I’d be more interested in discussions about creative ownership and the implications of fictives/fictionkin/etc with respect to the original writers, if I thought the people who brought this up actually cared.
Disclaimer: I don’t really have a dog in this fight except that I’m a writer, and eventually I’d like to get published (maybe).
YES FUCKING THIS
it’s a conflict of interests and it’s hard, and no one should have to pretend it isn’t or that they don’t have negative emotions about it
i think the important thing to remember is that multiple people can have their own intense feelings about a work and that’s ok. as the author you have the right to cling strongly to your vision and defend that that’s what the work is about for you. anyone else, fan or fictive or kin, also has the right to cling strongly to their experience and vision of your work and say “this is what it’s about for me”.
for you, your work may be a child. for someone else, it may be a life saver. for someone else, it may be deeply painful and triggering. for someone else, it may be a portal to another universe that you unknowingly opened.
all these interpretations can be true at the same time! you don’t have to believe that you channeled it. coincidences happen especially in a multiverse. you can see yourself as having personally poured your own blood sweat and tears into a creation while also believing that it happened to align with some other universe somewhere else strongly enough to act as a “key”. maybe people will say your key is flawed because it sticks in the door they’re trying to open with it, and you can say that you didn’t intend to make a key to open that door and you still don’t. no one can force you to make a key for their door. but you can respect that it works for that, and that if you found a key that fit your door almost perfectly you’d wonder why it wasn’t perfect and think the person was a bad keymaker, and this is turning into some junji ito shit here but, you get where i’m going i think
