#discouraged

(I haven't seen any aus so im feeling discouraged and im not sure how big the Fandom is)

I have watched the entirety of Wednesday now.

I'll be posting a bunch of analyses, because I won't let this ruin my love for the ship. But even without those - after watching Wednesday and Enid display every possible romantic element for two seasons, only to read about the writers mansplaining their relationship as "sisterhood" (which feels incestuous to be brutally honest) - I'm sad and discouraged. It is seriously obvious to anyone with eyes what those two girls feel for each other. And yes I am mad, because I do not want to watch Wednesday and Enid, PAINFULLY queercoded characters, continue to display romantic feelings for one another while randomly kissing men once every two episodes. I do not want one of the only accurate representations of lesbians to end up with a man, to be told that that's who she is.

But Tim Burton &co. are the ones with the decisional power. Of course. When are privileged men not in power, deciding about every good thing women may have.

I'm tired of being robbed of things that are very obviously representing me, every good thing I may have, every happy ending - just because. I'm tired.

Man, it really hurts to see what’s happened to FanFiction.net. I still remember the 2000s to 2016, when I would spend hours totally glued to the site, completely lost in incredible stories written by genuinely talented people. It felt like a community.

Now? Sure, there are still some good writers trying to hold on, but the site has become almost unusable. It feels like 99% of it is just flooded with scam bots, fake reviews, and intrusive ads. Almost all of the stories I look at have countless fake bots just giving out discord scams. It is so disheartening.

Even basic things are broken, half the time you can’t upload new chapters or save documents. I tried using their new beta site, but it’s just as glitchy, and it constantly fails to sync properly on my phone. It’s like the admin team has completely checked out or just straight-up doesn't care about the people who use it anymore. The worst part is feeling stuck.

I'm not a fan of AO3; I can't stand the formatting, and it feels like the site is drowning in explicit content and AI-generated slop. But at the very least, you can tell the people running AO3 actually care. They actively update the site and listen to their audience.

Because FF.net is so neglected, so many of my favorite authors are getting completely discouraged. They're either abandoning the site for AO3 or just giving up on writing entirely, and it honestly breaks my heart to watch it happen.