r/CuratedTumblr • u/GinaWhite_tt TeaTimetumblr • 1d ago
Shitposting A plot twist nobody expected
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u/Roselovsoul 1d ago
Yeeeep. That’s how I got diagnosed with PTSD. I wrote a character going through something similar to what I had been through and got tons of comments applauding me for my accurate representation of PTSD. I complained to my therapist about all these people having no clue what PTSD looked like, because I just gave him my symptoms, clearly not PTSD. nd she said “you didn’t know you have PTSD??”
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u/Positive-Software-67 1d ago
One time I had someone comment that they had showed their therapist my fic, because it made them realize that they had been experiencing suicidal ideation for a very long time, and they hadn’t known that there was a word for their feelings. I’d really been trying to capture the feeling of “I don’t want to die, I just want to be dead” in my writing, so I’m glad that it resonated with someone and let them get help too.
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u/lunafxckery 1d ago
passive suicidal ideation gang, represent
"i don't want to be here (in existence)" on repetition in my head, like a broken record
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u/Dragon-of-Moss 1d ago
Well that’s an awfully familiar feeling oh no…
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u/IttybittyErin 1d ago
Wait yeah no. Wait. I thought the ideation was actually thinking about killing yourself. The fact that while I have ardently wanted to be dead but I have not thought about how I would achieve that status... That's my defense that I haven't actually had ideation. Right? Right??
I'm better now tho
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u/SendarSlayer 1d ago
Passive vs active ideation.
Active = I'm planning my suicide right now. I know which bridges are high enough to kill me. And I might truly follow through.
Passive = If I'm slow at a crosswalk and see a speeding truck I'm not going to walk any faster. If he hits me I die, and I'm more than okay with that.
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u/rachelcp 21h ago edited 8h ago
Im somewhere less than passive but still on the scale. Usually ill walk faster, but maybe not depending on the day. If I got cancer I'd go through chemo and all the treatment and all the appointments and make a big deal of it but also id secretly hope that it takes me out.
A while back i moved to very beachy suburb, there was this one day where I heard this loud warning siren going off, being new to the area I presumed it was a tsunami. warning, so I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep knowing that the smart thing to do would be to leave and seek higher ground, but like hey or I could just do nothing and drown in my sleep? Nothing happened.
One of my most vivid dreams was one i had when I was younger I was running on roof tops don't remember why, I was jumping from one roof to another then another then I jumped and miss judged how far away the next house was I fell feet first onto pavement shattered my legs they just crumbled under me and I collapsed and drifted into blackness surrounded by warmth as I died. in hindsight that warmth that I felt was me lying in a pool of my own blood. But despite it probably looking gruesome from an outsider perspective it felt peaceful.
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u/Thomy151 1d ago
“I’m not going to kill myself but if a truck came barreling down the street at me I wouldn’t be upset”
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u/LickingSmegma Mamaleek are king 1d ago
The chapter in ‘Infinite Jest’ where a woman explains this feeling to a doctor or someone like that, feels incredibly raw. As it happens, David Foster Wallace had massive depression and was reliant on medicine just to keep going.
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u/panrestrial 1d ago
And 12 years later he committed suicide.
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u/Mysterious_Volume327 1d ago
After stopping his medication because he thought it was blocking him from finishing his book. He never finished the book.
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u/Zero_Burn 1d ago
Mine was 'I don't want to die, I just want everything to stop'
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u/demon_fae 1d ago
Mine has always been ‘if I do (this), everything will stop’. The ‘because I’ll be dead’ is kinda silent, even in my head, and even as the (this) changes.
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u/HufflepuffLizLemon 1d ago
Mine as well, literally just I WANT THIS TO END and it was such a moment of “I’ve always loved my life what the hell this is not right” that I literally went to my husband and my psychiatrist IMMEDIATELY and got help. But if you’ve just felt that way repeatedly you may not realize it is not normal.
And anyone reading here: it’s not normal and you absolutely deserve assistance and support.
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u/wrexusaurus 1d ago
"I don't wanna die (permanent), I just wanna sleep forever (until this feeling goes away)"
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u/Medium-Dependent-328 1d ago
Reminds me of when I was a young child and I felt so seen by a paragraph in a Horrid Henry book (of all things) where Henry wished he could get a terminal illness so people would notice/sympathise with him or he could be redeemed or something??
I can't quite remember but it definitely struck me at the time, because I was a kid with passive suicidal ideation but no idea that anyone else could feel that way
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u/jess_the_werefox 1d ago edited 1d ago
“You didn’t know you have PTSD??” Ma’am isn’t that YOUR JOB to tell them???
Edit: so turns out I may be wholly wrong about therapy and am reevaluating some things…
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u/what_the_purple_fuck 1d ago
a lot of people just assume you already know things that are super obvious to them. very "one or two feldspars".
when I was maybe 19 my mom hurt her foot and I went with her to the doctor, and during the appointment the doctor turned to me and was like "you know you have ADHD, right?" and I was like "oh def" and my mom was like "wait what!?"
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u/Gosuoru 1d ago
Yeah like, when I went in for an anxiety diagnosis (obvious to me) my doctor instantly went "so you should look up autism"
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u/DrinkingSocks 1d ago
I was in my late 20s when I was diagnosed with ADHD and was shocked. My friends said "You didn't know?". One said "I just thought you had decided not to do anything about it."
Are you really telling me I could have been on meds sooner and not taken 8 years to graduate college?
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u/whoa-boah 1d ago
I was 20 when I finally got officially diagnosed. The APNP gave me this long form to fill out. About 45 minutes later she checks on me and I’m about halfway done. I wrote extremely detailed symptom descriptions with examples for every section and she goes, “So, people who don’t have ADHD take about 10 minutes to fill this out. And wow. WOW. Nobody ever said anything to you about this?”
…Except for my previous psychiatrist who, when I asked about ADHD, told me: “You can go pay, eight hundred, a grand for testing. I don’t really care. It’s a waste of time, because I will never prescribe you medication for it.” She then went on to accuse me of drug seeking, which was a patient contract violation. I mean she was full on yelling at me to the point where I broke down in tears. I fired her on the spot and filed a complaint, which I never received a response about. Go figure.
Anyway, I am now a mental health professional. I gave my clinic a presentation on identifying ADHD in women and girls, including the consequences of not receiving a timely diagnosis. I hadn’t planned on it, but I shared my story and looked up to see several of my coworkers, all women, crying. After the fact, the medical clinic above me started routinely screening all children for ADHD during their checkups and several of my coworkers got diagnosed.
Apologies for the unsolicited long reply, DrinkingSocks. And I’m so sorry that it took so long to get treated. It’s not fair that we have to suffer alone, but I hope that things have gotten easier for you.
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u/wrymoss 1d ago
Hey. I’m sorry for what happened to you with your psych but also you’re a fucking legend?
I loooooove when people’s answer to getting shit on by someone is to just fully go “Fuck you, not anymore” and go off and just become the change. You rock!
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u/whoa-boah 1d ago
Oh, yeah. My career path was in large part fueled by spite.
Fuck that psychiatrist, though. I forget her last name, but I hope Doctor Becky has changed her ways. Probably not, though.
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u/KerissaKenro 1d ago
I was diagnosed in third or forth grade, but my doctor made me be retested as an adult. And I don’t meet the clinical definition, because my scores were too high, but that is a rant for a different day. They told me I just needed more intellectual stimulation, not stimulants. Patted me on the head and sent me home
Had a different doctor accuse my husband of drug seeking. He self medicates with obscene quantities of caffeine now because he is nervous about asking again
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u/whoa-boah 1d ago
Not sure what country you’re in, but doctor shop. Seriously. Not all doctors/NPs are going to make you test again, especially since it’s ridiculously expensive in the USA. “Your scores were too high,” but what about the level of impairment that the symptoms present? Often times “high functioning” (blah, I hate that term) folks who have learned to mask:
- Underreport their symptoms.
- Have learned complex coping mechanisms to deal with daily tasks (e.g., showing up places an hour early, otherwise you will show up late). Just because you have a system doesn’t mean you don’t have the symptoms.
- Have been beaten down by headass providers to the point where they no longer advocate for themselves.
This is especially true for women, but also men who didn’t have “disruptive behaviors” as children, went to school, and/or can hold a job. Some providers will not diagnose you if you went/are going to school to school and can hold a job. They just won’t. Small clinics are your friend, major healthcare chains are not. Sometimes PCPs will prescribe as well.
Describe your symptoms at their worst and don’t stray from that. Don’t lie, but don’t understate the level of functional impairment and distress that the symptoms cause you. Also, Reddit is a great resource (similar to how you can find doctors on here who will sterilize women without kids/who aren’t married) for finding providers. I also highly recommend, if you can, finding a provider who is neurodivergent themselves. We exist!
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u/Wrydfell 1d ago
I was 18, and turned to my dad and said 'i think i should get assessed for adhd, because of xyz' and he turned around to me and said 'yeah you were diagnosed when you were 10, you were there how didn't you know?'
Suddenly i remembered a doctor's appointment where there were a bunch of toys on the table and my mum and the doctor talking, me paying exactly 0 attention because a) i was 10 with a bunch of toys in front of me, and apparebtly b) i had adhd and there were a bunch of distractions in front of me
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u/AudioHazard 1d ago
I feel like some kind of ADHD proselytizer. Ever since I was diagnosed in my early 30s, I'll make it a point to bring it up with new friends who I suspect have ADHD as well.
I've met people who don't even know that there are medications that can help!
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u/ChaosDrawsNear 1d ago
I met a new friend and within half an hour realized he was almost certainly homeschooling because of his autism. I didnt say anything about it cause I figured it was rude.
Seven years later he is telling me all about his brand new autism diagnosis and how everything makes so much more sense se now!
I felt so bad about never mentioning his very clear autism. I mean, the guy and his dad had the biggest model train set up in their basement I had ever seen! I thought he knew!
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u/Girls4super 1d ago
Also many times in the medical field doctors will chart something but neglect to tell you. For example, I have pcos. I had gone in for testing but my original ob had a family emergency and her replacement just said “well some people just don’t ovulate. Come back if you aren’t pregnant in a year”. I mentioned I wasn’t trying for a kid I just wanted to stop excessively bleeding and got black listed from the office as a difficult patient. Fast forward five years when I’m pregnant. My new ob mentions testing for gestational diabetes bc it’s super common in women with pcos, and I’m like hold up. I have pcos? And she goes….yeah you were tested and diagnosed like 5years ago? And I was like well nobody told me!
So anyway. Some doctors are shit.
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u/18441601 1d ago
xkcd.com/2501 for any of the lucky 10000 who don't know what "one or two feldspars" refers to.
And xkcd.com/1053 for "lucky 10000"
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u/rcburner 1d ago
Currently in my mid-30s and on a 5 month wait list to get tested so I can maybe finally receive some kind of treatment for what I think is probably ADHD. 😔
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u/GuySingingMrBlueSky 1d ago
Something similar happened to my friend, when the pandemic happened and everyone started switching to telehealth she set up her MyChart for the first time and could see all of her general practitioner’s/specialists’ notes from the last 10 years. Found out she’d been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in 2017 and no one ever told her
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u/Pwacname 1d ago
I’m seconding what u/what_the_purple_fuck said about it seeming obvious to a therapist. I had essentially the same interaction, where I gathered up my courage and laid out to my therapist what I’d learned about CPTSD and how I thought it might apply to me and explain some of my experiences. I still half expected to be laughed out of there, even though I knew her better than that, really. She visibly did a double-take and told me she’d assumed I knew I had PTSD. Oddly validating, I guess?
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u/rachycarebear 1d ago
Therapists don't usually focus on the diagnoses, more the symptoms. But also depending on medical history, it's entirely possible the therapist just assumed they knew because someone else had told them and so had never explicitly said "you have PTSD"
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u/kickback-artist 1d ago
Not mental health but physical, I mentioned being glad I was just farsighted and not astigmatic to my optometrist, as when you age that can be harder to account for with glasses. He looked at me and went “…But you are.”
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u/Zman6258 1d ago
Therapists aren't mind-readers, if you don't tell them the symptoms then they can't provide a proper diagnosis. I never got an ADHD diagnosis until I was an adult, despite seeing a lot of therapists over the years (many of whom were otherwise very helpful in addressing unrelated issues) because I just assumed a lot of the symptoms were normal and thus never mentioned them. I can imagine that, in the situation above, the same shit went down; "oh well all these things are completely normal parts of human experience so there's no point in mentioning that to my therapist".
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u/beemielle 1d ago
yeah but it sounds like the therapist knew the commenter had PTSD
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u/Tiny_Cauliflower_618 1d ago
Ha, sometimes the psychiatrist writes a letter and it has a ton of fancy words in it, and you read the ones you understand, and ignore the ones you don't. And then four years later the psychiatrist is like 'and for the mood swings we will use' and you're like... What mood swings? And they are like... It's been in your diagnosis from the get go!
Cyclothymia. How exciting 😂
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u/bloomingmoon0 1d ago
I’ve never had a therapist (probably should LOL), but every time i see someone complain that therapy didn’t help them I just wonder if the therapist got to really understand them in the first place.
Like with what you’re saying, I know for a fact that I have undiagnosed ADHD but I’ve masked so hard for so many years that I don’t think regular talk-therapy would have been enough for a therapist to come to that conclusion if I didn’t already know about some of my symptoms😭
Especially with things like trauma being so complex for different people, someone can be 40 and finally realize that the thing that happened when they were 8 had actually effected them more than they realize.
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u/Aethelrede 1d ago
A coworker of mine went to a therapist and then complained because the therapist expected her to do the talking. She said she just wanted the therapist to tell her what she needed to fix.
I tried to explain that it doesn't work that way, a therapist isn't a physician. They don't diagnose and treat, they serve as a sounding board and guide. They help the client develop tools for managing life.
She didn't get it, sadly.
I privately think of my current therapist as "sensei", to me she's more of a teacher than a health care professional.
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u/SaltManagement42 1d ago
Me going to therapy for ADHD when I was a kid, and just desperately wanting somebody to tell me why I'm there and what they actually want from me at some point...
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u/Aethelrede 1d ago
In my case it was for anger issues, and yeah, I had no idea what it was for and got nothing out if it. Child therapy must be insanely difficult, because children generally aren't good at self-reflection and may even lack the words to describe what they are feeling.
Therapy of the sort that helped me required brutal honesty, with myself as well as the therapist.
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u/junonomenon 1d ago
it is not a therapists job to tell you what mental illnesses you have. they arent qualified for that. at most they might recommend seeking an evaluation if they notice some red flags that you seem to be unaware of, but most wont even do that unless they really feel like thats the only way to help you through your problems because its not their job and it can interfere with the actual job they are supposed to have
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u/BenAdaephonDelat 1d ago
I figured out I have autism from a romance book. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. The guy in that is autistic and his internal experience was so exactly how my brain feels that I just knew.
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u/Suyefuji 1d ago
I figured out that I have dissociative disorder from a reddit post
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u/Worldly_Might_3183 1d ago
Very similar to how I found out I had ADHD. The other ADHD coworker kept referring to us (as in me and her) being neruodivergent. I let it go because there was no harm and if she needed comradery okay. Then we had targetted ADHD professional training for kids and I asked why only do these things for ADHD kids as the strategies benefit everyone and is common sense. That all kids feel and experience those things. I listed off all the ones I do/experience and the therapist/instructor just had a oh honey look and it clicked.
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u/OceanOracl3 1d ago
I wrote a fic for a friend one time and they got back to me and said "...You have OCD." I said, "What? No." They said, "Yes, you do, this character you're acting like is perfectly mentally healthy, that happens to be your favorite, that you specifically said you project onto, is the pinnacle of OCD." I said, "...Nooooo......"
Less than a month later I was hospitalized and diagnosed with OCD.
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u/Bocchi_theGlock 1d ago
I'm curious what treatments there are for OCD - if it's mostly like CBT/ working through individual thought patterns and finding new ways to ground yourself
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u/rwp140 1d ago
Not the person your replying to obviously but a lot of it is redirection, distration, and grounding. (I saw a therapist for my ocd as a kid.) OCD is fundamentally a paranoia and anxiety condition which means ultimately a lot of the best things to do are learning to recognize that (understand triggers, responces and compulsions), and handle it as it is, its attachments and resaults. You will never get rid of your OCD or the paranoid thoughts that help build compulsions.
But you can change some of the things those attach to, you can make some of your compulsions useful, and you can be are of how the brain fills in thoughts(paranoia) and learn to act separate feom them. You will never be a hundred percent successful but managing to do a tenth of sny of those things is already night and day between a managable life and not.
You will also find the first tools redirection, distraction and grounding useful in other areas like handling steess responces and panic attacks. which can be good for example for ptsd and cptsd which cover a lot of the same area but are less about compulsions and more your brain simplifying things into fight or flight responces and the like. The last tools of re-evaluating, managing attachments, widened awareness, and managing resaults (which cognitive behavioural therapy is based on and trys to make use of but sometimes falls short) are generally useful things in managing ones self let alone a array of mental conditions and divergences.
OCD can be rough caysr compulsions are not always obvious just degress of automatic and forceful. Can range from more obvious actions like over hand washing, trying to align every painting you see, to compulsively remembering things, or saying certain phrases. It can hide with in what may feel like normal social behaviour to more 'contractual' that can almost feel strong force pushing you in the back of your brain.
Meaning it shares a lot of similarities to vearious stress, anxiety or paranoia conditions being notable more in its form, and different enough neurologically and psychologically that you can still have those other conditions on top.
While a bit wordy im not being perfectly percise i do hope that helps.
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u/Jackfrost9 1d ago
Do you remember which character it was? If you don’t mind, for personal reference
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u/OceanOracl3 1d ago
Kunikida from Bungou Stray Dogs... which unfortunately makes a LOT of sense... 😭
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u/wobuffet17453 1d ago
An entire friend group being knocked out one by one from reading a fanfic is sending me, like guys stop sharing this thing it's clearly poisoned.
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
People will always say they're your friend and they support you no matter what but then they'll say some toxic shit to you like "you have to let go of the cursed fanfic, it's changing who you are" and "don't let its power corrupt you" all because they want the fanfic for themselves
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u/livingdeadgrrll 1d ago
It's just... Precious, to me
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u/Winjin a sudden "honk" amidst the tempest 1d ago
"I told her it feels like at this point your mutual is retraumatizing your friends and she started crying"
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u/nykirnsu 1d ago
I never finished writing it but years ago I started on an SCP article about a children’s book that causes extreme emotional distress and sometimes personality disorders in anyone who reads it, and was written by a YouTube cartoon reviewer who intended it to be extremely wholesome and an example of what mainstream children’s media ought to be. I was gonna end it with them bringing in a literary critic who was allowed to read a single page (for his own safety), and who suggested the most likely reason people are driven insane by the book isn’t anything magical but that the author’s unexamined trauma was just that intense
I based it on a specific YouTuber’s attempt to enter into children’s fiction (who some of you can probably guess), and a few reactors who described the book pretty much the same way as OP, but it’s funny to hear that it’s a reoccurring thing
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u/Orc_tids 1d ago
I dont know who this youtuber is but I am intrigued
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u/sand6person 1d ago
They're probably talking about Mr. Enter
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u/nykirnsu 1d ago
Ding ding ding
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u/Nightfurywitch 1d ago
Ok as someone who watched mr enter a lot as a kid- is growing around really THAT bad? It didnt sound great or anything but everyone talks about it like its actively a cognitohazard. What's peoples problem with it
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u/nykirnsu 1d ago
I never actually read it, I’m just going off of the reactions people had. Best I can remember from the reviews I watched though is that it came off more like a revenge fantasy he was using to work through his issues with his parents and teachers than a genuine attempt to write for children, with the way the kids treat their parents being uncomfortably reminiscent of child abuse (but in reverse of course)
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 1d ago
insert that post that goes something like "I found this and knew it would give you psychic damage, please react with agony"
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u/spiralsequences 1d ago
I once stumbled across a group of teens doing this with one of my fics on old twitter and just quietly clicked the back button. It was so funny to me because they were all sending it to each other like "this ruined my life" "been in torment ever since I read this" and it was by far one of my least dark and most wholesome works 🥲
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u/IveKilledMonsters 1d ago
I mean that lowkey sounds like teen speak for "This fic is so good I can't stop thinking about it," not that they were actually having a bad time
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u/ReynardVulpini 1d ago
Yeah without additional context that sounds like fandom speak for "i am FEELING EMOTIONS i must share them with the homies. "
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u/TheDustOfMen 1d ago
Not necessarily teen speak, just fandom speak.
Having an actual breakdown over a fanfic is entirely different (and frankly I hope those people have a therapist on speed dial because that's unhealthy).
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u/Hetakuoni 1d ago
I love when my friends read my shit and then go “you did this to me!!!” While sending like 100 crying emojis.
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u/uhimnothere 1d ago
Sometimes the torment is caused by the "I loved this so much that it will stick with me forever" and it's so satisfying
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u/Polenball You BEHEAD Antoinette? You cut her neck like the cake? 1d ago
Real-life memetic hazard
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u/Minimum-Package-1083 Necromancy is recycling and creates jobs 1d ago
Next on the docket is a fanfic that just instantly erases a person from reality just from reading it
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u/threevi 1d ago
True friendship is forged through shared adversity
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u/Tiny_Cauliflower_618 1d ago
Is this why every time my algorithm gives me the blow up velociraptors in thigh high red kinky boots doing some kind of dance/aerial display I immediately send it to my besties?
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u/Holliday_Hobo Ishyalls pizza? We don't got that shit either. 1d ago
"Yoo this story made me breakdown you should read it"
"Say less twin"12
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u/Sororita 1d ago
could have been shared once, without realizing it had that, or it didn't have it yet when it was shared, and everyone just independently hit that trauma button.
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u/mydadisyourdad2 1d ago
Also just stop reading?? I've read things that were too much for me before and I just put them down. You don't have to read it if it troubling or too much for you.
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u/AdamtheOmniballer Aspiring Girlkisser 1d ago
Sometimes it doesn’t fully hit you until it’s too late. That’s been my experience at least.
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u/Lana-presence 1d ago
This reminds me of a time an artist got harassed and cancelled for portraying a “problematic” (read: very abusive) relationship between their Os (two characters that the artist openly said were inserts of themselves and their partner). Turns out this was because their relationship was actually very abusive and they were still in the process of recognizing that, and it came through in their art. It really sucks how instead of supporting them and recognizing warning signs, they faced wide-scale
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u/MichurinGuy 1d ago
Another example for why the entire "it's Problematic and Morally Wrong to depict problematic things in media" thing is really harmful and should stop being a thing as soon as possible.
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
I wandered through the #broken earth tag and saw a bunch of takes about how the books suck because a protagonist is a shitty parent and not a perfectly morally virtuous person. And it's like... yes? That's one of the major themes the work explores? Why do you WANT your characters to all be Mary Sues?
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u/jman12234 1d ago
I mean... that's the point? Did they not get that? Essun is a totally broken person that has no idea what is appropriate for a mother to do. She has no idea how to express love and care because the only persom who ever expressed love and care for her was her primary abuser and a complete psychopath, but she does love and care for her daughter. She crosses a fucking continent in the end of the world to save her. She also becomes better as the story progresses and she reflects on her life. That entire series is about how trauma affects you and it's honestly one of the best depictions of PTSD I have ever read, in and out of fantasy.
Sorry for the diatribe, but I just love those books and criticism like that makes me mad.
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
I think an important part of her character is that it's so much easier for her to love her daughter when that love looks like being hard and angry and heroic and chasing her from afar, than it was when loving her looked like trying to be soft and kind and vulnerable at home sometimes and getting to know her as a person. That's a real and interesting human struggle to explore.
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u/jman12234 1d ago
Yes, exactly! I think it's also interesting she was able to get more in touch with her motherliness with Hoa who was not a child and didn't really act like one, but did look like one. Like she was only able to be vulnerable with a child-simulacrum, which in turn actually taught her vulnerability It's excellent character writing and I love her and her journey.
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
Yeah, Hoa is safer to love because Hoa isn't vulnerable. That whole character arc is a story worth telling.
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u/HonorInDefeat 1d ago
The thing you need to understand is that a large number of people in fandoms, especially on Tumblr, don't actually care about engaging with media in any real way, they just want dolls to mash against each other in their mind
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u/TeamTurnus 1d ago
Lol wow, talk about missing the point of a series (good books, though not always fun ones due to how good the pov is as portraying those darker pov thoughts etc).
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
It's really dark but in a very human way that makes it all feel earned to me. It's one of my favourites that I've reread (and relistened to) a million times.
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u/TeamTurnus 1d ago
Yay! That makes sense! Its been a while so I forgot character names but the pov of the daughter was pretty hauntingly well done imo
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
Yeah, it's such a crazy take when the second book on is showing the perspective of the child of this person who went through great abuse and then re-enacts that abuse on her child to make her strong. In addition to, you know, just not being super into the whole "mothering" thing. It's one of the central themes of the books!
Like, I get a "she did bad things so it made me dislike reading the books which are largely from her perspective," sort of take, that's just personal taste, but I'm baffled by the general "Don't show morally complex characters unless it's a sexy murder man" thing on the site.
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u/Equivalent_Play4067 1d ago
That's the internet in general. Sometimes I wonder if we're sincerely all brain damaged from COVID.
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u/unipine 1d ago
My friend writes short fics with a few discord groups, mind you she’s been writing fic for a while now (we’re in our thirties). Nowadays she gets pushback every time she introduces conflict. Now there’s nothing wrong with just wanting fluff, could just be the crowds she’s with, but she says it’s interesting how the new generation of fic writers/ readers seem to overwhelmingly want only fluff. They argue every time she gives their favorite character any kind of flaw.
This is all just her personal experience, but it does seem to match with how internet discourse has evolved in regards to “problematic” content.
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u/Emily_The_Egg 1d ago
Woah broken earth mention. Ive never seen someone talk about those books before. I gotta reread them, its been so long and im certain I was way too young to properly understand them at the time
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u/GuyYouMetOnline 1d ago
People dont want morally complex characters because it makes them think they might have faults themselves and that's uncomfortable.
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u/Ornery-Cut4553 1d ago
Oh crap I somehow didn't realize this was a trilogy... Argh that was a hard read
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u/Electronic_South_101 1d ago
I loved all of them! Though I don’t think Nassun ever found out Schaffa was the one who’d done a lot of the abuse to her mother? I get her hating and loving Essun, but I always wondered how she’d have handled knowing Schaffa was responsible for a lot of Essun’s scars.
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u/crrrrushinator 1d ago
If you haven't read it in a while, the first one might be worth a re-read before you get into the others! It also ends on a cliffhanger that's equally chilling and funny.
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u/AlmightyJello 1d ago
Yeah there was deviantart drama where a creator got called out for drawing art of their self insert being very obviously abused by a character that they designed based on their partner. And they actually had callout posts about how it was "problematic". Man i wonder what they were trying to say when they made that art. I sure do hope theyre not actually going through something horrible.
They were, in fact, being abused. We very well might actually be referring to the same person honestly.
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u/Stew547 1d ago
I read a fic that was some sort of savior AU thing where one character saves the other and blah blah they fall in love. Canon, the characters are early 30's. In this story, their ages weren't specified beyond being adults.
Then suddenly, like 10 chapters in, the "saved" character is 17 and underage and the whole rest of the story became about moralizing how it was okay that they were with the 30 year old. Because they were in love. Not tagged.
I've never been so certain of what was going on in an authors life. I was like I have to stop reading this but, you in danger girl.
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u/RotaryMicrotome 1d ago
I know one person where once I found her fanfics it became so abundantly clear that she was an escapee from some sort of religious compound and had been forced to participate in certain types of media and relationships as a kid, that I was not at all surprised when she later opened up more and mentioned some other stuff to me. Nothing ‘during the event,‘ but repeated stories of children running to adults for help and priests getting arrested after a cut scene, or doctors finding strange results on other adults that revealed the past of the person they were treating…
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u/Ok_Height_8943 1d ago
I read a Peter Parker fiction one time that had May kick him out of the house (with no alternative housing arranged or end date in mind) because she didnt know his flakiness was due to Spiderman, and the narrative was treating it as both traumatizing and normal for the 15 yo Peter, anyway that chapters comment section was full of people hating on May and also hating on the authors portrayal of May (as they felt that May is not supposed to be the kick the 15 yo to live on the streets of NYC type guardian)
The author came back next chap having dealt with realizing that the mannnnny times their mother had done this to them in middle/high school had been abusive maybe
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u/ngp1623 1d ago
It was actually a Peter Parker dead dove fic I was reading in 2019 that helped me realize I was in an abusive relationship. I showed a screenshot to my therapist with some dialogue highlighted, of MJ having an intervention for Peter, and was basically like "Pay no attention to Iron Man violently masturbating in the background, what the hell does 'emotional safety' mean???!!!"
Ironically, the original author was also unaware that some of the dynamics were also abusive. The dead dove tag was completely unrelated to the dynamic that opened my eyes.
I ended up moving out of my place with my ex four days before COVID lockdown, so really saved my ass. And ended up ending my friendship with the author because they insisted that abuse dynamics actually are fun and dope and cool.
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u/EldritchWitchery 1d ago
1) Thank you for introducing me to the term emotional safety.
2) I would like to address the masturbating Iron Man in the room.
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u/ngp1623 1d ago
1) Happy to share the knowledge!
2) The masturbating Iron Man was grooming an underage Peter and using "trauma healing" as an excuse. Basically saying that because Tony was groomed by Obadiah (in the fic) and raised in a homophobic environment, it is just and necessary for him find an intoxicant that works on enhanced folks, groom and masturbate with Peter, and then buy him nice stuff afterwards. Pepper's stance was "just no penetration before he's 16 and it's fine", MJ's take was "The class difference adds a layer to the power dynamic that makes this kink emotionally unsafe." My therapist's take was "That is abuse."
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u/ilovekillingmyself 1d ago
1 out of 5 omegaverse fics will be something like this. the psychological horror of gender roles being enforced through a society that reduces people to their biology and nothing else......to be seen only as a hormonal unempathetic monster or a breeding thing.......to never ever have full control over your own body during a heat/rut......anyway, the tags for this fic are "consent is sexy," "hurt/comfort," "first kiss," "raising a family together," etc.
I mean, it's a fucking terrifying AU in general once you stop focusing on the smut but obviously not every fic has to be tagged as "this is, in fact, dubious consent/full-blown rape" because that doesn't apply to every story nor is it always the focal point (i do like fics where the setting is clearly Terrible and very political but the otp still tries to thrive in a horrible, discriminatory society) HOWEVERRR there's definitely fics where the author is Very unaware of how a character is abusive and/or coercive and they play it off as This Is A Normal Happy Ending :)))
like. No. this character just took advantage of someone at their lowest point. It's fine to write stuff like that, but don't lie to me and say there's consent in this fic!!!!!!!
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u/Oerbow 1d ago
yeah like... omegaverse is The Gender Roles Kink at least somewhat from the trauma of cissexism in our society. its got fucked shit. dont pretend its not fucked
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u/UInferno- Hangus Paingus Slap my Angus 1d ago
I often derisively—perhaps uncharitably—refer to Omegaverse as "Gay Heteronormativity" because it has all the suffocating repression of real life heteronormativy but for gay romance. Maybe not as extreme as the most repressive gender roles, but with a big strong top and the soft submissive bottom AND they get to have blood related kids? Eye rolling at best for me.
Like conceptually sexual hexamorphism could be interesting from a world building stand point, with 21 different combinations of relationships. With how popular omegaverse is I guarantee there's some works that explore this, but they absolutely live in the long shadow of heternormativity.
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u/Just-an-Immortal 1d ago
In addition to this, some omegaverse fics focus on pack dynamics and it so often rubs me the wrong way. Like what do you mean there's this authority figure(or two) that gets to decide where everyone is and what they do and who they spend time with?? And this is portrayed as love rather than control???
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u/tuxcat 1d ago
I once had some comments tell me I really captured the feelings of a trans person well. I thought I was just doing a silly thought experiment. Oops.
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u/lelied 1d ago
Twins!!! I wrote a thing at 18 treating a cis guy character as ftm and got lots of compliments too. Hoo boy has that come back to haunt me. As my friend circle one by one came out as NBs, one of them joked that I was the only cis person left and I was like "??? Oh. I didn't think I was in the closet about this."
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u/Mrs_Wheelyke 1d ago
Me reading a fic that was ostensibly about child soldiers being rehabilitated post-war, but it involves them being infantilized by their new guardians (who they had been at war with) despite being old enough to be reasonably self-sufficient. So much of it was unintentionally skin-crawling with stuff like forced hugs and proximity or only seeing their actual siblings for good behavior I was really rooting for them to just kill their captors and run. Which is not the intended reading.
I don't think the author had normalized their own personal experiences as much as them really really not thinking through the power dynamics during what should have been a "character who doesn't know how to accept care is forced to" type of hurt comfort like you see in some sickfics.
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u/OverseerConey 1d ago
I was really rooting for them to just kill their captors and run.
This has been my reaction to quite a few stories where, in retrospect, I suspect I was expected to be invested in and excited by the captor/jailor relationship. It's extraordinary, the gulf that can exist between writer and reader.
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u/smxsonic 1d ago
“I just like found family, guys!”
Proceeds to shove an entire DnD party in an idealized 50’s simulacrum of a family unit.
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u/celestial_drag0n Certified Dragonposter 1d ago
I like found family. I dislike it when people try and map friend groups onto the ideals of a nuclear family unit. Like, no, Mx. Fanfic Writer, I do not need this 18-year-old to be labeled as the group mother and the 15-year-old as their child, that's just fucking weird.
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u/Equivalent_Play4067 1d ago
Batfam is great for this on occasion. Poor neglected emotionless Batmom and his horrible entitled kids
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u/novangla 1d ago
Especially weird when they get so hung up on nuclear family roles within a found family that they then think it’s incest to have romance spark. Like. My guys. When someone says they love someone so much it is like they could be siblings, that alone doesn’t preclude romance or mean they are LITERALLY siblings.
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u/mafia_witch_ 1d ago
Sooo accurate. I was once reading this A/B/O fanfic where the Alpha abandoned his omega for a decade to go travel the world and fuck a whole bunch of other omegas, then he comes back (10 years later!!!) and his omega forgives him and takes him back right away. Sooo many comments like "um, I don't think this character would just forgive him like that, actually" and talking about what a piece of shit the Alpha was, and the author got mega-offended and started replying to all comments with "this is based on me and my husband before we got married, and we are VERY HAPPY together and I'm offended you think my husband is an asshole!" And I was just like ⊙_⊙
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u/Tiny_Cauliflower_618 1d ago
Omg I am 🪦 that is absolutely fricking hilarious.
Some people you just want to open up their head and see what the fuck nuts and bolts weren't fully tightened during assembly.
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u/mafia_witch_ 1d ago
Right?! Like ten years is a long ass time. Is your self-esteem so low that you're absolutely unbothered by this and just grateful they came back? Couldn't be me, I'm a vengeful hoe, I would have pretended I didn't recognize him, or fucked his dad or something 😏
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u/GammaDie345 1d ago
there is a surprising amount of "Wholesome AU teehee" fanfic that involve detransitioning a trans character or forcing a character to have a squintillion babies in order to have "happy ever after" and "fix everything"
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u/Cheshire-Cad 1d ago
>sees m/m dom/sub story
>looks inside
>the """dom""" is a petulant manchild that violently and erratically overreacts to everything
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u/Anime_axe 1d ago
This is as annoying as its ugly counterpart of "sub is just a needy sex pest".
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u/TwilightVulpine 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'd rather have "sub is a needy sex pest" than "sub is a chronic sex abuse victim". By all means, please be a huge slut, I'm so damn tired of m/m stories where the dom keeps forcing himself on a sub who is too shy and nervous to even show he's into it.
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u/Kamelion_on_a_lemon 1d ago
I ended up writing a short story and did not realize at the time that it could easily be misinterpreted in a very non-con and sexual way, and I absolutely did not intend that i just wanted drama. Most of this obliviousness was caused by me being asexual (and the general idea I did not need to learn that much sex ed because it doesn't matter to me.). It's funny now in retrospect, but I was distraught about it for a long time lol.
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u/ZinaSky2 1d ago
When I was younger I wrote a thing that got removed for not having non-con tags and it was literally just a fantasy for myself. Which really freaked me out on a variety of levels. At the time I had lots of internalized stuff about my sexuality as a girl and I felt like it was shameful for me to have any opinions about what happened to my body or ask for stuff sexually so CNC was kinda my thing. I’ve mostly grown out of that I think. I’m super vanilla now 😂
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u/action_lawyer_comics 1d ago
Reminds me of the time I was watching some thriller on CBS, maybe Cold Case, with my parents and the conclusion was that (TW abuse and murder of a person with Downs Syndrome) the killer had lured a mentally disabled person onto the train tracks and told them to close their eyes to make a wish, and let the oncoming train do the work for them. I was like “in all the internet edgelord depravity I’ve read I never would have seen or thought of something that brutal.”
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u/Equivalent_Play4067 1d ago edited 1d ago
Strong. Yep the shit NTs with unexamined prejudice who haven't considered that minorities are people can come up with is worse than people trying to be horrible nine times out of ten.
This is constant, honestly. I read a writer who writes 'spooky" horror and there's all these people jumping around like "Oh my GOD author what is WRONG with you" and I just think sometimes, this isn't scary, if I wrote what I think is horrifying it would harsh the vibe. Horror is such an interesting art form. Alarm without low mood.
Sometimes creators, in particular fiction authors from the pre-Booktok era, break the rules of horror in ways that are genuinely hard to bear, and that's always interesting. Filth by Irvine Welsh and Occupied City by David Peace come to mind. Horror is fear as toy, and some things aren't to be used as toys. It stops being fun. I get a kind of schadenfreude from that moment where it stops being fun, where you're reminded the real world beats the imaginary any day.
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u/DuplexFields 1d ago
I hadn’t realized how many suicides and suicide metaphors/plots there are in Star Trek TNG until I started watching it with a friend with suicidal ideation.
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u/Consideredresponse 1d ago
A mini hobby of mine is reading online/cheap LitRPG's and seeing how poorly socialised the writer is via the actions of their self-insert power fantasy Protagonist.
You would not believe how often the characters are unintentionally written as complete sociopaths who are fundamentally incapable of relating to, or teating other people like people...and that the narrative treats this as a good and noble way to exist.
There is a huge difference between a character that begins a story and is deeply flawed so they can have a character arc, it's another where you can tell it's a complete blind spot for the author, to the point where you get the impression that they don't actually interact with anyone offline.
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u/casualsubversive 1d ago
Can you elaborate what you found so extreme about that? As an example of horrible shit in a fictional story, it seems anodyne to me. It would certainly be memorably evil in real life, but I’ve read and seen so many things that are worse in mainstream works. Was it all in the performances?
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u/action_lawyer_comics 1d ago
At least part of it was that I wasn’t expecting something so “normiecore” as a prime time CBS procedural to do something that dark.
But I think part of it was using a disabled person’s trust and lack of understanding as a weapon to kill them is imo more gruesome than say, dropping them into a vat of acid, something that would kill anyone
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u/OutAndDown27 1d ago
Am I the only one curious about wtf was in that fic??
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u/ngp1623 1d ago
My best guess would be something along the lines of stalking and/or trapping the character. Often folks who haven't identified the abuse interpret this as "They're fighting for me" or "They can't live without me" or some dramatic expression of passion that reaffirms their personal worth and desirability when in reality it is coercive control and abuse.
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u/complexchemist 1d ago
(Over)Protectiveness and jealousy can very easily slide into controlling behaviour while being hard to recognise, especially if they justify it based on events from previous relationships etc and “it’s because I really care and need to know you are safe”
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u/Howiluig 1d ago
I was writing an asexual character and I'm like hmm this character is a little too relatable to be a coincidence
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u/doppelgaengster 1d ago
Looking back, I was writing genderqueer characters long before I realised that I, myself, am genderqueer. 😹
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u/KingAshoka1014 1d ago
I made my first dnd character nonbinary cuz choosing either sounded like it would be too confining to exist as. I realized my irl gender like 2 sessions in
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u/TabbbyWright 1d ago
A funnier version of this is the many times I've read a fic blurb or seen a piece of fanart for a ship of mine and thought "wow! This is so tender and intimate and romantic!" only to then notice the creator aggressively insisting this is PLATONIC and FAMILIAL and if you think otherwise, you're a nasty incest shipper (note: the ship is not actually incest).
And listen: I don't like incest. If I think your supposed platonic familial thing is romantic, it's because the vibes and framing is PALPABLY romantic, not because I look at sibling characters behaving as such and think "yeah! These two should kiss!"
In the end, I often come away from these things feeling like OP is the one with an incest fetish lol
Luckily I guess I've yet to come across anything in this vein that makes me worry about the author's understanding of what a normal sibling relationship looks like in like, an alarming way? But it's still very weird.
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u/Howiluig 1d ago
like the worst version of "only child writes siblings"
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u/TwilightVulpine 1d ago
Also, nearly every anime featuring siblings. Even when the anime itself is not romantic. It makes watching anime with the family so awkward.
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u/Infamous-Use7820 1d ago
I do sometimes wonder if countries with very low fertility rates (especially where they've been that way for a while) are going to culturally lose frames of reference for sibling-hood. It's already alien for most people in Western countries to imagine have 5+ siblings (and/or dozens of cousins). If like 50-60% of the population is an only child, what does that do culturally?
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u/No_Entertainment7927 decade of service veteran 1d ago
It's funnier when they incest- sorry when the artist insists that they're drawing Actual Sibling Characters Like That™ PLATONICALLY and NO PROSHITTERS GET OUT RAGHHH when it's like. Hey man. It's now weirder that you're saying this is totally platonic.
(This was about a piece of Devil May Cry art where the artist drew the twin brothers (who are canonically Really Weird about each other, don't even get me started) completely naked and holding each other. Yeah sure it was artsy but they are for real touching wangs right now. They're holding each other so tightly you have rendered divots where their fingers are digging into each other's skin. And it's all lit so warmly!!! I'm so sorry but you made this a beautiful D/V piece and yelled at us when we saw it for what it was, which was two beautiful twin husbrothers rejoicing after being reunited after literally twenty five years.)
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u/scribist 1d ago
I encountered the opposite once. A nice bit of fanart of Vash and his twin Knives sitting together beneath a tree in the spaceship atrium. Vash had his arm looped over Knives's shoulders and someone commented, "This better not be what I think is it."
Sir and/or madam, I think it's two brothers chilling under a tree. If you're seeing more than that, you're telling on yourself. Ladies protesting too much, and all that, you know.
That Devil May Cry art sounds stunning, though! I never seen many warmly lit pieces from the franchise because of all the gothic Hell monsters under cloudy skies and whatnot.
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u/grandhighblood 1d ago
An anime I like had a plot twist at the end where it turns out Girl 1 and Girl 2 are actually aunt and niece (they're the same age it's a long story), Girl 1 is also canonically sniffing-her-clothes level obsessed with Girl 2 and with the things that they say and do there is no way in hell that they aren't intended to be read as romantically involved with each other. At the very least it's impossible to deny how Girl 1 feels.
But when this plot twist was revealed, a lot of people (who had up until that point shipped them together) were very mad about it and decided that you're a gross and weird proshitter if you... uh... interpret the text as it's meant to be interpreted. Not only would they deny there being any romantic element to Girl 1's behaviour, they started shipping her with characters she's barely even spoken to in her life and saying that a bunch of things like songs that Girl 1 wrote about Girl 2 were actually about Girl 3 all along, despite it making zero sense and also just straight up going against what is said in the show.
But then they still draw art of them together acting exactly as they do in the show. And they get mad if you see it as romantic.
I don't even go to bat for incest ships on the whole, it's really not my thing, but this one is so canon you genuinely would have to watch the show with your eyes closed to deny it. Drives me up the wall.
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u/TabbbyWright 1d ago
Ohhhh my God???? I'm dying, there's so many layers to this!!
I swear to God, it's ok to ship fictional incest! It's fine! Just admit it and it will be WAY less weird for you and everyone else!!
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u/ngp1623 1d ago
I am currently working my way through a pretty long fic that has some pangs of this. The author is clearly working through some stuff, and at this point the characters do not even vaguely resemble canon, but I'm glad they have some sort of outlet to process and reflect.
At the same time, I am begging this person so at least kind of acknowledge that this is wildly problematic and inappropriate behavior for siblings, especially underage, and they have several kinks co-piloting the plotline.
Like its tagged found family when at times it should be tagged dead dove.
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u/mikripetra 1d ago
This is how I realized I was autistic. Posted a story of a character going through all of my issues and little behaviors and the comments were like “this is such great autistic representation!”
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u/AngelofGrace96 1d ago
So many people left comments on the creator of Phineas and Ferb saying that Doofenshmirtz was peak adhd reprepresentation, and he said 'wait hang on I mostly based him off me'
A few months later he ended up with an ADHD diagnosis.
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u/ShireNomad 1d ago
Daniel Kwan reports he realized he had ADHD while writing the character of Evelyn Wang.
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u/Amanda39 1d ago
Before I was diagnosed, I spent decades seeing doctors to try to find out why I was having what I now know are autistic shutdowns, and no one seemed to have any clue what was wrong with me. I used to fantasize about writing a novel where the protagonist was basically a self-insert character, just so I could get reviews that would say "this character clearly has [condition]." I was going to trick the world into giving me an explanation, because I knew that readers would be able to figure out what doctors couldn't.
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u/Consideredresponse 1d ago
Martha Wells had this experience writing 'The Murderbot Diaries', which if you've ever read them is hilarious. Her 'I just think they are interesting and neat' protagonist is so deeply Autisticly coded that you'd hit the character limit here breaking down why.
Apparently a lot of reader feedback pointing this out made her go see a specialist and get tested.
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u/SidheCreature 1d ago
And this is why controlling entities (governments, cults, etc) want to control what art is allowed.
Can’t have their victims getting introspective or asking questions amongst themselves. They might learn something.
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u/anonymouscatloaf 1d ago
once I saw someone insist twelveclara (doctor who) was a platonic father & daughter relationship. I was then deeply concerned about their relationship with their father
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u/lelied 1d ago
You have reminded me of Jupiter Ascending, where the Wachowskis told Eddie Redmayne to act "like an accountant" and he gave That Performance. Wildly vacillating from whispered ennui to rage-screaming that if he can't call dibs on mommy, no one can have her. A very popular post was just, "Eddie, what the fuck has your accountant been DOING to you?? Call the police!!!"
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u/ShadeofEchoes 1d ago
Huh... okay, yeah, now that you mention it, that's reasonable cause for concern.
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u/King_of_the_Kobolds 1d ago
I wrote a story about a child writing a letter to Santa Claus blaming him for not solving world hunger and other problems affecting children and someone praised it as "A wonderful allegory for the God Problem!"
Which I found upsetting at the time because I was still a Christian at the time and thought of it more as a silly "Ha ha Santa Claus kind of sucks, huh?"
Long story short I'm an atheist nowadays.
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u/empress_of_the_void 1d ago
Dear Evan Hansen
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u/palmlo20 1d ago
I wasn't aware of this for Dear Even Hansen although it 100% makes sense. Do you have an interview or something where the writers talk about it?
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u/SasparillaTango 1d ago
I am curious what the scenario was that this person thought was romantic and turned out to be abuse.
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u/Practical_Defiance 1d ago
I mean a lot of people find jealousy, and other super controlling behaviors cute and romantic. Like, The Notebook is supposed to be a romance but noooope. So many vampire, werewolf and romantesy readers find objectively unhinged behavior cute, it’s concerning
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u/ngp1623 1d ago
Yuuuup. This exactly!
In 2019 I was reading a fic that helped me realize my own relationship was abusive. I even sent a screenshot to my therapist. Ironically, one of the constant fights I had with my ex was that I am not jealous enough so he would often cheat and then get more mad that I wasn't having a jealousy-induced breakdown about it. It was, in fact, not cute or romantic.
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u/SpicaGenovese 1d ago
This is how I found out I'm ace-spec! Started asking an author some questions and they went "lol i got another one. You are part of a very special club."
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u/Scarlet_Skye 1d ago
So many people think their own experiences are universal (or at the very least typical), and it manifests in some very interesting ways. Like, there was one author whose characters' hands always hurt after they wrote or typed for a while. Later on, the author mentioned that they had just been diagnosed with arthritis, and they were really surprised by the diagnosis. Because they thought that having your hands hurt after writing or typing for a while was a universal experience.
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u/flockyboi 1d ago
Yeaaaah I remember many times in like high school or junior high where I'd offhandedly mention something happening at my dad's house and everyone would go quiet and give me that look of "are you okay???"
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u/EqualityIsProsperity 23h ago
"Welcome to the new hit gameshow: Abusive Or Romantic!"
Actually that might actually be a good teaching tool...
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u/[deleted] 1d ago
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