If you can't stop being ableist because it's mean and gross, do it because it's just bad writing.
It will pull your readers right out of the story. And they will laugh at you.
I tried to read a "Hell House" because (embarrassingly) I confused it with the horror classic "The Haunting of Hill House"... "Hell house" is a very different book. Some of it is very good. But also it's SO DATED.
When trying to show how depraved & evil the people in the house became they are like "he went looking for deviant people like dwarves to bring to the house" Not only ableist but so silly it's immersion breaking. NOT DWARVS (really?)
I ended up posting about my confusion about why so many people liked the book and found out I was reading the wrong one.
I'm a little embarrassed I apparently got these books mixed up somehow. I've returned the knock off and Hill House is great so far... it's a much more sophisticated kind of horror. And ... it's not dated.
How is it that some books don't get as badly dated as others?
I'm still cracking up about this... just imagining the author wracking his poor lil brain for the WORST, the most depraved, more horrible thing he could imagine. He gets some real horrors like being locked in a house with no windows, everyone being controlled, all very creepy.
Then he's like "what if tons of sex and some of the people are really short?"
bruh. ablism is a hell of a drug.














