Sensitive topics in my works

Over the years of writing, I've come a long way when it comes to writing specific topics and the way they appear in my works. If I had any of my middle school writing or even most of the high school one, I would not want to show it to anyone with how bad it all kida is, but just from a quality look of it, but also the way it dealt with some topics. I was very lucky to not write the very serious ones at that point in time and most of the problems really revolved on how bullying was written and how things like anxiety and more traditional ways of self-harm were kinda just brought up once and then never again in the stories. One can argue self-harm one is serious, but I do come from a situation where I am familiar with non-traditional ways of it (restricting oneself and denying things you love) so it's not a topic I know nothing about and I don't exactly think it was as as it might've been if I tackled actual serious stuff, which was something I wanted to do, but never got around as I was a kid who couldn't stick to the same idea for more than 3 months. This has, luckily changed over the years, including both how I handle the topics themselves and sticking to something for a long period of time for once.


My main thing that shows this one way or another, at least partially, would be Lifeless Stars. It's my baby, my first new longer works in a new fandom after I abandoned 4 ongoing multi-chapter fics at the same time in my previous one (of which 4 were all set in the same universe at the same time. not a good look). But now, it's been over 2 years of writing for idv and I'm still here, still kicking, albeit a bit slower than I'd like to. Instead of writing this, I should probably be writing this fic as today is Luca's birthday and I wanted to update it on it. Laughs.

But besides the 'sticking to the whole damn thing for once' aspect of Lifeless Stars, the other aspect are the topics themselves. Teacher/student is not a new trope; it has existed for a very long time, it's in popular romance novels, even. As of the moment I'm writing this, Alva and Luca have just gotten into the relationship, so I can't comment on how well I've done that. I'm still writing the aftermath chapter where Luca is supposed to come to the realization he's dating someone and that someone is his teacher. I have general ideas, but I can't comment on them as of now. What I can talk about, however, are other aspects of the story, which are the reasons why Luca is here in the first place, in this situation, that being his backstory.

From the tags and the first chapter of the story you find out that Luca was raped and abused by his own father over the years, since he was still a young child, resulting in high isolation from his peers with exception of Tracy, and the only other trustworty adult in his life was Tracy's uncle, unable to rely on his mother who just pretended everything was fine for the public. His father was an inventor, a professor at a university; of course he had an image and the image protected him, even with an accusation such as this. He was stuck in this loop until he was in the last year of high school, where due to an accident that heavily injured Alva and killed Alva's wife, he was finally truly free for the first time in his life. But these things carry over to everything else, they don't leave.

Due to the current story position, I still haven't been able to completely explore this aspect of his life (that also comes once he and Alva have been in a proper relationship for a while) but you can see how it affects him in some aspects. He hates looking at the mirrors because he thinks he looks like his father. He still is not comfortable entering any sexual relationships as shown in one of the earlier chapters where he had a choice in it. Just the fact that he even had a choice to say yes or no was a relevation to him. He struggles with self-harm too, in more ways than one. Previously cutting himself and later on getting drunk so that he doesn't remember anything or as a way to disconnect from problems he has in life, they're all some ways it all gets displayed. All of this is, in one way or another, the aftermath of years of abuse he had to go through, with no way out. And it's going to impact the relationship too, until he comes forward on what really happened, coming to peace with himself once and for all and then finally has something happy even in a state that he is now.


The other fics that deals with a similar starting topic in a much different way, is my flowers of eden series, the one that's also still ongoing as is roughly the same size as of the moment of me writing this. I am in another position where the fic that's supposed to unravel a lot of things is not finished, though here it's missing one chapter only, that does not change the fact that there's a lot of missing things, as this is only a halfway finished seres. It does, however, have a few fics written out of order, so there are some more things to work with compared to Lifeless Stars.

Aesop (with his Blindspot skin in the first half of the series), is a boy who struggles with almost everything in life. He can't make friends, people think he's weird, he's not good at school besides chemistry and even his adoptive father doesn't care much about him at this moment besides the basic needs that he has to take care of. When he stumbles upon the old manor that is now being visited by an earl from a different country, he finally gets something akin to proper interaction with people. Désire is nice to him, he doesn't make fun of him and is overall pleasant to the boy, of course he would keep coming back. It's only when the line was crossed, asking to sit in Désire's lap the first kiss, where things go into the grooming sphere. Chapters one and two of the fic show this in great detail how this looks like from young Aesop's perspective. To him, everything is amazing, he can't wrap his head around why Tuberose and Noir are being weird about it.  It's only in the last chapter, where he's an adult, that you see how his opinion shifted. He's still there, he doesn't have a way to leave now, but he's aware. He knows it affected him, it robbed him of his childhood. They're both in a situation where all of this is unspoken, and they do nothing about it.

'Let me down slowly' is a fic that, besides having the tittle from a song that also inspired the series into being written, has first proper appearance of Aesop as Gatto, at this point a teen This is only speaking chronologically, as there is another fic with Aesop as an adult written before this, but we'll get to that later. Here, he's met with the realization that, for the years he'd been here, it was all for Désire's pleasure, for the fact that he wanted to have sex with him, the fact that he could easily control him. Aesop had no idea what's going on on the outside much, he was always in the manor or outside of it, in close proximity. He wasn't even aware of the case that was shown in the newspapers, which somewhat reflected his situation, at least in the nature of the relationship. It's when everything crumbled down, the façade that held up his happiness was now gone. With the one last chapter of this fic left that show the confrontation between Désire and Aesop, it's the culmination of everything, after which he has to slowly accept things as they are, with no way out of it, even when offered to leave.

He's stuck in this, and he accepts it, as there's no other options.

In 'the glory at my feet' we see Ithaqua, a different character that comes in as a part of the 'main cast' for lack of a better word, as an outsider after many years and events have happened. While the main focus is on him and Tuberose, Gatto appeared in it too, quite a few times, and every single meeting they have, he or someone else says or does something that alludes to what happened to him as a child. Ithaqua understands that something happened, something got that great, but he doesn't know what. He knows someone died, that Gatto and Désire have an odd relationship, that Tuberose really doesn't like when the two of them eat cupcakes off each other's faces. Itahqua knows nothing, while everyone else knows everything. Gatto is still reprehensive towards Désire, but they just deal with it because there's no other way. While their relationship will have a look from an outsiders perspective soon, for now, this is what there is to them.


My writing has been changing even after I started writing these fics, but my intend with them has not. I planned them to be my best, if that can even be reached as I do consider 'ma petite fleur' to be my masterpiece and I don't think I'll ever write something better than that, but time will tell, as I am still young all things considered and maybe I do change my mind about it one day. Now, they are the best I can offer.

The way I write topics that are heavy received a lot of nice comments, even if mainly from friends. The way I write them and how I develop the plot, people seem to enjoy it and show it in a way that's worthy of being read. I am happy that so mainly people love it, enjoy the way I crafted the stories, it makes me happy overall and just a more confident writer overall. I do my best in everything and creating these stories specifically is so important to me.  I wish for everyone to have this confidence too. It will come with age, that is for sure and may you have it under your belt sooner or later.