Fictive Etiquette Note Template

               FICTIVE ETIQUETTE NOTE, BY THE SALT INSTITUTE.

Hello! We're the Salt Institute. We're a fictive-heavy plural system.

This template is based on our personal Fictive Etiquette Note -- a short note we wrote to explain to other people, singlet and plural alike, what our fictives want them to know: what being a fictive in our system is like, how they'd like to be treated, what their boundaries are regarding their source and interpersonal interactions.

SECTION 1 is a breakdown of how we structured our note; the actual template.

SECTION 2 contains the raw text of our personal etiquette note. It isn't meant to be reused as is, and likely won't be directly applicable to your own system anyway. We're sharing it here ONLY as an example; in case seeing how others have done it helps other fictive-heavy systems write, in their own words, how they'd like to be treated and the various boundaries they have.

We hope our template helps you and yours!
If you use it to write your own etiquette note and find it useful, we'll appreciate it if you link back to this page, but it's not necessary.

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[SECTION 1: STRUCTURING YOUR NOTE]
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--[Before You Start: General Tips]--

  * There's a lot of variety in how terms are used across different subsets of the plural community. If you're using a term that a clueless singlet would not already be familiar with, we suggest explaining how you& personally use it -- we can guarantee there'll be at least one other system elsewhere who doesn't use the term in exactly the same way.
  * All the questions below are suggestions, entirely optional. They're only here to help people come up with words and ideas. You don't have to share anything that your fictives / you aren't comfortable sharing.



--[Part 1: Introduction & Definitions.]--

  * What's our DEFINITION of the term fictive? What does "being a fictive" entail in our system?
  * Are there any other basic concepts that our readers will need to be aware of to understand what follows?


--[Part 2: Explaining how you want to be treated / Listing boundaries.]--

 * SOURCE:
     > Do our fictives want to be treated like their source or not?

 * THE SOURCE AS A WORK OF FICTION:
     > How do our fictives relate to their source as a work of fiction?
     > Do they want to engage with the source itself?
     > With the fandom?
     > What's an acceptable level of engagement from other people?
     > Are there any topics they need to avoid?
     > Any other details?

 * DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FICTION AND PERSONAL LIFE:
     > Do their personal lives match the events depicted in said work of fiction?
     > Do they feel as though there's an emotional separation between the fictional piece of media and their memories/lives?
     > Is it okay to ask for details about their lives or not?
     > Any other details?

 * ON SOURCEMATES AND CANONMATES:
     > Are they looking for sourcemates (fictives from the same media)?
     > For canonmates (fictives from the same specific iteration of the media)?
     > Any other details?

 * ON MEMORIES:
     > What are their memories like? Are they literal, allegorical, or a bit of both?
     > How do they engage with their own memories?
     > Are there any particular beliefs they hold about their own memories that they'd like respected?
     > Any other details?


--[Part 3: Sendoff.]--

 * Thanking people for reading the note
 * Easy linkback to this Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/W5ya5Kny





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[SECTION 2: RAW TEXT / EXAMPLE]
    (Please do not reuse this text wholesale. Copypasting a few bits and pieces into your own thing is fine if words are hard for you on a specific topic, but the whole thing is personal to us and we mean it to be used as guidelines only.)
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Many of us are fictives. We use the term for two kinds of folks:
  * people made by the brain based on a fictional character,
  * people whose soul got transferred from another universe into this one, where a version of their universe is depicted in a work of fiction.

From all of us, please remember we're people, separate from our fictional character counterparts, and treat us accordingly. In particular, this means:

  * Don't assume you know us as people because you're aware of our source = this world's fictional depiction of our life / world / fictional character counterparts. Yes, some (maybe most) things will match, but that doesn't mean we're comfortable speedrunning the "getting to know each other" phase.

  * Don't assume we will enjoy engaging with our source as a work of fiction; ask first. Some of us can comfortably make the separation and won't have any problems with it; but some of us need to avoid engaging with certain topics, with the fandom, or even with our source entirely.

  * If you're talking to us about stuff related to our source, please be aware we might have different things to say depending on the angle we approach that discussion from. "Your opinion on this world's fictional depiction?" often doesn't strike the same chords as "Please talk about your actual life and memories from before?"

  * Relatedly, regardless of how friendly you are with the rest of the system, don't assume we'll be comfortable talking about our actual life experiences with you. Please respect our comfort levels. It's not personal if we refuse to talk about it!

  * Don't assume you're automatically friends with us because you used to be friends with (a version of) us in another world. We're generally down for talking with folks from the same source -- it's a special kind of "yeah, I get what you went through" that we can appreciate -- but we're not interested in finding canonmates and aren't looking to rekindle old relationships.

And a quick additional note from the folks whose souls got transferred from another world into this one:

  * Don't call our exomemories (= memories we have from before we joined the system) "pseudomemories" or imply they're "substitute beliefs" for things that happened to the body; that's not accurate for us. We believe they're memories of things that really happened someplace else; not least because there is no correlation between them and our collective experiences. Please respect that.

Thank you for reading!