If you write, you probably write depressed characters without even realizing it. Please think about that. · 4:06am Jul 17th, 2018
Because everyone wanted another post about mental illness.
I don't really want to turn into that person, but it's been a long year and a half (well, year and five months, to the day) and a long [unknown period greater than half my life] before that, so let's do this.
Depression, which comes in multiple flavors, is the most common mental illness out there and you know people who have it. (Unless you're a hermit who doesn't know anyone and you're definitely not afflicted yourself.) This means that it's the most commonly portrayed mental illness. It also means that it tends to slip through the "very special episode" filter because creators think of themselves as making "a character like [name of someone they know]" instead of "a character with depression".
Sometimes that gets us some really good characters. I give you: Eeyore. Or for a more self aware version, Marvin the Paranoid android who Douglas Adams' mother insisted was based on Eeyore and not on [that kid Adams went to school with] like Adams himself thought.
Sometimes that gets us Bella Swan. If you think reading Bella Swan is hard, try being her. Day in, day out, a walking mass of contradiction guided only by the principle that if something it makes you feel worse then it must be true (regardless of whether it makes sense in the context of the other things you believe) who can't see an exit from the pain that is life other than ceasing to exist as a human being. (Darkness take me, for the world hurts so much.)
It's . . . a mixed bag.
Now, onto Fimfic.
Today I read a fic that was, I think, trying to be over the top funny.
It didn't come across that way for me. Sunset did something that she shouldn't have, a violation of trust and a relationship, and when that came to light she said that, far from thinking the person betrayed wasn't good enough for her, she didn't think she was good enough for anyone, a bunch of stuff about how she was a horrible person and worthless, and . . . the dialogue was honestly hard to read without imagining Sunset sinking to the floor, pulling her knees into her chest, and rocking back and forth in a very common, but often fruitless, motion of self-comfort.
Which is to say, Sunset came across as having depression and having it bad. Probably chronic depression augmented by a major depressive episode she was right in the middle of.
Like, I could write volumes on how a single paragraph screamed out "CHARACTER WITH DEPRESSION HERE!" and that's before we get to the context, which just makes it all the more obvious.
The fic then ended with Sunset condemned to an extended period of extreme (but still in the pg to pg13 range) degradation and humiliation as punishment for her misdeed.
Because that's totally how depressed people should be treated after they act out in response to feelings of worthlessness and/or anhedonia.
And, as I say, I think it was meant to be funny. Sunset's outburst of, essentially, I'm worthless and responsible for everything that is bad in the world was, I believe, meant to be over the top (in spite of the fact that it's well within the range of normal) and the punishment was meant to be a punchline (with in-kind over the topness.)
It didn't come across that way to me, and I'm not laughing.
Thus this post.
When you're writing it's important to remember that things you would never do and/or things that strike you as entirely unrealistic and even comical may be normal for others. What you initially think of as the stuff of farce could very well be completely in line with other people's day to day experience.
If you don't remember that then you get stories like the one I just read.
The one I just read was one where we have a realistic portrayal of someone suffering from really bad depression coping via partaking in emotionally loaded behavior in rash and socially unacceptable ways (colloquially: acting out) and finally having others exploit her emotional problems (and misdeeds, but mostly the emotional problems) to put her in a subservient (indeed servile) role in an unhealthy relationship with an incredibly toxic power dynamic.
And people who don't see how closely, and painfully, this maps onto real world experiences probably would never have guessed that such a story would leave someone like me horrified and feeling, emotionally, like shit. Because they never thought about the fact that there are people for whom that outline is perfectly reasonable.
And thus this post, in which I ask one simple thing: think about it.
I'm not saying not to write your story, just think about if the things that are entirely imaginary or fantastical for you might be someone else's real life. And if it might, what message are you sending to that person, or to people like them? And, lastly, do you want to send that message?
I think I used to write like that, back in high school and middle school especially. Found one of my old journals just the other day. Forgot how grim and downcast younger me was. Hadn’t thought about that in years.