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Published:
2020-12-28
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2020-12-29
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Viridian’s Opinions on Morality, Sexuality, and Fanfiction

Summary:

The purpose of this “work” is to assert some of my opinions and make clear my position on several contentious issues that I see dividing many prominent cartoon fandoms.

Notes:

TW: mentions of r*pe, p*dophilia, sexual harassment, bad things that happened to me, sexual themes

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter Text

First, I’d like to introduce myself. At the time of writing this, I am a seventeen-year-old U.S. citizen and Nevada native who identifies as pansexual and uses she/they pronouns. In the past couple of years, I got really into cartoons and animated series of all kinds. I also just started writing fanfiction this past year, but I’ve been reading fanfiction since I was twelve. 

 

I was first inspired to write this because members of a certain The Owl House Discord server were leaving anonymous graphic death threats in the form of public comments on my nsfw Owl House fanfiction (and saying those messages were from that server, which is how I connected the two groups of people).

 

As I reached out to that community to ask them to stop, they accused me of being a pedophile, laughed at my identification as a “member of the kink community,” and stated that they were afraid that I (and my friends in that server, who are also minors) would “prey on minors.” 

 

My interaction with that community was very thought-provoking, and I think it’s obvious now that there needs to be more dialogue and understanding instead of polarization. By the way, this work is NOT intended to attack that community. Please do NOT blame them. Their concerns are valid, and it’s good to stay cautious online in case of real danger. The death threat commenters were just an extreme few. All I want is to clarify my own standing on these topics and introduce a forum for debate and open communication.

Chapter 2: Topic #1: “Viridian is a pedophile”

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Topic #1: “Viridian is a pedophile”

 

This is the topic that most annoys me with its sheer misinformation, so I’ll address it first.

 

I am SEVENTEEN. I am a MINOR. The Wikipedia definition for pedophilia reads as follows: “Pedophilia… is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. A person must be at least 16 years old, and at least five years older than the prepubescent child, for the attraction to be diagnosed as pedophilia.”

 

The legal definition for pedophilia: “an obsession with children as sex objects. Overt acts, including taking sexually explicit photographs, molesting children and exposing one's genitalia to children, are all crimes.”

 

The psychiatric definition, as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) used by medical professionals: a paraphilia involving intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children that have either been acted upon or which cause the person with the attraction distress or interpersonal difficulty.

 

Yes, I am an older adolescent. No, I do NOT experience primary or exclusive sexual attraction to middle schoolers, nor have I ever fantasized about them. I do NOT have a pedophilic disorder. I do NOT write sexually explicit fanfiction for pedophilic purposes. 

 

Here are my thoughts about pedophiles. They can be divided into two categories: actively child-predating pedophiles and non-practicing pedophiles. 

 

I look upon those in the first category with the highest moral disapproval. Active pedophiles need to be caught and jailed. I do not want any children or teens to be harmed. As a young person, I don’t want to be harmed either. 

 

I look upon those in the second category with sympathy. Pedophilia is an involuntary psychiatric disorder, not something that people choose. (Regardless, pedophiles should NOT be included in the LGBTQ+ community, for all sorts of reasons.) Non-practicing pedophiles often experience large amounts of self-hatred and guilt, avoid prepubescent children, and seek therapy and psychiatry. They take precautions against predating upon children, including avoiding them, averting their eyes from children when in contact, and talking about it with both professionals and a community of non-practicing pedophiles. They may read fanfiction about prepubescent children when they have their exclusive sexual urges.

 

That being said, many people are not like this. People who are not like this can probably be classified as active pedophiles. A good example doesn’t clear an entire group. This is NOT an excuse to say that pedophiles are misunderstood or should be glorified in any way. It’s much too easy to accidentally encourage active pedophiles. 

 

Also, I am not throwing my full support behind fanfiction about prepubescent children. That is a morally grey area, and I think it would depend on a case-by-case basis, especially if the fanfiction encourages pedophiles to become active without also cautioning against it. I’ll address the whole “fanfiction encouraging people” as another topic.

 

Let me just say that I don’t think it’s fun or sexy to write fanfiction about children with barely-developed bodies. For me, that’s just… um. No. Ew. I don’t think I’ll ever write anyone younger than sixteen at the youngest engaging in mature activities. *Sidenote: Nevada age of consent is sixteen. That is also the age when I first had sex, with my second girlfriend. 

 

I like writing characters that are my age. That’s why all my currently published fanfictions involve 17-year-olds. You’ll probably be able to tell when I wrote a fic based on how old the characters are in it. 

 

That’s why I age up characters. And I’ll address that as another topic.

Chapter 3: Topic #2: “Viridian is encouraging unsavory people”

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Topic #2: “Viridian is encouraging unsavory people”

 

As I learn how to navigate my fanfiction writing, I’ve decided to clear the air completely and maintain complete transparency with my readers. This means putting cautions and caveats for every fic I write. Many people don’t do this, and that’s mostly valid (case-by-case in my opinion, honestly), but I’ve now found that I need to do that to feel comfortable with publishing my work.

 

When people say that I’m encouraging unsavory people (that’s my own phrasing), they usually mean several groups: pedophiles, sapphic fetishizers, and rapists.

 

I’ll talk about these one by one, I guess.

 

Pedophiles: Um, I don’t know how much they’ll get out of my fanfiction. My characters are all aged up and not described with children’s bodies. If you’re a pedophile and reading this, do reach out and tell me, since I don’t know what the pedophilic experience is like, but I’m fairly confident in my assumption that pedophiles just like the fact that they’re undeveloped children, and if you write them as being older, it loses the appeal? 

 

Sapphic fetishizers: Yes, women are pretty hot, especially together. I think this is… mostly fine in fandom? I mean, they’re fictional. Just don’t be sexual or creepy in front of people who don’t want to hear about it. However. Please don’t think it’s okay to be gross toward your sapphic friends or other irl sapphics. Please. When I was fifteen, I had an older guy friend (one of the first people I came out to) who fetishized my sexuality and acted really creepy about it. I’m not going to go into detail here, but basically, he wouldn’t stop when I asked him to, and got physically aggressive. That was an incredibly uncomfortable experience for me. It made me panic and cry and feel really bad inside. If you like my writing and are thinking of fetishizing sapphics, please have a little empathy and decency. 

 

Rapists: Oookay. People are probably saying this because of the rape/non-con fics I write. I want to address this more in a separate topic about BDSM, but I’ll just say here that it’s fictional. It’s not even very realistic rape. I add anti-rape messages to every fic I write. I’m pretty sure my fanfiction isn’t suddenly going to make people want to go around raping others. If they want to do that after reading my work, then they were already rapists, and I look upon them with great moral disapproval too. Oh, also: I’m not a rapist. I have never wanted to have sex with someone by force for real. Yikes. If you’re a rapist or wannabe rapist and reading this, have some empathy . How would you feel if someone violated you against your will? And, yeah, rape fantasies are valid, but that is NOTHING like the horror that is actual rape. I’ll talk about rape fantasies in a separate point.

 

In conclusion, I don’t think I’m seriously influencing people to act on bad instincts. I definitely don’t intend to do so.

Chapter 4: Topic #2.5: “Yeah, but fiction affects reality”

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Topic #2.5: “Yeah, but fiction affects reality”

 

Well, yes, but also no. There are nuances to this topic, and I can partially agree with this statement.

 

A few random examples of fiction affecting reality: 

  • Queer representation in mainstream media making queer people feel better and more comfortable
  • That one 2014 incident that people keep bringing up about two 12-year-olds stabbing a classmate because they worshipped Slenderman
  • Works that romanticize depression or abusive relationships making people more depressed or more susceptible to abuse
  • Watching shows and relating a lot to certain characters and kind of adopting personality traits and catchphrases from them sometimes
  • The movie “Split” perpetuating misinformation and fear of people with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
  • People deciding to learn parkour because they see that in action movies and think it looks badass
  • Playing Fortnite leading people to do Fortnite dances irl 
  • Reading the Hunger Games series and drawing parallels to your own country’s governmental flaws, thus deciding to partake in social justice movements
  • One time when I read this really, really emotionally intense Twilight fanfiction that romanticized and sexualized a really toxic, manipulative, and abusive Bella/Alice relationship even though it had clear trigger warning tags that I decided to ignore because “it can’t be that bad” but then I cried and had a panic attack and my mental health regressed because it reminded me of one of my past relationships and then I tried to self harm, all because I made that really stupid decision to read something that was clearly not gonna be good for me

 

As you can see, there are positive and negative aspects to fiction affecting reality. 

 

A few random examples of fiction not affecting reality significantly:

  • Shows and movies and games involving murder and epic gunfights don’t make the average viewer want to start killing people
  • Playing Fortnite doesn’t lead people to snipe others from bushes irl
  • The whole “One Million Moms” argument is invalid: just watching “The Owl House” doesn’t make children worship the Church of Satan
  • Adding onto that: consuming media with gay characters doesn’t make a straight person gay
  • The classic American literature we’re reading in high school right now with really yikes themes (like The Bluest Eye, with pedophilia, father-daughter rape where the daughter was literally ELEVEN, slavery, racism, and violence) made a lot of us really, really uncomfortable, but didn’t make us more likely to support any of those things
  • Reading a manga that shows people’s feet an abnormal amount of times and clearly panders to readers with foot fetishes won’t suddenly give you a foot fetish if you don’t already have one

 

As you can see, fiction doesn’t always affect reality. I don’t think being a seventeen-year-old pansexual online cartoon erotica writer struggling to put out more than one chapter a month is going to significantly encourage active pedophilia, child sex trafficking, or whatever other really horrible actual real-life world problem people keep insisting I am contributing to. 

 

I know there’s this saying that “writing something makes people more likely to act on it,” but the opposite is also true simultaneously. Mental health professionals often suggest writing something out as a way to cope. Those two truths can coexist. 

 

I’d also like to make some distinctions. There’s a difference between writing something and supporting it. I’ve definitely published fanfiction with the warning “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” on it (which basically means, this is exactly as the tags have described, so don’t click in expecting something else). I’ve tagged things “Bad BDSM Etiquette,” but as a member of the kink community, I obviously don’t support that. 

 

It’s okay to depict unhealthy behavior. 

 

It’s okay to sexualize unhealthy behavior, since people don’t usually connect deeply to pure smut, and pure sexual fantasies are often wildly unrealistic.

 

It’s even okay to romanticize unhealthy behavior, as long as you also include warnings for the reader and make it clear that you’re depicting a warped vision of reality. 

 

Yes, I had a really bad experience with a fic depicting a romanticized toxic relationship. That doesn’t mean that those types of writing shouldn’t be allowed to exist, however. I advocate for free press and free choice; it’s the reader’s job to know what they want. 

Chapter 5: Topic #3: “BDSM is abusive”

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Topic #3: “BDSM is abusive; writing BDSM will encourage abuse; kinks are stupid”

 

Today I’ll be giving a little crash course into BDSM since there seem to be misconceptions about this.

 

BDSM stands for Bondage & Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism & Masochism. 

 

In order, this refers to people who like: getting tied up or tying others up, punishing/disciplining others or getting punished/disciplined when breaking certain predetermined rules, dominating a partner, submitting to a partner, hurting or causing pain to a partner, and being hurt or feeling pain caused by a partner. 

 

The most important part of BDSM is consent. There are two main sayings: RACK (Risk-Aware Consensual Kink) and “Safe, Sane, and Consensual.”

 

People who don’t subscribe to this central tenet are shunned by the BDSM community. 

 

Real BDSM is never abusive. There are a lot of people out there who extort nudes or demand a BDSM relationship from a partner. I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with them. They’re not real representatives of the community. BDSM is never about hurting others. It’s about helping others explore their non-normative sexualities. 

 

There are several other aspects of BDSM relationships. First, there are three basic types of people, dominants or doms, submissives or subs, and… switches. They’re just called switches. They do both domination and submission. This is DIFFERENT from the classifications of top, bottom, and verse. Tops are people who enjoy taking the initiative in doing things with their partner, while bottoms prefer to follow instead of lead. Verses can do both. That’s not exactly the same thing as a dom/sub dynamic.

 

Sidenote: I don’t think the top/bottom/verse thing is inherently sexual, especially as it’s become more of a casual cultural phenomenon, but I respect those who think otherwise. Calling them “big spoon/little spoon” instead is also super cute, and I totally support that. 

 

Back to BDSM! Kinks are defined by Google as “a person's unusual sexual preference.” According to Wikipedia, “kinkiness is the use of non-conventional sexual practices, concepts or fantasies… to contrast such behaviour with… "vanilla" sexual… proclivities. It is thus a colloquial term for non-normative sexual behaviour… indicating a range of sexual and sexualistic practices from playful to sexual objectification and certain paraphilias. [...] Kink sexual practices go beyond what are considered conventional sexual practices as a means of heightening the intimacy between sexual partners… the definition of what is and is not kink varies widely as well.”

 

Okay! Kinks are pretty natural. Sometimes, they can be defined by a person’s experience in life (like growing up in a controlling household making you want to give up control to someone else and be tied up, which is valid, OR the equally valid growing up in a controlling household making you absolutely freak out if anyone tries to physically tie you down). There’s no set rule for what type of people develop what kinds of kinks or fetishes. 

 

With that being said, I know there’s a lot of funny memes about things like “You can’t kinkshame me! I’m already ashamed!” or the like, but please don’t actually kinkshame people. It’s not something that people choose, more like something they discover, and there are a lot of problems in society with oppression of non-normative sexuality already. A lot of people can struggle with the fact that they have kinks, often harboring guilt about it that lasts. Please don’t tear people down like that. 

 

Now I’m going to talk a bit more about the parts that people see as abusive or rape-encouraging. Before we begin, an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: nothing in BDSM is okay without communication!!! Communication is like, the most important part of it!!! This is why people who engage in BDSM and kink practices need to trust each other and communicate often and have some kind of safe word system where you can say a word (or do a hand symbol) and EVERYTHING stops. Using the red-yellow-green or traffic light system is a very common one, where red means “stop immediately!” and yellow means “slow down, be careful, I’m hesitating” and green means “yes, this is fine!” Sometimes people can also have more silly sounding words, like “pepperoni” or something not commonly said during sex, as their safeword. If a person’s mouth is restrained or they are unable to speak, there’s often silent signals, like snapping fingers or wiggling eyebrows. 

 

Other than safewords, there’s also aftercare. Aftercare is incredibly important for everyone involved in a BDSM “scene” or activity. Not only does this mean taking care of possible physical injuries or reassuring someone that has been degraded that they are worthy of love, but this also means comforting the partner inflicting these injuries, reassuring them that yes, this was consensual, remember, don’t worry, you’re not a monster. 

 

Okay. These are the measures that keep kinky sex safe, sane, and consensual. 

 

I don’t condone unsafe sex, just like how I don’t condone other dangerous things in my fanfiction, like duelling with fire or making dangerous potions without putting on safety glasses first. 

 

Writing BDSM is different from real life BDSM too. There are two types of BDSM fanfiction that usually abound on AO3, types I like to call “direct” and “meta” fanfiction.

 

Direct BDSM fanfiction is when you directly write the fantasy into the work. If you have a rape fantasy, for example, a direct fanfiction you write might depict a character being raped, and you would tag that appropriately.

 

Meta BDSM fanfiction is when you write characters that participate in BDSM and know its rules, and then one of them has a rape fantasy, and another might safely help them act out a rape scene. 

 

Here’s also where you might use the tag “Bad BDSM Etiquette” to caution IF your characters don’t perfectly follow the safety guidelines. 

 

There’s nothing abusive or bad about either kind of fanfiction. People with rape fantasies aren’t rapists or “broken.” In fact, many fantasies commonly seen as “immoral” and bad are actually extremely normal. According to a 2015 Psychology Today article, 62 percent of participants in a study admitted to at least one of several rape fantasies they asked about. “Consensual Non-Consent” or rape roleplay is common. It’s also a good example of why a safeword is important, as the word “stop” would have little to no meaning in a CNC scene and would probably mean the opposite. A safeword is the ultimate determiner of consent, and after uttering it, any actions following it would definitely be abusive and classified as assault. 

 

Looking beyond just rape fantasy, I want to say that kinks are common and ought to be normalized instead of mocked or feared. It’s okay to have a rape kink, knife or gun kink, urine or excrement kink, foot fetish, vore kink, etc. no matter what media or meme culture or random people on the internet say. 

 

At the end of the day, writing can be a great way to explore kinks and fantasies you would ordinarily not be able to test in real life. I have definitely been using my writing to feel less ashamed and shy of kinks that I possess, and it’s safer and easier to test the waters in fiction before trying it in real life. 

Chapter 6: Topic #4: “Aging up characters doesn’t matter, you’re still sexualizing children”

Notes:

[TRIGGER WARNING!!! THIS SECTION CONTAINS LANGUAGE SEXUALIZING CHILDREN FROM AN EXAMPLE FIC SOMEONE ELSE WROTE THAT I BRING UP. THERE IS A BOLDED, ALL-CAPS WARNING BEFORE THAT PARAGRAPH.]

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Topic #4: “Aging up characters doesn’t matter, you’re still sexualizing children”

 

I’d like to remind people of several things. 

 

First, the characters are fictional. They’re fictional people who don’t exist in real life. They’re not children. They’re fictional characters. 

 

Second, I'm a minor. I don't think it's right to sexualize minors. However, I think what you're missing is the fact that I'm NOT writing smut about 13-year-olds. Writers who aren't pedophiles don't watch some show and think, "wow! young, undeveloped teens and children! hot!" It's more of the dynamic between characters.

 

For contrast, I’d like to bring up a Gravity Falls fanfiction I read once that ACTUALLY sexualized children. 

 

[TRIGGER WARNING!!! LANGUAGE SEXUALIZING CHILDREN IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH]

 

It’s tagged with “Lolicon” and includes an “Underage” warning. It uses adjectives like “cute” and “little” to describe the child involved in the sexual encounter. One phrase the author used is “miniscule swell of [her] prepubescent hips.” 

 

Clearly, this is a fanfiction that sexualizes children. The word choice purposefully focuses on the underdeveloped aspects of a child’s body from the point of view of an older adolescent. The adjective “prepubescent” is literally used in an effort to make it “hot.” 

 

Please compare this with my writing. I have never written, nor wanted to write, a fanfiction about a child with an underdeveloped and prepubescent body. I have never described any character with such a body. I have ALWAYS aged them up, and I even find a way to drop in their age in the fanfiction (like the character reminiscing on having celebrated their 16th birthday “last year” or something) in order to show the change from the canon version. 

 

You may ask why I would want to write about characters who are canonically younger. “Why not Catradora?” ask several people. 

 

I can’t write Catradora. Their dynamic, their story, what they went through—it upsets me. It hits too close to the trauma and challenges my girlfriend and I experienced before we reunited and started dating this year. 

 

Sometimes, like for Catradora, it’s a personal reason. Other times, like Camileda, you just don’t ship it. 

 

That raises a question, though: why do people think writing Catradora smut is okay but not Lumity, for example? It’s true that Catra and Adora are around 17-18 years old at the beginning of the She-Ra series, and 20-21 by the end. However, we also see them when they’re about 5, and again when they’re young teens (around 14-15). There are definitely fics that feature them in situations before the show’s plot started (so, presumably, younger than 17) but also age them up to be older than 17. Why is that more acceptable?

 

Luz and Amity (for example) are 14 in The Owl House. Outside of canon, the creator also has art of their beta designs (estimated around 17 years old). Is it not enough to presume that these two fictional characters might, at some point, grow up to be fictional adults? And engage in adult activities? I don’t understand why people need to see a canonical version of a character being an adult before deeming nsfw of them now morally acceptable to read. 

 

It’s not even like I prefer writing fics about 14-year-olds. I said, earlier in this guide, I prefer writing people my age. It’s the dynamic that I really like to highlight, and I age up characters to isolate the dynamic from their age. I’m not even truly sexualizing the characters, actually. I’m sexualizing the dynamic. 

Chapter 7: Topic #5: “Children could see Viridian’s work”

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Topic #5: “Children could see Viridian’s work and have their childhoods ruined”

 

I’ll admit that this topic does have a bit of a valid point. I know we ponder solutions like “maybe the parents could restrict the internet!” but I question the feasibility of those “solutions.” Here’s what I have to say, though. 

 

At some point or another, children are going to encounter sexual content. This is because the majority of the population is allosexual (which means not asexual), and there is so much content out there, in the media, in pop culture, and on AO3, that it’s kind of unavoidable. 

 

Even if people somehow blackmail or threaten or scare me into deleting my works and deactivating my account, there are other accounts. I don’t think it’s feasible or right to try and make the entire Internet kid-friendly. 

 

Here’s my unpopular opinion: children are never too young to learn about sex. In fact, I think it’s really, really important for them to know, for several reasons. 

 

First, pedophiles and sexual predators will often take advantage of children’s lack of knowledge, manipulating them into doing things that they don’t entirely understand and therefore cannot defend themselves against. If children know what sorts of sexual behaviors are inappropriate, they can keep themselves safe. 

 

Second, it will minimize social stigma around sex. I don’t understand what’s so “taboo” or “hard to explain” to children. You can just say, “Sex is something that people do to make babies. It happens when people who trust each other put their private parts together. There are different types of private parts, and only a penis and a vagina can make babies together. All types of people have sex together. Some people don’t have sex at all. This is all okay. People often have sex because it feels nice when done correctly. Bad people can try to do sexual things even when you don’t want it, which is bad because it can give you diseases and hurt really bad, so don’t let anyone touch your private parts.” And then answer questions. 

 

Third, a lot of children kind of just… discover masturbation. Here’s a reliable source for more information: https://www.mottchildren.org/posts/your-child/masturbation-and-young-children . It’s better to give them an easy and straightforward explanation for what’s going on, why it’s not socially acceptable to do that in public or with others, and then answer more questions in a mature, honest way.

 

That was kind of an aside, my own personal take on sex education and children. I didn’t know what sex was until I read a questionable Shake it Up! fanfiction when I was twelve. After that, I did educate myself via the Internet (which was surprisingly clear and factual), and then soon after learned more from my school’s Sex Ed class. 

 

Personally, I was fine with all of it, and just went “oh, interesting, a lot of things make sense now.” 

 

I don’t know how other children might take it, which is why I will never publish a safe for work fanfiction on my viridiangold account (because sfw fic readers looking for more content might then stumble upon my entire account). Instead, I will publish sfw fanfiction solely on a pseud (sirifiriwiri). 

 

I’m very passionate about normalizing human sexuality and talking about sexuality. That includes educating children on a very important aspect of society and keeping them safe from potential predators. 

 

I’m currently in the process of figuring out ways to not just isolate my nsfw work but introduce it in a healthy, safe way. I’m thinking of writing and publishing a Sex Education guide and a BDSM guide for each of my nsfw fics to link to.

Chapter 8: Topic #6: “Viridian is a predator"

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Topic #6: “Viridian is a predator and we can’t let them be in our server because they will do bad things”

 

This is the one that genuinely baffles me the most. 

 

For clarity’s sake, I should say that I’m? Not?? A predator??? Nor have I ever wanted to be one?

 

As far as my understanding goes, here are bad things that could happen on Discord after you let someone into your server:

  • They DM you and start saying creepy sexual things out of nowhere (this has happened to me, ugh. Immediate block!)
  • They start spamming and doing @everyone in your server, being annoying and all that (just ban them)
  • They start spamming gore and sexual content (VERY BAD. ban them!!!!)
  • They could invite all their friends and do a raid (yikes, I’ve never witnessed one, but I’ve heard of them and that’s scary)

 

The reason I was confused by this is because people sometimes try to police who stays in their server based on if they read smut or not, and there’s literally no way to know for sure if the person doesn’t tell you that they do. Moderators of those types of Discord servers openly show a great deal of hostility and fury to me, because my main (and only) account is my nsfw account. They focus so much on people like me, who are open with the fact that they write nsfw fanfiction, that they let real predators slip by. A friend of mine in such a Viridian-hate server was actually preyed upon for a few months by a “friend” they made in that server who was gradually pressuring them to do and say certain uncomfortable things. 

 

I guess I’m just tired. I spend more time than my girlfriend thinks is wise politely debating people on the internet and trying to convince them not to hate me and that I really mean them no harm, when those people could be spending their time attacking real predators and homophobes and sapphic fetishizers in our shared fandoms instead of me, if they really want to go around attacking people. 

 

Regardless of that, if you disagree with me, please continue politely debating me. It’s okay. I have time, and I’ve vowed to treat everyone with understanding and let myself be open to outside suggestions.

Chapter 9: In conclusion.

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In conclusion.

 

Okay, I didn’t say this before, because I didn’t want it to detract from my other messages but—

 

Please, I am begging you, please stop leaving death threats and negative comments on my fanfiction. If you don’t like it, please don’t read it or go out of your way to attack me. It’s not like I haven’t been tagging everything appropriately to the best of my ability. Literally every single time I receive a death threat or a comment or direct message saying something like “you’re a bad person and i wish you didn’t exist we’d be better off without you” or “your morals are shit” or “fucking hell you are sick,” all I do is think, thank goodness they sent that to ME and not to someone else who might suffer more from seeing those sentiments; thank goodness I’m receiving this NOW and not when I was younger, heavily depressed, and suicidal, or even last year when I would have been crushed by comments like these. 

 

This isn’t just a pity party either. I have a constructive solution. Please stop debating on my fanworks, period. You may instead debate in the comments of this work. 

 

Or, join my Discord server: https://discord.gg/XAwBGhymR4

 

This link doesn’t expire, and anyone can join. There’s a discourse channel set up for free expression. This is a place of respect. You won’t see any nsfw content unless you ask for the nsfw role. Even then, all nsfw content is spoilered. Please don’t raid it or do anything else of the scary Internet predator things I listed somewhere before in this guide that people were literally scared of me doing that I am also scared of people doing to me. 

 

I am trying to come from a place of love here, and therefore being vulnerable by opening myself up to literally everyone who sees this. 

 

I’ve been sitting on this document for a good while. I’m scared of publishing it; I’m scared of how it’s going to be received, but I also want to make my voice heard. 

 

Okay. I’m going to publish this now. Uh, leave your opinions in the comments! Thanks for reading! I love you all! 

Chapter 10: Addendum

Summary:

Sorry for the update, everyone. I needed to publish this to move on.

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Addendum:

 

I’m glad that this work has been received with thoughtfulness and understanding. 

 

However, due to several points of strife with a very specific group of people, I wanted to add this explanation, apology, and description of my future intentions.

 

There was an incident on August 19, 2020 that sparked literally all of this. I have been unable to find closure because it was deeply upsetting to me, and I still feel misunderstood and vilified. I respect the fact that the people who mocked my mental health and need for therapy, called me a pedophile and monster, made copypastas of my anxious attempts to communicate, and drove me to tears after hours of ranting and mockery, are fine with moving on and forgetting what happened. However, I need to move on too. 

 

I want to make it clear that the only reason I ever reached out to that server was to stop the anonymous death threat comments on my fanfiction signed [Server Name]. At the time, I wrongfully and clumsily called out the name of the server on my fanfiction, hoping someone would see and respond. Friends in the server alerted me to a bigger situation than I had anticipated and gave me the name of a mod, which I took to minimize the situation. I wanted to deal with one adult moderator, resolve the situation, and leave.

 

I asked friends in that server to pass on my messages, but they refused, because the server at this point was very aggressive and actively insulting me, stating that any friend of mine would be labeled a “pedo apologist” and banned. Getting banned is clearly an upsetting experience that my friends wanted to avoid, and I respected that decision. However, they decided to help by narrating what was happening to me and giving me the most important points they thought I should respond to when DMing with the person they chose to talk to me.

 

This probably constituted what they thought was “spying on the server,” and I recognize that I could probably have handled it better. No one was sending me screenshots; I have never had an alt account; my friends just thought it was funny. I was trying desperately to explain that my friends and I were all minors with no intentions of doing anything predatory to the person I was DMing, trying to get the server to calm down. Members of that server were starting to feel anxious and scared, which also upset me, since that was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I probably should have backed out at this point, but I was thinking emotionally and panicking, so I kept responding to what they were saying in the most calming way I could, which only made them even more scared since they realized I knew what they were saying. 

 

I admit that, during the entire ordeal, I (as a human being with emotions) was emotionally frustrated, righteously annoyed (over misgendering and assumptions about who I was), and extremely anxious to the point where I was shaking all over, crying, and not thinking clearly. I was trying to DM the representative with a formal and collected tone to emotionally distance myself, I was receiving multiple streams of input and tons of notifications from the friends who only cared about the drama and were giving me suggestions of what to say, and I was trying to stick to my goal while not letting the secondhand accounts of insults in the server and the hostility of the person I was DMing distract me.

 

I don’t think I conveyed my points in the best way I could have. I don’t even remember some of what I said, and then the server started kicking random inactive people in an effort to purge my friends, and then my friends started getting mad at me for jeopardizing their place in the server, and then the people in the server kicked out one of their friends because I had accidentally had an interaction with them and gifted them a fic they didn’t even want, and… yeah. A mess. 

 

It was a genuinely terrible time. Afterwards, I stopped being friends with the friends who were lurking, passing me those terrible insults, and watching the drama without caring about how I felt or what my goal was. I think one of them left the server soon after. I don’t know.

 

I am so, so, so sorry to the people in that server who were negatively emotionally affected because of me. I promise I never meant any harm, and it just blew out of proportion in a way that I didn’t know how to handle. I don’t want to force you to forgive me, I just want to express this so I can hopefully find closure.

 

I’m sorry for all the inactive people kicked and people wrongfully banned (especially that one friend of theirs. I’m so very sorry).

 

(Update as of December 30, 2020: I am so sorry for the person who was banned recently from that community for "being my spy." My old “friend” apparently manipulated me even further than I thought, feeding me a false username and impersonating someone else. That’s not okay, and I am so sorry for accidentally playing a part in letting this “friend” set someone else up to face the devastating emotional consequences of being ostracized by their friends.)

 

I also want to say that I have never controlled the actions of my friends or girlfriend, and I have never sent anyone to infiltrate or attack any of your servers. They have always acted of their own volition, and I have tried my best to tell them not to start drama and to leave places where I’m not welcome untouched. There is no good reason to start a fight.

 

I don’t exactly know what my friends have been doing, but I heard that my girlfriend was just banned from a server (she *says* she didn’t do anything), and I wanted to apologize if she did do anything. I never want to force people to talk to me, especially if they don’t want to. I ESPECIALLY don’t want to be feuding with or scaring younger teens. That is never what I wanted to do; I should be protecting those younger than me, and I clearly failed. I don’t know if my apology will reach them, and maybe they won’t want to hear it, but I do want to put it out there: I am deeply sorry for any negative consequences I have wrought upon anyone. I made some very stupid choices, and it’s okay if you don’t forgive me.

 

I hope that expressing this sentiment can help us all move on. 

 

Here are my intentions for the future: I’m going to continue to stay in my server. I will not approach anyone from the communities strongly against me, and I hope this will put those servers at ease. I am going to (again) clearly express to my friends and girlfriend that I do not want them going into servers “just to see what they’re saying about” me. 

 

I can understand my username being a ban topic or trigger word, and while that makes me sad, I do understand why and respect that. Please take whatever measures you need to protect your emotional wellbeing. 

 

If you’re in one of those communities and want to talk to me, I will welcome that. Otherwise, I will hope we never meet again, and that you stay safe and have a good life.