laura 🪷

But I'm not grieving it because we no longer have access to the incredible story, or because we will no longer have the finished sequel,

I'm grieving it because Rose didn't deserve this treatment.

Rose is a talented, incredible, and lovely writer. She is an artist, and the art she puts out through her words were beautiful and one of a kind, and I am grieving the fact we let this happen to an artist like her. Do any of you understand how mortifying the thought of a person involved finding out about RPF? Are you just willfully ignorant because you were only merely consuming the content?

Keep RPF in fandom spaces and fandom spaces only. Please for the love of God. Protect all writers. Respect fandom etiquette.

I’ll never claim to be an expert, but fandom spaces (tumblr, ao3) have been so incredibly important to me for the majority of my life now. I have loved finding such wonderful communities of ppl to obsess about Merlin, Sherlock, Marvel, or whatever else with on these sites. For a long time (and honestly even now) I was never comfortable sharing w others in my real life that I read fanfic and engage in fandom, and I think that was a common experience, but that’s no longer the case.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started to see a change, but over the past few years, and then especially with the incredible popularity of Heated Rivalry, many people who would usually look down on fandom spaces started to engage with them more, coming to tumblr from X, TikTok, insta, etc. without a real understanding of how these communities work and stay respectful. It should absolutely be a good thing that reading fanfic, engaging in fandom is no longer something people are ashamed of, but there is a flippancy and casual disrespect associated with this culture that is harmful to people who have been engaging in these spaces for years, especially authors.

It is not ok to treat fics, fanart, and other fandom works the same way you would other forms of media. It is not ok to enjoy these works and then, in the same breath, disrespect their creators by ignoring their express wishes. As @callsignrex put it, fic authors did not sign up to be celebrities. Taking their works out of fandom spaces leaves them open to harassment and worse from non-fandom communities online that they did not sign up for!

Fandom was never meant to be exclusive, but it is something that can be so inherently personal. Treating tumblr and ao3 like other social media platforms is harmful because it assumes that authors are churning out content for another algorithm, instead of (often) deeply personal writing that they wrote first and foremost for themselves, as well as to be discussed with kindred spirits around the world. Fandom communities stay special and safe and sacred as long as the people within them respect others’ wishes and treat others as human beings, not just faceless usernames behind a screen. I would not be able to bear seeing fandom spaces be stomped out by the same insensitivity that plagues social media.

hey so in light of all the horrible things that have happened to agustofwind due to people ignoring clearly stated fandom etiquette agustofwind has deleted all of thier fics and are removing their online prescence. i don’t think i even have the words to describe how bad i feel for her and her state of mind having to deal with everything that has been happening. That said ik tumblr is a safe space so if anyone wants to share thier downloads of a fic please use this post as a place to do so (i have zero cycle, life in the sun, youre always my reminder, family matters, and bad bad news) pls text if u want any of them xx

This situation is not exclusive to rpf. I have watched this happen in pretty much every single major fandom. Klance Byler Mcyt, ect, they have all had a fic go extremely viral which then results in a downward spiral where fandom etiquette is thrown out the window and the author inevitably ends up pulling their fic from the internet and stepping away all together.

To be honest with you I am not surprised that this has happened again. I have been noticing for a while that the way people have been treating Rose and her fics has been absolutely terrible. Even people who were well meaning let their excitement about her fics cloud their judgement and cause them to be quite rude to her and disrespectful of fandom and rpf etiquette.

Therefore I would like to give some reminders to everyone about fandom etiquette. Because it's not just "keep all rpf discussion to ao3 and tumblr." those are important and those rules being broken certainly played a role in this particular scenario, but there's a lot more to it then that and as a fan you need to be more aware of how you interact with content.

Authors are not celebrities. They did not sign up for having an audience to deliver things to. They are fellow fans and creatives who are passionate about what they do. Because of this, I urge you, no matter how good a fic is, no matter how much you love it, you cannot treat it like a grand monolith for the fandom. When that happens the fic gets pulled out of its intended context and the author will inevitably be put under extreme strain and scrutiny. If you love a fic the best thing you can do for it is keep your interactions with and discussion of it purely to the ao3 comments and the authors askbox. I understand that creating a separate fandom for someone's works is done out of love and admiration but I have never ever seen it end well. When you create a fandom for a fic you are inviting typical fandom problems in and pushing them onto an author who did not ask for this.

You also need to stop treating authors like they are gods or something. I know this is usually done with the intentions of being complimentary. But an author is a real human being who deserves compassion and kindness. When you treat them like something to be worshipped you are inevitably dehumanizing them and making people feel more comfortable saying horrific shit to them or just generally being disrespectful. While it is also bad to get too parasocial and act like an author is your close personal friend, going towards the other extreme is also harmful. It is also just uncomfortable in general to have people act like you are not just a normal average person existing in the world. Authors are amazingly talented of course and that should be appreciated, but that does not rank above the fact that they are a normal person who would just like to interact online like anyone else.

The most important thing to remember is respect above all else. Because authors are human beings who deserve it. Being talented at something should not exclude them from that right. I ask that you take the time to reflect on the way you talk to/about authors and double check that you aren't accidentally forgetting about that.