Statement-Making (again)

[ladyofleithian]

So the author of “Enough" is back. She took her fics off private and said that she’d been in need of distance from the fandom and, in one case of one fic, taking it down to be reworked into original fiction. (Attempting)



In all honesty, as much as I absolutely did not care for “Enough", I don’t think I can go through with finishing the spork. Not because of the length or because I’m a chicken (FFS, I’m sporking a fat fetish fic that’s twenty-one chapters; I am not a chicken), but because honestly...I’d just feel dirty doing it. I’m not even seeking to get a medal for doing the bare basics of being kind to someone; I’d genuinely feel dirty doing it after what happened to her. I mean, say what you will about, say, “Downfall”, but at least nothing like this happened.
And the thing is — the author of “Enough” handled herself with more strength and dignity than the people who were treating her transgenerational trauma like it was nothing. She didn’t shout at anyone, she didn’t call anyone names...and keep in mind, if she did, I wouldn’t blame her. She was perfectly composed, level-headed, even when Pissbaby McFucknut’s friend was being massively patronizing towards her. It really made that conversation even harder to read.

I’ve gone into detail about Pissbaby, but his friend...well, the thing is, her being a jerk isn’t an isolated incident. Back in 2020, there was a woman...let’s call her Nancy. She was kind of handling the fact that Reylos were having more conversations about race (which they tried to do before but kept being shut down) poorly, and people were calling her out on it. Well, Pissbaby’s friend...the really insulting thing, now that I think about it, was how Nancy treated her when she sided with Nancy, thanking “an honest to God woman of color” (her words, not mine) for supporting her. Which...Pissbaby’s friend is still horrible, but Nancy just showing her off like “see, see, one of my BFFs is BIPOC; that means you can’t criticize me” (at least that was the impression I got) is genuinely disgusting. I mean, if I were Nancy and I’d fucked up big time, I’d at least try to apologize and fix the situation, and not treat my BIPOC friends like that. I remember following LordKat on YouTube before he turned out to be a total piece of shit, and while I don’t like him, I feel the need to badly quote him in saying that with people like Nancy and their relationship with BIPOC, they don’t have genuine friends. They have trading cards. Friends are just a currency that they collect. I mean, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I got the impression that Nancy just saw Pissbaby’s friend as someone to kiss her ass and reassure her that she’s a good person and that it’s everyone’s fault but hers. Hell, it gets worse — she basically forced a BIPOC mod on the Reylo Fic Recs group to be a shield against criticism: see, of the people who had to do damage control on the Facebook page, it was usually that particular BIPOC mod, and considering some people Misblamed her, there’s no way the other mods couldn’t have known about the fact she was in harm’s way. Obviously the commenters that jumped down her throat crossed a line, but they weren’t (as far as I can gather) the people calling out the Holocaust fic request; those people actually expressed disgust that the other mods were basically making a BIPOC mod do the heavy-lifting. (And Nancy also went on about “the people who are calling out antisemitism are so meeeeeean, why can’t you be like that one black guy who made friends with KKK members”, which is stupid on so many levels)

But yeah. Pissbaby’s friend. She...I have some sympathy for her if I take the idea into account that she was just being used by Nancy, but she was really patronizing towards the author of “Enough", just trying to explain her own culture to her, even outright lying and manipulating her — her friend apparently nearly took his own life, which...any suicide, attempted or successful, is tragic, but his reasoning for nearly taking his own life was completely different than what his friend said — she said he nearly took his own life due to fandom bullying, but he said that he nearly did it out of guilt that he couldn’t help someone allegedly being bullied. Either way, it’s tragic, but it’s made abundantly clear that Nancy’s friend was lying in order to guilt-trip the author of “Enough” just because she objected to a Holocaust quote being used out of context.

It’s just sick. The awful thing was that I was acquaintances with Nancy’s friend, even writing a fic for her — it’s safe to say that realizing she was such a deplorable person does make me feel gross myself. But yeah — after everything the author of “Enough” went through, I’d just feel like I was engaging in a beatdown when she’d survived a knife-stabbing. I just don’t think I can do it.

Comments

[esme_amelia]

(hugs) Don't worry about the spork, hon. The whole incident was just disgusting (seriously, it should be common sense to realize that hey, suggesting a Holocaust Reylo fic just might be insensitive).

[ladyofleithian]

(hugs back) Thank you. Really. I totally agree; it’s just one of those things that shouldn’t have happened. And yeah, it should have been common sense to realize it but common sense isn’t really common.

[esme_amelia]

"Common sense isn't really common" - that should be a t-shirt.

[ladyofleithian]

Thanks! Glad you like what I said.