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I am still firmly in "camp do not engage negatively with reviewers", but it gets really hard when they're asserting firmly that they know what I meant and that what I meant was toxic.
Like, there's a reviewer (or commentator, it can be hard to tell the difference), going around asserting that the Wayward Children series is 100% a metaphor for suicide, and that this is exactly and entirely what I meant. And it's not.
I WAS a suicidal teen, and a suicidal child before that. I would NEVER be that irresponsible.
Yes, some of the characters in that series are or have been suicidal, because they're largely drawn from my experiences as a teen in a group home for emotionally disturbed children. And a lot of us were suicidal.
But in that world, the doors are not a metaphor for suicide. A doorknob is not a razor blade. The doors are absolute and unquestionable reality. They don't represent anything, except for finding a place where you can be yourself, and be happy.
The doors are not death. The doors are fandom. They're your first BBS. They're the queer cafe downtown that didn't serve alcohol and so didn't require an ID, where you heard Jill Sobule play and realized maybe you weren't broken.
So it's HARD, when I see people ascribing such hurtful and toxic motivations to my writing, not to say "no, you're wrong." Intent doesn't matter. If you can read my work that way, that's on me. But if you're saying "This is WHAT SHE MEANT," I reserve the right to be hurt.
