I- …Um. Wow… So it’s more like you were given the choice to talk about it as if it were gossip? Is my understanding right?
9 Likes
The attacker here is the best friend of the one you would be telling. So it’s essentially the choice to not tell that person or - since the attacker would know you told - risk your relationship with them and have the attacker reveal secrets you don’t want getting out.
7 Likes
The amount of wrongful portrayals has me feeling that writing sexual assault at all on this app should not be allowed. I understand that awareness is important, but it’s clear that majority of the time it’s not going to be written with that mindset 
10 Likes
It’s like serious issues like SA, suicide and the like aren’t black-and-white like point systems usually are 
5 Likes
I’m not going to lie one of my stories does contain discussion of sexual assault but I’m writing more towards someone supporting the saviour with the after trauma
2 Likes
Bump
5 Likes
Ok I have some additional thoughts. And I just want to preface them by saying I am owning up to the fact that these thoughts are based on my own (and often very visceral) reactions and they are not a statement or assumption about other people’s intentions when they write stories.
That being said, I think sometimes authors who portray actual scenes of SA and who are trying to bring awareness to the issues facing SA survivors may benefit from questioning why the depiction is necessary. I’m not talking about SA as a plot device for LI to save MC - we know how disingenuous that is at this point. I mean people who are truly trying to address the process of healing from SA - why is showing a scene depicting the assault necessary? It’s Episode, so I know it’s not going to be “that graphic” but the decision to show the scene reminds me of the times people have demanded the ~gory details~ either in a demand for “proof” that my experiences were “bad enough” or out of grotesque fascination. Why not have characters reflecting on what was going through their mind or where they went / what they did afterwards. That gives you context for their journey of processing and healing as well. It also acknowledges that experiencing SA is farm from just a painful bodily experience (though that is certainly an aspect we should not ignore), but something that can destroy your innate sense of self and community and that’s the aftermath you spend most of your time trying to address.
TL;DR - consider how the “need” to portray specific scenes of SA to bring awareness to dealing with trauma might impact survivors of SA
My other thought…and this is a difficult one, but it revolves around the response from family / friends / community to a character who has experienced an assault. Most of the time people are appalled and press charges and the perpetrator goes to jail. Leaving aside the difficult space to hold when you want abusers to face punishment but also want to abolish prisons - bc this is not the time or place for that conversation lol - sometimes it is hard to see how many people rally around the MC when…how many of us have truly experienced this? I’m not really advocating for not punishing abusers in stories, but rather having a character acknowledge that it is not the reality for most of us. How many of us were not believed because “[that person] wouldn’t do something like that” or we must have “misunderstood the situation”? How many of us have made even more insidious comments about what we were doing beforehand? How many of us have been shut down by friends, family, schools, etc. because it was something they didn’t want to do? How many of us, if we’ve gone to the police, were told (at best) “there’s nothing we can do”? How many of us have suffered in silence knowing no matter what we do or ask for, we would be seen as being the one in the wrong or trying to “get attention.” I think perpetrators in stories should face justice or punishment and survivors in stories should get the support they need (NB: which is not ~sexual intimacy~ with some other character) so that in the narrative it is clear that SA is never excusable, but I would like to see the reality that this doesn’t happen for most of us reflected in some way.
But these are just my thoughts, and we all have many different opinions on how to approach this. I think that’s why these kinds of threads are important so you can get a wide range of perspectives and come to a well-rounded conclusion about the intentions AND the impact SA narratives have in a story.
12 Likes
Is your second point that you’d personally like to see positive plot progression for a SA survivor character (perpetrator is punished, MC is supported, etc) just with some in-universe acknowledgement that a lot of other people with the same experience don’t get that same justice and kindness? Or is it something slightly different? Just want to make sure I understand your take!
8 Likes
Yeah, mostly. I just didn’t want to make it seem like I was saying abusers shouldn’t face consequences (legal or social) just because they often don’t in reality. In another medium, I wouldn’t necessarily mind having the character deal with the reality & implications of a survivor never getting seeing their abuser face consequences but I am not sure how well that would be portrayed on Episode. And since Episode is really geared towards a younger audience, I think showing the MC be explicitly supported and the perpetrator face consequences might be a better route to take, but yes, with in-universe acknowledgement that a victory for one is not a victory for all of us and many SA survivors don’t have that same experience.
I dunno. I guess this is a difficult thing to conceptualise esp in an Episode story. I would like, regardless, for the MC to receive support because that can show people that they deserve such support after a traumatic event (or events). I think sometimes I just have a hard time seeing the way this plays out in stories when in reality most abusers still have jobs, loving relationships, social and economic capital, and people who defend them. Seeing the community disavow a perpetrator of those things might be more worthwhile than just sending the perp to jail. And I would want the focus to be on the MC’s journey in dealing with what happened to them, which is something that can only really be done with adequate supports. But I will admit my ability to be “”"“neutral”""" in this topic is severely compromised by my personal experiences, so I may be…maybe not off-base, but taking things to a level that I shouldn’t necessarily expect from an Episode story lol
4 Likes
I think I understand. Sometimes you have the need to see things that reflect the specific sadness and ugliness of your own experiences, but I agree that an app built for younger audiences probably isn’t the best place to explore that degree of it.
Portraying trauma of the aftermath of SA with tact and compassion for readers who’ve lived it requires a particularly deft hand. I don’t know how many authors on Episode could fit that requirement. It would be extremely small. I do encourage authors to read, listen, and try to become better, more compassionate writers - especially if they’re wanting to tackle something as big as this.
9 Likes
I heard this somewhere and I believe it’s a kind of rule when writing.
If it can be anything but s*xual assault, don’t make it s^xual assault.
7 Likes
bump 
3 Likes
I’m fortunate that I have never personally experienced sexual assault (though there’s the ominous guarantee of an unspoken “yet” at the end of that sentence because you can’t not be a woman and come out unscathed) so I did not use to think too much of when stories liberally utilized this trope to the point that I began to think it’s a given for any romance story to feature it at least once in any way, shape, or form in lieu of any proper segue to bring the two romantic leads together.
Since then, I am glad I’ve been educated on this topic because I did not realize how upsetting and triggering it is for people that have personally experienced assault. To have a character in a story be roofied and nearly raped and to brush it off almost immediately afterwards…it IS disrespectful to survivors and makes light of a very real and glaring issue in our society.
Why is sexual assault always the go-to subplot?? If you’re not going to implement it to raise awareness or at least pretend to care, why even bother? Would I be wrong in saying that it normalizes this type of behavior even?
6 Likes
I think the ubiquity of this trope is like…so close to getting one of the points we’re making in this thread. Which is that SA is an unfortunately common experience and portraying it irresponsibly does continue to normalize the behavior, like you said.
Honestly, I think part of the issue, both culturally and within the app, is that people are focusing on SA as primarily an experience of the body. And don’t get me wrong, SA is often a painful experience in the body - the kind where both the event and your reaction to it sticks in your muscle memory for years. But the emotional, mental, and psychological toll SA takes on a person is generally more difficult to heal through, regardless of the level of harm done to the physical body, and that’s the part that’s often ignored. Characters are saying, “well, this painful experience almost happened to my body, but since it didn’t, everything is fine.” I think that’s a very common way of looking at it if you’ve never experienced SA.
But I would honestly also say that there are probably several authors who have been assaulted framing it in the same way because they think they have “gotten over it.” And it’s not for me to decide how others feel about their own personal experiences, so maybe they have ~gotten over it.~ but I also think that if those authors took a closer look at their understanding of themselves, relationships, and how to connect with the world, they might realise they’re not actually as “over it” as they thought. Maybe that’s neither here nor there.
This is going a little deeper here, but there’s also a potentially strange power dynamic at play when someone saves you from SA or saves your life, etc. I wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be explored in an episode story, but I also just don’t want to be shown a character getting sexually assaulted.
Another reason or maybe by-product of using the trope in this way is to portray a Strong Female Character™️ (I know SA is far from being a woman-only experience, but it’s definitely most of what you see on the app). Like, Strong Female nearly gets raped and she’s able to move on immediately because shes Strong and Brave, unlike all those other girls who acknowledge they’ve been violated and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are seen as fragile and weak. Strong female characters should be well-written, complex characters with their own motivations that fuel believable choices and behavior. It’s not just about punching things or never dealing with trauma. Augh.
9 Likes
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my story does contain some details of sexual assault however this will be done respectfully.
I’d also like to point out that it’s important if people use things such as sexual harassment/bullying or use Male survivors that they don’t brush it off as nothing. As it is still something done against someones will.
Trigger warning
I have been sexually bullied as a teen and as a result I hate being touched around my waist of grabbed . This makes me panic and I have hit people as a unintentional reaction. People often tell me that it was nothing and shouldn’t effect me but it does. I was out with a friend when she spotted her boyfriends uncle, she whispered something to him and the next thing I know he’s grabbed hold of my head and is trying to kiss me. I started panicking and started shouting at him to let me go which my friend seemed to think was funny and him telling me to kiss him, but I once I got loose he did it again. Again she thought it was funny once I got him to let me go I shouted at her 1 for laughing and 2 for not helping me out.
People often seem to ignore this and say it can be brushed off
4 Likes
I have not gone through such awful experience but I agree that brushing off the assault or the attempt is really insensitive, unfortunately it happens quite often on stories…
1 Like
Yes, chiefs.
I’m a bit fortunate that I haven’t experienced anything traumatic (yet), but reading these scenes where SA’s brought up and disposed like a plastic bottle is pretty upsetting, and I can’t imagine what others who may had experienced it or just very sensitive would feel.
4 Likes
bump.
2 Likes
Bump.
4 Likes
As a Sexual Assault victim myself I feel like it’s portrayed terribly in most stories. I find it very hard to read some stories with scenes like them or similar to it if it’s portrayed badly and the MC is enjoying it because that’s honestly disgusting.
Off topic but if anyone needs help writing scenes like these please feel free to pm me, I am 99% comfortable talking about my personal experience I just want it to be known and not taken carelessly or inaccurate and most importantly spread awareness!
8 Likes