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sophygurl · 5 years

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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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thein273 · 2 years

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I posted 6,487 times in 2021

19 posts created (0%)

6468 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 340.4 posts.

I added 33 tags in 2021

#autism - 5 posts

#yes - 4 posts

#this - 4 posts

#it me - 4 posts

#adhd problems - 3 posts

#oh my god - 3 posts

#neurodivergent - 3 posts

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#in my world everyone's gay until they prove otherwise because everyone i talk to is usually gay - 2 posts

#i have...a few like this - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but seriously i have so many emotionally repressed hardass characters i think i'm projecting this cannot be healthy i actually need therapy

My Top Posts in 2021

Question for Other Trans and Nonbinary People Relating to My Book

First off, I want to establish: I AM TRANS AND USE THEY/THEM PRONOUNS. I CHANGED MY NAME. I EXPERIENCE GENDER DYSPHORIA. I am not a cis person writing an appropriative story. This is a question for the vastness of the trans community to get people’s opinions.

Okay, so, I’ve got a situation. I have a series where one of the MCs is a trans nonbinary character. I want to have a realization subplot, but the problem is, it’s a dual POV book, so for most of the book the second narrator would be using their birth name and assumed pronouns, she/her. But a realization subplot is something that I feel would be meaningful and possibly even helpful to some people and could normalize a lot of the trans experience.

So, this is my dilemma: trans people, would you be uncomfortable with this in a book you read? Would you be able to reread the book knowing by the end of the story that one of the MCs is trans and these are not their actual pronouns or name?

I know this is just going to be triggering for some and I would preface the heck out of this book with trigger warnings. But I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot with this book because I hate to say it, but I would like to make some income off a story that’s been important to me my whole life. I want to know if other trans people think the value of having a realization subplot, all these other problems aside, would outweigh the harm of having to, by necessity, use the wrong name and pronouns for a trans character for an entire book.

Cisgender people, please boost.

9 notes • Posted 2021-07-08 01:25:33 GMT

I Have a Theory

You know how baby gays and eggs somehow all find each other even before they know they’re queer? I say we emit Gay Pheromones that only other Gays can detect. Science, prove me wrong, I fucking dare you.

(It probably will but I’m trying to shitpost.)

9 notes • Posted 2021-08-05 04:06:06 GMT

No one: Not a single soul: The sweetest fan commenting on an abandoned fic I haven’t touched in three years and didn’t plan on ever updating again: I love this! This is one of my favorite fics! I hope you’re doing well and I can’t wait until you update! Me:

11 notes • Posted 2021-05-20 22:41:28 GMT

I ironically just hyperfixated on scrolling through ADHD tumblr instead of doing the million things I have to do. I think I’ve stopped. God, I hope I’ve stopped.

15 notes • Posted 2021-05-08 21:51:01 GMT

So, I think everyone knows by now that Eda’s storyline with the Owl Beast is a good magical analogy for invisible disabilities and illnesses. My experience is specifically with mental health and mental disorders, which can often feel like this untamable beast to me, and with how many parallels are in this show, I’ll be honest: I was nervous.

I thought for sure they’d completely cure Eda and the underlying message would be that if you’re different in a way that sometimes hurts, then either you cure it completely or you’re screwed. Obviously, if you can cure an invisible illness, do it and that’s wonderful and I completely believe there should be that rep, but I just worried a little bit about the messages it would quietly send to young viewers. That people who are struggling and can’t fix it are wrong somehow, and either you cure it or life is hopeless. Maybe that was just me thinking through the lens of someone who’s dealt with a lot of ableism and attitudes about my mental illness that boil down to “make it go away or you’re broken and your life isn’t worth living,” so admittedly, take this with a grain of salt.

But there is something...so empowering about seeing Eda not only accept it, but come out stronger for it. There’s a design and everything to reflect that, yes, it can suck. It can be really difficult and you need to manage it as best you can in whatever way works for you. But you don’t have to be miserable. You don’t have to hate your life because of something you can’t control. Working with it, surviving it, adapting to it and accepting it can make you a stronger person. Can make you a happier person.

There’s just something incredibly powerful about that and I will be unendingly grateful for this show.

Also, Luz and Amity are now officially dating and it actually isn’t the very last episode of the show. They barely even do that for straight couples. How many Disney execs did Dana Terrace have to hold ransom and torture to make this show happen? That woman is a blessing to humankind.

Actually I have no idea who all is going to bat with Disney. Anyone who is contributing to this show is wonderful and I love them, and anyone who is fighting Disney for this rep, you are a freaking hero.

26 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 03:44:17 GMT

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