coaltide | Merry Crisis

Entry tags:

2022

Merry Crisis

On the 7^th night of Hanukkah my vindictive author gave to me....

yuletide |

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Disagree with the other anons. I would not acknowledge any of her complaining. When reveals come, the awkwardness will shift to her when she realises how badly she's behaved, thus leaving her obligated to apologise to you.

Then you risk ending up with the same situation you could end up with if you orphan/leave the fic in the anon collection: she might end up so resentful that the friendship ends up cooling. It's just that she's the one who'd be doing it instead of you doing it without telling her why.

Your advice here is what you do if you're trying to "win." If you're prioritizing the friendship, you get ahead of it, and communicate, and hopefully your friend is a reasonable & apologetic person in response. If they aren't, then the friendship might still blow up, but you did the best you fucking could.

+1.

DC

Disagree. She'll feel awkward enough when it goes live that this will compound her feelings - after all, right now she feels wronged because she thinks she got a crap gift and is probably assuming things like, the author didn't try / the author has the opposite of my preferences and wanted me to know that / etc. Finding out it was by a friend won't make her want to apologise, it'll make her feel doubly betrayed. Even if author!nonny meant well and actually put a lot of effort into it. Whether the recipient's reaction is based in anything logical right now, finding out it's by a friend is not going to make her feel better about it or, crucially, more likely to re-evaluate her criticisms.

“Betrayed” could be going a bit far lol

You're probably right, hahah, but I can't think of a good lesser word that contains the same dynamic. "Not only did I get a crap gift, but from someone I thought knew me and might care more than a stranger about whether I'd enjoy this? Well this sucks."

It really depends on the personalities involved. There are people out there who do assume that any behavior they dislike is deliberately malicious! I don't think there's any reason to assume the recip is one of those in this case, though.

DC

Whether the recipient's reaction is based in anything logical right now, finding out it's by a friend is not going to make her feel better about it or, crucially, more likely to re-evaluate her criticisms.

Where are you getting this? If this happened to me and it turned out the fic I disliked was by a friend, I would for sure be re-evaluating my criticisms! Then again I'm not enough of an asshole to complain about my fic in public, so maybe I can't generalize here.

CYRT

Then again I'm not enough of an asshole to complain about my fic in public, so maybe I can't generalize here.

That's exactly what I mean, though. When someone is already upset enough to do that, they aren't going to take it well if you add embarrassment to the mix. They might in the long run but definitely not in the short.

NC. Given human nature, it's possible the recip would displace their embarrassment by being outraged that the thread OP didn't tell them sooner.

AYRT

Exactly. Is it fair? No. Would it be OP's fault? Also no. But it's still a situation where it might be wiser in the long run to take a different tack.

The thing is this isn’t like, “I wish you’d told me sooner that you hate when I make jokes about that seemingly harmless thing you’re actually sensitive about, now I feel unnecessarily bad about it.” It treads more into “I treat everyone except my clique rudely, so you should have tipped me off that it was you.” If a person did this and didn’t seem wholly apologetic at least in the long run without me leading them to the apology on a red carpet, it would seem like they only gave a shit because it threatened the friendship.

I mean, obviously? If they cared about hurting the feelings of Rand O. Author, they wouldn't be bitching about their gift in semi-public! Of course they only care because it's their friend!

But OP now knows they're the sort of person who bitches about gifts in semi-public and still wants to preserve the friendship, so the cliqueyness is priced in.

this is all weird

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Merry Crisis

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