Do readers not realize that the stories here are mostly fiction?

[EmilyMiller]

Well, clearly, you're living in MY reality - so with that being said, I apologize it's so depressing. I'll try to get that fixed!

Yeah - but that’s the nature of alts. Let’s try to make talking to myself at least a little realistic.

Emily

 

[Devinter]

Yeah - but that’s the nature of alts. Let’s try to make talking to myself at least a little realistic.

Emily

Pretending to have a Swedish alt is highly ambitious, considering how difficult the accent is to fake. Plus, I bet you don't even have a pet moose.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Pretending to have a Swedish alt is highly ambitious, considering how difficult the accent is to fake. Plus, I bet you don't even have a pet moose.

Hey - I used to watch Sesame Street - I know what real Swedish accents sound like!

Next you’ll be saying I can’t do realistic Transylvanian enumerators either.

Emily

EDIT: Might have meant The Muppets

 

[VerbalAbuse]

NO! Of course the stories are real. I mean, Star Wars is real. Vader, Sidious, all of them are real people. I haven't heard anybody to say otherwise. Stories here must be real, too.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

NO! Of course the stories are real. I mean, Star Wars is real. Vader, Sidious, all of them are real people. I haven't heard anybody to say otherwise. Stories here must be real, too.

Stories here ‘have’ to be true. They’re on the internet, after all.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Hey - I used to watch Sesame Street - I know what real Swedish accents sound like!

Next you’ll be saying I can’t do realistic Transylvanian enumerators either.

Emily

EDIT: Might have meant The Muppets

Sesame Street characters are also Muppets. You’re golden.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Sesame Street characters are also Muppets. You’re golden.

I like being precise. I go back and edit AH posts FFS, who does that?

Emily

 

[SirNoseDVoidOfFunk]

Having put a couple of femdom stories on the site and got some pretty distressed feedback from people who don't like that sort of thing, it did cross my mind that there might be a bit of trolling going on in the comments. Either that or there's people on here who don't realise that fetish erotica about power exchanges is based on fantasies, some of which are morally a bit dodgy.
It's almost like some of these readers are the opposite of the Wealliams and Twudies who go around fetish clubs and munches complaining that everybody else is a role playing and they have the only proper slave in the whole scene...

 

[Voboy]

We all deal with this. I was introduced to it early, in (I think?) my fifth tale, when a commenter took my characters to task for risking an unwanted pregnancy. I was not sure what to think of that.

Then there are MANY commenters who assume that just because I write about something, it must mean I'm "into" it. Nope. Sorry, gentle reader. NMK; I just thought it would make an interesting story.

 

[Britva415]

I always find the “readers are so dumb” comments odd.

I don't think they're odd, but what I think is that this commenting behavior isn't about intelligence at all.

It's about character.

 

[Britva415]

Yeah, I went there

 

[jehoram]

Can't say I have that experience of readers seeing my fiction as fact, but I hear that a lot of female writers here find themselves being hit on. The closest comments to that are when I see something like "That looks like it might have come out of Forbes."

But it occurs to me that maybe the reader is trying to get the writer into some sort of role-playing game, where the writer is asked to assume the persona of their character and be that person, just for that reader. If the writer has invested in the character to the extent that a story gets written, maybe there's more where that came from.

 

[StillStunned]

I was introduced to it early, in (I think?) my fifth tale, when a commenter took my characters to task for risking an unwanted pregnancy.

I've had that. "You'll be even more stunned when you get your sister pregnant."

Besides clearly identifying me-the-writer with me-the-narrator, the commenter is overlooking the fact that I use the best contraceptive known to mankind: I'm not going to write it that way.

 

[Voboy]

I've had that. "You'll be even more stunned when you get your sister pregnant."

Besides clearly identifying me-the-writer with me-the-narrator, the commenter is overlooking the fact that I use the best contraceptive known to mankind: I'm not going to write it that way.

And, presumably, the second-best contraceptive: "I don't have unprotected sex with my sister."

 

[StillStunned]

And, presumably, the second-best contraceptive: "I don't have unprotected sex with my sister."

Actually, "She initiated the sex, and she's written as being far too clever to do anything stupid."

 

[OnlyHappyEndings]

It's hotter when you can persuade yourself it's real. I used to read Penthouse Forum and pretend I was reading about real people, even after the writers wrote an article about how they make up the fake stories. I think that's why so many stories here are written in first person, in the tradition of Lovecraft. But to believe it to the point where you get mad about it?

 

[darkride]

I get comments on some of my stories where the reader seems to think everything in them is real life. They are STORIES, people. You know, fiction. Yes, there may be some truth in them but seriously. Are our readers so dumb as to offer legal advice for persons in a fictional story?? Some are.

Yeah... I have a number of regular, often anon commentators who like to attack one of my stories each time I post a new chapter, upset at the way that 2 of the characters in particular a treated.

I just take it as a compliment - obviously my writing is just SO GOOD they can't tell the difference between real life and my writing.

 

[Cagivagurl]

I get comments on some of my stories where the reader seems to think everything in them is real life. They are STORIES, people. You know, fiction. Yes, there may be some truth in them but seriously. Are our readers so dumb as to offer legal advice for persons in a fictional story?? Some are.

Are you trying to imply the stories aren't true????
Oh my god....
Surely this is a lie...
Please tell me it isn't so.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Only happened once, a thing I wrote on Fetlife.

 

[R. Richard]

The stories may be fiction. However, if a story is set in a real place, the writer does need to have lived in the real place, if things are to even seem a bit real. If someone living in Chicago walks from home to the Empire State Building, the story kind of collapses.

 

[bestkeptsecret678]

If you write well enough, people can't tell the difference between where reality stops and fiction begins. If you say it's all true, someone will doubt you; and if you write it as fiction, someone will think it's true.

Yup. I’ve had comments (mostly negative) where a reader doesn’t like what a character did or decided and goes on to project the negative consequences that will come to them… as if they are real. I take it as a compliment on my story telling, that they were so convinced.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Oh, yeah, I get that a lot.

Yup. I’ve had comments (mostly negative) where a reader doesn’t like what a character did or decided and goes on to project the negative consequences that will come to them… as if they are real. I take it as a compliment on my story telling, that they were so convinced.

 

[intim8]

Maybe these readers all grew up reading Penthouse Letters and Playboy Advisor, which were always written and presented by the magazines as if they were true, almost always in first person.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yup. I’ve had comments (mostly negative) where a reader doesn’t like what a character did or decided and goes on to project the negative consequences that will come to them… as if they are real. I take it as a compliment on my story telling, that they were so convinced.

I've had comments, always positive, where readers say, "Thank you both for sharing your story," as if they thought it was autobiographical. While one character might be loosely based on me, but the other is fictional, that means I nailed it, story-wise.

 

[Rob_Royale]

When someone who has been damaged gets triggered, it becomes very real. Their fear and anxieties get stirred up and that trauma comes screaming up to the fore. I've seen it happen with my wife and it's not a good thing.

The real question is, why read something that might trigger you?