Fictive Etiquette Guide
One of the things we’ve noticed as a fictive heavy system is that a lot of singlets have no idea how to talk to fictives. When one of us whose pluralkit proxy obviously marks us as a fictive sends a message in a predominantly singlet discord server, there’s this odd thing that happens where the conversation stalls for seemingly no reason. Especially if we mention something related to being a fictive.
We don’t think this is out of malice, it’s just awkwardness. People who’ve had very little interaction with the plural community aren’t likely to know how to talk to fictives. The short answer to that is to talk to us like people, but we thought we’d write out some tips to help our well-meaning but uninformed singlet friends. Disclaimer that we’re just one system, and these tips come from our own experiences. We can’t speak for other systems
Tip 1: We aren’t RPers or ask blogs, don’t ask us questions like we are. We won’t be answering from the perspective of our source characters, but from the perspective of a person who exists in this world and happens to have some things in common with that character. Apply the same rules you would if you were asking a non-fictive about their life
Tip 2: When we talk about our exomemories, that’s not an invitation to treat them like our source media. Don’t try to analyze them like a piece of media, or make light of our trauma. Those memories feel as real to us as yours do to you, be respectful
Tip 3: Don’t fangirl over us. We aren’t your favorite character come to life. Seriously, this is just weird and uncomfortable. Also, don’t bring up your ships that involve our source characters to us
Tip 4: If we’re in a fandom space, assume we’re comfortable there. We can make our own decisions about how and when (and if) we want to engage with our source’s fandom. We may leave suddenly if things get weird or uncomfortable, but that’s just us looking after ourselves without derailing the conversation. Generally though, don’t feel the need to modify your discussions on our account unless we ask you to
Tip 5: We aren’t some sideshow attraction to be gawked at. If you think of our identities as weird or cringey, that’s going to show in your interactions with us, and it always sucks. Your internal feelings about fictives are something for you to work through, don’t expect us to put up with you treating us like a freak show
Tip 6: Don’t judge us by our source characters. We didn’t get a say in it, neither did anyone else in our system. Having a fictive of a character doesn’t mean the system likes that character or condones their canon actions. Depending on the system, it might not even mean we know very much about that character. Some systems (like ours) will sometimes get fictives of characters we know very little about
Tip 7: Don’t assume we’re the same as our source characters. We might be very similar, or we might be nothing at all like them. Our exomemories could be drastically different, or we could come from an AU. Our personality, gender, sexuality, and personal history might be different than you expect. Also, don’t judge our identities the way you would a headcanon. If our source character is bi but we’re gay, that’s not bi erasure
Tip 8: We’re people first, fictives second. Start there, with the understanding that we’re not really all that different from the non-fictives in our system that you’ve already talked to. It doesn’t have to be awkward
This isn’t a comprehensive list, it’s just a few tips based on our experiences being openly plural and fictive heavy online. Other fictives, feel free to add your own tips, or things you wish singlets knew or understood. Just don’t get syscourse-y, we don’t wanna deal with that
Some clarifications:
For the first tip, we were trying to say that there is a difference between a fictive and a person pretending to be a fictional character for the purposes of roleplay/an askblog. One is a person making up answers about a fictional person, the other is someone talking about themselves. Even if our experiences sound very close to our source canon, it's not okay to interact with us the way you would with an askblog/RPer
We weren't trying to say that we don't identify as our source characters, because a lot of us do. We all have varying levels of how closely we identify with them. Some of us have gone as far as to change our names and not tell anyone outside the system we're a fictive, but most of us float somewhere around seeing our source character as a version of ourselves
Tip 8 wasn't intended to say that being a person is necessarily a more important or more central part of our identities, but to emphasize that we want to be treated as people, not characters. In our experience, the fact that we're fictives sometimes gets in the way of singlets seeing us as people, so that's why we phrased it the way we did
Adding to this as a fictive myself
re: Tip 3: Some of us do consider ourselves nesrly the same as the source character (think soulbonds, but not just them) even with changes, and some of us are okay with fanning and fawning! Seriously I love fans I eat up the attention like candy, and it sucks that everyone's so awkward about it. The difference is that some people put us on weird pedestals that ignore that we're people and instead dehumanize/depersonalize us. As a general rule don't go gushing to a fictive you don't know, but some of us really WANT that interaction so just ask!! I like talking about myself!! One of our best friends scrolls through his own tag to read fans talking positively about him to combat his depression. It all depends on the individual.
This goes double for source memories- literally just ask what the individual fictive is comfortable with before talking about it, and use your brain and don't bring up traumatic or intense memories unless we do first. Some of us like talking about our memories, some don't, most of us have different boundaries for what we want to tell and what we don't. For a lot of us our exomemories are literally our lives before the system, long as it's treated that way then it's ok.
As for shipping this is another tossup. I agree that assuming a fictive is attracted to someone they're shipped with is weird as fuck, but if we bring up a relationship or shipping ourselves then we did it because we want to talk about it, we have our own agency. I have friends that consider their source selves separate enough that they even ship themselves around for fun without it affecting their real relationships, and that's completely fine. Again, we can do whatever we want with our identities, just check what we're comfortable with when talking about source.
Basically yeah, just treat us with the same consideration as you would anybody else you've never met irl, not like some parasocial relationship with someone you want to pretend isn't a person.
🃏 Akira Kurusu
