#yes i am aware some of you will be sideeyeing me for how gay this sounds

[lumpofcohle]

lizzie (fave fic author/new friend) and i have been video chatting almost every week since we met in march, and it still feels so magical to make a friend like this in my 30s, wow!

it still hasn't stopped having that "playground feeling" in the best way

by which i mean: i used to meet another kid on the playground or at the swimming pool or at school, and we had like one (1) major interest in common and in my head i would be planning how we'd be best friends our whole lives

except with lizzie, we really do have that much in common, and so far all the things we don't share complement each other

she's already on my shortlist of people i could spend essentially infinite time with (we were up until 3am last night on a work night just because we were having so much fun – huge sleepover vibes)

so i just get to walk around feeling like the happy, emotionally secure child i never was while we both are marveling that the other person thinks we're cool :')

and it's so fucking nice :')

[epochryphal]

I hope you're okay with answering questions about the "fiction isn't real" argument. If not, please ignore. Say you're a content creator and a person is fictionkin with one of your characters. Gently and politely, the person tells you you hurt them with a creative decision you made. They don't call you Bad and they're not motivated by revenge, they just want you to know. What's the best/most ethical thing to do then? Should you apologize? Should you let it influence future canon developments?

i am totally interested in these convos, ty for this goodgood question.

so - the first issue here is, what is their motivation? what do they want to get out of telling you this; how do they want you to respond, what do they want to have happen? which they may be saying, or may not, or might not even be conscious of.

like, i’ve found that “just want you to know” is... rarely complete. where i struggle with it most is, i feel like i just want a person to know that i’ve realized i was shitty and unskilled towards them and probably hurt them, and that i feel remorse and commitment to doing better. but... i’ve come to the conclusion that, that just-want isn’t strongly enough about their quality of life, and it’s too strongly selfish. too much about wanting to offload the burden of having fucked up, just by Acknowledging it To the wronged party. i don’t think it’s enough about their healing, affirming, processing, moving on. it feels like pulling them back. at least, for these folks, who i haven’t heard from in years.

conversely, when i just-want-someone-to-know that they hurt me (rather than wanting a behavior change, or an apology)... when i’m really sure those aren’t my deeper motivations, as they often are for me... it tends to be about conflicting needs, or incompatibilities, and something that can’t be helped or doesn’t have a solution, but just-maybe be being simply aware of it a future solution could be found. like, “hey, just so you know, i really value that this thing is powerful and good for you, but it’s affecting me negatively, even with these good boundary practices, and i wouldn’t have you change anything; it’s still worthwhile for me to engage with it” (—or it isn’t, and i have to disengage).

this is true with disability conflicting access need stuff—like one person’s stimming affecting another’s sensory overload—and it’s true with trauma processing stuff and with identity representation stuff and it’s generally, like, personalities and comforts and needs. and because of that, it’s really sensitive, right, to hear that oh. being me, and getting my needs met, impinged on you being yourself and getting your needs met, and hurt.

so in a direct interaction with a content creator—this all scales, right? would the russos care? would it keep neil gaiman up at night? would it terrify a small webcomic artist out of producing certain content? would it horrify a zine creator into keeping their trauma experiences hidden as Bad?

so i really am preoccupied with, when on earth is it appropriate to bring that to someone, that they accidentally hurt you, you’re not upset, you don’t want them to do anything different at all, they just Should Know? is it ever? regardless of being fictionkin, even

(and if they do want you to do something different... what is it? because if it’s something you hadn’t thought about, that falls into a negative trope like bury your gays, things like that, okay, evaluate. but if it’s something that was representing something important to you, your experiences... and you weren’t casting it as the Only Experience Ever... that’s some weighing, and you get some weight there.)

i guess - if someone brought that to me, i might be curious as to how i’d hurt them. what the mechanisms were. and, if it could’ve been different, what that would’ve changed, tradeoffs. i’d try to be compassionate? but i really don’t think an apology is owed, nor significant content changes. maybe looking at tagging and content warnings and boundaries, sure.

and i also think it’s- different if i’m the original canon creator or if i made a fanwork. the latter feels very—why was i important enough to let know? (aside from improper tagging.) and, don’t we get to have different experiences?

mm i’m losing coherency but. i’m close to a couple of creators, who are also fictionkin of other content, and we like... process with each other. if something hurts, or if we’re concerned about hurting others. accountability circles with similar values. there have been a few times we’ve been very sideeye at certain canon creative decisions in fandoms where there’s a Known and Acknowledged large fictionkin fanbase and decisions have seemed baity or cruel or callously indifferent (okay i’m talking about the homestuck epilogues, yes) and how they’ve defended their decisions has seemed really Uninterested in acknowledging anyone’s pain even in a passing way, just casting people as Needing Help If So Affected—

so, okay, yeah, my main advice is don’t do that. don’t invalidate? don’t Crazyshame. and avoid positioning your plot/will/vision as so genius and Misunderstood and more important than anyone’s suffering. but that doesn’t mean you have to change anything, either, or apologize? just don’t do shitty justifying. and try to not sound like you’re, uh, unsympathetic The Plot Must Go On, even if you’re ultimately saying that yes nothing’s changing. express hope that they get something good out of it or find a good way to break from it. don’t just be like “well maybe this isn’t for you then” and certainly not “maybe you should be more StableTM before engaging in my work” or etc

just, dang, ethically, be compassionate while maintaining firm boundaries.