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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42426
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42426
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

One useful example may be the _Worm/Ward_ series (Especially Ward, though it's still in progress), by Wildbow/JC Macrae. In this world, people often get superpowers due to intense trauma. Superpowers of course means battles, so there's even more chaos.

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ward](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ward)

Our protagonist in _Ward_ (Victoria) was seriously warped by a bio-tinker for several years, and resists using her powers for a long time at the start, but later she uses flight to compensate for a twisted ankle, or her strong force-field to compensate for a broken arm still recovering.

In _Worm_, that book's protagonist (Taylor) was seriously injured several times, and sometimes it was almost absurd how she could compensate with her powers, yet even she had a fear of lock-in syndrome that resurfaced in many battles.

There's a fan podcast called "We've Got Ward" that does a great job analyzing things, and it helped highlight some of the strategies that Wildbow used to have respectful body horror. (Alas, the podcast is 60 episodes, and Ward is over 1 million words by now, so I can't steer you to a specific pinpoint section as a model.)

In earlier chapters of _Ward_, Victoria gets to see a therapist after a long delay, and she just wants "coping" strategies, because she doesn't believe she can truly be healed. But there is a huge amount of internal growth, while still horrific things are happening. (She doesn't suffer the worst of it, but she is right there, trying to comfort & communicate with someone who has been dismembered and sections taken to a villain's lair, yet all parts are still alive. )

So while most of us aren't fighting supervillains in our daily lies, we could easily lose a limb, or have a degenerative disease that makes physical control grow more difficult with emotion (Sveta) or limit sensation (Weld). We may not be mind-controlled by the queen of another world, or shoot rays of emotion-power, but we may have depression or another mental illness. So even though this is a "dark fantasy" story, the traumas reflect normal human trauma.

I think the most important thing to stay respectful is to focus on your characters as distinct beings with their own backgrounds and reactions. So someone who is appearance-based _may_ have a stronger reaction to what seems to be a lesser trauma, or perhaps the appearances are actually a shell, hiding a reserve of strength. Right now, only you know, and you have to make sure the story communicates that, so it's not like characters reacting like some textbook example. People are flawed and may have flawed responses. So don't feel a Strong Character has to react with Strength to things (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer), they can be just Strongly Written, so you understand why they are reacting in a non-ideal way.

I really like that you're contemplating this, and not just assuming your reaction is the right one, the universal one, etc.

Original score: 1