One of the things weâve 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, thereâs this odd thing that happens where the conversation stalls for seemingly no reason. Especially if we mention something related to being a fictive.
We donât think this is out of malice, itâs just awkwardness. People whoâve had very little interaction with the plural community arenât likely to know how to talk to fictives. The short answer to that is to talk to us like people, but we thought weâd write out some tips to help our well-meaning but uninformed singlet friends. Disclaimer that weâre just one system, and these tips come from our own experiences. We canât speak for other systems
Tip 1: We arenât RPers or ask blogs, donât ask us questions like we are. We wonât 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, thatâs not an invitation to treat them like our source media. Donât 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: Donât fangirl over us. We arenât your favorite character come to life. Seriously, this is just weird and uncomfortable. Also, donât bring up your ships that involve our source characters to us
Tip 4: If weâre in a fandom space, assume weâre comfortable there. We can make our own decisions about how and when (and if) we want to engage with our sourceâs fandom. We may leave suddenly if things get weird or uncomfortable, but thatâs just us looking after ourselves without derailing the conversation. Generally though, donât feel the need to modify your discussions on our account unless we ask you to
Tip 5: We arenât some sideshow attraction to be gawked at. If you think of our identities as weird or cringey, thatâs going to show in your interactions with us, and it always sucks. Your internal feelings about fictives are something for you to work through, donât expect us to put up with you treating us like a freak show
Tip 6: Donât judge us by our source characters. We didnât get a say in it, neither did anyone else in our system. Having a fictive of a character doesnât 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: Donât assume weâre 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, donât judge our identities the way you would a headcanon. If our source character is bi but weâre gay, thatâs not bi erasure
Tip 8: Weâre people first, fictives second. Start there, with the understanding that weâre not really all that different from the non-fictives in our system that youâve already talked to. It doesnât have to be awkward
This isnât a comprehensive list, itâs 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 donât get syscourse-y, we donât wanna deal with that