available at certain times or anything of that nature. And if you KNOW you are going to need certain accommodations, certainly talk about it with the agent, so that they can have your back and know what is up. But again - I think all that is kinda TMI for a query letter, if it has nothing to do with your book.

YMMV!

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kantuck · 5 years ago

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ADhD, something to think about.

A friend sent me this: (I’m copy/pasting, mistakes are the authors.)

“Kan, saw this on FB, thinking of you.”

I was asked a while ago by a friend to share my thoughts on ADHD, and what I believe about this unique neuro-diversity that we all seem to have. It has taken me some time to put it into words, but here is the basic gist of it and I hope it can help someone to understand the “why” behind what we all experience.

ADHD is not a curse, It is not broken, it is NOT a malfunction of the brain or a “Mis-wiring”. It is not from your mother smoking cigarettes when you were in utero, and it is NOT from too much television as a child. ADHD is a Nuero-diversity. It is a different wiring of the brain as it relates to the body and to information collection AND most importantly it has a purpose! Before I get to that piece though, let me share with you what I KNOW about ADHD.

ADHD is a label that we have assigned to individuals that present with a specific set of symptoms associated with a diagnosable neuro-diversity. These symptoms can include things like distractibility, forgetfulness, inattention, hyper-focused attention, emotional storms, irritability, feelings of worthlessness, active or overactive imagination, tardiness or skewed senses of time, imposter syndrome, out of control thoughts, and severely low self-esteem.

Recently, research studies have identified three (3) aspects of ADHD that are experienced by almost everyone with this neuro-diversity and not experienced by almost none without it.

Interest-based nervous system: Not just interest-based attention, but your entire nervous system functions differently based on your level of interest. When you find something truly interesting it will actually energize you. Sleep is irrelevant, Food is a fleeting thought. You are sustained by interest. Have you ever found yourself up way past time to go to bed, forgot that you had to go to the bathroom, or didn’t eat, just because you were so interested in something? Yeah, me too.

Emotional Hyper-Arousal: Imagine this like you have a volume knob for “Emotions” and yours is turned up 5 notches higher than the neuro-typical people around you. Your highs are higher, your lows are lower. Merely funny is hilarious and mildly sad is sorrowful. Everything is extreme. Not worth humor is funny and not worth heartache is indeed sad. Every emotion felt is more-than.

Rejection-sensitive-dysphoria: Basically, we are hypersensitive to rejection, from anyone. It doesn’t really matter if we consciously care about the individual or group that is enacting the rejection. We are just hyper-sensitive to being rejected by anyone for any reason. Even if we don’t want to be part of the club, we are sensitive to the club not wanting us as a member kind of thing.

Now if we combine these symptoms and aspects we begin to see some pretty obvious and reoccurring traits that cause problems in daily life.

Imposter syndrome: Minimizing our accomplishments and maximizing our failures or faults. If we succeed, then it was easy or luck, but if we fail it is because we are flawed or broken and we are totally responsible.

Hyper-focus: I can be focused on something that I am interested in, but cannot manage to pay attention to a board meeting. I am all about the next book coming out, but forget my anniversary.

Emotional storm: I have a thousand thoughts running through my head and each one has an emotion that I have to feel as it passes and therefore I feel a thousand emotions in the span of a few seconds and cannot differentiate between them.

There are many many more that I don’t think that I need to list. You can see the patterns I am sure.

What if…..?

What if ADHD was natural?

What if ADHD was not ADHD, but something else?

What if ADHD was NOT a Deficit or a Disorder, but an adaptation?

Scientific research now suggests that what we know as ADHD is actually an evolutionary adaptation to a Hunter/Gather lifestyle.

In a natural environment, where there are predators and prey, where the rustling of leaves, or the flash of game in the periphery, or the trickling of water heard, could mean the difference between life or death, it is actually an extreme benefit to have an overabundance of involuntary attention. It is a bonus to be hyper-aware (distractable).

This is why so many that have ADHD wired brains find solace in natural environments. There is so much to “Pull” our attention, but so little to “Pay” attention to. We find ourselves recharged by walks in the forest or sitting near a babbling brook. This is our natural born element and so it invigorates us.

So why so few of us then? Well, let's look at that. Darwin’s theories of evolution state that: If there is a mutation in an individual that is part of a species that makes that individual more likely to survive, then that mutation will be passed along to its offspring and therefore make the offspring more likely to survive than it’s counterparts of the same species and thus, the mutation will eventually, though the process of natural selection, be distributed to the entire species and will no longer be a mutation, just part of the species. For example: if a bird has a mutation that increases its beak size and that increases its survivability, then eventually the entire species will have larger beaks. So, let's look back at 20,000 years into our human history. Everyone that existed on the planet were hunter/gathers. It is very likely that at that time, the majority of individuals were also what we call today, ADHD. Then one day, someone decided that it would be a good idea to plant & farm & build walls & raise livestock & stay in one place.

Now we have these sedentary people that are NOT hunting or gathering in dangerous environments. They are protected by walls and removed from danger.

However, we still have all these ADHDers that cannot stand being still, so they are still hunting and gathering and putting themselves in danger.

Who is more survivable now?

Fast forward 20,000 years…..97% of all humans are sedentary and only 3% are ADHDers.

ADHD is not new, it is not made up by Pharma, it has always been here, just never called the same thing. The first mention of an individual that appeared to display ADHD symptoms that I found was from the writing of Hippocrates, also known as the father of modern medicine, he stated: The patient has quickened responses to sensory experience, but also less tenaciousness because the soul moves on quickly to the next impression.

Back then, “soul” was the word for mind and “impression’ was the word for thought. So what he was saying is ...The patient has heightened responses to external stimulation but has less follow-through because the mind moves on quickly to the next thought.

If that is not ADHD I don’t know what is.

This is not a bad thing though. All we need to do is look throughout history to see ADHDers in action. We can take the symptomatology that we know now and apply it to historical figures and we see that the most innovative and influential individuals in history were probably ADHDers.

Socrates Leonardo Da Vinci Mozart Benjamin Franklin The Wright Brothers Salvadore Dali Walt Disney Nikola Tesla Thomas Edison Albert Einstien John F. Kennedy And if those names don’t do anything for you then how about these names of self-professed ADHDers:

Justin Bieber Simone Biles David Blaine Terry Bradshaw Richard Branson Andre Brown Jim Carrey James Carville Jim Caviezel Wendy Davis Katherine Ellison Josh Freeman Ryan Gosling Viglil Green Ed Hallowell, M.D. Woody Harrelson Mariette Hartley Cameron Herold Paris Hilton Christopher Knight Solange Knowles Adam Kreek Jenny Lawson Greg LeMond Adam Levine Howie Mandel Audra McDonald Alan Meckler Rep. Kendrick Meek Matt Morgan David Neeleman Paul Orfalea Ty Pennington Michael Phelps Pete Rose Michele Rodriguez Louis Smith Leigh Steinberg Payne Stewart Shane Victorino Bubba Watson Henry Winkler Brookley Wofford

ADHD is not the “fault” it’s the exception. We have always been here and we have always been the ones that are changing the world.

There is statistically a higher percentage of ADHD in America than in Europe. Researchers believe that this is because our founding fathers and the immigrants that are our heritage had the out-of-the-box impulsiveness to pack up and go across an entire ocean to make a better life!

ADHD is not a curse, it is not a disorder, society has the disorder because as much as it touts individuality, it is only acknowledged once an individual complies with the obligation of normalcy. You cannot be creative unless you can get to work on time. You cannot be innovative unless all your bills are paid. Blah Blah Blah….

Being born with ADHD is like being born with a beautiful pair of raven black angel wings. Imagine for a moment how that would be. You would be shunned as a freak. Called an abomination. You would try to hide your birthright if only to “Fit in” or be “normal”, and always throughout all of the insults and put-downs, through all of the pain and sorrow, all you would have to do is spread those beautiful black wings and soar….

We are not the problem. We are the solution. We are the R&D while everyone else trudges on the assembly line. We are the inventors and the visionaries, while the neuro-typical are content with the status quo. We take the risks and run the chance….sometimes to our detriment, but also sometimes to glory.

Doubt yourself all you want. Tell us all that “your” ADHD is a disorder or a disability, but make no mistake…..You are amazing.

#ADhD

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sophygurl · 6 years ago

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WisCon 43 panel Mental Illness in SFF

Speculative fiction is fruitful grounds for stereotypes and tropes related to mental illness. We have mad scientists on the one hand and mad gods on the other. We have robots representing one kind of neurodivergency in the science realm and the fae or fae-touched doing similar in fantasy worlds. We have creatures that feed on sanity and medications that cure mental illnesses, and the drugs or plants that cause them. What's going on with mental illness in SFF genres? When are these depictions and metaphors helpful and which ones are just plain harmful?

Moderator: Jason Finn. Panelists: Ira Alexandre, Kristy Eagar, Clara Cecilia Abnet Holden, Kiersty Lemon-Rogers. [also Autumn was added to the panel - I didn’t catch if she wanted to be known beyond her first name however] [additionally, a member of the audience named Cassie eventually joined the panel as well, but I wasn’t able to catch anything beyond her first name]

Disclaimers: These are only the notes I was personally able to jot down on paper during the panel. I absolutely did not get everything, and may even have some things wrong. Corrections by panelists or other audience members always welcome. I name the mod and panelists because they are publicly listed, but will remove/change names if asked. I do not name audience members unless specifically asked by them to be named. If I mix up a pronouns or name spelling or anything else, please tell me and I’ll fix it!

Notes:

Kristy introduced herself by saying “I like to say I’m seven kinds of crazy” - she has a wide array of mental illnesses/neurodivergency.

Ira said they are “also seven kinds of crazy”, specifically mentioned Bipolar II, autism, and ADHD.

Kiersty said she’s liking the term “mentally weird” for herself, that not everything is officially diagnosed “for reasons”, and that she likes to see people like herself in fiction.

Clara said she also likes the “seven kinds of crazy” and mentioned OCD, GAD, autism, and severe depression. She gets excited to see characters even close to being like her.

Autumn said she finished her master’s degree in counseling and also holds multiple diagnoses. She writes “queer mental illness trash romance”, and has created the games Player 2 and Self Interview.

Autumn also said she wanted to hold space for people who don’t like the word crazy, for whom it’s not something they’re reclaiming.

Jason said he has a family history of mental illness. He started the panelists off asking about representation that they have feelings about.

Ira said they wrote about the Vorkosigan Saga with a focus on Miles, who is more known for his physical differences but who is also neurodivergent. Miles is also a vet with PTSD - which is not handled very well in the story. There is another character who has PTSD who gets the help that he needs, however.

Ira also likes Murderbot (I’m guessing by a quick search this means The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells), as well as Chidi from The Good Place. The fork in the garbage disposal line really speaks to them.

Kristy also loves and relates to Chidi. She noted that there is no therapeutic help available in the afterlife. She also talked about the show Monk - the detective with OCD. Monk often described his OCD as being both a blessing and a curse. Monk made her feel seen, however she felt depressed at the end of each episode. She noted that his OCD gave him a sort of superpower where hers did not. Instead of framing it in terms of blessing and curse, and feeling like she only has the curse, she likes to think of it as neither - it just is.

Clara talked about characters like Monk where the superpower is just that the see the world differently.

Kristy also talked about how most of us don’t have a personal assistance to come around and help us interface with the world.

Clara added that other shows do this, as well - Sherlock, House, The Good Doctor. There is an exceptional cis white male with an ability that is valued enough that his inability to interface with the world on his own is seen as okay.

Autumn said she is sensitive to characters being read as autistic but the story doesn’t tell us that they are. Example was a Canadian show, Strange Empire.

Autumn also talked about Jacqueline Koyanagi’s Ascension - the main character is both physically and mentally disabled. Strong rec. [I agree!!]

Kiersty mentioned Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series as being decent rep for someone with ADHD as a sort of superpower. Also An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon reads as neurodivergent.

Kiersty added an example that was not well done, which I didn’t catch the name of. She loves the work but the representation was bad. Another work I didn’t catch the name of [ugh my handwriting] has tokenization. The queer mentally ill character has psychopathy and is treated unkindly within the story. This was the focus of Kiersty’s graduate work - it can be hard for her to analyze critically because she loves and respects the author overall, but there are serious issues here.

Ira went back to the idea of the helper character (like for Monk, Sherlock, etc.) - there are labor issues here as well. These helpers are paid for their work to make the character more palatable to the world. Sometimes the exceptional genius character gets taught how to treat others kindly along the way.

Kristy said this is a classic trope in the detective genre - the neurodivergent genuis detective and the person who explains what they mean to the rest of the world. Nero Wolf is another example of this - being a massive genius somehow entitles these men to treat others poorly.

Kristy talked about The Good Doctor as a combination of good and bad representation. Often, another doctor or nurse or even patient will explain things to or for the main character, which can lead to the idea that he is unable to learn these things on his own. One episode had the example of “I can’t be racist, I’m disabled!” which is a very bad take.

Kristy noted that the interfacer is also the one who is seen as having the “burden” of being in relationship with the person with the mental illness.

Ira talked about Murderbot - the first book at least was a positive example - that it’s okay to interact with people differently instead of trying to correct how you naturally relate to people. It’s a more adaptive relationship,

Kiersty talked about Data in Star Trek and the whole “I just want to be human” trope. When that type of character is coded as neuroatypical, it can be problematic. Kiersty will fight anyone who questions Data’s personhood. She relates to him very strongly.

Kiersty also talked about Deanna and how she would tell Data that he does have emotions - he just expresses them differently. He didn’t need to have an emotion chip or whatever. He already had connections and relationships with others, even if they looked different.

Autumn talked about Kingpin in Daredevil as a possibly divisive example because he’s a villain. But his villainy was not related to his autism. They both just existed. This is also an example where the translator character is a man and also paid for his services, so it is not unpaid labor. And Kingpin’s romantic interest, Vanessa, accepts him as he is.

Clara added “Kingpin is definitely not a good person, but I love him.” She also agreed his character was handled well and is over the common trope of mental illness being the reason for the villainy.

Clara talked about how so many villains are characters with anti-social personality disorders - the all villains are psychopaths trope. Then there is Sherlock who said in the first episode that he was a sociopath but no, he wasn’t, and portraying him that way is a problem. Rec’s the book and film I Am Not a Serial Killer - good depiction of someone with anti-social PD who is not a villain and not violent and who gets a diagnosis and therapy.

Ira said, in regards to villains, mental illness as a driving force for the plot becomes the reason for their villainy. There is a fascination in pop culture for the display of a villain’s psyche’s in a way that there isn’t for other types of characters.

Kristy talked about the debates between psychopathy and sociopathy. With the Sherlock thing that Clara mentioned - Kristy thought it was plausible because of the spectrum of disconnect in emotions involved. There is a problem in portraying all psychopaths as serial killers - many are CEO’s, accountants, soccer mom’s, etc. There are positives - the emotional disconnect can make someone with psychopathy good at hiring and firing people, for example.

Clara said that she likes depictions where anti-social characters can be helpful and useful.

Autumn spent the past year working with people with anti-social PD - people who require full time care. Incarcerated people tend to have it as a diagnosis but it’s not always a good diagnosis because part of the diagnostic criteria includes “criminal behavior.” The context of criminal behavior is not always taken into consideration.

Autumn said that the people she worked with had empathy but their feelings of guilt were so overwhelming that they melted down when they tried to tune into them. The problem is that this disconnect becomes habituated - it becomes a refusal to take responsibility for their actions at all because they can’t let the feelings in.

Jason asked the panelists to talk about depictions of therapy. This was Deanna’s whole job. He is unhappy with Barclay’s treatment in the series a lot of the time.

Ira commented that there are too few space therapists. In fantasy - therapists usually have another role in addition to the therapy.

Autumn talked more about Deanna as a professional empath. In seasons 6 and 7, the show started portraying therapy more realistically - the way therapy actually happened during the time the series originally aired. Autumn also added that Dax was unqualified for the role as councilor on DS9.

Kristy talked about therapy in speculative fiction sometimes being specifically therapy. Then there is Guinan in The Next Generation who did a lot of unpaid labor as a therapist for everybody, exemplifying the magical black woman trope as well. There are a couple of episodes focused on her character and her feelings, but not a lot.

Kristy is also interested in the idea of the holodeck being used as therapy. Also, in fantasy novels, the priest often plays the role of therapist. It’s worth asking who is doing the labor and who is getting paid for the labor and who is benefiting from the labor, especially through lenses of race and gender.

Ira talked some about the movement of getting therapy from your own demographic (for example, black and queer therapists treating their own people), and how that could be an interesting concept to explore in spec. fic.

An audience member talked about the white cis male frame that mental illness is often looked at through in fiction. As a counter example, brought up Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti and Akata Witch, as well as Andrea Hairston’s Will Do Magic for Small Change - which delve into black and brown ideas of not being allowed to feel and the harm that therapy can do. Horror, as a genre, looks at this sometimes, too.

Autumn said the issue is complex - the thing about therapy with someone who shares your demographic can work because the most important thing in success of therapy is a shared rapport, and often that can be found with people you share things with.

Autumn also shared that in real life, schizophrenia cuts equally across the population, but diagnostically that doesn’t show. Black and brown people have more distrust of authority for obvious reasons, and that can be viewed as mental illness. Similarly, Russia used anti-psychotics on people who didn’t trust the state - but they had good reason not to have that trust.

Kristy noted that the panel is all white and that this is a problem. An audience member began asking the panelists questions in regards to race, and was asked if she wanted to join the panel to speak on that and she did (everyone applauded - this felt very needed, although the panelists were doing their best to address the issues).

The audience member introduced herself as Cassie, and this was her first WisCon - she said this kind of thing happens to her a lot because being at cons sparks her hypomania.

Cassie talked about the TV show Insecure where one of the black main characters is seen in therapy with a black therapist and how amazing that is.

She also talked about the issue of black people being scared of being shot at by police and that getting a diagnosis of delusion slapped on them, but this is a very realistic fear. Also - black expression of depression is often anger.

As far as people with anti-social PD, the white ones tend to end up as CEO’s, the black ones end up in prison.

Cassie rec’d Binti as well and talked about the depiction of PTSD, isolation from one’s own community. The character does see a therapist, but there is so much misunderstanding due to cultural differences. There are access issues around therapy - both in real life and in SFF.

Clara talked about strict and narrow depictions of “otherness” in fiction and how we can only have one margliazation in a character. As if it’s unrealistic for someone to be both black and mentally ill.

An audience member commented - “I guess cishet white men have no trouble empathizing with others.”

Kristy talked about Shonda Rhimes shows, specifically How To Get Away With Murder has a bisexual black woman with mental illness as a main character.

Kristy also mentioned Hannibal - “I love relationships where the therapist ends up eating their patient, or vice versa.”

“If you love cannibalism and mental illness....”

Jason - and we’re out of time and have to end it there. [lol]

[So. This was a really good and really interesting panel for a lot of reasons, but I’m left feeling a little frustrated about the focus of it, only because well - I wrote this one up too and was thinking about it specifically touching on ways that SF and fantasy use the tropes of their genres to portray mental illness and when those are used well or poorly. The panel did a little bit of that, but it feels like it veered off a lot into other genres, discussing mental illnesses in general, and even when focused on SFF - it was more listing off works and what they did vs. exploring the idea of SFF tropes specifically in regards to mental illness. But perhaps I need to narrow the focus of the panel description more if that’s the panel I want to see? IDK. It really was interesting and I liked how they just invited the audience member to the panel mid-way through to gain her perspective. Also some cool recs!]

#wiscon #wiscon 43 #mental illness in sff #mental illness #mental illness representation

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