#if y'all just left the people you see as 'weirdos' alone you'd be so much less stressed and they'd have less of a platform

[angels-heap]

Every now and then, I stumble across conversations about how fucked up the HL(VRAI) fandom was in 2020, and it's so wild to me that the relevant "examples" are almost always individual off-putting fanworks or individual trolls and not, like, the rampant harassment. Guys, the worst part was the harassment!! The handful of people who posted fucked up shit for shock value were annoying, but the overblown response to those trolls and the ensuing harassment campaigns against anyone who could possibly be construed to have anything in common with them were infinitely worse.

... then again, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these folks claiming one gross-out fic ruined their fandom experience were also the same people who spread all the discourse and organized the harassment campaigns, so 🤷

[thee-morrigan]

27 & 28 for the writer ask (and 31 if you are up for it)

[weird questions for writers]

hiii thanks for sending these (and sorry it took a mo to answer)! definitely will be doing 31 because i refuse to turn down an opportunity to fawn over anyone who's ever paid me any amount of attention (truly, people who support other people's hobbies are actual angels, i'm baking you all a cake filled with rainbows and smiles)

dropping answers below the cut!

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

this is probably a bit vague, but any time i feel like i don't have a good sense of a character's distinct voice, it's very stressful - there've been lots of times where i felt like i understood a character, like i knew what choices they'd make in a given scenario, but not how they'd get to that decision (like, only understood them in an intellectual sense?).

i can't think of any one character in particular (fandom or otherwise) who stands out as more stressful than others, though!

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

they're not fandom-related (they feature in an original project i'm writing at a glacial pace), but probably my character lola renfroe.

i love writing lola because (even though they are ultimately a good and big-hearted person), they're not especially nice. they don't care very much what most people think of them and can sometimes be a little too blunt - but as a writer, it's fun to explore characters (especially femme-presenting ones) who you know to be good but who are, frankly, just not very likable!

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

for someone who writes almost exclusively about love (romantic, platonic, self-love, loss of love, etc.), you'd think i'd have an easier time articulating the volume of love i have for anyone who's ever read my writing. i started writing (as a tiny human) because i had ideas and stories inside of me that took up so much space i felt they had to live somewhere beyond my own head, and i mostly still do. but the writing i do that ends up (in part or whole) online is writing that isn't for me; or, rather, it is, but it's for me the reader (who might also sometimes be you the reader). there's a quote from matilda about reading books to know you're not alone, and i think a lot of writing that we share serves the same purpose: you write to feel seen. you write to know you're not alone. (and, just to be clear, i don't only mean that in a serious, shared-trauma, identity-validating kind of way. i also very much mean that in the sense that sometimes you need to know you're not alone in wishing some characters would just be the sluts you *know* they can be. it's all imaginary barbie dolls, y'all - sometimes you just have to make 'em kiss.)

ANYWAY - what i really mean is: every single time i share something, part of my brain immediately cringes and tells me i'm a weirdo (brains are assholes a lot of the time). but when i see that someone's liked/reblogged/left kudos/commented on something i wrote, it feels like you're saying, "hey, i'm a weirdo, too!". if you've ever read anything i've written and enjoyed any part of it, i am so ridiculously grateful to you for validating my need to make my imaginary barbies do things (ya weirdo <3).