A Modicum of Empathy

 

Yesterday I mentioned how much I love reading the comments on my stories. The good, the bad, I usually love just about everything that I read. If someone has taken the time to submerge themselves in a world that I've created, and they have then decided to take even more time to comment, or better yet, debate with someone else about the characters and the world that formerly just existed in my head, I think that's pretty much the best thing ever.

However, I do have one serious pet peeve when I'm reading a certain sort of comments that always makes me wince. 

Stumbling across these sorts of comments are the one time where I have to hold back to keep from unloading with a double barreled Mega-Rant, by reminding myself that I do not need to set someone straight, just because they have an internet connection and apparently felt the need to give me their two cents about my main character and how utterly idiotic they think she is. 

To be clear, that isn't what bothers me. People are free to dislike whichever characters they want. That's fine. I want you to feel for the characters. Good, bad, whatever. That doesn't even scratched the surface. 

But if you're still here, and have survived my four paragraph mini-rant, please let me explain my complaint. 

A lot of people, or at least a vocal few, seem to want these perfect female heroines, who are supposed to be brave, and pure, and as unblemished as driven snow. These sought after characters need to be strong, and their decisions must be flawless. 

The men can usually be whatever they want, because that seems to matter much, much less from what I can tell. Or maybe it doesn't because one of the molds that I have tried to break with my writing has been the Alpha as a complete and total ass, mostly because I feel like that's been done to death in so many werewolf stories. 

Yes, for whoever is about to say it, not all the Alphas in my stories are good guys, but I have tried to make it so the status quo in my stories isn't that the main male character starts the story as a bad guy, because when I started reading werewolf stories I felt like that was nearly every story I read, along with the pure female virgin white wolf with super powers that was going to save everyone with a last minute deus ex machina move that would leave everyone stunned and awed. 

Now I'm not going to say that there aren't some very good stories out there that fit within those parameters, but when I thought "I'm going to try to write a story in this genre" I wanted to at least be a little bit different.

But I digress, back to the point, because I promise I'm not intentionally trying to dance around it. 

Let's get back to those comments and talk about why they bug me. 

Usually the comments that get on my nerves go something like this: 

"Dani so stupid. She's the worst character ever. I don't understand why she acts like this but I could write a better character in my sleep. None of what she's doing makes sense. I can't even read this crap."

A lot of the time these comments center around Dani running away, pulling away from Luca, or reacting to something traumatic in her past. These parts often resonate with people who've actually experienced trauma, while setting off people who haven't who "just don't understand." 

So here, in my tiny corner of the internet, I'll offer my 2 cents:

I've personally experienced trauma of the physical and sexual variety. 

When I write a character like Dani, I draw from my personal experiences of my own trauma and what having PTSD in the aftermath was like. The nightmares and disassociation, the difficulty I had with boundaries and trusting others, and the self harm, to just begin to scratch the surface of what I dealt with nearly two decades ago, when I first began writing over and over again about what had happened to me, as a way to try to process things. Because I guess that's what writers do, we write.

Obviously the stories that I write now are fiction, because there are werewolves and a lot of the plot is totally fantastical. But I borrow a lot of the trauma responses and Dani's reactions from real life, especially her reactions later on, from my own experiences. Writing has always been healing for me, and I find that it can be helpful for others too, who have walked the same path, to know that they aren't alone.

I didn't always handle things spectacularly or make the best choices, both in life or in relationships, although thankfully I had years with a great therapist that helped me work through a lot of it.  

And I guess a little part of me hopes that maybe the people who "don't get it" might manage to understand it, just a little bit, without having to actually go through it. That they might finish the story with a modicum of empathy which was missing when they first began commenting.

Okay, that might not be totally true. Part of me still wants to bust in with a snarky comment every time I get one of those comments about how much Dani sucks for dealing with what she's dealing with, but I figure I probably should probably put more energy in responding appreciatively to awesome comments than wasting time on mean ones. I mean I'm pretty lucky, because most of my comments are pretty amazing, just like most of my readers. 

Anyways I've rambled on for way longer than I've meant to. Hope y'all are having a good night.