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scarrletmoon · 2 months

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About Powder Blue

This is going to be long. There are going to be discussions of suicide and trauma. This is going to be a bit of a jumbled mess because I can't tell a linear story to save my life. Don't feel like you need to read this, now or ever.

If you're wondering what the issues with PB were, and looking for what's next, read the indented text and skip the rest if you want!

I've had a bit of a...tumultuous relationship with the OFMD fandom. I've made close friends and lost them, made even closer friends who've very patiently reminded me of my worth when I needed that. I'm at a point where I'm still struggling, but I'm getting better. I'm still working on not being afraid. It's a bit of an uphill battle, but I'm still pushing my little boulder. I'm not alone this time, which is nice.

I entered the fandom as a nobody. I had almost 50 fics on AO3 and two had mildly popped off while I wasn't looking, but I wasn't really known for anything. I was a fandom ghost, posting my little fanfics and sharing them with the world because I just enjoyed the characters so much. Like a lot of people, I dreamed of being known for something. I thought that'd be neat.

I'm still in a state of shock and confusion that I've written anything in the past 2 years that people remember and even love. It's weird to be in a place where I never imagined myself to be. I can't stress enough how much I did not write explicit fic before this fandom; in high school, I would've welcomed a porn ban. I was afraid of my own sexuality, convinced it was some sort of monster I had to control. Convinced I was dirty. To other people my age, I was a prude, naive and childish for not being comfortable with it. So I feel for people who lash out now, who insist that attraction is actually fetishization, that if we set enough rules, maybe if we resist temptation, we'll be saved. I see you, and I feel for you. I personally don't think that's a healthy way to live, but if you'd told me that 2 years ago, I would've cussed you out. It's really a realization you have to come to (or not) on your own terms.

Anyway.

I know it's tacky to talk about your own success but it doesn't feel real. I go back and forth, reading other people's work -- and my god, there's some unbelievable talent in this fandom -- and thinking "shit, why would anyone read anything I've written? My stories are kindergarten finger paintings next to museum masterpieces". I am learning, slowly -- very slowly -- that I can't bully myself into a shape I like better. I'll never abuse myself into the kind of writer I think I want to be.

The first chapter of Powder Blue was written on a random day of the week after work. I was in a server -- the first fandom server I'd properly joined and talked in, watching a convo about how funnyt it would be for Ed to be a middle aged sugar baby -- when I pulled out my laptop and wrote for an hour and then posted that chapter to the server. I hadn't written for five years before OFMD. I had never finished a multi chapter fic. I posted that chapter and went to make dinner, and assumed the Google Docs link would get lost in that channel after a few likes.

That's not what happened.

The next few months were...a lot. My 7 year old Twitter account blew up from about 200 followers to 1000 in a matter of months. I was misinterpreted half a dozen times. Suddenly, people knew who I was and had Opinions. Some of those Opinions were Not Nice. I was told to grow a thick skin and get over it. So I figured my extreme reactions -- physical shaking, intense fear, a spiking heart rate, like I was being chased -- were just me being weak. I thought if I just sucked it up and laughed it off, it'd stop affecting me.

Turns out RSD is real and not an excuse I was using to be a baby, and it literally didn't get better until I was medicated! Wild

(This -- "I'm just overreacting and everyone else is secretly handling it better" -- has been a pretty consistent pattern my entire life, so figuring out I'm actually AuDHD has been mindblowing. If you've been wondering why you're so weak your whole life, I've got some screening tests you might be interested in).

Anyway my point is, a few things happened over the course of 2023 that brought me to a level of emotional pain I've never experienced.

At the start of the year, I was taking a self imposed internet break, after being forced to apologize for a tweet thread about Izzy, where I'd made the mistake of suggesting that fans of his should consider thinking about why they enjoy his character, but to only do this if they wanted to and ignore me if they didn't. This was taken as me being a hypocrite, and accusing Izzy fans of being terrible people. I apologized, vowed to never mention him again, and left Twitter for a month. Around the same time, a few things in a very close friend group went very wrong. I assumed it was entirely my fault for misbehaving, picked myself up, and tried to punish myself into a shape that would be acceptable for other people.

It didn't work.

Since I was now marked as an anti-Izzy bully, I couldn't say anything -- either on Twitter or in private -- that wouldn't be interpreted as me trying to start fights, as me being passive aggressive, as me trying to send covert messages for others to decipher so they could come and grovel for my forgiveness. Some of this is my fault -- it took a long time to learn than my private locked Twitter account isn't a diary. it took even longer for me to learn that maybe the people I was hanging out with weren't my people.

During all of this, I was posting Powder Blue after months of tears, pain, heartbreak, frustration and stress. I still don't understand why people write books for work or FUN. It was the most horrific experience of my life. It was valuable and so rewarding but jesus christ did writing PB take a lot out of me.

So as I felt less connected to my friends, as I was trying to hide how I felt because I thought I didn't deserve to be upset about anything (everything is always my fault, you see, and if I just behaved better, these things wouldn't happen to me), someone came to me and said they'd noticed some issues with Powder Blue. I'll refer to this person as the reader.

I was more than happy to hear them out. And it's true that I made some mistakes. The environment that I published PB in was not the one that I wrote it in. I didn't read any other sugar daddy/sex work fics as I was working on PB. PB was never a reaction to those fics. But because of those stories, which had handled things is harmful ways, there was suddenly a responsibility I'd never expected to have. I've never done sex work, I've just spent a lot of time listening to sex workers and trying to understand the legislation and environment as much as I can as a lay person. And since I don't have a personal experience with sex work, I shared my finished but rough draft with the reader, who did.

The problem, ultimately, is not something I could ever have fixed to their satisfaction. The fic doesn't involve dubious consent on a level that I think warrants an archive warning tag -- I tried to make it explicitly clear that Ed never does anything he doesn't want to, and that he's never coerced. The issue is that the nature of Ed and Stede's relationship is inherently uneven -- Stede is rich, and although he gives Ed money that's his to keep, Ed still isn't as obscenely wealthy as Stede is. Ed is poor and has been for a while. He's good at whatever he chooses to do, but he's struggling. That's a very uncomfortable spot to put Ed in. I also put Ed through some things that I've personally been through, as a way to work through my feelings and to try and better understand myself. If I was acting like Ed in real life, the reader is right that it would be concerning. But, importantly, Ed's not real. Nothing in this story is happening to a real person. Nothing in this story is an endorsement of any of his behaviours or unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I still believe the reader had good intentions -- the amount of effort they put into coming to me would be utterly bizarre for someone who was just looking to be cruel for no reason. But that also doesn't change the fact that being told I was having a trauma response and needed to stop working on the fic immediately, pushed me into the most suicidal period I've ever experienced.

That's not their fault. I'm sure that wasn't their intention. I've chosen to not try and find out who they are, or try to contact them again to respect their privacy. Some of the things people said to me, publicly dismissing the reader's pain, were so harrowing to read that it made me feel worse for ever writing PB in the first place. They were right to stay anonymous.

I'm sure the reader never meant for me to have such a massive breakdown that I took down the entire fic and left Twitter (and a few friend groups). It's been difficult to understand that just because someone didn't mean to hurt me, doesn't change the fact that I was hurt.

One silver lining is that I did go and find a new therapist. She's great! And she also thinks that how the reader tried to bring things up to me was wrong. As the reader obviously saw, I have a lot of Trauma, so I'm still not entirely convinced that I didn't deserve what happened to me. I'm not angry at them. I appreciate their concern. I just can't do what they asked of me. In the end, Powder Blue was not a story that was right for them. And that's okay.

My point in detailing all of this, is that I stayed quiet for a long time because I didn't think I deserved to tell my part of the story. I was scared that when people said they respected my choice to take down the fic, that they agreed I'd some something impossibly harmful. People trusted my judgement but I didn't trust myself. But people didn't know that I didn't trust myself.

Additionally, reader can't speak on this without revealing themself in some way. I'm terrified that they might read this and say something anyway. My biggest fear is becoming the kind of writer who sees negative criticism and pushes on anyway, or even blocks people who disagree with me. I don't want to hurt anyone the way I've been hurt.

BUT I've been holding onto this for months. I cannot write a perfect fic that will never trigger anyone. I will never write a meaningful story that won't hurt someone, no matter my intentions. There IS a way to admit you fucked up, or a way to listen and disagree, without turning into a raging asshole. I'm struggling to find that line. I'm hoping I'm making the right choice here.

And honestly, I'm just soft. I am so fucking soft. I talk a big game but I am so soft that a single person poking at my trauma caused me to break down so severely that my partner was legitimately afraid for me. I am learning that this softness doesn't mean I should become a crueler person to cope. But it's hard. There are going to be people who see this post and think I'm being a whiny crybaby looking for attention and pity. And I just have to deal with that.

Anyway. All previous chapters of PB will be up soon. Read them or don't. I will do my best to add more detailed trigger warnings. And I would personally suggest that if you're worried about any of the content in the fic, to run these worries past a friend who's read the fic, because they'll know you better than I ever will. Please don't read Powder Blue if you think it'll harm you. I would rather have fewer readers than triggered ones.

If there's anything I've missed that you think I need to address, know that my inbox is open, that anon is on, and that I'm not in the business of retaliating against people who come to me with an issue, even if they're a dick to me while they're doing it. I'm not going to dismiss someone because they weren't nice to me while they were upset. I'm a bitch but I'm not that kind of bitch.

So. Thank you for waiting for this fic. Thank you for waiting for me. We've got something like 16 chapters to go, and I can't tell you when they'll be up, or if they'll be up soon. But thank you for loving this story. I can't tell you how much that means to me, especially now.

Love,

Scarr

#scarrlet rambles #powder blue #about powder blue #this is also just a really long about me

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comicaurora · 2 years

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Does operating with such a large buffer ever cause any issues for you? I imagine the relief of deadline-related stress and the ability to streamline several pages at once makes up for it, but do you ever find yourself regretting that you can't go back and tweak soon-to-be published pages to alleviate reader confusion? Is it weird to be working so far in the future from what the fanbase is currently experiencing?

Honestly I think that's an unconditional advantage. I really, really hate being misinterpreted or misunderstood - like, pathologically - and while I like seeing diverse interpretations of the story and characters and interesting headcanons I didn't consider, I don't like it when it gets turned into "wow, Red clearly meant to say this" or "Red is obviously intending to say this but actually fucking up and saying this other thing" etc etc. I am, by nature, a very angry person who has a very hard time saying "no" when picking battles, so the temptation to march in with a sternly-worded clarification and quash that confusion becomes very, very difficult to resist.

The Falst intro arc, for instance, was exceptionally tortuous because of the purposeful misdirect woven into the actual plot. Having to watch weeks of discourse about how terrible - or, more charitably, stupid - I was for making this fictional character play into fantasy-racist stereotypes before the reveal that Falst was actually just being framed was pretty hard for me to sit through. If I were also scripting those next pages at the same time, I don't think I'd have been able to resist having one of the main characters turn directly to the camera and state outright "gosh, we were led to believe that you were a villain acting according to harmful stereotypes of your people, when in actuality you were a person with your own thoughts, desires and struggles all along, deserving of our compassion and respect! It's a good thing Kendal was open-minded enough to have a charitable interpretation of your motivations rather than immediately believing that you were the heartless monster we were told you were! Guess it just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover and also racism is Bad And Wrong :]"

Right now I have several more chapters storyboarded, and the script is unlikely to change much between now and when I finalize them. There's complaints and concerns I've seen brought up that I think those pages will incidentally address, but ultimately I have to tell the story I want to tell, not the story I'm defensively compelled to constantly apologize for. Having a buffer helps protect my story from my knee-jerk hatred of people Just Not Getting It So Let Me Explain It More Simply. If it doesn't work for someone, bummer, but I'll still have told it how I wanted to.

#asks #behind the curtain

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