define “restraint”?

Like, it's bad enough for one character to get raped. Now you have another, in the same situation, but also potentially with both blaming themselves / seeing themselves as a rapist? Or feeling like the other is the perpetrator and then feeling awful about that because it was just as bad for them? Flinching from them in the aftermath even though they know it's not their fault?

Pt 1 here

Kicked in the ribs (while they're down!)

People depict a rib kick as either something that knocks whumpee flat on their stomach or that throws whumpee across the room. Please keep in mind that:

The reaction to any torso attack is to curl in protectively! The victim would not willingly expose their whole body by laying flat; we know instinctively that a curved structure disperses impact much better and our bodies will do that!

A 2nd kick is going to have to deal with flailing hands, shins, elbows, as victim tries to defend themselves

People (wisely) try to stay on their feet in a fight--unless they were conditioned otherwise.

A kick that throws someone across the room should be a heel kick. EVEN SO! It still takes a tremendous amount of strength to toss like 150 pounds of awkward weight across the room with a kick. Think of how light your foot is compared with a whole body--you'd have to be an expert at employing weight, torque, and momentum to actually send someone flying across the room if they're starting on their hands and knees.

Generally ribcage strikes don't really hurt immediately and may not even be frightening if your character is used to fights/violence.

Except the sensitive ribs at the bottom of the ribcage. Combine aching pain with some hit-in-the-gut panic.

If you want to kick whumpee face-down from hands and knees you will have to either move their arms and kick them down between the shoulder blades, or grapple them from behind with your feet on their thighs.

It's HARD to kick someone flat from their hands and knees. Unless aggressor is much heavier, or has goons to stretch victim out for them.

Why would the timid shy nerd be at a huge sketchy downtown black market bazaar? Well, she's got this beetle colony she's raising that needs a very specific kind of leaf for nest material, and there only place to get it is this one guy at the bazaar that sells that stuff. Why would the most femininely flamboyant guy ever known just happen to have downright encyclopedic knowledge about professional boxing? Well, there was this one time when he was down bad for this guy who was an aspiring professional boxer...

I know it sounds stupidly obvious when written out like this, but when you're up close to your writing, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Some time ago I finished reading a book, where the whole plot hinges on character A, who is 100% certain that character B is dead, personally getting up and coming down from the top rooms of a castle, to the gates, at 3 am, to come look at some drunk who claims to be this guy who died 17 years ago. Why would A do that, if he's sure that B is dead?

2. Convince yourself you like it actually, to survive

3. Seek it out, because you like it

paranoia

control freakism

sense of self-worth so low that it loops back around into being totally dismissive of everyone else

a warm-hearted kind center beneath 200 protective walls of bitterness that doesn't actually make the bitterness better in any way at all even a little bit

bisexuality

crushing feelings of responsibility

zero understanding of own bodily autonomy that bleeds out and affects how they treat others

a lil petty vindictive sadism they maybe don't wanna look at too hard or acknowledge

full self-awareness of all their most negative traits without working to fix those traits at all

internalized misogyny

a mysterious undefinable hunger that cannot / should not / must not ever be sated