Someone please help me explain why this is so very wrong to do

[sisterjune]

Dear flist, I received THIS PM in my mailbox this morning:

Hi! I saw that you identified yourself as Muslim in the Community episode 2.05 discussion thread, and I was hoping you would be willing to lend me your perspective on a fic I'm working on, specifically on whether a particular plot point might be considered offensive or otherwise

Comments

[rose_in_shadow]

I'm not Muslim (Christian, actually) but if I got the same kind of question, I would be uncomfortable for the reasons you describe. I would tell her my personal opinion but that may very well differ from some other person that reads it.

I'd say you'd be safe with a polite demurral and maybe advise her to check out the library for research if it's that important to her.

I've only had something like this happen to me once. A PM asking what I thought about the person's creating a multi-fandom community board. I have NO idea where this came from, but I told her politely my honest opinion that I didn't think it was a good idea because personally that's not the kind of site I gravitate toward. Since I never got a reply back, I'm guessing that all she wanted was validation on her idea, which didn't give. :/

[prozacpark]

I wonder what she was planning to do before she came across her token Muslim across a community? I...doubt it would've stopped her from posting her fanfic

[sisterjune]

Yeah exactly, and Honestly I hold true to the opinion that if you have doubts something will go over well with other people, then, dont do it. I mean that in the FAIL sense and not in the general sense, since playing it risky is fine in other areas but not in the ones where people might be hurt. So my thing is, either she's sure enough that it's fine that there's no need to question it outright, or she's unsure and therefore she should just NOT DO IT, change the line of dialogue or plot or w/e that she feels nervous about and move on. IF she's creative enough she can manage. But obv, like you said it's probably more to do with a need for validation than a genuine concern for my or any other muslilms feelings. More rather a worry over her reputation if anything. I think that's exactly why this bothered me SO MUCH. It just reeks of falseness. Honestly I dont want to reply to her and I dont think I will. Alot of people dont get email alerts with their lj PMs and even lj loses msgs all the time. I am gonna pretend I never got it. I mean I

[prozacpark]

Oh! I love that you have Anne Taintor icons. <3 Every fandom needs them.

And yeah, fandom and its fake sensitivity. *headdesk. But wise decision on ignoring her and I fully approve. ;)

It turns out that I *do* have MSN, and just added it to my trillian. I don't know how it exactly works, but I think you can contact me through the e-mail address? Which is the same as my LJ name @live.com. I'm helltoships on AIM, if you have that, which I use most often.

[sisterjune]

Hee thanks. I wish I could find more icons in her style! But alas I could not D:

Yay! My friend on msn also uses trillian, it would glitch sometimess but mostly it works fine. and I'll add you on msn, I dont have AIM D: I used to but none of my friends used it, and now it seems the opposite is happening lately lol. I might dl it again one day. we shall see~ I hope you are on now. I need to talk to SOMEONE about that recent tvd ep and preferably someone who wont be going EEEE DAMOOON the whole time.