This week, the dragons are delighted to welcome Kayla Ancrum, author of The Wicker King, to the show. Kayla's debut novel is a dark, contemporary YA thriller that delves deeply into hard hitting issues such as mental illness and codependency, which is why Jules and Madeleine were thrilled to have her join a discussion about portrayals of mental illness in YA fiction. Still labouring under the Gothic tropes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as meeting resistance and misunderstanding in the modern day, mental illness can be a knotty issue. In a previous episode (You Fancy Me Mad) the dragons deconstructed the Gothic tropes surrounding MH. In this episode, they look at how literature can help normalise a health issue that is far more common than people realise, and how it can help combat misinformation. What is good mental illness representation in YA fiction? And where are the areas in which it falls down or could use work? Is mental illness in fiction suffering from being, in many cases, an example forced to bear the weight of an entire spectrum?
Join us for a lively discussion and find out.
Title Music; Ecstasy by Smiling Cynic
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 127: Crime & Culpability - Should Characters get what they Really Deserve
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 126: The Slow Death of Literature - What Readers Really Want
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 125: From a Certain Point of View - Multiple POVs, Dual Timelines and Reader Sympathies in Speculative Fiction.
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 124: Visitations and Forebodings - How Nightmares are used in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 123: From the Deep - Mystery, Suspense and Sea Monsters in Historical Fantasy
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 122: Baby Doom - The Stork Visits in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 121: If We Were Villains - What Shakespeare has to say to a Modern Audience
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 120: Bards, Troubadours and Skalds - The Musician Archetype in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 119: Love Conquers All - Power Couples who destroyed the Story
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 118: You Fancy Me Mad - Renfield, Lear & Ophelia: Madness in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 117: Dinosaurs and Mega Cryptids - Man-made Monsters in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 116: Cliches are Cliche for a Reason - Why Tropes aren't bad, but Some Tropes need to Die
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 115: Clothes Make the Man - Cross-dressing in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 114: Queer Eye for the Straight Story - Reading Speculative Fiction through a Queer Filter
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 113: Decoy Ducks & Red Herrings - Sayings, Urban Legends and Aphorisms
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 112: Spies, Traitors & Turncoats - Informants in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 111: Larger than Life - The Fictional World of Giants
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 110: Saying What You Really Mean - The Importance of Theme in Speculative Fiction
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 109: Into the East - Fantasy Settings Tolkien Never Used
Dissecting Dragons: Episode 108: It Must be the Weather - How Nature Reflects Art in Speculative Fiction
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