Personal rant, but, I really want more writers to be less ~elusive~ and like vague as shit when it comes to how they go about seeing other people interact with their characters. Not like “this character is my fav and fuck all you readers if you don’t like them”, but the “Haha, hey, that’s fucking disgusting that you’d do that / ship that / etc with my characters when they are clearly not built that way so stop it” kind of way.
Like, it’s pretty common to see writers either just quietly ignore in*est or und*eage ships or ab*sive ships along with blatant fuckin racism and racist stereotypes that masses of fans dive head first into for??? some ungodly heathenish reason??? Like, yes, the writer is one person. Yes they have their own lives. Yes they work and are busy and blah blah like normal people. But, I know they see it to a degree in some cases. They interact with fans and hear stories or get sent things by friends. Writers have and do interact with fanart (though I guess legally cannot read fanfics until their series of books is over due to possible infringements? Something i read a while ago, idk how true it is). They see this stuff, and like just??? let it go by????
I mean, sure, you could argue the whole “It’d lower sales” or “make people stop reading”. But, oooooookay? And? You’re selling to the world and word of mouth as is, there are a billion other people who will read and consume or hear of your writing. Why is telling off harmful people and possibly driving them away from consuming your work such a bad thing? Why would you want those kinds of people touching or tainting your work anyway?? Oh noooo, people who perpetuate harmful and terrible things won’t touch your work -- oh wait, that’s a good thing.
When the writer writes family bonds, or bad characters, or a plethora of other shit, I just feel like they shouldn’t have to be ~covert~ and ~polite to everyone~ about not agreeing or blatantly calling out shitty people on how they portray their characters. Readers should be allowed room to have headcanons and imagination and fill in the blanks, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed too (esp if the writer is kinda white-centric or missing representation in other areas overall). I’m saying when it comes to things like the shit above, a writer should be able too, and should, speak out on it and tell their audience to knock to the hell off. Just tell readers like “omfg what is wrong with you??? why would you ship family??? together??? why would you push an ab*sive relationship like that when I’ve very clearly written the one character to be a victim what the fuck??? Why can’t ya’ll just be normal ass people holy shit”.
Idk that’s just me and I really do hope there are writers out there who do this. Maybe I don’t know them, but it’d be refreshing to see more of it.
