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annakacoyett · 6 months

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Parents, whatever you do, please please PLEASE don't take away your children's lifelines, especially when they're in a vulnerable age.

Today, my dad made me delete my AO3 account and the emotional pushback was one of the worst feelings I've experienced.

It's not like it was unguided either, nor was the decision to do so uninformed.

My dad only wants the best for me, both my parents do, and I know that. I know that they love me, and I know that they'll be there for me in more ways than one.

But on some days, it's really fucking hard to see that.

Today was one of those days.

I've been briefed with the dangers of the internet at that start of grade five. I have had my issues with technology misuse as well. In those times, my only interest was youtube and shitty (and I say that with the most loving tone possible) gacha glms with cliche plotlines.

I loved reading, anyone that knows me can tell you that. I have more books stacked in my room than my mom's study. I also love animes and cartoons--- what kid doesn't? I discovered Darling In The FRANXX that summer and I was hooked (the love story was tragic and it was one of the first times I felt the hurt).

I love stories, I love reading them, I love imagining myself as one of characters as well.

So you can imagine what 11 year old me did when she found the existence of fanfiction. Of AO3 and a bunch of other sites like Fanfic.net, Wattpad and Quora.com.

I was estactic, more ways than one. One of the best things that came from that eye opening discovery for me was the community behind it.

People sharing their work for free? Other people loving it and being supportive to the author simply because they can? The entire treasure trove of possibilities and stories that everyone made, shared, and got love for it?

The entire concept was forgein to sixth grade me.

I was aware it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. I know how cyberbullying works, I've seen how hateful and downright terrible people can be behind a screen, hell, one of my best friends was being bullied by the entire grade that way.

(Reported it and got every single one of my acquaintences marked black on their student records that year. Some tried to bully me afterwards but by that point, I was armed with quirkless vigilante Midoriya Izuku stories and as an inspiring artist, I was feeling particularly creative. I won the school's art talent show that year with my comic being sent to every parent, student and teacher on the school's email list (Covid-19's only contribution to my life).)

Me being me, I signed up for AO3. I read for a while, and doing not much else. I had over 20 tabs opened on any given day, all with different stories. I wandered around many fandoms, all related to the media I was consuming at the time.

I remembered thinking 'why doesn't this certain fic exist?' After all, the entire concept of fanfiction was to create things that don't ever get to see the light of day otherwise, right?

I didn't hit me until the annual book week competiton (online) the school held.

I was supposed to write them. Write the stories that I love so much. Give that tiny idea a spark of life, and watch it expand and embrace other readers lovingly.

English is my second language, and my grammar was actrocious until I started reading. Reading fanfics. I never realized how annoying not having the right sequence of words can be, for the writer and for the reader as well.

Until I saw with my own two eyes a badly writen Wattpad oneshot with P.O.V. formatting and horrible first person perspective.

My writing skills improved, and my teachers were questioning me left and right about my supposed misuse of 'online writing/paraphrasing tools'. It was amazing seeing how my grades improved.

But I was still hesitant.

I asked my mom to see if I should write a story that I thought of. She told me fiction wouldn't help me later in life, that living in a delusional fantasy world wasn't what made her and dad sucessful (in words a 6th grader can unserstand).

I asked my dad the same thing. He looked me in the eyes and told me that if I couldn't solve a motherfucking math problem as easy as the one I asked him for help the other day*, I shouldn't be daydreaming about doing useless shit like this (again, in words an eleven year old could understand).

*I was learning the Ontario ciriculum. Dad learned the government issued one when he was a kid. The contents taught at different grades vary, because they both have different endgames (my school aims to improve on student's learning skills (responsibility, cooperation, initative, etc.) while his was focused on material study value (memorizing formulas, being able to write a 6 page discriptive essay in twenty minutes, memorizing the periodic table, etc.)). What I was learning was taught to him at grade 4. He was very frustrated that I couldn't solve a simple math problem on basic probability while I was panicking/crying next to him because I didn't understand what he was yelling at me for.*

My sister was begging me to spare people from my crazy ideas because she being tortured with them was enough (she was three years younger than me).

I was lost, to be honest. But again, fanfiction spoke to me like some deranged fandom god and I remebered a line that basically boiled down to 'If you give up because haters want you to, they're winning.'

So I wrote my first fanfiction. Took me a week to muster up the courage to post it.

I waited.

Three hours later, I had my first hit.

I was up in the clouds. Somebody read it. Someone read my supposedly idiotic idea.

Twleve hours later, my first kudos came in.

I was in heaven all over again.

Days, weeks, months passed.

And the support and love just kept coming in.

I was happy. I found my community. I have people showing me that they appreciated my hard work, my dedication to my story. I improved so much since I started. I learned that it was okay to be burnt out. I learned that it was perfectly fine if you needed a break from other people, sometimes even your hobby. I learned that not everyone enjoys the same thing, and to not really mind it if I get a mean comment here and there. I learned that if it was there choice to read my work, hate on it, and make that hate known when they could've pressed the 'go back' button, they aren't worth my emotional strength.

The AO3 community taught me more about life than my own parents. It happened in the span of eight months.

I walked into grade 7 with a spring in my step, with a new confidence in myself. Fanfic stayed with me throughout those times, even when puberty forced me to make some incredibly irrational decisions during my mood swings.

Writing, creating, and sharing my artworks became one of my lifelines. It was something I loved. Loved more than reading itself.

In 8th grade, I made new friends. A new girl transferred, and she was basically glued to her laptop with her large, heavy glasses falling off every 10 minutes. I engaged her in conversation, and she asked me if I watched Haikyuu.

That opened a new dam of possibilities.

I didn't watch the anime, nor did I read the manga, but I was circulating around crossovers long enough to know much of the storyline (TPN x Haikyuu! was one of my favorites).

She and I became fast friends.

It became clear to me that she has issues of her own. Issues that I once had, but much more severe.

She starved herself during lunch for over two months because she didn't have enough time to complete her never ending extracirricular work that her parents made her do. She was shitting terrified of her own mother, so much so that during our Halloween party, she was having a panic attack and trying to eat glass because the container of food she brought broke (it dropped because someone bumped into her) and her mother made it (it took three of us to hold her back and my homeroom teacher (bless you Mr. Kaan) telling her to blame him if her mother asks for her to stop trying to hospitalize herself). She had emotional breakdowns over every single grade she recieved because it wasn't a perfect score like her parents were expecting (her grades averaged around 89-99 depending on the subject).

I did my best to help her, but I could only do so much as a kid.

So I gave her what held me through my self-justified fights with my family--- AO3, fanfiction and creative writing.

She came a long way since then. Her changes were astounding and her personality shifted from 'desperate people pleaser' to 'eccentric but pretty chill lunatic'. Her mother was less than pleased with how obnoxiously weird her daughter was getting, but my friend was finding herself again after 9 years of dedicating her life to academics and no way in hell was I going to let her feel bad about that.

My own grades were around a 95% average, and my parents were happy. My English mark only got better, and I also wrote a fic in Vietnamese to further strengthen my native writing.

Then shit hit the fan.

I came home today exhausted from school--- my head was a mess, highschool wasn't easy; especially when you have PE last period. I dropped dead on my bed as soon as a stepped into my room, sweaty uniform and all.

When I woke up, dad was home and three hours passed.

I took a shower, did some prep for dinner while waiting for my mom to finishing her run, and relaxed on the couch with my sister and dad.

Dad looked at me and said 'Oh yeah. [OP] you're not allowed to write those stories of yours anymore.'

I asked him why. He won't just randomly do things like this.

'You're a kid, you don't understand the dangers of the internet.'

He then proceeded to list out the suicide statistics from people who ended themselves from the hate they recieved online.

It's a horrible thing.

But I already knew that. I knew since I was given my dusty old tablet that needed an ethernet cable to work. That was four years ago.

What astonised me was that it took my dad, a man who was resourceful and very competent, four fucking years to find out about this.

I distinctly remember him making me quit a fandom discord server after my sister befriended someone online and got not so nice things said to her. I also distinctly remember him reading through my messages, private ones with my friends, classmates and teachers in my DMs, groupchats and emails to make sure i wasn't slacking off. He also had his IT guy install a tracking function on my laptop to monitor my shit.

I get where he was taking this--- he and mom didnt have the best online support sharing their experiences in life. They got harrased, hated on, walked all over and accused of horrible things. My parents braved through it all, and never faltered even if they got spitted on.

Now that he was armed with the knowlegde that I could potentially be harmed to death, something even worst than what he experienced, he wasn't willing to give it up to chance.

Dad didn't believe I was ready. He thought I was lucky to haven't encountered a single mean comment before he got his wake up call and enforced this. He doesn't believe in the existence of a communtiy that didn't gain anything for their contributions, but still existed.

It was too good to be true for him, and he told me as such.

I was the younger one here, by decades. I was his kid, and I was the bumbling fawn that didn't know better.

I was told I didn't understand, wouldn't understand what he was doing for me.

My mom agreed.

But I did.

I know what they're trying to do. I know that they only want the best for me, that they didn't want me to face the dangers yet.

But I already have, and came out victorious on the other side, better than ever.

I told them so seriously, and added that I was aware of the dangers and already seen what it was like. I saw what it can do to a person, my fifth grade bestie wad proof of that, and was on the recieving ends of some nasty hate myself.

This didn't deter them, only alarmed them about how nonchalant I was being. They told me I was delusional, that I was adeicted to finding praise and validation by strangers on the internet and that I was wasting my time and effoet over a useless hobby that didnt give me anything in return. That I was being a hormonal teenager who only pushed her loving parents away, that frankly nobody cares about my works, that it's shit compared to what other better, more talented and much more sucessful people have written.

They said the fact that I've seen what vitirol could be spilled online and haven't ran away with my tail betwen my legs only proved that I was vulnerable to the clutches of such a toxic environment. That I wasn't ready for the hate, and I don't need unwarranted attention over some words that a baby could babble.

That's what they said.

That was not true.

That was SO not true.

I wasn't delusional, I wasn't a starry eyed kid that was naive to the horrors of society. I didn't waste my time, I didn't maintain a 'unsustainable' hobby because of my need to feel uselessly egoistic. I wasn't being irrational over my hurt, I wasn't being weak for standing strong against the wave.

I know I wasn't the best out there, that so many more could do better than me. I learned I didn't need to work for love, that it should be given freely for those that need it. I understood that my works of art are unique and I should feel proud of them, and I believe I did it even better than they could have.

I have pride in my works, my accomplishments, my understanding and lessons that I've learned independent from what my real life adult figures taught me.

And it paid off. My works have 3-4k hits each.

Three thousand to four thousand people have read my story. My works that my family didn't believe was any good.

Even my cousins, whom I see as my older siblings, were skeptical of how sucessful I was until it smacked them right in the face.

I was proud of what I did, and I have every right to.

My dad wasn't happy.

I put up a fight. I didn't want to give up my babies, I didn't want to abandon my unfinished projects. I have three running series, I have friends that I supported, that supported me. I have people tell me how much my work meant to them, and I told other authors how much their works meant to me as well.

My mom had this thing were she tells me to do something that she wanted me to do that was either out of my comfort zone, I wasn't ready to or just plain refused--- and that she'll tell me I did a good job afterwards.

It was empty praise. But I still did it because it was the only validation I recieved as a child.

Then I had other people tell me that I did good, out of their violation. That I was amazing, that I should be proud of myself. These were total strangers on the internet. Someone behind the screen loved what I did more than my mom, my dad, my sister, my family.

It helped me. It was pretty much the only stable support pillar I had that I knew I didn't need to uselessly maintain. That the communtiy would still be there for me even if I stopped posting for several years and never came back.

Everything that I had was destroyed with a psuh of a button. Dad gave an ultimatum.

Either I never post again, delete my account completely and never step foot into AO3 again, even for reading; or all my technology would be conficasted until I did so.

It was a no brainer. I would've easily given up my techno privilegdes for my stories to live on.

But theres a catch.

Finals was in four weeks.

And in those four weeks, I have summative projects and assignments that were worth up to 50% of my grade.

I can't do any of those projects or the finals itself without my tech.

Dad knew this. He sent me some study material just yesterday.

And he was there, watching my mom press the delete button. I wasn't even able to orphan my works--- mom pressed the 'delete completely' option.

I'm angry.

I'm mad.

I'M LIVID.

I am sobbing while writing this. It hurts. It so goddam bad. It hurts because your only reliable source of support was taken away violently. It hurts because you parents treat you like a maniac anti-fan. And that they're so stuck up in their heads that they didn't even consider what it would do to me.

Dad asked me why I didn't tell them before, why I didn't come to them as soon as I saw my first hate comment, why I still stick to this despite them teaching me better. Why I felt the need to share my works to the world, because it's obviously because I want the praise.

The man that told me my works were useless and shit just two minutes before, was asking me this.

I wanted to tell him how I cried myself to sleep the day someone wrote how bad my spelling was. To tell him how his words and actions had hurt me today as much as it did years ago. How much of my efforts I put in to even get a simple 'good work' from them with varying degrees of success. How my best friend's first ever fanfic was gifted to me, on that account, because I was the only one who supported her in her dark times. How mom dragged me kicking and screaming to my first book week writing competition against my will, nearly annhiliating my desire to write before I found my community.

How recieving each kudos felt, how reading every suppoetive comment was like. How waking up one day to see a long-forgotten fic that I'd subscribe to had updated, how giddy I feel when finding just the right fic that had all elements I wanted.

It hurts.

It hurts so damn much.

My account was gone four hours ago, and I'm crying on and off for the tye majority of it.

It hurts because I loved it. I loved everything to do with my works--- the ideas, the writing, the motivational dips and dives, but most importantly, I loved sharing my work to the world.

Because I'm comforted by the fact that somewhere out there, my idea was still alive, and people are still reading it.

It hurts because my characters are part of me. Their characterization was so different from their originals, but it was my charcterization that lived to tell the tale.

It hurts because my love was there, my art was there, my people were there. Ones that don't blame me, ones that appreciate me, ones that understand me, all through a screen.

It hurts because I wrote those fics as what I wished would've happened to me, that I know could've happened to me had I have someone to guide me.

It hurts because I know that people loved my ideas and urged me to write more. Are WAITING for me to write more.

It hurts because I couldn't imagine a day were I wouldn't have taken 5 minutes out of my day and read a masterpiece, write one, or search for one.

It hurts because those wonderful stories made me laugh, made me cry, made me happy and sad and all sorts of other things.

It hurts because I enjoyed every single one of those moments.

It hurts because I spent the last four hours typing this and crying and still couldn't find the right ways to say that IT HURTS.

I hate it.

Hate this feeling. Hate my decision to stand by. Hate that my works are gone forever.

Some part of me hates it, loathes that I managed to forgive my parents for this, that I understood they meant well.

It hurts so damn much.

I want to scream. I want to kick a wall. I want to throw myself out of the motherfucking window.

I didn't do any of that.

I just cried.

It hurts so much because I know people in real life that loves my works, that appreciate my efforts, that know I wasn't just some kid that had no idea what's happening.

It hurts because those people weren't my parents.

My parents were the ones who laughed those ideas off. My parents were the ones who scrunched their noses and reminded me time and time again how much money I was costing them for the betterment of my life. My parents were the ones that love me, that I know I love, but took and torn away my love and forced me to shut it tight somewhere no one can see.

One question my dad asked me was why I didn't show him my works. Why I wanted to share it with total strangers.

This is why.

I showed it to him, once. I showed it to my mom, once. I showed it my sister, once.

Dad criticized my use of vocabulary, telling me I could do better and that to not waste my time on this.

Mom demanded to know why I wasn't working on something worthwhile, like my persuasive writing skills to aid my college application, but this.

My sister's was perhaps the kindest reaction I got.

She laughed.

She laughed so hard she had tears down her eyes, chortling uncontrollably at my six hour piece of work.

She laughed and then asked me to never write again, childishly repeating what my parents told me to in over a hundred different ways but directly.

I remebered it like it was yesterday.

She laughed, but she cared.

My sister was the only one who bothered to look at my fics, gave me any feedback and told our relatives about my work.

She was trying to make fun of me, of course, like the baby sister she is. But she cursed out my cousin who was joking about a charcter in my fic in all the curse words a tiny little kid like her knows.

My first reader was my sister, not my parents.

The first genuienely supportive comment was from a total stranger on the internet, not my parents.

The first adult to wholeheartedly read my fics, who loved what I did, was my 8th grade homeroom teacher, not my parents.

The first adult who gave me ideas as fellow fanfic author, who talked fanfic to me, was my elementary librarian, not my parents.

The ones who rupoed me away from all of that, who gave me so much grief in most terrifying fifteen minutes of my life, the ones who destroyed my golden pillar with the push of a button wasn't the dangers they warned me of, but my parents.

I think it hurts so much is because of two reasons.

One: everything I loved about myself, everything I could keep to myself, everything in my own colorful teenage world, everything that I made by myself, for myself, was non existant as of five hours ago.

Two: the people that caused it were my parents, ones I wished were everything I had against the world.

Dad told me once, that I need to be mindful of the tools I used, because if I'm not careful, they'll hurt me someday.

I find myself digusting comparing my parents as the tools in that saying, but it's true.

I still love them. I still love them aftet everything today.

But I hate them for doing that. I hate them for cutting away my lifeline.

So parents, guardians, caretakers, etc.--- please, please, PLEASE don't take away your child's lifeline. You don't know if that's their last, you won't know if you're not one of them.

For their sake.

#rant post #tw vent #parents #ao3 fanfic #please dont do this to your kids #it really #really hurts #i just want to put this out there for anyone that needs to hear this #just want to sleep en

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