Thank you both for your thoughts! It's really interesting to hear from people who aren't from my country, and I agree the dictionary definition is probably pretty good at giving a fast check on whether or not we're talking about a disability! I admit my own perception on this and ableness is also a little skewed because of personal circumstances: I have a hard time remembering there are people in this world who can just do normal things like go to a supermarket not fearing they'll be in an extreme pain afterwards, or walk down stairs without flinching in pain with each step. I'm so used to thinking "well, everyone has some condition they need to adjust their life around" that I don't stop to remind myself that no??? that's literally not it??
an idea not so subtly stolen from the LGBT discussion thread
Mental illness + disability and the space in between is something I'm interested in as someone with both lol , and outside of various 'share an oc' threads that pop up every so often I thought it'd be neat to have a place to talk about it? Plus I've seen my share of people looking for advice so hey why not.
This is pretty similar to the LGBT thread : share your thoughts about mental illness and/or disabilities in characters or ask for advice, specific or not!
This is not a show me thread ! They got those in char discussion.
For the comfort of others, please either black out (like this, changing both the background AND font) or spoiler sensitive topics like self harm, suicide, and details of trauma.
Only rule here is be civil and don't jump on people's throats...... please.........
While talking about tropes you dislike is fine, vague-posting other users is not
The reason this is posted from my side acc is so I can use blocking as a form of moderation should anything get out of hand.
if you have any problems before i can catch them ping zinnia !
Caine Oh gosh trying to remember that quote-unquote "normal" people exist is such a mood XD. I mean I do think to some degree we all do have something or another that we need to adjust to but like I always have a little surprised moment whenever I remember other people aren't just consistently in some degree of pain; I just can't even imagine what that would be like at all aha (but I'm glad that it's not something everyone has to deal with, of course!).
Zeetheus As someone who is a self-diagnosed autistic (testing isn't an option where I live right now but I do have my ADHD diagnosis and the approval of my peers) and hangs out in that community, my take has been that while nobody necessarily wants it to be considered a disability outright (just because it's a little too close to home with the whole "autism is a disease we gotta cure it!!!" nonsense), nobody objects to someone who has it considering it a disability like on an individual basis (as ofc everyone has different presentations of symptoms and whether it will hinder you or not is highly dependent on your environment/lifestyle), and it's common to see people labeling themselves disabled because of it. I know that's not quite what you were asking and you may ofc know this already (or are even autistic yourself!), but I figured it couldn't hurt to note that the community at least seems fine with it so it's not like an offensive thing to discuss it in a mental health/disability thread just in case aha ^^;
Also oh my gosh the tropes for albinism drive me nuts, too! Depending on presentation it's definitely a disability (and also an actual real-life condition!) and not just like a mystical fantasy thing that makes an OC the chosen one or alternately marks them as very ill/frail/mentally unstable. It's very annoying it only shows up in entirely made-up contexts like this in the media and never anything like how it actually is, which surely is what contributes to people's confusion about it =/
Will be using this thread for sure, since I try to depict various conditions but I'm sure I don't always succed. So just a thing I was thinking about recently: weird, inaccurate and villanous representation of mental illness goes waaay back into the day, and is so deep in culture that we're actually taking a huge and hard job by trying to fix the damage that has been done. For example, I was recently thinking about Macbeth, a late '500s-early '600s drama where the main villain character is so fixated with the idea of the power he's been told he might have and keep that he doesn't pay attention to reality any more, and also has hallucinations every once in a while (ante litteram psychosis?), and his wife, before sleep-walking while rambling about what she and her spouse have done, clearly says she would have no trouble smashing an infant's head if it means getting the power she wants (surely some empathy-sympathy lacking or being repressed here). So yeah, not only media from recent years, but literally Shakespeare (which is also sad because I really love that drama otherwise).
In the aside from the very first scene in which we meet him, after he knows he's now been named Thane of Cawdor, he says (out loud for the public, when of course we know he's just thinking) "Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings: / My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man that function / Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is / But what is not." which kinda starts hinting at what we now know might be the psychosis he develops later. And while Macbeth also is a character we can sympathize with, as you said, back in the day the whole play had two clear levels, the one of the plot and the one glorifyng James I's success, which continuously hinted at each other; in this way, Macbeth was meant to be the symbol of illigetimate monarchs and those who conspired against the rightful King (in those years, Guy Fawkes and all the people in the Gunpowder Plot) in an attempt to defeat James I, first king of the UK, Shakespeare's biggest fan, Banquo the loyal knight's descendent, bringer of peace after the almost civil war between Catholics and Anglicans, thaumaturg, only rightful king, very good guy who was always right etc etc, so the people walking into the Globe Theatre to see Macbeth knew very well that Macbeth was not the good guy, was constantly reminded of that by the references to real recent events or symbolic meanings in the play, and therefore I don't think the audience back then really saw Macbeth's inner troubles as something detached from him being the symbol of all that was a threat in those years. The same for Lady Macbeth somewhat: she's clearly evil, and also a woman who is not family-driven (which, extremely bad at the time), so when the sleepwalking scene comes up they probably thought she was just insane even if we know don't have enough material to give her any diagnosis (since unconventional = insane). So to sum up, while today Macbeth is actually a fascinating character and Shakespeare probably didn't mean to push on the mental illness = evil trope (instead he doesn't), I think it still contributed in some way to the trope because the audience really knew he represented the chaos their Kingdom had just gone through, therefore linked the two things like the trope does, and it just reinforced the thing in popular culture.
I like when the characters illnesses are linked to something, not just slapped on them to make them different and ''special uwu''... When a character has a mental illness I always find it interesting to know how their illnesses ''developed'' (sorry if I use some wrong terms English isn't my native language ;;) and how it can affect their actions and personality...
I don't mind all your characters having some kind of trauma as long as it's explained... Like if you go on saying this girl got raped when she was 11 because lol that's just cringe and kind of insulting for people who actually went through something alike...
Mental illnesses are always a great addition to characters when you know what you're talking about and when it makes sense.
Otherwise it's just for ''uwu attention and feeling special and not like others uwu'' and that's pisses me off.
Beefy ok, that was indeed out of focus and my bad. My general distrust for humanity makes me believe that would be added stigma because I easily picture people pushing all of Macbeth's features together without thinking a lot about it, including his actions + mental status + political meaning to form whatever monster thing, but yeah that's just me distrusting people/the audience and not any of Shakespeare's intentions. So this was a bad example, but we all still have a huge job to do, fixing what has already been done by other sources to compare mental illness to being evil, or also, as Kaedexe just suggested, being cool/unique/edgy whatever (btw you forgot to make the text colour the same as the bg so the text shows through on the dark theme!). This second point is also very dangerous, as it somewhat fuels the hate actual people receive because random people on the internet believe they're professionals who can tell when strangers aren't actually ill and are just "faking it"? And very disrespectful overall, since it implies little to no research about the topics mentioned.
And while I'm at it, what do you all think of "inspiration porn" involving disability and mental illness (at a lesser degree) when applied to characters? Like, characters with a disability being extremely successful no matter what and becoming an example for everyone else? I don't personally see a problem with them, as long as the character is actually a good character and not unrealistic perfection incarnate, and I think they're of great comfort - especially if the creator is struggling with something themself - and it's always nicer than the contrary (disabilities and mental illnesses completely destroying characters and only bringing tragedy to their lives with no redeeming points or adaptation of any kind), but are there limits that shouldn't be crossed or expectations that shouldn't be created? (ex. I made this blind character who is amazing, a billionaire, the handsomest and also a superhero with super powers, how dare blind people actually not be as cool and unique as my character who is perfect and never mistaken?)
I would recommend reading a couple books not only about the mental disorder, and reading stories by the characters to give an idea how a walk in their shoes how their life would feel like. Also I would recommend staying away from the 'mental disorder being their only trait'
So, some stereotypes about mental illness have been touched on here, but what about more stereotypes about not mental health related disabilities you are tired of seeing?
I immediately think of grey-eyed-sunglasses-wearing-face-touching blind people, and how I've never seen a single wheelchair user in media who actually can use or feel their legs at all; so what other examples immediately come to your minds?