#the “this is a magical setting” or “oh stormlight haha” are both weak excuses if you want to actually portraying trauma response respectful

[feral-biologist]

For a series that places heavy emphasis on characters' mental state as major drivers for their growth, disregarding characters' trauma for the sake of "coolness" is where the demarcation of writing to authentically portray mental illness and writing for glorification of war and violence lies.

Like, don't get me wrong, an author does not have to always write about the trauma of war and whatnot, sometimes you just want to write about some cool pew pew stuff, and that's valid. And sometimes you could write a character with PTSD without the need to extensively delve into their psyche. But the moment you frame your character growth through the lens of exploring their mental health and trauma, shouldn't you, as the author, do due diligence in considering every aspect of their interaction and experience holistically? If you claimed to portray mental health and trauma, disregarding major sources of physical trauma for the sake of "cool action scene" makes your story feel contrived and disjointed. This is literally the opposite of "show, not tell", where the narrative is telling you, the reader, that you should care about the character's mental health journey while simultaneously fail to appropriately address their trauma.

(also stories do not have to be realistic nor cool to be engaging. As well, stories can be both realistic and cool while being respectful of how they portray violence and action scenes)

(and as an aside, your claim of how the mind responses to repeated physical trauma is just... completely false? girlie pop... I don't think... that's how trauma response... work??? Yes, different people have different ways of responding to trauma, and some of them might include completely compartmentalization, memory repression, and/or dissociation when an individual is in survival mode, but eventually, your brain will still have to process it, whether consciously or subconsciously. But the trauma do not just disappear out of thin air. And your mind/body would still exhibit physiological responses even with the logical understanding that no immediate harm will be done to you, let alone having to go through the trauma again and again .

i'm so mad at the way physical traumas are treated in stormlight. Like yes even when you get heal by stormlight being hacked at the spine to the point of paralysis over and over again or having an arrow impaled through your face would absolutely be a traumatic experience, but this got treated like it's just a cool fighting sequence and our heroes are just that badass. Like??? Why is neither the characters nor the narrative talk or even mention it??? The books want to realistically portray mental illness and then completely failed to also realize that being radiant also means you're experiencing even more traumas?? A lot of this just feels like mindless action scene and glorification of violence tbh