I wanna be a starship ranger

The future is now, so I don't see how the time isn't right for me . . .

Being a woman who likes genre fiction is one of the most exhausting experiences on earth.

At the moment, I'd say there are two broad categories of genre fiction: the "gritty" stuff, like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, and the more "fluffy" ones like the Marvel movies. I've said before that I don't have a whole lot of time for gritty shows; the main reason is that I find surrounding myself with that kind of negativity tiring, but there's another aspect. The thing is, "gritty" seems to translate- in the minds of showrunners, anyway- into "bad shit happens to women." The bad shit isn't

Pictured: what women can expect from "gritty" drama.

always limited to the female characters, obviously, but there's a specific dimension to the way women are hurt in these shows. It's always to do with their bodies. They're groped, raped, tortured, suffer miscarriages, die in childbirth- it always seems to be some variation of either a woman being made vulnerable by her body or a woman being betrayed by her body. The female vessel is treated as an essentially weak, fragile, corrupt piece of meat in a way that mens' bodies just aren't. Men get hurt; men die; but men die heroically in battle, men take a bullet for their friends, men make heroic last stands. Maybe a single tear runs down their face while they do it. Often their death concludes with a brief glimpse of them in the afterlife, being greeted by the women whose bodies paved their way to heroism.

In some ways, this hurts men as much as it does women; it perpetuates a myth of male superheroism
that leaves no room for men to be weak or emotional or hurt. But the visceral disdain for the bodies of women- that cuts deep. And it cuts into male and female viewers alike. We all learn, hearing these stories, that this is what women should expect: from men, from other women, from themselves. Is it any wonder, then, that violence against women is endemic? We've created an endless cycle of regurtiating misogyny into our pop culture and then playing out the scenarios we see onscreen. And with "gritty" stories becoming increasingly popular, I only see this trend on the rise.

So what about the other side of the coin?

Remember girls, this is what you're good for.

In a way, gritty and fluffy genre shows create a one-two punch of female disempowerment. Gritty shows tell women that their bodies are weak and disposable. In a lot of respect, fluffy shows do that as well: how many superhero movies has the girlfriend/mother character died in? There's a whole trope named after it. And it's not just death; it's disrespect. This past summer, Guardians of the Galaxy opened with Peter Quill's mother on her deathbed, and shows the sole woman on the team being called a "green whore" as a joke. In The Avengers, the sole female superhero is taunted by the villain, who calls her a "mewling quim" (an antiquated slang term for "vagina;" in modern parlance, a "whiny cunt.") Buffy the Vampire Slayer, often held up as a paragon of feminist TV, had its heroine inadverdantly turn her boyfriend into a monster by having sex with him. But I think the trends of fluffy TV, when it comes to women, are deeper and more insiduous than just hurting them physically. That's an aspect, yes. But what these shows really say- beyond "you're gonna get hurt-" is "you can't be a hero."

I don't think I've posted about BBC's The Musketeers here before, but I was absolutely crazy about the first season. It wasn't perfect when it came to women (oh look, more dead girlfriends and attempted rapes) but the most prominent female character, Constance, got to her her own miniature hero's journey. She wanted to learn how to fight, and she did. At one point, she and one of the men find themselves backed into a corner by a bad guy. Constance grabs a sword. "Have you got this?" her companion asks her. She bares her teeth. "Absolutely." And then she kicks the bad guy's ass.

How great is that? Finally, a heroine is being given the same strengths as a hero: she wants to learn to be strong, and she does. She gets to quip at the bad guys before proving she's stronger than they are. This is what we want: women who get to kick ass, who get to be funny, who get to be the same kind of wish fulfillment as the male characters. Escapist fantasy is, after all, a form of wish fulfillment: we want to be Peter Quill, or Robin Hood, or one of the Three Musketeers. When you were a kid, did you ever play games based on whatever TV or movies you watched? I did. Power Rangers was a popular choice, and so was Pokemon. I notice, however, that the older boys and girls get- once they reach school age or so- their forms of fantasy diverge. My female friends and I increasingly made up our own stories, independent of what we saw when we got home from school and turned on the TV. Our male classmates were still playing at Star Wars and Indiana Jones, squabbling over who got to be Indy or Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. When girls joined in those games, we often made up new characters to play (my character's name when we played Indiana Jones was "Sarah.") After all, it's not like heroines were thick on the ground; Star Wars fans got to be Leia (and to be reminded by geek culture that their value still boiled down to how they looked in a gold bikini) and if you were into Indiana Jones, there was Marion Ravenwood. (There were two other prominent women in the movies- the screeching Willie Scott, or Elsa the Nazi seductress. Neither held much appeal for would-be adventurers.) Meanwhile if you were a boy, you could be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or Indiana Jones or Indiana's father Henry or Lando Calrissian, or Chewbacca, or . . .

You get my point.

You thought you boyfriend would respect you and your choices?
That's adorable.

So tying this back around to The Musketeers: Constance's arc wasn't perfect, and her primary narrative function was to be a love interest for d'Artagnan, but she still had her own stuff going on. Then season two happened, and it all went to complete shit. Constance, trapped in an abusive
marriage, was berated by her husband on one side and her would-be lover on the other, being called a "coward" for being afraid of being branded an adulteress and/or being hurt by her husband. She didn't get to pick up any more swords. Instead, chastised, she admitted that she was in the wrong for wanting to dictate the course of her own life, and for being constrained by the endless restrictions applied to women's lives. "Hypocrite" was the specific word she used. And then, having been thoroughly humbled by a man who knew what she wanted better than she did, she married him, and they're going to live happily ever after!

What . . .  the . . . fuck.

Where did my Constance go? Where was the heroine I'd wanted so badly as a child? Where was the woman who kicked ass and took names and stood up for her friends- and more importantly, stood up for herself? Why were her thoughts and needs and desires being treated as subordinate to her boyfriend's feelings? Where was the woman who, if I'd been fifteen years younger, I would have been playing with my friends at recess? Doesn't that little girl- all the little girls now who watch the show- get a heroine too?

And it wasn't just Constance: it seemed like this season was an endless parade of women being abused, murdered, tossed aside, and forgotten. The most egregious example is probably the nameless sex worker murdered by the season big bad (even in the end credits, she was only credited as "Prostitute") but she certainly wasn't an anomaly. There was Marguerite, seduced by one of the leads, subsequently abandoned and then blackmailed, and finally succumbing to despair and taking her own life. Marguerite was never her own character; she was an object to move the story along, someone to provide angst for her lover (when he remembered that she existed) and plot fodder when the villain needed a way to move forward. Then there was Queen Anne, a secondary player in her own story: having birthed a secretly illegitimate child, her role was to be threatened with exposure and sexually assaulted by the villain. The villain, by the way, made a habit of that; scarcely an episode went by when he wasn't choking a woman, or forcing her to undress for him, or creeping into Anne's personal space while she was powerless to turn him away. And there were the countless female guest stars- Samara and Emilie this season, Adele and Isabelle and Flea and Agnes last season- who vanished entirely from the show after providing one of the four main men with whatever information or emotion they needed for their own character arcs. Women in this show don't get to be heroes anymore; they get to make heroes of men, often being hurt or dying horribly in the process.

I don't mean to pick on this show specifically- well okay, yes I do, because I loved season one and it was crushing to see how far the second season fell. But it's far from the only culprit. On another BBC show, Robin Hood, the female lead was brutally stabbed to death by a spurned lover stalker. On the CW's The Flash, Barry Allen's mother was murdered before the show even started, spurring him to seek out her murderer and accidentally become a superhero in the process, all while lying to and gaslighting his love interest, Iris. The Evil Dead franchise- which saw a revival in 2013, and has plans for a new TV show- valorized Ash Williams, while the leading lady of the series is best remembered for being raped by a tree. Twice. (I can accept that Sam Raimi, being young and immature in 1981 when the first film was made, didn't consider the implications; I have a harder time swallowing the fact that when remaking the movie over twenty years later, he chose to do it again.) Incidentally, Evil Dead has also been made into a musical- featuring a grand finale entitled "Blew The Bitch Away." I don't think that the men responsible for all these creative decisions actively hate women, and are doing this to spite us: I think it's worse. They write this way because it's never occurred to them to do otherwise.

We write what we know. The people (men) who write genre shows are aping the conventions they saw in shows growing up- Star Trek, Lost In Space, The Lone Ranger. They write their heroes being complex and cool and badass because it's what they were raised to identify with. They want this generation of boys to grow up idolizing the characters they've created. But, in a failure of empathy on a massive scale, it doesn't seem to have occured to them to do the same for women. Boys get to play at being Will Robinson or Captain Kirk; girls get to be green alien space babes. On one level, it's a repetition of sexist attitudes that flourished in the media when they were growing up. On another, it's simply that they don't think that women want heroes too. They don't think women want to wink and blow smoke off a gun after blasting the bad guy away. They don't think women want to be dashing romantics who sweep their partners off their feet. (That's the men's job, after all. And the idea that heroes could romance men, and heroines women? Doesn't even enter their minds.) They don't think women want to see heroines they can look up to, who exemplify all the things we want to be. I don't think they realize that we want anything.

The real world is hard, and unfair. It's true for everyone, and even more so for people of marginalized identities. Battles aren't won with grand sweeping gestures, but with endless grinding work that only advances us a few inches at the time. Even when the grand gestures are made, there's no guarantee that they'll stick: I remember being glued to the livestream of Wendy Davis's 2013 filibuster, tears pouring down my face as the women in the gallery screamed down the male senators trying to force Davis into silence. In that case, the gesture worked; she won. Except she didn't, because a few months later, the bill she was filibustering against passed anyway. The erosion of your humanity, little by little, will kill you in the end. So don't we deserve something better to aspire to? Don't we deserve to see our heroines succeed, not just because the heroes get to as well, but because we need that sense of hope to keep ourselves going? If we can't expect women in a fantasy world to triumph, how can we ever raise our spirits enough to get up and keep fighting?

And why the fuck is everyone obsessed with Leia in that bikini?

The CBC and diversity

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a fan of Strange Empire, which is why I was distressed earlier this week to hear that it had been cancelled after a single season. The CBC has given no direct reason for this decision, but cited the fact that it was a "difficult" choice and insisted that ratings were not at issue. The CBC representative interviewed also mentioned a desire to make room for new programming, which I admit to finding a bit puzzling. Of their returning shows, two (Heartland and Murdoch Mysteries) are in their eighth season, another (Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays) is in its fifth and yet another (Mr. D) in its fourth. If the network wants to make space for new scripted programming, why not retire shows that have already had a long run rather than cancelling those that have only aired thirteen episodes?  They also re-affirmed their committment to diversity, as the network intends to air a miniseries based on Ines Choi's play Kim's Convenience in the 2015-2016 season, and recently wrapped up The Book of Negroes earlier this year. While I'm happy to hear it, I remain unconvinced that a miniseries demonstrates a long-lasting committment to anything, because it is simply that- a miniseries. It will last only a few weeks, and when it is finished, it will have made no permanent change to the diversity of the CBC landscape. 

With that in mind, I decided to comb through the casting lineups of the CBC's original scripted programming, in order to see how diversely populated these casts actually are. I did this by looking up each show on IMDB, and counting through every actor with a significant enough role to appear on the show's homepage. These shows make up about half of scripted programming on the network: six other new shows have been announced, but their cast list has not yet been released to the public. This breakdown also only includes gender and race, as I have not watched all of these shows and cannot verify the dis/ability or sexual orientation status of the characters. This is what I found:

White male 

5 (Chris Potter, Graham Wardle, Shaun Johnston, Kerry James, Gabriel Hogan)

White female

2 (Amber Marshall, Jessica Amlee)

Nonwhite male

1 (Nathaniel Arcand, Cree First Nations)

Nonwhite female

1 (Michelle Morgan, Chilean-Canadian)

Murdoch Mysteries

White male

4 (Yannick Bisson, Thomas Craig, Jonny Harris, Lachlan Murdoch)

White female

2 (Helene Joy, Georgina Riley)

White male

8 (Jack Laskey, Warren Brown, Connor Price, Hugh Dillon, Dustin Milligan, Torben Liebrecht, Adrian Lukis, Julian Michael Deuster)

White female

3 (Evelyne Brochu, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Lili Bordan)

White male 

4 (Bob Martin, Matt Watts, Edward Asner, Dan Demarbre)

White female

3 (Tommie-Amber Pirie, Martha Burns, Jennifer Irwin)

Nonwhite male

2 (Al Karim, Middle Eastern; Pablo Silveira, Latino)

Schitt's Creek

White male

5 (Eugene Levy, Dan Levy, John Hemphill, Tim Rozon, Chris Elliot)

White female

5 (Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy, Jennifer Robertson, Emily Hampshire, Sarah Levy)

Nonwhite female 

1 (Karen Robinson, Afro-Canadian)

White male

9 (Gerry Dee, Jonathan Torrens, Booth Savage, Darrin Rose, Mark Forward, Mark Little, Liam Cyr, Hans Pettersen, Matt Tolton)

White female

4 Lauren Hammersley, Bette MacDonald, Naomi Snieckus, Kassidy Mattera)

Nonwhite male

2 (Wes Williams, Afro-Canadian; Suresh John, Asian-Canadian)

Nonwhite female

1 (Isabelle Beaupre, not specified)

In total:

White male: 35

White female: 19

Nonwhite male: 5

Nonwhite female: 3

Further reading:

CBC renews Schitt's Creek and Murdoch Mysteries, cancels Strange Empire

"I am different too:" on Strange Empire and being lovable

To call media representation of autistic people a "mixed bag" is overstating the case slightly. We have occasionally been granted representations of autistic people shown in a positive light- though they're usually tinged with the narrative of tragic disability, a la Rain Man- but more often, we hear stories of how difficult autistic people are to deal with, how hard we are to love. On ABC's (late, lamented) "Selfie," John Cho's Henry scolds his co-worker for not dedicating herself to "solving the world's problems . . . like autism." The biggest news story currently concerning autistic people is of a mother who threw her six-year-old child off a bridge. She was described as "patient and loving" in dealing with her son. This is considered an anomaly. Autistic children learn quickly and often that we are not easy to love.

When the CBC's Strange Empire was announced, I immediately planned to watch it. It combined a multitude of fictional aspects that I'm drawn to- history, women and the ties between them, the building of communities, and the ways in which we view our own past. But what I didn't know until after I'd watched the pilot was that one of the three main characters- Rebecca Blithely, the medical protege- was actually written and played as an autistic woman. Once I'd been told, I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it sooner. Rebecca's mannerisms, speech patterns, and general demeanour are all aspects of a life I am intimately familier with- my own. In the supplementary website The Curiosities of Rebecca Blithely, she describes feeling overwhelmed by the weight and texture of a necklace given to her by her husband; I have many memories of breaking down in tears because something in the texture of what I was wearing overwhelmed me. (At one point in my childhood, I recall having a meltdown because one of my boots felt tighter than the other; when asked what was wrong, all I could do was wail "it's uncomfortable!") When Rebecca speaks, she stops and starts, sometimes struggling for the correct words, often hushed by the husband who claims to love her by being told that she is being inappropriate. This is a bitterly familiar experience for people on the autism spectrum; being told we are too loud, too impassioned, too annoying. She wrestles with finding the right words, and with gauging the correct level of discourse for any given situation; again, something I am intimately familiar with. Rebecca Blithely and I share a story: of moving through a world not built for us, attempting to master a language that seems rife with traps and potholes that can easily be fallen into for the unwary.

Rebecca is brilliant, impassioned, and yet unhappily stifled. She is recently married to a fellow doctor, a man who doubles as her adoptive father- a dynamic that the show has not shied away from (although happily, they have refrained from introducing sexuality into the relationship.) She desires knowledge, endless knowledge, and finding herself suddenly stranded in a shanty town outside the constrictions of Victorian society, she is finally given the opportunity to explore. Up until this point, she explains in the pilot, her ability to practice medicine has been limited to papers published under her husband's name ("of course," she says; the suggestion that she be allowed to take credit for her own genius does not appear to have been posed to her) and a series of scientific conventions in which her husband/father put her on display as an abnormal prodigy. "They tell me my abilities derive from my head, which is too small, and my brain, which is overlarge and presses acutely against my skull," she explains. This zooification of an living human being may seem barbaric to viewers now, but it hasn't been so long since the mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent were locked up in asylums and gawked at by spectators. And this legacy is part of Rebecca's story too: she began life being committed to Bedlam, where she spent her childhod prior to being adopted by Thomas Blithely and his wife. Rebecca's backstory puts on display all the ways in which the different have been dehumanized, denied autonomy, and treated as "less than." But her entrance into the world of Strange Empire means that a change is coming for her. There are no asylums on the frontier. There are no doctors anxious to measure her skull or poke and prod her to see how she'll react. Freed from the society she was born to, Rebecca is finally being given the opportunity to thrive.

And thrive she does- in Janestown, Rebecca comes into her own. She performs a ceasarian section, saving the life of both mother and child. She begins to explore the possibilities of electricity. She is frustrated when she cannot save a patient, but continually offered new opportunities to improve. But in some ways, Rebecca;s intellectual blossoming takes backseat- for me- to what happens to her socially. Rebecca Blithely, a lifelong outcast and freak show, is treated for the first time with unconditional love. In the pilot, when she talks to Kat Loving (a fascinating character in her own right, and due an essay of her own) she sometimes stumbles over her words and rambles without knowing when to cut herself off, but Kat never does it for her: she smiles, congratulates Rebecca on her accomplishments, and generally offers her respect and kindness. Later, in the third episode- after her husband has slapped and berated her for trying to save a patient- she confesses to Kat that she longs to learn more about the human body, and that she disdains the religion she was raised with. All through this scene, Rebecca's posture is tense, her voice clipped; undoubtedly she is expecting another slap, or at least a cold shoulder. But she recieves neither. Instead, Kat smiles at her, and asks her to go for a walk with her. Rebecca, neurodivergent and noticeably different as she is, is accepted unconditionally into Kat's family. And the example Kat sets is followed by others: in the scene after this, Kat's daughter Robin impulsively grabs Rebecca's hand and smiles at her. The step Kat has taken- without doubts, without fear- has started the ball rolling for everyone in Rebecca's social circle to treat her exactly as she should be treated: as a valuable member of the community, who deserves love and respect without reservation.

Rebecca's discovery of a loving home for herself is reflected all throughout the show: we are being presented with a narrative about social outcasts and misfits finding their place. This is made explicit in episode four, where the main storyline is largely concerned with racism against First Nations people. When Rebecca's husband gawks at a Native woman, suggesting that she does not feel pain as white people do- that she is somehow "different-" Rebecca quietly retorts, "I am different too." Seeing the way this woman, Nuttah, is treated, she draws the connection between the two- both have been classified as less than by the likes of Thomas Blithely, and both are worth more than the categorization he offers. Later, when Kat announces her intention to leave her adoptive white children behind for their own good, Rebecca insists that she not do it: "They will see your value," she pleads. The intrinsic value of women like Kat and Rebecca has not been recognized by the world they live in, but here- in Janestown, surrounded by other outcasts and misfits, they are being offered for the first time a chance for untempered acceptance. In the world we live in now- where the different are still treated with hostility and suspicion- is it important beyond the telling of it that we are able to turn on our televisions every Monday and see these women, hearing the statement the narrative is making loud and clear: they are different. And they are valuable.

Why I won't be watching Bitten, as a devoted fan of the books it's based on

A thing you should probably know about me is that I am a huge, huge fan of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series. I read the first book, Bitten, when I was fourteen and finished the series with Thirteen last year at the age of twenty-one. I grew up with these characters- in some cases, quite literally. I know some of them probably better than I know members of my extended family, and the books have helped me through some really tough times. So when Bell Media announced that they were making a TV show based on the first book in the series, saying I was thrilled is a bit of an understatement.

Then they announced the casting. One of the main characters, Jeremy Danvers, is being played by this guy:

Now I've never seen this actor in anything before; I have no feelings on him as a person. But in this case, I am gravely disappointed by his casting, and the racism shown by the showrunners in their choice of him to play a character textually described as Asian-American.

You could argue (I mean you shouldn't, but you could) that since Jeremy's backstory and heritage aren't explicitly referred to in Bitten, then the production team simply didn't know that he was not white. I might be inclined to agree- I don't want to believe that the production team intentionally whitewashed a character, after all- but the excuse doesn't hold water. SPACE, the channel producing and running the show, also posted this image to their Facebook page. It's a family tree of the character who appear in Bitten- including Jeremy. This information could only be discovered by reading the novels and novellas in which his parentage, race, and appearance is described in-depth. If they cared enough to do that extra reading and find out what everyone looked like and who their ancestors were, there's no excuse for not offering the role to a talented actor of Asian descent rather than erasing this important part of Jeremy's character.

It's not like issues of representation in the media haven't been at the forefront for the past few years; there's a whole website, Racebending.com, dedicated to raising awareness of these issues. And the long and the short of it is, the industry is incredibly rough on actors of colour. You don't need to take my word for it- check out the local movie listings. How many movies playing at your local multiplex star non-white actors in leading roles? And why, when so few roles are offered to nonwhite actors, would Bell Media make the decision to take another potential role and give it to a white actor?

So I'm not watching Bitten. I'm pretty sad about it, to be honest; I was so excited when the series was first announced. But I can't in good conscience support racist casting practices like this. I love the books as much as I always did, but for me, the cons of watching the show simply outweigh the pros. Casting practices like these may proliferate in the entertainment industry, but I don't need to support them. Sorry, SPACE and Bell Media; you've lost yourself a viewer.

The charming kook has left the building

16224 / 50000 words. 32% done!

In fairness, this is not the thousand words a day I promised when I first started working on this project. But I have been busy! Oh, how busy I have been. Running to classes, running from classes, running to meetings, running home to cook dinner, catching up on my readings from the class I just swapped into (protip: if ever you should switch classes after a semester starts, don't switch into an English class), visiting home, getting my computer fixed- well, you get the idea. And the upcoming week does not look any calmer- tomorrow I have two regular classes, one dance class, and one audition ending at eleven at night, and then I'm up again at nine the next morning for class. I feel a bit like that episode of Nostalgia Critic where he's screaming "I'M THE ADULT! I DO THE ADULT THINGS!"

I've arrived at a point in my novel now that I didn't expect to reach for at least several thousand more words- the main character's breakdown/panic attack. See, as I've mentioned, the narrator of the novel has OCD and takes medication to control it. It goes missing halfway through her roap trip, and what happens? Boom. Panic. I originally planned for this to be more around the middle of the book, but I've been restructuring the plot lately, and realized that my idea of the trip taking up two-thirds of the plot makes no sense. No one wants to read 30 000 words of getting on and off buses. So the panic attack comes just before the halfway point, and as such, I've been revisiting my own illness, reading over descriptions of what panic attacks feel like, and generally trying to get a sense of what's going on in my main character's head. Ironically enough, part of my inspiration came from the TV I've been watching lately.

I'm sorry, were you looking for the sweet, pliant
abuse victim/PTSD sufferer? WRONG NUMBER.

When I get back to my room at night, I'm generally too tired to read or write, so instead I flop on the couch and catch an hour of TV before I go to bed. My latest hour's worth of entertainment has been BBC America's Copper, a show which seems almost uniquely designed to appeal to me: it's a period drama, it's a diaspora story, it's about the underprivileged class that history generally ignores. Also it's kind of like Gangs of New York, but if the screenwriter had had a firmer grasp on the idea of "characterization."

At first glance, the show has exactly zip to do with my book, and honestly, it doesn't- different types of characters, different plots, a sad lack of telepaths. (I feel like every form of media could be improved with telepaths.) What impresses me so much about the show is the way it deals with mental illness, and specifically PTSD. It has two characters with obvious, overt symptoms, and several others who display more subdued reactions. It does well by them, I think- making sure they're sympathetic without turning them into victimized caricatures. And most importantly of all (to me) it says something that a lot of media surrounding mentally ill people never address: being mentally ill does not automatically make you a nice person.

We have a tendency, I think, to valorize those with mental illnesses- we have our Rain Mans and our I Am Sams and our Beautiful Minds where the lead might be crazy, but it's okay! They're a genius so that makes up for it. Or you'll get the Inspirationally Mentally Ill/Disabled character, who is so gosh-darn sweet and kind and self-sacrificing that you'd swear they escaped from a Candyland board. I understand why this happens- to most, disability and illness seem like terrible things, so they try to find some way of "fixing the afflicted," so to speak. They may hear voices, but they're so good at math! They may have flashbacks, but they're so stoic and hot! They may never be able to live independently, but they're so sweet and cuddly!

If the words "just get over it" leave your mouth,
I will shoot you in the EYE.

Except . . . no. No, that's not how it works, and I wouldn't want it to anyway. Making disabled or sick characters one-dimensional angels fails on a writing level- no one is a one-dimensional angel unless they're on an episode of Supernatural- and on a basic human level, because reducing us to that stereotype robs us of our basic humanity. The disabled are still human. We have bad days. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we snap and yell at people. Sometimes we react to our problems badly and take it out on others. Sometimes we don't have good coping mechanisms. That's what makes us people. And disability does not rob us of our basic personhood. If you think that, you're a crappy writer, and also a pretty crappy person. And that- among other things- is part of what I'm trying to do with this book. People with disabilities and mental illnesses exist. Some of us are teenagers. Some of us are even on your YA bookshelves.