PinkAngel:
This is a very important point to remember! We should all suspend our real life somewhat when we enter into spanking fiction but sometimes people do sometimes seem to forget they are reading something from someone else's imagination.
I don't write what has happened, or what I would like to happen to me, I write what comes into my head as a plan or an idea that I think might make a good story.
So exactly when has anybody forgotten that the stories here are fictional?
Some people seem to assume this on occasion, and then those people feel the necessity to announce to everyone else, "This is only fiction," but offhand I can't remember a single instance in which a reader/commenter has claimed that a story is a RL account--unless of course the author him/herself has first stated that it is.
It's perfectly possible to have discussions/debates that are both intensive and extended about fictional characters and situations without any of the participants having lost track of the fact that they're dealing with fiction.
Before I lost interest in "Smallville" (when both Lex Luthor and Lana Lang were removed as regular characters), I participated in extensive discussions RE the relationships between Lex, Lana and Clark Kent on the alt.smallville newsgroup--IIRC no one there ever assumed that the occasional intensity of the debate meant that anyone involved must have believed that Lex, Lana and Clark actually existed.
That does seem to be an assumption that some people make on amateur story sites, however, that if there's any in-depth discussion/debate on a particular story, those involved somehow "must have forgotten" that it's a fictional account.
Personally, I operate on the exact opposite assumption: If a person doesn't claim that a fictional story is actually a RL account, then he/she is fully aware of its fictional nature.
Also, offhand I can't remember any reader/commenter claiming that the negative behaviors and/or situations often found in fictional stories are reflections of the author's RL beliefs and attitudes, yet I have observed some people trying to "defend" an author from criticisms of his/her characters and/or occurrences within a storyline as though they were somehow criticisms of the author him/herself.
Here's an author criticism: "J.R. Rowling is really a sucky writer, her characters aren't believable."
This isn't an author criticism: "That Lord Voldemort is really a mean motherf---ing bastard, it's immoral that his Death Eaters are killing innocent Muggles."
As anyone who's read my extensive comments on stories probably realizes, I can get quite interested in the characters and situations in those narratives--but it doesn't mean that for a nanosecond I've somehow forgotten that they're fictional (unless otherwise indicated by the author).
I strong suspect that the same is true of virtually all this Library of Spanking FICTION's readers/commenters... --C.K.