Airing the laundry.
Dec. 28th, 2012 05:48 pmI wanted to do this before yuletide reveals are up, and before end of workday preceding my upcoming four-day weekend.
Two months ago, when yuletide requests went live and people started publishing their "dear yulegoat" letters to be seen, I made mine along with everyone else. In my optional details, I requested a bisexual interpretation of a canonically gay character. I specifically requested that $author not de-queer him in the course of the story. You can read the letter here [amended]. The original letter included the language, "I will not think badly of you if you choose to default." (paraphrased); I edited it out of my request on AO3, so that my author never saw it. I no longer have a copy of the original phrasing.
( screencap of my signup from AO3 )
I made both fail_fandomanon and yuletide_coal, and on Halloween I received the following comments immediately after posting this entry about spiraling into a major depressive episode. I woke up to a bunch of comment alert emails on AO3, thinking, "someone read through my complete works, omg!" and found, well, this:
( Screencaps of the comments in question from AO3; misogynistic language and general assholery )
Over the past two months I've received a trickling in of comments -- largely topping out at "fuck you" -- to public entries and comments on public entries.
I'm not going to defend the things that bring me joy. I'm not going to argue about whether or not I get to love or want to see more characters like me. I'm not going to justify posting them here, gathered together, in public. I shouldn't have to. Because reposting this, gathered here in one place to be seen easily is no more wanky than the asshole who made the comments in the first place.
I am going to say two things.
1. No one deserves this kind of treatment. There are no circumstances under which this kind of behavior is okay.
2. The ability to turn off anonymous comments is an integral site function. The ability for a creator to siphon off this kind of cowardly abuse by requiring that commenters have an account or an open ID is, in fact, more important than $JoeAnon's right to comment on any fanwork they please.
Comments are restricted to people I have friended. If there's negative discussion of this post elsewhere, I don't want to hear about it.
Two months ago, when yuletide requests went live and people started publishing their "dear yulegoat" letters to be seen, I made mine along with everyone else. In my optional details, I requested a bisexual interpretation of a canonically gay character. I specifically requested that $author not de-queer him in the course of the story. You can read the letter here [amended]. The original letter included the language, "I will not think badly of you if you choose to default." (paraphrased); I edited it out of my request on AO3, so that my author never saw it. I no longer have a copy of the original phrasing.
( screencap of my signup from AO3 )
I made both fail_fandomanon and yuletide_coal, and on Halloween I received the following comments immediately after posting this entry about spiraling into a major depressive episode. I woke up to a bunch of comment alert emails on AO3, thinking, "someone read through my complete works, omg!" and found, well, this:
( Screencaps of the comments in question from AO3; misogynistic language and general assholery )
Over the past two months I've received a trickling in of comments -- largely topping out at "fuck you" -- to public entries and comments on public entries.
I'm not going to defend the things that bring me joy. I'm not going to argue about whether or not I get to love or want to see more characters like me. I'm not going to justify posting them here, gathered together, in public. I shouldn't have to. Because reposting this, gathered here in one place to be seen easily is no more wanky than the asshole who made the comments in the first place.
I am going to say two things.
1. No one deserves this kind of treatment. There are no circumstances under which this kind of behavior is okay.
2. The ability to turn off anonymous comments is an integral site function. The ability for a creator to siphon off this kind of cowardly abuse by requiring that commenters have an account or an open ID is, in fact, more important than $JoeAnon's right to comment on any fanwork they please.
Comments are restricted to people I have friended. If there's negative discussion of this post elsewhere, I don't want to hear about it.