This might be inappropriate, and please feel free not to respond if this is too weird to say. But your posts on conditioning in whump are nice to see.
The whimpee + caretaker deconditioning posts and stories that aren’t necessarily psychologically accurate are still very comforting to me in some weird way. As someone who did experience trauma-based conditioning, though, it’s also good to see talk of how conditioning can really work in real life. I don’t know how to word this; it’s just reassuring to know that i’m not ‘making it up’ or ‘exaggerating’ what I experienced. Sorry if this doesn’t make any sense. I’ve just been thinking about it all morning.
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You've got nothing to apologize for, love. This is exactly the reason why I make these guides. Conditioning is hellish both to experience and to recover from, and it can be a validating experience to see it depicted with the gravity that really has.
The whump community is wonderful in how it draws so many different people with so many different experiences in. We have so many people who love whump for the escapism, the sadism/masochism, the inexplicable whumperflies, and every other reason under the sun for enjoying seeing characters pushed beyond their limits.
It can be easy to forget that there are survivors here, too. That even the things that seem extreme and far-fetched often have someone in the audience who it really happened to. Whump is meant to be an escape—but sometimes that escape is having someone else say, "I see you. I remember how it felt, too. You're not making it up. You don't have to be alone anymore."
Realism is my love letter to other survivors. It's my way of taking the compassion we show to our characters, and extending it to the real person other side of the page. I don't have a better way of telling a stranger that I see them, that I care about them, and that I know how much it took to survive the things that we have.
Connections like this mean everything to me. Thank you for reaching out, and for giving me a good excuse to cry. Don't let this be the last time we chat, alright? My inbox and DMs are always open.