thoughtfulSometimes, no matter what you do, you're going to offend people. Sometimes you'll never know why.
Things I have done in the past week that someone has found offensive: listened to loud, "weird" music. Had an opinion about whether or not people who aren't me should be allowed to make decisions about my body. Enjoyed bad science fiction. Had my hair highlighted in preparation for the Hugos. Implied that there's a double standard in how women are expected to dress for the Hugos vs. how men are expected to dress for the Hugos. Implied that it's more expensive to be female. Bought children's toys for myself. Bought children's toys for a child. These are just the things I know about mind you, and I only know because in each case, someone told me. I'm not sure why most of these things were offensive. I don't actually want to know. And that, right there, probably offends someone.
I do my best to Marilyn Munster my way through life, leaving fields of happy zombies and sparkly plagues behind me. Sadly, though, nothing is that inoffensive. Not unless it's, say, a rock, and even that will offend, if it gets into somebody's shoe. There is no way to avoid giving offense. Not if you're a thing that actually exists.
And it can be hard, as someone whose audience is largely online, to deal with the thought that I might accidentally offend someone, lose potential readers, and wind up living in a cardboard box next to the creek. My cats aren't supposed to go outside! (This is the "worst case scenario" mindset. It kicks in when I think I've upset someone. My brain is a theme park that hates me.) Case in point:
A while ago—within the last year, although I couldn't tell you when—someone with whom I had communicated on Twitter, but who I didn't really know, asked me "Why did you kill character X?" I gave the response I always give to that question, which is completely honest, despite having been originally stolen from Stephen King: "I didn't kill them. They just died." I have made the conscious choice to kill very few characters. Most of them are sacrifices to the story, and I'm as surprised as anyone else when I see what's coming. It's an odd answer, but a totally sincere one.
(Example of me killing a character on purpose: I killed Rose. It was sort of essential, since her story hinges on her being, you know. Dead.)
This person did not find my answer sincere. They proceeded to declare on Twitter that I was a horrible person who disrespected her readers and didn't appreciate reader questions and was generally horrid, and then went and amended all their reviews of my books to lower their ratings, so that it would be clear that they did not give good scores to mean authors. So with one statement that I still don't regret making, because it was sincere, I lost a reader, and the aggregate scores of my books went down. And I'm lucky in that this is one of the biggest "bad author, no authorial biscuit" scandals that I've had to deal with so far.
Do I know exactly why my response was offensive? Nope. I've said that to other people without causing offense (that I'm aware of). Did this person explain? Nope. Is that the only time I'm going to cause offense in this world?
Nope.
No matter what you do, you're going to piss people off. Hell, me saying "offense is inevitable" is probably pissing someone off. So take deep breaths, and don't dwell on it too much. As long as we're all doing our best not to be horrible and hurtful, it should be okay, in the long run.
Even if we never know why.
August 20 2012, 17:15:52 UTC 4 years ago
You get this. Youv'e set up a universe, and things happen. You can affect it, but you don't really control it.
To someone who isn't a writer, this doesn't make sense. You're the writer, you're in control, if anything happens in your books it's because you chose to do it, obviously. So your response comes across as flippant and frankly an outright lie. And someone who would flippantly lie to a reader who is clearly invested in your work obviously makes you a Bad Person.
What this amounts to, and which seems to usually be the case in major offenses, is lack of some context which one assumes is shared. In this case, you have that understanding of your interaction with characters which your reader lacks. I see one of the other commentators mentioning a quote from "Princess Bride" being horribly misinterpreted because the recipient had never seen that move. I've had it happen all the time - an innocent remark triggers something for the other person in ways I could never have imagined, or some comment of mine alludes to a meaning the other person has no way of getting. Usually it's just confusing, sometimes it isn't. And, unfortunately, when we're upset we don't tend to stop and think "could the other person have possibly known I would take it this way?" nor "Hey, until this point they were perfectly respectful - maybe they didn't mean to be offensive, I should ask."
Also, of course, some people really are assholes.
August 20 2012, 17:23:02 UTC 4 years ago
Bah. Thank you for the perspective. It really does help.
August 20 2012, 17:56:03 UTC 4 years ago
Bear in mind here, I'm speculating. Maybe what you tweeted just happened to mirror what the great aunt they utterly hated said on her deathbed and that's why. I don't know, you don't know; they may not know. Emotional reactions can be funny that way.
But, assuming my guess is right, from their perspective they expressed a deep interest and emotional investment in your work. You - they assume knowingly - went and shat over that, mocking them in the process. And now you're saying "Oh, I shat all over your love of my work, I totally don't see why that's a thing with you, why are you being so unreasonable let's be friends!" and that won't fly. To them, you're only digging deeper. You were an awful person and you don't see why being an awful person is bad. You don't engage with people like that. You run away, and you warn your friends about them.
Now, I want to emphasize - you are not an awful person, okay? Let's be 100% clear on that. I've met you, as far as I could tell you were an interesting, engaging, and friendly person who was happy to take time out of her day to spend an evening with a random person you met on the Internet.
What happened - and will, I'm sure, happen again - is that you said something that someone else took in a way you didn't expect, and in a way which they interpreted to mean that you are a bad person. In all likelihood, they're not a bad person either, and they're not looking for excuses to condemn people. It was a sad, tragic miscommunication which, unfortunately, you may never have the opportunity to fix.
It doesn't make you a bad person, it doesn't make them a bad person. It's just something that happens.
August 20 2012, 20:55:53 UTC 4 years ago
"To someone who isn't a writer, this doesn't make sense. You're the writer, you're in control, if anything happens in your books it's because you chose to do it, obviously. So your response comes across as flippant and frankly an outright lie. And someone who would flippantly lie to a reader who is clearly invested in your work obviously makes you a Bad Person."
That was pretty much my GUESS as well. Your answer that the character "just died" upset the other person because the (apparently flippant) remark seemed to indicate to them that not only didn't YOU really care about the character, but that they shouldn't either - that all the emotional attachment they had put into that character was a waste. What I am GUESSING is that they were looking for an answer along the lines of "It tore me apart to write about the death of that character. I really hated to do it, but it was necessary to the story." An answer along those lines validates the pain they felt about the death and they can think about the character death as a valiant and noble sacrifice for the good of the story.
August 20 2012, 21:06:22 UTC 4 years ago
August 20 2012, 21:25:01 UTC 4 years ago