i know that i am incredibly fortunate in so many things yet it doesn't seem fair that i should spend so much of my life and time to manage my things and my self and my 'problems' and that i need to do so much of this only to barely achieve 'bare minimum of decency' type life skills, like the ability to not explode as mega-asshole to a good friend, or to not angrily and destructively drop the ball on a responsibility, most of the time, but not always, but also because these are entirely taken for granted, nor are decent people even supposed to struggle with this, weeks of insomnia-confusion-constant puking-getting lost in 'problems'-etc get filed under haha you know me i'm a bit selfish and disorganised and somewhat of an asshole (but a likable asshole, i'd hope? oh, currently, not so much? well...). i mean the latter is a problem of strategy to maybe also address.

all of these are also what i enjoy writing. especially the 'this is a bit too much, this is a bit too little, this doesn't quite add up, but why, and aren't you just excited', and then i try to fill all these gaps with like, in-universe or meta victim blaming commentary, so to speak. this is obviously not believable-this is obviously absurd-you obviously derive a sick pleasure from this-this is obviously ill-informed drivel by a sheltered little liar. and you add a little more, you reign yourself in a bit, you add back a little more, you remove a little bit, and so on. the counterweight, simultaneously: it is that devastating!-respect the survival-respect the choices-respect the difficulties-acknowledge-look! and then back to: isn't it all wrong, look at how it is all wrong. like, emotively, as theme. obviously not a good enough writer for this to be intelligible as architecture i must assume. but i think this is what it's about, and also what i'm so defensive of.

i think i am interested in exactly the moment when violence in a story becomes likely to be deemed unreal or fetishistic which i think is when - this is not how body works, this should have had a different outcome - this doesn't seem to make sense for the setting, why is this person doing that to that person, why does this person have that done to them - this seems like a strange reaction to me - there is context missing - this is immature - this is quite too much unnecessary detail on that, or this focuses on specific things in ways i find suspicious - this seems to be erotically charged somehow without being clearly declared as such but this is [x porn] - something where the word 'porn' would get used to describe it. gaps of believability, gaps of tastefulness, gaps of 'sensemaking'. when it's too cleanly tied together in thoughtfulness and care, i will nod in appreciation and think that this is objectively of course much better than [x, y, z] but remain ultimately unmoved. if it's nothing but hot air and badassery or imagery of whatnot, obviously it is uninteresting also. i think i need - want to read fiction again. (i don't often). what i just described, i find in fanfiction most often, but i want to look beyond. obviously one more famous non-fanfiction example was the often reviewed a little life, which does all that, was criticised for all that (including i think for its emotive proximity to 'that kind of' fanfiction). a quality not so easy to actively search for.

it really went like: i was asked about my family and origins in neutral ways in a self-chosen clinical evaluation context as young adult, prompting me to look up concepts and 'appropriate answers' online: 'what does it mean when this or that or that happens' only to feel scolded by the responses ("there is no thing as gentle [x]!") and then i directly, immediately, unprompted, of my own free will, jumped straight to reading up false memory syndrome foundation pamphlets, and article after article and take after take about the watering down and selfish misuse of trauma and violence and how 'everybody wants to be traumatised these days' and 'everybody wants to be a victim these days' and shared annoyances at people's inappropriate handling of these experiences and terms and words, in testimony, in therapy, in fiction, in media, in everything, and reading up about what kind of personality pathology makes people want to fake adversities, what kind of personality pathology makes people inappropriately overrelate, and all this, again: immediately. pre-emptively (i had not called myself that, i had not dared use these terms, etc). and this is where i, ultimately, have remained stuck. an amazing social mechanism, because it was already there, right? it was already there, waiting for me, to snap shut, it wasn't created for me, i wasn't, personally, directed towards it by someone in particular, i directed myself and, here it is.

i started the fic writing project in parallel timewise with the rape studies project, both i believe prompted by a number of events. it is helpful, because, when reading about violences and rapes, i can, sometimes, selfishly get lost over it not being about me or what i know not being in it, and the fic adds selfish points of references: it could be about a character, a situation in it, then. it is also helpful, because i use it to explore ideas about how it can be like, and the limits of how things can go (wider, in my mind, than most seem to think; wider than most of what i see written). i also look forward to sharing the little chunks once a week, which is a new experience for me. to sit on so much of it, and to be unable to talk about it, since i have chosen to do this so much on my own, separate from fandom, separate from anything else, but i think a lot of what i'm doing is probably fragile like that. i also like that it creates pleasure, and is the first project of mine where pleasure and these other kinds of excavations flow together in such self-directed ways. it's less hidden than otherwise what pleasures i derive and i am more openly serious and ambitious about what i am doing than otherwise. i wonder how else this will change me.