u/AcidReindeer

ICE as immigration and customs enforcement. I've seen that most Quakers are anti ICE and was wondering why. What part of your religion if this opinion is based on your religion is dictating that belief? No disrespect just curious.

So a couple of years ago, I posted a fanfic on Ao3. Rare ship, dark ship and large fandom. Got depressed and had a itsy bit of a mental breakdown, orphaned the fanfiction (I do not believe in deleting art) and deleted my entire account because I felt like it was garbage and I was garbage for writing it. I've always had a problem with perfectionism and needing people to like my work and this was the first time I really published anything, especially something that I care about (I've always loved writing but never particularly good at it. I'm still like that)

Well, I'm doing better mentally, and I got curious, so I decided to swallow any fear I had of failure and checked up on the fanfiction and I expect it to have like 100ish hits (basically how I left it) and now it has about 4,000 hits and 70 kudos (I have no idea if that is a good percentage) and a couple of people in the comments actually enjoying it.

Now I'm kind of sad that I abandoned it on the side of the road out of anxiety because, while it never planned to be long or a masterpiece, there was an ending in mind, and now I can never update it.

Anyway, it felt like venting. Thanks for reading.

Edit: I would like to thank everyone for the advice, and I'm glad if anyone takes my story as a cautionary tale, and it ends up helping anyone out. I will not disclose the fandom or ship out of embarrassment. However, I do not blame anyone for asking. I will not be upset at anyone for typical human curiosity. If you do go down the rabbit hole and end up finding it, I hope you end up enjoying it. Thank you again.

A recent interaction with a friend has reminded me how dumb antis are.

So, for context, my friend and I are both pro shippers, but I'm a dark shipper and there not. Now they do like some toxic ships, but those are special exceptions.

Recently, I've had an ZADR (Zim/Dib from invader Zim) obsession because of this one FanFiction I was reading that was really good so, of course, I told them about it and gushed about how good it was and how well written it was and all that jazz and how good the ship is. While they do not like the ship because it is between a child and an adult however they still listened to my ramblings and listened to theres. We talked about the ship we like, like any normal conversation between us. I should note they never told me to not talk about ZADR. If they did, I would have respected that.

The ZADR obsession got so bad I made it my PFP on the app we use to communicate. They did not react to the change. Well, the obsession is over, and I changed it to my new recent one, and they responded with "Yippee ZADR is dead 🎉" and I laughed so hard at that message, I can lie. It's normal for us both to tease each other, so I know there was no malice.

It makes me think about how people cannot be normal over shipping. That they abandon their friends over shipping. I read countless stories on here about people losing their friends and sometimes their families because of fucking cartoons. I do not understand why people cannot be normal and just ship and let ship. My friend tells me about countless ships that I personally do not care about, but I listen to them anyway about it as they listen to mine. I do not think that's very hard, but for some people it's just impossible. I enjoy seeing my friends happy and I enjoy making them happy, but some people care more about fictional characters than real-life people. It's madness.

So I kinda never thought I'd be making a post like this.

I've never exactly hidden the fact that I write and read fanfiction. Most of my friends knew I had an AO3 account, and while I don't post very often, I have uploaded a few fics over the years.

A few months ago I got ABSOLUTELY obsessed with a fandom. Like genuinely obsessed for almost two months straight I was writing drafts nearly every night, I write more than I ever have in years. Eventually I finished a fic that I was really proud of.

The thing is... it was a dead dove: do not eat fic :')

The main relationship was intentionally rotten, codependent, unhealthy, and honestly kind of horrifying. It was based on my own hc for some characters whose personalities are mostly left up to interpretation in the canon (people familiar with the "pregame" thing in the fandom mentioned probably know what I'm talking about)

The fic was VERY clearly tagged : Dead Dove: do not eat, Explicit with warnings EVERYWHERE, the relationship was not portrayed as healthy even the summary itself basically screamed "this is not a romance." It contained some smut, obsession, unhealthy attachment, and a lot of very ugly dynamics. The entire point was that these people were not in a happy nor wholesome relationship.

I also wrote it in my native language because I couldn't be bothered translating the whole thing into English and that was my greatest mistake...

Anyway one of my friends knew my AO3 username because it's basically the same as one of my usual usernames, he did found the fic, read part of it, and then messaged me.

Not to ask questions NOT even to discuss it...

He absolutely just tore into me

He called my writing garbage, called the fic disgusting, asked what was wrong with me, and generally acted like the existence of the fic said something about me as a person. I ended up joining a call with him to explain that fiction isn't endorsement, that the tags were there for a reason, and that I had literally written the relationship to be unhealthy.

That somehow made things worse.

Instead of dropping it he brought other people from my friend group into it suddenly I had multiple people lecturing me, arguing with me, telling me the fic was messed up, that I shouldn't write things like that, that it reflected badly on me etc. (A lot of them didn't even read it)

And honestly it wasn't even a debate at that point it felt more like being scolded by a group of people who had already decided I was guilty of something just for writing a fanfic about a dynamic they didn't like.

I got so stressed out that I ended up taking everything down not deleting permanently yeah but I unpublished the fic and a bunch of other works too because what the point anyway if people I trust can just yell at me for that.

The whole thing has left a really bad taste in my mouth I know AO3 was built around the idea that people can write whatever they want as long as it's properly tagged, but getting genuinely yelled at by people you considered friends over a fictional story is a WEIRD experience.

Part of me is angry because they chose to read something that was clearly labeled. Part of me feels embarrassed. And part of me is wondering if I should have kept my writing completely separate from my friendships from the beginning.

Has anyone else here had friends or people they know react badly to discovering what you write?

(SORRY for my English :') )

Update : Thank you all for the support, I honestly didn't expect so many kind responses and it means a lot to me :)