It's also probably easier to write the graphic sex, torture, etc. than it is to write the absence of hope.

Which is interesting because I think relatively few of us have experienced the first but haven't most of us experienced the second? but the second is very internal....oddly enough I remember as a child having dreams of someone (not myself) being tortured, or constructing elaborate stories in my head of someone (usually a woman) being tortured or more often humiliated etc; but I chalked that up to living with abusive stepfathers and I outgrew them at some point along the way.

There may also have been a element of visualizing my experiences in school being constantly bullied in that, which I hadn't thought of before, Huh. *ponders*