the last time I logged onto here and wrote paragraph after paragraph of my feelings, it was a lot of sad shit and insecurities that plagued me regarding my writing. I’m here to let everyone know that I’m in a MUCH better headspace now than I was then. I went into a pretty deep hole of isolation and insecurity after the break-ins happened, I stayed indoors and tried to regulate my nervous system the best I could and I feel as if I succeeded. I’m going out more now, I’m reading a TON lately and while I’m still not having success with writing, I think I’m on my way to it.
I’ve done a lot better at embracing the cringe and the corny things in life and not letting myself be embarrassed by my love for them (which tbh I was never really embarrassed until I hit the age of 30 and started to feel like I needed to “grow up” and have some sort of “adult” life that isn’t real). I’m turning 35 this year and I’m still a fangirl to my core. My obsessions and hyperfixations still consume me the same way they did when I was 16 years old and read twilight for the very first time. I struggled a lot with coming to terms with that part of me still being so alive at this age.
When my mom was 35, she was married, had a two year old and was pregnant with me. For my entire life, I thought that I had to do the same thing. I can practically hear the clock ticking inside of my body, counting down the hours and minutes and seconds until I’m no longer able to conceive. I’ve come to terms with never having children and I honestly don’t even want them anymore, but I can still hear the ticking inside of me. That idea, that lifestyle was pushed on me so harshly growing up that there are still days when I wake up and I think “it’s too late for me” — but that’s bullshit. It’s not too late for anything. I don’t want a baby, I want to be a published author. That is my baby. I don’t want a romantic partner right now, but I do sometimes think writing might come to me a little easier if I had some actual romance happening in my life right now 😂 but I’m truly happy without it.
I have an amazing group of friends, I am so fucking confident in who I am, I look cool, I dress cool, I AM cool. I can say with 100% confidence right now that I’ve never known who I am more than I do right now. And sure, there’s people out there who think I’m too old to still be acting like a teenage fangirl. And that’s okay. They can think whatever they want, their opinions of me are none of my damn business.
I’m in such a good headspace that I uploaded Absolution back onto Wattpad earlier this year. I don’t check my notifications, I have to protect my peace as I’m sure there are brand new readers that are stumbling upon it and thinking ‘wtf IS THIS’, but it’s there for anyone to read in all of its unedited original glory. Harry Styles changed my life completely. If I weren’t a fan of him, I think I would have gone down the traditional path of marrying a man that didn’t truly love me and popping out kids and being miserable a few years down the line (I know that’s not always the case but it is what I’ve witnessed with a lot of my peers). Harry gave me a community of queer women who have my back, who support everything I do, who encourage me to be nothing but who I truly and authentically am. I owe him everything and I owe that community everything, so I refuse to take a silly little fanfic away from people who wanna click back in and read for nostalgia’s sake.
Could this change again? Sure. You guys know me. I change my mind often, I go through the motions, I have ups and downs. But I don’t think it’s going to change this time. I know who I am and I love who I am. Anyone who wants to judge me based on a fanfic I wrote during the pandemic or based on any mistakes I may have made in the last decade or so… they’re welcome to judge away. I won’t be bothered by it anymore.
I wrote about… 10(?) chapters of my WIP that has Mad Max as my MMC, then I decided I hated it and started over, decided I hated that and started over again… I now have like 6 different versions of the story I want to write. That’s okay. I’m going to take a break and visit them later. In the meantime, I did dabble in some Dr. Jack Abbot smut as he was a recent obsession of mine. I haven’t posted it anywhere, but it feels good to just write. Even if I’m not actively doing it right now, I know that it’s always there for me, waiting. And I know that I’ll return to it because I love it more than anything in the entire world, and a love that strong doesn’t just die. It might settle down deep inside of me, it might go to rest for a few weeks or months or even years, but it will wake back up. It will come back to me because it’s meant for me.
I hope you’re all doing well and know that I think of you often. I wish that the online fandom still felt the same to me that it did back in the day, but I’ve had to disconnect a little from that world to protect myself and it’s done amazing things for my brain. Things have changed, but my love for anyone who bothers to check in on me or think of me from time to time is eternal and that is something I can promise will never change.
Sending love and light as always
Aubs 💗
Ps - I didn’t read through this post and nitpick at every word I wrote. I just wrote it, posted it and closed the app. That is a freedom that I never thought I’d experience and yet… 🥳
Were you the person that wrote the girls/girls/boys one shot with Harry where it was this lesbian couple with Harry? I could have sworn it was you but I cannot for the life of me find it 😅
just wanted to say that absolution was something else for me, like i can’t explain what you wrote did for me at the time. i remember when everything was going down and you took it down and i was so bummed but i understood why you did it so i just wanted to wish you well and take your time!!
and i can say that there’s a lot of people that would love to re read it IF you republish it (but if you don’t, we totally understand!) sending you love 🫶🏼🫶🏼✨✨
I appreciate this so so much 😭 hearing how loved absolution is by so many people is why I have a hard time coming to terms with my need to let it rest, I feel like I’m disappointing so many people by keeping it offline. I appreciate you understanding why I had to take it down, I hope that one day I feel okay enough to republish it or put it somewhere for anyone who likes it. 🥹 sending love back to you!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I just finished re-reading Absolution (because I missed Mad Max, of course) and I think my biggest issue with republishing it is that while it reminds me of great, fun memories during a magical time in harry’s world, it also reminds me of how toxic that time was if you were on stan twitter and in the world of wattpad fanfic.
I am not proud of a lot of the writing in it, I’m not proud that I let comments influence my decisions when it came to storyline and smut and I’m embarrassed by the intensity of the degradation I wrote into nearly every single smut scene… it’s been hard for me to wrap my mind around. I was shocked at the amount of smut in it that didn’t make any sense to the actual storyline? And how HARSH a lot of it was. I was in a much more male-centered mindset when I was writing this story and I think it shows through the way I wrote my smut scenes in that particular book. This isn’t me bashing degradation kink, because I clearly experienced it and still enjoy it to an extent… but I think i took it too far in Absolution.
This was also a very weird time for fanfic and stan culture as a whole because of the pandemic. Harry (and fanfic about him) was really blowing up and gaining attention on TikTok right as I started publishing chapters and I think it was easy for me (and a lot of other authors, I’m sure) to get caught up in the excitement and the attention from it all. I let the comments on my story influence the way I thought about the story and my writing. I think I would feel so much better if I edited a lot of the book before publishing again, but I also feel bad for doing that because I know people are attached to it the way it is.
Absolution has been offline for quite some time and I worry people will go back to read it again and realize it wasn’t as good as they remember it being. I know the best thing for me is to get into a headspace where I don’t care what people think about my stories or my writing, I know that more people love my writing than those who dislike it, but the amount of hate that Absolution got when it was being published has been burned into me for a long time. And now, looking back at the story, I feel like I’m seeing all of the points people were making against it and I wish I took it as constructive criticism rather than pure hate (although, most of it was just pure hate).
I’ve been reflecting a lot on 2019-2023 in the Harry fandom. I know the pandemic had a lot to do with the way my fanfic blew up the way it did—people were quarantined and bored, TikTok was thriving because of it and that’s how a lot of people discovered my writing. I think that’s a big part of the reason I have such a sour taste in my mouth about it, because while harry is my favorite person in the world and has been for many years, and love on tour was my most favorite experience, the pandemic rewired my brain so harshly that anything I went through in that time period feels at least a little bit tainted.
I want to write again. I miss it, desperately. I’ve been working through a lot of trauma and figuring things out for myself for a long time, and things still aren’t 100% good. I know they’ll probably never be 100%, but I would like to be able to approach writing in a healthy manner. I would like to look back at my work with pride and not let strangers online control my perception of my worth. I’m doing my best to be the greatest version of myself that I can be, I’m working hard to release myself of the brain rot I’ve acquired ever since that man broke into my apartment and I dealt with the ptsd and fear via severe isolation.
I get messages all the time about Absolution. I know people miss it and want to read it again for nostalgic reasons and I get it, I truly do. But I’m not ready yet for it to be published again and I can’t say for certain that I’ll ever feel ready to publish it again. Rewriting a piece of work that you already have a complicated relationship with takes a lot of hard work and brain power and I feel like if I’m going to work hard to write something, it should be the book that’s been spinning around my head for the last few years that features Mad Max as the MMC. The book that I could see myself not only writing, but publishing one day. I’m not saying it’s a waste of my time to rewrite Absolution right now, but I am saying that I have a short attention span now (thank u tiktok for short form content… it’s ruined me completely) and I have limited energy for writing overall. I want to put that energy somewhere that matters to me.
I second guess myself often. I will type out an entire post, scroll through it and nitpick at every little thing. I did it with this post lol. I always convince myself that people will hate it, will hate me if I say everything I want to or need to say. I have been shrinking myself down for years, I want so badly to please people, to make all of my readers happy when they’ve made me so happy in the past, but I’m doing myself a disservice by not being my true authentic self with you all 100% of the time. I need to accept that not everyone will like me, not everyone will like my writing, my characters, my stories. They aren’t for everyone. But my brain has me convinced that I need to cater to everyone or else I’m a bad person lol. Once I free myself from those mental chains, I will revisit Absolution and that entire world.
I feel like a lot of people are probably sick of reading these types of posts from me. I’ve always struggled with leaving my past writing on the internet for anyone to access and judge. I have struggled so deeply with absolution and then feelings of guilt when I take it away from you all. I know people have got to be sick of me publishing and unpublishing it. Of saying I’m going to edit it and repost and never doing it. Of deleting every trace of my writing on the internet and never putting it back. I completely understand the frustrations and all I can say is that I’m sorry, but I’m also not. I have to go through the motions, I have to let myself feel the way I feel and I hope everyone understands my struggles with this.
As for Petal… that is different for me. I don’t feel the same negative emotions toward Petal that I do toward Absolution (or dark side or daylight, the Harry fanfics I wrote back in 2011 lol) and I think it’s because I personally find Petal to be the better story. My writing was better, the smut was better, the characters feel well-rounded to me. I still have my issues with it though… there’s still a lot of smut that wasn’t totally necessary to the plot (which is fine, don’t get me wrong, I love a smut heavy story! but I’m a plot heavy girly and I should be writing that way). I also had an original ending in mind when I first started writing it and at the last minute I decided I needed to give it a happily ever after. While I don’t totally regret changing the ending, I do feel sad for myself because I always let the feedback I receive sway my decisions.
I let twitter’s toxicity get to me immensely. I let the wattpad comments get to me instead of just moving my material to a different platform. I was worried that if I tried to change anything, or if I didn’t include all the smut, if I kept the unhappy endings, that I would lose my popularity. It was so beyond necessary for me to disappear from the internet for a long time, to find new things to love and care for, to rewire my brain in a healthier manner so that I wasn’t just trying to please other people.
Anyways, there’s no point to this. I just have a lot of feelings and thoughts about Absolution and my writing in general and doing a little re-read of it over the last couple of days brought a lot of icky feelings up. I felt like I was reading it with fresh eyes and a new perspective, and I wish I was coming to you all to say “fuck you if you don’t like it, people love it and it’s coming back” but I can’t say that just yet. I need more time. I know anyone who truly loves me or my writing will understand that my main focus going forward will be original content. I think I’ve always been scared to move into that world because what if I write a book with all original characters and everyone hates it? What if my only talent is for writing Harry Styles fanfic and I can’t even write that right now? It seems silly to muse over these intrusive thoughts but… my imposter syndrome has been killing me more and more as I get older and start to explore more of what I truly love. I feel like such a fraud so often, like none of the success I’ve had was real or deserved and it was all just sort of bestowed upon me without me working very hard to get it. (I say this as if my fanfic got me a six-figure book deal or something lol, this is how you know it’s truly bad for me!!)
I’m 33 years old and all I’ve ever wanted in my life is to hold a book in my hands that I wrote and felt proud of and I’m nowhere near achieving that goal. Most days that goal feels light years away from me. Some days it feels completely impossible, even with the influx of self publishing in the book world. I always thought I would take a break from writing and come back with a new banger about Harry and it would just be a rinse and repeat situation, similar to my break between dark side/daylight and absolution. I know I can write decent fanfic, but can I write a book worth publishing? I think now is the time to put my Harry pen down and explore something (sort of) new.
Mad Max is an original character of mine that I am deeply invested in. He lives in my head rent free. He feels so fleshed out and whole and real that I know he’s the perfect character to attempt writing a book about. If I’m ever going to be able to do it, it will be with Mad Max as my MMC. The world I created for him is so clear in my mind, I can see it every time I close my eyes. I hope that i can release all of my doubts and stop overthinking and just write. I need to just write. I don’t need perfect right now, I don’t need popular, I don’t need positive feedback in order to write in a Google doc. I think somewhere along the way, I forgot that. I forgot that this isn’t a performance for an audience. It’s my childhood dream. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for myself. I owe it to myself to at least try.
So in conclusion: Absolution is not coming back anytime soon, unless I can figure out a way to put it behind a paywall or something that ensures only the people who truly love it in its raw, unedited form have access to it. I’m teetering in the middle of republishing Petal or keeping it down for now. All my work that’s posted here will stay here, as I do quite love all of my oneshots and feel proud of them.
I would love if anyone that bothered to read this far would take two seconds out of their day to send me some good vibes or positivity. I’ll even take prayers. I’m not religious, but I will take any magic or hope that exists in this world to get the authors pen back into my hand.
I think of you all so often. On here, on toxic ass twitter and even on the hellscape that is Wattpad. While I have a lot of negative feelings about my time as a fanfic author, I hope you know that I truly have soooo many positive experiences with you all. I have felt your love and your light every time you’ve given it to me. A lot of you carried me through very dark times and I hope you feel my gratitude. I wish that I could give you what you really want as a way to express that gratitude, but I know most of you will understand why doing so would be harmful to my already very frazzled and fragile mind. Mental health is a lifelong battle with a lot of ups and downs and I appreciate anyone that’s stuck with me through the various “downs” I’ve experienced over the years.
I have to add, it feels so good to type a bunch of giant paragraphs about how I feel and send them off into the void. I’m not sure anyone will read this, and… I don’t care if nobody does. I needed it off my chest, I needed to dump all of my thoughts somewhere and tumblr has always been safe for me to do that.
This morning at sunrise in NYC, an autonomous group performed a banner drop from the Manhattan Bridge beginning our global day of action against the assault on Rafah.
Found on Rosa Booth's instagram
