"Homosexuality Is Unnatural!"

"Homosexuality is unnatural!"

How many species on earth display homosexuality: 1,500

How many species on earth display homophobia: 1 (ours).

How many species on earth are transgender: many fish, insects, female hyenas have psudeo dicks.

How many species on earth are transphobic: again, one. Ours.

Therefore, homophobia and transphobia are unnatural. Checkmate, conservatives.

One Haunting Video Shows “Beauty Through The Decades” In New Light

Karolina Żebrowska’s “Beauty Through The Ages” video shows not only on the glamorized versions of women but also the real, middle and lower class women as they lived in the past century.

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GIFS VIA.

so, my original question was this:

how do you go about writing topics like abuse, sa, etc., because i had thoughts about adding these sort of things in a storyline of mine, but i'm not sure how i would do it without being seen as somehow offensive. i want to do it mainly for awareness purposes, definitely not to romanticize it or justify it, as well as vent a bit personally (thats more with the abuse topic though)

so i was just wondering how you think of it, is all. thanks!

this is really long and meandering so. under the cut. also, might be a lot of typos, i'm not re-reading all of this to make sure :P

i mean well. yknow. ok so like. i'm not really an expert here, cause I mainly write stuff how I'd want to read it, and there's a lot of people who do NOT want to read abuse stories the way that I write them and that's fine. me personally? I like getting into the graphic bits. I remember what happened to me, for the most part. I also like getting into the complicated feelings (like for example the weird kinks you can get from trauma) but I mostly avoid posting that stuff here because. well. because of a lot of reasons, mainly that people actually do not enjoy when abuse survivors aren't chaste about the ICKY parts of their abuse heahfshaf.

BACK TO THE POINT THO: the main thing that i've usually seen other survivors get annoyed at is the sa & abuse being used for shock and nothing else. like, the victims of the abuse not mattering or being used as fodder. and also, victims not having much of a life outside of their abuse.

I know that's rich for me to say cuz I can't stop abusing my characters and I tend to not have much time to do things other than what I'm REALLY interested in- so to a lot of you guys my characters can seem like they're kind of just going through it 24/7, but that's not really how I see them since y'know, I see the whole thing in my head.

but I've noticed that myself and others like it when abused characters also have like, other shit going on. imagine that, I know. A lot of people want characters who's abuse is kind of tangential to them. (not my preference, but this is something I've seen a demand for)

in a way I have a similar thing going on, though I frame it more as "let them get silly with it" hah. As in, I like when characters who are abused or sexually assaulted get to also be silly (editing this to be more clear: It's nice when a character experiences a full range of emotions & experiences. or has a normal day, or does things completely unrelated to their abuse. it feels jarring to some people but the reality of living with abuse is often jarring, as i'm sure you're aware. because one moment you're having a normal ass day at school or something and the next you're at home experiencing things that people consider too horrific to even talk to you about. so a kid hanging out with their friends being a normal silly kid can go a long way to making what happens to them feel more real, at least to me)

I also like it when abuse victims don't react in pretty ways to their abuse. when they get messy with it, when it makes them mean and preemptively lash out at people, when they fight back and aren't innocent. and maybe they never were innocent (which doesn't mean they deserved abuse, but a lot of people subconsciously believe that if you are a bad enough person then your abuse doesn't count or it doesn't matter as much)

one of my favorite characters when I was younger was (and still kinda is) Yuudai from Sakana. for a lot of the comic Yuudai was a genuinely mean person. Sakana is a comedy comic tho, so of course things don't get too dark for too long and people mostly ignored or just scowled at his jabs, but the main character was genuinely scared of him. So if you think about it, you really wouldn't wanna be around Yuudai irl because he was NOT fun or nice haha. long story short Yuudai's got some personal stuff going on, including (spoilers) an emotionally abusive ex who tells him on screen that no one else can stand being around him because he's so mean.

AND THE THING IS,, that's not entirely a lie??? like, it's a lie that no one else could ever love Yuudai, but it's not entirely untrue that Yuudai is kind of mean. which is what makes it effective. it also makes it clear that not all people who are mean are abusive. which i like.

OK THAT WAS A HUGE TANGENT so let me try to actually give some advice.

FOR ME, writing about abuse is akin to writing about, for example, race. in that you really do need to know why it's wrong to be racist in order to make an anti-racism story. You need to go deeper than just "we're all people" and really understand the malicious and insidious history of race science. you need to internalize that race, as it's thought of in modern day america, is NOT REAL. it's completely constructed. there is no genetic difference between people that you can figure out based on the color of their skin and their facial features.

you need to understand that all of that was made up and pushed by a lot of people to justify a lot of things. and you need to understand, at least generally, the state of various races oppression, and the histories there too.

it's like that, to me. which isn't even to say that you need to understand the exact histories, just the general mechanisms, y'know? (unless you're making a story about a specific kind of racism in which case you kind of do need to look into stuff. like, at least listen to activists and the like)

but like, you don't have to study every case of abuse to write about abuse haha. you just have to understand a lot of the contemporary issues abuse victims have. yknow, the reasons people get abused, the reasons people can't LEAVE abusive situations. how abusers get away with it. which is easy enough to do cuz the internet means you can listen to abuse victims by like, category or something. and that's another thing, not every kind of abuse is the same.

for me, I like expressing the feelings of abuse victims. especially parental relationships. including stuff like how much they might love or have loved their abuser. rage, pain, pleasure, adoration, helplessness, denial, the addictiveness of being given a sliver of praise, or the horror of living with a monster who does nothing but hurt you :D! the slow realization that someone who was supposed to love you absolutely does not. or at least, they don't love you in a way that's good.

umm this has all been very meandering and i'm not sure if its been helpful, so here's a very meandering bullet point list of things i try to do (these are NOT requirements for a good story or anything, they're just rules i follow for myself so I don't lose to the plot. you can and absolutely should do things outside of this these are my personal thoughts I'm spewing over here)

at no point should the narrative imply that the abuse was justified or necessary (for example, imagine a narrative where a magical child is abused and that abuse is said to be the reason they can control their magic instead of hurting people. in the broken earth trilogy, multiple characters with magic-earth abilities have their hands broken as children to prove they can control themselves. we're told this is for their benefit, but we later on see a small island that raises their magic babies just fine without hurting them, so the idea that this systemic abuse is necessary is disproven by the narrative. this is cause that's how it is IRL, corporal punishment has never made someone more disciplined or emotionally regulated and that's just a fact)

Focus on the abuser can be extremely minimal to extremely extensive. it really depends on the story you're telling, but how much you focus on the abuser vs the victim can majorly shift the tone & what the story is about so it's important to consider this going in (in Switch by A. S. King, the abusive sister who's fucked up the entire family isn't even named. She's a hole in the narrative. Switch is largely about taking the time to heal from something bad once it's over, so this make sense. in the Broken Earth trilogy, one of the main POV characters is both a victim and perpetrator of some pretty extreme abuse. I'd say that abuse wise, the broken earth trilogy is more about trying to fix things the best you can, moving on, and trying to be better, even if it hurts)

There are a lot of different ways to react to abuse and it will change you (I would recommend looking into different people's experiences, or common ways people react to abuse. a lot of people aren't aware they were abused until it's long over. or, if you're lazy like me, you can mostly just draw from your own experiences hah. but if you're gonna like, for example, write an entire cast of people who've been abused, it can be good to get more variety in there. some people react in ways that are completely incompatible with other people. which can be fun in fiction, cause then it gets messy :D)

What are the other environmental factors? (race, gender, class, sexuality, species, etc. these can all play a fun role in how someone reacts to being abused)

What's the point/Why does this matter/Why am I even making this? (I ask this about all my stories, sometimes it's just "because I want to share it" and sometimes it's like, "because I would want to read it" but it can also be more high concept, like for example, there are a lot of stories out there about the cycle of abuse and how abuse victims can end up reenacting things that happened to them because they've just internalized it as normal behavior.

don't forget to have fun :) (fictional characters are toys and if you're not getting silly with it in a fulfilling way then whats the point. loosen up a bit! it doesn't have to be a PSA!)

I would worry less about being offensive and more about being genuine tbh. really, even if i don't like the way abuse is written about sometimes, it hurts way more to see an author just using Tragic Shit as fodder. abused characters as nothing but place holder NPC's to be saved with no thought put into how they feel about it. that shit sucks.

if anyone else wants to add something more concise or important, or like, ACTUAL writing advice, PLEASE do. I'm only one person and I'm not even that good of a writer. i only write because if i don't then I'll die.

I genuinely feel like I’m going insane sometimes

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! (If you aren't part of the trick or treating this year, please ignore!)

Treat 🪷🧿🪷👌

Now have Magia Slash offer you some box of oreos