#sorry this isnt coherent i didnt know how to structure this and its been a long day

[bisexualdinahlance]

can you explain the Casey McQuiston thing a little further? I'm pretty brand new to the rwrb fandom and not familiar

There's been rumors for years in the RWRB fandom and outside of it that Casey McQuinston used to be on tumblr and was a fic writer for the Social Network/Social Network RPF fandom. Further, there was a lot of rumors that RWRB was SN RPF with the serial numbers filed off. The original tumblr account people say was Casey I'm pretty sure is either gone or dead now, and the fanfic author that people say they are took down their fics years ago. It's very possible that that person was Casey, but like without them fessing up there's no way to know for sure.

Someone on Youtube did a whole video essay deep dive into investigating the accounts, and even read the fic people claim RWRB is based on. The conclusion the video essayist came to was that she thought the author was Casey but that the fic was nothing like RWRB. (Which of course it wasn't lmao, the intro to the book literally talks about how they wrote it during and after the 2016 election - several years after the fics were deleted.) There's a good chance she's right, but while some of the reasoning is good, one of the reasons was literally that both authors "inserted their media opinions superfluously" into the story that broke their immersion because both authors made fun of "blonde women [the video essayist] liked" lol. So I take the conclusion with a grain of salt even if the investigation work was good.

Anyone who has read the book I'm sure can tell that Casey probably wrote fanfiction, but it's pretty clear to me that it's not lol. It just has tropes and dynamics that are popular in fandom spaces, as well as some specific turns of phrases. Which isn't a bad thing lol, RWRB is my guilty pleasure fave, I adore it even if it feels a bit lib in the current political climate.

I doubt that Casey ever saw the rumors - for a while it was mostly just snarky tumblr or reddit comments that brought it up to prove moral superiority over not liking the book. But it's still frustrating to me that like an author is essentially being haunted reputationally by fanfic they might or might not have written as a teenager/college student. Even the fanlore page for the book is completely overtaken by people speculating that it's a fanfiction. I would be PISSED if I got published, and everyone claimed my books were Harry Potter fanfiction because I used to be in the HP fandom in high school and college. And then spread around old fanfiction that I deleted off the internet because I got made fun of for how bad the smut was.

(Part of the "proof" that some people used as to the original fic being RWRB was it was deleted off of LJ but the fanlore page on the actual fic speculates it's because the author was getting bitchy messages about the quality of the smut in the fic.)

Anyway, sorry this wasn't super... coherent I have a lot of opinions on the subject. the TL;DR is that Casey might have been a BNF in the Social Network fandom, and because of that people speculated that they turned one of their SNRPF's into RWRB. It's pretty clear that they didn't do that, but these rumors have haunted the fandom for years because people keep spreading them like they're fact.

And I think authors should be allowed to keep their fandom separate from their professional work exactly because of shit like this lol.