#if they just say it outright that they're not cool then i can spare myself the shit show and just avoid them

[drhanniballecter]

People are upset over transphobes identifying themselves as “superstraight” on social media and i understand why that’s upsetting for people to claim as an identity. 

On the other hand, as a Trans myself, I for one feel a weird weight lifted for these people outing themselves as assholes right from the get go. Especially when it comes to dating apps. One of my worst fears, especially when it comes to cishet people is that they’re not going to be comfortable with my trans identity, to the point of violence. So I would Much Rather that they state their transphobic nature right there at the top of their profile, rather than me risking becoming a target for hate even just by sending a ‘like’. 

[olderthannetfic]

You're kind of the only fandom discourse-ish blog I follow these days, and i've found myself in a wee bind, so I wanted to request some...advice? What's the etiquette when you're gifted a fic on ao3 you have zero interest in? I don't know the author, and I don't care about the fandom anymore. It's a gift because it's a sequel to my own fic for that fandom, but again, I didn't ask for or commission it. I skimmed, and i dont even like the story they wrote. Cool that they wrote it, but I really don't want it as a gift. I wish the other person had just used the inspired by function, but they haven't and I'm not sure whether to say anything or just quietly ignore it. Especially since they've also left a comment on my fic saying what they've done. Again, I'm happy they were inspired by my story, but what they've done isn't my thing and I'm not really the type to outright lie to spare feelings. Now I'm just putting off a response and growing more and more disinclined to say anything at all. Welp. Help?

--

I'd say nothing, frankly.

I think I personally would mostly be flattered that they were inspired and wouldn't really care whether I enjoyed the actual fic or not. I'd say "Aww, I'm glad you were inspired!" in response to their comment and then never kudos or comment on the fic itself.

But if you genuinely don't feel flattered and don't like that they gave you an unrequested gift outside of an exchange or something, you don't need to lie. Like you, I don't think politeness requires lying to save someone from feeling sad.

I wouldn't worry about the gift reflecting on you: many gifts are exchange fanworks that may not be quite what the recipient wanted or may not be very well made. It doesn't reflect poorly on you to receive crappy gifts. I'd only officially reject it via AO3 (taking my name off of it as recipient) if it were a trollfic designed to bother me.

Unauthorized sequels are also often considered bad form in fandom, so it's a little clueless to gift you one and assume you'd definitely welcome that. Though maybe they did it as a gift instead of an 'inspired by' because it's not an authorized sequel. Perhaps the latter function strikes them as requiring more official status from you. Or maybe they're not familiar with the function at all. Who knows.

Saying nothing is the least bother for you and the most face-saving for them. I'd go with that.

If they come back to bug you about it, you can say "I'm flattered you were inspired, but the fic isn't really my thing", and if they persist after that, then maybe they aren't so well-meaning after all, and you can deal with them accordingly. But I'm guessing they'll be crestfallen when they realize you aren't going to respond, and they'll slink off to lick their wounds in private.

[castielcommunism]

is this just me. as a fic writer, do you have other authors that are your personal, secret enemy? like you'd never say anything to them or really engage but you grumble inside when you see people rave about them and maybe you read one of their fics and yeah it's got some good in it! but also they're your enemy and it's unbearable when they get attention. life is short, yes, I know. am I alone in bitterness. tbc, asking you not as enemy but as intermediary with good sense and a popular blog.

I have petty secret one-sided beefs with certain popular authors, whose work I’ve read and didn’t get the hype about at all, but I try to talk myself out of it most of the time, or alternatively, bitch about it in private group chats and not say anything in public because that’s mean. like authors on here don’t ask for the attention they receive, and that stuff is more or less entirely out of their control. spnblr is unique among the fandom spaces I’ve been in for how heavily focused it is on fic and fic authors, privileging it even above actual canon at times. which IS great for a lot of reasons because a lot of the memes about, like, dta for example are funny, and I think it’s cool that people so openly celebrate the work of other creators on here. but also that can lead to a kind of exclusivity, where if you don’t cater to specific fanon or are interested in other aspects of spn that are not destiel, you are basically shit out of luck. or even if you ARE interesting in producing those things, if you don’t get a big blog to rec your stuff it’s hard to gain traction because of how fucking massive and enduring the fandom is. and that creates a feedback loop that reinforces specific interpretations of canon and fanon - stuff like cas growing a vegetable garden or being grumpy in the mornings. Not saying those things are bad, but they disincentivise diversity of interpretation. also lends to the fandom feeling clique-y and exclusive, which I’ve seen a lot of people express and I feel that way too.

I think especially with spnblr, people talk about fic authors on here the same way they talk about their favourite writers for the show itself. so there’s an equivalency being drawn between a hobby writer who writes fanfiction in their spare time for a show they enjoy with a professional showrunner who is paid to make network television. and that equivalency is a false one obviously, but the same language is being used, meme formats are interchangeably used between like yockey and komodobits for example, people have blog titles and urls that are references to fics, they have tags dedicated to specific authors, etc. So a “canonical fanon” begins to form in the fandom, elevating certain fans to the same levels as professional industry writers through linguistic and memetic equivalency, even if that isn’t the intention and even if that equivalency is incorrect (which it is!).

All this to say, jealousy is normal, I experience it, I think a lot of people do as well based on vague posts I’ve seen. Unless an author is creating offensive or bigoted stuff I try not to take it too seriously, even when their stuff is (in my opinion) poorly written and/or uninteresting. But that’s like every fandom in a way, the most popular shit is tends to be overrated or outright bad, but it’s catering to a specific audience with specific fandom/fanon needs that are being met. Obviously that’s not true across the board and I like some popular fics too and think they’re great, but that’s the adage and there’s some truth to it.

The only time I’m genuinely annoyed is when people liken fanfiction to like, actual published literature, because it absolutely isn’t and I think fic authors need to keep some perspective on what they’re doing (which is, again, amateur hobby writing), but it’s usually the fandom around their work that says those things, not the authors themselves.

[toziers]

can you explain what's going on right now? i keep seeing big IT blogs talking about some discourse or something but i have no idea what they're talking about other than it involves you lol

alright i like. i truly do not like having diScOurSE out in public because i’m not one to air out my dirty laundry 24/7 but seeing as how it was brought into public against my will i feel like the least i can do is clear up the situation for those who’ve been seeing the posts. 

i’m putting this under the cut bc it’s long. tws for some biphobia, brief mention of transphobia and, at the end, a rape mention. 

so if you don’t know: hi, i’m migz, i’m an it fandom blogger. its okay, i know, its really cool. part of my shtick here is that i like to turn normal thirst tags into works of art for the sake of comedy. perhaps you’ve seen some of my highlights from my “fhg” tag - perhaps your brain has been spared. either way, it became kind of “my thing” around the third or fourth week (mid nov) of me having this blog. at first, i tagged just about every ask i got mentioning the thirst tags with “bill hader” - they had to do with him, so why not tag him? it would draw more like minded people! about two days into that i got a message asking me to tag my nsfw. i am a big dumb idiot, and apologize for not initially doing it. i havent had a following bigger than like 10 in several years and completely spaced on basic etiquette. so by the end of november i was tagging everything applicable  with “notsfw” and “bill hader”. 

now you’re caught up.

on december 1st i got this message from user billhaderanti:

now i want to start by saying i absolutely was in the wrong here. i didn’t even think about how many people were being subjected to the asks i was getting - especially ones who had no idea they were all jokes. i don’t track the bill hader tag, so it just didn’t even occur to me - that’s ignorance on my part, and to anyone who was subjected to the terrors of me before my tagging system: i am genuinely sorry. i relay the same sentiment in my response, though you can tell i’m on edge.

and they replied:

clearly they Were offended by it but thats.. not the point. at this point, im feeling Really weird about the whole interaction, but still understanding, because again - i GET it. i know my posts are gross - that’s the point. it doesn’t make it excusable, though, which is why i understand why people are offended. so i responded with the only solution i Knew would keep us both safe and happy posting on our own blogs. 

so i thought this would be the end of things! i’d been pretty anxious lately already since i’d started to receive anons telling me i was gross and whore-ish for thirst posting in this way (i delete all of those, so if ur thinking about sending one, i guess no one’s stopping you but it won’t be seeing the light of the dashboard). i’m unsure if it was immediately or a few hours later, seeing as how i have a bad concept of time and the post-dates are right on the edge between nov 30 and dec 1, but i went to their blog - because anyone who has been on the internet knows the opportunity to vague post is near irresistible. and...what do ya know

fair! it’s their blog. however i am an emotionally fragile egg girl and immediately got freaked out. the odds that they were the only one who thought this were low. and, again, i’ve been very open on my blog about how important it is to respect boundaries; my posts are absolutely prone to breaking those boundaries people have created for themselves. 

so i made my own, semi-vague post, letting my following know (and i’m pretty sure i’d answered asks about it before, but this is going to be long enough w/o me searching those up too) that i understood if they wanted to block me or unfollow or whatever - people need to create their own safe spaces. the tension is pretty clear in the tags, i’m not trying to hide that. i felt that the way this woman slid into my dm’s was pretty abrasive (just my opinion/how it made me personally feel) and i let myself be a lil emotional about it in the tags of my post.

alright! maybe this is the end. maybe we both go our separate ways and post happily on our own blogs... except it’s not the end. later in the day (some of this was happening like 1/2am, so now its Day day, i believe - again, not good w time passage lol)

clearly, i’m upset. my groupchat double checked that i didn’t get too emotional in my response - did i mention im anxious about discourse lol - and apparently.. it did the trick. she didn’t message me again. great. it was over. 

at this point, i decided i needed to make an even bigger change. so a few days after i’d calmed down i created an entirely new tag for my thirst posts so if people hadn’t already hidden the notsfw posts or just blocked me outright, they’d have a third option to escape the madness. at this point, id had my blog about 6? weeks, but there were still 2k posts for me to sift through - some of them were completely untagged. i also had to do it post by post, because one of xkits features - the mass re-tagger - was getting blogs deleted for some reason, and i wasn’t going to do that. so i spent a few days going through all 2k+ posts, adding the “fhg” tag. 

YEEHAW! a brand new tagging system, no more hopping into the bill hader tag (minus one or two really funny, not super explicit asks, like the bill hader farquaad meme), and, tbf, i’d completely put this woman out of my mind. i don’t seek out drama and do my best to stay in my lane. yesterday, i checked my activity for the first time in awhile since id put out a couple new original posts that had started to get traction and i Love reading tags. i noticed a mutual had @’d me, and realized i havent checked my @’s in...ever, maybe. i see a post from my good pal billhaderanti. 

since i dont follow them and never check my @’s, i’d completely missed it. however, once i did see it, i was horrified. id gone through all that fucking work to keep my blog My Blog and also respect everyone’s boundaries and it still hadn’t been enough. i’d been awake for almost 24 hours and went. a little crazy. and i didn’t reply immediately because i just had no words. i sent it to my friends because i... i just wasn’t going to be able to figure it out myself. 

there’s a lot to unpack in this post alone, but whatever, i’m gonna put my own grievances with the immaturity of 1. making a callout post to begin with when i’d been nothing but civil 2. making a callout post about something as (in the grand scheme of Life) minor as some tags where i refer to a someone’s genitals as a “whack pack” and 3. making a callout post in such a rude way - aside. at the end, she calls me (and whoever else!) a demonic mlw (man loving woman, we assumed, and then later confirmed with a post further back on her blog). 

which - yeah, we started scrolling. at first we were looking for more vague blogs, and then we just...started finding things. billhaderanti is a self proclaimed lesbian separatist, which... fine. but it’s already pretty clear that this woman hates me on some level simply because i am a bi woman (demonic mlw, remember!) which is just. damn man i can’t believe we are still fighting the biphobic fight lol. so the more we scrolled, the more we uncovered - and not just the biphobic / vaguely mtf transphobic things they posted (or put in tags), but we also found that they had their OWN thirst tags. certainly not as hyperbolically comedic as mine, but they were there, talking about his body and his person the same (and, frankly, a bit creepier for other reasons) as mine. 

there’s one post in particular that snatched my wig in it’s creepiness - and i say creepiness in the sense that it feels personal. like this woman feels like she knows bill to some degree where she can say these things. my tags have always had a sense of distance, as they’re written for humor. and maybe this particular post was written for comedic purposes, but it doesn’t read that way, and if it WAS, then she has no right to call ME out for MY comic tags and posts. 

i’ll let it speak for itself, mostly because i don’t want to read it again. 

i also won’t be going through her blog again to find the posts with biphobic and other Interesting:tm: tags because there are plenty and i just really! want to be done with the whole ordeal! her blog is public and i’m sure you can all find it and look to your heart’s content. 

feeling a bit feral and a bit pissed off now that we knew the depth of how rotten this woman’s vibes were, a couple of my pals made a post or two similar to what my tag’s are like except turned up to eleven (if possible) - and tagged them with “bill hader” (and notsfw!!). yes, a bit childish, but at this point, the entire situation was childish, and making jokes was truly the only way we were going to get through it. another vague post went up on her blog soon after.

talking down to us, calling us children, and then for whatever reason calling us virgins... whatever, weird post. around this time most of us (est) went to bed, because it was nearing 3 or 4 in the morning. 

and then today happened. i woke up fresh and ready for the day after a wonderful 4 hours of sleep and found that jane had made an incredibly intelligent post in response to the situation. i won’t ss it, but i’ll LINK in case you missed it. attached there in the reblog is my own response. i think they can speak for themselves. 

after that, things were kind of jumbled, since i wasn’t online a lot and when i was i was Not checking my activity simply because i was afraid of what i’d see. for the most part, it ended up just being support (which i am very grateful to all of you for - it means a lot that you all enjoy my content to any degree). 

there was some more vague posting from both “““““sides”””””” of the “““““argument”””””” - mostly just people restating the fact that this is a public space and we should All be aware of how we effect others. i still hadn’t heard directly from billhaderanti, so i assumed we’d all be dropping and disengaging and moving on. i still wasn’t blocked, though, so who really knew what would happen. 

eventually, it culminated in this last post. tw for mentions of rape

i’m going to start by saying that 

1. there are nearly no teenagers that were involved in this. im turning 23 in january and most of my friends are 20+. maybe one or two are 19. 

2. none of us sent any sexually violent asks - most of us didn’t send asks at all. i believe one or two of my friends admitted to sending asks however they assured me their nature wasn’t bad; as far as i know, everyone remained civil in whatever went on (again, unclear to me as to what was being sent; no one was actively posting or talking about it. if billhaderanti wishes to elaborate, they can, but i don’t have anything to put in). 

3. before i finish this, i would like to apologize to billhaderanti. as a comedian - not just my stupid tags, i mean in real life, too - i know that humor can hurt. it’s not always funny, it’s not just stupid hahas. sometimes things that are supposed to be jokes just hit people differently and cause bad things. i recognize that. i never meant to trigger you (if you’re reading this) or cause you any severe mental/emotional harm. i apologize for my humor bringing up your trauma, and i never meant for that. regardless of my own thoughts and opinions about the nature of my posts/the thirst tags themselves, they hurt you, and i’m sorry. 

anyway, i’m going to wrap this up (i’m bad at endings, what can i say! steven king and i took the same writer’s class!). if you read all this... sorry. i probably won’t be taking any asks about it, because i find the whole “drama” of this to be stupid and rooted in some seriously biphobic issues this fully grown woman has. 

tldr; i attempted to contain my blog so this woman could exist and function safely on her blog, but it wasn’t enough for her, so she called me out, and then some of the fandom called Her out for being biphobic and mean and overall just immature about the situation. as of now, she’s yet to block me, though her and her wife have blocked a few of my friends. her wife continues to clown on my friends. this post was made for clarity’s sake. the end, i’m getting a drink.