Goodbye
∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ Hello, lover. Hahaha brownie points if you know where that quote came from. Okay, enough joking around. This is a rather lengthy goodbye as well as an almost play-by-play/step-by-step process (with pictures) on my decision to take down/hide away all my fics and stop writing EXO fanfiction. This is, also in a way, a glimpse of the kind of lots of fanfic writers have to deal with. I'm not demonizing anyone, I just want the uneducated and the inconsiderate to finally realize that what they meant as a compliment can actually hurt a person. When I first got into this community, I told myself that since I've read so many great fics even when the author has left the fandom, when my time comes, I'll keep my fics up too. Most of my readers will have realized that I've locked all my fics, but before yesterday, I had always meant to make them public again. Before I get to that, let me tell just explain why I locked my fics. As my dear readers would know, around October 2015, I started locking all my incomplete multi-chaptered fics and fics that are part of an incomplete verse. At that time, all I did was leave a link to an explanation on why I've taken them down/locked them. This time, I'm going to show everyone examples of the kinds of comments that made me do this. I'm probably the only damn person in this ficdom who posts my fics on 4 platforms (LJ/AO3/AFF/tumblr) and rarely do I not preface each fic with "x-posted on ...". I'm also probably the only person who updates their writing status regularly on my twitter, my aff blog, and for ao3, I link people to my tumblr in my author's notes. For tumblr, I had two kinds of updates. One was a "quick glance" update at the top of the page like so:  And another was more in-depth, tagged with #update:  Pretty ing crazy, right? If you're also a writer who does this much for their readers, let me give you a commiserative fist bump. Despite all my hard work at trying to engage my readers, these were the kinds of comments I regularly got:  But what made me snap was the comments I got for a gift fic I hadn't yet crossposted but still explained that I would expand on the fic in my author's notes. Notice the difference between the comments from my recipient and from other readers. You can also see me lose patience with every new comment:    and the killer:  So I locked my fics and I thought things were going well, y'know? People were understanding and supportive. And then came what I liked to call, The BaekSoo Sequel. Most of the comments I got for Morning Call (a xingdae fic mind you) were about baeksoo. These were only some of them     This was back in November, so I still haven't completely made peace with entitled readers. So I wrote this extensive, but admittedly passive-aggressive, explanation on why a baeksoo sequel in that AU was a terrible idea.
 Ironically enough, exoquartus was more of a baeksoo fest than a chingu-line fest. Anyway, GUESS WHAT SOMEONE REPLIED TO ME AFTER I POSTED THAT:  Thus ended my love for baeksoo and my disgust over some of the baeksoo shippers. It still really upsets me because I had tons of WIPs with them as a pairing, but now I just want to vomit at the mention of it. Baeksoo will make a comeback, so don't go anywhere. Things went okay-ish. I decided to just delete comments asking for sequels/spinoffs or just generally MORE MORE MORE instead of replying. But it still hurts when I get stuff like this:  People who write comments like this, I just want to know a few things:
Then around April 2016, my depression got worse and I got physically sick every single ing week. Fandom tired me out, especially as a Xingmi and as a xingdae shipper. OTPs start to become NOTPs and members I used to love now make me irrationally annoyed whenever I see even a mention of their name, mutuals on twitter start thinking and subtweeting me that I'm ignoring them specifically when I actually ignore everyone as explained here. My personal and academic life fell apart again, even with support from my family and my school. So I deactivated my twitter, locked almost all of my fics (incomplete or not), and posted 3 different updates here, here, and here. I wanted to delete everything, but I've written SO MUCH in the past year that it hurts to do so. I was (and still am) so out of it that I couldn't be as excited when xingdaes started their postings. Many writers know that I'm the kind of person who likes to live tweet my spazzing while reading fics, or leave lengthy comments. Sometimes I'd see tweets like "I wish red would read my fics," or "I want a comment from red," and to be honest, that makes me unhappy and in a way, pressures me so much so that I can't read a fic in peace without people expecting a comment from me. But regardless of whether or not I'm in the mood to spazz, I still leave comments. Just short and simple ones. Then in the middle of xingdaes postings, I got a mention from someone who doesn't even follow me:     Their replies made NO ING SENSE to me so I just ignored them. But it made me feel used. Like I'm just there for someone's entertainment. Like I'm just there to every writer's ego. And then yesterday... Oh dear god. If it was a different person and a different pairing, I would have reacted differently. But it was this person and it was baeksoo.  And when I went through the fic and the comments, THE WRITER COULDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO SAY MY NAME! "Fresh way," my .
 Then, when they replied to me, this happens.
  When I wrote suchen's "Hello, Stranger," the person who wrote the fic I was inspired by had already left the fandom. But because it still played an important role in my fic, and because I wanted people to read it too, I linked to both the author's LJ profile and the fic itself.
   A lot of writers who have been in ficdom longer than I have go through similar things. But they learn to ignore the they have to go through. That's not who I am. It's not in me to ignore injustice, especially towards myself. Every time I pick myself back up, something kicks me back down again. This is not fun anymore. I don't care if people don't remember me or my fics. Because even if they do, chances are I, wouldn't know. So it doesn't matter anymore. To the people who have been looking forward to continuations of my fics and my planned projects, especially my Exordium, I'm really sorry. It hurts me, but I just don't see the ing point anymore. It's time I focus my energy and my efforts into my original writing. Maybe actually get paid for whatever I have to go through. I've sent emails to mods of fic exchanges and fests, asking to take down my fics because I don't like not having control over my own intellectual property at such a crucial point in time. Suhoney and BAE are still on their posting period, and I'm not about to ask them to take my fics down yet. Maybe a week after the reveals, I will. If you have PDF or offline versions of my fics, please do not spread them. So many of you have hurt me and don't deserve to read my fics. Give me at least this much.
If you made it this far, thank you. To the people who have supported me all this time, and have sent messages to check up on me, thank you. To the writers who've left fandom but still leave their fics up so people like me can get inspired and learn from your writing, thank you. To the writers who still put up a fight, whether actively or behind-the-scenes, thank you. To all the mods who had to deal with my sudden drop-out, thank you. To my lovely, lovely, writers and readers from 91daes, thank you. All my love, and a lot of ' you's, Red, (2014-2016) |
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