#time to start anonymous sock accounts on AO3 & stuff & not tag anything what so ever

[turbo-virgins]

Last night I received the following concerning anonymous message:

When I first read it I was immediately suspicious and thought this was a malicious attempt to start in-fighting while everyone is on edge over the sock-puppet oc-stealing individual that has been hovering around the fc5 community for some time now. However, at least one mutual I have in common with the blog named in the anon has since blocked me, which leads me to believe that the message above might be true and I am being accused of plagiarism. I have left that blog name covered up in case this is all some huge misunderstanding.

In the midst of these accusations, no one (aside from the anon) has reached out to make me aware of the situation or even what I am being accused of plagiarizing. I have reached out to the person who is supposedly accusing me to confirm whether or not they are actually accusing me, but have not yet received a response.

In the meantime I'm providing my limited perspective of the situation to (hopefully) clear the air.

When I first became active in the fc5 community on tumblr (about two years ago, I think?) I was mutuals with the redacted blog in the anonymous message. This person is a long-time prominent member in the community. Their oc and their deputy/john fanfic is well loved and very popular. Not too long after I joined the fandom I began writing my fic, Holy Roller which is a deputy/joseph fanfic centered around my oc, Delilah. It was inspired by a deputy/joseph fic on ao3 called To Build A Home (and I have an old message with a different mutual that I can dig up if requested in which I discuss the premise of that fic and how it inspired me).

In an attempt to be more active in the community, I started reading a few of my mutuals fanfic (including this person's fic). From time to time I would send asks/dms/leave tags in WIP posts leaving encouraging and positive feedback and just enjoying someone else's writing in general. I believe I only read up to chapter 3 or 4 of the fic of the person that is accusing me of plagiarism.

The only similar thing I am aware of between their fic and mine is that we both make allusions/references/allegories (whatever the correct term is) to the biblical book of judges and specifically within that book - the story of Samson and Delilah. When I realized that both of our ocs/other characters in the fic make a reference to Delilah, I remember sending them an ask about it because I thought their take on their oc being a stand-in for Delilah/Samson/some amalgamation of the two was neat. At the time I believe they referenced some biblical academic debate about several different accounts regarding Delilah - some in which she is painted as a victim rather than a seductress. If I recall correctly, they offered to send me a link to their reference material, but I don't remember if I ever got the link - all I know is that I never actually read through whatever reference they were using.

Shortly after this exchange (maybe a few days, maybe a week or two, I don't remember) this mutual blocked me (and I think I was blocked maybe a year and a half ago? I don’t remember; I don’t think I’ve interacted with this person in over a year though). At the time it did not occur to me that the Samson and Delilah references might be why they blocked me. I reached out to a mutual we had in common to see if I had done anything or reblogged anything that hurt or offended this person because whatever the issue was I wanted to apologize make it right. It is my understanding that this mutual we had in common asked this person directly and the reason I was given via a dm back from this mutual in common was "[they] are feeling Some Kind Of Way." I didn't know how to interpret that, so I assumed that by blocking me, this person was setting a boundary of some kind and didn't want me interacting with them. Since I thought they didn't want me interacting with their stuff, I didn't push the issue further and blocked them in return so that I wouldn't see their stuff cross my dash anymore. I also never read any further in their fic.

If I am correct about my assumptions and the accusations in question are regarding the Samson and Delilah references in both of our fics, I am not sure what to say other than it is a complete coincidence. I don't know how this person has been interpreting my own work, all I can offer is my own perspective and decisions I made about my oc, Delilah.

Below I have done my best to outline aspects of Delilah's character and my personal reasoning behind why she is the way she is:

When selecting Delilah's name I knew I wanted a biblical name since the fictional cult in fc5 is a christian-based cult. I briefly researched female biblical figures and I decided on Delilah because the name didn't strike me as super common and I wanted my oc to be a character who may be misunderstood and villainized by some but is still sympathetic - much like the biblical Delilah based on how you interpret/read into the biblical narrative. I believe the name Delilah also means "fragile" or "delicate." I liked the meaning behind her name because my oc is physically resilient which may at first glance seem at odds with her name, but she is emotionally and mentally very vulnerable which is NOT at odds with her name.

As far as physical appearance the closest thing Delilah has to a face-claim is Maya Hawk specifically from Stranger Things. I liked her hair style and some of the 80s-esque fashion she wears in some of her photoshoots. Delilah has kind of dark red hair and my line of thinking there was that Wrath = anger = red. In my fic, Delilah is at times an embodiment of Wrath much like the in-game fc5 deputy. In my writing she is frequently associated with the color red (to tie back into Wrath symbolism) while Joseph is associated with the color gold (based on a long character analysis post I wrote about his glasses a long time ago).

As previously stated, Delilah was intended to have some minor association made between her and the biblical figure. There is a scene early on in my fic where Delilah calls Joseph over the phone only for him to accuse her of being a spy attempting to get close to him and betray him which would (he says) ultimately lead to his downfall. I personally see Joseph as someone who projects himself and his experiences onto the biblical narrative and then uses that biblical narrative as evidence to justify his actions (sort of like an endless self re-enforcing confirmation bias feedback loop... thing). This is a pattern of behavior of his that is referenced in other places in my fic - specifically his in-game references to the book of revelation and then later in my fic to the book of job. It is my reasoning that, when Joseph encountered Delilah by chance at a bar, learned her name, and learned of her connection to the Hope County sheriff, that he was ready and willing to connect her to the biblical Delilah based both on their shared name and their specific circumstances. I believe that Joseph himself even hints at that in their dialogue.

The only other instance I can think of where my work sort of alludes to Samson and Delilah is a few hints and conversations where Delilah explains that she had a traumatic experience as a child where her hair was cut off against her will. Honestly the Samson and Delilah symbolism potential there is secondary to the fact that it was intended to reference my own childhood fears and insecurities. For reasons I won't get into, my hair has been a major part of my identity and how I present myself my whole life. There was a time where I did not have autonomy over my appearance and that manifested itself in this fear of having something so crucial to how I present myself taken away against my will.

This feeds into my next explanation: I have stated before that Delilah is not intended to be a self insert, however there are major aspects of her character and the way she is written that are pulled from my personal experiences. Her religious trauma, her toxic relationships with the maternal figures in her life, her self-doubt, her self-loathing, her deeply ingrained religious guilt, and the symptoms of her anxiety/panic attacks are all pulled from my own deeply personal life experiences. Delilah is a character who keeps everyone at arms length because she believes there is fundamentally something wrong with her - that her flaws are something to be covered up rather than accepted. And the point of her dynamic with Joseph in my fic was for her to find a source of unconditional love that she'd been craving, but to have that love come from someone incredibly fucked-up, dangerous, and manipulative.

As for how well I have executed these concepts - that is a matter of every reader's personal opinion and they have a right to that opinion. This fic I have been working on for approximately two years is the longest work I have ever written. I am inexperienced and still developing my style and skills as a writer. There are approximately four more chapters I have outlined before it will be complete.

I would like to reiterate that I have not yet received confirmation from the person supposedly accusing me on the specific details of what they think I plagiarized. The purpose of this post was to explain my thought process behind my oc and the plot of my fic - I wanted to demonstrate that there is real creative reasoning and intent behind my writing, that my interpretations of Joseph and my characterization of my oc Delilah are based on my own thoughts about fc5 canon material, and that any similarities between my work and someone else's is a coincidence and there is no malicious intent behind any fandom related content I've ever put out on my blog or on ao3.

If this is all a big misunderstanding, then I apologize and I would like to keep in place the boundaries that were set before I was ever made aware of any potential accusations.

[titleleaf]

I was tagged by @bro-stoevsky​, a hero to the people!

Author Name:

skazka, because once upon a time I was horny for a fandom with a lot of hapless men in uniform and beefy men getting beat up, can you imagine? If you really want to fuck over your ability to find where your fic has been recced, pick a username that’s the name of several popular fanworks and also a common noun in an other language than English. If I had to change it, I don’t know what I’d change it to. 

Fandoms You Write For:

All of them. I write for all the fandoms. Right now I’m squeezing the last drops of blood from The Terror s1, but I write a lot of small fandoms (especially for fests like Yuletide) and in the past wrote lots of Histories fic. I still love the Histories, but I succeeded in burning myself out by writing a lot during a hectic part of my life and I’ll need to basically rebuild how I write in order to move forward. 

Where You Post:

I post fic here on Tumblr (seldom) and on AO3 -- I crossposted to fanfiction.net very rarely for a fandom with a strong presence there, but I hate the interface. I also write 

Most Popular One-Shot:

“ties that bind, knots that fail”, a Victor Frankenstein/Ethan Chandler Penny Dreadful PWP that I honestly do not remember writing. 

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story:

10k of weird robot/human pining smarm and android repair for Prometheus fandom! If I were to write it all over again, I would change a lot, but first and foremost... each chapter being 1000 words is seriously dirty pool. 

Favourite Story You Wrote:

This shit changes with the wind, but I really enjoyed writing “this is the hand”, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style fic for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. I don’t normally play with structure, so this was an interesting challenge. 

Story You Were Nervous to Post:

Everything that I’ve ever written, tbh. 

How Do You Choose Your Titles:

Do You Outline:

Once upon a time I’d be like LOL NO but I guess I do? I have a notes document where I store title/summary/tag/warning info for most fics as they’re being written as well as relevant links and research documents, and if I’m writing something with a plot or some structure to it, I’ll usually outline the sequence of scenes or at least the major beats in there. My outlines are usually short on the beat-by-beat detail and long on the other stuff -- these screenshots of one for a Hickey/Goodsir fic in progress are pretty representative.

[...]

So I’m not exactly a detailed, comprehensive outliner here. My fic with the most detailed outline to date was probably the L.A. Confidential fic “forest in the desert” -- the fic which I wrote initially under the title “some dreamers of the golden dream”, which it’ll always be called in my head. I wrote a four-page outline not only of the plot beats I intended to include in my fic but the outline of canon events and where certain characters were at certain times. I don’t want to say I did jack shit to really confidently pin down the moving parts of the canon, but I actually tried, which is not typical for me. The spitballier stuff and resources went into another document i was using to keep track of titles pre-spreadsheet, and it was a lot of stuff like this:

(That small, too.)

Complete:

...like... how many fics are complete? I have 385 fics posted to AO3 on my main account; some of those might be in anonymous collections, I don’t know and I don’t bother checking. I probably have a few others floating around on sock accounts (given what I write on my main account, they’re not unusually dark or sexual or anything, they’re just self-indulgent) or posted on LJ/DW someplace and not backed up, but that’s the biggest chunk of them there on AO3. 

In-Progress:

I don’t post many WIPs in the sense of multichapter fic, so nothing to report there, but I have 330 fics currently in the process of being cooked up -- maybe 50 of those actively at any given time, but 330 stories with a nonzero wordcount in my big spreadsheet o’ stuff. 

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started:

[stares at Yuletide] 

Do You Accept Prompts:

I do, but I also need to be open that some prompts can totally stump me, or a fic in response to a short and pithy prompt might sprawl totally out of control. I get a little bit of performance anxiety about producing the right content in response to other people’s prompts, but a lot of stuff I’ve written that I like the most has resulted from somebody else’s prompt. An anon once said something to the effect of “the difference between a good fic by skazka and a bad fic by skazka is whether or not they’re working from somebody else’s good prompt or just trying to wing it” and a) haha oof b) damn... they r right. Except that’s mean to people who wrote perfectly good prompts and just got my nonsense in return. The most benign way of reframing that is that I work better with some structure and something to hang my gross ideas on.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write:

I’m not even kidding about how much I’m hyped for Yuletide. It’s basically small-fandom... well, I’d say Christmas, but it’s quite deliberately not Christmas, so it’s just my small fandom happy place. 

Tagging:

@forthegothicheroine​ @cinemaocd​ @marypsue​ and anyone else who wants to participate!