charmzz

I know this is a bizarre post from this account. 

For most of my online life, I have been known primarily for writing X-rated fan-fiction. I don’t claim to know what is right for everyone and I support everyone’s freedom of speech and expression unconditionally. However, I have been writing (and reading) pornography online under pseudonyms since I was 14 years old. I am now 28 years old, and I wish I had never engaged in the pornographic side of fandom culture.

For many years, this practice seemed harmless to me. Writing explicit fanfiction (in particular) seemed like an easy and entertaining way for me to express creative themes and ideas. I often thought, what was the harm? Don’t most love stories contain some erotic content? Wasn’t it a good thing to provide free entertainment that my friends online could use to detach from reality, and to feel some sense of love and belonging?

For me, there was harm.

As I have gotten older, I have found that my relationship to my body, my interactions with others, and my mental health have suffered. I believe that some of this was due to the hyper-sexual side of the shipping culture that I engaged in for so long. There is an intense voyeuristic sheen to this aspect of fandom, one where you are definitively on the outside of the love and romance you observe, day in, and day out. 

I firmly believe that writing, drawing, creating stories, and expressing one’s feelings and thoughts can be extremely productive uses of time. Again, I don’t claim to know what is right for everyone. I just wanted to share this experience with my small group of followers here, as it’s possible that some of you can relate.

As a final note, I want to apologize to my readers. If my erotic content ever roped you into a side of a fandom that affected you negatively, please know that I am sorry. I never meant to cause any harm.

With this post, I am hoping to let you know that if you feel unsettled or frustrated with shipping culture or smut/pornography, you can move on from it. You don’t have to lose writing, or drawing, or anime, or manga, or fandom in general just because you no longer engage in the X-rated side of things. 

You can let it go.