#there are not flat one dimensional main characters in ILY

[gohyuck]

hi hi, i'm not the romanticising ptsd anon, but my great grandfather & my great granduncle fought in the vietnam side of war and honestly things aren't pretty (war has never been) and idk how to feel abt ptsd & the vietnam war as a concept for a fic, but i really do enjoy ur writing & development of characters + i believe that the ptsd isn't going to be a character trait of jeno so i really hope that the fic isn't centered around war but just abt the characters' relationships? it's not easy to talk abt war & it's annoying when some authors make combat ptsd a character trait & address it shittily in their fics bc everybody deals w their trauma differently ... and the US was a fucking piece of shit in the war and i hope that you establish that and i'm sorry if this is aggressive i just wanted to share my thoughts ily and ur writing!!

hi!! so i do want to address every part of this to make sure i like.. respond to everything, if that makes sense? and dw it isn’t aggressive it’s totally valid and i absolutely want to hear from people with more experience with the topic than i personally have

1) “ idk how to feel abt ptsd & the vietnam war as a concept for a fic “: i know this may not have been a main point/concern of your ask but i do want to talk about this specifically BECAUSE i do want to... make a distinction between what fic-writing usually is (concepts on my blog and in general!) and what i intend to do with this fic! i think that, generally, fic-writing started out with writers projecting onto stories for their own purposes (which is valid and i 100% do this, just read Into It lmfao) and, as they started getting feedback, slowly moving to writing not only for themselves but for the invisible audience. from there, i’ve started to see more and more fic authors transition into publishing their own works, which i think is fantastic, and really goes to show that writing fic is a stepping stone for publishing personal/original work. since writing smultronstalle, i’ve wanted more and more to start writing fics that have more of my originality rather than taking tropes and rewriting them (which, again, is totally valid and, again, something that i still do on this blog for fun), and if i write this fic i want it to, frankly, be more like a book than a fanfiction. i’m just used to writing in second person and tbh i get happiness from getting direct and instant feedback on tumblr so i want to start off posting this on tumblr. that being said, i apologize for having ptsd/the vietnam war come across as the concept for the whole fic, because that’s not my intention. i used “vietnam vet!jeno” in the concept title to establish a general background for the character at the timestamp shown in the concept. i don’t want that to be his only (or, tbh, even his main) trait. as for the ptsd, i mentioned it in the warnings because i feel it would be... 2 dimensional of me and of my characters if i wrote a story about a war veteran who came from immediate fighting and one of the worst wars in modern history but i didn’t write about ptsd at all, especially when i know that this is likely to be a very long story. i want my characters to be human. always. so the vietnam war and ptsd are not concepts so much as the context of the fic and an aspect of a character that makes sense for the character himself, if that makes sense and is okay.

2) “ i really hope that the fic isn't centered around war but just abt the characters' relationships”: from the very little part of it i’ve planned and the general outline i’ve had it’s more about two young people meeting after a heavily turbulent and political time in the U.S./the world and navigating life in general (like. straight up things like falling in love for the first time, getting married, experiencing others’ lives and others’ deaths, paying taxes, etc) together. always together. like i’m tired of characters who have strife and stuff i just want to write a story about one great love, you know? i want to write about distinctly human characters with their own experiences and their own flaws but i want to write about how every character is whole at all times, and how they don’t need other people to fix them because nobody is inherently broken. i want to write about people coming together rather than the forces trying to drive them apart. this sounds like such a pompous response to this part of your ask (i’m so sorry) but essentially what i mean is that the war is just context. it’s basically a fact in the fic: the vietnam war happened, jeno fought in it. yes, it affected him and affects him even once he’s home, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s jeno. he just happened to fight in the war. other characters aren’t so much as concerned about that as they are about him as a person, you know? it’s like how i don’t look at my friends and see their traumas, i just look at them and see them.

3) “ it's not easy to talk abt war & it's annoying when some authors make combat ptsd a character trait & address it shittily in their fics bc everybody deals w their trauma differently”: this doesn’t need a response i just wanted to emphasize it. i think like actual published authors of books, not just fics, make combat ptsd the singular trait of some of their characters, and it pisses me off. i also wanted to highlight that everybody deals with their trauma differently partially to remind myself of it (i will be looking back at this ask, and the one before this that talked about not romanticizing ptsd, and any asks others send, while i write) and partially to just say that. yeah. you’re right. and again if i write it i will not make flat characters with one trait or struggle or anything per character. and you’re right - it isn’t easy to talk about war, especially not when i don’t have any direct connections to those who have experienced it. because of this, if, at any point in time, any of you want to hit up my inbox and go “this sucks, you didn’t write this well at all” just do it. i won’t be mad. i’m here to learn and research and bust my ass

4) “ and the US was a fucking piece of shit in the war and i hope that you establish that”: yeah this story is actually going to be a thinly veiled criticism of the united states and how they start wars and never deal with the aftermath, with the consequences, with what those they send off come back with. the vietnam war, especially, was. bad. like it was bad the U.S. was hot garbage (always is) and i will establish it

i hope this answered questions and everything (and didn’t raise more concerns) but this if you have anything at all to say in response please let me know i feel like i sound preachy in this response and that isn’t my intention at all