I'm going to tell a little story.
Thirteen years ago (jfc I'm old) I was involved in a very large and very contentious fandom under a different pseudonym. I was also pregnant with my first child (this becomes important later). During the course of my interaction with this fandom, which will never be identified, I enjoyed a lot of popularity among a very specific little corner of it. A corner which was overlooked and mostly ignored. I was a happy lil' shipper who never really worried about things like hate asks or random people stumbling across my shit because it was so niche that you really had to go out of your way to find it.
At that time, I was fairly active on Tumblr, enjoying robust traffic through my Ask Box where I invited people to send me mini-prompts and created an entire universe based on what I received. Over 250k worth of story JUST via Tumblr asks.
All that changed when the Fire Nation attacked I decided to participate in a fandom event.
I would like to clarify now that what followed was NOT the fault or responsibility of the mods or those involved. But it did bring me to the attention of other members of the fandom. People who had been ignorant of the existence of myself the the wee little blorbos with which I enjoyed playing.
Once my fic went live, which involved "the wrong ship" everything went to shit. I suddenly gained ~150 followers overnight and came to the attention of a number of people who I hadn't even been aware of and all the baggage they decided needed to be seated in the VIP section of the fandom.
The hate started a few days later.
I didn't really care at first. I was happy in my one little corner of the playground, enjoying dressing up my blorbos and making them kiss. One or two people came by to tell me I was doing it wrong, but that didn't matter to me.
And then someone(s) went back through my blog and read all the posts I'd made about my pregnancy. Which was when the real problems started. The absolute, uncensored flood of vitriolic hatred aimed at me and my unborn child. Asks sent which I will never, ever quote, but I still remember verbatim. Paragraphs of such disgusting, graphic, unapologetic venom that would have shocked the writers of such films as "Hostel" and "Eden Lake" with the creativity of what they wished to do to me and my family.
I cannot say for sure, to this day, whether or not it was the same person. I don't really care any longer - it's been over a decade and I'm so removed from it that it might as well be an anecdote published by a random person on Reddit trawling for upvotes. But the result at the time was that I deleted my Tumblr, orphaned every work I had posted on Ao3, and retreated to the comfort of anonymity for years.
I rejoined Tumblr about five years ago, when I began watched The Untamed. I told myself that I didn't really need to engage with other fans, and that I could be content with reading fics and occasionally liking posts without reblogging, all in an effort to avoid inviting such violence again. But recently I've come to realize that I miss the community I had before all that occurred. All those little interactions, the 250k collaborative effort between myself and people who liked what I wrote, sharing things I enjoyed.
So I've decided to begin interacting on Tumblr again.
My askbox is open. I am proship. I am a fandom old who does not care for the recent pseudo-puritan discourse that has crept into fandom spaces. I will NOT reply to hate sent to my box, nor will I allow it to influence what I write or how I live my life. Don't bother sending anything that's not sent in good faith, because I won't spend more than a second of my time thinking about it. I'm too goddamn old to entertain the outrage of childish persons who don't know how to differentiate fiction from reality. And I will not ever confirm the fandom or pseudonym which lead me to this decision.
All this to say: Hi Tumblr. I'm Stratisphyre.
