excellent essay! this remind me of the ground "rules" we have about our timelines, which are basically this: the timelines we came from are specific only to Taluwis, outside people cannot come from them, and outside people cannot enter them.
so we ran into trouble when a well meaning and empathetic hikago fan with plural-like past life experiences showed they did not understand this boundary (they were isolated from any plural systems). They told us that they used to be a contemporary of Sai in the Heian Era. This is fine. So far as we are concerned they have their timeline with their Sai where they were a contemporary, and that is fine, it just has nothing to do with our timeline, of course.
But then after they heard about my trauma history, they then claimed that they were experiencing memories of the abuse (which should not be possible especially because the description I gave was vague and not specific about any particular events) and said they wanted to punish my abuser (childishly, by hitting him with a frying pan?) or do something to stop the abuse from happening. But that is not possible, you cannot enter my timeline, and you cannot change the past. So we told them, anything you experience is your own independent iteration and does not have to do with our timeline. You can do whatever you want in your iteration, but it cannot affect our history because you are not there.
They were persuaded, but still, I felt as if a basic boundary was violated. Out of ignorance rather than malice, but all the same. My trauma history is something very serious, and is not something that can simply be fixed just because an outside person feels empathy for me.
no subject
so we ran into trouble when a well meaning and empathetic hikago fan with plural-like past life experiences showed they did not understand this boundary (they were isolated from any plural systems). They told us that they used to be a contemporary of Sai in the Heian Era. This is fine. So far as we are concerned they have their timeline with their Sai where they were a contemporary, and that is fine, it just has nothing to do with our timeline, of course.
But then after they heard about my trauma history, they then claimed that they were experiencing memories of the abuse (which should not be possible especially because the description I gave was vague and not specific about any particular events) and said they wanted to punish my abuser (childishly, by hitting him with a frying pan?) or do something to stop the abuse from happening. But that is not possible, you cannot enter my timeline, and you cannot change the past. So we told them, anything you experience is your own independent iteration and does not have to do with our timeline. You can do whatever you want in your iteration, but it cannot affect our history because you are not there.
They were persuaded, but still, I felt as if a basic boundary was violated. Out of ignorance rather than malice, but all the same. My trauma history is something very serious, and is not something that can simply be fixed just because an outside person feels empathy for me.
--Akira