I want to hear your thoughts on it, about characters you have dealing with that shit, how you write it, or even why people shouldn't have those types of characters at all. Really, I just want to talk about characters and their mental health stuff because why not?
Hmm. I don't feel comfortable writing characters who self-harm, mainly because it's something I haven't done. I also don't want someone to follow my character's example and self-harm, if that makes sense? As for actively suicidal characters, I don't think I have any? I have a lot of characters who are emotionally numb/apathetic to life, but none who attempt suicide during the story (although Oliver did beforehand and Victor was very close to beforehand). I guess Lavinia might be considered suicidal because she attempts to kill the faery who is sexually abusing her even though she knows it will most likely get her killed, she sees it as a way out (it fails and she loses a hand and her tongue for it).
I tend to write it as a cautionary tale, normally making them realize that damn, people need me around, or have someone just stop the person before they off it.
Yeah, I definitely will never write a suicidal/self-harming character and have it glorified because mental illness isn't something that should be glorified. It shouldn't be condemned and ostrisized, but it shouldn't be painted as romantic. All The Bright Places
Since my fantasy is an INCREDIBLY dark fantasy, I certainly don't romanticize any of it and just write bits and pieces of clues that readers can tell that there is something going on with that character
I see your points and agree with them.
but angst and character develop wait for no man, woman, or genderly ambiguous individual.
I've created one character that was slightly suicidal. I based him off of a point in my life that I wanted to forget but also get over. The character was hated, had major clinical depression, anxiety disorder. He might have been bipolar also
One of my characters suffers from severe PTSD because of his abusive household and the main one suffers from a dissociative identity disorder
I mean, as long as it's never glorified, and the writer knows how to write that, then I believe it's alright.
One of my universes is a world where after a strange chain of events several million people on Earth develop supernatural abilities. It sounds amazing at first, but the story itself is kinda dark; focusing on the relationships between how a 'normal' person feels towards an 'ability' person. As well as the issues that might be faced. It follows the viewpoints of several characters; with or without abilities.
One of the characters was somewhat suicidal but develops immortality and regeneration (a two in one package). They already had problems before the story and was at a lowest point in their life. While it is not directly stated, it is implied that they did attempt to take their own life (which is how they found out the abilities.) Of course, the issues they do have cannot be ignored and it's definitely a thing you do see happen throughout the events of the story, they do receive support for it by some of the other characters. Recovery for this character will be a slow and rough road. I've never really written a character like this, but I am making sure to do research on it and not making their life all negative.
A lot of them fall into the weird inbetween of "I don't actively want to kill myself but if I truck was coming towards me I might not step out of the way/I wanna die but I also have so much I want to accomplish first" because personally that's what I have the most experience with and as someone who's never been actively suicidal I don't feel comfortable trying to tackle that because that's something where if I fuck up writing it, it could actually hurt people.