#she1th

There’s a lot of posts about his whole sexual exploitation of naive minors & the whole thing blew up late February of 2019, but We’re here to talk about Lee’s entire history. (Notes: there will be some sources, but a lot of this is really old stuff or stuff only mentioned in private servers, so they’ve been lost to the sands of time or are just things heard through the grapevine.)

To preface all of this: NOBODY saw any of this coming. At worst, Lee was a narcissistic plagiarist high off the fumes of his own success, but his attitude at no point gave off any signs that he would exploit minors in that way. (Exploiting them for profit, though - that’s basically his whole shtick).

Lee was/is a very popular writer in the she1thdom (with fandom picking up the fanon “Shiro calls Keith ‘cherrybomb’” from his fics) & would charge professional rates for his works on his patreon, raking in around $1300 to $1600 PER MONTH for almost 2 YEARS on she1th fics alone (that isn’t counting his commissions either: he charges $125 for a 5000 word fic, $150 for a fic with porn). If he doesn’t hit his goal of $1600 a month, well, that’s clearly YOUR problem for not sponsoring him enough, not his.

Yeah, sure you could save $25 for the porn-free version, but reading a Lee work without any smut is like trying to eat a bowl of nails without any milk in it.

And then he would bitch & moan in DMs to other she1th creators about how “disgustingly underpaid he was”, “how ungrateful [she1th fans] are” or whine in she1th discords until his sympathizers ponied up enough money to pay him for another commission. Hell, he even admitted to MANY she1thers that he didn’t care about she1th, he didn’t like she1th & he was FURIOUS that how DARE not all his she1th fans were eager to throw their money at his original works (which forced him to go back to writing for she1th, even though he literally quit his dayjob to write fanfics full-time).

“Gruelingly underpaid” is apparently “professional rates for writing” so maybe Lee’s making a statement about the writing industry. Or maybe he’s just a dick.

As an ex-supporter of his patreon, We can tell you just how horrible his tiers are. And how tiring his whole gimmick of “I’m that edgy she1th writer! Sex workers! Drugs! Alcoholism! Cheating! Keith & Shiro hating each other but having sex! Christianity is evil & homophobic! -obligatory mention of Gucci because I’m trying to insert subliminal messages in my works to get my readers to buy me stuff!-” quickly got.

Essentially you’d have to pay $10 per month to see anything that wasn’t basically stuff you’d see on his twitter feed or tumblr. (”Pay me $5 a month & I’ll post my notes & let you know what I’m up to!”).

You also had to pay for updates to his she1th fic “Picosecond” if you wanted him to update at a speed faster than “1 chapter every 2-3 months” -- which is already stupid since it’s his fic, but if you’re unlucky & you “didn’t pay him enough”, he’d mention it on the post update that it’s YOUR fault that this chapter wasn’t longer*!

But it’s totally fine, because he said it in a joking tone & so that makes it okay to throw shade at his commissioner like that~!

*minor issue but he artificially inflates his own word count by waxing on about the scenery or filling the chapter with long monologues, so he was ripping people off even more while shilling how “deep” he was

Lee later threw a fit again about how ungrateful, uncaring & cruel the she1thdom was. Why? Because his newest fic about witch!Keith, paladin!Shiro & the cursed tree with crying baby heads for fruit didn’t get over 100 kudos within the span of three days.

And if you were a new fan to she1th & wanted fic recs? He’ll literally just rec his own fics & only his own fics! (Despite having connections to basically every she1th fic writer in the fandom).

Calling Lee a narcissist is a bit of an understatement.

He was also caught plagiarizing another she1ther’s band fic. And, key point here:

The original fic was posted for free on ao3.

Lee’s version was patreon-only until he posted it to ao3 (after ignoring his patreon subscribers who were like “hey what the fuck, i’ve read this before”).

You had to PAY to read Lee’s version (& this is just a personal opinion, but do you think you’d want to pay for a passionless uncaring version of the same fic? His whole disdain towards VLD & She1th leaks out all over his writing, but he’s so good at marketing his stuff that people don’t really notice it - they just think he’s being “dark & edgy”).

He then claimed to have no prior knowledge of the fic only for people to dig up his ao3 account & find out that not only had he bookmarked the original fic, but he had also kudosed it. (Yes, he’s deleted that bookmark by now. Can’t delete the kudos though!)

Lee tried to spin the whole thing as “fighting for the freedom to write whatever you want” just like how he tried to spin his condescending tweets about the Hanakotoba zine’s selection process as “rewarding those who worked hard at their writing” like it wasn’t just a blatant “im only picking me, my friends & popular folks & calling them the best the fandom has to offer” cash grab.

He eventually took down the fic but not before loudly insisting that he was in the right. The other author just wanted the drama to be over with so the entire incident was settled & forgotten without much fanfare.

And then someone spoke up & mentioned that Lee had begged for nudes from underaged fans. And a whole storm of threads poured forth, many of Lee’s whiteknights vanished into the wind & the she1th blogs who had been vaguing about him for years finally gave up on him (you can only avoid someone so much if they’re that popular & basically in every single she1th event promo & whatnot).

Essentially, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Or is it?

In the grand scheme of things, this hasn’t really changed much for Lee. People did write to his publisher, Oni Press, (as Lee was working on Dream Daddy with them) & while there was a response, there hasn’t been much information as to how it concluded.

His patreon follower count did drop quite a bit, but Lee still has many fans who will willingly throw tons of money at him. (Besides, he was already losing followers after VLD ended - tons of people lost interest in both the canon & in fan content).

So yeah, things haven’t really changed that much for Lee other than some people now refusing to support him financially or make art based on his works.

Twitter threads & posts about the whole incident:

http://archive.fo/HxI0H

http://archive.fo/N1thM

http://archive.fo/caVOs

http://archive.fo/YjBA5

http://archive.fo/2GgnG

http://archive.fo/454Ww

http://archive.fo/50f9A

http://archive.fo/EhBIQ

Fail-fandom threads about Lee CA’s attitude towards his own fans & his semi-illegal patreon (illegal in the sense that he never discloses on his account that he’s writing VLD fanfics for money):

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/265625.html?thread=1492373401#cmt1492373401

http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/264405.html?thread=1485573845#cmt1485

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/321513.html?thread=1844915433#cmt1844915433

Lee CA’s plagiarism of another author:

http://archive.fo/TM25C

http://archive.fo/ioMRF

http://archive.fo/3kymS