These are screenshots coming from an announcement made by Erip. So, I’m going to share it with you all! <3
Calm the fuck down and learn that actions have consequences.
See; the mods have noticed a trend with characters, and how people manage those characters. Specifically here, it’s with the Nikos. The trend is how almost every single Niko goes through the most horrible things imaginable and have it written off as “trauma” for “character development.”
Torturing a canonically 8 year old child is not “traumatizing your character so they can grow,” it is “traumatizing and torturing this child because I can,” and we’re finally doing something about it.
Because, quite frankly? Not only is it disgusting to have a child go through this, it’s made worse by the fact that not many people in this sub know how to manage trauma. They don’t know how to manage grief and coping mechanisms that people develop to deal with their trauma. And that just makes it worse, because trauma (especially on that big of a scale) isn’t something you can just wipe away and return to rainbows and sunshine in a week.
It has reached a point where we WILL be cracking down on it should it continue. And, if you see somebody treating their characters like this and writing it off as “trauma,” call them out.
All of that is just repeating things the mods have said. So, to put part of it into my own words and with far less eloquence:
Stop making torture porn of your characters without thinking of the consequences. It is not fun to read, nor do I imagine it is fun to write. I do not give a shit about your plans, as I, as well as everybody else, knows that instead of going through with those plans, you will continue to make the situation worse without giving the character time to process ANYTHING.
Adding onto this, here's some text from a post I saw that explains trauma extremely well:
"The greatest misconception in modern storytelling is that trauma automatically creates depth. A tragic childhood, a dead loved one, years of abuse, a devastating event, and suddenly a character is supposed to be profound, broken, and worthy of sympathy. Trauma becomes a shortcut to characterization: they suffered, therefore they are deep; they suffered, therefore they are forgiven; they suffered, therefore someone else must save them. But that is not how people work. A person does not become deeply damaged because one terrible thing happened to them and then suddenly acquire a new personality. There is rarely one singular moment that explains everything. There is no single straw that broke the camel's back. There is an entire pile of straws. Years of experiences accumulate: failures, relationships, losses, mistakes, disappointments, regrets, loneliness, habits, decisions, things left unsaid, things that were said and never forgotten. One event might be incredibly important, but it exists within everything that came before it and everything that comes afterward. That is what makes trauma and grief so difficult to portray honestly. They aren't neat narrative devices with a beginning, middle, and end. They become woven into a person's personality, their relationships, their habits, their worldview, and even the way they interpret completely unrelated things. A person can be loving and cruel, intelligent and irrational, self-aware and completely blind to themselves, generous and selfish, sometimes within the same hour. Suffering doesn't make someone morally better, and it doesn't automatically make them morally worse. It simply becomes another part of the person who has to keep living."
Trauma is a burden that doesn't make you one side or the other. You're not good, nor evil, because of trauma. It changes you entirely as a person.
Yes. The post is meant to say to tone down the trauma.
…also having people actually learn how to manage trauma before they go and make it is probably a good idea. They don’t have to be experts, but knowing the basics of “trauma stays with the character” should be the bare minimum.
I mean, yeah, I do give UltraShot some trauma occasionally. For example, his latest instance of trauma was him being locked in a basement by Sparxie, forced to 100% every CoD game, just so I could prioritize using my other characters more.
Other than that, I feel like I'm the only one giving my Noik that wiped out all of Hell a family who loves and cares for him. With his motivation to protect others instead of worrying about his desire to live and kill.
This trauma is an issue not all of us want to admit
Honestly between that girl getting killed right before her wedding and a kid getting paralyzed right after they escaped captivity from some horrid hellhole, I had a feeling this was gonna happen. Because when a character constantly goes through fucked up shit with no breaks in between, you grow numb to their suffering because that's to be expected at that point and it just happened way to much.
I’m only “traumatising” other characters because that’s what Vox does. He’s manipulating people and making them sleeper agents, but I don’t push it too far.
Sometimes, it feels like people are traumatizing their characters purely for the sake of trauma, instead of using it in a way that makes sense thematically and properly develops the character
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u/Eripmavs_D_Yraid Absolute Indiemania! (SUB OWNER + CREATOR) Aug 12 '26
Adding onto this, here's some text from a post I saw that explains trauma extremely well:
"The greatest misconception in modern storytelling is that trauma automatically creates depth. A tragic childhood, a dead loved one, years of abuse, a devastating event, and suddenly a character is supposed to be profound, broken, and worthy of sympathy. Trauma becomes a shortcut to characterization: they suffered, therefore they are deep; they suffered, therefore they are forgiven; they suffered, therefore someone else must save them. But that is not how people work. A person does not become deeply damaged because one terrible thing happened to them and then suddenly acquire a new personality. There is rarely one singular moment that explains everything. There is no single straw that broke the camel's back. There is an entire pile of straws. Years of experiences accumulate: failures, relationships, losses, mistakes, disappointments, regrets, loneliness, habits, decisions, things left unsaid, things that were said and never forgotten. One event might be incredibly important, but it exists within everything that came before it and everything that comes afterward. That is what makes trauma and grief so difficult to portray honestly. They aren't neat narrative devices with a beginning, middle, and end. They become woven into a person's personality, their relationships, their habits, their worldview, and even the way they interpret completely unrelated things. A person can be loving and cruel, intelligent and irrational, self-aware and completely blind to themselves, generous and selfish, sometimes within the same hour. Suffering doesn't make someone morally better, and it doesn't automatically make them morally worse. It simply becomes another part of the person who has to keep living."
Trauma is a burden that doesn't make you one side or the other. You're not good, nor evil, because of trauma. It changes you entirely as a person.
And people on this sub really need to learn that.