I hardly ever written a post that can be considered as a rant but I feel one coming up 😛 and I will dive straight into it before I change my mind and let it fester into a demon inside me. I am merely trying to get this unpleasantness out of my head so I won’t feel like biting someone’s head off.
I’ve been helping another fellow fanfic writer with her new blog. She is moving her fic from the OF to her blog due to some personal problem with some highly opinionated and judgmental ‘friends’ which prevented her from posting on the OF. It was originally feared that she may have to stop posting her story after more than 3 years of writing, with more than 200 chapters being written and more chapters still being written. However, we both put our heads together and came up with a blog for her story 🙂
These people who have been giving her sleepless nights are spying on her story thread on the OF. They have told her she is out of touch with reality simply because she has spent much of her free time writing this wonderful story, a story which explores the emotions a couple go through as they come to terms with falling in love with each other after suffering setbacks from their past love. It is a very well-written story full of drama and emotions and it has gained many readership over the years.
To me, these people who claimed to show their concerns as her friends must not know anything about passion, nor do they know this friend of theirs. Writing is her passion but they try to curb that. They think that it is wrong to be writing about love and romance because they think it means she has been spending too much time fantasising instead of doing something meaningful. Well, to me, someone who finds time to meet up with friends occasionally, go to church regularly, do volunteering work on Saturdays IS doing something meaningful with her life. She is allowed a little indulgence in the form of putting her writing talent to good use, methinks.
What riles me most is that these self-righteous people deem it necessary to spy on her, making her comeback to the OF impossible. They took turns writing and calling her to try to ‘counsel’ her but their words were judgmental and their actions intrusive. Over the past month as this has been going on, she has had several breakdowns and has difficulty sleeping, suffered nosebleed and developed rashes.
However, throughout the ordeal, she has maintained a dignified stand, refusing to stoop to their level by leveling her own judgment on them. Despite my constant call for her to stand up to them, she has chosen to counter their high-handed attitude with well-chosen words of contrition.
We spent countless chats talking about this issue and I am happy to note that she is feeling much better these days after we came up with the idea of a blog for her story and how to make it accessible to her faithful readers. I am also very proud of her for finally writing a well-worded counter-reply to one of her friend’s email which suggested she see a counselor for her problem. After weeks of telling her she should tell them what she really feels about this whole saga, she finally stood up for herself albeit in a milder manner than the tone they applied on her.
I guess these people never expected her to have an interest that is different from theirs and now that they have discovered the shocking fact about this friend, think that she might be cuckoo. Well, if that’s the case, then perhaps all writers of fiction should go see a counselor, too, because they too write about fantasies. Do you think I should go check into a clinic too?
Oh, and one of them says she’s concerned that this friend is being too friendly with her cyber pals while being closed off with her real friends. It never occurred to this person that the friend feels uncomfortable being among people who are hypocritical, superficial and talk about everything and nothing at all. Methinks that with friends like that anyone would be happier chatting with cyber pals *rolleyes*
My friend really has my sympathy because I’m so much luckier in that I have ex-classmates who know about my passion for writing fics and meeting cyber pals and they never said anything bad about that, nor do they expect me to tell them everything that’s happening in my life. We just accept each other as being different.
I am going to end this with a plea to the readers of my friend’s story (I’m sure some of you know who she is) NOT to post anything on the OF under her story thread, except to give the thread a boost when it falls onto Page 2 with innocent comments. She still holds out hope of returning to the OF one day so the story has to stay on the board until then. I don’t want to cause her more grief because that thread is being monitored and we don’t want these nosey people to know she has been talking to her cyber pals about them. Imagine what kind of emails and phone calls she’ll get from them if they know?
Oh, and if you’re one of her readers on the OF and want to continue reading her story, please send her a PM via the OF. You can send me a PM too but I doubt I can give you any more information without betraying her confidence. But if you’re one of those who spy on a friend simply to make her conform to your standard, I hope you will never be judged and spied on the way you judge and spy on your friend!
Rant over…and out!
