#costar said 'backspace today' and stella said 'no <3'

[florbelles]

i understand that everyone is absolutely sick of hearing from me on this topic, but given that, as many of you have doubtlessly also seen, this is something that has actively affected other members of the community and some of my dearest friends, i do want to say some final words on the topic, and then i’ll move on.

i’ve made a similar post once before. i was angry, then. at this point i am simply exhausted and saddened that this is seemingly an inescapable part of the fandom experience, and it is the reason why i am not active in the ways i would like to be anymore. to be clear, i miss it. i miss it a  lot. i miss it so much, in fact, that there have been multiple times that i have legitimately debated whether or not the tradeoff was worth it. the answer has always been no.

my first tendency is always to assume that something is a me issue, if not in fact then in my feelings towards it. the fact that my experiences are shared assures me that it is not. it would be wonderful if i could simply put everything aside and say, i don’t care that every answer i give in an ask meme, any wip snippet i share, even my responses in tags, will show up elsewhere. here’s the thing, though. i do care. and so i have simply decided to remove that aspect of my fandom experience, genuinely feeling that when the inevitable happens, i’ll have no one to blame but myself.

while i should like to give the benefit of the doubt in most scenarios — similar fandoms can give way to similar ideas, after all, and i share many concepts and themes with the works of my dearest friends i’ve met through fandom, having discovered them in part because of it — there are some scenarios where behavior patterns and repeated instances of direct, verbatim or near-verbatim plagiarism has occurred, not only to me but to others, oftentimes in ways that are conspicuously out of place or even contradictory to previous output, that it becomes impossible to ignore.

additionally, while my primary reason for remaining on this site is because i am overwhelmingly grateful for the wonderful friends & mutuals it’s given me, and i very much want to continue to support their work and interact with them on the platform where we met, unfortunately there is another, far less supportable reason, in that this aforementioned pattern is difficult at this point to attribute to inspiration or enthusiasm. the latter i understand; it’s one of the great advantages of existing in a communal creative space, and inspiring other creators and reinforcing their love of their own work is incredibly rewarding. when there’s a degree of duplicity involved, however, with other creators publicly claiming to have pioneered concepts that are yours (and were implemented for years prior), or even taking meta talking points when speaking to new fandom members about joining with a specific type of character or arc that they did not, in fact, join with, but in fact acquired later in direct opposition to their original premise (but i did, in fact, join with years prior and never felt the need to comment on), i begin to understand that the desire is not simply to share a creative space, but to claim it. 

this has not always been an incredibly sympathetic problem to have. the response to someone, or multiple someones, sharing that they have dealt with direct plagiarism of personal projects to the extent that it has destroyed their fandom experience when contrasted with the response elsewhere when someone receives a bad review or anon hate has made it clear where it falls on the fandom grievances list. that’s perfectly fine! no one else is expected, much less obligated, to be bothered by it; i don’t share this in order to insinuate that anyone should behave or feel differently about it, but simply to account for my own behavior, because the reality is that it’s not something i feel particularly safe speaking about, and it’s something that i have often chosen to ignore in silence. i am not comfortable doing that in scenarios where i understand it is not only happening to myself. i can no longer choose to take a high road and tacitly condone it by my continued amicability; i’m no longer simply saying, “i am willing to ignore this happening to me,” i’m saying “i’m willing to look the other way when people i care about are hurting.”

to be clear, i will never publicly point fingers. i will never, ever condone shaming, bullying, harassing, or targeting someone. i simply want to be able to privately curate my fandom experience without there being a ripple of dramatics questioning who i follow or block and for what reason without it blowing back on me and my friends to the extent that it becomes a conflict i have to publicly address, as has happened in the past. i simply request that my boundaries are respected, as well as my right to having them.

thank you for bearing with me this far, and thank you so much to all of the incredibly lovely people i’ve met who continue to make being a member of the creative community so, so worth it. as always, i’m incredibly excited to watch and support your own creative endeavors, and i sincerely hope that one day i’ll reach a place where i feel comfortable fully joining you again.

xx stella