Hey reddit, throwaway becuase some friends know my account.

Basically, I've been engaging in fandom spaces for most of my life, and have posted both art and fanfic throughout the years. However recently, I've gotten into kind of a predicament.

I used to be part of this friend group when I was younger, and a lot of shit happened within that friend group so now I'm not in contact with some of them anymore. I've struggled with mental and emotional health in general and a way for me to process the things I've gone through or am feeling is to write about a character going through it.

Let me be clear. in no way do I mention my friends, their names, or appearances. But growing up, especially as I was going through all of this and the group falling apart, I wrote fanfiction about a character from a show I liked going through the same things, albeit changed just a bit to fit the canon a bit more.

However, what I had forgotten was that one of the friends I fell out with knows my ao3 account. Back when we were still friends, I would occasionally share the stuff I wrote with her, and I just forgot I had done that. You can probably guess what happened next.

I haven't spoken to her much in these last few years, but a few days ago our old groupchat basically blew up. she was sending screenshots and links to my fics and accusing me of sharing all their personal business with strangers, telling me how creepy it was that I would write about them, and some of the others started agreeing.

Again, to be clear, there were NEVER any identifying details. I simply took situations I had gone through with these people and wrote about similar things happening to a character I like. The only reason she even knew it was about them is because she knows my account and the fanfics were posted around the same times as shit went down, with similar situations happening. It was my way to process the things I'd gone through and how it had affected me mentally, because it really took a toll on me and I needed an outlet.

I don't know what to do or how to feel, part of me feels violated because those fics were only ever meant to be an anonymous way to get my feelings off my chest and had some things in them that were extremely personal to me, but on the other hand, I feel like a terrible person because some of the people from that group are so angry with me and I genuinely didn't think I was doing anything wrong at the time, but now I'm not sure.

Also as a sidenote, not everyone was upset, mostly just the people I don't have contact with. Some of the people from that group are also some of my closest friend now, and they're telling me I did nothing wrong but I can't help but feel that they're biased.

So reddit, am I the asshole?

TL;DR - I wrote about a fictional character going through stuff I had gone through with former friends to process my emotions, said people ended up finding out and are upset