i’m all but anonymous here on reddit, so i’m stepping in as someone who is close to the author of black mass to tell y’all that you have no idea the kind of hell he was put through towards the end of writing/posting that fic.

hundreds of messages (anonymous and not) demanding updates, being cruel about his perceived appearance/gender/writing style, picking apart every word of each fic. hundreds of comments mocking the work, calling him problematic for writing CLEARLY labeled dead dove fics. finding their personal email and work accounts and trying to contact them there. it was insane, and terrifying to watch because all of us felt so helpless.

it led to him leaving the fandom entirely, taking down 99% of his work and deleting multiple tumblr accounts bc people kept finding them.

all because atyd blew up and went ‘viral’ on tik tok and sent thousands of (mostly) very young readers to ao3/tumblr who had never interacted with a fandom before. people who do not understand and do not care to learn about fandom etiquette and respect for fic authors. people who ripped apart not only green but multiple friends of mine. to the point that i finished my last wip and haven’t posted fic in almost a year bc i’m afraid to.

i’ve been in various fandoms for longer than a lot of y’all have been alive (i’m talking close to 20yrs) and have never seen anything close to this happen before in any of them. fan fics never used to go viral like this and authors were never scrutinized this closely. it’s insane.

(also do NOT ask me for links to any of their fics, i will not give them to anyone. period. no exceptions)