#don't think this present self could handle becoming physically disabled
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with training I'm very often trying to, like, figure out how to do more, do better, because there are so many things I want to accomplish and I'm starting out so very far behind, but feel like I might want to seriously consider actually being less active.
and my biggest hesitation there is not actually about negative impact on performance or anything (quite possibly the opposite!) but rather...the way that I often end up just, like, lying around wasting away often resulting in lower mood on days that I skip training, and concern that I'll end up like. depressed. which is probably not the healthiest relationship to have with training let's be real
#m#ref notes#don't think this present self could handle becoming physically disabled#would probably need to nix it and start again#which is probably good reason to be more concerned with sustainable recovery!#if you don't take breaks your body will take them for you etc etc
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One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:
- destroy her sense of self / agency
- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)
- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors
- immediate obedience to any command
I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.
I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.
The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.
Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.
Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.
Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.
If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.
The important thing is what you choose to do now.
I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.
Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.
Torture survivors are not broken.
They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.
The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).
The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.
Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.
Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.
And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.
Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.
I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.
A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.
Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.
Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.
I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.
Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.
Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.
The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.
Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.
Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.
A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.
I probably sound quite angry here.
I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.
If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.
Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy��? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?
Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?
I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.
You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.
I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.
Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.
Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.
Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.
It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.
Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.
You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.
Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.
Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.
Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.
That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.
With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.
It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’
And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.
If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.
So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.
Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?
Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.
Fela’s music started causing riots.
You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.
Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.
I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.
Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.
Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.
Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.
The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.
So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.
Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?
Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.
And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.
Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.
Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.
I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.
Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.
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#songsprite#writing advice#tw torture#tw racism#torture apologia#fantasy ask#torture does not work#torture survivors are not broken#resistance to torture#torturers are not omnipotent#antagonism towards torturers#so called psychological torture#clean torture#attitudes towards torture survivors#attitudes towards clean tortures#torture and memory#writing survivors#writing symptoms#writing torture#you don't need torture to traumatise your character
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I'm not sure if you're awake right now but I wanna ask, can you describe some things your ocd causes(I don't know if that's a good word to use but it's all I can think of) you to do? I'm wanting to write a story involving a character with ocd, while I'm doing research I remembered (I might be wrong though so feel free to correct me) that I think you said somewhere before you had it and since you kind of inspire me to go after things I thought I ask. If it's too personal feel free to delete!
Also, ocd story anon, I read that trauma can be a cause of ocd, do you believe that your ocd could've come from your trauma?
This is a very very long response going into a few of my (and some alters) OCD traits and some reasoning behind them and the range of responses I have to various triggers. It actually helps me analyze my traits better when ppl ask stuff like this so I may have gone overboard as stuff kinda clicked in my brain but hopefully somewhere in here you will get your answer.
So, I’m going to start with the last question first. MY OCD was not caused by my trauma, however my traumas have completely shaped my compulsions and obsessions to a point where my OCD traits are almost inseparable from my PTSD. See, I’m autistic, and OCD is part of this co-morbidity package a lot of autistic people end up with, to a point where the co-morbid disorders are often not even diagnosed after the autism is because its that common. (They’ll diagnose separately if you need treatment for one of them. like the reason i have ADHD and OCD listed as dx’s is because the doctors count them separately on me bc i need medication for them, but they’re extremely common to the point of being expected with most ASD dxs)
Yes, I have OCD and have always had, but my trauma caused so much anxiety that the disorder reshaped itself around specific triggers. There are many layers to my OCD, it’s actually a strange sort of nonspecific looking presentation because of how many alters also have OCD, so it becomes difficult to tell who has which O and C thus there being a lot of inconsistency in whether or not a trigger affects me.
It’s also worth nothing that some doctor’s feel that I fit under the specific label of “scrupulosity” or rOCD (Religious OCD) because of how much of my stuff revolves around religion. I don’t always agree that it’s this because while my O and C are based on religious themes, I don’t believe in the concepts behind the things. I believe most of the religious stuff is just from religious trauma.
On one layer, I have a number obsession. There are certain numbers that are tolerable, a few that are “cursed,” and one that is “blessed” and one that is “perfect.” I will do anything to change things to match my blessed and perfect numbers. I will even fudge the truth a little (not a lie, often an exaggeration, by about one or two digits) to make something fit those numbers. To randomly come across a cursed number or even just a slightly intolerable one, makes me very anxious and can shape how i spend my day and how much time i spend with my better numbers. The way my trauma shaped this compulsion was that my numbers tie to religious stuff, since my traumatic environment was often religious, or trauma would be inflicted with religious reasons.
There is an alter that has a compulsion to say a prayer. When we have intrusive thoughts (which you super need to research if you’re writing OCD bc it is a KEY PART of the disorder but ill go into it later here), someone starts reciting the prayer. Sometimes I will as well just because it’s easier to go along with it. Not completing the prayer is not an option. I mean that with absolutely every intent. Not completing the prayer is NOT AN OPTION. It does elieviate some background anxiety, so whoever is dealing with that is being helped by the compulsion, but it is extremely frustrating and upsetting, especially since i am as non-religious as i can possibly manage to be. The prayer is also said whenever something is uneasy or something triggers specific flashbacks.
One of the most obviously noticeable and upsetting for all involved O and C is being “dirty.” There’s a VERY wide range of triggers here, from actually dirty/germy/unclean things, to unpleasant/intolerable sensory triggers, all the way to conceptual dirtiness like sin, virginity, and lying. This can affect me subtly sometimes, like how i compulsively tell the truth and over share so that i feel clean or how i cannot go to sleep after a fight if it has not been resolved. (”never go to bed angry” they said, well shit now i literally cant cool.) This can also hit me violently and to a point where I am a danger to myself. I worked at a movie theater for a summer some time ago and touched something that was a bad sensory feeling while cleaning a dirty theater. I then proceeded to scrub my hands in near-boiling water for almost fifteen minutes in the break room, broke down sobbing, and when I got home i sat under very very hot water in the shower until my skin was raw and red for days. It doesn’t often get to that point, but when it does, I’ve been held down for my own safety since I’ll literally rip my skin and bite myself to punish myself for being dirty. It is frequently bad enough that I will let myself do something “dirty” as a form of self harm since it seriously makes me miserable and sick. This stuff comes both from religious trauma and from just....crappy normal autism feelings and manifests as my most disabling OCD trait.
There are other things like closing drawers and straightening and arranging things that are done to feel that I am being “good” because of reprimands I received in the past that made me feel like I am “bad.” I am sometimes able to not act on these compulsions, though it takes conscious effort to choose not to. Whether or not this stems from trauma doesn’t really matter to me. I know that most of the fronting alters have these “little OCDs” be it through me or for their own reasons. Tia for instance has to keep things in the kitchen a certain way and Phoebe has to complete certain physical activities a certain way or else she gets upset or feels she did a very bad job/failed.Since I’m really just. going at this question lmao lets talk a little about intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are upsetting/disturbing/unacceptable thoughts you do not take pleasure in. For me, a few of them make me feel dirty, which triggers my compulsions very badly. Some relate to trauma, others don’t make sense. There are very common ones such as urges to kill or mutilate self or others, urges to do disastrous things (like causing a huge car accident), urges to do disgusting sexual acts (to self or others, often to unacceptable people like children, elders, and the undesired sex), urges to become a serial killer/rapist/shooter/etc, and other such painfully upsetting things such as those. These are often what fuel the obsessions in OCD and the compulsions are to make these thoughts stop or hurt less. Personally, I get a lot of sexual ones because of how poorly the topic was handled in my childhood. I get ones about elaborately slaughtering a specific abuser, about doing things that will kill me, about mutilating myself and mutilating pets (those are the ones that fuck me up the most i think), and about doing very destructive things that would harm a lot of people. I also get some about terrorism happening where I am, but that one is FOR SURE a trauma thing so maybe it could just be my PTSD.
Intrusive thoughts occur with a LOT of different disorders!!!!! It’s just OCD when you have compulsions to cope with them. Even then, it has to be a certain way for it to qualify.
I hope I was able to give you somewhere to start in terms of information. OCD is a very big disorder and is a major reason why I’m unable to function in a workplace environment. I didn’t go into the specifics of every compulsion, but if you have questions, I don’t mind talking about this stuff. It helps me process it to explain it to others and I end up healing a little through oversharing I think.
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