when you are younger, you tend to think you need to share every bit of yourself with your partner. every dark secret or errant thought. as we get older we realize that it's not something we need to do. not because we need to hide shit from our partners, but because we realize that a partnership doesn't mean there are no boundaries. you retain your own space and don't need to be vulnerably raw every moment. this is healthy. you are not your worst moment. and while your partner may not mind the emotional weight you place on them, it is still an extra load. learning to sort the shit you can handle by yourself and what you need support for is part of growing up.
now this might seem wildly out of place from me, i write about comics and ttrpgs- why am i giving relationship advice? because what you've got between yourself and the other players is a relationship. that's right this was secretly gm advice all along- let's go!
uh hey, i don't do this usually because i never think to but i'm gonna be talking about trauma and things what cause trauma, so consider if you wanna read this right now.
so here's the thing, i am a pessimist by nature. my superpower is i can always think of a way for things to get worse, it's a great skill to have as a gm! it is less good for my mental health. but one of the ways it affects my games is that i feel i have to portray my worlds honestly, including the bad shit. but there are a number of reasons why i don't. one of them are lines set by the table, some for comfort and others for disinterest. using my own tastes as an example, i have a line on sexual assault because i don't think i can pull of stories. the disruption and discomfort at the table outweighs what i personally think i can pull off with that narrative. i think there are places for those kinds of stories, i even think there are places within ttrpgs to tell those stories and tell them well. but i'm not interested in taking that swing. you also have very common lines like suicide, torture, slavery, or violence towards children. it makes a ton of sense why some people would be uninterested in those kinds of games- and you aren't going to get a good story when people are wishing they were doing anything else. but the thing i want to underline here, is just because they aren't a focus, that these events are not shown on screen, does not mean they don't occur. and while they may not be a part of the narrative, that doesn't mean they can't be part of the story.
okay, lets go ahead and underscore this for the edgelords: this is not me saying to ambush your players with shit outside their comfort zone. if you use this as an excuse to cross a player's set boundary without their permission then i will come for your fucking teeth
no, this goes back to what i was talking about relationships. often my characters, pc or npc, will have shit in their past that i will just never put on screen. because it is important to me to get diverse voices and experiences on screen, and i can depict people shaped by events, without showing that event on screen. as a recent example, i was playing in a game where suicide was a line. i really respect that player and wouldn't want to upset them- but whether through bleed or events in the story i realized my character had suicidal ideation. their heroism was death-seeking behavior. this was something i was open about outside the table, i talked with my gm about how it informed the character and where i felt it sprang from. in this case they had come across their mom's own botched attempt at a young age and they never talked about it. an event that was NEVER going to come on screen but one that shaped almost every interaction i had going forward. this also, is an unfortunate reality when playing female presenting characters. it's not even something where i wonder to myself, "has this character had to deal with assault in the past?" but instead the fact that i grew up in america, and almost every femme person i've gotten to know deeply has had to carry that shit. its this horrific trauma so deeply ingrained in how people act. i'm a big dude who is over six feet, so i am fairly used to getting immediately scanned whenever people see me and gauge me as a potential threat. i've seen a lot of people cross the street when they see me walking towards them. and while the world you are portraying might be one where things aren't so dire, but that also means thinking about how does that change how you present people.
but none of this is anything i need to bring to the table. to put on screen. i know that i need to have the rough edges exist to feel like i'm making things feel true and interesting to portray. but that doesn't mean unloading all of it on my players. instead it means giving myself the space to figuring out the context of my characters, and bringing that forward in how they act. even if we never see anything, i want them to resonate with people who know and for those who don't to feel something there, beneath the surface.