Scoliosis Visible During Autopsy.

I turned off guest comments on a fic I’ve been working on. Im sorry if you’ve genuinely enjoyed what I write and no longer can leave a comment, but I highly recommend making an AO3 account regardless.

Anyway, here’s what I did so:

Considering the fake-out praise at the beginning, this was clearly meant to get under my skin. I’m assuming this was written by a guest who recently left a critical comment on what I wrote. Someone came to my defense in that initial thread today, and this person crashed out and decided to shit on me anonymously on the next chapter. Again, can’t be sure, but the complaints are similar, and either way it honestly doesn’t matter.

I cannot stress enough how immature, disrespectful, and rude it is to do something like this. I don’t care if I’m writing the most incoherent and amateur story on earth, this would STILL be inappropriate. I mentioned in the endnote of this chapter that I recently had a severe RSD spiral and was overall doing extremely unwell, and this person did not care and/or saw that as an opportunity to beat me while I’m down. Fantastic.

Anyway, fic writers such as myself are doing this for free, for fun, and do not owe you anything. If you don’t like what you’re reading, just stop reading it or write what you want to read. It’s that fucking simple.

I’m honestly uncomfortable knowing this person is lurking because spending hundreds of hours of my life on a project that I’ve legitimately lost sleep over and treated as a part time job is not worth this amount of anxiety. Im not going to discontinue or lock this story, but I’m pretty upset and disappointed people out there are like this.

Please don’t be this person, and if you’re a fic writer and anyone does this, don’t engage.

some FREAKS... idk

"tumblr's the only social media without algorithms!" "you can still be anonymous on tumblr!" "tumblr's so nice because you don't have to show your face!" WRONG tumblr is special because you can have 3000 followers and still get an average of seven likes a post. i'm doing stand up comedy at a packed venue and one person is laughing

is it so bad

to live without your light?

yk that thing wherein you read a fic so fucking good it feels like you're doing shitty astral projections to fucking heaven and somehow stumbling upon jesus's stash of porn, and you go, "oh!" because it's both downright mind-blowing and hilarious? yeah i lost myself halfway there

gun to my head i would rather die than read this fic. what the fuck are you even doing at this point. whats the fucking point?

This one gets its own post because i still like it

now playing. . . tip toe by hybs

when scaramouche arrived at your house for a quick date, he didn't expect you to be in a frilly prom dress with bows and all. the way you turned over made him feel like he was intruding into your home abode. but he did tell you that he was on the way so maybe it is really your fault? he retorted, "i thought you said you didn't want to go to prom."

you quickly grabbed a big, tan trench coat draped over yourself. nervously laughing, "yeaaah... but i just wanted to look cool to you."

scaramouche just looks like a guy who wouldn't want to go to prom. but the way he was looking at you made you flustered. the guy you like is at your house. maybe, call yourself delusional but was his eyes were enchanted by you?

if he was though... you folded like a chair. he just threw you out of orbit and now, you're gone.

however, you didn't expect the next words out of his mouth. scaramouche furrowed his eyebrows, like he didn't believe what you just said, "you're my girlfriend? of course, i'd think you're cool."

"i am?" you reiterated, "i am your girlfriend?"

he scrunched up his face. it's kind of silly to see a guy like him scrunch up his face. even though the two of you have been friends for a good year, some expressions of his is a treat to see. "are you not?"

is it weird to ask him what are we? "i would like to be." fiddling with the ends of your frills, he sat down on the couch, dumbfounded. "but you are."

at the same time the both of you replied,

"you never asked?"

"i thought you knew?" he's kidding right? there's a small, frankly, big, part of you that wants it not to be a joke. but the teensy tiny voice in your brain refuses to believe it. you looked at his face, looking for any trace of jokes but you found none.

"anyway, did you want to go to prom? i could sneak you in, my mom funds like school anyway." he pulled you on his lap, careful of placing your frills down neatly. shifting out, you turned to him, "scaramouche, i thought we were-"

"yeah? but now we are dating?"

you sighed and gave up. once he put his mind to something, he doesn't stop. "okay, to answer your other question, yeah, i do want to go."

"good because i already got you tickets."

By the way, fanfiction isn't the place for reviews or criticism.

When you're a published author, it's like you're preparing a meal in a food competition. You expect a rating and to be told what worked and what didn't to improve your craft and embark on your career.

When you're a fanfiction author, it's like taking some of your free time to enjoy the process of baking cookies and then offering them to someone to be kind.

If you take a cookie from the plate, you don't spit it out and tell them it sucked.

Unless the writer asks for your opinion, you can keep it to yourself.

Adding this to clarify, and you don't have to agree with this by any means, I cannot force you to, but the reason Ao3 and Fanfiction isn't the space for criticism and ratings...is that it is a fan space created by fans for fans.

It isn't school.

It is a space where people with the same interests can congregate and enjoy the same fandom.

When you think about commenting on an fanfic authors fics, don't think if it as fishing around in your pocket to give them a compliment.

Compliments are nice. Most everyone likes compliments.

"I like your character development."

"You paint wonderful imagry."

Those are comments that are compliments. Speaking for myself as a fanfic writer they're nice, but they're not what my fan heart craves.

I want engagement with my readers.

The best comments I get aren't talking about my skill as a writer, but what just happened in the story because you and I (the reader) are already fans of the world created.

Comments like:

"NOOOOOOOO!"

"Did she actually just do that?"

"EXCUSE me?!?!"

None of these comments are compliments and none are critical. They are emotionally aligned with the story. They are engaged and with this engagement we create a little community in this tiny little space we get to call ours.

I cannot stop people from saying cruel things, but I can inform those people of the "dangers" so to speak when people treat fandom spaces like Ao3 as if it's Goodreads.

Writers, who write for themselves and offer it to you out of kindness, can decide that if people are just going to spit out their cookies they don't need to post about them anymore and that is how fandom spaces die.

If you don't like the flavor of cookie they made, or you're allergic to one of its ingredients...don't eat the cookie. Put it back for someone else to enjoy and then go find the flavor you do like.

what real suffering looks like