so like. obviously it’s an immensely tragic route to take but sometimes it’s just so satisfying for a story to go “there’s no happy ending this time. resistance isfutile in this scenario. the ‘good guys’ can’t win. this is a pointless last stand. so for their final act, our beloved characters are going to rock the antagonist’s shit so fucking hard it makes you stare at a wall struggling to process what just happened and how you feel about it for hours afterwards.”
i simply think that sometimes it’s the best possible narrative decision to allow characters to become supernovas, imploding on themselves but taking as much with them as possible. “you can’t save anyone” “maybe not, but i canhurt you”. fuck yes. if you can’t beat them, tear them apart.
If someone on the street hands you a personality test, do check the mailing address and the fine print to see if it was made by the church of Scientology. And then do not mail or email them for your results because if you do that they will literally never leave you alone.
And they are a destructive cult. To be clear. Scientology bad. If you get a pamphlet from them tear it up and throw it in the garbage.
I’ve also had Scientologists hand me pamphlets for seemingly normal meditation classes and nutritional and mental health advice. If a random person hands you a thing on the street, check who it’s from. Look at the mailing address, any watermarks, any fine print. If they’re an organization you’ve never heard of, see if they have a parent company or religious organization that they’re working for.
The church of Scientology (and some other cults) owns a lot of businesses. Some of which even pretend to be a form of therapy. Because they are anti-therapy. Do not blindly trust random people handing you booklets. Read the fine print.
If you’re a grown ass, tax-paying adult and you take the time out of your day to harass/bully a young black girl for simply beating thousands of other young actresses for a FICTIONAL ROLE IN A 15+ YEAR OLD BOOK SERIES and being the perfect fit in the eyes of the AUTHOR HIMSELF—
—My brother in Christ seek psychiatric help. Like deadass y’all did this to Amandla Stenberg and Quvenzhané Wallis. Let young black girls have their representation.
i literally do not care about crime novels unless it’s about a random teenager (preferably a teenage girl) so unhinged that they just end up solving crimes the police couldn’t solve, making them enemies in the process
Okay so I guess it’s time I’ve said my piece. I know I stayed silent yesterday when the current situations started blowing up my dash. I wasn’t sure what I could say regarding the situation. I wasn’t sure what I was comfortable saying regarding the situation. But after being so vocal regarding the OCFA situation, it feels wrong to stay silent now.
Whether I decide to share my own experiences regarding the situation or not, I want to stay right from the start that Maddie was someone I considered a friend. A closefriend. That, apparently, was not a mutual feeling as I was unceremoniously unfollowed yesterday by Maddie (randomestfandoms) and then unfollowed today but Emily (perfectlyemily). Let me reiterate, these are both individuals that I considered myself close with and while Emily herself has no bearing on the current situation, it still cuts deep.
I will admit, straight up, that I was foolish. I wanted to believe my friend and so there were many situations where I wrote off things that were happening. You never want to think the worst of someone you care about. I wanted to believe that things could be coincidences, and as someone who had multiple times helped Maddie brainstorm new ideas, I know the potential of their creativity.
Let me be clear, I had friends on both sides of the issue. I defended Maddie multiple times. I didn’t want to outright take sides or potentially invalidate one of my friends who were feeling hurt or upset over potential theft. I say potential here, because at the time I wanted so, sobadly to believe that things could be a misunderstanding. I know better now, and if I made anyone feel as if their feelings on the matter were wrong or unimportant then I am so sorry, and that wasn’t my intention. In trying to be a good friend to one person, I fear I may have been a bad friend to others and that was never my intention.
As I said, I wanted to believe the best in Maddie, I wanted things to be just coincidences, despite having my own experiences and doubts. The important thing was that they were my friend and I cared about them and didn’t want to hurt their feelings. As someone who often worries about my ocs seeming to similar to someone else’s if they so much as have the same face (there have been multiple times I have reached out to other creators to discuss potential character similarities to make sure neither of us were uncomfortable), I know that there are others who have absolutely no problems with this. So I downplayed my own doubts, was willing to drop one oc and changed the fc of another to avoid feeling uncomfortable. I shared my worries with only one person who told me that I wasn’t wrong to feel weird about it, but still I shrugged them off.
It is another situation entirely to have evidence laid out so plainly. People are sharing their receipts, and there’s no shortage of evidence. I have heard multiple people talk about Maddie downplaying their concerns when they reached out regarding similar ocs. There are accounts of Maddie getting upset when others have used the same fc after them in the same fandom, despite acting cavalier when in a reversed situation where someone would feel like Maddie was copying them by using the same face claim.
Look, I don’t know what to say here. This whole thing is messy, and it’s hard to turn off that impulse to try to see the best in someone that I thought was my friend. And even as I type this, I worry about how this might make them feel. I know that sounds silly, especially with how quick they were to unfollow me despite my own silence during the situation. They’ve made no defense for themselves and just… innocent people don’t suddenly start unfollowing their friends who have contributed nothing to the conversation. As I said I don’t know yet if I’m going to share my personal experiences, though they have been documented in the interest of transparency. I fear that in trying to be kind I allowed myself to become a doormat in this situation and, even worse, hurt other people by defending Maddie. If that is the case I am so sorry. It’s clear that in light of this evidence and validation of my own experiences that were written off that neutrality isn’t possible in this situation. Please, don’t take this as an excuse to go and attack Maddie, that’s not what this is about. I’m not trying to perpetuate drama here, but as I said it feels wrong to keep my mouth shut now when I’ve been so vocal about other situations in the past.
So, after hearing about even more situations and more evidence regarding Maddie(@randomestfandoms-ocs) coming into the light…I feel like I should make another post regarding my feelings.
If no one knows by now all the evidence of this situation can be found in this post
I don’t know if Maddie’s ever stolen or copied an idea from me, I guess I never paid attention to those things if I’m being truthful.
But even though I might have never been stolen from I’m hurt entirely by all of this and angry because people, some of them being my friends, were also hurt.
Anyway, first off I feel like I need to say that I give 100% support and love to those harmed by Maddie and if you ever need to talk I promise you my messages are open.❤️
Secondly, I truly feel that I will no longer be friends with Maddie.
They haven’t blocked me yet, but I feel like it will be better for me mentally to just go ahead and do it.
This goes for Em @perfectlyemily as well. You were one of my first friends in the oc community so it breaks my heart even more.
But after everything with Maddie and you even unfollowing me as well without a word, I don’t think I could trust you again.
I will cherish the memories and discussions we had, but it’s not the same anymore and will never be like it was.
Too much disgusting behavior has been revealed and these are people I won’t be comfortable being friends with.
This was someone who I thought was a dear friend, but it’s someone who is completely different.
But I still wish the best for them and plea for them to take this opportunity to apologize, grow, and better yourself to do better.
I know I’m going to use this situation to be more aware and do better when it comes to researching so this doesn’t happen again.
I still feel any receipt I have are not as valid or helpful as any others, but I am posting publically my support for all those harmed by Maddie. We are no longer friends, and the strength to end that friendship (after admittedly long growing and festering feelings of anxiety and anger) was given to me by all of you.
Also wanted to say that i did reach out to Gloria personally when it happened, and I stick by what I said to her and regret not posting publicly; Elsa was a copy of Shelley/Sydney. We have clashed from more than that, but that is something I stand by; you were right to post about it and your feelings were valid. I am sorry I did nothing to help.
I know so many people have made posts already but I feel the need to tell my own story and experience.
I befriended Maddie (randomestfandoms-OCs) at the start of 2020. When I first joined the community I was wary, seeing as we had similar FCs for Teen Wolf OCs and stories, but I shoved it aside as coincidence because I was new and they weren’t.
Once I started befriending them I got so caught up in everything I lost myself. I was just getting out of a shitty relationship and had been evicted from my very nice apartment due to COVID and losing my job. Maddie made me feel less lonely and relied on my support to enable their OCs. I considered us friends. I thought they did too.
The first red flag came up when they told me of their side blog codenamekryptonite. I thought nothing of it, considering most people had sideblogs. But then I found out that they were pretending to be an entirely different person named Veronica and in their own words “it was like they were Hannah Montana”.
I was uncomfortable with this but I brushed it aside. Because they were my friend and I trusted them not to abuse the sideblog.
Clearly this didn’t happen.
The second red flag happened when I asked what was wrong after seeing a “delete later” post on their blog. Immediately I was bombarded with Maddie talking about an OC discord they were in where they felt their ideas were being ignored and how stressed they felt. I did not know any of the users they mentioned, so once again I took Maddie at their word, believing my friend over people I didn’t know.
I now know and befriended the people they were talking about and I regret taking Maddie’s side.
The third red flag was the Gloria situation. I behaved horribly because again I thought I was protecting my friend. I had grown used to the comfort Maddie’s protection brought me and I felt like I owed them because they helped me out of the hole I was in. So I acted in an abhorrent manner, discrediting Gloria and blocking her because I was blind to the other accusations that occurred. I didn’t have much information on Gloria and what little I did came from Maddie and Emily (perfectlyemily).
To Gloria. I apologize for acting the way I did. I was horrible to you when you were telling the truth and I’m sorry it took me so long to realize this.
The final red flag and eventual end to our close friendship was Maddie stealing my Lya Dayne OC. Receipts are in Anna’s (anna-phora) post but this was just the latest in a long line of OCs that were more than coincidences.
They continued to steal OC ideas of mine long after I cut ties with them in July of 2020.
Every time I believed an OC of mine was stolen I confronted them privately, hoping to resolve this without going public but I can’t stay silent on this anymore. It’s clear that going public is the only way to get the message across.
I cut ties with them in messages but remained friendly when the situation called for it. Until a few months ago when I admitted to one of my friends that ocfanhub was also Maddie and that they were not only going by Veronica on tumblr, but on discord.
This eventually became public knowledge and I woke up to find myself blocked and unfollowed by Maddie. Our friendship was over and even though I was angry at them for stealing so many of my ideas, I still wanted to be friends with them. I still considered them my friend.
It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the extent of their influence over me during that time, but I’ve been speaking out against them for years, because no one deserves to have their loneliness manipulated, no one deserves to have their OCs stolen, and no one deserves to be silenced when they’re trying to speak out.
Here are the receipts I have promised you. I have included the usernames of people who were ok with me coming forward and using them as an example.
I have not included usernames on the examples I know of just from being a member in this community and having seen previous attempts to call out Maddie.
I included links to everything as well as noted where other receipts are available.
There is again an exception with Gloria’s examples as the confrontation there was very public and well known.
If you have something to add, feel free to reblog or let me know and I will add it.
Alright, so because this has now become a Thing where people believe users didn’t try to reach out privately, here are some of the receipts I’ve been green lit to share of people reaching out. Didn’t want to clog so just posted the first pic of each:
It’s funny seeing all these people like “I feel bad I won’t complete all of the challenge days ” and I’m over here like “I’m the creator of the challenge and I’m lucky if I do ten”
also it’s super suss that the “drop your interests! you’re too old!” posts are always about women. why don’t you go to a football game and tell random dudes they’re too old to be interested in childish games
suzanne collins killing prim after everything katniss did to save her………. THATS how you write a story about the brutality and futility of war ma'am thats what we call a compelling and fucked up narrative yessums thats storytelling babes!!!!
i love in fantasy when its like “king galamir the mighty golden eagle and his most trusted advisor who would never betray him, gruelworm bloodeye the treacherous”
When my sister and I were kids we had this one action figure, who was actually a brutalized batman doll without his cape (the dog chewed half his head, too), who we dubbed ‘Evil Chancellor Traytor’. The idea was that in the fictional society of our toys, ‘chancellor’ just came with the word ‘evil’ in front of it, as a matter of ancient tradition. Like ‘grand’ or ‘high’ or something along those lines.
Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.
The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.
The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.
But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.
Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:
Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!
Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!
Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!
Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*
Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).
And then we had the Quest For a New King. Somehow or another that ended up being a giant rubber snake called ‘Tyrant King Cobra’.
::closes tab, shuts off computer, and proceeds to have the best day ever just by knowing this exists::
i will always reblog Evil Chancellor Traytor
tbh that’s some A-grade worldbuilding and use of tropes, these kids should be hired to direct movies instead of crusty idiots like Michael Bay
A character arc where the character who did terrible things and regrets them is forced to live, to put one foot in front of the other and find healing, who chooses to pour goodness into the world and make the world a better place
Is more satisfying to me than a character arc where the character who did terrible things and regrets them is redeemed through death
99.9% of the time.
There was a tumblr post about this where basically it was “redemption isn’t about people forgiving you because you do better now, it’s about you doing better even if no one forgives you.”
And honestly this post changed my view on redemption arcs and on the “Redeemed Through Death” arc.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: it’s more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It’s performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.
This is ultimately why propaganda is going to work on you. Because you never learned how to think for yourself and the actual ideology behind things. You simply rely on group think and the bare minimum explanations to tell you what’s good and bad.
Sawthis article linked on twitter yesterday and…. yeah. YEAH.
Honestly the people thinking they’re so cool and mature by being like “I’m not taking sides” are the same people who “don’t care about politics” because it doesn’t directly impact them. What they’re really saying is that they don’t give a fuck about the people who have been hurt. Unless it actually hurts them personally, they’re not interested in hearing about it.
It’s not about being indifferent. It’s about a lack of empathy for others.
i don’t know how some of you can look at all 15+ cases worth of evidence and still can’t make an “educated decision” on the matter. class has been in session since saturday. we’ve been trying to educate you, we’ve provided the text books. you’ve had the professors, all fifteen of us. it’s not our fault that you didn’t take notes.
no but how much audacity and sheer entitlementdo you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?
“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either
ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.
AO3 has filtering systems for a reason. Instead of complaining that they host content you don’t like, why not, oh I don’t know, try actually fucking using the filtering options so you don’t have to see it?
As always, YOU are responsible for your own online experience. It is not my or anyone else’s job to curate your online world for you
No but the level of hatred I see for Amber Heard is terrifying. Johnny Depp is a rich white man with a history of preying on minors as an adult. He’s not an underdog, he’s not marginalized in any way, shape, or form. For what reason his fans seem to think he is, I don’t know. You are protecting the person with power. Johnny Depp was known to be homo/biphobic to Amber Heard, an openly bisexual woman. Bi women face a significant rate of intimate partner violence, particularly in relationships with straight men, who weaponize their biphobic misogyny to be abusive. When you protect Johnny Depp you are protecting biphobic violence when you defend Johnny Depp you are protecting homophobically-motivated intimate partner violence. Please get a reality check.
