#most often a character's angsty backstory or terrible childhood is not real-world trauma but in-text drama fodder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

junemermaid · 3 months ago

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I need a sign I can tap that just says:

while I understand that many people in fandom use fanfic to self-soothe or deal with or figure out their own baggage, I personally dislike using characters' (whether textual or inferred) trauma as the primary or indeed only lens for character analysis, and thus I will not be doing that

it is kind of wordy but, yeah

#the writing life #most often a character's angsty backstory or terrible childhood is not real-world trauma but in-text drama fodder #and I am not particularly interested in pure therapyfic #I accept that it has value to other people and I'm not the fandom police #but I find it unhelpful and often flattening to try and reduce a character's whole personality to their suffering #especially in a high-drama genre like fantasy/adventure where hideous nonsense just happens to characters daily #plus as a person with [an amount of issues] I do not find wallowing in a fictional person's problems very enjoyable #examining them; yes #using them to drive story; yes #for me any catharsis comes from them finding peace or clarity or leaning to live with whatever happened to them #but this tends to come with a side of every other character becoming only a carbon cut-out cheerleader/therapist/trauma bin #and in particular I am not about that aspect

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