fancyfade:i know earlier i mentioned one thing i liked about gail simone’s run on birds of prey was...

fancyfade:

i know earlier i mentioned one thing i liked about gail simone’s run on birds of prey was how she handles the female characters and the way the tropes work when they’re captured is the same as when male characters are (link), they’re shown to be powerful and worthy of respect. so she’s normally good on a gender angle

one thing she is NOT good on is on a neurodivergence angle

so far soooo many of the villains/antagonists just have neurodivergences… or over emphasized neurodivergences in particular

savant has… distorted perception of time, whatever that means. He forgets whether things have happened already or not (but he doesn’t have the ability to see in the future), genuinely doesn’t seem to be anchored in reality at all times. I have no clue if this is even a real thing that can happen. Also allegedly no empathy people can argue whether that’s because of ND-ness or just a descriptor for white wealthy guys socialization and flaws usually arising from that but the first one is DEFINITELY ND-ness

Rose/Thorn is portrayed in a sympathetic light (well, she’s initially set up as the antagonist but then it’s revealed she’s not. the initial set up as the antagonist is why she’s on the list) … but her DID is still treated like superpowers (Rose is put to sleep for surgery but it doesn’t affect Thorn… someone with DID can tell me if this is actually a thing that can happen) and the narration box for Thorn is done in the “scary” font where no one else’s is, I get the feeling that the writer was trying to get us to think “oh she’s creepy”… I remember having more specific complaints when reading but I’d have to re-read her issues to write them out and… I really don’t wanna.

then calculator straight up says his genius comes from his OCD. You can be like “What’s wrong with someone’s talents/skills coming from their neurodivergence or mental illness” but… the good analogue of calculator doesn’t have any explicit neurodivergences or mental illnesses in the text (She reads as having PTSD and autism to me but a) that’s not explicit in the text). It should be noted that we also see calculator taking psychiatric medicine but none of the good guys.

it feels like villainy is medicalized a lot here, and it’s fucking exhausting.

I think it’s totally fair about the first couple points and I would hope that I would do better twenty years later, but I did have mental health experts helping with Rose and Thorn, and Savant does become a good guy later, struggles intact.

The Calculator having OCD was established routinely elsewhere, I was just borrowing him. But a smarter move on my part would have been to ignore it if I couldn’t add to it in a more humane way.

No excuses.