This App Got Us Stumbled

i don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but i wanted to add my own piece on what we’ve realized since starting the blog.

i’m not sure how else to sum it up other than we were just plain mean, especially on our quote posts. there’s a line between critiquing and berating and we crossed it way too much. i mean if something i had written ended up on this blog, i’d feel pretty shitty. it was wrong of us to make fun of young writers. writing can be such an intimidating interest, and we should have been encouraging people to keep writing and developing their styles.

if any of y’all are or did write fanfiction, or anything really, keep at it!!! your writing is unique to you and if it makes you happy there’s no reason to stop. we were a bunch of hypocritical teenagers (and we’re still learning and changing) and our opinions are not what you should listen to. you should always listen to your own heart and mind when it comes to any creative project. if it’s special to you, if it makes you happy or expresses something you wanted to let out, then is it good. it is great. it is much much more than that. you create the meaning in your creations, not others. so please, keep creating.

and to everyone whose work we posted on here, i am so deeply sorry.

i love and miss the fun we had with you all. talking with you guys and having our banter was something i always looked forward to. i’ll always appreciate the time we had.

this will likely be our last posts on here, it’s best that the blog dies out. thank you all so much for being in our little community.

- nev <3

eli and emma’s blogs are on eli’s post below and my personal blog is @imreallycold

ya so i wanted to make a quick little thing connected to what emma just said. towards the decline of this blog i felt like i definitely kept posting stuff the most and kind of trying to make this a bigger thing that it was and i wanted to apologize for that! 

i love this little community. i love that we have inside jokes. but the truth is that like any medium there’s gonna be some cringy shit made and literally who are a bunch of teenage girls to make fun about cringey shit when EVERYONE makes fun of teenage girls for literally anything they do!

calling out toxic standards and tropes, like emma said, are one thing, but just being mean and negative is just... lame. 

we’re probably never gonna post anything again bc we just like... don’t use this blog anymore but idk if anyone reads this just remember that we’re in a global pandemic and like if some eleven year old who isn’t allowed to leave the house for four months wants to write a fanfiction about austin from austin and ally just like.... let her like what’s the harm? 

ya bye,

eli 

no that’s totally fine!! I posted one today lol. I recommend AO3 over Wattpad because imo it has generally better content, but there are some good niches of Wattpad as well :)

this actually brings me to a point I’ve been wanting to make for a while, which is that I (mod Emma, not speaking for anyone else) don’t really love the messages this blog was pushing when we were active. I do think we did some good stuff in terms of calling out harmful tropes/relationship dynamics in fics (Wattpad writers romanticize some weird shit sometimes), and I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t have fun laughing with you guys at all the weird grammar mistakes and plot contrivances we found, but tbh I do think it was kind of mean spirited & I know that if I was a young writer posting stories on Wattpad & saw one of them featured on here, I’d be heartbroken. Honestly, everyone has to start from somewhere and don’t think cringe culture is very understanding of that or constructive to future growth. 

and also yeah I really hope we didn’t perpetuate the idea that reading fanfiction is bad, because it’s not! Fanfic is a super cool creative outlet & a way that a lot of people these days get into writing original content, and I hate that a lot of writers (myself included) feel the need to hide/downplay such a cool hobby because they’re afraid of being judged for it. one thing I don’t really support is fanfiction about real people (like band members and stuff) because it’s kind of intrusive and often makes the subjects uncomfortable, but even in that case like... i wrote panic! at the disco fics when I was 13. And they might be embarrassing to me now & I wish I’d just stuck with doctor who but I also did develop my writing a lot and make friends in the process.