Mankira · 5h
I want to start this by saying that I’m really not trying to be rude, I’m genuinely curious and want to understand things about this sort of stuff better
I know your StrawPage says you’re a victim of a lot of the things you write about, but I’m curious how you’re into them after that happened? Is it not triggering to read and write about? /genq
The way i typed out my response and then accidentally refreshed the page and lost it all I’m gonna cry </3
Though others do mind this sort of question so it’s not good to just ask willy-nilly, I don’t mind expanding on it, so you’re alright anon! Don’t worry about it!
That being said, this reply is going to have themes of IRL abuse (including incest, (C)SA, DV, etc) in it in order to explain, so please be careful while reading!! I’ll keep it as non-explicit as possible, but do be warned it’ll be hinted at and mentioned.
For me, there’s a handful of things that work through my brain in relation to these more taboo kinks. These aren’t the things that go through everyone’s brains, just my own.
Firstly, why I’m attracted to it in the first place. Since my abuse started when I was very young (under the age of three), my brain adapted to it and grew up on it. As such, the way I process sex and what’s sexy is a bit different from others. As a sort of way to protect me, my brain made me feel that certain things were “attractive” that wouldn’t be otherwise, as a sort of protection. It’s less traumatizing if my brain has me be into it, basically, because it can feel like something wanted instead of a violation. Those feelings, like other feelings caused by trauma, lingered even after I was no longer being abused. It’s similar to kinks like CNC, sadomasochism, and ageplay developing in response to certain types of trauma, which brings me to my next point:
I can click out at any time. I actively have consent to continue writing/reading or to stop, and that’s important. It makes me feel like I have some control over what happened, and that helps me with some of my anxiety around it. Via that sense of control, certain things surrounding it become less triggering, because I can reclaim the experience in my head as just a “part of my life” and not something that haunts me every second. It’s part of the reason I stress being referred to as an object and by it/its so much as well, it’s a reclamation of the dehumanization I went through throughout my life. Think of it like taking a bad memory and finding ways to make it feel less daunting. The fear and stress is still there, but the more I can find ways to control it in my mind, the less that it grips at me.
The therapy aspect. By properly expanding on my memories and turning them into something fictional that I can control, I’m able to process what happened in a safe environment. It’s not too different from journaling. I just happen to share those journal entries, like some people do with a vent twitter or something similar. It’s a way of safely going through my memories in a space that can’t hurt me and I can even enjoy myself with. It’s something that is both personal and creative.
I have personally had dark fiction that others have shared help me, as well. Reading stories of characters being abused the same way I was didn’t normalize it like some people seem to think it will, but made me realize that something was wrong. I never thought of my situations as rape, abuse, grooming, etc. until I saw other people label their stories that way with themes that echoed things I experienced. It was really a hand reached out to me that helped me figure out something was wrong, and I really appreciate dark fiction writers for giving me that. It also helped validate my feelings on it, because writers (ones that some people would consider “romanticizing it” based on the way they wrote) mimicked my fawn responses and hypersexuality in their writing. Despite it being that the victim seemed to want it and acted such, the way they tagged it made it pretty clear that something was wrong, and that helped me sort some of my feelings out.
Besides my personal stuff, I do also appreciate dark fiction/DDDNE from a literary standpoint as well as a kink one!! I think that there’s a lot you can explore when you let your themes wander into ones that are darker. There’s parts of a character you don’t truly understand until you make them face the worst, and I appreciate how much you can learn from a character based on these situations. Kinda like a thriller, you could say. I find the psychology of characters fascinating, and Dead Dove works explore a side that a lot of people are scared to.
