#seriously tho this isnt meant to shame anyone in particular in the fandom

[rise-my-angel]

I don't speak English as my mother tongue, and reading your ask about you leaving Pedro's fandom, like me, although I don't write fanfics, I want to, but I don't think I'll post something, but I agree with everything you wrote in the answer. As I mentioned to someone in Pedro's fandom, if you're not friends with the right people, no one will befriend you or know you.

It genuinely hurts to hear you say you want to write, but you don't know if you want to post. Its actually heartbreaking. Some of the best feelings I've had about my writing since I've moved to the Game of Thrones fandom is seeing people express genuine enjoyment for my writing. I love that I was able to create something that even for a small part of someone day, reading my new chapters brings joy.

I never felt that way about my Pedro work, because I was always up against impossible standards. I posted Confused Warmth a little after the first trailer for The Last of Us released, and hit the timing jackpot. That fic was huge, and got massive spread. But I always was put up against that standard afterwards and not hitting the same level of success was very hard to swallow. In retrospect part of me wishes it were a lot less popular, because that was literally my first proper reintroduction to writing after a significant amount of writers block lasting around two years. It was ultimately bad for me, because nothing else I wrote got that popular in any way. So I had one fic that people talked about but literally was invisible on the map of Pedro writers because I was not in their common circles. I was an outsider with one fic people liked.

Here, I average 30 notes per chapter with Heart of the Great Wolf. I don't know how many people read it regularly and do not intetact with individual chapters at all, but I know the regulars who do and all I can hope is that feedback or not, I am still providing that very small, sometimes invisible lurking audience, enjoys my work for the small part of the day they read it. That's more joy for what I do then anything I felt in the Pedro fandom.

There I was always an outsider in writer circles, and eventually was only beginning to be known because I had some analysis and meme posts about The Last of Us and Mando season 3 gain traction. Which also got me onto a very disliked side of a big part of that fandom.

Me saying I didn't like the implied romance between Joel and Tess literally was the starting for me leaving. It literally left me feeling like I did something wrong for expressing an opinion because I had people I was mutuals with or looked up to talk down to or about me for disliking it as if I was immature and childish. It literally is what led to me being on the bad side of the fandom.

I also had a very harsh exit from Pedro discord servers. I was active in a major one during 2022 with some of the biggest pedro writers at the time, but I had one specific user who did not like me.

She always insulted me, talked down to me, would always push me out of conversations by spamming whenever I'd say anything if we both were online so my messages would get buried. I expressed an opinion she disagreed with and when I included a meme to lighten the mood she put me on blast publically to shame me for my stances and no one said a word about her hostile behavior towards only me. Eventually I ended up leaving without saying goodbye and no one ever said a single word to me after or even interacted with my posts on here. I was so unwelcome by one person but because she was more popular then me, I was left out in the cold until I left by myself silently and never was in any circles afterwards.

To tell the truth, I didn't write my Oberyn fic for that fandom. I was testing the waters of joining the Game of Thrones fandom and wrote an Oberyn fic, because he was one of my favorite characters long before I joined the pedro fandom. I literally wrote an unpublished Pero Tovar au set in the Game of Thrones universe. It was the last fic I wrote for that fandom before realizing I wanted to do Game of Thrones content and was way more passionate about the entire series then just what of the Pedro fandom I was involved in.

Sure there are issues here, but overall, I have more fun here then in the Pedro fandom. I'm arguably more well known here despite having a very unpopular fic for the series, because my posts about the series in general are more well discussed. Yeah its gotten me blocked by half the fandom by now but I don't feel as if I've been kicked out of a clique like I was the Pedro fandom.

I still follow some lovely people and talented writers in that fandom, but they consistently experience the issues that eventually pushed me out of the fandom entirely. I feel for you, for everyone still in that fandom because I have watched it get infinitely more hostile of a place since I left.

Sure I got hate anon spammed on here and got called a retard for my post saying I think Dany is a rapist, but at least I was only brigaded by certain people and not shadow banned from the fandom as an whole by being excluded from the remainder of blogs around me. Now I just exist as an outspoken blog who is on like 50% of block lists in people in this fandom but at least they had the courage to straight block me instead of silently pushing me away while half pretending I was still part of the community.

I hope people in the Pedro fandom now who are not part of those popular cliques, or writers like you who wish there was a space for their writing, find enjoyment in other ways. The Pedro fandom preaches inclusivity but will silently push out any who don't fit into their standards and make them feel unwelcome.

At least in the GoT/asoiaf fandom, there are average loud mouth shitters like me literally all over the place, so there's always a place for me here even if I'm just the resident clown.

Give me the clown nose and horn, I'll dance for you people here. Change my username to rise-my-patchface and annoy the shit out of people as much as I morosely intrigue them with my weirdness.