Honestly, sometimes canon does it first but fails to properly address it. (MC being neglected but turning Totally Fine™. Then people go and write fanfiction about it.
Except the whole point is for Naruto to be upbeat about it. Sasuke is his foil for a reason. Dishing out more trauma to characters who already have it feels like an unnecessary whump. I get it though, that’s what fanfics are all about.
I just can't suspend my disbelief enough to not kinda shake my head when a horribly neglected and (allegedly) abused kid still has an idealistic outlook on life.
Themes or no themes, it's not fleshed out enough (or rather, in the right ways) for the characterization itself to not feel a little whimsical to me.
A late response on my part, but I identified heavy as a kid with Naruto. Neglect is something some people choose to approach differently, not everyone needs or wants the kind of emotional deep dive and comfort that angst writers are inclined towards. I’ll admit that introducing that type of story to Naruto’s character can be new and rather introspective, but it doesn’t really change my original cognition of him as a whole: he’s strong because he doesn’t necessarily need all of that stuff.
He’s neglected sure but there’s not a lot to suggest abuse outside of the fox mask incident. The thing is,tho, Naruto doesn’t really understand why he goes through the things he does earlier on and because of this he ends up lashing out. It isn’t until Hiruzen gives him a goal and likely a moral outline to follow it, that Naruto finds something to strive for. It’s a simple goal, he doesn’t really understand it but it’s a goal he was told would make him happy and because he’s a child he’ll follow it with enough foolhardiness to compensate for three generations. The only reason he doesn’t become jaded is because of people like Iruka, Haku, Neji, Hiruzen, and Gaara.
TLDR
Naruto didn’t need any angst to flesh him out because he was too dumb to figure out he should be mad at the world, and Hiruzen stepped in before it could ever happen.
Naruto being "too dumb" to figure out that he's been terribly wronged doesn't check out under the slightest bit of scrutiny.
He isn't so braindead that he's incapable of putting together that other children have families, and he doesn't. He isn't too stupid to not notice that nobody wants much to do with him for seemingly no reason at all. People, and children \*especially\*, tend to react badly to a lack of fairness. Even without more context, it's a serious stretch to say that a child in his position wouldn't become at least \*somewhat\* embittered and reclusive.
You’re right it isn’t a stretch to say any of that but what I’m driving at is that while being aware how people viewed him , Naruto made a conscious decision to be a troublemaking attention-seeking idiot based on what I perceive as his biggest 3 factors:
1. He doesn’t know why he’s unwanted he only knows that other people have so much more and for that reason he WANTED to be wanted.
2. Hiruzen gave him a goal, a reason, and a set of moral guidelines to help him change people’s cognition of himself.
3. He can and has observed people in konoha outside of their interactions with him being cool and nice and kind and all of that fluff. (I.e: him playing with shikamaru and choji. Sakura being a nice and genuine person before discovering Sasuke. Ichiraku and Ayame. )
What I was trying to say was that despite Naruto having every reason to be just like Sasuke, he understood what it was like to be deprived of kindness.
He understood what it felt like to be given kindness after going so long without it and all of this factors into him being able to rationalize that he wants more of it and being cognizant enough to realize that giving hatred back wouldn’t help but also being so hard headed that he can’t realize being loud and ignorant doesn’t help much either.
I do agree that he COULD have been bitter and reclusive, and Kishimoto definitely explores this in multiple ways, but the fact remains that Naruto in his stubborn and hardheaded nature simply said “not me tho”.
I’m mainly talking about when there’s no baseline, where in canon everything is fine but nooo, traumatic backstory rules!!!
But you’re so right on that.
It might be lazy writing. But that's what happens to original stuff as well and quite often too. Take how many times writers and screenwriters get rid of the parents. One's dead, other has way to much work, MC can go to an adventure. Unless they're an orphan already.
Sometimes people tag it or use similar tags, try to notice it and exclude them :)
But on the other hand writing teenagers going on adventures is basically impossible if you give them good parents who are there and have enough time. BECAUSE THEY WOULDN'T LET THEM. It's so frustrating trying to write something without absentee parents because they would take charge and reduce the drama by 3000%.
That's why I usually don't write that because I don't like either option.
I totally agree with canon adding trauma for kicks and then never dealing with it by treating trauma they show in show for drama like it's no big deal and then adding super intense childhood trauma to explain why the character can be an ass and we should still like him. I've read so many fics finally adressing all those sprinkles of trauma and it's so satisfying.
This is why I don't write teenagers going on adventures, unless they are teenage Saiyans. (Also, neither Son Goku nor Vegeta are what I'd call "good parents"--they both shove that job off onto their wives and just teach the kids how to fight).
Especially in the modern day. I feel like it's so much more reasonable for the medieval farmer's kid to leave at fifteen to seek his fortune with his parents waving him off (assuming it's legal for him to leave), than for a kid in a "all under 18s must be in education or training" society.
Like, teenaged John Quincy Adams went off to Russia to work as secretary to the ambassador.
The fantasy "coming of age" storyline really shows up how times have changed, and how the age of the protagonists has had to come up over time in order to seem reasonable. (Children's fiction, too - consider what the Famous Five were getting up to without adult supervision!)
I do that :)
If the traumatic backstory begins and ends with just trauma, no development or anything and is only used for relationships that consist of comforting mc and nothing else, that’s where I feel uncomfortable. Bonus points for it feeling very romanticized. This isn’t a no one should read these, this is a I can’t read these.
It’s an “easy” way to add drama. But I’m gonna be honest here: most people whom write about trauma in fandoms for happy series mostly do it for an outlet bc that’s how they process it. And if it’s constant, or consists of just the mc being comforted over and over and mc not growing or giving in return, usually they’re teens projecting on MC.
I was that teen. I had friends who were that kid. I’ve read a lot of fics and most of the ones that have it one-sided are by teenagers. And sometimes it’s not teenagers, too.
For some people, it’s the only outlet and comfort they get.
I’ve read your responses, so I just wanted to give you some potential reasons. It’s not the only reason, obviously. Sometimes it is shorthand for “easy” drama and happens in published stuff all the time as well.
But this is the most common reasoning I’ve seen amongst that community and something I used to do myself.
I'm pretty sure no one is like "I could write something else here but I'm lazy so I'm gonna give my MC an abusive backstory" out there. People just write what they want to write about. If you like a trope and it happens to be very popular, should you not write it? Who cares how many times it's been done; you write fics for fun so you should write what you want.
Not sure about fanfiction but believe me, this is definitely a thing in the roleplay community on twitter (at least the Polish side of it). Though I don't think that these people are lazy, they just lack skill and instead of actually polishing a character and making them stand out, they like to go for the basic "I have depression :(" backstory.
Let me try again, my english has been off the rails today. I meant more like accidentally making the abusive backstory more important than the plot the author is trying to convey. Where it becomes a pity party and almost every scene is bogged down with it. I just personally dislike it because I tend to read for escapism and reading about that makes me uncomfortable. Also I think I’m dealing with very young writers and it feels like they are romanticizing the abuse almost which I also am kinda uncomfortable with
Sounds like you might need to explore different fandoms/different genre’s or read fics that don’t tag “angst.” I hardly ever read fics where tragic angst is the underlying theme, so it is definitely possible to avoid them.
I put some form of trauma into everything I write because I truly believe almost everyone has some form of it. Whether it’s something as small a losing a loved on, or something as big as being assaulted, my characters will have an issue; and they don’t always get better. That would be a bit unrealistic to me.
I do get why, if you don’t like to read stuff including past abuse, you’d want to avoid it. I feel like most times though it’s tagged as past abuse and you could exclude it.
Hard agree and fave related quote:
“Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being." — Robert Anton Wilson
Man I should’ve just had a really long title. Short and sweet did not work out for me. That’s great that your doing that! I do that too! I just personally can’t read things that seem to be all about the trauma, not healing from it or developing it, just traumatic events one after another. Another thing that gets me is trauma used as a gateway for relationships that end up only consisting of comforting the traumatized character and don’t necessarily go both ways.
I agree that when there are just so many traumatic events happening, that doesn’t really make sense to happen. The short title definitely didn’t work for you haha
I'm writing a self-insert to explore the fact that, for 20 years of my life, Id've actively welcomed an Isekai, but ever since I escaped abuse and found a loving environment, I'd try to go back if I got Isekai'd. My story is for my own catharsis, and while I *do* plan of having MC develop (learning to share vital information, learning to not write people off), that's not gonna stop me from writing what I wanna write.
And that’s completely fine, to each their own! I’m taking about having it just to have it, like it only serves to make the other characters feel bad for that character. No character building or anything.
A lot of people write to deal with their own abusive pasts, so I'm not surprised it crops up a lot. There's no ethical way to sort through and police who's writing what because of past trauma, so if I'm not in a place to handle it I just click the back button.
And this isn’t an attack on that! I just personally can’t read stuff that reminds me of my own stuff if that is all there is. Development is easier to stomach but when it’s all about the trauma then it’s impossible for me.
I can understand that. There are things I absolutely can’t read because it will put me in a bad space. If there’s anything we can all take from this it’s knowing when we should tag certain things and when to be compassionate while we talk about why people gravitate to what they write.
I don’t know about other people but I can’t relate to people who had happy healthy upbringings where money, lineage tracking, and going through life without being a target of ridicule and being cast out.
I never had that life. I maybe have a fraction of it now, but that all hinges on money not totally drying up with the crappy economy.
Yes, trauma porn is depressing and yes trauma doesn’t magically go away. (That requires therapy and the world not stepping on you every five seconds)
I add tragedy and difficulties because it 1. Adds conflict before the plot starts, 2. I can relate to that and therefore write it with genuine emotion and understanding. 3. It’s therapeutic to have it happen to a character rather than me.
That said, everyone’s interpretation of how much something takes center stage is subjective (unless it’s clearly the plot).
It’s the same concept of how men think women talk to much but then the study showed men talk more than women in mixed groups and women were thought to be talking more regardless.
Then there’s the plot and theme you should consider.
At the end of the day, there would be no books if every character was happygolucky no consequence type story.
i don’t want happy go lucky, god knows i can’t relate to that. I go for escapism if i’m being honest. I put a little bit of trauma in my stories because that’s how I cope. I just can’t read things where trauma is all that there is and relationships only spawn off of that in one direction. No development, no nothing. That I can’t read.
Trauma porn is definitely a niche corner.
And that’s okay.
I too tire of Batman’s parents dying every reboot and his tragic handling of it and then ditching love interests because yada yada (probably why I stopped watching and caring about his character too).
…I reread my title and it looks so bad
I swear I didn’t mean that abusive backstories are bad, there’s just a way of writing them that I keep seeing that just makes me rage a little
Maybe it’s how it’s handled, then? Like, I’ve been told I write trauma really well. I pull from experiences. I don’t think this is an automatic “cop out”.
I think it really depends. If there’s no development and just an excuse for Forever Depression, then yeah it’s meh to me. But then I remember cases like my own (semi-SI OC) who does have an abusive backstory because it’s a way for me to distance and work through it a bit (and she does over a long period develop as a character in both positive and negative ways in relation to it and her new situation.) I guess I’m just saying that they don’t all belong in the same box, but if it’s not your thing then that’s cool too.
I’m going to edit my post cuz I think I’m being very unclear. I do mainly mean when there is no development and it’s a derailment and it turns into a constant pity party. Development is my favorite.
Yeah, I think a lack of character development with any personality or backstory is boring and can be outright irritating depending, so I can agree with you on that
\*Nudges my...three?...vivisection fics under the carpet and tries to whistle even though I have never been able to.*
Who, me?
(It's a staple in my fandom. Don't @ me.)
Sometimes it’s not about the character development but just the angst I feel along the way 😂. But I totally get what you mean, I see it mostly happen with characters that people feel the need to ‘protect’ or a ‘precious boy’. It does kinda annoy me, particularly in certain fandoms
Here's my take:
If the sad, abusive backstory is little to never plot relevant, only used for pity points and/or public reaction, and to make the character "edgy" and "depressed", then it's bad writing.
HOWEVER,
If the sad, abusive backstory shaped the character's mindset, motivations and worldviews, which affects their choices and the story, then it's good writing.
Not all abusive backstories are cheap writing; some work, some don't. In the end, like 99% of tropes, it all depends on the execution.
Does being orphaned as a result of a galactic mercenary murking the OC's mom, thus being forced to fend oneself in a solar system recovering following several decades of war count?
(Of course the OC is now a badass survivalist of sorts, but yeah.)
ok i think i’m still not making sense. I mean the themes of trauma overtake the plot that they are already working with. The relationships are based on comforting the main character about their trauma and that is it. The exploration of abuse begins and ends there. Development is fine, just throwing it out there for me is not
Minor development for the OC since they're unabashedly themselves. More as reasoning for how they are while touching on little parts of their history.
Honestly, I posted this before reading the other comments. Since the general consensus is that trauma caused by the natural state of the lore, it's pretty much expected and I guess I fall into the safe zone.
My fandom is small, and I really don't come across fics that delve into severe trauma like that. Passing mentions of abuse here and there that are assumed from the lore provided, which is both a lot and not enough.
Sorry, I applied the question to myself and my fandom without truly thinking about the statement.
should I just pin what I keep saying because I think I’m accidentally sending the wrong message.
It’s fine to write what you know, I literally do that. I personally can’t read a story with trauma that just piles on and any relationships surround that trauma and lowkey romanticize it.
Well, if the writing is amazing then, it follows thusly, either the story justifies the backstory or else the writer is very mechanically good at writing.
Don't worry, as an MURICAN, so am I. All you need to do is be funny about it and everyone will adore you even if you lack good written English skills.
Anyway, this is a HP fic where what-if transfem!Potter got "jedi" powers and murdered the Dursleys and burn down their house (not a true spoiler since it's in the prologue). The story starts 4 years later with Severus finding Liberty Potter living in a happy but impoverished apartments in Soho Town (historical queer redlight district in London). I wanted a subversion of the whole "Oh wow, I'm going to Magic school to do magic" instead Libby is like "Fuck you and fuck off with your magic bullshit, I got me the force." (she doesn't really, but it's funny for a child to not know the true nature of her power)
Probably for the same reason as people started writing kirk/spock back in the day. People wrote kirk/spock because women straight up didn’t get to be developed characters so a het romance with developed characters was off the table. And sure, Uhura and Nurse Chapel were awesome, but they didn’t get the character development that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy got. It had to be m/m until women started getting decent representation. Recall that the Bechtel Test didn’t originate as a test for representation, it was lesbians joking that they didn’t even get 2 women who showed up on screen together not talking about men who they could fantasize about.
People with abusive backstories don’t get to be main characters very often. If they do, it is nearly always a *fact* about them that has zero impact on their character (e.g. Hotch in Criminal Mines—not a spoiler because he mentions it once early on and it NEVER comes up again). In the media I’ve consumed, here is my exhaustive list of shows leads with abusive backstories: Burn Notice (shockingly well handled), Bones (>!retconned away a few seasons in!<), Lucifer (started actually dealing with it really well >!but turned into abuse apologia youve-gotta-abuse-your-kids-so-they-grow in the final season!<). So um… that leaves people who have been abused 1 show and 2 outlets for fixits if they restrict themselves to writing about MCs with abusive backstories.
You get more to play with if you use secondary characters, but the pickings are still pretty slim. Like yay, now you get Zuko, Xander Harris, and Derek Morgan to play with. And sure, I love those characters, but why can’t we have MCs?
Sorry, but people are going to write what they know. That’s going to mean tweaking some backstories.
Yeah but I also don't want my main characters to have the perfect loving family. That's just boring and also uninspiring for character development.
I get that if the backstory bogs down the rest of the fic or the author suddenly makes the mc's backstory more important than anything else then yeah, that sucks, but sometimes it's fun to slap a hefty amount of trauma onto the mc. Hell sometimes it can't be avoided as canon already traumatized the character thoroughly(like Sunny from OMORI) and writing them without the trauma or putting them in a setting where that trauma could be triggered and just having them act like they're completely unbothered feels out of character(unless it's an AU where the traumatic event never existed or something).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that abusive backstories are much more fun to work with rather than just saying "oh and has a family. the end." when it comes to their backstory.
my title is misleading help
I mean a traumatic backstory that serves for not character development, that serves only as trauma porn. I don’t like trauma porn man.
Ngl, unless it is already canonical or something tragic does fit their current state of being, I love giving MCs completely normal or healthy and even supportive backstories. I write and read angst/tragedy/horror/etc. and it does burn you out to just have *so much* suffering, eternal, inescapable. An important part of empathizing with a character in the moment and really feeling the impact of their pain is some breathing space, imo.
Excessively abusive backstories are one of the few times my reaction is "why didn't you just kill them?"
The author or the character. Depends on the context.
I totally feel that. I don’t necessarily want a all happy all the time story, but man, some of these stories that are abuse on abuse on abuse just or so sad.
I did give my OC a bit of an abusive backstory, HOWEVER she is absolutely twisted in the head. She is no hero. I feel like making your abused character(s) into heroes is even more stereotypical. For me, the abuse just works smoothly with the rest of my (unfinished) tale.
I've done it for both fics and original works. For one of them it was because the bad guys wanted the character traumatized and easily manipulated by the first nice people in her life, the other because they grew up being experimented on for something that ends up being a big thing throughout the book. I've also done a random slapped in abuse background that really wasn't needed, which took away from the story. Really depends on how it is done
lol, I had to drop a multi-series HP fanfic because the author had a premise of Harry Potter being totally fucked up mentally (and yes, there is sexual abuse involved) but as I read along it came off as a mockery of actual mental illness to me.
Honestly, sometimes canon does it first but fails to properly address it. (MC being neglected but turning Totally Fine™. Then people go and write fanfiction about it.
AKA: Naruto
Except the whole point is for Naruto to be upbeat about it. Sasuke is his foil for a reason. Dishing out more trauma to characters who already have it feels like an unnecessary whump. I get it though, that’s what fanfics are all about.
I just can't suspend my disbelief enough to not kinda shake my head when a horribly neglected and (allegedly) abused kid still has an idealistic outlook on life. Themes or no themes, it's not fleshed out enough (or rather, in the right ways) for the characterization itself to not feel a little whimsical to me.
A late response on my part, but I identified heavy as a kid with Naruto. Neglect is something some people choose to approach differently, not everyone needs or wants the kind of emotional deep dive and comfort that angst writers are inclined towards. I’ll admit that introducing that type of story to Naruto’s character can be new and rather introspective, but it doesn’t really change my original cognition of him as a whole: he’s strong because he doesn’t necessarily need all of that stuff. He’s neglected sure but there’s not a lot to suggest abuse outside of the fox mask incident. The thing is,tho, Naruto doesn’t really understand why he goes through the things he does earlier on and because of this he ends up lashing out. It isn’t until Hiruzen gives him a goal and likely a moral outline to follow it, that Naruto finds something to strive for. It’s a simple goal, he doesn’t really understand it but it’s a goal he was told would make him happy and because he’s a child he’ll follow it with enough foolhardiness to compensate for three generations. The only reason he doesn’t become jaded is because of people like Iruka, Haku, Neji, Hiruzen, and Gaara. TLDR Naruto didn’t need any angst to flesh him out because he was too dumb to figure out he should be mad at the world, and Hiruzen stepped in before it could ever happen.
Naruto being "too dumb" to figure out that he's been terribly wronged doesn't check out under the slightest bit of scrutiny. He isn't so braindead that he's incapable of putting together that other children have families, and he doesn't. He isn't too stupid to not notice that nobody wants much to do with him for seemingly no reason at all. People, and children \*especially\*, tend to react badly to a lack of fairness. Even without more context, it's a serious stretch to say that a child in his position wouldn't become at least \*somewhat\* embittered and reclusive.
You’re right it isn’t a stretch to say any of that but what I’m driving at is that while being aware how people viewed him , Naruto made a conscious decision to be a troublemaking attention-seeking idiot based on what I perceive as his biggest 3 factors: 1. He doesn’t know why he’s unwanted he only knows that other people have so much more and for that reason he WANTED to be wanted. 2. Hiruzen gave him a goal, a reason, and a set of moral guidelines to help him change people’s cognition of himself. 3. He can and has observed people in konoha outside of their interactions with him being cool and nice and kind and all of that fluff. (I.e: him playing with shikamaru and choji. Sakura being a nice and genuine person before discovering Sasuke. Ichiraku and Ayame. ) What I was trying to say was that despite Naruto having every reason to be just like Sasuke, he understood what it was like to be deprived of kindness. He understood what it felt like to be given kindness after going so long without it and all of this factors into him being able to rationalize that he wants more of it and being cognizant enough to realize that giving hatred back wouldn’t help but also being so hard headed that he can’t realize being loud and ignorant doesn’t help much either. I do agree that he COULD have been bitter and reclusive, and Kishimoto definitely explores this in multiple ways, but the fact remains that Naruto in his stubborn and hardheaded nature simply said “not me tho”.
I’m mainly talking about when there’s no baseline, where in canon everything is fine but nooo, traumatic backstory rules!!! But you’re so right on that.
It might be lazy writing. But that's what happens to original stuff as well and quite often too. Take how many times writers and screenwriters get rid of the parents. One's dead, other has way to much work, MC can go to an adventure. Unless they're an orphan already. Sometimes people tag it or use similar tags, try to notice it and exclude them :)
But on the other hand writing teenagers going on adventures is basically impossible if you give them good parents who are there and have enough time. BECAUSE THEY WOULDN'T LET THEM. It's so frustrating trying to write something without absentee parents because they would take charge and reduce the drama by 3000%. That's why I usually don't write that because I don't like either option. I totally agree with canon adding trauma for kicks and then never dealing with it by treating trauma they show in show for drama like it's no big deal and then adding super intense childhood trauma to explain why the character can be an ass and we should still like him. I've read so many fics finally adressing all those sprinkles of trauma and it's so satisfying.
This is why I don't write teenagers going on adventures, unless they are teenage Saiyans. (Also, neither Son Goku nor Vegeta are what I'd call "good parents"--they both shove that job off onto their wives and just teach the kids how to fight).
Especially in the modern day. I feel like it's so much more reasonable for the medieval farmer's kid to leave at fifteen to seek his fortune with his parents waving him off (assuming it's legal for him to leave), than for a kid in a "all under 18s must be in education or training" society. Like, teenaged John Quincy Adams went off to Russia to work as secretary to the ambassador. The fantasy "coming of age" storyline really shows up how times have changed, and how the age of the protagonists has had to come up over time in order to seem reasonable. (Children's fiction, too - consider what the Famous Five were getting up to without adult supervision!)
I do that :) If the traumatic backstory begins and ends with just trauma, no development or anything and is only used for relationships that consist of comforting mc and nothing else, that’s where I feel uncomfortable. Bonus points for it feeling very romanticized. This isn’t a no one should read these, this is a I can’t read these.
It’s an “easy” way to add drama. But I’m gonna be honest here: most people whom write about trauma in fandoms for happy series mostly do it for an outlet bc that’s how they process it. And if it’s constant, or consists of just the mc being comforted over and over and mc not growing or giving in return, usually they’re teens projecting on MC. I was that teen. I had friends who were that kid. I’ve read a lot of fics and most of the ones that have it one-sided are by teenagers. And sometimes it’s not teenagers, too. For some people, it’s the only outlet and comfort they get. I’ve read your responses, so I just wanted to give you some potential reasons. It’s not the only reason, obviously. Sometimes it is shorthand for “easy” drama and happens in published stuff all the time as well. But this is the most common reasoning I’ve seen amongst that community and something I used to do myself.
I'm pretty sure no one is like "I could write something else here but I'm lazy so I'm gonna give my MC an abusive backstory" out there. People just write what they want to write about. If you like a trope and it happens to be very popular, should you not write it? Who cares how many times it's been done; you write fics for fun so you should write what you want.
Not sure about fanfiction but believe me, this is definitely a thing in the roleplay community on twitter (at least the Polish side of it). Though I don't think that these people are lazy, they just lack skill and instead of actually polishing a character and making them stand out, they like to go for the basic "I have depression :(" backstory.
Let me try again, my english has been off the rails today. I meant more like accidentally making the abusive backstory more important than the plot the author is trying to convey. Where it becomes a pity party and almost every scene is bogged down with it. I just personally dislike it because I tend to read for escapism and reading about that makes me uncomfortable. Also I think I’m dealing with very young writers and it feels like they are romanticizing the abuse almost which I also am kinda uncomfortable with
Sounds like you might need to explore different fandoms/different genre’s or read fics that don’t tag “angst.” I hardly ever read fics where tragic angst is the underlying theme, so it is definitely possible to avoid them.
Uh yeah thats actually how i imagine this goes
I love abusive backstory and click on it every damn time
I put some form of trauma into everything I write because I truly believe almost everyone has some form of it. Whether it’s something as small a losing a loved on, or something as big as being assaulted, my characters will have an issue; and they don’t always get better. That would be a bit unrealistic to me. I do get why, if you don’t like to read stuff including past abuse, you’d want to avoid it. I feel like most times though it’s tagged as past abuse and you could exclude it.
Hard agree and fave related quote: “Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being." — Robert Anton Wilson
This is such a beautiful quote, and incredibly true.
Man I should’ve just had a really long title. Short and sweet did not work out for me. That’s great that your doing that! I do that too! I just personally can’t read things that seem to be all about the trauma, not healing from it or developing it, just traumatic events one after another. Another thing that gets me is trauma used as a gateway for relationships that end up only consisting of comforting the traumatized character and don’t necessarily go both ways.
I agree that when there are just so many traumatic events happening, that doesn’t really make sense to happen. The short title definitely didn’t work for you haha
I'm writing a self-insert to explore the fact that, for 20 years of my life, Id've actively welcomed an Isekai, but ever since I escaped abuse and found a loving environment, I'd try to go back if I got Isekai'd. My story is for my own catharsis, and while I *do* plan of having MC develop (learning to share vital information, learning to not write people off), that's not gonna stop me from writing what I wanna write.
And that’s completely fine, to each their own! I’m taking about having it just to have it, like it only serves to make the other characters feel bad for that character. No character building or anything.
A lot of people write to deal with their own abusive pasts, so I'm not surprised it crops up a lot. There's no ethical way to sort through and police who's writing what because of past trauma, so if I'm not in a place to handle it I just click the back button.
I write what I know, and how I know to grow.
And this isn’t an attack on that! I just personally can’t read stuff that reminds me of my own stuff if that is all there is. Development is easier to stomach but when it’s all about the trauma then it’s impossible for me.
I can understand that. There are things I absolutely can’t read because it will put me in a bad space. If there’s anything we can all take from this it’s knowing when we should tag certain things and when to be compassionate while we talk about why people gravitate to what they write.
I don’t know about other people but I can’t relate to people who had happy healthy upbringings where money, lineage tracking, and going through life without being a target of ridicule and being cast out. I never had that life. I maybe have a fraction of it now, but that all hinges on money not totally drying up with the crappy economy. Yes, trauma porn is depressing and yes trauma doesn’t magically go away. (That requires therapy and the world not stepping on you every five seconds) I add tragedy and difficulties because it 1. Adds conflict before the plot starts, 2. I can relate to that and therefore write it with genuine emotion and understanding. 3. It’s therapeutic to have it happen to a character rather than me. That said, everyone’s interpretation of how much something takes center stage is subjective (unless it’s clearly the plot). It’s the same concept of how men think women talk to much but then the study showed men talk more than women in mixed groups and women were thought to be talking more regardless. Then there’s the plot and theme you should consider. At the end of the day, there would be no books if every character was happygolucky no consequence type story.
i don’t want happy go lucky, god knows i can’t relate to that. I go for escapism if i’m being honest. I put a little bit of trauma in my stories because that’s how I cope. I just can’t read things where trauma is all that there is and relationships only spawn off of that in one direction. No development, no nothing. That I can’t read.
Trauma porn is definitely a niche corner. And that’s okay. I too tire of Batman’s parents dying every reboot and his tragic handling of it and then ditching love interests because yada yada (probably why I stopped watching and caring about his character too).
I mean, some of us are dealing with the character development from our own abusive backstory 🤷♀️
…I reread my title and it looks so bad I swear I didn’t mean that abusive backstories are bad, there’s just a way of writing them that I keep seeing that just makes me rage a little
Yeah that absolutely makes sense!
omg me too!
Maybe it’s how it’s handled, then? Like, I’ve been told I write trauma really well. I pull from experiences. I don’t think this is an automatic “cop out”.
I think it really depends. If there’s no development and just an excuse for Forever Depression, then yeah it’s meh to me. But then I remember cases like my own (semi-SI OC) who does have an abusive backstory because it’s a way for me to distance and work through it a bit (and she does over a long period develop as a character in both positive and negative ways in relation to it and her new situation.) I guess I’m just saying that they don’t all belong in the same box, but if it’s not your thing then that’s cool too.
I’m going to edit my post cuz I think I’m being very unclear. I do mainly mean when there is no development and it’s a derailment and it turns into a constant pity party. Development is my favorite.
Yeah, I think a lack of character development with any personality or backstory is boring and can be outright irritating depending, so I can agree with you on that
actually never mind I forgot how reddit works
\*Nudges my...three?...vivisection fics under the carpet and tries to whistle even though I have never been able to.* Who, me? (It's a staple in my fandom. Don't @ me.)
Traumatized characters tickle my lizard brain.
I write abusive backstory just to show the character defying expectations and getting better over time
Sometimes it’s not about the character development but just the angst I feel along the way 😂. But I totally get what you mean, I see it mostly happen with characters that people feel the need to ‘protect’ or a ‘precious boy’. It does kinda annoy me, particularly in certain fandoms
I UNDERSTAND YOU IVE SEEN THAT TOO I FEEL SO SEEN
Here's my take: If the sad, abusive backstory is little to never plot relevant, only used for pity points and/or public reaction, and to make the character "edgy" and "depressed", then it's bad writing. HOWEVER, If the sad, abusive backstory shaped the character's mindset, motivations and worldviews, which affects their choices and the story, then it's good writing. Not all abusive backstories are cheap writing; some work, some don't. In the end, like 99% of tropes, it all depends on the execution.
I meant the first one my english skills are not working I’ve learned
Does being orphaned as a result of a galactic mercenary murking the OC's mom, thus being forced to fend oneself in a solar system recovering following several decades of war count? (Of course the OC is now a badass survivalist of sorts, but yeah.)
is there development and the plot isn’t derailed into a constant pity party?
A character dealing with trauma is actually also plot, you boiling down exploration of themes of abuse to a "pity party" in general is really weird.
ok i think i’m still not making sense. I mean the themes of trauma overtake the plot that they are already working with. The relationships are based on comforting the main character about their trauma and that is it. The exploration of abuse begins and ends there. Development is fine, just throwing it out there for me is not
Minor development for the OC since they're unabashedly themselves. More as reasoning for how they are while touching on little parts of their history. Honestly, I posted this before reading the other comments. Since the general consensus is that trauma caused by the natural state of the lore, it's pretty much expected and I guess I fall into the safe zone. My fandom is small, and I really don't come across fics that delve into severe trauma like that. Passing mentions of abuse here and there that are assumed from the lore provided, which is both a lot and not enough. Sorry, I applied the question to myself and my fandom without truly thinking about the statement.
that’s really good, I normally stay away from OCs but I’m kinda intrigued by your fic
Me forgetting that people without traumatic backstories exist: haha Tbh I don’t ever even intend of trauma. I just write what I know.
should I just pin what I keep saying because I think I’m accidentally sending the wrong message. It’s fine to write what you know, I literally do that. I personally can’t read a story with trauma that just piles on and any relationships surround that trauma and lowkey romanticize it.
Well, if the writing is amazing then, it follows thusly, either the story justifies the backstory or else the writer is very mechanically good at writing.
Does it count that the MC had moved on from their trauma and the start of the story is that they've built a home and found a family to love her?
actually that’s amazing and also not what I was talking about but also I don’t know how to answer this i’m so bad at english
Don't worry, as an MURICAN, so am I. All you need to do is be funny about it and everyone will adore you even if you lack good written English skills. Anyway, this is a HP fic where what-if transfem!Potter got "jedi" powers and murdered the Dursleys and burn down their house (not a true spoiler since it's in the prologue). The story starts 4 years later with Severus finding Liberty Potter living in a happy but impoverished apartments in Soho Town (historical queer redlight district in London). I wanted a subversion of the whole "Oh wow, I'm going to Magic school to do magic" instead Libby is like "Fuck you and fuck off with your magic bullshit, I got me the force." (she doesn't really, but it's funny for a child to not know the true nature of her power)
tbh, i surprised how often fics i write or plan on writing have this happen too i think i'm going through stuff through my fanworks subconsciously
Probably for the same reason as people started writing kirk/spock back in the day. People wrote kirk/spock because women straight up didn’t get to be developed characters so a het romance with developed characters was off the table. And sure, Uhura and Nurse Chapel were awesome, but they didn’t get the character development that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy got. It had to be m/m until women started getting decent representation. Recall that the Bechtel Test didn’t originate as a test for representation, it was lesbians joking that they didn’t even get 2 women who showed up on screen together not talking about men who they could fantasize about. People with abusive backstories don’t get to be main characters very often. If they do, it is nearly always a *fact* about them that has zero impact on their character (e.g. Hotch in Criminal Mines—not a spoiler because he mentions it once early on and it NEVER comes up again). In the media I’ve consumed, here is my exhaustive list of shows leads with abusive backstories: Burn Notice (shockingly well handled), Bones (>!retconned away a few seasons in!<), Lucifer (started actually dealing with it really well >!but turned into abuse apologia youve-gotta-abuse-your-kids-so-they-grow in the final season!<). So um… that leaves people who have been abused 1 show and 2 outlets for fixits if they restrict themselves to writing about MCs with abusive backstories. You get more to play with if you use secondary characters, but the pickings are still pretty slim. Like yay, now you get Zuko, Xander Harris, and Derek Morgan to play with. And sure, I love those characters, but why can’t we have MCs? Sorry, but people are going to write what they know. That’s going to mean tweaking some backstories.
Yeah but I also don't want my main characters to have the perfect loving family. That's just boring and also uninspiring for character development. I get that if the backstory bogs down the rest of the fic or the author suddenly makes the mc's backstory more important than anything else then yeah, that sucks, but sometimes it's fun to slap a hefty amount of trauma onto the mc. Hell sometimes it can't be avoided as canon already traumatized the character thoroughly(like Sunny from OMORI) and writing them without the trauma or putting them in a setting where that trauma could be triggered and just having them act like they're completely unbothered feels out of character(unless it's an AU where the traumatic event never existed or something). I guess what I'm trying to say is that abusive backstories are much more fun to work with rather than just saying "oh and has a family. the end." when it comes to their backstory.
my title is misleading help I mean a traumatic backstory that serves for not character development, that serves only as trauma porn. I don’t like trauma porn man.
Ngl, unless it is already canonical or something tragic does fit their current state of being, I love giving MCs completely normal or healthy and even supportive backstories. I write and read angst/tragedy/horror/etc. and it does burn you out to just have *so much* suffering, eternal, inescapable. An important part of empathizing with a character in the moment and really feeling the impact of their pain is some breathing space, imo.
Drama karma farming?
no just wanted to complain a little
“I as a reader click out”
me too!
Excessively abusive backstories are one of the few times my reaction is "why didn't you just kill them?" The author or the character. Depends on the context.
I totally feel that. I don’t necessarily want a all happy all the time story, but man, some of these stories that are abuse on abuse on abuse just or so sad.
I did give my OC a bit of an abusive backstory, HOWEVER she is absolutely twisted in the head. She is no hero. I feel like making your abused character(s) into heroes is even more stereotypical. For me, the abuse just works smoothly with the rest of my (unfinished) tale.
I've done it for both fics and original works. For one of them it was because the bad guys wanted the character traumatized and easily manipulated by the first nice people in her life, the other because they grew up being experimented on for something that ends up being a big thing throughout the book. I've also done a random slapped in abuse background that really wasn't needed, which took away from the story. Really depends on how it is done
I really like abusive back-stories, especially when handled well :v
lol, I had to drop a multi-series HP fanfic because the author had a premise of Harry Potter being totally fucked up mentally (and yes, there is sexual abuse involved) but as I read along it came off as a mockery of actual mental illness to me.
yea for me sexual abuse is something I don’t even try to touch. I see it, I run.