I'm just here for some fun

Obstinate and inflexible in their actions

Terrible for each other in most circumstances

No matter what art someone posts online, you cannot trust that they are a good person with your best interests in mind.

Buddy

IS a problem: Treating living, breathing mlm like they're a spectacle, invading their space, or going "SQUEEEE OMG IRL YAOI!!"

NOT a problem: Primarily liking yuri, GL, or w x w content.

IS a problem: Treating living, breathing wlw like they exist for your entertainment, or asking invasive, inappropriate questions out of the blue.

*NOT a problem: Finding NS/FW queer content attractive or arousing, even if you aren't necessarily queer yourself.

*IS a problem: Being an Actual Homophobe and claiming that being queer is gross and wrong and perverted, all while still using NS/FW queer content for your sexual gratification.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

Those are real things, that real people go through, and that real people need to recover from, with real experts who let you know what to do.

The fictional, play pretend version of these don't concern me. I don't know what's storytelling, what's recovery, or what's trying to explore something potentially triggering in a safe environment.

Your personal disgust over a thing that doesn't exist does exactly nothing to prevent the real thing. Your sense of righteousness is equally play pretend. You can pretend to be a good person by morally opposing pretend evil, but do nothing to fix the reality of that evil.

The reality is much more difficult to contend with, but there are many real people who do the very real emotional and logistical labour, and you being mad at a story is just pretend.

Buddy

You don’t owe anyone good writing.

You don’t owe anyone a complete storyline written in order.

You can jump around. You can abandon projects. You can write really shitty stories! Writing is about telling stories and creating worlds. Not about what makes your followers happy.

I have to remind myself of this a lot, because in most of my stories I’ve gotten stuck and don’t know where to go. But you can jump around. You can skip parts. It doesn’t matter.