Hello! Do you know if there's a good way to combat the "I'm scared to release my characters/story to the world because what if they get WILDLY misinterpreted and their identities get fully denied and I'll have to justify every pixel and vocal utterance before I get endlessly harassed" uhh.. mentality? situation? in totally unrelated news i really enjoyed TADC and happy vacation to Goose forever and ever
The bad news is that there is no way to avoid that.
The ideas out of your mind will collide with the biases, expectations, experiences and limitations of someone else's mind and they will completely get you wrong. Sometimes people will get you so wrong that you'll half wonder if you accidentally shifted sideways into an alternate dimension where every day is opposite day.
And the people who are wrong about you will be wrong about you at other people, whose first impression of your work will in turn be informed by people who don't have the first idea what any of it is about, and there is, quite literally, not a goddamn single fucking thing you can do about it.
There is no amount of explaining yourself, there is no amount of laying out your reasoning step-by-step, there is no flowchart diagram so detailed, no series of disclaimers so comprehensive that they will prevent this from happening.
Which is not to say that explaining yourself is pointless, not at all, it can be very helpful to do at times. Sometimes a little clarification goes a long way. It's just to say that the misunderstanding is table stakes. It is part and parcel, it is built in. You are going to get some amount of that literally no matter what you do, and the larger your audience grows, the more misunderstood you will become, as you are made subject to an expanding game of telephone that has absolutely no filters against misinformation.
This has been true since the dawn of our species, and it will remain true until the day we finally die from the universe. What is unique about our digital age is that it used to be, once upon a time, that if someone horribly misunderstood your work, you would rarely had to hear about it. Most people on Earth had no earthly way to reach you. Social media and digital communication has changed that, making us all subject to the unfiltered firehose of the human id at all times; and the absolutely horrid and toxic way that social media platforms are designed and optimized to boost all the worst, most base and inflammatory human modes of interaction acts as a massive amplifier for it all, and the worst people in the world have figured out how to very effectively weaponize it.
This is what we all saw happen to Gooseworx, and what happens every single day to tons of creators, and much more frequently and viciously along axes of oppression.
I say this to recognize and validate your fear. It is not irrational, it doesn't come from nowhere, and yes there are absolutely risks to publishing your work in the digital age.
However, I think you should do it anyway.
The worst people in the world, those people who have found a way to weaponize mass media and digital communication, their goal is silence. The whole point of mobilizing these harassment campaigns, the whole point of weaponizing social media, is to make you shut up and keep their views and opinions dominant and unchallenged. And, frankly, fuck that and fuck them. Your work has value and deserves to be seen.
Still, you don't have to jump into it with both feet and no safety gear, you can mitigate the risks and maximize the joys. Publishing your work to smaller audiences deliberately is an option—posting to a small fandom, or on a private forum or discord server. Physical zines are another option; they are very easy to make and fairly easy to distribute if you have a venue. A local music scene you're a part of, a local convention that relates to your interests or subject. Hell, ask around at local coffee shops if you can leave a few of them on their counter, that sort of thing. Put them somewhere eye-catching with the words "free zine" visible. You won't reach very many people, but you'll reach them in a very different and more physical way than you can with posts on a website.
Publishing under a pen name using accounts that aren't connected directly to you can also help. Deliberately and carefully maintaining your anonymity can help, and establishing good privacy habits and information hygiene can help a lot. Being deliberate and specific about where and when and how you make yourself reachable helps a lot.
Again, these are all things that come with challenges and can limit your audience, and it is ontologically unjust that any of it can even be necessary just to share your work, but the options are available should you want to use them.
I think you should share your work. Where and how and with whom you choose to do it is up to you, and please remember that social media and the social internet are absolutely not the only options or even the best ones for a lot of things.
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