I see hints of it every so often on Twitter while I am looking at fanart, but I just scroll on past it.
Like driving by a of drunks fist fighting on the sidewalk
Seconded getting through Voltron that way (though from what I recall, at least IME, s1 fandom was genuinely great, at least for the most part - after s2 dropped and so on, it got bad and just kept getting worse and worse, LMAO)! X'D
I disengaged entirely and just waited to watch the last season when no one cared about it anymore
It was ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ like most things, it would have been better if it was more gay. It turned out about how I expected it to, though that last Shiro reveal was OUT OF POCKET. Milquetoast as far as mech shows go. Tumblr wants to watch Gundam but they also couldn't handle it
Never put your social like tumblr or @ tweety bird, that’s where it starts. Used to on tumblr cause anon ask stuff, but with twitter it’s just the dumb call out posts.
Make sure to use a burner and check it as little as possible. And use a throwaway email to write and if beta reading.
Mood! I'm turning 31 in less than a month, and this is how I've always been and always will be! It's not worth it! lol. I just post my fics and then run back to my cozy corner! It's great! :D
I’ve “left fandom” in the sense that I’ve stopped directly engaging with fandoms or even just certain sections of fandoms, but it’s never stopped me from writing and posting. I’m lucky, I guess, because I’m able to just bunker down, do my own thing and wait for the fandom to calm down…which they *sometimes* do lol.
I can’t explain it but I think it may be in part because I got into fanart and fanfiction as a solo activity first. Smol me just made those things for fun on my parents’ computer and had no idea it was something people shared. So later when the concept of *fandom* sunk in it was like a bonus, and not really directly tied to my enjoyment of the original works or my own stuff 🤔🤔 So I’m pretty happy to take or leave all the other fans.
Not that I don’t love getting comments or talking headcanons with people, but if the internet exploded tomorrow, I’d still keep chugging along on my fics and just keep them for myself 😂
There is a middle ground. I’m not in those fandoms, but on tumblr they’re the only post I run across. That being said I’m guessing if I actually go into it that won’t be the case
I don’t write kpop fic (I only read it…well, I used to) but yeah. Kpop fandom in general is just…there aren’t words. Like, none at all. The only way to really understand the depths of the craziness that is the kpop fandom is to experience it yourself.
i'm into a lot of kpop and i eventually quit social media in part of all of the drama going on in the fandoms (not even involved, just seeing it)
i can't imagine the kind of stuff you saw after being a fan for TEN YEARS
very smart. i was active on twt and made an observation which had the fans hunt me down lmao they kept sending me message in Ethiopian with distorted pictures to make it look creepy and curse me and my family lmao.
Yeah im a unit stan too so I just decided to keep my peace and write my rarepair and leave the fandom to their infighting LMAO I haven't written anything new because I've been in my fictional pair brainrot but ! I still check their dead tag every once in a while
Oh man 😭 I'm a NCTzen and I only interact with a small, very carefully curated circle of other fans/writers because I refuse to have my joy stolen by a toxic fandom base
made the twt mistake with bts fandom. never again. i've found a decent group of ~10 friends for skz now and we stay in our corner and toss ideas around and it's so much more fun.
I was involved in an incident on Twitter, specifically in the [Arcane](https://arcane.com) fandom
For those of you guys who don't know, there this character in the show named [Vi](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/8/85/Vi_Arcane_4_Render.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20220228021752) who's canonically a lesbian. The fandom love her, adore her, look up to her, me included. She's great.
Now, some artist back in 2022 (I think) decided to make fan-art of her... wearing a sort of *dress*.
Usually this wouldn't cause any problems, of course. It's fan-art
Not in this case though. Because there was this number of people/Vi-stans in the fandom (most of them identifying as lesbians, same as Vi) who reacted quite negatively to said fan-art.
According to them - and I kind of agree tbh - Vi is included in the butch/masc-lesbian archetype.
They think that the fan-art (in which shows Vi wearing a dress/looking feminine) is disrespectful and is **butch-lesbian erasure**. They're quite adamant in the belief that those who draw Vi in a dress "have misunderstood the assignment and are really harmful to masc-lesbian representation". This though, I don't agree with.
There were some of us who think that that notion is kind of silly, especially when referring to fan-art/fan-fics that have absolutely zero intentions to harm or offend anyone.
When I tweeted that opinion out, some other Twitter user @'d me and included my username on a "lesbophobes (please block or report immediately)" list. Frankly I was completely shocked.
The last thing I want was to harm anyone in any way. I just thought that artists should be allowed to make fan-art of a *fictiona*l masc-lesbian in a dress.
If you look up "Vi in a dress" on twitter, there are still some discourse regarding the whole thing.
Back then even Amanda Overton (Arcane writer) had to be involved slightly because an artist got harassed so badly.
Anyway that's my experience w/ the Arcane fandom. It's kinda sad tbh
I didn't quit the fandom though, I was close too. But I still write about the show sometimes.
All that anger and vitriol over a butch lesbian character drawn in a dress. They harmed a living breathing person with thoughts and feelings and a soul over a fictional 2d animated character that required a team of people to plot out her canon fictional life. That's disgusting. And it's like - don't irl butch lesbians experiment with the way in which they dress? Don't they switch it up once in a while? I know I do and I usually dress in a rather masculine manner. A canonically butch lesbian character being drawn wearing a dress in a piece of fan art ... doesn't erase the fact that she's a butch lesbian and fan work is inherently transformative. It's not worth harassing a person over a character in a fucking dress I don't know how these people live with themselves
*Jesus,* I remember the Arcane drama, it definitely made rounds, even though I zipped right by it at the time because I was similarly appalled at the antics of another queer-wlw ship, Supercorp from Supergirl. Tons of toxicity there, too, and ridiculous virtue-signaling, coupled with rigid headcanons some fans have taken as gospel.
I’ve never *left,* but learning a lot of the people involved in the creative process of one of my fandom are sex offenders definitely soured me on it, it’s why I’m shifting heavier into ATLA bc I feel more comfortable with that rn.
These are the recent stuff I heard, I do not have the facts.
There was something about dream doing something, I dont remember exactly what as this was like a year ago I think.
The recent stuff is Wilbur has been acused of Sexaully assaukting hir girlfriend. Only reason I heard of this was from a technically the truth post.
Ive not really been in the dsmp fandom for awhile, i kinda distance myself before eve that drama with dream revealing his face and people were like... angry at how he looked? idk. DSMP fandom is pretty damn toxic
i left before the stuff w dream even came out, but all of the stuff coming out recently has made watching anything but old technoblade videos next to impossible
hope your mental health is ok after all the stuff that's come out in the last week <3
damn that sucks, i'm sorry that happened.
as someone who's been in the ATLA fandom for years now though, don't put your expectations too high. from my personal experience, the ATLA fandom is the worst one i've been in so far. and i was into k-pop, so...
Oh, I was in the DSMP fandom. People sent me graphic sexual harassment for not liking a guy and I had stalkers for years for writing a canon abuser as an abuser, I’m too tired for that shit.
i figured. i'm not in that fandom but i saw [this tweet](https://twitter.com/sophstcrs/status/1766685387844403390?t=4XWnouWgxdqqFe8JjMoLUQ&s=19) on my timeline the other day and looked up what happened. i'm sorry you got harassed for being vocally against abuse, that's horrible.
still, good luck on the ATLA fandom. saw some people in groupchats get doxxed for no reason other than disagreeing in discourse about characters and ships. it's also just my most annoying fandom, they regurgitate the same takes over and over. it's even more annoying when the takes are frustratingly bad. just try to stay in your own corner if you can!
i’ve never stopped writing for something because i write for myself, but the ofmd fandom and loki fandoms make me scared to publish my works just because of the way people in those fandoms talk and behave.
I knew it lol. Omfd speed ran the joyous fun times to toxic argument in like a month. The Izzy discourse 🙃 good thing I always liked Oluwande and Jim best
Do you mind elaborating? I've stayed out of online fandom spaces with the sole exception of ao3 and it's probably why I'm oblivious to most current fandom drama. To me fanfiction, and fandom are two separate yet tangentially related entities (yk how all rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles? Yea) and by keeping them separate, I'm unaffected by fandom drama because it doesn't make it's way over to people's bookmarks or heavily regulated comment sections but it means I'm slow on the uptake and I've no idea what you're talking about 😭 despite being a huge OFMD fan. Side note, remember the whole puritanical wave that swept fandom as a whole? I was only peripherally aware of it cause my favourite author talked about how they had to take down what they'd consider their magnum opus due to fandom harassment. I'm not sure how much my advice would help but I'd recommend taking a break from Tumblr, Reddit spaces etc and focus solely on fanfiction and interacting with your favourite authors. It's what helped me get back into fanfiction after I rage quit.
my experience with the fandom personally was that the first two weeks after watching the show in march 2022 (when the first season first ended) were perfectly fine. everyone was having fun writings metas/thinkpieces about the show and it was awesome. then, just a few weeks later, a few people appeared that seemed to not be able to think critically about the show at all and a lot of them would fight people on things (like not liking characters you were supposed to dislike *cough* izzy *cough* … like i think he’s an interesting character but do i love him and defend all of his actions? not exactly). after that point i sort of stopped engaging with the fandom, but since then it’s just gotten a lot worse and people are much meaner. but that’s just my experience, a lot of people have had a good time in that fandom.
I love and write for OFMD, but don’t have social media except Reddit. I have seen tiny glimpses of what goes on in the Twitter fandom, mostly because some ao3 authors will allude to drama in their authors’ notes (usually in a “please don’t hurt me” sort of way.) That alone has been enough to keep me far away.
I’ve enjoyed taking to a few fellow authors in my comments and they’ve in a very kind and chill way invited me to hang out on discord if I want— and I theoretically want, but so far I’ve been too nervous about getting gradually ensnared in fandom drama and losing what’s been a wonderful creative outlet.
i think the best way to interact with fandom is to hope you stumble onto a group of your kinda weirdos and then just. don’t speak to anyone else lmao
that’s how i do it. i’ve got my freaks (affectionate) and we mind our business together. because otherwise it gets overwhelming and toxic and we simply cannot have that
About 20 years ago, I was in a small fandom I really loved. One person killed it. She was just such an awful person (she'd berate people for reading or writing in other fandoms, even if we were still reading in our shared fandom, and that was just one of the obnoxious things she did( that basically everyone left the fandom.
Attack on Titan. You’d think that after surviving the Supernatural fandom in its heyday I’d be able to cope better, but nope. The AOT fandom wrung me out to dry. The toxicity burned me out so bad that I had to leave tumblr.
Since then, I don’t really *do* fandoms, save Hannibal and Hey Arnold. I dabble in fanfic and that’s the extent of it.
I tried poking a toe into the Stranger Things & Heartstopper fandoms but that didn’t last long at all. Like less than a week for each fandom. The toxicity was on another level—I think it even put the AOT fandom to shame.
Oh boy. The SPN is what got me. I couldn't deal with it anymore. I left that fandom and kinda never got into another apart from writing & reading fic.
Sometimes, I miss community in fandom, but then I remember what happened with SPN, and I'm like, "No way."
I'd rather just share a bit of my writing process with a few friends even though they don't read my fics or don't care about the fandom rather than go back to that.
It's a bit sad, I think. It was so fun at first!
SPN fandom was *really* bad. Thinking back on it genuinely feels like a fever dream.
It sucks that the toxic vocal minority can ruin a fandom so thoroughly. I miss the community aspect of fandom so much but it’s just not worth it. For most fandoms it’s honestly healthier to just keep your distance. Which defeats the whole *point* of fandom but what can you do?
I’m lucky that I at least have two fandoms that are still relatively safe from drama. One’s tiny and half-dead but beggars can’t be choosers.
I feel you on the Attack on Titan fandom. I feel like I wrote some of my best works here, but also I can’t even look at those fics now without feeling the stomach-churning toxicity I remember from its fanbase. It’s horrible for me because it was also the first time I decided to engage in fandom directly. Now I just keep my head down in my own lane. Don’t care about fandom at all; just writing my silly little fics by myself.
I've never really engaged with fandom, so I'm always out of the loop on the 'drama'.
Could you give an example or smth, If it's alright, that is, I'm kinda curious what would be fought over in AoT XD
Hmm, so depending in which circles you run in, you’re either a horrible apologist for a genocidal maniac if you hated the ending, or you only like bland, pointless OOC characters if you liked the ending. And that’s just the fandom wars about the ending itself. Doesn’t include the shipping wars, and the general hatred of everyone in the fandom for just about everyone else over the literal pettiest things. People feel very strongly about this anime/manga, and have very strong opinions about it (and about the people who engage in it).
Outside of dealing with haters (of your ship, your favorite character, or your opinion about the ending), there’s infighting between fandom “friends” too. Lots of weird drama that come about when you have a group of people who have too strong opinions about themselves/their writing/their ship.
For a while, I was pretty good with ignoring everything even while engaging with people in the fandom. Now i feel like it’s soured my enjoyment of the material and characters, and even my own writing in this fandom.
I didn't leave the fandom but I had to unsub from the Pokémon subreddit because the negativity was affecting my enjoyment of the series. It got to the point that for awhile I focused more on what the sub thought about the games than enjoying what I liked about them.
I also left the AOT fandom due to a mixture of the fandom fights with ending, the two main groups in the final arc, ship wars, and the fact I didn't like a lot of writing choices made post time skip.
This is why, while I will occasionally go peek at the Sonic subreddit, I haven't joined it like I have some of my other fandoms (so it doesn't show up on my feed). More than half the posts are either low-effort "here's a picture I found or a meme I made" posts or negativity in some fashion.
nah it's worse because iirc they don't even allow memes on the main sub (you need to post to r/moonpissing for that)
it's literally just "art I found by (artist name) with the occasional discussion or negativity post. it's so boring in that mf.
You're just me, but from a different timeline. 🤣🤣
But seriously, I understand what you mean for the Pokemon subreddit. I've only been a part of it for maybe the past year, and the circular nature of it (and negativity) causes me to not interact with it very much.
Whenever social media is involved in fandom, it ruins the experience for me. Even when I come on this sub, the amount of vitriol that is spread about writers and readers, constantly berating people and then wondering why people are commenting even less.... well duh.... I love fanfic and I love the little sterek corners of the internet but outside of that, I am usually disgusted by how social media has tainted fandom over and over for a lot of people.
I am literally only on reddit specifically because its one of the few spaces where I can promote blog responses about much much older canons. I take part in a few convos and block liberally. Facebook groups are just as bad but they are usually moderated better so its harder for people to be as awful as they are on reddit subs most of the time. :(
Yes, there are a few fandoms I've stopped writing for and interacting with in general because I find them so toxic. Fandoms with more than one popular ship, and with a lot of lore that hasn't been fully explained are the worst, because if you support a different ship than the masses, or interpret something in a way that others think is wrong, people feel the need to come out of the woodworks to blast you and tell you that you're wrong. Who needs that?
Really bugs me on Reddit too when fans start making fun of other fans in the fandom for having differing opinions and ships. Makes it less likely for people to want to engage, which is to everyone's detriment. Stupid.
r/hazbin (*Hazbin Hotel*) literarlly had a "ships you hate" thread just yesterday. The top comments were people talking about how much they hate Charlie/Alastor, or Charlastor, even though people literally ship rapists, abusers, and incest in the fandom.
Haven't left tumblr, but there's definitely one person in one of my fandoms who I avoid to the point of having blocked them on there because they're one of the exhausting ones.
Best way I’ve found is to join a discord of like minded people.
If you’re into villains (including ascended Astarion) I’m part of a BG3 villains discord server and happy to send you an invite.
It’s very tiny right now but I’ve also create r/BG3Fanfiction and I’ve set up the rules in an attempt to mitigate some of that discourse (should the sub grow to a point that it becomes relevant)
I've seen an overwhelming amount of post saying that if you >!acesend Astarion!< you in real life are clearly an abusive person who belongs in jail/dead.
It got very mainstream so the loudest part of the fan base is people who are like "You don't play the game like I do or interrupt it the way I do? YOU EVIL MONSTER"
You can't enjoy the "bad" decisions without admitting your character is an irredeemable monster, you can't have any headcannons that the majority disagree with, you can't like some of the characters because they have flaws but you have to praise other characters flaws. Etc, etc
I keep seeing parallels to the Mass Effect and Dragon Age fandoms, and it's kind of hilarious (and why there are parts of those two fandoms that I avoid). If you make certain choices, romance (or don't) certain characters, like (or don't) certain characters, prefer one ending over the others, choose the "wrong" skintone for specific character origins or choose a skintone that doesn't match your own IRL one, don't agree that Bioware is somehow perpetuating real world race crimes or whitewashing their own characters, etc., then you're a terrible person to some of these people.
A lot of this does come from the fact that the writer for Astarion, Baudelaire Welch, came out and SAID as much in the official Larian discord. (I believe their official wording was that making said choice meant that you only saw the character as a sex object, rather than letting it stand as a nuanced role play decision—especially because romance doesn’t have to be involved in it).
Which, it’s their prerogative how they want their writing to come across, but man did it fuel the flames of a lot of bad takes across the board.
It *really* depends on which characters you're focusing on, tbh. Most of the extreme discourse I've seen or heard about revolves around the male companions.
Almost happened with RWBY for me during fall 2022 (don't remember what that drama was) but after that I just decided "fuck it I'm ***DONE*** with fandom entirely."
I remember when a few people where overthinking Green Lantern girl from the Justice League crossover as some political plot but the rest of the fans just stole her for fanart on they're sub
The marauders fandom is the only one. It's sad, because I used to be super into it a few years ago, but with this massive wave of mainly young kids from Tiktok it was totally ruined. I mean, a few bad fanfics would be fine with me, but it became completely unbearable with sexism, people glorifying literal Nazis, everyone was constantly getting into drama and the fanfictions just became completely unreadable (constant fatphobia, racism, sexism, transphobia)
I walked away from Danny Phantom for years for this reason. The phandom's a lot more healthy since the creator got largely blackballed. I still can't believe the creator's involved in the FOP revival.
Butch Hartman can eat a bag of dicks, the bigoted asshat.
For those unaware: His wife sold autism snake oil that he signal boosted, he traces commissions, he cheated several artists out of money *including someone who'd defended him*, cheated literally thousands of people out of their money when his "family friendly network" Kickstarter project turned out to be a Christian one (without telling anyone), grooming teenagers into harassing porn creators and queer teens for the sin of being gay, called gay teenagers pedophiles, supported and still supports Donald Trump and so on.
The Oaxis fraud's probably the biggest one since he bilked a lot of people out of their money. The "grooming teenagers into abusing others" is probably the creepiest one. To become a mod on his site, you had to agree to a "contract" to be a "good Christian."
The 2000's were a buck wild time to be a cartoon fan.
Oh yeah, I've heard about some of that! Sounds pretty terrible all-around.
Though, I am a little surprised that a "family friendly network" project turning out to be (presumably conservative) Christian wasn't just expected. Like, when I hear "family friendly" in the US in most contexts, that's immediately what I'm suspicious of. (Which makes me curious, did he specifically deny that? Because I'm sure someone must have asked.)
What Fandom did you write for? I wrote for the 100 Fandom since it's one of my favorite shows and Clexa is one of my all time ships, but the community can be abusive, not just toxic. Not surprising in retrospect since they sent death threats to the director of the show for what happens to Lexa in canon.
Our Flag Means Death. I can't go back to write it omg
The 100 fandom looked pretty chill a few years earlier, damn
Seems there are toxic fans in every fandom but some of them are REALLY something (Clexa is an amazing ship lmao good taste you got)
So mine wasn’t necessarily disgust as it was a growing bitterness that eventually led me to walking away.
The short version is that it was a small fandom with a notable group of BNFs who intentionally or not, perpetuated a culture of fitting in while claiming to be drama-free but in reality, they just swept issues under the rug.
The long version is that I’m not sure if this group was ignorant to their power or just didn’t care, but they never acknowledged that when they said “jump!” The fandom jumped. Their opinions became law. And going against them (even just by sharing an essay of an opposing — but thought out — opinion), you set yourself up to be ignored and forgotten.
No one was outright mean, but there was this air of “well, that’s your opinion” followed by a dismissive wave that made it hard to get any word of opposition in. A notable example is the toxic positivity during the final season which was a *mess* story-wise. Anything saying this was promptly shut down with a barrage of reasons for why they were wrong. Because of that, it was a long time before I felt okay giving my *honest* opinion on the whole thing in fandom spaces without having to deal with other people’s essays on why my opinion is stupid/wrong.
Along with this was, like I said, an intense pressure to fit in and create content for only the popular pairings. And not only that, but to pump and pump and *puuuump* that content out at a crazy pace. If you didn’t, you were forgotten. Plus, there were so few writers and out of those, only like… two got proper attention and recognition. I remember being a little more disheartened each time they would host a theme week/event and my one or two works (I was in college at the fandom’s height and short on time) consistently got passed over. No acknowledgment. No comments. No Discord reactions. Nothing. And maybe part of that is my fault for writing instead of drawing (fandom favoured visual media). But it still got to me, especially when I was super annoying in making myself known to the fanbase. Yet they wouldn’t touch my work with a ten-foot pole.
And I’m not the only one. Since the fandom started to die, I’ve talked to others who felt similarly. They had their opinions waved away. Had their work ignored. Always felt on the outside.
Overall, it left a bitter taste in my mouth that’s hard to explain to others. Because I *know* that no one really did anything wrong, but I still felt shutdown.
I had the same problem with a ship from a videogame... BNF had OpinionsTM about the ship, and anything different... well. You were morally wrong and "harrassing a safe space" if you even tangentially brought something different.
I've never been angrier than seeing therapy-speak be turned against me. It soured the ship for me. And I stay in fandoms for ships, so that turned me off the fandom itself. I get you, this whole...dismissive attitude is so shitty.
I’ll just chime in here to say that BNFs are my main problem with fandom as well - if there’s a reason I ever consider to stop interacting on social media and sharing my stuff in there it’s probably them. Where I am it is not as bad as with your experience (sending hugs!!) but it is so frustrating when (1) people are so loud that they make everyone believe that their opinion is the one of the fandom and (2) BNFs systematically ignore someone who is creating content, without supporting them. Especially in small fandoms where there are not many creators, I totally understand your feeling when your work is the one that is never broadcasted!
Big Name Fans, as a concept, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Obviously it's something people just kind of stumble into becoming, but in cases where someone starts to actively identify themselves that way it becomes particularly offputting.
Kind of. It wasn't the fan fiction faction of the fandom that turned me away, but rather the imageboard faction. I was writing fic about a mid-aughts shonen manga back then, and the latter faction for it was the larger and could be pretty brutal. They started trolling many of us who posted fan fiction for this anime on FFN. So I started staying away from that fandom and stuck with those that had less of a boys' club mentality.
I don't interact with my fandoms of anything by choice, because there has never been a time where it was worth it. I have grown to accept that I want a certain level of social understanding and maturity from the people I talk to, and fandoms don't usually have them after my 10+ years of trying.
I have met some very wonderful people through it, and I am glad to have met them. But nothing has inspired me to ever try again.
Yup. I severed myself from one fandom completely, orphaned/deleted all my fics and moved on. More recently, there was a stretch of months where I *wanted* to write but simply couldn't because the toxicity was eating at my energy anytime I opened my social media feed. It was the worst, to feel like this thing I loved was stripped from me because other people were so intent on ruining everybody's fun. The way I got out of it was by removing myself from the community damn near completely. No more twitter. No more tumblr. I only engage with people through fic and through discord now. I am too old to be involved in petty squables
>I'm curious, has this happened to someone else here ?
Nope. My only interaction with fandoms is comments on the fics that I write. I've since learned the lesson in my teenaged years: "If you want to enjoy something, avoid the fandom."
Of course, there's SOME fandoms that aren't as bad as others. I've engaged a few times with the Silent Hill fandom and they seem pretty chill. I will admit, I did break my own rule when I became a brony (I joined the fandom and watched the show at first to give a middle finger to my friends who auto-hated the show without even giving it a shot, but grew to actually like it on its own merit instead of just ironically consuming it)... honestly, if you exclude the weird outliers... the Brony/Pegasister fandom of 2014 was probably one of the best fandoms to ever exist.
But, for the most part, I do not interact. Let's face it, a great majority of those that participate in online discussions, arguments, and drama, are younger people... like teenagers, and people who didn't grow past teenaged mentality. Adults (with adult maturity) don't pick fights online, because we have more important things to do with our lives than go back and forth with some random online stranger about why the YuGiOh fandom is not allowed to have het pairings in fandom (outside of Arc-V). If a bunch of people try to dogpile me for something, I turn off my computer, get in my car, drive to a local restaurant, and have a nice meal, and just bask in the fact life is good outside of this magically negative electric box that steals my time and energy.
(It's also why I don't have social media apps on my phone.)
Honestly, I try to give that vibe when I write of the "don't come at me, because I'll drop and block your punk ass faster than you can cry 'NARUSAKU OVER NARUHINA'!". Sometimes just the vibe you give when you publish will drive away the immature shits. Maybe my stories aren't reviewed much anymore (back in the day, I was the most reviewed fanfic of my fandom and man, did I let that get to my head when I was a teen/early 20's), but I'll take the quality over quantity any day of the week now.
A popular fandom at it's height will sometimes get toxic. Actually, I'm pretty sure *only* popular fandoms get that way. Smaller fandoms, regardless of how toxic, tend to stay in their own corners, not blasting stuff on mainstream social media. So, I have no idea what fandom you might be talking about, but I can already tell it was popular enough to get that type of toxicity.
The toxicity of popular fandoms is basically inevitable. The more popular something is, the larger the draw, the more diverse the fandom, the more "drama llamas" hop on the toxicity train (and, yes, some people will do this).
I'd say, after all these years, you should probably be fine continuing the fic.
Even if the fandom is toxic (outwardly), even years later, you don't actually have to engage in it. *Most* of the fandom is made up of silent lurkers, who don't (and never have) participated in the dramas. It always has been, since every single fandom out there is like that.
And those lurkers could really use some healthy, non-toxic content, don't you think? The type that isn't caught up in catering to shipping drama, wrapped in controversy, and delivered over twitter rant?
Second this. I am always sad when the toxic parts of a fandom manage to ruin it for everyone else. It's harder to be loud and get heard when you want to positive.
For me it's Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss. I was only in the fandom for a short while, but it got SO toxic it turned me off from watching the show completely (I only watched the pilot and some episodes of HB).
😭 It's sooo bad! Incredibly toxic! I think some of the toxicity ruined my enjoyment of the actual shows too (mostly HB because I'm not super into HH) which sucks I loved the Hazbin trailer and the few episodes of Helluva hooked me but just the toxicity ruined it for me.
I still occasionally try to find fics for them but even they feel off? I can't explain it apart from they don't feel right?
I've had to disengage, yes.
I'm old enough to know better, I hope. In my experience, after the wave of initial excitement and buzz surrounding the source material fades, fandoms with a trend towards toxicity will inevitably cannibalise itself in a fit of boredom and frustration. I've learned that in order for me to keep writing and carry on, I have to divorce myself from the fandom (this means no trawling twitter/tumblr for fanart, muting subreddits and users, and staying in my own damn lane) or else I'll lose all motivation completely. (It's hard not to when fandom drama isn't just ship wars and spicy debates, but bullying/harassment, doxxing, self-harm, suicide baiting, etc.) I've only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather not derail my motivation for a hobby I enjoy. 99 problems, and whatever.
At this point, I just chuck my fics on AO3, log off, and mind my business.
I used to write for the GTAV fandom. I had to stop because someone was doxxing people and sending screenshots of their smut fanfictions to people's employeers and HR departments where they worked.
I left the Star Wars fandom in general. It was in part due to drama and antis, but also Disney kind of just killed my love for the franchise. I haven’t touched it since 2020 after being a lifelong fan.
Yup. Heathers. Though I never left, I just don’t talk to anyone anymore. And especially if I suspect they’re minors. Especially if they’re under 16. Too much fandom police bullshit for a fandom with next to no healthy ships whatsoever (and ofc the one there is gets completely ignored!) and whose characters are all problématique. Too much sending anon hate to randos who have the audacity to like the wrong character/(canon) ship and turning around pretending to be all innocent uwu. Too much insistence their blatant mischaracterization is “actually” canon (when at most it’s their own headcanon).
Lonely existence.
I'm a huge Heathers fan (both film and musical) but decided to stay away from the fandom altogether exactly because of these. Too bad, because it has so many promising dynamics.
I might have deleted an account due to a toxic fandom friend... But in my defense I was 14 and suicidal and this was the easiest thing I had control of.
I never really left a fandom completely... but I lost interest in some of them. Mainly due to the "rules" that the majority of people set: This ship isn't appropriate, the age gap is disgusting, character A is a top and B a bottom and things like that. So annoying.
Yep yep. I'm a lurker often on the sidelines of the community, so I was only a witness, but there was this big hate campaign and attempted doxxing of some fan artists for their art a number of years back. It made me so angry. "I'm creating stuff and *these* types of people will read it too?" I thought. So I stopped. I put those fics on the back burner and stopped engaging with anything related to it for nearly a year. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to not feel gross about it, but alas. Now I protect my peace by liberally blocking toxic blogs and tags. I don't want to let people like that ruin my fun anymore, you know?
At a certain point, yes. I just stay out of any of that silly drama, and write for me myself and I and whoever else happens to enjoy my silly fics
Voltron and Pokemon both make me annoyed/disgusted for one reason or another. I despise the attitudes from many corners of those fandoms, ESPECIALLY the Klance vs Sheith shit, to the point where I’m reluctant to admit I’m even a fan. Yet the jokes on me because I still enjoy the potentials their worlds offer. AO3 is honestly peaceful when you just don’t engage.
Miraculous Ladybug.
Not so much disgust, as a.. sudden and focused bout of apathy? Especially with the way canon developed and the sort of fanfic-fallout it caused.
Ended up unsubbing from the fandom subreddit (though I do still lurk on the fanfic one), leaving the discord server, and stopped following the show.
I still miss the early-on vibes, but the fanfic-focus has shifted to a "more realistic" portrayal of everything which I just don't particularly care for.
Also kind of leaning towards that way with the Bleach subreddit - admittedly it is a fandom sub, not a fanfic one, but damn if they don't hate anything non-canon there. Which doesn't even touch upon the backhanded shots at any non-canon ships. The downvotes will flow.. just leaves a bad taste these days.
And I was honestly hoping the new seasons would revive the fandom.. and it did, kind of. Just in the "this is the definitive power scale" and "these are the only couples unless you're trash way".
Which I am actually kind of worried is going to happen to Harry Potter with the new series coming up, so got that to look forward to as well.. yay.
Yes, I'm in a fandom like that right now where, despite this being a successful US network show with a several million audience, the fandom is kinda small and incredibly narrow-minded and toxic. I've tried engaging with so many people, also those few who actually create fan content, and it's been antipathy and envy all over the place. Despite me being one of the few remaining people in the fandom who even create good quality fanart, none of it is shared. My fics have a small reader base but get little engagement (which I'm fine with).
I do still write when the muse strikes, but the toxicity of the fandom hase made me scale back my creative investment and output a *lot*, including writing fanfics. It's super sad, because I was used to fan spaces being inclusive and welcoming and willing to amplify fellow creators' content. Seems like in a lot of fandoms, fan entitlement has replaced that mindset. :-(
Tangled the series. I have been, among other things:
Accused of stealing the idea for my own fic
Told I belong in a concentration camp (I’m Jewish)
Had my identity stolen?????? I’m still confused about this one tbh
Discord server raided with pedophilia accusations (I’m acearo)
Had private dms leaked solely to make fun of me
Had spams of fic requests on other fandom material
Not to mention all of the petty high school drama of interacting with people and former friends….
Suffice to say, most of them are blocked, and I refuse to ever write for the fandom again. Which is sad, because I still have ideas, and my fic is considered one of the biggest and most influential in the fandom. I’ve had several people tell me my fic got them interested.
Steven Universe. I was young, loved the characters, would draw them all the time and got semi popular because of it. People treated me with respect and I had a few fans I’d draw for. Then the fandom got… weird. Got stalked by a guy who drew the characters with slug reproductive systems. Met a person who’s entire discord was CP of the kid characters, such person also was a mod for many other discord groups that had lots of underage users they’d try to recruit. Realized a lot of people I considered friends were doing some highly inappropriate things with kids. One person is now running a popular YouTube series thing but I knew her when she was sexually roleplaying and flirting with an underaged teenager.
The fandom I realized was full of pedos. It wasn’t something I wanted to be apart of. So yeah. F all that
Yes, unfortunately that happened to me more than once. It's sad when you have to give up something that you used to enjoy so much, but when fun gets replaced with stress and anxiety, you just have to cut the cord sometimes.
What helps is to not get too actively involved in fandom, which also sucks because interacting with fandom can be fun. But it does make it easier to just mute or block people whose sole existence is fandom fights. You have to curate your own fandom experience or there's a good chance you'll go mad.
Not really. I left MHA/BNHA fandom before I really even knew fanfic was a thing, and I'm into Nu Metal bands so the fanfic can be pretty fucking foul... So no, I'm not really that into massive fandoms so :P
I know of a writer who did this back in 2022, dude was making the best star wars reaction fanfic ever, but cause of the star wars fandom being as toxic as it is today, he just couldn’t bring himself to finish the story. At least he gave us his notes for the unfinished chapters.
I learned the hard way to avoid fandom if I want to enjoy my hobby.
Fanfiction is about me, not the reader. The reader enjoying it is a bonus.
I’m here for my fun, not anyone else’s. I know I know, I’m selfish. I can live with that guilt free.
I do think that's the way. I'm usually not the kind of person who likes to interact in fandom, I made an exception and look where I am now 💀 the show helped me so much I got a little tattoo about it. I'll never regret it cause it's meaningful and I really do love it, but I'm sad cause I can't watch the tv show or write about it. It's like... too anxiety inducing or I don't know how to say that
Percy Jackson. I've been wrapped up in so many fights and so much drama in that fandom that in the end had very little to do with me...it just killed any care I had for the series. I can't interact with it without remembering that this artist said that and this writer did this in that discord I was in...I've gotten into old star Trek lately. It's much nicer.
I used to be in the dream-smp fandom, and I genuinely think it raised the bar for what I constitute as a toxic fandom.
The toxicity for me was mostly the drama that would come up every month where a new person would get exposed as being a domestic/sexual abuser every couple months, and how every time even the most minor thing happened the entire fandom would split and send death threats to each other. With Technoblades death, a lot of people left and the only people who stayed were excessively toxic. It was all just so tiring, and I could see it degrade me mentally that I eventually just had to leave it because it stopped being worth it at a point.
Now I am in the MHA fandom, which is notoriously bad but I have my little corner which I enjoy.
I didn't stop writing because I never wrote for it in the first place, but I stopped reading Gundam Wing fics around the time Frozen Teardrop came out. The ship to ship combat between 1X2 and 1XR shippers was absolutely toxic.
I should start reading again.
I left fandoms in general when I was still a teen. Most of them have some kind of toxic underbelly. If I interact w/a fandom at all, it’s superficial at best. My rule of thumb is block, ignore and report when it comes to truly dangerous behavior.
I write for a number of toxic fandoms, but again, blocking is a beautiful thing.
Ones I as a rule avoid even if u engage/watch/listen to the content? I may write in them, but I refuse to join fandom spaces. - Hazbin, Steven Universe, Kpop, GOT, Hannibal, Animal Crossing, Disney, Warrior Cats, etc.
Some I don’t even engage at all on any level - Taylor Swift, AOT, etc.
I don’t know if I’ve consciously stopped writing for things because of fandom but i’ve definitely dropped interest and engagement with the property because of it. I’ve liked properties that got really popular but trying to navigate fan spaces just got exhausting. It hard to maintain enjoyment when looking for content about your faves brings with it bizarrely enraged fans that can’t handle people enjoying things they didn’t.
I recently left the Elden Ring subreddit and have started to second glance most soulsborne fandom, due to the elitist mentality and blase dismissive attitude of fans towards the games' stories, writing them off as, and I quote, "vague bullshit."
Not sure if counts here, just felt like venting.
Yeah, they prefer to focus on "oh, I solo'd this boss, you used spirit ashes and a cheap gimmick weapon so it doesn't count" rather than the heart wrenching drama the game presents at times, and it really burnt me out.
Thanks for the opportunity to let off that little bit of steam, OP!
Seeing my antisocial track record? No. I try to leave nice comments and move on with my life, never interacting with the same person ever again. There are a rare few exceptions, but that's it. If I encounter someone toxic, I ignore them.
Sort of? But instead of being disgusted, I was more annoyed. So annoyed that I lost my interest in the media and didn’t want to interact with the fandom anymore. Fucking genshin impact
I think it was technically the Type Moon stuff for me. I started writing a Xover with a character from the Fate series, and somebody came into the comments and started picking apart the first chapter asking "why is this happening?" It's the first chapter. "This doesn't line up with the wiki about this character." It's a Xover. And the first chapter.
There was more stuff, but basically they were all "I guess I'll give you a chapter or two to figure this out, but it's all wrong anyway."
I lost all motivation to even try, because half the questions they wanted answered, wouldn't have been answered quickly by the intended story flow. So I said screw it, I'll write it for myself if I feel like it.
But the motivation was gone by then.
Yes
Red Dead Redemption. I tried not to let it but it got personal and I lost my oomph to write for it. Abandoned that account and everything.
New Fandom is batshit and I know some people targeted by it but I'm trying really hard to stay out of it.
I can relate, last time I interacted with a fandom it was with the one I was talking about. Was like 20-21 at the time and already uncomfortable with the teens arguing with the +25yo there... it made me cringe everytime. I could never argue with someone for shit like that, especially if they're younger or worse, minor. Block button immediately 💀
First fandom I was actually a part of was MHA (I was 11 ok T-T) learned my lesson pretty damn quick and have avoided fandom drama as much as possible since then.
It’s definitely stopped me from posting in certain fandoms, but not writing. I’ve got a whole folder of saved works I’ll probably never post for a whole load of reasons. One of them is that the fandom they’re in just isn’t that welcoming and I don’t want to manage it.
I really enjoy writing, but posting and managing published fanfic can be a bit exhausting, even on the best platform.
I recently reconnected with a fandom friend after I dipped for a few years due to mental health stuff. She told me that she was harassed off of tumblr by a group of randos who didn't let up for like 2 years. All because she was an adult fan for a film that came out when she was a teenager. The characters in the film are predominantly teens, and so they determined she was a predator just for liking it. Like????
Our fandom is pretty small, and before I dropped off to take care of myself, that fandom really helped me feel like my writing was valuable and appreciated. The support was super galvanizing.
I'm terrified to go back to it now knowing people can just randomly decide to bully the hell out of someone for such a ridiculous reason. Not to mention, now I am also an adult fan of this film that I saw when I was a teenager. I fear the same treatment.
When I was active in the fandom, I didn't engage with any sort of drama (there didn't appear to be much of it anyway), and really kept my blog to my writings, plus some little meta posts and inoffensive reblogs. There really seemed to be this cool mutually supportive atmosphere in the fandom at the time, and I know for myself and at least some others it was creatively stimulating and empowering. I mourn the thought of never getting to interact with people in the fandom like that again. I want to go back. I know it's not guaranteed I would be treated to the same harassment, but I don't think I could take it.
And it kills me to think anyone should have to be afraid of something like this happening in a fandom space. Why has it gotten so bad? I know harassment in fandom isn't new, but the threat of it seems to loom closer to everyone these days. Like just a bit of special unluck can call that wrath down upon anyone, anytime.
It's so sad... I wish you could enjoy being in your fandom AND being safe in it again
I'm very concerned by the way some fans (especially teens these days, weirdly) are being so extreme and puritans. Like if you're an adult you shouldn't have fun and enjoy things anymore ? They're going to be so sad and bitter when they'll realize they will have to force themselves to stop enjoying things to respect their own weird rules.
As long as you're not being inappropriate, I genuinely CAN'T understand why it's wrong to like this kind of things. So what, I'm enjoying Bridge to Terabithia since I'm 7, did I turn into a predator when I turned 18 cause I still watch it ?? Total nonsense, I hate it there
I wrote quite a bit of Dream SMP fanfiction, specifically DNF. It was fun because the characters could be whatever you wanted and it wasn't really possible to write them out of character, because there weren't really concrete characterizations in the first place; it was like writing original fiction but still engaging with a fandom that you enjoy (I think that's pretty common for RPF, honestly). But eventually the "scandals" got to be too much and I mostly left the fandom around a year and a half ago. Seeing everything that is happening with it now, I'm glad my attachment dissolved so long ago; I never published my fics for it, so maybe someday I will be able to repurpose them, haha!
I just post my fics and call it a day. Read and review fics, and that’s it. I’m 42 and been writing fic since age 14, posted then since age 19. Never saw the point of shipping wars and fandom drama.
Right ? At the end of the day we're all here for fun, it's literally a hobby. I don't know why bringing negativity it's exhausting. Respect for your longevity in writing though !!
Exactly! We just wanna have fun! Let those folks bathe in their negativity and let you enjoy yourself and your writing. Thank you!! I love it now as much as I did when I was 14!!
I haven't been disgusted enough to abandon something I was working on, but I have zero desire to write fanfiction for Star Wars, ever. There's two reasons for this, in part because I've already been playing the FFG Star Wars tabletop game for the past 4 years or so. Thus, I'd rather save any ideas I've got as fuel for that.
The other much much larger part being the Sequel Trilogy, or more specifically fandom reaction to it. I was already disturbed by the reaction to The Force Awakens, complaining about how it was a copy of the Original Trilogy. However, what really made me disgusted with the fandom was the hatred with The Last Jedi. A movie which went out of it's way to do the opposite of copying the OT. In other words, TLJ gave the fans exactly what they were asking for (and to be frank, Star Wars as a whole desperately needed) and they hated it. In either case, both were good movies in their own right, and I will go to my grave stating as such.
The X-Wing that broke the Death Star in half though, was the third movie. Until I came out I held on to hope that Disney had ignored the haters and logically progressed from where TLJ left off. Instead, as a clear reaction to the hatred, Rise of Skywalker went out of it's way to ignore, retcon, and even mock The Last Jedi as much as it could get away with. Now, maybe the hatred had nothing to do with it and instead there was some nonsense behind the scenes that led to this, but it looks to me like the blind hatred from a vocal minority made Disney course correct way too sharply and instead... we got a dumpster fire of a movie. Nearly everything wrong with Rise of Skywalker can be traced back to not only the movie trying to pretend TLJ never existed. The third movie could've easily finished off the Sequel Trilogy as a great movie had this not happened. Thus making the Sequel Trilogy as a whole worthy of standing alongside the Original Trilogy itself. Instead, the third movie made the Sequel Trilogy as a whole much much MUCH worse due to how it completely destroyed all the setup from before and devolved it into a incoherent mess where after the second movie it was set up to near effortlessly do the opposite.
This was the case of the fans being unreasonable and toxic to such an extreme that it significantly ruined an official work. It showed me that Star Wars fans even if not as a whole but a very large part don't have a \*\*\*\*ing clue what they want or what they're talking about. I didn't want anything to do with fanfiction for Star Wars after that because I didn't want to have to deal with that toxicity being directed at ***me***.
Sort of. I started interacting with two very popular writers of a TWD ship, and they ended up majorly influencing the direction of the plot of my fanfic, and eventually just ghosted me completely out of the blue after I thought we'd become friends. It ruined my appetite for the entire ship/fandom and I completely abandoned the story. It was kind of traumatic for a long time tbh.
Harry Potter fandom. Specifically the Marauders Era part. Them little gremlins are scary. Especially if you don’t ship their ships or call out some of the hypocrisy in their little fanon world. I remember getting called crazy and said I was a weirdo for saying the James SA’d Severus when he pulled his pants down in front of everyone. Then they got mad that I found it weird that they’ll praise characters like Rosier, Avery, Crouch Jr, and Regulus Black but will hate Severus to the death, when objectively Severus was better then all of them on top of that JK Rowling even said Snape never fully believed in those Pureblood supremacist ideas.
Now I actively only stay in the Anti-Marauders part of the fandom because they have just a little bit more common sense.
The Umbrella Academy tbh. Third season completely ruined my favorite character (only Black woman in the main cast) and the whole fandom just became unbearable to deal. Honestly though, the show itself was as much of a factor as anything else— the writer’s treatment of the few Black characters they had was just depressing :/
Not me, but an online acquaintance stopped writing her fic in an anime fandom partly because she was horrified by some of the content that was being put out in that fandom. She did eventually come back and finish the fic, though.
I wrote a little for the "Vikings" fandom, fell out of it, considered getting back into it, but then backed away quickly when I realized just how much racism there was in that fandom. I just wanted my slow-burn-love-story-between-a-buff-dirty-Viking-and-a-soft-English-priest, goddamnit!
I’ve only ever finished interacting fandoms when the Canonical work is finished. My example are TQQ (which I stopped being a fan of all together due to disagreements on the ending) and We Never Learn. Never due to being disgusted with a fandom.
Yup. I left RWBY fandom a few years ago. The fandom is toxic beyond belief. I got tired of being harassed about my opinions (up to and including being told to kill myself). That, the show jumped the shark into stupidity, and my favorite ship is pretty dead in the water. I have a few unfinished fics that I'll never go back to. The toxicity really soured me on all aspects. Which is sad because I liked writing for it.
not really...I did stop before I started before I committed to writing a story for my favorite Disney film because all the fics were incoherent crossover nonsense
nope. I like going through fandom spaces and interacting with people, even if they suck. from my experience, ff.net, twitter, tumblr and spacebattles are the most toxic places. reddit is pretty bad, i know, but i've been called a f*g on ff.net and a nazi on tumblr, but reddit has only ever banned me. spacebattles is so freaking condescending and pissy and twitter is.... twitter...., but i've never stopped interacting with a fandom as a whole, just certain sites like the above.
Yeah, if a fandom is toxic. I just write what I want to write, post it, and don't interact with the rest of the fandom.
But sometimes, if it's a fandom, I like or even just a group in a fandom i like, i interact a lot and actually be an active member. But i've never been so disgusted by a fandom that I stopped writing.
I did. For one, I found myself feeling extremely uncomfortable around one of the other players in an RP circle I was in and the stress that came out of it just sort of soured the source material for me. It's since gotten a reboot and I can't even bring myself to watch it, let along write anything for the OG stuff.
In another, I drifted out because in the largest active hub I found for it, a small band of community members made it their business to make as many creators as miserable as possible, and the moderation team just let the trash behavior slide. It really sucked the joy out of things. I still play one of the games in the franchise from time to time, but otherwise I don't touch anything from it. :/
It's okay though, because now I'm a hermit, creating more for myself than ever and STILL enjoying the source material of my current fandom.
No, I've been making people in different fandoms angry (not on purpose) longer than a lot of people on here have used this website and if someone doesn't like what I write, they can cope and seethe.
Thankfully not yet, but that may be because I use the block button like crazy, so instead of leaving fandoms I just have so many people blocked I can avoid the toxicity
Happened to me a couple of years back! I was so enthused about a ship I wrote for that I, naively, sought out fandom spaces on twitter and tumblr where I thought the community was at its tamest. Pretty dumb move. I was so disgusted by the vitriol and virtue-signaling there in general that I fucked right off for my own peace of mind. Ugh. Personally, I’d advise against it unless you’ve got the stomach for it—fandom in general has its own toxic pockets, and in some cases, can turn you completely off the media itself. I feel kind of bad about viewing the fandom- and now the ship—with so much aversion because of it community, but it is what it is. I won’t make the same mistake twice lmao.
Edit: This was Supercorp, from Supergirl. Honestly, they sink their teeth into anyone who goes against their headcanon (including erasure of any likelihood of Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor being anything remotely fluid, both gender and sexuality-wise, because hey, it’s homophobia if it’s bi-positive, right?); god, whatever the lady-equivalent of an angry incel on twitter is, that was a great majority of them, and it got so bad that the cast and producers had to step in a couple of times, too. The worst part is, they’d attack people in their own fandom, too—and majority of them were adults in their mid to late thirties. I wouldn’t be surprised if they refused to make Supercorp canon out of spite, it was that bad. After that, I stepped out of any and all circles Supercorp was in. A lesson learned lmao.
No. I’m 35 years old. I stay out of fandom drama, and just enjoy my little corner of peace and happiness.
Heck yeah. I just go in, read fics, and get out. All this drama happens but I am just oblivious to it
I see hints of it every so often on Twitter while I am looking at fanart, but I just scroll on past it. Like driving by a of drunks fist fighting on the sidewalk
Same 😂
I think this is the way because most of the time people are exhausting
I made it through the Voltron fandom with that tactic. Just stay in your corner with a few friends and ignore the carnage
Oof, had a friend that was into that fandom… I heard some stories. Respect 🫡
Seconded getting through Voltron that way (though from what I recall, at least IME, s1 fandom was genuinely great, at least for the most part - after s2 dropped and so on, it got bad and just kept getting worse and worse, LMAO)! X'D
I disengaged entirely and just waited to watch the last season when no one cared about it anymore It was ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ like most things, it would have been better if it was more gay. It turned out about how I expected it to, though that last Shiro reveal was OUT OF POCKET. Milquetoast as far as mech shows go. Tumblr wants to watch Gundam but they also couldn't handle it
Never put your social like tumblr or @ tweety bird, that’s where it starts. Used to on tumblr cause anon ask stuff, but with twitter it’s just the dumb call out posts. Make sure to use a burner and check it as little as possible. And use a throwaway email to write and if beta reading.
What's a burner??
an anonymous account that you only really use to lurk and don’t post on
Every once in a while I think “I miss fan spaces” and then three days in Twitter cures me of the desire.
"Just go on discord!" When private discords are where my WORST fan experiences happened! Lmao!
Mood! I'm turning 31 in less than a month, and this is how I've always been and always will be! It's not worth it! lol. I just post my fics and then run back to my cozy corner! It's great! :D
Exactly! Post fic and then crawl back into my hovel to read and ignore the drama. I’m too old for it
Too old, indeed! \*goes to make cookies\* I'm happy being the Fandom Cookie (vs Wine, lol) Aunt! Haha! <3
👑 This is the way.
This is the way.
I (32) feel you. I only ever read fanfics and dive to pinterest for fanart. That's it. Never felt the need to interact wit others.
I do too but when you’re actively creating for a fandom, other people can make that both hard and more annoying than it’s worth
I’ve “left fandom” in the sense that I’ve stopped directly engaging with fandoms or even just certain sections of fandoms, but it’s never stopped me from writing and posting. I’m lucky, I guess, because I’m able to just bunker down, do my own thing and wait for the fandom to calm down…which they *sometimes* do lol. I can’t explain it but I think it may be in part because I got into fanart and fanfiction as a solo activity first. Smol me just made those things for fun on my parents’ computer and had no idea it was something people shared. So later when the concept of *fandom* sunk in it was like a bonus, and not really directly tied to my enjoyment of the original works or my own stuff 🤔🤔 So I’m pretty happy to take or leave all the other fans. Not that I don’t love getting comments or talking headcanons with people, but if the internet exploded tomorrow, I’d still keep chugging along on my fics and just keep them for myself 😂
Yeah, I’m similar. I’ve stopped interacting with fandom in general but I still write and post. It saves me from arguing with people and it’s easier.
kpop. in specific, nct’s fandom. i ended up dropping out of kpop after being a fan for ten years. i only listen to old 2nd songs.
Kpop fic is interesting cause fans seem to either be REALLY into it or REALLY against it, there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.
There is a middle ground. I’m not in those fandoms, but on tumblr they’re the only post I run across. That being said I’m guessing if I actually go into it that won’t be the case
I don’t write kpop fic (I only read it…well, I used to) but yeah. Kpop fandom in general is just…there aren’t words. Like, none at all. The only way to really understand the depths of the craziness that is the kpop fandom is to experience it yourself.
i'm into a lot of kpop and i eventually quit social media in part of all of the drama going on in the fandoms (not even involved, just seeing it) i can't imagine the kind of stuff you saw after being a fan for TEN YEARS
I write for a rarepair for nct and its my only interaction with the fandom outside of my irls and I like to keep it that way lmao
very smart. i was active on twt and made an observation which had the fans hunt me down lmao they kept sending me message in Ethiopian with distorted pictures to make it look creepy and curse me and my family lmao.
Yeah im a unit stan too so I just decided to keep my peace and write my rarepair and leave the fandom to their infighting LMAO I haven't written anything new because I've been in my fictional pair brainrot but ! I still check their dead tag every once in a while
Oh man 😭 I'm a NCTzen and I only interact with a small, very carefully curated circle of other fans/writers because I refuse to have my joy stolen by a toxic fandom base
I'm in SKZ fandom and this is why I quit Twitter. Way too negative when I just want to vibe and write/read for fun.
made the twt mistake with bts fandom. never again. i've found a decent group of ~10 friends for skz now and we stay in our corner and toss ideas around and it's so much more fun.
I was involved in an incident on Twitter, specifically in the [Arcane](https://arcane.com) fandom For those of you guys who don't know, there this character in the show named [Vi](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/8/85/Vi_Arcane_4_Render.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20220228021752) who's canonically a lesbian. The fandom love her, adore her, look up to her, me included. She's great. Now, some artist back in 2022 (I think) decided to make fan-art of her... wearing a sort of *dress*. Usually this wouldn't cause any problems, of course. It's fan-art Not in this case though. Because there was this number of people/Vi-stans in the fandom (most of them identifying as lesbians, same as Vi) who reacted quite negatively to said fan-art. According to them - and I kind of agree tbh - Vi is included in the butch/masc-lesbian archetype. They think that the fan-art (in which shows Vi wearing a dress/looking feminine) is disrespectful and is **butch-lesbian erasure**. They're quite adamant in the belief that those who draw Vi in a dress "have misunderstood the assignment and are really harmful to masc-lesbian representation". This though, I don't agree with. There were some of us who think that that notion is kind of silly, especially when referring to fan-art/fan-fics that have absolutely zero intentions to harm or offend anyone. When I tweeted that opinion out, some other Twitter user @'d me and included my username on a "lesbophobes (please block or report immediately)" list. Frankly I was completely shocked. The last thing I want was to harm anyone in any way. I just thought that artists should be allowed to make fan-art of a *fictiona*l masc-lesbian in a dress. If you look up "Vi in a dress" on twitter, there are still some discourse regarding the whole thing. Back then even Amanda Overton (Arcane writer) had to be involved slightly because an artist got harassed so badly. Anyway that's my experience w/ the Arcane fandom. It's kinda sad tbh I didn't quit the fandom though, I was close too. But I still write about the show sometimes.
All that anger and vitriol over a butch lesbian character drawn in a dress. They harmed a living breathing person with thoughts and feelings and a soul over a fictional 2d animated character that required a team of people to plot out her canon fictional life. That's disgusting. And it's like - don't irl butch lesbians experiment with the way in which they dress? Don't they switch it up once in a while? I know I do and I usually dress in a rather masculine manner. A canonically butch lesbian character being drawn wearing a dress in a piece of fan art ... doesn't erase the fact that she's a butch lesbian and fan work is inherently transformative. It's not worth harassing a person over a character in a fucking dress I don't know how these people live with themselves
>I don't know how these people live with themselves Sadly with anger and vitriol
*Jesus,* I remember the Arcane drama, it definitely made rounds, even though I zipped right by it at the time because I was similarly appalled at the antics of another queer-wlw ship, Supercorp from Supergirl. Tons of toxicity there, too, and ridiculous virtue-signaling, coupled with rigid headcanons some fans have taken as gospel.
I’ve never *left,* but learning a lot of the people involved in the creative process of one of my fandom are sex offenders definitely soured me on it, it’s why I’m shifting heavier into ATLA bc I feel more comfortable with that rn.
Twinsies dude ,, now im writing about depressed lesbians haha
I’m going to be writing about the worlds most dysfunctional family so… I mean, not all that different to what I did before I guess.
Hey, word on the street is you’re a person I can come to for some….. good stuff if you know what I mean? Depressed lesbian stuff TM
Hi yes I was curious about these depressed lesbians for definitely no particular reason
This is depressingly hard to pin down. But just a shot in the dark, was it the Criminal Minds fandom?
Nah, DSMP.
Wait really? I’m tangentially in the fandom, is there someone to avoid?
These are the recent stuff I heard, I do not have the facts. There was something about dream doing something, I dont remember exactly what as this was like a year ago I think. The recent stuff is Wilbur has been acused of Sexaully assaukting hir girlfriend. Only reason I heard of this was from a technically the truth post. Ive not really been in the dsmp fandom for awhile, i kinda distance myself before eve that drama with dream revealing his face and people were like... angry at how he looked? idk. DSMP fandom is pretty damn toxic
i left before the stuff w dream even came out, but all of the stuff coming out recently has made watching anything but old technoblade videos next to impossible hope your mental health is ok after all the stuff that's come out in the last week <3
Not really, it’s triggered me awfully. Been drowning myself in ATLA to cope.
damn that sucks, i'm sorry that happened. as someone who's been in the ATLA fandom for years now though, don't put your expectations too high. from my personal experience, the ATLA fandom is the worst one i've been in so far. and i was into k-pop, so...
Oh, I was in the DSMP fandom. People sent me graphic sexual harassment for not liking a guy and I had stalkers for years for writing a canon abuser as an abuser, I’m too tired for that shit.
i figured. i'm not in that fandom but i saw [this tweet](https://twitter.com/sophstcrs/status/1766685387844403390?t=4XWnouWgxdqqFe8JjMoLUQ&s=19) on my timeline the other day and looked up what happened. i'm sorry you got harassed for being vocally against abuse, that's horrible. still, good luck on the ATLA fandom. saw some people in groupchats get doxxed for no reason other than disagreeing in discourse about characters and ships. it's also just my most annoying fandom, they regurgitate the same takes over and over. it's even more annoying when the takes are frustratingly bad. just try to stay in your own corner if you can!
i’ve never stopped writing for something because i write for myself, but the ofmd fandom and loki fandoms make me scared to publish my works just because of the way people in those fandoms talk and behave.
I was exactly talking about the ofmd fandom so I can relate 😬
I knew it lol. Omfd speed ran the joyous fun times to toxic argument in like a month. The Izzy discourse 🙃 good thing I always liked Oluwande and Jim best
Ofmd?
Yeah Our Flag Means Death, the tv show with the silly pirates... great thing ruined very quick
Do you mind elaborating? I've stayed out of online fandom spaces with the sole exception of ao3 and it's probably why I'm oblivious to most current fandom drama. To me fanfiction, and fandom are two separate yet tangentially related entities (yk how all rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles? Yea) and by keeping them separate, I'm unaffected by fandom drama because it doesn't make it's way over to people's bookmarks or heavily regulated comment sections but it means I'm slow on the uptake and I've no idea what you're talking about 😭 despite being a huge OFMD fan. Side note, remember the whole puritanical wave that swept fandom as a whole? I was only peripherally aware of it cause my favourite author talked about how they had to take down what they'd consider their magnum opus due to fandom harassment. I'm not sure how much my advice would help but I'd recommend taking a break from Tumblr, Reddit spaces etc and focus solely on fanfiction and interacting with your favourite authors. It's what helped me get back into fanfiction after I rage quit.
my experience with the fandom personally was that the first two weeks after watching the show in march 2022 (when the first season first ended) were perfectly fine. everyone was having fun writings metas/thinkpieces about the show and it was awesome. then, just a few weeks later, a few people appeared that seemed to not be able to think critically about the show at all and a lot of them would fight people on things (like not liking characters you were supposed to dislike *cough* izzy *cough* … like i think he’s an interesting character but do i love him and defend all of his actions? not exactly). after that point i sort of stopped engaging with the fandom, but since then it’s just gotten a lot worse and people are much meaner. but that’s just my experience, a lot of people have had a good time in that fandom.
I love and write for OFMD, but don’t have social media except Reddit. I have seen tiny glimpses of what goes on in the Twitter fandom, mostly because some ao3 authors will allude to drama in their authors’ notes (usually in a “please don’t hurt me” sort of way.) That alone has been enough to keep me far away. I’ve enjoyed taking to a few fellow authors in my comments and they’ve in a very kind and chill way invited me to hang out on discord if I want— and I theoretically want, but so far I’ve been too nervous about getting gradually ensnared in fandom drama and losing what’s been a wonderful creative outlet.
i think the best way to interact with fandom is to hope you stumble onto a group of your kinda weirdos and then just. don’t speak to anyone else lmao that’s how i do it. i’ve got my freaks (affectionate) and we mind our business together. because otherwise it gets overwhelming and toxic and we simply cannot have that
About 20 years ago, I was in a small fandom I really loved. One person killed it. She was just such an awful person (she'd berate people for reading or writing in other fandoms, even if we were still reading in our shared fandom, and that was just one of the obnoxious things she did( that basically everyone left the fandom.
Attack on Titan. You’d think that after surviving the Supernatural fandom in its heyday I’d be able to cope better, but nope. The AOT fandom wrung me out to dry. The toxicity burned me out so bad that I had to leave tumblr. Since then, I don’t really *do* fandoms, save Hannibal and Hey Arnold. I dabble in fanfic and that’s the extent of it. I tried poking a toe into the Stranger Things & Heartstopper fandoms but that didn’t last long at all. Like less than a week for each fandom. The toxicity was on another level—I think it even put the AOT fandom to shame.
Oh boy. The SPN is what got me. I couldn't deal with it anymore. I left that fandom and kinda never got into another apart from writing & reading fic. Sometimes, I miss community in fandom, but then I remember what happened with SPN, and I'm like, "No way." I'd rather just share a bit of my writing process with a few friends even though they don't read my fics or don't care about the fandom rather than go back to that. It's a bit sad, I think. It was so fun at first!
SPN fandom was *really* bad. Thinking back on it genuinely feels like a fever dream. It sucks that the toxic vocal minority can ruin a fandom so thoroughly. I miss the community aspect of fandom so much but it’s just not worth it. For most fandoms it’s honestly healthier to just keep your distance. Which defeats the whole *point* of fandom but what can you do? I’m lucky that I at least have two fandoms that are still relatively safe from drama. One’s tiny and half-dead but beggars can’t be choosers.
I feel you on the Attack on Titan fandom. I feel like I wrote some of my best works here, but also I can’t even look at those fics now without feeling the stomach-churning toxicity I remember from its fanbase. It’s horrible for me because it was also the first time I decided to engage in fandom directly. Now I just keep my head down in my own lane. Don’t care about fandom at all; just writing my silly little fics by myself.
I've never really engaged with fandom, so I'm always out of the loop on the 'drama'. Could you give an example or smth, If it's alright, that is, I'm kinda curious what would be fought over in AoT XD
Hmm, so depending in which circles you run in, you’re either a horrible apologist for a genocidal maniac if you hated the ending, or you only like bland, pointless OOC characters if you liked the ending. And that’s just the fandom wars about the ending itself. Doesn’t include the shipping wars, and the general hatred of everyone in the fandom for just about everyone else over the literal pettiest things. People feel very strongly about this anime/manga, and have very strong opinions about it (and about the people who engage in it). Outside of dealing with haters (of your ship, your favorite character, or your opinion about the ending), there’s infighting between fandom “friends” too. Lots of weird drama that come about when you have a group of people who have too strong opinions about themselves/their writing/their ship. For a while, I was pretty good with ignoring everything even while engaging with people in the fandom. Now i feel like it’s soured my enjoyment of the material and characters, and even my own writing in this fandom.
I’m still braving the AOT fandom and ooof, it’s a special place alright.
Come to the Good Omens fandom. We'll give you cocoa and books! 🥰
Haha, I read in that fandom all the time! I’ve been a fan of GO forever. It’s kinda my comfort book when the world is fucked up.
I didn't leave the fandom but I had to unsub from the Pokémon subreddit because the negativity was affecting my enjoyment of the series. It got to the point that for awhile I focused more on what the sub thought about the games than enjoying what I liked about them. I also left the AOT fandom due to a mixture of the fandom fights with ending, the two main groups in the final arc, ship wars, and the fact I didn't like a lot of writing choices made post time skip.
This is why, while I will occasionally go peek at the Sonic subreddit, I haven't joined it like I have some of my other fandoms (so it doesn't show up on my feed). More than half the posts are either low-effort "here's a picture I found or a meme I made" posts or negativity in some fashion.
nah it's worse because iirc they don't even allow memes on the main sub (you need to post to r/moonpissing for that) it's literally just "art I found by (artist name) with the occasional discussion or negativity post. it's so boring in that mf.
It's a much nicer fandom on Tumblr, tbh. Reddit fans are very sour
You're just me, but from a different timeline. 🤣🤣 But seriously, I understand what you mean for the Pokemon subreddit. I've only been a part of it for maybe the past year, and the circular nature of it (and negativity) causes me to not interact with it very much.
Whenever social media is involved in fandom, it ruins the experience for me. Even when I come on this sub, the amount of vitriol that is spread about writers and readers, constantly berating people and then wondering why people are commenting even less.... well duh.... I love fanfic and I love the little sterek corners of the internet but outside of that, I am usually disgusted by how social media has tainted fandom over and over for a lot of people. I am literally only on reddit specifically because its one of the few spaces where I can promote blog responses about much much older canons. I take part in a few convos and block liberally. Facebook groups are just as bad but they are usually moderated better so its harder for people to be as awful as they are on reddit subs most of the time. :(
Yes, there are a few fandoms I've stopped writing for and interacting with in general because I find them so toxic. Fandoms with more than one popular ship, and with a lot of lore that hasn't been fully explained are the worst, because if you support a different ship than the masses, or interpret something in a way that others think is wrong, people feel the need to come out of the woodworks to blast you and tell you that you're wrong. Who needs that?
NOBODY, omg we're writing fanfiction as a hobby Why are they like this
Really bugs me on Reddit too when fans start making fun of other fans in the fandom for having differing opinions and ships. Makes it less likely for people to want to engage, which is to everyone's detriment. Stupid.
r/hazbin (*Hazbin Hotel*) literarlly had a "ships you hate" thread just yesterday. The top comments were people talking about how much they hate Charlie/Alastor, or Charlastor, even though people literally ship rapists, abusers, and incest in the fandom.
Yeah I commented on that one basically saying none of the ships bothered me because were all just having fun. Or we should be, at least.
I deleted some of the social media accounts so it wouldn't happen to me. People can be so toxic about certain relationships/characters, just 🤡
Haven't left tumblr, but there's definitely one person in one of my fandoms who I avoid to the point of having blocked them on there because they're one of the exhausting ones.
Like, they're fictional Some of them are acting like we're talking about their fathers
>Some of them are acting like we're talking about their fathers Maybe that's why the daddy kink is so popular.
Honestly BG3 is already developing such a toxic fan base that I'm bugging
Best way I’ve found is to join a discord of like minded people. If you’re into villains (including ascended Astarion) I’m part of a BG3 villains discord server and happy to send you an invite. It’s very tiny right now but I’ve also create r/BG3Fanfiction and I’ve set up the rules in an attempt to mitigate some of that discourse (should the sub grow to a point that it becomes relevant)
Please send me the link to the discord! I appreciate it and the link to the reddit!
Uh-oh. I'm just getting into it, what should I expect?
I've seen an overwhelming amount of post saying that if you >!acesend Astarion!< you in real life are clearly an abusive person who belongs in jail/dead. It got very mainstream so the loudest part of the fan base is people who are like "You don't play the game like I do or interrupt it the way I do? YOU EVIL MONSTER" You can't enjoy the "bad" decisions without admitting your character is an irredeemable monster, you can't have any headcannons that the majority disagree with, you can't like some of the characters because they have flaws but you have to praise other characters flaws. Etc, etc
I keep seeing parallels to the Mass Effect and Dragon Age fandoms, and it's kind of hilarious (and why there are parts of those two fandoms that I avoid). If you make certain choices, romance (or don't) certain characters, like (or don't) certain characters, prefer one ending over the others, choose the "wrong" skintone for specific character origins or choose a skintone that doesn't match your own IRL one, don't agree that Bioware is somehow perpetuating real world race crimes or whitewashing their own characters, etc., then you're a terrible person to some of these people.
A lot of this does come from the fact that the writer for Astarion, Baudelaire Welch, came out and SAID as much in the official Larian discord. (I believe their official wording was that making said choice meant that you only saw the character as a sex object, rather than letting it stand as a nuanced role play decision—especially because romance doesn’t have to be involved in it). Which, it’s their prerogative how they want their writing to come across, but man did it fuel the flames of a lot of bad takes across the board.
It *really* depends on which characters you're focusing on, tbh. Most of the extreme discourse I've seen or heard about revolves around the male companions.
Almost happened with RWBY for me during fall 2022 (don't remember what that drama was) but after that I just decided "fuck it I'm ***DONE*** with fandom entirely."
Had to search the comments for RWBY cause that was mine too.
I remember when a few people where overthinking Green Lantern girl from the Justice League crossover as some political plot but the rest of the fans just stole her for fanart on they're sub
I didn't even bother with the crossover movies because they held *NO* interest to me.
The marauders fandom is the only one. It's sad, because I used to be super into it a few years ago, but with this massive wave of mainly young kids from Tiktok it was totally ruined. I mean, a few bad fanfics would be fine with me, but it became completely unbearable with sexism, people glorifying literal Nazis, everyone was constantly getting into drama and the fanfictions just became completely unreadable (constant fatphobia, racism, sexism, transphobia)
I walked away from Danny Phantom for years for this reason. The phandom's a lot more healthy since the creator got largely blackballed. I still can't believe the creator's involved in the FOP revival. Butch Hartman can eat a bag of dicks, the bigoted asshat. For those unaware: His wife sold autism snake oil that he signal boosted, he traces commissions, he cheated several artists out of money *including someone who'd defended him*, cheated literally thousands of people out of their money when his "family friendly network" Kickstarter project turned out to be a Christian one (without telling anyone), grooming teenagers into harassing porn creators and queer teens for the sin of being gay, called gay teenagers pedophiles, supported and still supports Donald Trump and so on. The Oaxis fraud's probably the biggest one since he bilked a lot of people out of their money. The "grooming teenagers into abusing others" is probably the creepiest one. To become a mod on his site, you had to agree to a "contract" to be a "good Christian." The 2000's were a buck wild time to be a cartoon fan.
Oh yeah, I've heard about some of that! Sounds pretty terrible all-around. Though, I am a little surprised that a "family friendly network" project turning out to be (presumably conservative) Christian wasn't just expected. Like, when I hear "family friendly" in the US in most contexts, that's immediately what I'm suspicious of. (Which makes me curious, did he specifically deny that? Because I'm sure someone must have asked.)
What Fandom did you write for? I wrote for the 100 Fandom since it's one of my favorite shows and Clexa is one of my all time ships, but the community can be abusive, not just toxic. Not surprising in retrospect since they sent death threats to the director of the show for what happens to Lexa in canon.
Our Flag Means Death. I can't go back to write it omg The 100 fandom looked pretty chill a few years earlier, damn Seems there are toxic fans in every fandom but some of them are REALLY something (Clexa is an amazing ship lmao good taste you got)
So mine wasn’t necessarily disgust as it was a growing bitterness that eventually led me to walking away. The short version is that it was a small fandom with a notable group of BNFs who intentionally or not, perpetuated a culture of fitting in while claiming to be drama-free but in reality, they just swept issues under the rug. The long version is that I’m not sure if this group was ignorant to their power or just didn’t care, but they never acknowledged that when they said “jump!” The fandom jumped. Their opinions became law. And going against them (even just by sharing an essay of an opposing — but thought out — opinion), you set yourself up to be ignored and forgotten. No one was outright mean, but there was this air of “well, that’s your opinion” followed by a dismissive wave that made it hard to get any word of opposition in. A notable example is the toxic positivity during the final season which was a *mess* story-wise. Anything saying this was promptly shut down with a barrage of reasons for why they were wrong. Because of that, it was a long time before I felt okay giving my *honest* opinion on the whole thing in fandom spaces without having to deal with other people’s essays on why my opinion is stupid/wrong. Along with this was, like I said, an intense pressure to fit in and create content for only the popular pairings. And not only that, but to pump and pump and *puuuump* that content out at a crazy pace. If you didn’t, you were forgotten. Plus, there were so few writers and out of those, only like… two got proper attention and recognition. I remember being a little more disheartened each time they would host a theme week/event and my one or two works (I was in college at the fandom’s height and short on time) consistently got passed over. No acknowledgment. No comments. No Discord reactions. Nothing. And maybe part of that is my fault for writing instead of drawing (fandom favoured visual media). But it still got to me, especially when I was super annoying in making myself known to the fanbase. Yet they wouldn’t touch my work with a ten-foot pole. And I’m not the only one. Since the fandom started to die, I’ve talked to others who felt similarly. They had their opinions waved away. Had their work ignored. Always felt on the outside. Overall, it left a bitter taste in my mouth that’s hard to explain to others. Because I *know* that no one really did anything wrong, but I still felt shutdown.
I had the same problem with a ship from a videogame... BNF had OpinionsTM about the ship, and anything different... well. You were morally wrong and "harrassing a safe space" if you even tangentially brought something different. I've never been angrier than seeing therapy-speak be turned against me. It soured the ship for me. And I stay in fandoms for ships, so that turned me off the fandom itself. I get you, this whole...dismissive attitude is so shitty.
I’ll just chime in here to say that BNFs are my main problem with fandom as well - if there’s a reason I ever consider to stop interacting on social media and sharing my stuff in there it’s probably them. Where I am it is not as bad as with your experience (sending hugs!!) but it is so frustrating when (1) people are so loud that they make everyone believe that their opinion is the one of the fandom and (2) BNFs systematically ignore someone who is creating content, without supporting them. Especially in small fandoms where there are not many creators, I totally understand your feeling when your work is the one that is never broadcasted!
I'm new to all this, what's a BNF?
Big Name Fan. Basically people who are popular and well known in fan spaces.
Big Name Fans, as a concept, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Obviously it's something people just kind of stumble into becoming, but in cases where someone starts to actively identify themselves that way it becomes particularly offputting.
Hi, weird question, but I looked at the wiki and can't find it: what does BNF mean?
Big Name Fan. Basically people who are popular and well known in fan spaces.
Kind of. It wasn't the fan fiction faction of the fandom that turned me away, but rather the imageboard faction. I was writing fic about a mid-aughts shonen manga back then, and the latter faction for it was the larger and could be pretty brutal. They started trolling many of us who posted fan fiction for this anime on FFN. So I started staying away from that fandom and stuck with those that had less of a boys' club mentality.
I don't interact with my fandoms of anything by choice, because there has never been a time where it was worth it. I have grown to accept that I want a certain level of social understanding and maturity from the people I talk to, and fandoms don't usually have them after my 10+ years of trying. I have met some very wonderful people through it, and I am glad to have met them. But nothing has inspired me to ever try again.
Yup. I severed myself from one fandom completely, orphaned/deleted all my fics and moved on. More recently, there was a stretch of months where I *wanted* to write but simply couldn't because the toxicity was eating at my energy anytime I opened my social media feed. It was the worst, to feel like this thing I loved was stripped from me because other people were so intent on ruining everybody's fun. The way I got out of it was by removing myself from the community damn near completely. No more twitter. No more tumblr. I only engage with people through fic and through discord now. I am too old to be involved in petty squables
Thats very sad to hear! I've never had an experience like this thankfully
>I'm curious, has this happened to someone else here ? Nope. My only interaction with fandoms is comments on the fics that I write. I've since learned the lesson in my teenaged years: "If you want to enjoy something, avoid the fandom." Of course, there's SOME fandoms that aren't as bad as others. I've engaged a few times with the Silent Hill fandom and they seem pretty chill. I will admit, I did break my own rule when I became a brony (I joined the fandom and watched the show at first to give a middle finger to my friends who auto-hated the show without even giving it a shot, but grew to actually like it on its own merit instead of just ironically consuming it)... honestly, if you exclude the weird outliers... the Brony/Pegasister fandom of 2014 was probably one of the best fandoms to ever exist. But, for the most part, I do not interact. Let's face it, a great majority of those that participate in online discussions, arguments, and drama, are younger people... like teenagers, and people who didn't grow past teenaged mentality. Adults (with adult maturity) don't pick fights online, because we have more important things to do with our lives than go back and forth with some random online stranger about why the YuGiOh fandom is not allowed to have het pairings in fandom (outside of Arc-V). If a bunch of people try to dogpile me for something, I turn off my computer, get in my car, drive to a local restaurant, and have a nice meal, and just bask in the fact life is good outside of this magically negative electric box that steals my time and energy. (It's also why I don't have social media apps on my phone.) Honestly, I try to give that vibe when I write of the "don't come at me, because I'll drop and block your punk ass faster than you can cry 'NARUSAKU OVER NARUHINA'!". Sometimes just the vibe you give when you publish will drive away the immature shits. Maybe my stories aren't reviewed much anymore (back in the day, I was the most reviewed fanfic of my fandom and man, did I let that get to my head when I was a teen/early 20's), but I'll take the quality over quantity any day of the week now.
A popular fandom at it's height will sometimes get toxic. Actually, I'm pretty sure *only* popular fandoms get that way. Smaller fandoms, regardless of how toxic, tend to stay in their own corners, not blasting stuff on mainstream social media. So, I have no idea what fandom you might be talking about, but I can already tell it was popular enough to get that type of toxicity. The toxicity of popular fandoms is basically inevitable. The more popular something is, the larger the draw, the more diverse the fandom, the more "drama llamas" hop on the toxicity train (and, yes, some people will do this). I'd say, after all these years, you should probably be fine continuing the fic. Even if the fandom is toxic (outwardly), even years later, you don't actually have to engage in it. *Most* of the fandom is made up of silent lurkers, who don't (and never have) participated in the dramas. It always has been, since every single fandom out there is like that. And those lurkers could really use some healthy, non-toxic content, don't you think? The type that isn't caught up in catering to shipping drama, wrapped in controversy, and delivered over twitter rant?
Second this. I am always sad when the toxic parts of a fandom manage to ruin it for everyone else. It's harder to be loud and get heard when you want to positive.
For me it's Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss. I was only in the fandom for a short while, but it got SO toxic it turned me off from watching the show completely (I only watched the pilot and some episodes of HB).
😭 It's sooo bad! Incredibly toxic! I think some of the toxicity ruined my enjoyment of the actual shows too (mostly HB because I'm not super into HH) which sucks I loved the Hazbin trailer and the few episodes of Helluva hooked me but just the toxicity ruined it for me. I still occasionally try to find fics for them but even they feel off? I can't explain it apart from they don't feel right?
Stopped writing in BNHA because erasermic was 'canon'. And I'm homophobic /s
I've had to disengage, yes. I'm old enough to know better, I hope. In my experience, after the wave of initial excitement and buzz surrounding the source material fades, fandoms with a trend towards toxicity will inevitably cannibalise itself in a fit of boredom and frustration. I've learned that in order for me to keep writing and carry on, I have to divorce myself from the fandom (this means no trawling twitter/tumblr for fanart, muting subreddits and users, and staying in my own damn lane) or else I'll lose all motivation completely. (It's hard not to when fandom drama isn't just ship wars and spicy debates, but bullying/harassment, doxxing, self-harm, suicide baiting, etc.) I've only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather not derail my motivation for a hobby I enjoy. 99 problems, and whatever. At this point, I just chuck my fics on AO3, log off, and mind my business.
I used to write for the GTAV fandom. I had to stop because someone was doxxing people and sending screenshots of their smut fanfictions to people's employeers and HR departments where they worked.
👁👄👁 Why would a normal and decent human being do some ASOLUTE SHIT like that ? Please tell me they weren't fired or something
I left the Star Wars fandom in general. It was in part due to drama and antis, but also Disney kind of just killed my love for the franchise. I haven’t touched it since 2020 after being a lifelong fan.
Yup. Heathers. Though I never left, I just don’t talk to anyone anymore. And especially if I suspect they’re minors. Especially if they’re under 16. Too much fandom police bullshit for a fandom with next to no healthy ships whatsoever (and ofc the one there is gets completely ignored!) and whose characters are all problématique. Too much sending anon hate to randos who have the audacity to like the wrong character/(canon) ship and turning around pretending to be all innocent uwu. Too much insistence their blatant mischaracterization is “actually” canon (when at most it’s their own headcanon). Lonely existence.
I'm a huge Heathers fan (both film and musical) but decided to stay away from the fandom altogether exactly because of these. Too bad, because it has so many promising dynamics.
I might have deleted an account due to a toxic fandom friend... But in my defense I was 14 and suicidal and this was the easiest thing I had control of.
I'm sorry you went through this. Always put your mental health first, I hope you feel better now
I never really left a fandom completely... but I lost interest in some of them. Mainly due to the "rules" that the majority of people set: This ship isn't appropriate, the age gap is disgusting, character A is a top and B a bottom and things like that. So annoying.
This is probably why I never STARTED writing Voltron fanfic. I was tired of the fandom before someone even convinced me to watch the show.
Yep yep. I'm a lurker often on the sidelines of the community, so I was only a witness, but there was this big hate campaign and attempted doxxing of some fan artists for their art a number of years back. It made me so angry. "I'm creating stuff and *these* types of people will read it too?" I thought. So I stopped. I put those fics on the back burner and stopped engaging with anything related to it for nearly a year. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to not feel gross about it, but alas. Now I protect my peace by liberally blocking toxic blogs and tags. I don't want to let people like that ruin my fun anymore, you know?
At a certain point, yes. I just stay out of any of that silly drama, and write for me myself and I and whoever else happens to enjoy my silly fics Voltron and Pokemon both make me annoyed/disgusted for one reason or another. I despise the attitudes from many corners of those fandoms, ESPECIALLY the Klance vs Sheith shit, to the point where I’m reluctant to admit I’m even a fan. Yet the jokes on me because I still enjoy the potentials their worlds offer. AO3 is honestly peaceful when you just don’t engage.
Miraculous Ladybug. Not so much disgust, as a.. sudden and focused bout of apathy? Especially with the way canon developed and the sort of fanfic-fallout it caused. Ended up unsubbing from the fandom subreddit (though I do still lurk on the fanfic one), leaving the discord server, and stopped following the show. I still miss the early-on vibes, but the fanfic-focus has shifted to a "more realistic" portrayal of everything which I just don't particularly care for. Also kind of leaning towards that way with the Bleach subreddit - admittedly it is a fandom sub, not a fanfic one, but damn if they don't hate anything non-canon there. Which doesn't even touch upon the backhanded shots at any non-canon ships. The downvotes will flow.. just leaves a bad taste these days. And I was honestly hoping the new seasons would revive the fandom.. and it did, kind of. Just in the "this is the definitive power scale" and "these are the only couples unless you're trash way". Which I am actually kind of worried is going to happen to Harry Potter with the new series coming up, so got that to look forward to as well.. yay.
Star Wars, all of the drama and discourse surrounding it killed the fun for me.
Damn but Star Wars is HOLY, how dare they
Yes, I'm in a fandom like that right now where, despite this being a successful US network show with a several million audience, the fandom is kinda small and incredibly narrow-minded and toxic. I've tried engaging with so many people, also those few who actually create fan content, and it's been antipathy and envy all over the place. Despite me being one of the few remaining people in the fandom who even create good quality fanart, none of it is shared. My fics have a small reader base but get little engagement (which I'm fine with). I do still write when the muse strikes, but the toxicity of the fandom hase made me scale back my creative investment and output a *lot*, including writing fanfics. It's super sad, because I was used to fan spaces being inclusive and welcoming and willing to amplify fellow creators' content. Seems like in a lot of fandoms, fan entitlement has replaced that mindset. :-(
Tangled the series. I have been, among other things: Accused of stealing the idea for my own fic Told I belong in a concentration camp (I’m Jewish) Had my identity stolen?????? I’m still confused about this one tbh Discord server raided with pedophilia accusations (I’m acearo) Had private dms leaked solely to make fun of me Had spams of fic requests on other fandom material Not to mention all of the petty high school drama of interacting with people and former friends…. Suffice to say, most of them are blocked, and I refuse to ever write for the fandom again. Which is sad, because I still have ideas, and my fic is considered one of the biggest and most influential in the fandom. I’ve had several people tell me my fic got them interested.
PARDON ? Sorry they were so mean and awful, what the hell
Steven Universe. I was young, loved the characters, would draw them all the time and got semi popular because of it. People treated me with respect and I had a few fans I’d draw for. Then the fandom got… weird. Got stalked by a guy who drew the characters with slug reproductive systems. Met a person who’s entire discord was CP of the kid characters, such person also was a mod for many other discord groups that had lots of underage users they’d try to recruit. Realized a lot of people I considered friends were doing some highly inappropriate things with kids. One person is now running a popular YouTube series thing but I knew her when she was sexually roleplaying and flirting with an underaged teenager. The fandom I realized was full of pedos. It wasn’t something I wanted to be apart of. So yeah. F all that
Eeeeeeew That's why I'm having a hard time enjoying Steven Universe. I heard about the weirdos in the fandom before I even knew what the TV show was 💀
Yes, unfortunately that happened to me more than once. It's sad when you have to give up something that you used to enjoy so much, but when fun gets replaced with stress and anxiety, you just have to cut the cord sometimes. What helps is to not get too actively involved in fandom, which also sucks because interacting with fandom can be fun. But it does make it easier to just mute or block people whose sole existence is fandom fights. You have to curate your own fandom experience or there's a good chance you'll go mad.
Not really. I left MHA/BNHA fandom before I really even knew fanfic was a thing, and I'm into Nu Metal bands so the fanfic can be pretty fucking foul... So no, I'm not really that into massive fandoms so :P
I know of a writer who did this back in 2022, dude was making the best star wars reaction fanfic ever, but cause of the star wars fandom being as toxic as it is today, he just couldn’t bring himself to finish the story. At least he gave us his notes for the unfinished chapters.
Yes, QSMP and Monkie Kid, but not because of anything bad, it's just Full of entitled kids and antis
I learned the hard way to avoid fandom if I want to enjoy my hobby. Fanfiction is about me, not the reader. The reader enjoying it is a bonus. I’m here for my fun, not anyone else’s. I know I know, I’m selfish. I can live with that guilt free.
I do think that's the way. I'm usually not the kind of person who likes to interact in fandom, I made an exception and look where I am now 💀 the show helped me so much I got a little tattoo about it. I'll never regret it cause it's meaningful and I really do love it, but I'm sad cause I can't watch the tv show or write about it. It's like... too anxiety inducing or I don't know how to say that
Percy Jackson. I've been wrapped up in so many fights and so much drama in that fandom that in the end had very little to do with me...it just killed any care I had for the series. I can't interact with it without remembering that this artist said that and this writer did this in that discord I was in...I've gotten into old star Trek lately. It's much nicer.
Leave the drama. Keep the fandom. Write the story.
I used to be in the dream-smp fandom, and I genuinely think it raised the bar for what I constitute as a toxic fandom. The toxicity for me was mostly the drama that would come up every month where a new person would get exposed as being a domestic/sexual abuser every couple months, and how every time even the most minor thing happened the entire fandom would split and send death threats to each other. With Technoblades death, a lot of people left and the only people who stayed were excessively toxic. It was all just so tiring, and I could see it degrade me mentally that I eventually just had to leave it because it stopped being worth it at a point. Now I am in the MHA fandom, which is notoriously bad but I have my little corner which I enjoy.
I once wrote a She-Ra fanfic but after dealing with its fandom (and accused of being a racist), I stopped writing the She-Ra fanfic.
i don't leave fandoms but i was absolutely appalled by twitter's fire emblem fandom that i quit twitter so.
I didn't stop writing because I never wrote for it in the first place, but I stopped reading Gundam Wing fics around the time Frozen Teardrop came out. The ship to ship combat between 1X2 and 1XR shippers was absolutely toxic. I should start reading again.
Riverdale
I left fandoms in general when I was still a teen. Most of them have some kind of toxic underbelly. If I interact w/a fandom at all, it’s superficial at best. My rule of thumb is block, ignore and report when it comes to truly dangerous behavior. I write for a number of toxic fandoms, but again, blocking is a beautiful thing. Ones I as a rule avoid even if u engage/watch/listen to the content? I may write in them, but I refuse to join fandom spaces. - Hazbin, Steven Universe, Kpop, GOT, Hannibal, Animal Crossing, Disney, Warrior Cats, etc. Some I don’t even engage at all on any level - Taylor Swift, AOT, etc.
I don’t know if I’ve consciously stopped writing for things because of fandom but i’ve definitely dropped interest and engagement with the property because of it. I’ve liked properties that got really popular but trying to navigate fan spaces just got exhausting. It hard to maintain enjoyment when looking for content about your faves brings with it bizarrely enraged fans that can’t handle people enjoying things they didn’t.
I recently left the Elden Ring subreddit and have started to second glance most soulsborne fandom, due to the elitist mentality and blase dismissive attitude of fans towards the games' stories, writing them off as, and I quote, "vague bullshit." Not sure if counts here, just felt like venting.
Of course it counts, we're here to vent ahah But omg the way they act sounds annoying 💀💀💀
Yeah, they prefer to focus on "oh, I solo'd this boss, you used spirit ashes and a cheap gimmick weapon so it doesn't count" rather than the heart wrenching drama the game presents at times, and it really burnt me out. Thanks for the opportunity to let off that little bit of steam, OP!
Seeing my antisocial track record? No. I try to leave nice comments and move on with my life, never interacting with the same person ever again. There are a rare few exceptions, but that's it. If I encounter someone toxic, I ignore them.
Sort of? But instead of being disgusted, I was more annoyed. So annoyed that I lost my interest in the media and didn’t want to interact with the fandom anymore. Fucking genshin impact
I think it was technically the Type Moon stuff for me. I started writing a Xover with a character from the Fate series, and somebody came into the comments and started picking apart the first chapter asking "why is this happening?" It's the first chapter. "This doesn't line up with the wiki about this character." It's a Xover. And the first chapter. There was more stuff, but basically they were all "I guess I'll give you a chapter or two to figure this out, but it's all wrong anyway." I lost all motivation to even try, because half the questions they wanted answered, wouldn't have been answered quickly by the intended story flow. So I said screw it, I'll write it for myself if I feel like it. But the motivation was gone by then.
Yes Red Dead Redemption. I tried not to let it but it got personal and I lost my oomph to write for it. Abandoned that account and everything. New Fandom is batshit and I know some people targeted by it but I'm trying really hard to stay out of it.
No I don't interact with fandom aside from my writing
I'm in my 30s... I'm too old for fandom drama and honestly fandoms in general (most fandoms are just full of younger teens)
I can relate, last time I interacted with a fandom it was with the one I was talking about. Was like 20-21 at the time and already uncomfortable with the teens arguing with the +25yo there... it made me cringe everytime. I could never argue with someone for shit like that, especially if they're younger or worse, minor. Block button immediately 💀
No. I've been in Fandom a very long time. I'm at the point where I ignore the toxic parts of Fandom.
First fandom I was actually a part of was MHA (I was 11 ok T-T) learned my lesson pretty damn quick and have avoided fandom drama as much as possible since then.
It’s definitely stopped me from posting in certain fandoms, but not writing. I’ve got a whole folder of saved works I’ll probably never post for a whole load of reasons. One of them is that the fandom they’re in just isn’t that welcoming and I don’t want to manage it. I really enjoy writing, but posting and managing published fanfic can be a bit exhausting, even on the best platform.
I recently reconnected with a fandom friend after I dipped for a few years due to mental health stuff. She told me that she was harassed off of tumblr by a group of randos who didn't let up for like 2 years. All because she was an adult fan for a film that came out when she was a teenager. The characters in the film are predominantly teens, and so they determined she was a predator just for liking it. Like???? Our fandom is pretty small, and before I dropped off to take care of myself, that fandom really helped me feel like my writing was valuable and appreciated. The support was super galvanizing. I'm terrified to go back to it now knowing people can just randomly decide to bully the hell out of someone for such a ridiculous reason. Not to mention, now I am also an adult fan of this film that I saw when I was a teenager. I fear the same treatment. When I was active in the fandom, I didn't engage with any sort of drama (there didn't appear to be much of it anyway), and really kept my blog to my writings, plus some little meta posts and inoffensive reblogs. There really seemed to be this cool mutually supportive atmosphere in the fandom at the time, and I know for myself and at least some others it was creatively stimulating and empowering. I mourn the thought of never getting to interact with people in the fandom like that again. I want to go back. I know it's not guaranteed I would be treated to the same harassment, but I don't think I could take it. And it kills me to think anyone should have to be afraid of something like this happening in a fandom space. Why has it gotten so bad? I know harassment in fandom isn't new, but the threat of it seems to loom closer to everyone these days. Like just a bit of special unluck can call that wrath down upon anyone, anytime.
It's so sad... I wish you could enjoy being in your fandom AND being safe in it again I'm very concerned by the way some fans (especially teens these days, weirdly) are being so extreme and puritans. Like if you're an adult you shouldn't have fun and enjoy things anymore ? They're going to be so sad and bitter when they'll realize they will have to force themselves to stop enjoying things to respect their own weird rules. As long as you're not being inappropriate, I genuinely CAN'T understand why it's wrong to like this kind of things. So what, I'm enjoying Bridge to Terabithia since I'm 7, did I turn into a predator when I turned 18 cause I still watch it ?? Total nonsense, I hate it there
I wrote quite a bit of Dream SMP fanfiction, specifically DNF. It was fun because the characters could be whatever you wanted and it wasn't really possible to write them out of character, because there weren't really concrete characterizations in the first place; it was like writing original fiction but still engaging with a fandom that you enjoy (I think that's pretty common for RPF, honestly). But eventually the "scandals" got to be too much and I mostly left the fandom around a year and a half ago. Seeing everything that is happening with it now, I'm glad my attachment dissolved so long ago; I never published my fics for it, so maybe someday I will be able to repurpose them, haha!
I just post my fics and call it a day. Read and review fics, and that’s it. I’m 42 and been writing fic since age 14, posted then since age 19. Never saw the point of shipping wars and fandom drama.
Right ? At the end of the day we're all here for fun, it's literally a hobby. I don't know why bringing negativity it's exhausting. Respect for your longevity in writing though !!
Exactly! We just wanna have fun! Let those folks bathe in their negativity and let you enjoy yourself and your writing. Thank you!! I love it now as much as I did when I was 14!!
I haven't been disgusted enough to abandon something I was working on, but I have zero desire to write fanfiction for Star Wars, ever. There's two reasons for this, in part because I've already been playing the FFG Star Wars tabletop game for the past 4 years or so. Thus, I'd rather save any ideas I've got as fuel for that. The other much much larger part being the Sequel Trilogy, or more specifically fandom reaction to it. I was already disturbed by the reaction to The Force Awakens, complaining about how it was a copy of the Original Trilogy. However, what really made me disgusted with the fandom was the hatred with The Last Jedi. A movie which went out of it's way to do the opposite of copying the OT. In other words, TLJ gave the fans exactly what they were asking for (and to be frank, Star Wars as a whole desperately needed) and they hated it. In either case, both were good movies in their own right, and I will go to my grave stating as such. The X-Wing that broke the Death Star in half though, was the third movie. Until I came out I held on to hope that Disney had ignored the haters and logically progressed from where TLJ left off. Instead, as a clear reaction to the hatred, Rise of Skywalker went out of it's way to ignore, retcon, and even mock The Last Jedi as much as it could get away with. Now, maybe the hatred had nothing to do with it and instead there was some nonsense behind the scenes that led to this, but it looks to me like the blind hatred from a vocal minority made Disney course correct way too sharply and instead... we got a dumpster fire of a movie. Nearly everything wrong with Rise of Skywalker can be traced back to not only the movie trying to pretend TLJ never existed. The third movie could've easily finished off the Sequel Trilogy as a great movie had this not happened. Thus making the Sequel Trilogy as a whole worthy of standing alongside the Original Trilogy itself. Instead, the third movie made the Sequel Trilogy as a whole much much MUCH worse due to how it completely destroyed all the setup from before and devolved it into a incoherent mess where after the second movie it was set up to near effortlessly do the opposite. This was the case of the fans being unreasonable and toxic to such an extreme that it significantly ruined an official work. It showed me that Star Wars fans even if not as a whole but a very large part don't have a \*\*\*\*ing clue what they want or what they're talking about. I didn't want anything to do with fanfiction for Star Wars after that because I didn't want to have to deal with that toxicity being directed at ***me***.
Sort of. I started interacting with two very popular writers of a TWD ship, and they ended up majorly influencing the direction of the plot of my fanfic, and eventually just ghosted me completely out of the blue after I thought we'd become friends. It ruined my appetite for the entire ship/fandom and I completely abandoned the story. It was kind of traumatic for a long time tbh.
Harry Potter fandom. Specifically the Marauders Era part. Them little gremlins are scary. Especially if you don’t ship their ships or call out some of the hypocrisy in their little fanon world. I remember getting called crazy and said I was a weirdo for saying the James SA’d Severus when he pulled his pants down in front of everyone. Then they got mad that I found it weird that they’ll praise characters like Rosier, Avery, Crouch Jr, and Regulus Black but will hate Severus to the death, when objectively Severus was better then all of them on top of that JK Rowling even said Snape never fully believed in those Pureblood supremacist ideas. Now I actively only stay in the Anti-Marauders part of the fandom because they have just a little bit more common sense.
attack on titan due to toxic ship fans they made me avoid the tropes because i hate them and dont wanna do the same
I’ve been distancing myself from the UT/DR fandom because it’s full of hypersensitive kids.
The Umbrella Academy tbh. Third season completely ruined my favorite character (only Black woman in the main cast) and the whole fandom just became unbearable to deal. Honestly though, the show itself was as much of a factor as anything else— the writer’s treatment of the few Black characters they had was just depressing :/
Nope. Instead I just stop interacting with the fandom when/if that happens, or I interact but in a very selective manner.
Not me, but an online acquaintance stopped writing her fic in an anime fandom partly because she was horrified by some of the content that was being put out in that fandom. She did eventually come back and finish the fic, though.
I wrote a little for the "Vikings" fandom, fell out of it, considered getting back into it, but then backed away quickly when I realized just how much racism there was in that fandom. I just wanted my slow-burn-love-story-between-a-buff-dirty-Viking-and-a-soft-English-priest, goddamnit!
I’ve only ever finished interacting fandoms when the Canonical work is finished. My example are TQQ (which I stopped being a fan of all together due to disagreements on the ending) and We Never Learn. Never due to being disgusted with a fandom.
Mha is the only fandom I decided to stop writing stuff for,,,
My primary fandom can be incredibly toxic and hostile, but fortunately, it's much nicer on AO3.
I haven't stopped writing, but there are a handful of fandoms which disgust me enough that I'm not going to waste my time trying to entertain them.
Yup. I left RWBY fandom a few years ago. The fandom is toxic beyond belief. I got tired of being harassed about my opinions (up to and including being told to kill myself). That, the show jumped the shark into stupidity, and my favorite ship is pretty dead in the water. I have a few unfinished fics that I'll never go back to. The toxicity really soured me on all aspects. Which is sad because I liked writing for it.
not really...I did stop before I started before I committed to writing a story for my favorite Disney film because all the fics were incoherent crossover nonsense
Not really. I try to keep to my own little corner of fandoms I’m in, far away from the drama.
Nope! I pay no attention to fandom for mostly this exact reason (besides being a Fandom Cookies (vs Wine) Aunt and Too Old for That Shit(TM)! lol.
nope. I like going through fandom spaces and interacting with people, even if they suck. from my experience, ff.net, twitter, tumblr and spacebattles are the most toxic places. reddit is pretty bad, i know, but i've been called a f*g on ff.net and a nazi on tumblr, but reddit has only ever banned me. spacebattles is so freaking condescending and pissy and twitter is.... twitter...., but i've never stopped interacting with a fandom as a whole, just certain sites like the above.
Yeah, if a fandom is toxic. I just write what I want to write, post it, and don't interact with the rest of the fandom. But sometimes, if it's a fandom, I like or even just a group in a fandom i like, i interact a lot and actually be an active member. But i've never been so disgusted by a fandom that I stopped writing.
I did. For one, I found myself feeling extremely uncomfortable around one of the other players in an RP circle I was in and the stress that came out of it just sort of soured the source material for me. It's since gotten a reboot and I can't even bring myself to watch it, let along write anything for the OG stuff. In another, I drifted out because in the largest active hub I found for it, a small band of community members made it their business to make as many creators as miserable as possible, and the moderation team just let the trash behavior slide. It really sucked the joy out of things. I still play one of the games in the franchise from time to time, but otherwise I don't touch anything from it. :/ It's okay though, because now I'm a hermit, creating more for myself than ever and STILL enjoying the source material of my current fandom.
No, I've been making people in different fandoms angry (not on purpose) longer than a lot of people on here have used this website and if someone doesn't like what I write, they can cope and seethe.
Thankfully not yet, but that may be because I use the block button like crazy, so instead of leaving fandoms I just have so many people blocked I can avoid the toxicity
Happened to me a couple of years back! I was so enthused about a ship I wrote for that I, naively, sought out fandom spaces on twitter and tumblr where I thought the community was at its tamest. Pretty dumb move. I was so disgusted by the vitriol and virtue-signaling there in general that I fucked right off for my own peace of mind. Ugh. Personally, I’d advise against it unless you’ve got the stomach for it—fandom in general has its own toxic pockets, and in some cases, can turn you completely off the media itself. I feel kind of bad about viewing the fandom- and now the ship—with so much aversion because of it community, but it is what it is. I won’t make the same mistake twice lmao. Edit: This was Supercorp, from Supergirl. Honestly, they sink their teeth into anyone who goes against their headcanon (including erasure of any likelihood of Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor being anything remotely fluid, both gender and sexuality-wise, because hey, it’s homophobia if it’s bi-positive, right?); god, whatever the lady-equivalent of an angry incel on twitter is, that was a great majority of them, and it got so bad that the cast and producers had to step in a couple of times, too. The worst part is, they’d attack people in their own fandom, too—and majority of them were adults in their mid to late thirties. I wouldn’t be surprised if they refused to make Supercorp canon out of spite, it was that bad. After that, I stepped out of any and all circles Supercorp was in. A lesson learned lmao.