#elly rambles

AU where brandon kills his dad and is on the run repost if u agree

I want to start this off by saying that I'm sooo grateful to the wiz fandom, I love y'all so much!! This rant is not about wiz, but I can't help but compare experiences

So. I'm in this fandom for a video game that's supposed to come out soon. I have written 2 fics for this fandom (both E-rated, but honestly, as far as ao3 smut fics go, pretty vanilla) after watching the trailers and being inspired! And I had a ton of fun writing them!! There's like, less than 10 fics for this fandom rn and I've written at least 2!

I also happen to be in the official discord for this game, mostly to get release updates. A couple months after I posted my second fic, I lurked a bit and tried to see if anyone mentioned reading any ao3 fics. The people who were talking about it mentioned that there were only 1-2 fics published. This means that they do not have an account, and therefore did not see my work, as I have everything privated. I am very happy about this! I do not need the official discord chatting about my smut fics that I wrote for fun

Unfortunately, it did not stay that way. I checked the discord again today, seeing if there were any updates and happened to scroll through a conversation about ao3, which I naturally stopped to read because I can be nosy at times

Tell me why at least one of the devs has an ao3 account and may have read my fics? And felt the need to inform the discord the exact amount of fics for a specific pairing in a way that felt like they were making fun of it? And tell me why people then started logging into ao3 to then make fun of my fics and post reaction gifs acting disgusted??

I am generally someone who believes that anyone involved in the creation of something should usually not be involved in the fandom*(), so idk, it kind of feels icky to have a dev potentially read my fics that I intended to only be read by other fans and then post about it to the official discord with thousands of people on there, and for them to joke about him doing reviews and making jokes that look down on people who write fanfic

*(to clarify, I know Oki is on tumblr, but they were very much a fan before they joined the wiz team and are operating on the same level of queer and neurodivergent like a lot of us so it feels waaay more genuine and with good intentions when they are interacting with the fandom than the dev who was talking about ao3 fics)

Like, nobody is forcing you to read fanfiction!! If you don't want to see it, just don't go on the website! It's really easy to not go on a website you actually have to google to find! And it's also really easy to not make fun of people who write for fun and for free!! It may not be your cup of tea but, genuinely, let me have fun and write explicit fics for fun! You can avoid them so easily

Idk it just kind of sucks, I write fics for myself for fun and for other people in the fandom, and they're private for a reason. The fandom seems like such an unwelcoming place just for talking shit about people writing fanfic (while mine were the main ones discussed - mostly because of the rating - they still weren't being very nice about writing fics in general) so I might just leave but it really sucks because I was looking forward to the game and seeing people's fanart that they share in the official discord and just generally trying to enjoy the vibe of a fandom. It would be one thing if they were making fun of it in a private discord, but this is the official discord for the game!! Devs are in it!!