#idk what to do to feel better about myself and my fanworks and my online presence n whatever. whenever i have a nice interaction or

[leatherbookmark]

after careful consideration we have decided that everything is horrible and we're just too tired

[itsclydebitches]

Here's a quandary I've suddenly found myself in: where do you stand on writers deleting their own works, fanfiction or otherwise? I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion - I go to look for an old favorite and find it's since been deleted from whatever site I read it on.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think that, "Sure. The author wrote it, it's their call. I don't own the work - I certainly didn't pay for it. It's their decision, even if it's disappointing."

But at the same time I can't help but consider the alternative - if I believe in death of the author (and I do), that an author's work fundamentally isn't solely theirs once it's been published, posted, etc., then it also seems wrong to have a work deleted. Stories aren't the sole property of their creator, after all.

But then I circle back. D'you think there are different obligations between authors and readers and the works being made in fandom space? I know if I had bought a book and the author decided they wanted it back, I would feel pretty comfortable telling them no, given I'd paid for it and whatnot. But that's a different world from fanfic and fandom space generally.

So. You're insightful Clyde, I'm curious as to what you'll have to say here (and to all y'all thinking about it, don't flame me. I haven't decided where I stand here yet - haven't heard a good nail-in-the-coffin argument for or against yet).

Val are you a mind reader now? I’ve been thinking about this exact conundrum the last few days!

(And yeah, as a general disclaimer: no flaming. Not allowed. Any asks of the sort will be deleted on sight and with great satisfaction.)

Honestly, I’m not sure there is a “nail-in-the-coffin argument” for this, just because—as you lay out—there are really good points for keeping works around and really good points for allowing authors to have control over their work, especially when fanworks have no payment/legal obligations attached. In mainstream entertainment, your stories reflect a collaborative effort (publisher, editor, cover artists, etc.) so even if it were possible to delete the physical books out of everyone’s home and library (and we're ignoring the censorship angle for the moment), that’s no longer solely the author’s call, even if they have done the lion’s share of the creative work. Though fanworks can also, obviously, be collaborative, they’re usually not collaborative in the same way (more “This fic idea came about from discord conversations, a couple tumblr posts, and that one headcanon on reddit”) and they certainly don’t have the same monetary, legal, and professional strings attached. I wrote this fic as a hobby in my free time. Don’t I have the right to delete it like I also have the right to tear apart the blankets I knit?

Well yes… but also no? I personally view fanworks as akin to gifts—the academic term for our communities is literally “gift economy”—so if we view it like that, suddenly that discomfort with getting rid of works is more pronounced. If I not only knit a blanket, but then gift it to a friend, it would indeed feel outside of my rights to randomly knock on their door one day and go, “I actually decided I hate that? Please give it back so I can tear it to shreds, thanks :)” That’s so rude! And any real friend would try to talk me out of it, explaining both why they love the blanket and, even if it’s not technically the best in terms of craftsmanship, it holds significant emotional value to them. Save it for that reason alone, at least. Fanworks carry that same meaning—“I don’t care if it’s full of typos, super cliché, and using some outdated, uncomfortable tropes. This story meant so much to me as a teenager and I’ll always love it”—but the difference in medium and relationships means it’s easier to ignore all that. I’m not going up to someone’s house and asking face-to-face to destroy something I gave them (which is awkward as hell. That alone deters us), I’m just pressing a button on my computer. I’m not asking this of a personal friend that is involved in my IRL experiences, I’m (mostly) doing this to online peers I know little, if anything, about. It’s easy to distance ourselves from both the impact of our creative work and the act of getting rid of it while online. On the flip-side though, it’s also easier to demean that work and forget that the author is a real person who put a lot of effort into this creation. If someone didn’t like my knitted blanket I gave them as a gift, they’re unlikely to tell me that. They recognize that it’s impolite and that the act of creating something for them is more important than the construction’s craftsmanship. For fanworks though, with everyone spread around the world and using made up identities, people have fewer filters, happily tearing authors to shreds in the comments, sending anon hate, and the like. The fact that we’re both prefacing this conversation with, “Please don’t flame” emphasizes that. So if I wrote a fic with some iffy tropes, “cringy” dialogue, numerous typos, whatever and enough people decided to drag me for it… I don’t know whether I’d resist the urge to just delete the fic, hopefully ending those interactions. There’s a reason why we’re constantly reminding others to express when they enjoy someone else’s work: the ratio of praise to criticism in fandom (or simply praise to seeming indifference because there was no public reaction at all), is horribly skewed.

So I personally can’t blame anyone for deleting. I’d like to hope that more people realize the importance of keeping fanworks around, that everything you put out there is loved by someone… but I’m well aware that the reality is far more complicated. It’s hard to keep that in mind. It’s hard to keep something around that you personally no longer like. Harder still to keep up a work you might be harassed over, that someone IRL discovered, that you’re disgusted with because you didn’t know better back then… there are lots of reasons why people delete and I ultimately can’t fault them for that. I think the reasons why people delete stem more from problems in fandom culture at large—trolling, legal issues, lack of positive feedback, cancel culture, etc.—than anything the author has or has not personally done, and since such work is meant to be a part of an enjoyable hobby… I can’t rightly tell anyone to shoulder those problems, problems they can’t solve themselves, just for the sake of mine or others’ enjoyment. The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because I was discussing Attack on Titan and how much I dislike the source material now, resulting in a very uncomfortable relationship with the fics I wrote a few years back. I’ve personally decided to keep them up and that’s largely because some have received fantastic feedback and I’m aware of how it will hurt those still in the fandom if I take them down. So if a positive experience is the cornerstone of me keeping fics up, I can only assume that negative experiences would likewise been the cornerstone of taking them down. And if getting rid of that fic helps your mental health, or solves a bullying problem, or just makes you happier… that, to me, is always more important than the fic itself.

But, of course, it’s still devastating for everyone who loses the work, which is why my compromise-y answer is to embrace options like AO3’s phenomenal orphaning policy. That’s a fantastic middle ground between saving fanworks and allowing authors to distances themselves from them. I’ve also gotten a lot more proactive about saving the works I want to have around in the future. Regardless of whether we agree with deleting works or not, the reality is we do live in a world where it happens, so best to take action on our own to save what we want to keep around. Though I respect an author’s right to delete, I also respect the reader’s right to maintain access to the work, once published, in whatever way they can. That's probably my real answer here: authors have their rights, but readers have their rights too, so if you decide to publish in the first place, be aware that these rights might, at some point, clash. I download all my favorite fics to Calibre and, when I’m earning more money (lol) I hope to print and bind many for my personal library. I’m also willing to re-share fic if others are looking for them, in order to celebrate the author’s work even if they no longer want anything to do with it. Not fanfiction in this case, but one of my fondest memories was being really into Phantom of the Opera as a kid and wanting, oh so desperately, to read Susan Kay’s Phantom. Problem was, it was out of print at the time, not available at my library, and this was before the age of popping online and finding a used copy. For all intents and purposes, based on my personal situation, this was a case of a book just disappearing from the world. So when an old fandom mom on the message boards I frequented offered to type her copy up chapter by chapter and share it with me, you can only imagine how overjoyed I was. Idk what her own situation was that something like scanning wouldn’t work, but the point is she spent months helping a fandom kid she barely knew simply because a story had resonated with her and she wanted to share it. That shit is powerful!

So if someone wants to delete—if that’s something they need right now—I believe that is, ultimately, their decision… but please try your hardest to remember that the art you put out into the world is having an impact and people will absolutely miss it when it’s gone. Often to the point of doing everything they can to put it back out into the world even if you decide to take it out. Hold onto that feeling. The love you have for your favorite fic, fanart, meta, whatever it is? Someone else has that for your work too. I guarantee it.

So take things down as needed, but for the love of everything keep copies for yourself. You may very well want to give it back to the world someday.

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Alex

Today I have the delight of introducing Alex, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @arotaro and @mutant-jojos!

Alex is a bisexual, half-Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary aromantic artist and creative with severe ADHD. You’ll find her prolific fanworks on AO3 as EmeraldTrash666, writing primarily for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure fandom. Her bold, colourful art for the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hetalia, Pokemon and Vocaloid fandoms is also available on Redbubble under the name StellaHagane.

She writes, she creates digital art and she dabbles in music, sewing and fashion design, single-handedly proving that there’s no such thing as too much creative awesome for any one aromantic!

With us Alex talks about finding the word aro, the power of fandom and creative fanworks, her love of aro Jotaro, the challenges of creating with ADHD, the struggles of being an aro gen writer in fandom and the importance of expressing our aro headcanons. Everything she says is absolutely on point, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I guess in some ways my “story” starts out pretty typical. Got older, kept waiting for my First Crush™, never got it, started worrying and trying to force myself to develop crushes. I actually was in a relationship with another girl on a forum I was part of as a teenager, but eventually I realized that I didn’t really like her romantically, and the relationship started to become really unpleasant for me. I eventually felt so miserable that I didn’t even want to talk at her at all, even though we were close friends, but I didn’t want to break up with her - partly because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, partly because we were everyone’s “OTP” and I didn’t want my friends to hate me for ruining that. But eventually I did break up with her, and I’m happy to say she took it with grace and we’re still close friends today! (She’s ace and a great writer/artist herself, too!)

I was part of a very nice LGBTQ+ group as a teenager, but I could never figure out my identity. I felt really ashamed and alone. Whenever I brought up how messed up I felt because I’d never had a crush on anyone, everyone was like, “Oh, sounds like you must be asexual!��, but I knew I wasn’t, and that was the worst part. Even though I knew aromanticism was a thing, nobody ever talked about it. It was only ever in the context of aroaces, so I didn’t know I was aro. I thought I must have had some sort of mental illness or something, but certainly not a legitimate orientation, nothing to be proud of like everyone else.

During that time, I found myself connecting on a deep emotional level to characters like Alphonse Elric, Fujiwara no Sai, the X-Men in general (although I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was literally a baby), basically anyone who was somehow “different” from the rest of humanity, even though I never understood why, since I was a fairly privileged kid who had never experienced much bullying or anything. Weirdly enough, it was Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure that helped me realize I was aro and come to terms with it; I saw an interview with Hirohiko Araki, the author of JJBA, where he was asked what type of girls Jotaro Kujo likes, and replied that he didn’t think Jotaro liked girls. The obvious interpretation would be that Jotaro’s gay, but somehow, one way or another, I decided to go with the idea that Jotaro’s aromantic. Jotaro also happened to be a character I really related to for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, so around the time I was 18 I put two and two together and was like ... oh shit…

Please click keep reading to continue Alex’s story!

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’ve always been weird in the way I’m very creative, but tend to kinda bounce around from hobby to hobby. Other people draw, or write, or sing, while I draw for a month, and then write for a month and sew for a week and play video games for a week, and then I draw some more, and then I try out something completely new, and then I write again. I think it must be an ADHD thing, idk. In any case, I’ve just always been really passionate about making stuff, whatever that stuff happens to be.

I’ve also always been very much fandom-oriented. Ever since I was a toddler, I used to dictate fanfiction to my mom (back then it usually involved Winnie the Pooh, the Powerpuff Girls, Godzilla, and my dog). I mostly draw fanart. I find that I’m not really capable of writing original stories, but I’m great at getting fanfics in character, and I love writing them. I love taking stories I already love and reinterpreting them, seeing what it would be like if the characters were put into different situations, etc.

Because of my ADHD, I really struggle with actually finishing things. I try really really hard, I really do, and I’ve been trying to push myself even harder these past few years. I’ve made progress, but it’s still extremely difficult, so I’m very sorry for all the projects I’ve abandoned over the years. Sorry I still haven’t finished the fic that was supposed to be done in early March. I’m trying, really. I promise I’m working on the next chapter of BLaD, too.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

Of course, pretty much everything I write is gen. Even if I include romantic relationships in my fics, I never write about romance, just stories which also happen to include some characters who might be dating someone. And obviously I always write Jotaro as aro! That’s really important to me. No matter which AU I’m writing, he’s always aro. (And autistic, but that’s off topic.)

I’m also not really into shipping because of my romance repulsion, but I ship Joseph Joestar and Caesar Zeppeli. The thing is … I’ve always viewed it as a unique relationship, sort of difficult to define as being strictly romantic or platonic or sexual, just kind of their own thing that defies words. That’s how I’ve always written it. I had the sudden realization recently that this strange view on the only ship I really actually like (at the moment, anyway) is probably due to my being aro, lmao.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

People don’t read gen fics, and people aren’t interested in aro stories. That’s just the way it is. I do have some dedicated readers, whom I love deeply, but in general… I could post something with a deep plot, something funny and dramatic and witty and touching, something I poured my heart and soul into for months, and it’ll get very few hits/comments/kudos, while someone else could post the same generic 2,000-word romance fic everyone’s seen a dozen times over, with no editing or anything, and get twice the amount of traffic my fics do in half the time. It’s really crushing.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I dunno… The aro community feels so small. Online, I have a small circle of aro mutuals who all kind of vent collectively, and I’m part of Arocalypse and a few aro/aspec Discord servers, but I still feel like there isn’t really much of a larger community to be part of in the same way that there is for other orientations. Offline, I’ve never met another aro, or even anyone who actually knows what aromanticism is prior to me explaining it to them.

I also don’t feel like there’s a very unified “aspec community”. As an allo aro, I feel very rejected by the ace community - not to say that I feel like I should be part of the ace community, since I’m not ace, but I feel like they throw aros under the bus a lot. I mean, we’ve all seen the “asexuals can feel love, just like anybody else! … oh, except for aroaces, I guess. But the rest of us are normal, so you should accept us!” rhetoric. Both within and outside the aspec communities, aros are rarely treated with the same priority as aces, even though we’re arguably in a much more difficult position than your average allo ace.

That being said, I’m glad there is an aro community at all. I don’t know where I’d be now if I were still questioning. Probably not in a very good place.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

As I mentioned, there’s a general lack of interest in gen fics or sympathy for romance-repulsed people in general. It’s really difficult being romance repulsed in fandom spaces, because nobody cares about anything other than ships. There are very few gen fics, and even less that are a decent length, not abandoned, or cater to my specific interests, so I have to write my own. I don’t often have anything good to read; most of the big fics, the ones with cool plots and long word counts and ongoing updates, are ship fics. If I’m lucky, maybe two gen fics will be posted in one week, and maybe one of them will be longer than a few thousand words. Maybe one might even have my favorite characters. But usually genfics are few and far between, and kind of random in terms of what you’ll get. Sometimes I get so bored that I read ship fics anyway, and then I always wind up feeling really awful afterwards.

I’ve written, over the course of the past two years alone, over 20 gen fics. But whenever I vent that sometimes I’d like to actually get to read something, I always get someone telling me, “Well if you want gen fics, write some yourself! You have to make the change! You can’t demand people write stuff for you!” And of course, at the same time it’s totally acceptable to request ship fics from your favorite author, and if you complain that there aren’t enough fics for your rarepair, it’s seen as relatable and totally valid.

Fandom is just … really, really amatonormative, tbh. I hate it. I’m trying to make a difference (I did organize Gen Jojo Week along with my friend Rachel last year, and hopefully will again this year), but there’s only so much I can do.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Aside from reblogging my art and promoting my fics? Talk about stuff. Talk about aro stuff in fandom. Seriously! I know it seems obvious that aro people would like aro headcanons and gen fics and all that, but we need to talk about them more. Nobody outside the community gives enough of a shit about us to have aro headcanons, so let’s get them popular. Talk about your favorite aro headcanons. Talk about your favorite gen fics. Talk about how such-and-such character is totally aro; talk about how excited you are to see aro characters in fics. My dream is for aro headcanons to become just as common and popular as any other type of headcanon.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

This is old news to most of the people who already know me, but my current big project that I’ve been working on for several years now is Between Life and Death, a drama/horror/supernatural JJBA fic.

(WARNING: PHANTOM BLOOD AND STARDUST CRUSADERS SPOILERS BELOW.)

The plot of the fic is that Dio wins at the end of Stardust Crusaders, and after realizing that he has no hobbies other than harassing the Joestars, he decides to bring Jonathan back by sticking his head (which… we’ll just assume Dio preserved for plot purposes) onto Jotaro’s body. Obviously, Jonathan is NOT happy with this arrangement, but it also turns out that Jotaro’s still alive, just not in control of his body. He can still use his stand, so he essentially uses Star Platinum as a sort of proxy for interacting with the environment around him, even though he only comes out when Jonathan’s alone since he doesn’t want Dio to know he’s alive.

Basically, it’s the story of a depressed vampire and a traumatized ghost. It’s a very introspective fic; most of the story consists of conflicts between Dio and Jonathan, and Jonathan and Jotaro struggling to come to terms with their new existences - Jonathan being unable to reconcile vampirism with his personal morals, and Jotaro having one hell of an identity crisis while also mourning the deaths of his friends and family. The plot is picking up, though, and there is an end goal in mind, as well as an eventual sequel!

As for where the story-in-progress is at right now … well, the next “stage” of the plot is hamon training for Kakyoin and Avdol, which will be fun. This chapter also includes several dream sequences, including an extended appearance by Mary Joestar (Jonathan’s mom), and a very serious and dark scene which I almost ruined by having dream!Will Zeppeli refer to Jonathan as his padawan. Yeah.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

As mentioned, I’m working on chapter 9 of Between Life and Death! And working on and off on some stuff for the mutants AU. Most recently, on a whim I rewrote the lyrics to Handbeat Clocktower by MOTHY to be about Jonathan Joestar. Somehow this went far enough that I’m making an actual UTAU rendition of this “parody”, and hopefully it’ll be done sometime in the next few weeks. I’m really having fun with it and I hope people like it!

[talesofsymphoniac]

NOW YOU HAVE TO ANSWER ALL THE ODD ONES. TAKE THAT

JUST YOU FRICKIN’ WATCH ME

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

I think my first fics were Tales of Symphonia ones when I was 12 that I actually handwrote and still have because I collect all my notebooks like a packrat. I like rereading them from time to time– some parts are cringey, of course, but there are other ones that I just LOVE.There was also a Dawn of the New World sequel with, like, my own OCs and everything that I spent a whole summer on. That one I DID throw away because I expected it to end up cringey. And yeah, from what I remember it was (fight scenes are HARD, okay?) but also I really wish I could reread it. Now all I have are my memories…

5. Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that?

Click Away is my baby and I’ll never stop being proud of it, sorry :P Any of my longfics, really.

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

Hm, well I just finished my latest WIP, so I have nothing actively in progress right now… I have a few sequel ideas for Click Away still kicking around that I’d like to get to eventually, though!

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?

One of the advantages of writing in small fandoms is there’s a good chance that your idea hasn’t been done before, I’ve found. I mean, Tales of Zestiria has a few hundred works, but in general when I’ve been excited to write fics it’s usually because it’s a concept I haven’t seen explored as much. I mean, I guess modern AUs had been done before with Click Away, but I’d never seen an Online AU, for instance. Usually there’s some sort of twist or key point in my fics hat makes it so I don’t compare my writing to others, at least not much.

Then there’s the Death Gate fandom, which I do tend to be harsh on myself with just because there’s really one main author there who is really good and I always worry about how my stuff will “measure up” next to that, or knowing the exact individuals who will be reading, but that’s less about a specific concept and more about writing for that fandom in general, haha.

13. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today?

I haven’t been writing stuff with the intent to post it for very long, sooooo. I am more likely to try to write AUs now, as opposed to canon stuff (I still very much prefer writing canon-based stuff, though :P)

15. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?

Nope, haha. My motivation is already so spotty that if something excites me enough to write it, I just go for it. And that almost never happens with two different ideas at the same time.

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?

Treading Water, my Sormik lifeguard AU. It has my third-highest kudos on AO3 and while I like it well enough, it’s never been one of my favorites, personally!

19. If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick?

That’s really hard??? I guess something introspective, probably, with strong relationships and themes? Possibly Polarity from To draw on all its omnipotence, though it’s a little bit too angsty to really describe my “portfolio.” It would need to be way more fluffy. Maybe something more like Fate Slides Into Freedom from the same. Or maybe The Truth Comes Out from A Click Away? Or Light from The Unspoken Bond? Idk, man.

21. If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs?

a;sldkfjaf I’m a really bad person and I almost never check that kind of thing, I’m so sorry

25. What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review?

I don’t really get much in the way of constructive criticism (and that says nothing about me as an author, but more how fandom in general is trained not to critique fanworks unless the author asks for it). I did get a critical review in my first try writing Unspoken Bond which echoed stuff I’d already been thinking (basically that I could afford to bounce around the timeline a lot more in that fic, since it covered a lot of canon elements) and inspired me to give it another go in a different way, which I’ll always be grateful for even though I’ll also always wish it hadn’t taken someone else pointing it out anonymously for me to change things around, you know?

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?

I read (or read, past tense) a lot of Yuri on Ice fic, but somehow I never wanted to write for it very much. I did a few script things, but for the most part the anime gave me a lot of what I wanted to see, so there was less of a desire on my part to fill the gaps. But I love reading other people’s interpretations!

That’s a pretty significant exception, though. In general, writing and reading usually matches up pretty well!

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?

I always feel weird trying to write Dezel and Zaveid. It’s why they always have such small parts if they’re even in my fics. I have to say, though, I actually did enjoy Dezel more than I thought I would in Click Away (he still had a really small role, though)

33. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?

MARIT. Granted, this was only for To draw on all its omnipotence, since that’s the only one that’s really let me delve into her brain so far, but I didn’t expect her to have as much to say as she did. The thing about Marit is she only becomes a main character in the last two books out of seven in Death Gate, so there’s a lot of room to talk about her that just didn’t happen in those two books. I expected her to be hard to write for that reason, but instead it was really fun to get to flesh her out a bit more! And I really think the whole fic was better for it!

35. Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to?

There was a little more Zaveid/Lailah flirting in Treading Water than I intended, but I lowkey ship that, so it wasn’t like I minded, haha. Other than that… I don’t think so?

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?

*cough* Salt and Sugar *cough* Statement released by Mikleo, 200 years after Sorey’s sleep began *cough cough*

39. Do you consider yourself to have a readership?

Maybe a little one in the Zesti/Sormik crowd!

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?

I don’t cross-post fics, except sometimes to Tumblr. AO3 is vastly preferred. (I used to read from ff.net when that was more popular but never wanted to post anything there)

43. How many views has your least popular fic gotten?

Going by kudos: What is Love? and What are Friends For? both have 5 kudos and 40 and 77 hits, respectively. Going by hits, A Soft Epilogue has 38 views (but 8 kudos).

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

Well, I use the tag “Fluff” a lot, so there’s that. Fluff, family, friendships, relationships, that sort of thing.

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

Hmmm, it would definitely depend on the person, but if I trusted them enough to show them something I might have them read Wedding Bells, actually. Just because it’s pretty innocent, gets into some pretty interesting points about the Purple Prose AU, and doesn’t require a ton of context.

49. Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it?

@neodiji was really unbelievably sweet the other day and left a comment on To draw on all its omnipotence, so that counts!

[cookinguptales]

I’ve been going back and forth on something personal and fandom-related the past day or so, and idk, I feel like I’d like some input?

I’ve posted a few times lately about how frustrated I am that a person I blocked a long time ago keeps showing up on my dash anyway bc tumblr is terrible. (And a post containing a screenshot of one of their asks has hit my dash no less than like five times in the past 24 hours, jesus.)

And I mean, I’ve mostly been looking at it as a tumblr-is-shit kind of way (because I still see posts containing asks from them as well as the occasional reblog, and usually tumblr savior gets it but not if a term I’ve whitelisted is in there) but yesterday something else happened, too?? I haven’t talked about it all that much here on tumblr, but I was stalked by a guy online a few years ago, and it was...pretty bad. Like moving past creepy and into scary bad. I kept pretty quiet about it back then, mostly just telling our mutual friends -- and being pretty badly burned when some friends chose him over me, or worse, started trying to help him get around the blocks by emailing me messages from him -- and blocking him on like EVERY platform (because he was literally joining new platforms just so he could harass me on them) and then I pretty much moved on with my life. So like. Not as bad as a fandom predator situation that ended in me literally changing my handle and moving all accounts about a decade ago, but it did result in mass unfriendings and me needing to warn people online and IRL about him in case he tried contacting me again.

Aaand yesterday I realized the problems that came with being quiet, discreet, and polite about these things because a different person I follow (who has about 1500 followers) posted about how great of a guy this person was, how sweet he was, how nice a friend, etc. Because, unlike my friends who I told and who took stalker guy’s side, this guy literally did not know what a fucking creep the guy could be. So I felt upset to see him praised (and to so many people, who might in turn go follow him) but also kind of upset with myself because I didn’t make more of a fuss and let people know that this is a guy who will be friendly with you one minute and then publicly plan your future children’s playdates the next. (I don’t even want children!!)

So a couple people have contacted me privately asking me who the guy is in kb fandom who’s been a creep at me, and I’ve privately told them. Like. I hate causing fandom drama, and I’m always pretty cognizant of the kind of readership I have, both age-wise and in number; I would never want to abuse my position in fandom. That’s the main reason I wasn’t public about these things back then. I used to answer asks privately a lot more often, which is why no one really saw how this guy started out weird and quickly escalated into catapulting over boundaries. I...don’t answer asks privately anymore, not unless someone specifically requests that I do so. I like to keep things on the record now. I never used to get asks before I started writing for this fandom, so I never thought about publishing them for my own peace of mind. But I guess I know better now.

Like... The guy I’m thinking about definitely wasn’t as bad as the guy who stalked me, but the guy who stalked me also had like six months to build up to Total Creep. And the guy who creeped me out more recently was doing a lot of the things that other guy used to do, especially as far as attempted emotional manipulation goes. (Thankfully, all of my “well, maybe he’s socially awkward and doesn’t know any better! I wouldn’t want to be mean.” feelings ran out after my run in with the first guy.) So I blocked him after like a month (iirc?) of increasingly weird interactions. Like almost every single point on my fic request guidelines exists because of this one guy. He is literally the reason I even have fic guidelines. Like you know what they say about rules and precautions -- they only exist because someone tried it.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is this. I don’t know whether I should say something publicly about all this. I mean, obviously this is a public post. But there’s a large difference between vagueblogging and a call out post. Man, I don’t even want to think of it as a call out post. I don’t want anyone to get harassed or anything like that. I just. I’m starting to feel more and more like I’m being remiss in not saying anything, especially because he’s so prolific when it comes to sending messages to creators in fandom and because so many people in this fandom are so young.

On one hand, I truly do hate making waves in fandom. I try to be as diplomatic as possible nowadays. I’m feeling stressed out even saying this much. And it happened quite a while ago -- like last summer. The last thing I want to do is cause problems over a grudge. I hate the current fandom dogpile culture, and that’s not something I want to encourage. And I don’t want to ask people not to reblog posts that have him in them (a couple people offered to do this after I explained what had happened) because a lot of those posts contain fanworks by talented writers and artists who don’t deserve to have their work ignored just because a creep asked about it.

On the other hand, though... People don’t know to be wary of someone unless you say something, y’know? I realized yesterday, when I saw a total creep of a human getting praised (out of ignorance), that keeping quiet and handling things discreetly doesn’t help me and it doesn’t help other people. It only helps creeps. I didn’t actually realize for a while that the guy I’m thinking of now was still as, ah, ubiquitous in this fandom, but I realize now that even though it didn’t get everything, the tumblr block was weeding out most things. It worries me when I think about how many of the people in this fandom are quite young, y’know?

So uh. Thoughts?