#a reminder that i turned off the option to dm me cause of the troll who sends real gore to people in the r&s fandom (including me lmao)

[nomlioart]

why are there so few peppino/gustavo / pepstavo fanfics raaahh

i've probably read everything on ao3 and i demand more- 👹

[northernxmuses]

Lessons from RPGs

There are a number of blogs I follow because I enjoy reading them, even if most of them do not roleplay. I have noticed that they have been getting a fair amount of hate lately and from reading the tags, it appears to be fairly typical.

Unfortunately, if you play in enough smut based roleplay games, you see waves of the hate roll in every year or so when someone gets a bee in their bonnet about some moral absolutism nonsense about what people should be permitted to write (apparently all rpgs should be fluff and lightness with no villains who have never done anything actually bad ever and as a girl who enjoys writing a wicked, wicked villain - I did get some hate over the years).

Anyway, over the years I have learned a few things about dealing with these types of anons. I thought I would share them just in case someone might find them remotely useful.

Things to keep in mind

Usually the sender is:

a minor (usually somewhere between 14 - 18);

tragically under-educated or with a very narrow concept of the world, usually due to being very young or growing up in a rural/remote area;

has difficulty with basic concepts of story and writing such as the separation of character and actor, liking a character even if they are a villain, and that enjoying/writing a plot doesn’t always mean you would approve of such events if they happened in the real world (I had a friend who wrote a crazy cannibal character and this anon kept messaging her about it and that it must be her secret wish - meanwhile my friend was in fact a vegan and still is to this day but she was writing an evil character and not her actual life); 

is not yet a fully realized person in terms of sexual identity or has a poor concept of sex (I have some hysterical examples of this if anyone is interested in a few tales - just slid into my DMs); and

has extraordinary poor social skills.

Basically these are people who legit think whatever boyband they love should never date, grow up, marry etc because they should be waiting for the little nonner to grow up or some such nonsense. Stalker thinking in its infancy. It can be terrifying but I mostly just feel sorry for them.

In addition, this anon often aspires to write but has no idea how to write anything but a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu. They essentially don’t know how to write anything other than themselves and their thoughts or some idealized version thereof. Therefore they assume everyone writes like that. 

A reminder that if they are a minor they should not be reading your blog is often worth posting. It is also an effective dig in the event they aren’t actually a minor.

By acknowledging the above, you can then approach each anon with a tinge of sadness about their youth, ignorance and general lack of ability.

Many lovely adults were uninformed and, in some cases, downright stupid youth and need the opportunity to just grow up. Remember they are often parroting the nonsense they have learned at home and do not have a good broader understanding of, well, anything. 

But that doesn’t mean you should tolerate their idiocy but much like hitting a badly behaved child doesn’t teach them anything but fear of the adult and that the strong get to hit the weak, screaming back at them and dishing insults rarely works. It just riles them up and causes them to send more and more anons to provoke a reaction. They feel justified and perversely satisfied they managed it. The satisfaction of the trolls is never worth your temporarily satiating hate post in my historical experience. 

This has led to my number one rule - Never Feed a Troll.

Strategies that have helped me over the years:

delete

turn off anon for a window of time until the little fools wander away

if you must answer, answer as if educating a particularly under-informed person or youth who does not comprehend well. Use small words, explain concepts with examples, direct them to source material (this has worked well for me in my D/s rpgs historically as I direct them to links about how real D/s works and not the nonsense in 50 shades of grey). This has two impacts - one - it makes it pointless for anyone else to message you because it is clear you are not ruffled by their silly nonsense, and - two - by claiming the higher ground, you leave them nothing but the low road. 

laughter (this really pissed off one anon who was livid with one of my characters and then they slipped up and forgot to make sure the question was on anon).

Of course, I note that I am not a person of colour and I can only fathom how extraordinarily awful it would be to receive racist remarks in your safe space - which tumblr should be for everyone - so I will leave you to deal with such remarks as you see fit. 

The above is more about people who message in insults about your writing, characters, stories and so forth. If an attack is personal, I usually just go with the delete option and try to think pitying thoughts in the same way I send a little kind thought every time I see an ambulance go by with its lights flashing. 

Keep writing lovely humans and do not let another’s narrow, sad life take away your pleasure in something you enjoy or stop you from improving your skills. 

All the best always... your Ames