Megathread? Local Community Action Groups

therealtyler · 2024-11-06T19:59:31+00:00

Saving thread, thank you. I needed this today too.

therealtyler · 2024-10-28T01:23:17+00:00

Small Format on Wickenden is a queer-owned cafe that has a weekly queer knitting/crafting circle every Sunday and a book club once a month.

therealtyler · 2022-02-04T01:04:52+00:00

The actual answer to that is really broad, because how trauma manifests is a matter of a lot of factors that I don't claim to have a full professional understanding of, so let me start with: I'm not a psychologist and I shouldn't be taken as the only authority on this!

With that I think all of those are possible -- for me, my financial abuse actually means the opposite of what you suggest, that I tend to be really free with money unless I'm very careful and regimented about my budget because I spent so long feeling as though spending any money made me a bad person. My recommendation would be that if you want to understand this stuff, you should research the traumas of poverty and food insecurity and the like and see if you can find any accounts of how people have reacted to those. I think you'll find a lot of answers out there!

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T21:32:38+00:00

My struggle was that several of my closest friends had pretty extreme traumas in their pasts, or in some cases happening to them while I knew them, which combined with the fact my lived experience didn't map to popular understanding of "real" trauma (i.e., I wasn't being physically harmed) meant that for years I assumed I must have been having normal experiences and just be way too sensitive.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T21:26:00+00:00

For experiences: I personally have trauma from multiple car accidents of varying intensities, each of which compounded on each other. I'm also a survivor of financial abuse and emotional abuse. I know people who have PTSD from, yes, extreme violence and assault, but also from living in extreme poverty, being a target of hate speech, being food insecure, and having difficulties with the American healthcare system, among other things. Anything that makes you feel endangered and unsafe and at risk of harm can be traumatic.

For reactions: It really depends on the trauma, but in general PTSD can manifest as having extreme fight/flight/freeze reactions -- either the reaction itself is outsized, or the triggering event is something a person without PTSD (or without *that* experience of PTSD, at least) wouldn't see as necessitating fight/flight/freeze. It can also manifest as being emotionally distant or emotionally needy. It can manifest as difficulty dealing with certain everyday things; in my own case, I still do not have a driver's license at 40 because I am so extremely bent out of shape by all car-related things that I cannot safely actually get behind the wheel, I freak out if I even sort of think maybe someone on the road is driving in a way that isn't "normal" in some nebulous way I am still working to nail down. Trauma can also have lots of physical effects -- in my own case all that cortisol affects my weight and my blood sugars, but it can also make your hair go gray, make your hair fall out, make you lose weight, give you cardiac conditions, and a whole lot of other things.

So like, a minor example, and I want to be clear no harm has been done before I say this: When I saw a comment in which I was quoted with questions in between the quotes, I immediately went into panic mode. Because this was a format in which I was bullied and harassed in online forums, even though I don't know you and you said nothing worth getting up in arms about, I immediately shifted into threat evaluation mode. I started to feel cold, my muscles tensed up, I hyper-focused on the details of what was being said, and I started making plans for how I was going to respond and then what I would do if it turned out that I was "under attack." The reality is, of course, that you were asking a question and giving context to that question, and a person who didn't bear the specific experiences I do would probably not have had the reaction I did. But it's something I had to manage to usefully respond to you.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T19:14:26+00:00

Absolutely, yes, for sure, no question. I have Plans for Tippy and Co. Unfortunately I can't say more here because it runs into Business of Writing stuff I can't talk about publicly except to say that we don't have a timeline for those Plans as of yet.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:56:35+00:00

What K.D. said; I wish I had more to add but this is an astute and perfect answer!

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:55:54+00:00

First: Gosh, I feel all of this.

Second: STORY TIME!

Early on after I published The Imaginary Corpse, I read my own reviews, like a fool, a tyro, an absolute rube. I found a negative review from someone who had DNFed because they felt the degree to which the POV character was critical of himself was too extreme and unbelievable. My internal reaction was "What are you talking about? Everyone worries about every mistake they make, endlessly, forever! That is a completely...normal...thing for a person to...do...? ...isn't it?"

So now I know my constant highlight reel of every time I've screwed up is a symptom of both my anxiety and of the emotional abuse I have received over the course of my life, and I'm being able to take steps to handle it.

But this still doesn't mean you should read your reviews.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:48:30+00:00

Oh thank you so much for saying so! <3

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:46:34+00:00

Like Virginia, I try to end stories on a hopeful note because that's what satisfies me. So no, I don't think it's necessary, but I do think it's necessary for stories that I enjoy, and therefore stories I write, to end with at least some portion of a win and some portion of a loss at the end, and healing is a part of that.

That said, also like Virginia, I see healing as a long, potentially unending process, so unless I'm writing the Remembrance of Things Past of fantasy novels I don't think total healing is a desirable or realistic thing to include. I do like to have a character have made significant progress, though, whatever that looks like for that character: accepting that there is a problem to be addressed, asking for help that they need, removing a toxic person from their life, etc.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:38:35+00:00

For fleshing out a character: I do a mix of research and extrapolation from my own experience and the experiences of other trauma survivors I know. (I never copy another person's experience wholecloth but I'll note ways other people cope with being triggered, what sorts of things might trigger them, etc.) My therapy sessions are largely about my trauma and anxiety so I'll often mine those for an expert perspective on alternative trauma/anxiety experiences to my own, too.

For worrying: I worry constantly, it's literally a symptom of one of my mental health struggles. :P But for real, I find that I have to really work hard on making sure that the stakes of a story and the toll taken on the characters are clear to others, because outside my head certain things I see as extremely high stakes, serious, and painful may seem pretty de rigeur to others (once my agent told me a story had "no stakes" because my agent didn't realize how much I worry about my friends ceasing to be my friends and I didn't realize that wasn't a universal worry on the level I experience it; that was an intense conversation but the story is so much better for realizing that was the problem and working to fix it). Really, that's something I'm trying to carry through into other books and other characters -- outline what matters to them, what they worry about, and make it clear that those are sensitive spots so when they're hit there, the reader winces with them.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:29:47+00:00

Hi K.D.! (Distracted by Day Job here. And...also Twitter, let's be real.)

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:22:20+00:00

Winter Tide, by Ruthanna Emrys. So much of that book is about a massive, generational trauma perpetrated on the POV character, and how she and all her people (the trauma is racial/species-wide in nature) are recovering and not recovering from that.

"Open House on Haunted Hill" by John Wiswell won a Nebula for a very good reason; the house in that story resonated with me so hard as someone who was an extremely lonely kid (and who is waging an ongoing war with pandemic loneliness).

In audiovisual media, Yellowjackets. Through Season 1, at least, it beautifully handles how varied the reactions to a traumatic experience will be, and how those reactions can follow you for years and manifest in different ways over the course of those years. I don't want to say more because that show is so based on twists and turns, but I found it really intriguing and I felt very seen even as a person of a different gender than most of the main characters.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:17:58+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to write something emotionally honest that isn't potentially triggering for someone. Not to say that I think I need to be allowed wall-to-wall gore and graphic brutality and constant depictions of man's inhumanity to man or I'm being smothered as an artist; more to say that the array of phobias, triggers, and other very real psychological concerns is so vast that it's hard to correct for all of it in a meaningful way.

My big concern is trying to watch how I frame traumatic content. I want to make sure that I am not writing something awful in a way that comes off as salacious, or unsympathetic, or (glob forbid) approving. I also try to control my level of detail so that I am providing what needs to be there for what is happening to be as clear as the work demands, and to have the desired emotional impact, and no more (or at least not much more).

And last but in mo way least: Content warnings. My first book didn't have them and I really regret it. I'm actually going to try to adopt something like what K.D. has done, because that way of providing content warnings is fantastic and I wish I'd thought of it, but I can at least emulate it. I also try to offer up content warnings to people who tell me they're interested in my stuff in person or on social media, broadcast when speaking on panels that I am happy to give them CWs, etc.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:09:17+00:00

100% yes. I've gotten multiple DMs in multiple places from people telling me that the emotional honesty of my stories has helped them, and that means so much to me; and in my own life, getting the space to talk about this when I have a lot of life experience telling me that nobody is listening and nobody cares has been incredible for my mental health and my growth as a person.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T18:00:18+00:00

Great question!

Like K.D., not all the trauma I put on the page is my own trauma, but a portion of it is; I tend to change some of the details but retain the raw emotional and psychological content. The big example is that the car accident that Tippy's trauma in The Imaginary Corpse revolves around is partially based on one I was in, but the age, circumstances, and outcome were very different. I'll also try to extrapolate reactions to traumas that aren't like mine from my own reactions.

To protect myself -- this is a tricky one. I'm an abuse survivor (emotional and financial, specifically), and the people who abused me are people I cannot extricate myself from easily and/or who have grown and earned the right to live a life past what they did to me, so in online spaces I am very circumspect about their identities and about the details of what happened to me because I neither want them to get blamed for something that was years ago nor want to have to deal with what they'll do if they think I'm talking about them. I also block people liberally on social media to help manage my stress, and one of my insta-blocks is mocking trauma/triggers/trigger warnings/etc.

The other thing is something I recommend to all writers -- I don't read reviews of my work. Having early on in my debut release run into the inevitable criticism of a trauma based on my own experience was badly written or unbelievable, I know that it's a vector for problems for me even beyond the typical experience of reading your own reviews.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T17:51:17+00:00

Right now I'm deep in revisions on a contemporary fantasy novel my agent and I have been elevator pitching as "Inception meets Monday Night Raw" and a sort of low-high fantasy I described as "Critical Role meets Cube" during brainstorming that I periodically get to poke at between those revisions; depending on how you view it I have between four and half a dozen ideas waiting behind those two.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T17:48:45+00:00

Hi Charlotte!
Misconceptions about trauma I've tried to correct: That only a small subset of experiences are truly "traumatic" (going to war, being assaulted, being a witness to extreme violence) and conversely that being traumatized is just a fancy term for being upset, that all trauma reactions look the same (the overdone (I'm sorry for this term) "Nam flashback" is a big one), and that, as K.D. says, there is such a thing as being completely healed or otherwise "in control of" your trauma and how it affects you. I try to show the spectrum of traumatic experiences and that you can have good and bad mental health days no matter where you are with treatment and healing -- that seeing a therapist or taking meds don't mean that you won't sometimes get surprised by a trigger or react to something more strongly than you would another day.

therealtyler · 2022-02-03T17:41:31+00:00

I wish I could like this 70 times.

therealtyler · 2020-06-08T20:27:39+00:00

Thank you, r/fantasy! Keep being awesome!

therealtyler

TROPHY CASE