by Amythyst » Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:42 pm
So yesterday evening / last night, someone got bent out of shape about something in one of viola's stories. Brief background, she posts 95% of her work on a website where her stories are available for free. (She has another site where people pay to support her work, they get early access & bonus material etc but the lions share of it is available for free.)
So this person got pissy about something they read in a story that's available free, and instead of just ######6 off and minding their own business they left a pissy annoyed comment about it. And that sparked a huge ######6 debate.
Now normally viola likes to get feedback. An average chapter will get 2 or 3 comments. 5 or 6 is nice. But when there's 10 - 20 comments in the span of a couple hours, that usually means the $#%^ hit the fan. And while viola's getting better at coping with that kind of thing, not everyone in our system can. Teg especially gets really scared when people are angry. When they're angry with us, she can spiral into flashbacks and pull the whole system down with her.
Except that didn't happen this time. I was ready to put up the defences or shut things down, but viola responded to a couple of the comments herself. She wasn't rude or harsh, she was maybe a bit snarky but we don't think she stepped on anyone's toes or anything. Then she just closed the browser and left it at that.
Then we get pinged on Discord, turns out someone viola is friends with (someone viola trusts & admires) is also friends with the person who was pissy about the chapter. We didn't know that right away, but this friend was checking in that our system wasn't upset or stressed etc. Then she talked with viola about the stuff going on, and eventually it was like she was basically getting viola's side of things, like how & why & whatever. Like she wanted to moderate I guess, between her two friends?
I'm not sure how I feel about that either way. So far it seems ok, but we'll have to wait and see if this person turns on us or not. I know viola would be upset if I blocked that person or otherwise intervened, so I hope they're not going to turn on us.
Then another author friend messaged us on Discord as well, she wasn't trying to solve anything she just wanted to know that we were ok. Other authors and creatives know what it's like when that sort of thing happens, like it can really ruin your day.
By that point it was 2 or 3 hours past when we wanted to go to bed, we'd basically had to stay up dealing with all this crap. Before we turned in though viola touched base with Teg and asked if she was ok. Teg seemed all right but she wanted us to bring her fox plushy to bed, so viola grabbed it.
Anyways, long story short, it was kind of ###$ up and I'm pissed off at people who feel like they have the right or the need to $#%^ on something they're given for free. Like seriously, just ###$ off and read something else if you don't like what an author is sharing out of the goodness of their heart? We ended up only getting about 4 hours sleep which isn't going to help us today.
On the other hand viola was really touched that one author reached out to check we were ok, and this morning we found a supportive note from another author. viola's also happy about how things went with the friend who was mediating but I'm still on the fence about that. We're glad though that Teg survived the ordeal ok, and that she just needed us to bring her stuffy to bed.
Em
Ciara(10f); Em(22f); Teg(6f); Vanessa(13f); Viola(17f); et multa magis
DID, general anxiety; previously depression, bipolar. • (New) Journey Thread