I mean this entirely in good faith, I just genuinely don’t know if this would be considered a problem or not. I don’t think there’s much of a chance of my original written stuff becoming popular, but if it ever did, would be be considered rude, inappropriate, bigoted, etc. to say “don’t kin or otherwise claim to be my characters, I made them up and would be uncomfortable with people claiming to be them”? I know back in the day artists would also frequently tag their art with “don’t tag as kin/me” (maybe they still do that? idk I haven’t really been looking I guess), and I guess that’s in the same vein as the other thing and something I would likely do in the future if it’s not considered wrong? Like… they’re my character. I made them up. They didn’t exist prior to me making them up. I don’t think I could interact with someone who claims to be them, I think I’d find myself blocking them… thoughts?
Thank you for your genuine and good faith question, my friend.
Happily, there is a very simple answer to this question.
The answer is that you have no control over the reaction to your fiction that its audience has.
That includes what fanfiction and fanart they create. That includes what characters people ship together. That includes the reaction that spiritual or mentally ill people have to your characters and your work.
Once your work is outside of your head and shared with the world, you don’t have any control over the thoughts about it that other people have.
You can reasonably ask people who believe they are kin of your characters not to talk to you about that, just like you can reasonably ask people not to share their headcanons, fanart, fanfiction etc about your work with you.
But the minute you try to actually control what your fans do or don’t do as a reaction to your work.
Oh boy.
That’s Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery territory, my friend.
Speaking as a fellow creator, best of luck. It’s scary to release your work to the public. People have all kinds of thoughts about it then.
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