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stardust_rifleI just see a lot of people dunking on metaphor and X-men minorities and subtlety, and i just...don't get it?
I might be writing this from the wrong perspective, but...
Five days ago, I published a hurt/comfort fic. In it, the "hurt" was the POV character recovering from past trauma- the trauma of having been kidnapped, tortured, and turned into a vampire against his will, and the resulting PTSD attack that came when the vampire-hunting organization asked why he hadn't killed himself.
Being a victim of kidnapping and torture is a thing that happens to real people, but being turned into a vampire against your will isn't. So, I sort of wound up mapping that violent crime against the person onto another violent crime against the person, not just on that POV character's nonconsensual turning, but onto the general concept of nonconsensual turning as it exists in this universe.
So, when I was drafting, I was like "Shouldn't I do that thing that all of the SJ authors tell you to do if you're making a metaphor for something sensitive- blend reality with the metaphor? Make it so that your X-men mutant is also Black or queer, so to speak?"
And then I tried to have it so that the horrible crime against the person that noncon turning wound up being a metaphor for actually happened to the POV character.
And I couldn't do that. I don't mean "I didn't want to write it" or "It didn't work with the fic", I meant "I literally could not bring myself to put down those words on paper". It was like a wall was brought up. That's why I'm only referring to it as the "horrible crime against the person" rather than what it actually is. Which I literally can't write down without feeling like I want to vomit! Lovely!
And it's at times like these when I'm glad that I have metaphor so I can write about the inherent monstrosity of survivorhood without baring my entire soul for the Internet to see.
I might be writing this from the wrong perspective, but...
Five days ago, I published a hurt/comfort fic. In it, the "hurt" was the POV character recovering from past trauma- the trauma of having been kidnapped, tortured, and turned into a vampire against his will, and the resulting PTSD attack that came when the vampire-hunting organization asked why he hadn't killed himself.
Being a victim of kidnapping and torture is a thing that happens to real people, but being turned into a vampire against your will isn't. So, I sort of wound up mapping that violent crime against the person onto another violent crime against the person, not just on that POV character's nonconsensual turning, but onto the general concept of nonconsensual turning as it exists in this universe.
So, when I was drafting, I was like "Shouldn't I do that thing that all of the SJ authors tell you to do if you're making a metaphor for something sensitive- blend reality with the metaphor? Make it so that your X-men mutant is also Black or queer, so to speak?"
And then I tried to have it so that the horrible crime against the person that noncon turning wound up being a metaphor for actually happened to the POV character.
And I couldn't do that. I don't mean "I didn't want to write it" or "It didn't work with the fic", I meant "I literally could not bring myself to put down those words on paper". It was like a wall was brought up. That's why I'm only referring to it as the "horrible crime against the person" rather than what it actually is. Which I literally can't write down without feeling like I want to vomit! Lovely!
And it's at times like these when I'm glad that I have metaphor so I can write about the inherent monstrosity of survivorhood without baring my entire soul for the Internet to see.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-11 11:31 pm (UTC)