BTW, CapriUni, I read that (very interesting) post and thought of this; as you know, Dickens' portrayal of Tiny Tim was considered very enlightened for its time, as most able-bodied people had rarely come across any positive portrayals of disabled people. So yes, he's a very sentimental and problematic character in the 21st century, but at the time, his portrayal was groundbreaking. Speaking of Dickens-- at the moment I'm working on a steampunk (gritty science fiction genre set in the Victorian period or a fictional version of it) reworking of Oliver Twist (I'm leaving aside the HOND one for a while), and have been wondering about the question; when writing something in a setting where social attitudes to the disabled are different and you're trying to portray those attitudes accurately, are you automatically reinforcing some people's attitudes?