not crossposted to L4E due to content warnings; also posted to Dreamwidth. In here I talk about: sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, and emotional abuse/grooming, both fictional and IRL


i think a lot of the time in my stories i don't focus enough a lot on the complexities of abuse, since most of mine was very black-and-white evil --- without me, for example, knowing the perpetrator on a particularly close level, and it happening when i was so young etc. for the worst parts of the abuse, anyway. and i never had any positive feelings for anyone else who abused me; idk how to word this but i sort of feel like my portrayal of it is very one-dimensional even if it is based on my own experiences, because of this.



i don't think portrayals of abuse that come from real life experiences that dont acknowledge every possible nuance are evil, btw, i don't want to be misinterpreted... i just feel like in my work ive been scared to branch out beyond this in ways i've been wanting to because i still have an internalized anti mindset. the novel i'm about to start is about a 18 yo with a seriously unhealthy relationship w/ the writer of her favorite tv show, and the toxicity of it is compounded by her houseboundedness, and the levels of abuse and harm between them while the writer is her only real connection to a life outside of abuse she faces at home from her caregivers will realistically create a very complex situation that is harder for many to conceptualize as abusive when it is happening to them (as opposed to getting sex trafficked as a kid, which was my experience; i had only hatred for my abusers, i did not rely on them in any meaningful sense) and so i want to make the narrator romanticize it. i want to make the narrator unbearably in love and attached, and i want the writer to obsess over the girl because of her own failing marriage, and groom her and i dont think i want there to be an ending where the girl realizes its bad and runs away like there Should Be:tm:.



this novel is also semi-autobiographical. our relationship was never abusive, but it was deeply boundary-less, and it at times left me feeling like i was being idealized and obsessed over, which only lead me to obsess over her too, desire her approval, and annoy her on twitter KJDNIFRNDC



but i'm scared to write it like this. part of me feels like im betraying myself and abuse survivors if i do. but i know thats stupid. mostly, i'm just scared of the idea that someone will compare me to my abusers, because i don't want to be seen that way. idk


my dynamic with her was so weird and complex that im only really processing how fucked up it was 6 years later, and this is a fictionalized and exaggerated version of it. but i dont think every story about abuse has to have a cookie-cutter moralized ending where She Gets Out, you know? that is cathartic for many, but for me the cathartic part is writing the suffering and the pain and having someone else go through it too and still fight to keep going even if there's no visible hope. Collapse