niko1shot

[niko1shot]

There are a lot of abuse and recovery stories out there in fandom.  A lot of them are written by people who’ve never been in an abusive relationship.  That’s fine, that certainly doesn’t mean you can't write it, especially when it’s present in canon.  Unfortunately, it does mean that a lot of people get it wrong.

The usual abuse narrative you see in fandom is a story about absence.  The lack of safety.  The lack of freedom.  The lack of love, or of hope, or of trust.  They try to characterize the life of an abused kid, or an abused partner, based on what’s missing.  They characterize recovery based on getting things back: finding safety, discovering freedom, and slowly regaining the ability to trust–other people, the security of the world, themselves.

That doesn’t work.  That is not how it works.

Lives cannot be characterized by negative space.  This is a statement about writing.  It’s also a statement about life.

You can’t write about somebody by describing what isn’t there.  Or you can, but you’ll get a strange, inverted, abstracted picture of a life, with none of the right detail.  A silhouette.  The gaps are real but they're not the point.

If you’re writing a story, you need to make it about the things that are there.  Don’t try to tell me about the absence of safety.  Safety is relative.  There are moments of more or less safety all throughout your character’s day.  Absolute safety doesn’t exist in anyone’s life, abusive situation or not.

If you are trying to tell me a story about not feeling safe, then the question you need to be thinking about is, when safety is gone, what grows in the space it left behind?

Don’t try to tell me a story about a life characterized by the lack of safety.  Tell me a story about a life defined by the presence of fear.

What's there in somebody’s life when their safety, their freedom, their hope and trust are all gone?  It’s not just gaps waiting to be filled when everything comes out right in the end.  It’s not just a void.

The absence of safety is the presence of fear.  The absence of freedom is the presence of rules, the constant litany of must do this and don’t do that and a very very complicated kind of math beneath every single decision.  The lack of love feels like self-loathing.  The lack of trust translates as learning skills and strategies and skepticism, how to get what you need because you can’t be sure it’ll be there otherwise.

You don’t draw the lack of hope by telling me how your character rarely dares to dream about having better.  You draw it by telling me all the ways your character is up to their neck in what it takes to survive this life, this now, by telling me all the plans they do have and never once in any of them mentioning the idea of getting out.

This is of major importance when it comes to aftermath stories, too.  Your character isn’t a hollow shell to be filled with trust and affection and security.  Your character is full.  They are brimming over with coping mechanisms and certainties about the world.  They are packed with strategies and quickfire risk-reward assessments, and depending on the person it may look more calculated or more instinctual, but it’s there.  It’s always there.  You’re not filling holes or teaching your teenage/adult character basic facts of life like they’re a child.  You’re taking a human being out of one culture and trying to immerse them in another. People who are abused make choices.  In a world where the ‘wrong’ choice means pain and injury, they make a damn career out of figuring out and trying to make the right choice, again and again and again.  People who are abused have a framework for the world, they are not utterly baffled by everyone else, they make assumptions and fit observations together in a way that corresponds with the world they know.

They’re not little lost children.  They’re not empty.  They’re human beings trying to live in a way that’s as natural for them as life is for anybody, and if you’re going to write abuse/recovery, you need to know that in your bones.

Don’t tell me about gaps.  Tell me about what’s there instead.

[niko1shot]

when you focus so hard you stop focusing

[niko1shot]

live well, william, because the dog knows you wont live for long

my time on bluesky has been so fucking funny to me. having an existing base + my dog seems like an algorithmic cheatcode and anytime i post him, regardless of the caption, the algorithm starts serving it to anyone's discover feed and i get a slew of replies from 45-70 y/o's that just see a dog

[niko1shot]

[niko1shot]

sory for sending yuo anon hayte

It wasn't even on anon you stupid bitch

[niko1shot]

is this what justin bieber saw when making that one freakish tune

I dont really want to do that

[niko1shot]

Sonic in RAIN WORLD

I had a massive brain rot today and this was the outcome.

I don't know why, but I just wanted to see Sonic in Rain World because both have a nature and technology theme. Also, I just love Sonic so much.

[niko1shot]

gonna repost this banger here

[niko1shot]

deep owl

[niko1shot]

theyre gonna find pllaces on your body you didnt even know were there

So I randomly found this blog and holy shit your most recent post resonated with me sm. I think the only part I can’t relate on is Pewdiepie, I just don’t care or watch many YouTubers in general (I genuinely struggle keeping up with stuff bc I literally live under piles of rock) but my go-to has always been the Cancer crew. I remember back then I legit made 4 ocs based on Max (Maxine specifically), Ian, Joji, and Chad. I redesigned them over the years but I could still see the influence the cc had on my younger self. Man I wish I could post or at least show those ocs sometimes but I know most ppl I know will not approve lolz. (cause you can still know the 4 is based on the cc, if you put them together that is)

ey, glad you could relate! i do agree with the youtuber thing to an extent— i didn’t really care about too many of them after i got old enough for shopkins unboxings and animal jam amvs to just not hit the same anymore. then i discovered cc, and now i’ll probably be trapped pouring my heart out over the most neurotic group of men i’ve ever encountered for a good long while. i wouldn’t claim to be blissfully ignorant when it comes to the routine fixations of chronically online individuals, per say, but it’s hard for me to kind of get engaged with a lot of trends beloved by the wider internet nowadays; i’m very content to mull around in my own little curated space with my people. i’ve witnessed what you’re referring to here a lot, actually, and always feel giddy when i can make a connection between someone’s benign, (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, super convoluted and flashy) heavily contorted original characters and like, some gay content creator they fawn(ed) over. it’s largely inconspicuous, as well as a nice thing to look back on and, like you said, reminisce on how your interests in your younger years influenced your creations and such. i do wonder what you mean when you say most people you know “wouldn’t approve”— is it a matter of waiting to chastise you for making ocs based off youtubers that may be viewed as problematic? i notice that a good amount as well— when a content creator’s popularity declines, or they merely shift target audiences, a lot of the internet keeps a mental freeze frame of how they are/behave that may be inaccurate due to the simple fact they haven’t kept up with them in a long time, or just never did, only hearing about their content and such through the grapevine. i’m sure there are a lot of people out there who could only identify idubbbz as “that one guy who roasted leafy in 2016 and was not very conservative when it came to his slur usage”. something like that. guys like these may not be everyone’s forte, and their content definitely isn’t for the faint of heart, but i like to be secure in my morals and not swayed by the differing opinions of internet strangers. (not saying that you are— if this kind of stuff is considered too crass over on your turf, it probably is best to keep it to yourself ^^’). i’m sure your characters are very cute, though, and if you’d ever wanna share them while still lying low my submission box will continue to stay open until i die, or tumblr shuts down. whichever comes first.

sorry for word vomit. thank you for the ask!

[niko1shot]

lowk yap sesh

So I randomly found this blog and holy shit your most recent post resonated with me sm. I think the only part I can’t relate on is Pewdiepie, I just don’t care or watch many YouTubers in general (I genuinely struggle keeping up with stuff bc I literally live under piles of rock) but my go-to has always been the Cancer crew. I remember back then I legit made 4 ocs based on Max (Maxine specifically), Ian, Joji, and Chad. I redesigned them over the years but I could still see the influence the cc had on my younger self. Man I wish I could post or at least show those ocs sometimes but I know most ppl I know will not approve lolz. (cause you can still know the 4 is based on the cc, if you put them together that is)

ey, glad you could relate! i do agree with the youtuber thing to an extent— i didn’t really care about too many of them after i got old enough for shopkins unboxings and animal jam amvs to just not hit the same anymore. then i discovered cc, and now i’ll probably be trapped pouring my heart out over the most neurotic group of men i’ve ever encountered for a good long while. i wouldn’t claim to be blissfully ignorant when it comes to the routine fixations of chronically online individuals, per say, but it’s hard for me to kind of get engaged with a lot of trends beloved by the wider internet nowadays; i’m very content to mull around in my own little curated space with my people. i’ve witnessed what you’re referring to here a lot, actually, and always feel giddy when i can make a connection between someone’s benign, (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, super convoluted and flashy) heavily contorted original characters and like, some gay content creator they fawn(ed) over. it’s largely inconspicuous, as well as a nice thing to look back on and, like you said, reminisce on how your interests in your younger years influenced your creations and such. i do wonder what you mean when you say most people you know “wouldn’t approve”— is it a matter of waiting to chastise you for making ocs based off youtubers that may be viewed as problematic? i notice that a good amount as well— when a content creator’s popularity declines, or they merely shift target audiences, a lot of the internet keeps a mental freeze frame of how they are/behave that may be inaccurate due to the simple fact they haven’t kept up with them in a long time, or just never did, only hearing about their content and such through the grapevine. i’m sure there are a lot of people out there who could only identify idubbbz as “that one guy who roasted leafy in 2016 and was not very conservative when it came to his slur usage”. something like that. guys like these may not be everyone’s forte, and their content definitely isn’t for the faint of heart, but i like to be secure in my morals and not swayed by the differing opinions of internet strangers. (not saying that you are— if this kind of stuff is considered too crass over on your turf, it probably is best to keep it to yourself ^^’). i’m sure your characters are very cute, though, and if you’d ever wanna share them while still lying low my submission box will continue to stay open until i die, or tumblr shuts down. whichever comes first.

sorry for word vomit. thank you for the ask!

[niko1shot]

you don't get context but you can see more at @mspaint-roadtrip which is the blog i started but i didnt know about tags so no one saw it

[niko1shot]

Pukicho I'd love if you'd interpretively doodle whatever unusually sincere and meaningful emotion is lingering your gut today

[niko1shot]

don't fall yourself a power bottom unless you throw it back like this

[niko1shot]

hey guys, what do you think of my dinner?

(choose your words carefully)