I've actually felt this way about my own characters before, didn't know it had a name though which is super neat!
My point was more that the things lily writes aren't actually emotional though. I definitely understand feeling in-tune with your characters and their emotions because how else would you write believable characters? But lily doesn't actually write why its believable and completely leaves out why the reader should even care about what's happening in the first place.
Yeah, it's not really an uncommon phenomenon. Depending on how you're writing and what perspective you're going in from you can easily wind up in the headspace of the characters that you're portraying and get yourself caught up in some unexpected emotions, especially when the scene gets away from you.
Lily, however, is basically trying to imply 'wow I'm so great and in-tune with my characters I feel their emotions! I'm such a great writer, I bet nobody's ever had this experience before, aren't I special?" No, Lily, you aren't. And given some of the circumstances in which your characters start crying...
This more to the point is why its so painfully obvious that she writes self inserts, anevays ex-fiance broke up with her suddenly and without reason leaving anevay sad and broken even though deep down her ex-fiance still loves her. We know why lily would cry at that and lily knows why she crys at that, because its what she thinks lizzy did to her. But if you were never aware of lilys past and just happened to stumble on the fic you would be confused and probably pretty bored. What she's writing isnt sad its just melodramatic for no reason.
The aggravating thing is that I know what she was going for and it could have
worked if we actually knew anything about the characters. The whole vignette doesn't actually do anything as simple as a flashback, though-- it just talks at the audience about things and says over and over again how in love the two are (instead of having the confidence to step back and just show that Anevay's insistence on getting into the Forsaken stronghold already implies as much).
This kind of scene could and has worked really well when the two characters are already established. The idea of one person becoming a literal monster and trying to 'scare away' the other so as not to hurt them (or not be hurt by them) isn't a new concept, and it can be done to really great dramatic effect. The issue here is that, again, we don't
know these two characters so we don't have any emotional investment in what goes on, and that the time between them seeing each other makes it feel extremely weird. If Aliena were still coming to terms with being undead (as in, her being raised and then regaining her soul had occurred relatively recently) then her demeanor would make more sense, but it's been years. If she were acting this way because she was ashamed and didn't want Anevay to think of her as an undead monster, then her response also still doesn't feel right. The whole moment felt like it was ripped from something else without actually considering the circumstances and characters, especially the part where Anevay puts a pendant on the dresser and that's what trigger's Aliena's freakout.
Which was super funny. Not the freakout, the pendant moment. The thing is, Lily basically just says 'Anevay put a pendant on the table'. Then, when Aliena picks it up, she does a hilarious short infodump about how important it was and we're supposed to feel sad.
A good writer would have started the whole scene off with Anevay in the elevator, looking at the pendant and thinking about what it means, and would have kept it present throughout the scenes in quick reminders-- "When the elevator came to a halt, she shoved the pendant into her satchel." "The Night Elves trained their bows on her. She reached into her pocket and ran her thumb over the smooth surface of the pendant. The touch of the cool metal helped calm her quickening pulse." It's not hard, we'd understand that the pendant is of extreme sentimental value even if she never explains exactly why, so when Anevay puts it down and Aliena starts flipping tables over it we'd at least have a point of reference. Instead it's basically "Anevay put down the pendant and left. Aliena turned and picked it up and started to-- WAIT, oh geez I forgot to tell you so like it's really important to them? Anyway that's why Aliena's going to start flipping out."
It's really amazing. I thought when I first came here to bitch about Lily's bad writing advice that she was just a mediocre writer with dreams of grandeur, but it turns she's
just competent enough that a surface-level scan makes her look 'generic fanfiction' tier. If you actually read her stuff it becomes grossly apparent that she's legitimately
bad. Foundationally bad. She had fundamental misunderstandings about a
lot of aspects of the craft and legitimately thinks she's hot shit.
She
is hot shit, but, like, in a more literal sense of the phrase.
But also, she straight up threatened to end her work if people go on Kiwifarms.
It's even more petty than that. Kiwifarms has nothing to do with it; it's that somebody was trying to
look up information.
They were following Lily's own advice to look up what she's said in the past and Lily got pissed off and decided this means people are 'impatient'. Of course it's just a cry for attention and forcing people to beg forgiveness for a slight that wasn't even a slight. This poor person was just trying to look for information Lily has buried somewhere on her blog (instead of asking Lily directly, because they know she doesn't like that) and they did it wrong so now everybody gets their toys taken away until everybody apologizes.
What a piece of work.