Crossover Episode

Imagine watching that show. It could be fun, right? And it is. Sometimes. It can be fun to laugh at the things the show got wrong, to joke about overdramatic moments. It’s not always fun, though. Sometimes you watch the fictional version of someone you love get hurt. You know it’s not them, not really, but it looks like them. It feels like watching them get hurt, even if you know they’re actually safe and unharmed.

Now, imagine finding the fandom of that show. Again, some of it’s really cool. There’s beautiful art, amazing fics, and detailed analysis by dedicated fans. Sometimes you see people talking about how much they love the fictional you, and it makes you happy. It makes you feel appreciated. 

But, sometimes, it’s not cool at all. Sometimes you find people who hate you. Who dedicate whole blogs to picking apart your fictional self’s every flaw and mistake. And there are people who ship you with your abusers. Or your siblings. Or, worst of all, your children. You’re disgusted and horrified, but no one seems willing to listen when you say that it’s wrong. “Ship and let ship,” they say. They tell you you’re advocating censorship, alienating other fans, accuse you of harassment and kinkshaming. “After all,” they tell you, “it’s just fiction.”

But it’s not. Not to you, anyway. And it’s not that the fans are doing these things to you, you know they aren’t literally forcing you to engage in the things they write your fictional self doing. Of course, that’s what you’ll get accused of believing if you speak out about it. If you say “this disgusts me because it’s me,” you’re met with a condescending “you know it’s not literally you right?” They roll their eyes and mock people like you publicly. Even some in your community, people who should’ve been on your side. 

Can you honestly say that wouldn’t get to you? Don’t you think this would be upsetting?

We can tell you that it is. This is the reality for fictives who engage in fandom. This is the reality for so many in our system. When we say that fandom is hostile toward fictives, this is what we mean. We are exposed to disgusting and horrifying content using characters that have our names and faces. Our pain and anger gets treated like shipping drama. We are told, even by others in the plural community, that we aren’t allowed to ask for it to stop.

So when you’re deciding what fan content you’re okay with, what ships you’re willing to stand up for, remember that we exist. That we see what you create, what you share. We’re in fandom spaces with you, whether you’re willing to acknowledge it or not, and you have to make room for us. 

The only things people in fandom are required to do is to tag things, and to treat you nicely. Beyond that it is up to you to “make room” for yourself, by learning to use the blacklist, block button, and coping mechanisms if needed. If you are unable to do this, if you are unable to separate yourself from the fics and art you see, if just the thought of this content existing causes such harm to you, then fandom just might not be a good place for you.

Fictives are not uniquely incapable of looking after ourselves and dealing with things that upset us. We do not need to be babysat by other people in fandom. Yes, it’s “real to us,” but even that isn’t a monolithic opinion held by all fictives, and it means little since fictives can be canon divergent. What about the fictives whose in-source abusers didn’t hurt them in their canons? What about the fictives who weren’t siblings with those characters and who were in love instead? Do their feelings not matter?

If you call yourself an advocate for fictives, then you should be an advocate for all of us, not just the ones who are convenient for your purposes. Otherwise, it comes off like you are simply using your identity, and the identities of other people, as a cudgel to push ideology. You speak of advocacy and allyship, but I do not feel like you are a good advocate for me, and any allies that think like you are no allies of mine.

The whole point of our post is that our pain and anger shouldn’t be treated like shipping discourse. The fact that fictives are hurt by this, even when it isn’t all fictives, means that we need to think about what fan content we do or don’t condone. We aren’t telling people what conclusion to come to, just that they need to consider the impact of their actions on marginalized communities within fandom

Beyond that it is up to you to “make room” for yourself, by learning to use the blacklist, block button, and coping mechanisms if needed. If you are unable to do this, if you are unable to separate yourself from the fics and art you see, if just the thought of this content existing causes such harm to you, then fandom just might not be a good place for you.

We already do this. We block people, blacklist words and tags, put clear DNIs, and we still see this shit. We get harassed by people who don’t give a damn about our boundaries, who don’t respect that we are trying to keep ourselves safe, because they’re mad that we’re “antis”. We shouldn’t have to leave fandom, something that has been a major part of our lives for over a decade, just because other people care more about their ships than they do about us. We’re not fragile just because other people’s actions affect us negatively, and we’d like them to acknowledge and grapple with that

Yes, it’s “real to us,” but even that isn’t a monolithic opinion held by all fictives, and it means little since fictives can be canon divergent.

I know. Most of us are canon-divergent on some level. For crying out loud, I’m a transfem Jason Todd fictive, I get it. Some fictives aren’t affected by fandom in this way, we know that. Maybe we could have been clearer about that in our original post, but that doesn’t undermine the message, because it does hurt some of us, and we have the right to speak out about it

it comes off like you are simply using your identity, and the identities of other people, as a cudgel to push ideology. You speak of advocacy and allyship, but I do not feel like you are a good advocate for me, and any allies that think like you are no allies of mine.

What ideology, exactly? That singlets and non-fictives in fandom spaces should care about how their actions affect us? That shipping isn’t more important than actual living people? You don’t have to agree with us, but can you at least explain why that’s such a bad thing to advocate for

If you don’t agree, and don’t want to consider us allies, that’s your decision. If you want to protect people who don’t bother to put in the work to at least try to make fandom more accessible to fictives, you can. But don’t expect us to call it a loss that you don’t want us on your side

Despite this, and saying you’re not trying to tell people what conclusion to come to, your original post still clearly props up one side. The “fiction affects reality,” “anti” crowd is not particularly thoughtful towards the feelings of fictives, either.

People get harassed, bullied, sent terrible things, just for liking the wrong characters or ships, let alone being a fictive of that character or half of the ship. Untagged hate can be found in certain characters and ships all the time, and these people also do not care what fictives might think if they came across it. People in general do not think or care about us very often, but you frame it as coming from the “ship and let ship” crowd, rather than it being a more fundamental issue with the way people view systems regardless of shipping stance.

I’m sorry people harass you. They should not do that, whether you’re an anti or not. Tagging isn’t perfect, no, we have to deal with things being untagged as well, but there is a big difference between calling out lackluster tagging and just saying “when you’re deciding what fan content you’re okay with, remember we exist.” It is coming off as a guilt trip–“if you care about fictives, you will not post about these things at all. You will think they’re abhorrent, like we do, or you don’t care about fictives enough.”

And I’m saying this isn’t a sustainable position, because fictives are diverse and people have competing needs, and you cannot just say “this harms fictives” because what is horrible to you might be beneficial to another. Getting rid of it might be good for you, but harmful to someone else.

What ideology, exactly?

The ideology that certain fandom content shouldn’t exist because it’s bad to create/share. Please do tell me if there is another interpretation, but my read is “this material is harmful and triggering to some people, therefore it needs to stop being made.” Otherwise you’d be saying that this material is harmful but it’s fine for it to exist, which doesn’t make sense to me as a position to hold.

We know that everyone has the right to create whatever content they want, and that there’s not a good way to limit what people are “allowed” to create without turning to censorship. This is a complicated, nuanced ethical discussion, and everyone has to decide for themselves what their views on ethical and accessible fandom are

That being said, it’s not okay to just ignore that some people are being hurt because it doesn’t align with what a person wants to create. Anyone creating and publishing content, even in fandom, should take some time to really think about the potential impact of their works and decide if it’s worth creating. Artistic freedom is important, but so is integrity and compassion. And fictives aren’t the only ones asking fan creators to consider the impact their works have on marginalized groups. There are similar discussions happening around the treatment of characters of color, queer and trans characters, disabled and neurodivergent characters, etc. If content is hurting people, those people have the right to speak up and say that it’s hurting them, and ask creators to reflect on their actions 

And yes, harassment happens on all sides. We do not condone anyone being harassed, even if they create content that we find disgusting. My original response came from a place of anger, and it probably would have been a better idea to cool off before responding. This is an issue that deeply affects our system, and it has a tendency to get our hackles raised. That’s also why our post focused on shipping as an issue, it’s something that’s caused us a lot of pain. We know there are a lot of issues facing fictives, and that shipping is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. Our post was supposed to get people thinking, not provide a comprehensive breakdown of all the issues facing fictives

There’s no easy answer to any of this, it just doesn’t feel fair that we should be expected to be quiet and keep our pain hidden so that people who ship incestuous or adult/minor pairings don’t have to face up to the impact those ships have on us

But you brought up bigotry. I do not think it’s right to compare these issues to fictives at all. To use a personal example: there is a fanfiction on AO3 that portrays my source self as sexually abusive. This deeply disturbed me when I found it and I do not like knowing that it exists.

The idea of comparing how I felt when I saw this fanfic, which was genuinely quite terrible, to how we feel when we see queerphobic, transphobic, sanist takes (the sorts of marginalizations that we face) is absurd to me. These are not the same experiences even remotely and I do not like the wording that suggests these experiences should be seen as similar.

Stereotypes and offensive tropes are bad because they reflect real, systemic bigotry that affects every aspect of a marginalized person’s life. People are raised with these biases that affect how those with privilege treat marginalized people, and how marginalized people see themselves.

Somebody writing what they perceive to be a fictional character in a relationship that would be unhealthy/illegal/immoral in real life, or a dark situation, or posting hateful rants about that fictional character, is not the same as somebody writing something bigoted because they have unexamined biases in their minds, and it is especially not the same as somebody writing something intentionally bigoted with the intent of harming marginalized groups.

That person didn’t write me as a sexual abuser because they had unexamined, systemically-produced anti-my-source biases in their head or because they wanted to hurt fictives. It’s just what they wrote.

That being said, it looks like this conversation is over anyway. Thanks for being civil, even though we clearly have very different views on this

Okay, so regarding the term ‘fictive,’ this isn’t ENTIRELY in my wheelhouse.  That’s because AFAIK, it was coined in the soulbonding community, which… I’m not the strongest at. (We DID admittedly come to plurality through the LJ soulbonding community, which had a lot of overlap, but we pretty quickly realized we were more one than the other.)

This means my understanding of soulbonding history is limited purely to Livejournal.  Soulbonding did not START there, certainly didn’t end there, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Fortunately for me, Livejournal is chock full of journals and communities that never updated after a month or so, giving nice little time capsules into terminology at the time.  Hardly formal, but whatever, you guys want formal soulbonding history, you shouldn’t’ve asked ME.

Anyway, I did a quick search of journal with ‘fictives’ as one of their interests.  First old-ass thing I found?  The theoslogos Livejournal community.

From what little I can see, theoslogos was devoted to the idea of a soulbonding religion–the idea that soulbonding was some form of alchemy or chaos magic.  I don’t know jack fucking shit about any of that, but it’s HUGELY clear that DID was NOT a part of this religion, and the mod, as far as I know, was a soulbonder.

Theoslogos was created in December 2004 and dead a year later.  So the ‘fictive’ term was in use by soulbonders by that time.

The earliest individual LJ with that as an interest (earliest as in, it died first so can be guaranteed not to have updated their interests later on) is roswellingram, whose LJ seems to have died in February 2006. (They created it in 2002.) They don’t show any interest in multiplicity or DID space, only fandom, and deleted everything but three strange random entries, so I’m not sure you can take that one way or another.

However, take a look at all the comms that show up with ‘fictives’ in their interests:

You see that, guys?  Every single fucking one of them is a soulbonding or fictionkin comm, with the exception of formerassassins, which has written in its profile the words:

“This community is also primarily (but not exclusively) for a particular group of people whose experiences often go undocumented; people who identify as soulbonds, fiction-kin or otakukin. … This community is also open to people in multiple systems who have killed in other worlds, system worlds or offworlds, and people who remember being killers or assassins in past lives and have dealt with or are dealing with those memories.”

So yeah, even that one was primarily a soulbonding/fictionkin comm.  And it was updated the most recently, meaning that the word may have spread into more general use later on.

In one of the locked comms I’m a member of, I also found this comment from a plural system in March 18, 2007, from tej_agni/Silhouettes:

“I’ve also seen the term “fictives”.“

This is incredibly loose and sloppy, but leads me to form the hypothesis that the term ‘fictive’ was originally a soulbonding/fictionkin term, and that it then later generalized into general plural use on Livejournal, on account of the very thin barrier between the groups at the time. (THIS IS A HYPOTHESIS NOT A CONCLUSION.)