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Fallout.
More than once I've said I was the inciting factor behind the splintering and shattering of a nearly twenty year old fandom community. More than once I've explained it, and at this point, I might as well write it up for posterity instead of going over it every time someone asks, no matter how much fun it is to get jaws to drop each time I talk about it.
I won't name names here, I won't cite specific dates without being certain about them, and there's parts I can only infer based on what happened after the fact.
In 2006, six people got together to found a pairing-focused archive for Spike/Buffy fics. It was both a repository and social network, with bookmarks as well as private messages. To balance things out, each of these people was responsible for a different part of the site - tech coding, policy enforcement, content moderation, that kind of labor division - to keep everyone from getting stretched thin.
One of these mods left early for real life reasons. When she came back, about 13 years later, the archive was still going strong - basically, it was the last of the pairing-focused fandom archives from the late 90s/early 2000s left hanging on, with only two of the original mods still there after various people rotated in and out of assorted positions. One of the ones who'd stayed on after rotating in was a fairly well-known personality in the small pond of the archive's social space, and becoming a mod took her from well-known to big name. The both of them were quite close before the first one returned to being a mod.
I wandered into the archive sometime in 2019, looked around at the offerings, and started writing fics nobody else has gotten around to yet. (It's a point of pride that I'm apparently, based on all evidence, the first person in the history of the fandom to write something where Buffy was old and not on her immediate deathbed - rather, an old woman who's enjoying life.)
Cut to December of 2020, when nobody's in a good space. I'd participated in a fic exchange where I provided some Do Not Wants in my signup form - not squicks, not triggers, Do Not Wants - and in the fic I received, got a rather blatant DO NOT WANT and then some. I asked specifically for no time travel, and the author thought that a suspended animation/mystic sleep type deal with the person waking up hundreds of years in the future didn't count. I checked the rules of the exchange, I checked the archive's bylaws, and I didn't see anything that spoke to the protocol of contacting a mod in this situation. Nothing to specifically or even generally outline how to address this kind of grievance.
This is when I'm the asshole in the situation.
I stewed a bit and thought, "I'm not going to acknowledge the gift." Not even giving a perfunctory "thank you for your time, I can tell you worked hard on this" comment was an asshole move on my part, as was being curt and dismissive when the author reached out to me to ask why I hadn't commented. Among other things, they said they'd worked hard to get it done by Christmas; I responded that I didn't celebrate Christmas.
The author went to the mods to complain about my behavior, which was fair. The mods discussed what to do next. Rather than any of them coming to me immediately about what I'd done, "Hey, what you did was deeply hurtful," "As a managing third party and moderator of the general space I'm informing you of the social boundary you crossed and that you need to apologize to this other member to maintain solid group dynamics," "We're going to arrange a fandom equivalent of a deposition where we'll sit everyone down, take statements, collect evidence, and figure out what happened before deciding what to do next," the decision eventually made was that I couldn't participate in the following year's exchange.
They decided on that, and they decided not to tell me as soon as they'd done so.
I should mention I had a great time writing my own entry in this and was looking forward to taking a crack at it again the next year. And I should mention that within a couple of weeks of this decision going down, I realized in the general social spaces, I was being ignored and dismissed in a way that was subtle but unmistakable.
(In retrospect, the attitude was likely, "Maybe if we ignore her she'll go away.")
I'm not someone who likes being ignored, and I'm not someone who'll go away because I'm not getting enough attention. I committed to keeping on writing fic and commenting and participating even though I could tell I was getting the cold shoulder from people who'd been reasonably warm in the past. Mostly out of a sense of spite, partly out of knowing I was still writing fic far removed from what everyone else was doing.
It's only when I signed up for the exchange in 2021 that I'm finally told that because of my behavior a year ago, even though nobody told me about it at that time, I wasn't allowed to participate, and I shouldn't reach out to the person who complained about what I'd done to hurt their feelings, not even to apologize.
This is when I'm the asshole again.
I'd gotten my feelings hurt enough by this all over again I go out of my way to tell the mods why I was curt and dismissive, and then - and this is on me - I tried to reach out to the person who wrote me that Do Not Want. It doesn't matter how much I was hurt; I violated the boundary. They complained to the mods again, as was the correct thing to do. I was then hit with a temporary suspension for the general social spaces and at no point did the mods reach out to say, "We should have the fandom equivalent of a deposition and try to resolve this conflict." And at no points did the mods directly say anything to me remotely in the vicinity of the ballpark of, "What you did was hurtful, now go apologize."
There was some disagreement in the mod team about this was handled.
Not many days later, the last two mods remaining of the group who'd founded the archive - the two mods not living in the United States' central time zone - found they'd been booted out of their positions. One was locked out; the other was pushed out. I can't speak to exactly what was said to cause all this, only what happened in the end, with the remaining three trying to handle the whole archive and assorted enterprises by themselves. The chat spaces, the discussion area, the software and content moderation policies and social management.
After a while, they moved from Facebook to Discord, which I still approve of on the grounds of a stronger separation of wallet names and fandom life, and to get eyes away from Facebook. They didn't bring in additional mods when they started the Discord server, though. They kept it at three. They were asked for clarification of statements and how they'd moderate a global group with three people in two time zones; they said they'd keep going and hope for the best.
It was evident and easy to see their ends were fraying, so then they did a sensible thing and brought on two new mods. Two new mods who were good friends to the big-name fans and in social debt to them. This resulted in a rapid change in the attitude and tone of the space, creating and cultivating a sense of an in-crowd with socially approved ways to go about the business of writing Spike/Buffy fics.
Not long after, one of the new mods permanently retires from her position, citing her real-world commitments. Some time after that, one of the other new mods says she's stepping away for a few weeks to honor her own real-world commitments, but she'd be back soon enough.
At the time, I'd committed myself to a long story that I was posting to the place largely to see if I could get away with it and if they were really ignoring me, because it wasn't quite what the new mod team wanted for their site - and it was their site by then, with the guidelines and rules already modified in small but harsh ways - or if it'd get me booted off entirely.
It wasn't me that happened to.
Someone else was writing a long fic that fit the site's new guidelines and rules to a T, even moreso than pretty much anything I'd written for the pairing. It was more popular than anything the mods were doing at the time. One night, around 10PM, they were told the story would be put up for review to see if it would stay on the site. The next morning, they woke up and found their story gone. It was popular enough people asked the mods, "What happened? Did this person do something wrong?" They asked, "What gives?" They asked, "Haven't you, the mods, written slow burns even slower than this one?"
The complaints were early enough, loud enough, and widespread enough that the story got put back. The big-name mod who'd pretty much moved in and turned it into her own space with everyone else beneath her flounced like a Livejournal professional from back in the day. She submitted her resignation notice in a public post in a very backhanded way, refusing to admit to doing anything wrong or untoward, telling everyone she was leaving and then pulled a Columbo to respond to some comments.
During this time, I'd spoken to some of the former mods, and the assessment was the big-name mod and the one who'd returned after 13 years had wanted to take over the space for some time, with disagreements on how to handle me being the inciting factor to put the plans in motion. One of the old mods logged into the site's old Livejournal account to see if she could; within days, the existence of a Livejournal account was removed from the site.
Part of the fallout of the splintering was a few people deciding to host their own Spike/Buffy archive. The original archive soon changed its title to "the definitive Spuffy archive" in response. The second, newer archive announced it could host art. The original archive decided it could do that, too, after years of people asking for it.
By this point I've moved on and wasn't surprised that the new mods had also since left. About a year after this goes down, I remember the mod who flounced also had a gardening Instagram account. I figured I'd subscribe to it and look at some nice flowers, thinking she'd either ignore me since I never post and rarely comment, or she'd take it as a sign I didn't have any hard feelings. Within a week, I get blocked from that account.
This is the point I decide against looking back.
Except to write it up and share, because I'm still astonished at what went down, and boy does it remain a valuable lesson in the importance of early conversations.
I won't name names here, I won't cite specific dates without being certain about them, and there's parts I can only infer based on what happened after the fact.
In 2006, six people got together to found a pairing-focused archive for Spike/Buffy fics. It was both a repository and social network, with bookmarks as well as private messages. To balance things out, each of these people was responsible for a different part of the site - tech coding, policy enforcement, content moderation, that kind of labor division - to keep everyone from getting stretched thin.
One of these mods left early for real life reasons. When she came back, about 13 years later, the archive was still going strong - basically, it was the last of the pairing-focused fandom archives from the late 90s/early 2000s left hanging on, with only two of the original mods still there after various people rotated in and out of assorted positions. One of the ones who'd stayed on after rotating in was a fairly well-known personality in the small pond of the archive's social space, and becoming a mod took her from well-known to big name. The both of them were quite close before the first one returned to being a mod.
I wandered into the archive sometime in 2019, looked around at the offerings, and started writing fics nobody else has gotten around to yet. (It's a point of pride that I'm apparently, based on all evidence, the first person in the history of the fandom to write something where Buffy was old and not on her immediate deathbed - rather, an old woman who's enjoying life.)
Cut to December of 2020, when nobody's in a good space. I'd participated in a fic exchange where I provided some Do Not Wants in my signup form - not squicks, not triggers, Do Not Wants - and in the fic I received, got a rather blatant DO NOT WANT and then some. I asked specifically for no time travel, and the author thought that a suspended animation/mystic sleep type deal with the person waking up hundreds of years in the future didn't count. I checked the rules of the exchange, I checked the archive's bylaws, and I didn't see anything that spoke to the protocol of contacting a mod in this situation. Nothing to specifically or even generally outline how to address this kind of grievance.
This is when I'm the asshole in the situation.
I stewed a bit and thought, "I'm not going to acknowledge the gift." Not even giving a perfunctory "thank you for your time, I can tell you worked hard on this" comment was an asshole move on my part, as was being curt and dismissive when the author reached out to me to ask why I hadn't commented. Among other things, they said they'd worked hard to get it done by Christmas; I responded that I didn't celebrate Christmas.
The author went to the mods to complain about my behavior, which was fair. The mods discussed what to do next. Rather than any of them coming to me immediately about what I'd done, "Hey, what you did was deeply hurtful," "As a managing third party and moderator of the general space I'm informing you of the social boundary you crossed and that you need to apologize to this other member to maintain solid group dynamics," "We're going to arrange a fandom equivalent of a deposition where we'll sit everyone down, take statements, collect evidence, and figure out what happened before deciding what to do next," the decision eventually made was that I couldn't participate in the following year's exchange.
They decided on that, and they decided not to tell me as soon as they'd done so.
I should mention I had a great time writing my own entry in this and was looking forward to taking a crack at it again the next year. And I should mention that within a couple of weeks of this decision going down, I realized in the general social spaces, I was being ignored and dismissed in a way that was subtle but unmistakable.
(In retrospect, the attitude was likely, "Maybe if we ignore her she'll go away.")
I'm not someone who likes being ignored, and I'm not someone who'll go away because I'm not getting enough attention. I committed to keeping on writing fic and commenting and participating even though I could tell I was getting the cold shoulder from people who'd been reasonably warm in the past. Mostly out of a sense of spite, partly out of knowing I was still writing fic far removed from what everyone else was doing.
It's only when I signed up for the exchange in 2021 that I'm finally told that because of my behavior a year ago, even though nobody told me about it at that time, I wasn't allowed to participate, and I shouldn't reach out to the person who complained about what I'd done to hurt their feelings, not even to apologize.
This is when I'm the asshole again.
I'd gotten my feelings hurt enough by this all over again I go out of my way to tell the mods why I was curt and dismissive, and then - and this is on me - I tried to reach out to the person who wrote me that Do Not Want. It doesn't matter how much I was hurt; I violated the boundary. They complained to the mods again, as was the correct thing to do. I was then hit with a temporary suspension for the general social spaces and at no point did the mods reach out to say, "We should have the fandom equivalent of a deposition and try to resolve this conflict." And at no points did the mods directly say anything to me remotely in the vicinity of the ballpark of, "What you did was hurtful, now go apologize."
There was some disagreement in the mod team about this was handled.
Not many days later, the last two mods remaining of the group who'd founded the archive - the two mods not living in the United States' central time zone - found they'd been booted out of their positions. One was locked out; the other was pushed out. I can't speak to exactly what was said to cause all this, only what happened in the end, with the remaining three trying to handle the whole archive and assorted enterprises by themselves. The chat spaces, the discussion area, the software and content moderation policies and social management.
After a while, they moved from Facebook to Discord, which I still approve of on the grounds of a stronger separation of wallet names and fandom life, and to get eyes away from Facebook. They didn't bring in additional mods when they started the Discord server, though. They kept it at three. They were asked for clarification of statements and how they'd moderate a global group with three people in two time zones; they said they'd keep going and hope for the best.
It was evident and easy to see their ends were fraying, so then they did a sensible thing and brought on two new mods. Two new mods who were good friends to the big-name fans and in social debt to them. This resulted in a rapid change in the attitude and tone of the space, creating and cultivating a sense of an in-crowd with socially approved ways to go about the business of writing Spike/Buffy fics.
Not long after, one of the new mods permanently retires from her position, citing her real-world commitments. Some time after that, one of the other new mods says she's stepping away for a few weeks to honor her own real-world commitments, but she'd be back soon enough.
At the time, I'd committed myself to a long story that I was posting to the place largely to see if I could get away with it and if they were really ignoring me, because it wasn't quite what the new mod team wanted for their site - and it was their site by then, with the guidelines and rules already modified in small but harsh ways - or if it'd get me booted off entirely.
It wasn't me that happened to.
Someone else was writing a long fic that fit the site's new guidelines and rules to a T, even moreso than pretty much anything I'd written for the pairing. It was more popular than anything the mods were doing at the time. One night, around 10PM, they were told the story would be put up for review to see if it would stay on the site. The next morning, they woke up and found their story gone. It was popular enough people asked the mods, "What happened? Did this person do something wrong?" They asked, "What gives?" They asked, "Haven't you, the mods, written slow burns even slower than this one?"
The complaints were early enough, loud enough, and widespread enough that the story got put back. The big-name mod who'd pretty much moved in and turned it into her own space with everyone else beneath her flounced like a Livejournal professional from back in the day. She submitted her resignation notice in a public post in a very backhanded way, refusing to admit to doing anything wrong or untoward, telling everyone she was leaving and then pulled a Columbo to respond to some comments.
During this time, I'd spoken to some of the former mods, and the assessment was the big-name mod and the one who'd returned after 13 years had wanted to take over the space for some time, with disagreements on how to handle me being the inciting factor to put the plans in motion. One of the old mods logged into the site's old Livejournal account to see if she could; within days, the existence of a Livejournal account was removed from the site.
Part of the fallout of the splintering was a few people deciding to host their own Spike/Buffy archive. The original archive soon changed its title to "the definitive Spuffy archive" in response. The second, newer archive announced it could host art. The original archive decided it could do that, too, after years of people asking for it.
By this point I've moved on and wasn't surprised that the new mods had also since left. About a year after this goes down, I remember the mod who flounced also had a gardening Instagram account. I figured I'd subscribe to it and look at some nice flowers, thinking she'd either ignore me since I never post and rarely comment, or she'd take it as a sign I didn't have any hard feelings. Within a week, I get blocked from that account.
This is the point I decide against looking back.
Except to write it up and share, because I'm still astonished at what went down, and boy does it remain a valuable lesson in the importance of early conversations.
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That is some old-school style fandom drama right there.
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Some people are not even worth f**king with
I don’t get paid to put up with this.
I’ll never get paid to put up with this.
Yikes, check out the internalized misogyny!
Remember when this was fun?
Re: Some people are not even worth f**king with
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