I just finished "i am an exit" and I am obsessed. Oh my god, you really do understand Bucky better than anyone. You also understand the intersection between sexual and medical trauma in a way no one else does - I felt so fucking seen by how you wrote Bucky experiencing them, the ways they overlap and feed into each other.
I have never seen another person talk about this connection before and I felt kind of crazy about it. Like, on a logical level, it makes perfect sense, but the complete lack of discussion of it made it feel like I am the only person in the universe experiencing this. But now I feel understood. Me and Bucky 🤝.
I am super, super curious about how/if Bucky might eventually seek medical care for... the everything. It seems like if that's something he'll ever want to do, it won't be for a very long time unless some sort of crisis forces his hand. Of course, his medical history makes various crises entirely possible (mwahahaha).
I'm really, really happy that you liked it and felt seen by it.
"Intersection of medical and sexual trauma" was one of my big reasons for writing it-- or, I guess, it was one of the Big Ideas that was behind my writing choices, and I was initially unsure about how much to get into it as a theme, but I went all in, and it was just, so, so cathartic and healing to write, and it sounds like it made many people feel comforted and seen. So I'm happy I dug into The Unthinkable Nasty in all its nastiness.
"the complete lack of discussion"-- EXACTLY, and I don't want anyone to feel the level of self-hatred and self-blame I felt.
You'd be amazed at how unable I was to write or even think about this topic even a few years ago. Before my brain latched onto The Bucky, I had OCs and original stories that dealt with similar themes, and indulging that was pivotal in getting to the point where I could approach The Bad Things mentally without my brain going on complete lockdown, but this fic was going a step further in making the sexual trauma part explicit and having that actually acknowledged.
Which, up until recently I had an aversion to reading about sexual trauma, which honestly I think was due to a sense that I "should" feel icky about it rather than actually finding it triggering?
Plus the many terrible and shitty ways that published stories treat rape. Which, I think, come from this cultural idea that no one "should" want to read about rape.
My sister has read a lot of YA books and she brings this up to me, and it was something that I had noticed too: the way it's so acceptable and standard to have sexual violence as an omnipresent radiation in the story, but so insanely taboo to have the main character be actually affected by it. Like I specifically remember the book "an ember in the ashes" by Sabaa Tahir because it constantly threatened the main character with rape but there was a such a tangible sense that she had Plot Armor against it, even though just about every single non-POV female character had been raped (not that the story really dealt with this.)
And apparently this is a common thing in YA novels. There's so much casual discussion of sexual violence but such a strong sense that the main character Cannot be raped, like it would be unthinkable to tell a story about that happening.
In basically all published SFF I've read, sexual violence is either insanely trivialized or treated as like, this indescribable black hole that can't even be referred to in words that makes the character's entire personality "victim" afterward and basically ends their character arc.
What made all of this dawn on me in a real way was...discovering what Hydra Trash Party means and being like "Oh! So these are the problematic fics I've heard so much about!"
When I was a creative writing major I read so many, SO MANY creative nonfiction essays and poems that were like... the only acknowledgement I found of anything that I was feeling, anywhere, ever, but they were always like. Completely raw stream of consciousness traumadumping that was saturated with this feeling that the author was plaintively begging me, as the reader, to be like "Yep, that's Real Trauma. You're allowed to be traumatized." The lack of compassion the author had upon themselves was so palpable and corrosive.
The author was vivisecting themselves for an audience, flatly reciting their traumas in a way that was alienating and clinical, excising a lot of the feelings and judgments of the author. I think the act of submitting and publishing those kinds of works was seeking some kind of validation or recognition, and somehow being compassionate to oneself or even talking about "what it felt like" instead of "the cold facts of what happened" was incompatible with that.
So I kept reading these fuckass Literary essays and poems and getting megatriggered and spiraling and crashing out.
Fucked up fanfiction feels like the polar opposite of that. It really digs into and wallows in "what it felt like," driven by the sick curiosity of "Oh, wouldn't it be messed up if THIS happened."
Instead of being constrained by "Oh, what happened to me was not That Bad, so I have to filter my feelings and experiences through some pretentious metaphor about a beached whale dying to give it Literary Merit and therefore Make It Valid," you simply come up with the worst thing you can think of, write about it happening to Blorbo in loving detail, and write about Blorbo feeling the biggest awfulest ugliest nastiest feelings containable in a human body. And you feel so much better.
I'm rambling, woops. The Stevequel will definitely get into Bucky's "seeking trauma-informed medical care" arc, and it's going to be. like, extensively self-indulgent. I've been writing some scenes and i have a lot of feelings about them.
I have plans for medical crises already. There will be some very angsty and emotionally difficult medical whump scenes. But the importance of Bucky being able to feel safe is going to be paramount.
Actually a big part of it is going to be Steve coming to terms with the fact that he has medical trauma as well and that his own self-cruelty in regards to that, his attitude of "well it sucks but you just have to get over it," is hurting Bucky a lot, and he has to learn to have self-compassion even though that's hard and scary and feels like exposing himself as a weakling.
We are going to be exploring Steve's internalized ableism and how it affects him, and his complicated feelings about his new body, and it's going to be so so so good so yummy.
Thank you for this message, really made me happy :)
