How do you feel SJ//M handles trauma? For Bruce Rhysmale Alien Feyrug Luc//ien Tampon Rowboat Nes//ta.
Very badly. She promotes unrealistic and impossible standards of conquering trauma. She repeatedly writes about characters struggling with trauma despite drawing criticism. Bonus: she doesnât care for sensitivity readers despite having struggled with mental health herself.
B/ryceâs trauma was handled the worst considering S/jm struggled with mental health last year and it still didnât hammer any sense into her. She literally implies that you can overcome mental trauma if youâre just strong enough and says that essential oils helped B/ryce conquer her PTSD. I talk more about it here.
Eri and Cloudy briefly talk about how Rhymaleâs trauma was handled here. But s/jm basically never addresses the trauma that you suffer from by fighting in wars, by being sexually abused, by witnessing the death of his family (did he witness it?) or practically anything else because she has to hammer in how much of a badass Rhymale is (I guess you can't be strong or desirable if you're a man suffering from trauma).
Alien wasnât handled well either. She literally suffered torture for months in K/oA and S/jm wants us to believe she was up to fighting and went back to being as badass as before in just a couple days. The loss of her scars and her magic wasnât fully explored. E/ndovierâs effect on C/elaena wasnât handled well either. N/ehemiaâs death was suddenly forgotten the moment Rowboat got romantically involved with her. Losing her human body supposedly made her sad but there was zero evidence to support it except for Alien saying so in one dialogue.
S/jm never brought up F/eyreâs feelings on being forced to hunt in the woods as the youngest member of the family. And she was literally healed by love. There was no other component to the struggle. Oh, and there was Rhymaleâs magical d*ick too.
L/ucien was entirely sidelined. He was reduced to F/eyreâs pawn and taken out of the books for the most part during A/cowar and A/comaf. There was little screen time for S/jm to work with at all, but even if she had taken the opportunity, we know she wouldnât have done much good. His lover was killed but it never affected his actions or thoughts. You would assume he would either shut out people or be really protective of people he cared; and while the latter does manifest in the form of T/amlin itâs not handled very well. His feelings about being a bastard arenât addressed properly either, if memory serves right.
T/amlin was just a placeholder dude. He was never meant to have depth. S/jm just wanted to pull a âplot twistâ and reaffirm that Rhymale was a better love interest just because he didnât treat F/eyre like shit (which he did anyway) and that was all he existed for. To ensure that readers kept the F/eysand ship sailing she went out of her way to characterise T/amlin as a piece of shit. She didnât give two shits about the fact that T/amlin witnessed the death of his family, lost the woman he loved, suffered at Amaranthaâs hands and watched his entire court get destroyed. I was genuinely pleased with how F/eyreâs relationship with T/amlin was resolved in A/cowar but A/cofas came out and S/jm went back to shitting on him. She can't for the life of her write decent storylines or construct sensible character arcs.
R/owan is a little less talked about because his character has no depth apart from âmuscledâ and âmagical d*ckâ but I disliked how s/jm addressed his trauma from losing L/yria and his unborn child. She made R/owan dismiss L/yria as a legitimate person and a person he was once very in love with just because she was not his true mate. Heâs been in plenty of wars - but no trauma as a consequence of that. His terror of losing Alien was better handled but I suppose it was because theyâre actually endgame.Â
N/esta is easily handled the worst of all characters apart from B/ryce. She has to put up with this sort of bullshit, and is treated the worst of all s/jm characters (check out this link and the links Iâve left in that post).
Some other resources:
Alien losing her humanity:Â https://spaceshipkat.tumblr.com/post/180694690752/i-really-hate-how-sarah-janet-brushed-over-the
L/ysandra:Â https://spaceshipkat.tumblr.com/post/175786326822/it-really-really-bothers-me-that-lysandra-a-rape
N/esta versus F/eyre in handling and addressing trauma:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/615779427844014080/it-really-does-show-how-fake-and-transparent-sjms
Rice:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/189879636474/its-actually-super-frustrating-that-rice-is-seen
More rice:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/176953901679/i-wouldn-t-mind-rice-being-so-sexual-after-his
E/lide:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/189188046049/elide-is-only-18-and-suffered-a-lot-of-trauma-but
Tampon:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/181951368619/i-dont-like-tom-lane-but-i-sort-of-feel-that
General trauma handling in S/JM books:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/181874734059/love-can-help-but-it-cant-solve-and-sjm-is-not
Important:Â https://polysorscha.tumblr.com/post/178342196329/sjm-is-an-example-of-writers-need-to-search
https://shewhotellsstories.tumblr.com/post/166509640040/your-fave-is-problematic-pt-12-incubators-with
https://shewhotellsstories.tumblr.com/post/165800768080/your-fave-is-problematic-pt-7-trigger-warning Just gonna throw in here that her handling of pregnancy robbed women of their agency and she uses redemptive rape as a plot device and has the victim of sexual violence kill herself. Â























