Brittany Diamond

granted, i DO prefer a world that slaps "melancholic" on in place of "depression" or "post-birth hyper-grief parental syndrome" onto postpartum depression or whatever, as opposed to just calling everything depression and schizophrenia and ASPD, as if our own western psychiatric words are the """correct""" ones and would logically be emulated by the whole of any other universe.

However.

i think it is MORE useful to think FIRST about your fictional society's values. and the power structures in play, or lack thereof. and how elements like religion and spirituality and magic and sci-fi tech shape and influence everyday life.

mental disorders and neurodivergences are things that mark a person "other" from someone who is the """expected""" product of their environment. crucially, in our own western conceptions of mental health, there is a STORIED history of people being labeled Other because they did not cooperate with the oppressive social norms of the time. see: insane asylums, lobotomies, drapetomania. etc.

how does your fictional society treat people who are Other? is mental health treatment more focused on compliance and the erasure of symptoms, or on self-acceptance and accommodation? is there a taboo against being labeled Other? what is the history of self-advocacy and human rights for people in these groups?

you don't Have to go the pessimist route and write in, like, horrific atrocities as a backdrop for your story. especially if you are not a horror writer like me. LOL.

but i do think it's disingenuous not to think about these things on a structural level.

what would these people consider a mental health disorder / neurodivergence, and why? what thoughts or behaviors cause that to be labeled a mental health disorder?

how are neurodivergent people in this world supported or unsupported?

what are the consequences for having an untreated mental health issue in this world? are there reasons someone might hide their mental health issue, or is there a baseline of trust socially?

if there IS an automatic baseline of trust, what social norms enforce that trust? what are the expectations of conduct for both the mentally ill and those helping them? what happens if that trust is broken by a mental health professional or carer -- what recourse does the mentally ill person have?

are there any Pretty Shitty social norms that would be reflected or encouraged in the mental health system?

the subject of Knox's talk was mainly how, on the right, this deep belief in the innate power of the written word is a large part of what drives efforts to have books removed or banned from public libraries, as if good "normal" white children are going to instantly become polyamorous atheist antifa supersoldiers if they're exposed to degenerate filth like And Tango Makes Three.

I am asexual. I don't mind reading spicy books on occasion, as long as it's not surprise spice, but I don't write it. It bores me and makes me uncomfortable, and my misery comes through in every word.

The publishing industry has been chasing fads for a long time. There was the magic school boom post Harry Potter, the YA supernatural romance that dominated after Twilight, and then YA dystopia after The Hunger Games. Likewise, there has always been authors that have been urged to chase those trends for the sake of sales.

As for cheap low quality fast fashion books, those have also always existed. The entire reason for the term "penny dreadful" is because the Victorians were pumping out short and cheap scandalous books that existed solely to get as many people as possible to buy them. And not to mention pulp-- named because it was made on low quality paper because these books weren't meant to last-- which dominated the sci-fi and fantasy industry for decades. They were also designed to be cheap and low quality, and if any book genres were pumping unnecessary sex in to attract more readers, it was sci-fi and fantasy.

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

In writing groups I'm in it's grammar and spell check is for newbies and those wanting a crutch or a cheat code.

I'm going to be frank with you, anon. Those writing groups sound toxic as fuck and I'd recommend finding a better place to spend your time.

Grammar check and spell check are embedded in most word processing software and have been since the 1990s. People don't have to use them if they don't want to, of course, but there's nothing wrong with using them.

English spelling is famously a bastardization of French multiplied by German divided by Latin with fifty other languages thrown in for fun. And don't even get me started on the Great Vowel Shift.

All that to say, being bad at spelling is not a moral failing nor is it a sign of weak character. It's a fact of life for an overwhelming majority of people writing in English.

People who refuse to use a spell checker are the same kind of pretentious assholes that think you shouldn't use a calculator ever. Absolutely there are steps you can take to improve your spelling, and being able to spell most words easily will make the writing process easier and more fluent. (Although you'll get a lot more mileage out of improving your touch typing.) But use the spell checker. Also use a calculator when you want to know the answer to a long division problem.

Grammar check - iffy, and it depends on the software. I don't use it because I think a lot of what it calls "grammar" is actually a point of style that I disagree with. However, if you find that when you're typing quickly you often omit or double words, grammar check is a really efficient way to type that.

Stuff like Grammarly's "reword this"? This is questionable. Now you're getting into something that is no longer your writing. If you're trying to build your voice, don't do it, because the voice you'll build is someone else's.

Asking ChatGPT to reword something for you? Now that is a crutch for people who don't want to learn to write.