[ SECRET POST #5816 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5816 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 09 secrets from Secret Submission Post #832.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/c8sFf01.png

[(Anonymous)]

Totally get you, anon.

My personality isn't an "it girl" one and I acknowledge that would never be me though. But sometimes I see people who are popular in fandom getting things I want (acknowledgement by staff like VAs and stuff, comission requests or fandom-related gifts for instance) and go "oh... must be nice".

But in my case it's really a matter of personality more anything. In one occasion I put myself out there and turns out that people hurt me a lot and take from my enjoyment. I have come to realize that I can't do it. But sometimes I wish I could.

[(Anonymous)]

DA and Not OP

I feel this a lot. Burned by a lot of petty fandom stuff that as much as I would want to put myself out there to find friends/supporters, the work of giving and getting attention by various levels of energy and personality is exhausting.
Begins to feel like I'm performing a role more than am being a person who wants to share their thoughts/creations on a thing they like.

[(Anonymous)]

I don'y want to be a BNF. I get more validation by cleaning the house or rejecting sweets.

[(Anonymous)]

I've been a sorta-BNF fanartist in a couple of relatively small-ish fandom and it's kind of a 'meh' experience. People treat you differently, sure. I've seen a lot of 'I'm afraid to approach you' reverence, so if anything, I've made fewer friends than in other fandoms. There was a lot of weirdos sending me messed up prompts and requests. Not that much hate, thankfully, but both fandoms overall were nice and there wasn't a lot of ship wars/haters/antis/etc to begin with. All the feedback was nice, of course, as well as exposure that brought me commissions, but idk. Either you gotta be a really really huge BNF to have some extra-positive changes in your fandom life, or the whole thing is just overrated.

[(Anonymous)]

I was a BNF once and it was genuinely awful and almost killed my love for the fandom. People are vicious and will look for any reason to take you down the second you step out of fandom line. And if they can't find a reason, they will create one. It was truly one of the worst experiences of my fandom life.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry nonny. It truly sucks that online fandoms are like this.

[(Anonymous)]

To this day, people I have never interacted with will post screencaps of my old twitter as some kind of "gotcha" to prove I'm "not a real fan" because I was friendly to a rival shipper. Not even friends, just friendly in one instance when apparently I should have been rude. It's all so stupid. I'm much happier being nameless.

[rosehiptea]

I was once referred to as the "BNF" of a certain ship. It was mostly a joke because hardly anybody shipped it but me. But I've written both people in the ship with other people. I'm just too much of a multishipper for stuff like that.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, rarepairs can give you a more chill version of the bnf experience-- it's a lot friendlier, my experience as being the one person to write like 40k for a niche ship meant I got to see people talk about my fic as The fic, but people also just talked TO me, which is what I really wanted.

[pantswarrior]

There are... degrees of it.

I was pretty well known in a fandom awhile back and it was kind of an unpleasant experience because with attention comes people who want to pick apart everything you do. And as I have zero self-esteem, I will admit that I took way too much of it personally and couldn't deal. I got tf out of there as much as I enjoyed writing in it, and am kind of wary of picking it back up again.

But then this year I found out that in a different fandom, a fic I wrote ten years ago apparently gained notoriety in a certain subset of the fandom. Just that one fic, in that certain subset of the fandom, so not a TON of people, and I'm pretty sure most of the fandom has no idea who I am. And that's fun because I got to know some of these folks who share my taste and we can kind of ignore the sketchy stuff going on elsewhere in the fandom and share the stuff we enjoy and support each other in making more.

[(Anonymous)]

Even if nobody is actively nasty to you, being a BNF sucks. I was sort of one in a smallish fandom and suddenly people were sending me hourly updates on their mental health and asking me to write [request] happening so they could enjoy it before they killed themselves, telling me about sexual abuse they'd suffered and asking for medical advice and money...wtf people! I eventually put up a post to refer people to (I will not give you medical advice, personal advice or money, and here's a long list of various suicide helplines) and then they decided I was a raging bitch and that's when the abuse started! But by then the canon had finished and I was super done with the fandom and it all settled down.

[(Anonymous)]

Giant fucking YIKES there. Sorry that happened to you, I can see how that would really tarnish the whole experience.

[(Anonymous)]

Jfc, that’s awful, I’m sorry you went through that! Too many people force their problems on strangers as if they were their free therapist, and abuse them when the person doesn’t act exactly how they want.

[(Anonymous)]

People get soooo weird and parasocial with no boundaries whatsoever, it's wild. I'm sorry you had that experience; it's all too common. :(

[(Anonymous)]

I used to feel the same way, but then one of my online friends became a BNF and her experience was a whole lotta nope. Nobody tried to dox her or bully her, but her fans would message her with their problems and she felt she had to reply to everyone because they were her lovely and supportive fans. It was all very mentally exhausting for her.

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, I guess I can see upsides to being a BNF—lots of fanart of your fics being more likely, proof lots of people like your work—but I'm pretty sure I personally would be miserable, especially because of the weird "other fans asking for advice and solace and help because everyone likes your work and somehow that means you're able to do free social work and also promote their fundraisers" thing.

The most I've ever done for BNFs in my fandom is write askbox fic a couple times (one's dad died, someone else was getting inundated with anon hate) and dump less than $100 in someone's kofi because I had the money and felt bad watching them, idk, kind of become a performing monkey/out of their depth voluntold social worker where they got all the fervor of the shitty parasocial creep side of fandom, with none of the money most celebrities get to show for it.

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly don't know if I would have been considered a BNF since the fandom was very small and oftentimes I felt like I wasn't so much popular as I was friends with a BNF before she became a BNF. So that when she became a BNF I was there. I'm highly aware that even online I don't have the most interesting/charming personality so when people engage with me it tends to be more for dubious reasons, not so much that they want to get to know me better.

I want the validation of having my works seen and appreciated and liked, but I am so afraid of people. People project a lot, without even meaning to or knowing that they're doing it, and between being someone who does it and wants to stop, as well as someone who has received this sort of behavior and it wears me down, being a BNF is a curse.

There are times I fleetingly want it, but at the end of the day, any form of fame is an invitation for people to use and/or hurt you. Even small fry shit like being a BNF.

[(Anonymous)]

I recently became a BNF not really intending to do that, just was really prolific and passionate about a pairing, and it really is terrible. I think the worst thing for me is knowing for certain that people will have heard of your most famous/well-recced fic or art -- the fandom is just too small for people to not have seen it, you post often enough in the Tumblr tag (not spam, with actual content) for other people active on Tumblr not to know who you are, etc. etc. And... there will just be a large contingent of people also active in those tags or who regularly talk about [pairing] that will just... never engage with your stuff. Ever. They don't attack you and they're not rude but the complete lack of engagement while continuing to reblog or comment on other people's works when you've done nothing to alienate or be mean to them just kind of kills you. At least that's how it is for me. I don't mind my stuff being completely overlooked and ignored. I don't mind writing for rarepairs that apparently only I care about. I don't need attention or comments or kudos or any of that to be happy in my fandom corner. But once you're a BNF, it'll become very obvious and salient to you that people you've had either no interactions with or you've tried to be friendly to will just hate and pointedly ignore you for years, and that's what I've hated the most, to be honest.

So like, being well-known and a big presence in fandom is just an unavoidably terrible experience, in my opinion.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, thank you to everyone who commented and shared their BNF-related experiences, for proving the point to my irrational brain haha.

[(Anonymous)]

You'll have people to talk to, and then people will hate you because you have to set boundaries or you might sacrifice your mental health. It's a double-edged sword. Most people I've seen who become BNFs (speaking as a certified Fandom Old (tm) ) love the attention until they can't turn it off and when they try to, people turn on them.

[(Anonymous)]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see what it's like, OP. Everyone wants recognition.