hello, all! it's been a while since i've been here, but i need some advice about something so laughably stupid. i graduated from college in 2009. during my sophomore year, my roommate and i lived with another friend we met during freshman year. i think we still would be friends if we'd never lived with her. she's a talented artist, too, so every so often i feel like it's such a shame we couldn't remain friends because we could've worked on awesome projects together. and every so often i feel like i should send her some sort of apology because it obviously wasn't 100% her fault that we're not friends anymore. i acknowledge that i can be a monster and i definitely didn't handle our relationship fairly. anyway. moving on to present day times. against my inner instinct, i decided to look at her new tumblr comic page. a mutual friend shared it on facebook, and i was too curious not to click on it. i expected to see myself depicted and i think i may have, but that's not the issue because i really don't give a fig. the issue is that she drew my roommate and *slightly* altered her name. anyone who knows her will know that it is her. and eventually someone else might say to her, "hey, you know ___ drew you in her comic lololol." and that will make her extremely upset. i feel like if i were to tell her, it might be better, but if no one else ever tells her then does she even need to know about it? it's going to piss her off beyond belief. she may even cry. i don't want to cause her distress, but now that i've looked at this girl's comic i don't know what to do with this information. it's just a silly comic that i sincerely doubt would ever become anything big. if she had drawn me and slightly altered my name and depicted me as some psychotic evil troll, i'd just laugh and let it be. but my beloved roomie friend is different, and she will not be able to be okay with this. so would you tell your friend about such a ridiculous thing? if so, how might you go about it? if not, why not?
I would be apt to contact this artist and ask her to take it down before saying anything to the friend. Unless she's (the artist) a total jerk with no empathy I'd hope she'd be amenable to removing it. If not, well, no I'd probably not tell the friend and hope she never sees it.
I'm going to slightly disagree with the former poster. Honestly, if you think it's even slightly possible that your friend will come into contact with your old roommate's comic about her, you should probably tell her first. Tough stuff comes easier when you have a good friend with you and that way she won't have to read/see it, you can just tell her not to even go there if it will really upset her. It sounds like you might still have mutual friends with your old roommate and if your friend does too, it's likely that this will come up. And it will be more hurtful if your friend finds out about this from someone who doesn't know or care that it will hurt her. It might be possible to get your old roommate to take it down, but I don't know if that will work. You could try, like Browncoat said.
Try to have her take it down. If that doesn't work, pick a good time to tell the roommate you want her to know.
that's pretty close, unfortunately. she has empathy for herself, no one else. there is absolutely no way she would take it down. especially if i were the one to request it. she thinks i'm the jerk with no empathy, because i didn't feel like putting up with her anymore. thank you all for your reponses, i really am still torn about this! maybe i could bring this up to my friend in the hypothetical, like "how mad would you be if ___ posted illustrations of you on the internet?" would that maybe soften the blow? and not for nothing, but it's five years after graduation and all of the comics i've seen by this person have been about herself and mostly her college life. she tells the same tired old jokes over and over, and edits the real life stories to make herself the center of attention. just grow up, girl!
maybe you should bring it up in this context! if you say what you really think about these comics and treat your roles in them as what they are--shitty and kind of desperate--as opposed to some kind of big deal that is worth getting really upset about, maybe that will take the edge off of telling your roomie about them.
Hmmmm, I think that I would tell my friend and be extremely supportive and sensitive to her emotions. Just show a lot of love.
I am in the "Tell your friend and be really supportive in doing so" camp. I would rather hear bad news from a friend who cared than finding out they knew all along and didn't tell me and I found out some other way.
