something i’ve kept to myself for a year and i can’t keep pretending this doesn’t bother me anymore. i’m genuinely done and i need to let this out of my chest.
i’ve spent the last year blaming my absence on being sick, and that part was never a lie. anyone who’s watched me these past months knows exactly how rough it’s been. some weeks i couldn’t even form a full sentence, never mind finish a chapter or could not go through the day. none of that was exaggerated.
but it wasn’t the whole story either. it was just the version that was easiest to say out loud. the truth is messier than that.
let’s start with the plagiarism. i’m not talking about shared tropes or fandom overlap, because obviously we’re all working with the same characters, and obviously people can think of similar things without copying each other. what i’m talking about is, opening a fic on ao3 and watching said fic unfold using the exact same skeleton i’d already built on an old fic of mine. Yes, it happened. same structure, same sequence of events, same locations, same emotional turns, in the same order, for the same reasons. things i’d created or was planning to use, or built on top of, without a word to me about it.
and through all of it, i never said anything publicly. every single time, i dealt with it in silent with the people involved. private messages. private forgiveness. i gave people room to be human, because i told myself maybe it wasn’t theft, maybe it was just admiration that skipped a step, the kind that would’ve been fine if they’d only asked first (because yes, in no occasion was i ever asked to give permission for my stuff to be used). i didn’t want callout culture on my blog. i wanted this to be a space for stories, not conflict.
but in hindsight, that restraint was the problem. every time i let it go silently, it just proved to someone else that they could get away with it too. what actually hurt wasn’t spotting the similarities. it was realising there had never been any acknowledgement at all, no “hey, can i build on this? can i use this idea that you had already clearly posted?” no credit, no mention. NOTHING.
and i already know the response to that: “ideas aren’t original anymore, specially on fics” i’m aware. i’m not trying to trademark a trope because this is not just about tropes. i’m talking about the outlining, the timelines, the rewrites, the thousands of discarded words, the hours spent making sure a character sounds like themselves and not like a placeholder. every location chosen on purpose. every emotional beat placed to build toward the next one. that’s not a passing idea, that’s construction work, and watching someone lift the blueprint is a different kind of exhausting than i know how to put into words. so every time it happened, i talked myself down. told myself it wasn’t a big deal. told myself people would eventually own up to it on their own. i accepted apologies that probably didn’t deserve accepting, and let things slide that should’ve been called out properly.
on top of that came the commentary and the constant hate comments. constant scrutiny over anything i posted, delays, updates, decisions, wording, all of it questioned like i owed an explanation for existing. people combing through my work looking for something to criticise instead of something to enjoy, including baseless accusations that i was the one copying, which would almost be funny if it weren't so tiring.
and now, because my most recent fic did better than i expected, apparently better than some people could tolerate, some people decided the appropriate move was to start spreading outright lies about me. not criticism. not a difference of opinion. LIES, invented from nothing, said with enough confidence that people who don’t know me have no reason not to believe them. that’s the thing that actually cracked something open in me, because, if you follow me from a good time, you know can take criticism fine; i’m pretty much the kind of writer that is very fine with it and i actually encourage it if you have something important to say with foundations and clear wordind. i can take someone hating my writing or disagreeing with how i see a character. but what i can’t wrap my head around is people who see something doing well and immediately go looking for a way to knock it down, as if my fic getting attention was somehow a personal insult to them. i truly just can’t understand that.
and to be hornets, i’m exhausted. genuinely, deeply exhausted in a way that’s stopped being about any one incident and has become about all of it stacked on top of each other.
i keep trying to find my way back to loving this the way i used to, to open a doc because i want to and not out of guilt for going quiet. i’ll get a few good days where the words come easily, where i remember why i started doing this in the first place, and i’ll actually let myself feel hopeful about it. and then, almost on schedule, something happens: another lifted idea surfaces, another cruel comment shows up in my inbox, another rumour starts circulating that i have to decide whether to address or swallow. i barely get steady again before something knocks me back down, and each time it takes a little longer to get back up than it did the time before.
this whole year i’ve tried to take the high road. stay calm when i wanted to snap. assume good intentions even when the evidence said otherwise. clean up messes i didn’t make because i didn’t want anyone else caught in the fallout. shield people who never once considered shielding me, who took my silence as an invitation rather than a courtesy. and i’m done with that. i’m so done. done being the adult, done being the one who’s always expected to let it go for the sake of peace that only ever benefits the person doing the harm. done biting my tongue to avoid “causing drama,” as if naming something true is the same as starting a fight. done pretending this hasn¿t taken a toll, because it has. it’s affected my writing, my drive, how safe i feel putting anything out there at all, and honestly, how much i trust anyone who shows sudden interest in my work.
so here’s where i stand now, if it happens again, i won’t be nice about it anymore. one more stolen idea, one more person borrowing my work without a word, one more attempt to pass my ideas off as somebody else’s one more lie about me, and i’ll call it out where everyone can see it, with receipts if i have to. i’m not interested in being diplomatic about theft anymore. a year of silence should never have been mistaken for consent, and i¿m not going to keep paying for other people’s lack of decency with my own peace of mind.
i still love writing. that hasn’t changed and probably never will. it’s everything around it i’m losing patience for: the scrutiny, the entitlement, the assumption that putting something online means it’s public property to lift from. i’m starting to lose faith in is whether this community is worth sharing that writing with anymore.
so, honestly, my first thought lately has been to delete all of my stuff, every fic, every draft, every outline, every note, this whole blog i’ve put years into building from nothing. the only thing stopping me is the handful of friends who’ve stuck with me through this, who’ve reminded me on the bad days why i started in the first place. i’d genuinely rather write privately for the five people i trust, sending docs or screenshots directly, knowing exactly where my words are going, than keep putting my work out into a space where it might just get picked apart, misread, or repurposed the moment it does well.
i’m just worn out, and i‘d like people to redirect that energy inward instead of monitoring everything i do like it’s their job. i’m just someone posting fic for a ship i love, that’s the whole thing, it always has been. if that success bothers you, if it makes you jealous or defensive or whatever it is you’re feeling, that’s something for you to sit with and work through on your own time, not something to take out on me. i’m done carrying that for anyone else.
maybe tomorrow i’ll regret posting this or maybe i’ll delete it once i’ve calmed down. i honestly don’t know. what i do know is that writing this is probably the closest i’ve come in months to actually saying what i’ve been thinking instead of keeping it to myself. i’ve spent so long swallowing my frustration because i didn’t want to create more drama, didn’t want people taking sides, and didn’t want every private situation turned into public entertainment. i kept telling myself it was easier to deal with everything quietly than to make a post like this.
i’m exhausted from always feeling like i have to be the adult in situations that i didn’t create. i’m exhausted from cleaning up after other people’s actions, from extending grace that was never returned, from trying to resolve things privately while watching the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again. at some point, constantly being the “bigger person” stops feeling mature and starts feeling like you’re just giving people permission to keep walking over you. that stops now.
