#'hey remember when you were in an abusive/otherwise hideously toxic friendship/relationship while you were posting this'

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

one reason i'm grateful a) to have been getting into treating my meta as An Art Form as much as fanfic/art/etc, and b) that there's an import function for that on AO3, is that i write very little prose these days, and Actually Having Substantial Things to Post helps me get past the stumbling block of 'well there's nothing much worth going to the trouble for anyway, is there' to the 'alright let's address all the other baggage that makes using AO3 so emotionally fraught for you bud' step (staircase.)

#whosebaby talks #for one thing i met my abusive ex through reading his fics on AO3 for years before we *actually* met and started interacting directly #more specifically me and my *other* abusive ex were fans of his during that time; and gushed a lot to each other in private about his fics #and Indirect Interaction with Ficwriter Crush Through Posting Fic to AO3 was one of the things that *got* us both posting on AO3 for a whil #that's not remotely the only reason i have baggage about it but. yeah. #it has taken me like four years to get to the point where i can *mostly* look in the AO3 tags for any given fandom i'm in #without feeling panicky or sick. mostly. #and not having had anything i felt able or up to posting there for so long means right now the bulk of my current stuff on AO3 is either #'hey remember when you were in an abusive/otherwise hideously toxic friendship/relationship while you were posting this' #or 'hey remember when you were involved in a fandom community that was positive + supportive; that's dead now or you wandered away from it' #'or both; and now it's too late to go back' #which itself is just. tied to a lot of trauma from *before* Fandom as It is These Days Being Its Current Flavor of Fucking Mess #and there are a lot of years-old lovely comments on my old fics that i feel deeply guilty for not having responded to before now #which it's probably not too late to and that's the beauty of AO3. but just. it's a lot #as well as the constant voice whispering in my ear that 'okay well you were pretty good at writing Once but you peaked and now you're shit' #there's a Lot. so yes i am hoping that having meta to post will help put a little distance there #while still preserving my old writing and the snapshots of who i used to be #because she deserved that much; regardless of how the person i am now feels about her; and the evidence that she was there. #anyway. this post brought to you by found a bunch of glowing recs for my exes' fics i had completely forgotten in my dusty AO3 bookmarks #it was an unpleasant surprise but after the initial OH EW that they were there all that time it feels good to know that it's gone #personal stuff #abuse cw #the salt files