@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
I think the food allergy analogy actually works pretty well.
Kind of.
Do you have a food allergy? I do. It's an insidious sort of allergy, something which even my mother doesn't always watch out for. (She fed me something with allergens in it last night.)
I'm allergic to legumes: beans, peanuts, etc. Specifically, I'm allergic to proteins in the seeds. The proteins are mostly eliminated through brewing, and don't exist in the oil; soy sauce is fine and so is peanut oil. However, isolated soy protein is in a lot of things, especially store-bought, pre-packaged frozen meats. A lot of "Asian sauces" also use some form of black bean in it.
In my case, I assume all of the risk. If I eat the wrong thing, I'm the one doing the choking and dying: not you, not the owner, and not the cook. Further, in my case, there's no way in God's green earth that a cook is going to be able to make reasonable accommodations for me. And, in my opinion, it would be my damn fault, so that's why I carry an epipen.
I pick my meals and restaurants very wisely, see.
And if a customer comes in and announces they have an allergy, everything you listed is how most restaurants would accommodate the customer. And as long as reasonable precautions are taken, there is absolutely no risk of a successful lawsuit. At all.
So, your analysis isn't great, and your analogy isn't great. At least, not in the liability context or from the perspective of someone who has to deal with a shitty, shitty set of allergies.
Sidenote: on how to improve any improv, or how to make any MU* scene better. Seriously. https://medium.com/@TimELyons/the-greatest-improv-advice-i-can-give-674c09f07376