Quote Originally Posted by Neo Emolga View Post
Yeah, I've had some good friends in the past and they turned to the dark side. They started off as really good people and always seemed fun and nice, and then something berserk happens and they feel more like an enemy than a friend. I had to leave people like that behind behind, but new friends will come along if you open yourself up to new people and give them a chance. New coworkers, joining a club, or meeting new people at the gym and such is a great way to find new and better friends to hang out with.

The fact she's blaming you for her problems when you've done nothing wrong is a sign you've got to let her go before she starts dragging you down with her. Misery likes company and it seems like she wants you there being miserable with her. But the fact she likes to control the violence and hates it when she doesn't is really disturbing. That kind of obsession with violence is a really bad sign and has me worried someday soon she might try to take that fantasy and make it a reality.

You and I are both story writers and we know only to use violence to put characters under pressure, have epic battles of good versus evil and stuff like that. Some of it is okay and you'd be hard-pressed to find an adventure or fantasy novel that doesn't have at least some violence in it. But we don't do it because we just crave the gore and bloodshed for its own sake and that's all we do it for. Even a horror story only uses it as a tool to achieve of fear and pressure, but if it was a never-ending carousel of blood and violence, it would get lame, tasteless, and even stupid.

But in the end, don't change yourself for her sake. And the same goes for your stories. Don't take them down or change them just because someone else disagrees with it (unless you're getting it published and they have a certain criteria they want to use, which is a totally different story). At the end of the day, it's always good to listen to advice and weigh the pros and cons of different decisions based on what you hear, but it's still your creation and it's still your call. No one has the right to take that from you.
Yeah, I have to think really hard about what I'm going to do. I'm definitely going to tell her I'm not comfortable talking about this stuff at the least, and if she persists or it gets worse, probably block her. I don't like completely cutting people out of my life; I only ever do it as an absolute last resort. It might come to that, but I still need some time to really think about all this and figure out the best thing to do. In the meantime, I'm not looking at/replying to any more messages from her.

Back in 2013-2015 Sally was super nice. There were a few problems (like her issues with the violent scene I wrote) but it was mostly fun. Then it started getting worse. I noticed in her stories, they used to be really violent but would have happy endings and a good vs. evil type theme...nowadays (I skimmed some recent ones a while ago out of curiosity) they're just violence with disturbing endings and have the formerly friend characters torturing and/or murdering each other. It creeps me out. But yeah, I definitely need to find some new friends.

Yeah...I have no idea why she latched on to my story as the source of all her problems. I remember her telling me she hated the movie The Great Mouse Detective because of the violent scene at the end, but for whatever reason she didn't fixate on that for years like she did with my story. And yeah, I'm super creeped out by the 'control' thing too. She can't expect to control what everyone else writes, and the violent scene in my story is very tame compared to the stuff she writes. She did once tell me that she 'likes to see bad guys get hurt' (even though her stories focus on the good guys getting hurt by the villains a lot of the time too) and would always have her villains get punished horribly (at least in the early stories). She once got really mad at me because my villains only went to jail instead of getting tortured/beaten. And yeah, I'm kind of worried about that too. My mom once told me she's glad I don't live close to her because she wouldn't feel comfortable with me hanging out with her. At the time I was just like 'haha, yeah" but now I think she may be right.

I agree! Stories need to have a balance. But the way Sally writes it's fixated on the gore/murder/torture and goes into way too much detail, and there usually aren't any lighthearted or humorous moments to break it up. "Never-ending carousel of blood and violence" is a good way to describe a lot of her stories.

Don't worry, I won't! I definitely won't be changing or taking down any of my stories. I have the right to write and post what I want just like she does. And yeah, hopefully I can at least shut this type of conversation down. She's asked me several times before if she thinks she should go to a counselor and I always say yes, but then she comes up with some reason not to. Well, I don't want to talk about any of this anymore, and she knows where I stand.