warnings fics usually don't bother with

[beccaelizabeth]

fic warnings that would save a lot of words of annoyance:

warning: abuse of mental illness
warning: he looks crazy but he's sekritly sooper speshul!!!
warning: use of hospital as Horrible Fate (rather than, oh, say, somewhere that makes people better)

... although canon doesn't bother warning for those same things, so is no surprise when fic doesn't.

I don't so much mind when it's a demon or alien attack. That's approaching things via metaphor that get way scary. What fiction is for.

I do very much mind when stories approach realism about family history and anxieties and symptoms and treatment and then... veer off into being about demons and aliens and being super special. It's... it's like treating skin color as a metaphor: it's entirely possible within the framework of symbolism commonly used by the English language and the literature canon, yet it's really destructive by the time it hits actual mindsets out in the world.

People avoid seeking treatment for treatable illnesses, in part because of cultural scare stories and obsolete models.

And I'm not saying the scare stories are all untrue. There's layers and layers of things that can go wrong. Doctors can be great big idiots, pills can not suit, all sorts of things.

But if the only use of something is a scare story it's just grating and godawful.

One of the things I liked about the Elizabeth Moon series I've been reading lately is they've had moments where the big win is the protagonists seeks appropriate mental health care. Going to get help is up there with the big space battles as a big win. And then the help itself isn't a battle, not patient vs doctor anyway, it's a team vs whatever is messing the patient up. I like that a lot. There's similar stuff in the Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan books. Proper, positive, useful healing. There should be more of that in stories.

Story that makes me write this looked like it would be a proper one where friends help someone past their fears so they get appropriate help, and then it turned out to be one where hospital was hell to be escaped from and they turn out to be super special and not crazy. Really annoying.

And I'm sure lots of people won't get why it's annoying. And that's sort of exhausting.

(If you've been hallucinating and start to believe you have wings you know what happens next? Like Jack off the office tower is what. Only without the helpful getting up again. It's a no use sort of story, an anti useful one that encourages patterns of thinking that point in all the wrong directions.)

(and I know many people think its just stories and they dont be important enough to worry about, but I dont know why those people write.)

It's also narratively unsatisfying. It sets up a problem, gets you involved and invested in it, and then switches it out for an entirely different problem which it then solves, or just shoves in a solution that doesn't address the problem as presented and understood all along. Discovering something wasn't a problem at all just isn't a great payoff.

But most stories seem to think that ending up with someone needing to take meds or do meditation every day isn't a dramatic satisfying solution either.

Which is one reason I so wanted to write Oz. Werewolf Oz had to take herbs and meditate and really work at his calm or he'd become a danger to himself and others. Mental health problems with added fur and a reasonable solution. I rather love that. If I was still writing Buffy fic I'd so start there.

Comments

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I would have understood more the transition between "Ianto is crazy" to "Ianto is in a wingfic" if earlier on the visions weren't of the dead, but of the "true-seeing" kind. Like how later on, Jack was a blobby thing of golden light?

Though I chalked the "How dare they section me!" to unreliable narrator, and that Ianto was refusing to believe that he needed help.

[beccaelizabeth]

Yes, exactly. There was something going on there, an interesting something about the dead not being done with and there being a threat that crept up on them without them being able to see it and about falling apart... and then Ianto grew wings and is secretly an angel. Does not compute. Maybe in a more demon oriented world if there's literal trapped souls, or if it were connected with Jack bringing Ianto back with the gold shiny stuff and he's some liminal figure connecting the living and dead worlds a bit like Owen was only for more human passengers, or... well, lots of things, which is why I kept reading up to that point. But just 'Ianto is an alien, with wings!' doesn't go anywhere.

And yeah, Ianto reacting badly to being sectioned is fair enough, it's the story apparently agreeing with him and providing the magic out that's a bit much.