Don now the raiments of sorrow
Rejoice! Despair! It is time now for Self-Flagellation Variety Hour, starring Aja:

An anon posits this question: "I understand that you're apologizing, but this is kind of getting old. Why must you cause trouble in every fandom you join? First Hikago, and now, Inception. I want to be more tolerant, but why can't you think before you speak?"

From here:

"I am relocating this question from my LJ, where it was asked anonymously, to here, and i apologize for those of you guys on my stream who are going to have to listen to me opine about my wanky fandom past. but I promise I'm only going to say this once and then from now on i'll, idk, just point people back to this question ad nauseum. :)

You ask why must I cause trouble in every fandom I join, and the answer is: I don't. I have been in fandom for over twelve years, and I am extremely well-traveled in terms of fandoms I have actively been involved with. The number of times I have actually *done* something to cause wank in a fandom, in something like twelve years at this point, is extremely small in number. In my first two fandoms I was well-liked and appreciated, and made a group of close friends who are still my friends today. There was no wank.

But in my third fandom, I had the misfortune of becoming a BNF who was very close friends with the biggest BNF in fandom history; I also had the misfortune of being persistently harrassed by a crazy fan who was angry because I had friended all her friends; of having my filtered posts stolen and made public *with my real name attached to them*; and being asked to be someone's secret friend for six months. I didn't *cause* trouble in that fandom, I reacted to the crazy shit that was happening to me and around me. Unfortunately, my reaction was explosive when it finally came, and *yours would have been too* if you were in my position. And that explosion, which was one of the biggest fandom wanks ever up to that point, has basically followed me around ever since, seven years to the date.

When I was kicked out of my social circle in the HP fandom after that happened, I didn't stick around to cause trouble. I *left.* And then I didn't cause trouble in House fandom. I didn't *cause trouble* in Prince of Tennis fandom--though people wanked about me, and are wanking still, because I had the audacity to be a BNF and love an unpopular ship and try to get other people to love it too. And when they kept wanking about me, i didn't stay to cause trouble--I *left*. I didn't cause wank in SGA fandom, or Death Note fandom, or Dresden Files, or Yuletide, or J-pop/JE fandom, or Nobuta or Die Hard or Devil Wears Prada or Bones fandoms, or Politi-fandom, or any of dozens of fandoms I've been in over the years.

Have people overreacted to things I've done? Yes. Have I done things that I shouldn't have? Absolutely. Have I been criticized for having the audacity to *have opinions* about things and then *voice* those opinions, and have I had those opinions de-contextualized or blown up to seem larger or more threatening than they are? Constantly.

Have I been raked over the coals in ways that no one else would have been, had they not been a BNF under constant scrutiny from fandom people who like to catalogue a list of my sins and make sure that i'm constantly adding to that list at all times? You bet. Have I been forced to keep paying for sins that weren't even sins, over and over and over again in well-documented brushfires that inevitably break out the moment anyone mentions my name? Always.

And then there's Hikago, which basically I can't talk about without feeling a twist in my gut. I loved that fandom and that canon and I still do, so much. I was actively devoted to Hikago fandom for four years, and the whole time, I never strayed much outside of my friends list, because it was pretty obvious when I did that no one wanted me there. And I felt like every time I did put myself out there publicly, I was met with hostility and derision and contempt. If you actually look at my journal and the ways I interacted with Hikago fandom, you will see lots and lots of love for Hikago fandom. You won't see any negativity from me. I tried very hard to bring absolutely nothing but love to that fandom.

And what can I say? I failed.

My one regret--my biggest personal regret--in fandom, is that when I made that plagiarism post, I wasn't being the person I believe myself to be. I was being the person everyone in Hikago fandom had expected me to be all along--the person they thought was malicious and power-hungry and unconcerned with the influence she wielded. The reality is that I was making that post because my friend whom I loved was being plagiarized (and I still, completely, believe that it was plagiarism, though perhaps subconsciously done). And I seriously did make that post out of the best intent. But what I regret most was that I put that noble cause of PLAGIARISM IS BAD ahead of all those other things I valued--courtesy and respect for other people, love for the fandom whose trust I'd honestly been trying for years to win. And in the end, it was never worth that. It was never worth upsetting Cathy. It was never, ever worth allowing some members of that fandom to finally have a reason to hate me the way they'd wanted to for so long. It was never, ever worth feeling like I no longer had a place in a fandom I loved. And it was never worth driving this poor girl whom I'd never even spoken two words to before out of a fandom she had a home in.

And I'm sorrier about that than anyone. I have apologized repeatedly for what happened; I can't apologize enough. And you'll notice, again, that after I failed, I didn't stick around to cause trouble. I *left.*

I am a BNF. I am one of the most notorious members of fandom. If I try to deny that, I get trolled for ignoring my critics and pretending like I don't have influence or for being disengenuous. If I try to acknowledge it, like I'm doing now, I get trolled for being full of myself and overinflating my own importance. Either way, the one constant is that people are going to look for reasons to hate me, to belittle me, to find fault with what I do and the things I say. That is a reality that I've been dealing with for years. When people criticise me, one of the constants is that I never learn. But what should I learn, exactly? How to let fandom put a muzzle on my thoughts and opinions? How to shut up and let fandom silence me and wear me down until I'm too afraid to say anything? Should I *learn* that the moment I say "x is canon," people are going to wank over it for months, because when someone else says it it's just an opinion that nobody cares about, but when I say it, it suddenly carries all the eclat of a declaration from mount olympus? should I *anticipate* that the moment I make, for example, a meta post about many fandoms with two lines mentioning Arthur and Eames, I'm suddenly exerting a horrible influence on Inception fandom and making everyone write fluff fic? Should I *know* exactly in what new and exciting ways fandom trolls are going to criticise me with each new post I make? What am I this week? Am I a concern troll who doesn't really care about social justice, or a hypocrite who doesn't actually write women and POC? What am I this week? Am I an elite inner-circle jerk who only has friends who are minions and sycophants, or am I a shameless ass-kisser who sucks up to all the real BNFs? Am I a machiavellian social climber or am I just completely clueless? Either way, whatever it is, I am wrong! I am always, inexorably, 100% WRONG, and no matter which way fandom has to spin it, the way you'll hear about it is the way that paints me in the most negative light imaginable.

I have learned to be very careful about trying to anticipate all the ways in which fandom can misread, misconstrue, mislabel, and misappropriate the things I say in order to use those things against me in a court of wank. For every time I misstep and wind up being mocked and derided, there are thirty other times, at least, when I have carefully chosen my words and walked the tightrope of being a public persona who is under constant scrutiny. But it's a tightrope. Sometimes, *inevitably*, you fall off. And when you fall, no one remembers that you just tripped lightly over the line a hundred times in a row. Or that you have spent years bringing positive energy and fun and dedication and respect to fandom, and trying to encourage others to have fun and respect what they do in fandom as well. The fall is all anyone cares about. That's all they're there to see you do.

But what should I be in the face of that? What should I do in the face of all that horrible social pressure to fail and fail and fail again? Because all fandom wants of me is one of two things: they want the happy squee and the exuberance and the joy that I'm known for; and/or they want to mock me and deride me and take pleasure in watching me screw up over and over again. And in the latter instance, if it means having to *create* wank where none exists, they will do so gleefully. Why else would you see a person whose *sole* contribution to inception fandom has been a couple of meta posts and some very mediocre half-finished ficlets being widely blamed and criticized for harmfully influencing fandom, and single-handedly creating entire fandom trends? Or, as another example, an openly bisexual woman who writes and recs femslash and het, recs both regularly, and has a "girls are awesome" tag on delicious, being widely promoted as only writing m/m slash?

The only world in which that makes sense is a world in which the reality of what I actually do is irrelevant to the fabrication of who I am. And that persona is destined to be the scapegoat for whatever fandom wants to wank about this week. That person has no hope of ever getting it right. That person has no hope of learning, because fandom is never going to allow that person to learn. As soon as she picks herself up and gets back on her own two feet, fandom is going to find a new way to trip her, because that is what fandom delights in.

Other than taking on a whole new identity altogether, what could anyone be in the face of that?

In 2003, on the last day of an HP con in Orlando, I burst into tears when my friend ana mentioned (that person who harrassed me from before). I told her in between sobs that I was upset because this person was inhibiting my ability to "bring good things to the fandom." And ana told me then that the only reason she was impeding my ability to bring good things to the fandom was because I was letting her get to me.

So. You ask me 'why don't I ever learn' and I reply, because fandom won't let me. But the flip side of that is that neither am I going to let fandom get to me. I'm not going to let fandom keep me from being the most loving, joyous, generous, fun person I can be. I'm not going to let fandom strip me of my commitment to my core values, one of which is that when you see injustice or unkindness or bullying, you speak out and you do your best to stop it. I'm not going to stop changing and trying to absorb the lessons that I learn from all the other people who are much smarter than me at a) being in fandom without tripping and falling, and b) applying concepts of social justice to their daily life. I'm not going to stop talking about misogyny and how we need to do better, and I'm not going to stop challenging myself to do better, and if that draws criticism, fine.

I'm going to draw criticism no matter what I do. I accepted that years ago. But since I'm going to draw it anyway, I'm going to try to make sure that I draw it for being the most authentic, sincere, and good-hearted person I can be. And I hope, honestly, that for all the times I am going to be wanked in the future, because I will be, that the most you can say is that "oh, that's aja being (insert adjective of the week here)"--and not that I ever have been untrue to myself or my beliefs, or genuinely unkind or harmful to anyone else.

i'm so sorry for the length of this response, but i felt like you might actually be receptive to an honest answer. obviously i am responding not to just you, but to the last several weeks (years????) of wank, to which i rarely have a chance to honestly, safely respond."

To summarize:
* It's never Aja's fault
* It's always Aja's fault
* What is this, a fandom for ANTS?

Also, fail_fandomanon's thoughts on the matter.

Note: This is a follow-up to a previous post on uff. Thanks to the mice at wank_report.

ETA: There is apparently more of this, if you are not still gorged on Halloween candy.