Hello! Just A Lil Smth, Please Dont Scroll!

hello! just a lil smth, please don’t scroll!

tw // anti-asian violence

there’s been a fuck ton of aapi hate since the beginning of the pandemic and especially lately, with the georgia shootings today, and even the grammys last sunday

all this said i just wanted to share a few resources (none mine!):

- anti-asian violence resources (this resource is also linked in my pinned, it contains information, petitions, places to donate and a lot more)

- stop asian hate (contains petitions, places to donate, ways to spread the word and more)

- sites to donate to and share (if you have a twitter please consider retweeting)

- a cumulative twitter thread with a little bit of everything and more than i explained

+ stop asian hate gofundme

+ asian american resource center (an atlanta based foundation focused on housing and civil classes)

—

if you have any resources you wanna share reply and/or reblog and i’ll add it, and with that please share this with the same tags <3 sending love to my fellow aapi, please stay safe all of you and don’t be fucking racist :]

How to Write OCs With Trauma

Just as I had shown with the 3 love posts for this series, there are a ton of ways that trauma can be shown through character behaviors or even speech patterns. Different people react differently when it comes to trauma, and you should also keep in mind what kind of trauma the character had gone through and what they were like before it occurred before deciding how they would be like now.

In the following post, I will be giving some different responses to trauma that your characters could display.

I. The “IDGAF Anymore” Trauma Response

Perhaps one of the most used responses to trauma that you see in characters in media is the character that blocks off their emotional responses to anything thereafter. They may fall in love with someone but they’ll never admit it because they don’t wish to be hurt. They may find a new family to love them but they shut themselves off from expressing said love because they are afraid of being hurt again.

Essentially what this response boils down to is a fear of being hurt again. Most people that shut down emotionally have been abandoned or abused or betrayed by someone they once trusted in some way; sometimes the thing that makes them feel betrayed isn’t even the other person’s fault such as an older sibling moving out of the house and away from their family once they get older or the death of a loved one.

II. The “Anger Issues” Response

I have known 2 people personally really well that have had this response to trauma. This response is where a person is so emotionally shut down (much like the last response spoken about) that they won’t allow themselves to show any emotion other than anger.

I once had a therapist tell me “usually when a person is angry, there is another emotion behind the anger, whether it is fear or depression or otherwise.” So the first question you should ask yourself when making a character with the rage response is… why are they angry? What emotion is being masked by the explosion of their anger? What are they trying to hide from? What traumatic experience is making them feel this way and how do they really feel about said experience? Depending on your answers and the kind of character you’re writing about, the angry outbursts can be different.

Some people will yell, some will get violent, some will punch holes in walls and doors and furniture… some will scream into a pillow… some will storm away in the middle of a conversation or hang up the phone if someone says just the wrong thing. Really think about what your character is like, how they respond to tense situations, before you lean into their anger response because some anger responses do not fit certain personality types.

III. The “Sensitive One” Response

Some people, when dealing with tense situations, become intensely emotional. They may cry easily when someone just looks at them cross-eyed. They might go quiet when they’re anxious. They might get really defensive at the smallest things. The Sensitive One can be shown in many, many ways, as there are lots of different types of sensitivity, so really consider your character and what they’ve been through before you decide which type of sensitive person they are.

IV. The “Unmasked Hero” Response

Not all heroes wear capes… that’s the saying, right? These people are the activists. These are the people that will talk to anyone for hours and hours just to talk them down. These are the people you always hear saying “I never want people to feel the way I felt when I went through this.” These are the people that become therapists to help others going through their issues. The Unmasked Heroes live their lives to make it so that no one has to experience the pain that they felt, if they can help it.

V. The “Rebel” Response

I do what I want. That’s the theme song of the Rebel. They lash out, usually acting like the victim no matter what happens (sometimes they really are, but sometimes they aren’t). Trauma can completely rewire a person’s brain, but with the Rebel, they often felt repressed before or like they were unable to fully be themselves and when something traumatic happens, something snaps in them to trigger that “I don’t give a flying fuck” response in their brain and suddenly they’re doing anything and everything they ever wanted to do (and sometimes even didn’t want to do) just to spite the rest of the world and if you don’t like it, you can kiss their ass. This can also be shown through a runaway after something traumatic happens.

This is another very common, often used trauma response.

VI. The “Mental Breakdown” Response

As a mentally ill woman myself, I want to emphasize: not all who go through trauma get mental illnesses and not all with mental illness went through a mental break. That being said, it is very common for an extremely traumatic experience (or life, in some cases) to give someone a mental illness. Or rather, to bring it out of them. There are illnesses like Bipolar, PTSD and more that come to the surface after an extreme mental break, PTSD being the more famous for this very situation.

What is important here is that there is no one situation that will cause a mental break. Depending on the person, it can be something that would be nothing to one person but would completely break another down while a third person might be going through 5 things all at once and seem to be handling it well. There are so many different illnesses out there, and a lot of them are very similar, so what I think is most important is that you do your research before you write an illness you have not personally seen or experienced. If you know someone with an illness you want to write about, ask them if you can run some idea by them and make sure it isn’t stigmatizing the illness, as mental illness gets stigmatized left and right in media.

VII. The “Class Clown” Response

Another common thing that is shown in media - and I’ve noticed is very common in real life - is the depressed clown. There are so many people that listen to society telling them it isn’t okay to not be okay, so they laugh and clown around to make others laugh and just like a lot of people need others’ compliments to feel validated, these people often need laughter to feel validated.

Some people that become the Clown type will deflect their sadness by making dumb jokes. Maybe, if you write about your character texting or on social media, you can show them in a downward spiral and just get on their social media page to post a dumb pun to negate the negativity. Or make a joke at their own expense, which is also common. A lot of people will make others feel bad for not being able to laugh at themselves, and these people are [often] great at doing exactly that, even if they end up in tears later on when they’re by themselves.

VIII. The “Angsty Artist” Response

As I’m sure a lot of you are aware, a lot of artists have a lot of emotions they are processing and a lot of them will use their art (whether it be visual or writing or otherwise) in order to process it.

You may have a teenager writing angsty fanfiction or poetry. You may have a young adult opening their first blog where they write about their life beginning adulthood. You may have a person that is drawing dark, gory artwork. Whatever it may be, the art can either directly reflect the way they feel, such as the dark artwork, or they may do the opposite and write about their personal idea of a utopia and use art to escape. Either way, the art is a means to process and understand themselves better and/or escape from reality for however long they do it.

The only good and bad thing about using this response is that a lot of people that use art end up getting lost in it. They end up becoming obsessed and never cease to work on the art or think about the art and may become consumed by their own processing creativity.

IX. The “Addiction” Response

Addiction can come in so many forms. It can be the typical drugs, cigarettes, alcohol… or it can be addiction to getting lost in a hobby (see #8: The “Angsty Artist”)… or it can be becoming a workaholic. Honestly, anything can become an addiction if you let it consume you, so keep that in mind. It could even be something such as them becoming a hoarder because they are afraid to let their past go, so they won’t let anything go.

There are so many other responses to trauma. There are billions of people in the world, and tons of them have trauma in their lives. To say that it all boils down to these responses would be silly, but these are some common responses to trauma that would be a great starting point if you’re trying to figure out how to have a character of yours going through trauma.

One of the most important lessons I ever learned about art was when I became a late addition to the editorial board for the literature part of my high school's lit/art magazine, which nobody ever read.

Because I realized after a couple of meetings that my moments of baffled distress during them were centering around a pattern of our votes electing by majority to reject most of the good, interesting stuff and agree to publish the very bland.

So I was looking around this room of people I mostly liked or respected if not both, trying to figure out what the fuck when there was no reasonable way of asking, until the day we by majority vote sent definitely the best thing submitted all year back pending 'revisions' which of course would not be made, because the poet would definitely either become demoralized or know for damn sure she was too good for our stupid journal. I have no idea which it was; it's a question of mindset, and the submissions were anonymous.

This good poem was rejected for two reasons, both of which were actually manifestations of it being good. One was that it had made a couple of the board uncomfortable--not by having any shocking subject material, mind, just by provoking emotions with unusual descriptive language and indirectness--and they'd transmitted that uneasiness throughout the group during discussion.

And the other, seized upon as an excuse in light of the first, was that by being complex in terms of both structure and notion it had drawn several of us in, interested enough to engage critically and respond in depth, and so we'd marked it up with lots of places we thought a word choice could have been a little stronger, a line break had been a little odd; ways we thought it could have been a more excellent version of the poem we perceived in it. None of them ways it was actually bad. Just places we felt it could have been better.

At the same meeting, we voted to accept a poem that was an utterly tepid rectangle of predictable nothing-in-particular, because no one could find anything in it to object to.

It wasn't good. It wasn't noticeably bad, either, though; it was one consistent level of mediocrity clear through, and thus no part of it stood out as a weakness, and therefore the committee found it more acceptable than the poem that was superior in every way, but which by being daring and interesting had left itself covered in vulnerable places.

The understanding I reached as a result of this experience was multi-layered and difficult to articulate, but the most important part, I think, to share is that the value and quality of a work are not, in fact, very well measured by how many negative things you can find to say about it.

"Narrative distance"? Do tell!

Explain it in text? Without emphatic arm gestures or wine? Oh god. Okay. I’ll try.

All right, so narrative distance is all about the proximity between you the reader and the POV character in a story you’re reading. You might sometimes also hear it called “psychic distance.” It puts you right up close to that character or pulls you away, and the narrative distance an author chooses greatly affects how their story turns out, because it can drastically change the focus.

Here’s an illustration of narrative distance from far to close, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction (a book I yelled at a lot, because Gardner is a pretentious bastard, but he does say very smart things about craft):

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.

Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.

Henry hated snowstorms.

God how he hated these damn snowstorms.

Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul

It feels a bit like zooming in with a camera, doesn’t it?  

I always hate making decisions about narrative distance, because I usually get it wrong on the first try and have to fix it in revision. When I was writing Lost Causes, the first thing I had to do in revision was go through and zoom in a little on the narrative distance, because it felt like it was sitting right on top of Bruce’s prickly skin and it needed to be underneath where the little biting comments and intrusive thoughts lived. 

Narrative distance is probably the simplest form of distance in POV, and there is where if I had two glasses of wine in me you would hit a vein of pure yelling. There are SO MANY forms of distance in POV. There’s the distance between the intended reader and the POV character, the distance between the POV character and the narrator (even if it’s 1st person!), the distance between the narrator and the author. There’s emotional distance, intellectual distance, psychological distance, experiential distance. If you look closely at a 3rd person POV story, you can tell things about the narrator as a person (and the narrator is an entity independent of the author) - like, for starters, you can tell if they’re sympathetic to the POV character by how they talk about their actions. Word choice and sentence structure can tell you a narrator’s level of education and where they’re from; you can sometimes even tell a narrator’s gender, class, and other less obvious identifying factors if you look closely enough. To find these details, ask: What does the narrator (or POV character, or author) understand?

I can’t put a name on the narrator of the Harry Potter books, but I can tell you he understands British culture intimately, what it’s like to be a teen boy with a crush, to not have money, to be lonely and abused, and to find and connect with people. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand (he doesn’t pick out little flags of queerness like I do, so he’s probably straight, for example), but he sympathizes with Harry and supports him. I like that narrator. I’m supposed to sympathize with him, and I do.

POV is made up of these little distances - countless small questions of proximity that, when stacked together, decide whether we’re going to root for or against a character, or whether we’ll put down a book 20 pages in, or whether a story will punch you in just the right place at just the right amount to make you bawl your eyes out.

There are so many different possible configurations of distance in this arena that there are literally infinite POVs. Fiction is magical and also intimidating as fuck.

CHARACTER FACIAL EXPRESSIONS (WRITING REFERENCE)

EYES/BROWS

his eyes widened

her eyes went round

her eyelids drooped

his eyes narrowed

his eyes lit up

his eyes darted

he squinted

she blinked

her eyes twinkled

his eyes gleamed

her eyes sparkled

his eyes flashed

his eyes glinted

his eyes burned with…

her eyes blazed with…

her eyes sparked with…

her eyes flickered with…

_____ glowed in his eyes

the corners of his eyes crinkled

she rolled her eyes

he looked heavenward

she glanced up to the ceiling

she winked

tears filled her eyes

his eyes welled up

her eyes swam with tears

his eyes flooded with tears

her eyes were wet

his eyes glistened

tears shimmered in her eyes

tears shone in his eyes

her eyes were glossy

he was fighting back tears

tears ran down her cheeks

his eyes closed

she squeezed her eyes shut

he shut his eyes

his lashes fluttered

she batted her lashes

his brows knitted

her forehead creased

his forehead furrowed

her forehead puckered

a line appeared between her brows

his brows drew together

her brows snapped together

his eyebrows rose

she raised a brow

he lifted an eyebrow

his eyebrows waggled

she gave him a once-over

he sized her up

her eyes bored into him

she took in the sight of…

he glared

she peered

he gazed

she glanced

he stared

she scrutinized

he studied

she gaped

he observed

she surveyed

he gawked

he leered

his pupils (were) dilated

her pupils were huge

his pupils flared

NOSE

her nose crinkled

his nose wrinkled

she sneered

his nostrils flared

she stuck her nose in the air

he sniffed

she sniffled

MOUTH

she smiled

he smirked

she grinned

he simpered

she beamed

her mouth curved into a smile

the corners of his mouth turned up

the corner of her mouth quirked up

a corner of his mouth lifted

his mouth twitched

he gave a half-smile

she gave a lopsided grin

his mouth twisted

he plastered a smile on his face

she forced a smile

he faked a smile

her smile faded

his smile slipped

he pursed his lips

she pouted

his mouth snapped shut

her mouth set in a hard line

he pressed his lips together

she bit her lip

he drew his lower lip between his teeth

she nibbled on her bottom lip

he chewed on his bottom lip

his jaw set

her jaw clenched

his jaw tightened

a muscle in her jaw twitched

he ground his jaw

he snarled/his lips drew back in a snarl

her mouth fell open

his jaw dropped

her jaw went slack

he gritted his teeth

she gnashed her teeth

her lower lip trembled

his lower lip quivered

SKIN

she paled

he blanched

she went white

the color drained out of his face

his face reddened

her cheeks turned pink

his face flushed

she blushed

he turned red

she turned scarlet

he turned crimson

a flush crept up her face

WHOLE FACE, ETC.

he screwed up his face

she scrunched up her face

he grimaced

she winced

she gave him a dirty look

he frowned

she scowled

he glowered

her whole face lit up

she brightened

his face went blank

her face contorted

his face twisted

her expression closed up

his expression dulled

her expression hardened

she went poker-faced

a vein popped out in his neck

awe transformed his face

fear crossed her face

sadness clouded his features

terror overtook his face

recognition dawned on her face

SOURCE

No: “You have to be X to write about X.”

Halfway there: “Anyone can write about anything.”

Yes: “Anyone can write about anything, but your content does not exist in vacuum. If a POC tells you your portrayal of a character is racist, or a queer person tells you you’re playing into harmful stereotypes, listen to them. Fandom is an escape only for privileged people. Being inclusive means listening to marginalized voices instead of dismissing us as fun police.”