#listen can I be frank dear anon you chose the wrong person if you wanted me to get mad

[takaraphoenix]

Dear Anonymous... Reviewer,

You may not necessarily be a shithead, like the usual title of this series is, but since you’re on anon and I have no means of answering and I feel like this is something that needs to be pointed out, here we go.

To be honest I don't have anything against Percy but it would make more sense for Nico and Will to be together. Percy is also kind of oblivious, and just because he yelled "what do you mean I'm not your type!?" to Nico in the books doesn't mean he would like Nico like that because he showed affection to Annabeth. No offense, just saying because I like Nico and Will together more but you did a really good job with the story.

By the time I reach that last sentence I have literally already deleted your comment. And I do mean literally; it was already disappearing as I caught the “good job” and got so confused that I went back to my mails to reread the comment.

Listen, anon. Don’t... tell an author their ship isn’t good and that your canon ship is way better. It’s not cool.

If you don’t like Nico and Percy together, that is perfectly valid. If you prefer another ship to Nico/Percy, that is also valid.

But how about, crazy concept, don’t read fics about this ship then. It is literally marked as that ship. This isn’t even an issue about an in-world detail that was only revealed half-way through the fic that you got somehow tricked into reading. It’s marked as the ship, the ship is pointed out in the summary, I have the fic-internal warning including the main ship. You saw all of that and you know that you don’t like the ship, but you decided to read it anyway. You could just... wild idea... only look for fics that are marked with your canon ships as the pairing and read those, instead of telling me why they should end up in their canon ships. Which they really-really shouldn’t in my opinion and I have really-really strong feelings about that; but guess what - I’m not seeking out S0langelo fics to comment on how they shouldn’t get together and how they’d be better off with other partners! Because that is a dick move to do! I have the option of not seeking them out and not reading them and  just seeking out the ships I like and reading those. And I do that.

Your “no offense” is super invalid there, anon. Because by then, I’ve already taken offense. And here’s a fun fact about that phrase; people who don’t mean offense don’t offend, people who use the phrase “no offense” generally only do it because they know what they say is offensive/insulting/rude and they just want a blank excuse to get away with it anyway.

And yes, I do take offense to it. Because I spent two months writing this story. I poured my heart into it because I love this ship.

I love Nico and Percy, together. The people who come into these fics reading them for the ship love Nico and Percy. When someone clicks on a fic that is labeled Nico/Percy, they come, among other things, for the ship because we like it. I write for those people and I love hearing from them and hearing what they enjoyed about the fic or hearing them gush about the ship in general. To open my emails to someone invading my shipper space with a ship I really detest and telling me why that is superior to my ship? Yeah, duh, I totally take offense to that.

That half-assed throwaway “you did a really good job with the story” is worth genuine jackshit afterward, to be quite frank.

You had the choice to leave only the “you did a really good job with the story”. You had that choice. But you deliberately chose that you needed to preface this with how you don’t like the ship that I love. And that choice was... absolutely... the wrong one.

Look, oddly enough, I get a lot of people commenting on my fics who don’t sail my ships. And if you have to make sure I know that you don’t like my ship, then do what they do - “this is normally not my ship, but you did a really good job with the story”. Message received, you made sure I know you don’t like the ship without irritating me with unnecessary details and objective opinions, all done.

Like I said in the opening, this doesn’t qualify for the usual “Dear Anonymous Shithead” title because you’re not being directly insulting to me, but... you gotta be told that this kind of comment is absolutely uncalled for and is, in fact, rude.

And yes, obviously does Percy “show affection” to Annabeth in canon; she is literally his canon girlfriend?? That? I? I am really confused about that point, but I gotta tell you, canon means exactly what the author wants it to mean in a fanfiction; and in my case, Perc@beth just means a lesbian hiding in the closet and choosing her best friend as a beard while struggling with her sexuality. That is all that ship means to me and by the power invested in me as the author of that - total AU, by the way, like not even canon divergent or post-canon, nope this is an all-out AU - fanfiction, Percy shows his romantic affection to Nico di Angelo, the love of his life, who would never even consider dating Will, because that is the world I create.

And if that is not the world you like best, the wonderful thing about fanfiction is that you can just not read it or go and seek out a world that does cater to your personal preferrence! Go and read a S0langelo fic instead! Talk about why you think that ship is great and works in the comment section of a fic about that ship. But not in the comment section of a fic that is about an entirely different ship. This is the wrong platform for what you said. It’s inappropriate.

Don’t come into fics with ships you think don’t work to tell the author why the ships don’t work and that your ships work better. I really don’t give a rat’s ass about either your opinion or your ship. All that does is annoy me.

Here’s the TL;DR: Don’t come to people knowing they like something just to tell them why the thing they like isn’t good??

It’s really exhausting that that’s a concept that needs explaining in today’s fandom culture.

#Dear Anonymous Shitheads #yeeeah it still gets the tag #because it DOES #go into the series #I swear all you did is give me a headache anon #Fandom Life #Shipping