Apropos of Nothing

[thjazi]

I should start one of those bingo cards for Gross Ableist Tropes Used By Modern Writers Discussing Nerval

It's an awfully SPECIFIC Bingo game, maybe, but JAM ON TOAST. I'm, like, one " but did your parents love you"  away from winning the game.

(For the record: so far, from various sources, I've gotten "you're lucky your loved ones put up with you" , "context, we don't need no social context"  " all your skill is a result of your mental illness"  "your failure was inevitable because you're different"  and of course the classic " wow, you ate food and dressed sometimes, you're such an inspiration", and I AM VERY ANGRY.)

Comments

[bobbiewickham]

Awww dammit. I would have expected a different sort of awfulness regarding him, like a fetishization of mental illness (so romantic! so interesting!), but wow, and it's especially awful given that it's modern writers? Like, I don't know how "modern" you're getting, but if it's really early 21st century then they ought to have a better understanding of mental illness than that.

[thjazi]

Oooh, that's in almost all of them too-- it ties into the "not skilled, just magically gifted Because Crazy" attitude and of course the "too innocent for this sinful world, Thus Crazy" thing and yeah, some of these are from books I'm reading that went to press in the mid-to-late 20th Century, but (A) ahahah I DON'T CAAARE, knowing that someone was around and kicking out such dosh at a time when the living idea could *directly* affect me and people I care about buys exactly zero patience from me, and (b)there is a DEPRESSING amount of it in current casual reviews and mentions of him. Blech.

...I HAVEN'T EVEN READ HIS STUFF YET, I'm just, you know. Ick'd.

(I do in fact HAVE a copy of some of his stuff now! And Gautier's! And the attention span of a distractable gnat!, but we'll see how it goes.)