For Writers:
Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Lex Chase:
Again with pushing for diversity, what about writing characters with mental illness? Not as villains or unhinged perverts but as heroes? And not only heroes, but heroes compliant with treatment or making steps to seek treatment? Not using their illness to make them “interesting” or use an episode as a plot device.
This would be so helpful in a contemporary setting! Although I think the classic Russian novelists described mental illness well, almost from the inside (and I’m thinking in particular of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, who in the novel suffers a nervous breakdown but even through it tries to rescue his brother), it would be great to read a hero character who actually deals with his illness in a positive way.