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reptileofdoom · 11 months

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Public PSA and Callout Of Hawkshadow/Luna: A Continued Pattern of Hurt and Manipulation PART 2 of 2

If you haven't read part 1, it is linked HERE:

If you have, then where we last left off, I had been guilted into continuing a friendship that was actively detrimental to my mental health; eventually causing a very bad anxiety attack over a small issue, over which I was gaslit to hell and back with Luna's insistence to berate me, causing in me accepting all fault and blaming myself for the incident.

After this, there weren't any large fights until January. This was for 2 reasons:

a) I had received anxiety pills from my psychiatrist, which I started using anytime a conversation with Luna would make me very anxious again

b) During the period of late November - end of December, she became busy on working on her large holiday fic. Our conversations became more sparse as she was, apparently, completely consumed by it.

But we were brought back together as Luna, out of nowhere, suggested working on a fic together.

This was... weird to me. For context: Luna and I had attempted to work on fics before. We'd have an idea in DMs, talk about it, create a shared doc, and then... NOTHING from her. I am not joking when I say I would write up to 4 thousand words in a document without a single contribution from her. This was back at the beginning of our friendship. As a result, I had given up on ever writing anything with her. So for her to just suggest working on a fic together out of the blue was... really weird.

(Side note: Luna and I had a lot of fic ideas in our pinned messages. At the time it completely slipped my mind that the only reason I brought up a/b/o had been because I'd just read a fic and wanted to talk about something similar. So our discussion of the idea happened months ago - it was only after the whole fiasco was over that I remembered, oh shit, it had originally been inspired by something else. So I apologize for the unintended idea stealing.)

I am including the following screenshot as 1 - proof we really did talk a lot about so many ideas; and 2 - as the most likely theory for why she was suddenly up for writing a fic with me.

She wanted to write something, but didn't think she would have time to do it by herself. So she hit me up. This becomes ironic later on because she ended up completely destroying my ability to work on the fic.

Bonus: her changing things I myself had written in the fic and only asking me if it was okay afterward. I... didn't really feel like I could disagree and argue with her.

In the middle of everything, an event occurred which I can only refer to as The Like Drama. This event is going to have its own post because it spans 10 screenshots and is, even more than anything in this whole series of events, incredibly inane, hard to follow, and it's insane it was ever made a big deal in the first place. It is, however, a very fantastic example of Luna's casual manipulation and general obsessiveness with public image.

The Like Drama post HERE:

Back to the fic saga:

A short time after this, after editing my words and only asking permission afterwards, I was scrolling Twitter and an announcement Tweet from Luna popped up on my timeline. (I don't have the capacity to go make an alt and try to search through her account for it, but it was public and many people can certainly remember it.)

It read, in summary: that she was working on an omegaverse fic and to stay tuned. A couple of things to highlight, specifically:

a) there was no mention of me, or any co-author in the tweet

b) this tweet was made without any sort of discussion with me

c) I have an Actual Massive Trigger around pressure; something I would talk about extensively in her server. Both Raelle and Cass (vegaspetesupremacy / sketchyshit) are willing to back me up on this. It used to be so bad that I could not tell anyone what I was working on, otherwise I would be unable to finish it.

(if anyone is wondering about the legitimacy of such a trigger - I used to attend a massively abusive private school for almost 8 years. It fucking sucked.)

Luna knew about this trigger. And not only did she post a tweet like that, in what follows after, she proceeds to stomp all over my boundary.

On January 19th I woke up to the message that a friend had committed suicide.

At the same time, the fic had gone up during the night - but it wasn't what I focused on because I was emotionally broken up. I made a Twitter post about taking some time off to grieve.

After crying, I was left alone with my thoughts. And my email notifications were pinging with people commenting on the fic. So I thought: why not reply? Luna had previously mentioned finding comment replies draining; I felt like I could do something useful.

And this is where things went wrong. As mentioned, I was not in a good headspace. So when some comments featured the typical begging for more ie "please please write a chapter 2!!" I was very blunt with reinforcing my own boundary; telling them quite frankly that it's uncomfortable and if they keep going, I will block them.

Were my replies graceful? No. But I was grieving and did not have the capacity to care.

Here is my final conversation with Luna, after which we never spoke again.

That's it. That's the end of our conversation.

Luna did not reply to me for 2 entire days. During this time, she wrote and published a drabble for one of the commenters.

Formerly, this conversation also had a message or two from me along the lines of "Luna? Please respond, please." I deleted these after seeing that. (That entire conversation, I was waiting on a single "I'm sorry for your loss" from her; at one point I specifically tried to allude to my situation to see if she knew, but she did not acknowledge it.)

After 48 hours, I unfollowed Luna on Twitter and left her server; mostly to see if it would make her react.

In response, she hard-blocked me. She chose her followers and fame over our friendship for good.

During this 48-hour period, I had also thought to message Raelle regarding my general frustration, almost as a last call for help. Because to be clear: this interaction left me sobbing and wailing on the ground. In essence, I had lost two friends on a single day. I could not fathom why she was treating me this way, what horrible thing I may have done to deserve this.

Not to be sappy, but: I really, really want to be clear how much I owe to Rae. She allowed me to vent and show her what happened: I asked her multiple times if I was out of line, because I thought it must be something I had done. She was my first outside perspective on my interactions with Luna; she was the one to tell me "you don't deserve to be treated like this." Without her, I would have probably ended up crawling back and begging Luna to forgive me, possibly trapping myself in months more of miserable friendship.

And here is something incredibly scary: If Luna had just.. given a single reply. Just a single "Wait for me a few days, we'll talk later." I wouldn't be here right now.

Even months after everything happened, I was still wracked by guilt and felt like I would sacrifice anything just to have that friendship back. My friends had to talk me down, sometimes, from messaging her begging her to take me back. After the first few days, I unblocked her on Twitter and kept her unblocked for close to a month - just in case that maybe, possibly, she ever wanted to talk to me again.

I'm not under any illusion as to what this treatment is comparable to. Some people, when shown everything, have told me the word "abuse" could apply - but I hesitate to use it, and am actively choosing not to include it as an accusation; because it is heavy and loaded and I do not want anyone to misunderstand.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end here.

After leaving the work, something happened: despite me leaving, Luna had not edited the Author's Note to include mentioning me. In fact, it almost seemed like she wanted to avoid mentioning me; since the fic has been deleted, I am including proof through old DMs with Raelle (me reacting to this situation). (I become quite angry in these screenshots. I apologize for the name-calling.)

Quick context for what I mention here: After I became unable to work on the fic, Luna would reassure me "it's fine, you already did so much" when I expressed guilt. So... yeah, seeing this comment was a betrayal. PLUS the fact she froze it.

So, in my anger and frustration I decided to make a Twitter post; SOLELY because of the no-credit issue. At that point, I didn't want to expose Luna's treatment of me because I still had trouble accepting that it wasn't mostly my fault.

Here is the post I made, which turned into a thread as she made her own thread and misrepresented what I said: https://twitter.com/reptileofdoom/status/1616908647048613888?s=20

As a response to this, Luna created her own thread which she started sending to everyone. And not just everyone she knew, but asking those people to share it with everyone they know. (The thread has since been deleted, presumably after people pointed out inaccuracies and/or she realized she was just giving the issue more publicity.) The main piece of misinformation in the thread was her claiming I was credited in the Author's Note: this only became true after my post went public and she did it, presumably, as a way of covering her ass.

Proof, provided by kiwibin (thank you so much):

(shown through discord search because the chat was extremely active at the time and there are a million unrelated messages)

Additional proof of the thread being sent to Rae, her defending me to Luna, and Luna's response (screenshots provided by Raelle, thank you so much):

Bonus points: Misgendering lol. You only have my word on this, but her thread also featured a screenshot of a conversation with one of the "upset commenters" who misgendered me and Luna did not correct them, instead reassuring them she still loved them or whatever. She posted it as proof of how much I upset her followers.

These next images are of Rae crafting her response at the time, but it is what she ended up sending:

(As mentioned before, Rae is an angel.) (Cut off because stupid image limit, so I had to prioritize more important conversation.)

Finally, last of all:

There is a reason I have called all this a "continued pattern." In the time afterward, as I was dealing with my own emotional fallout and had trouble processing everything, I reached out to someone Luna had mentioned to me as a "former best friend (who abandoned her)." The conversation was... illuminating, and gives information about Luna's time in her previous fandom, MDZS.

Thank you so much, lunarwriter, for allowing me to add your voice to this.

As mentioned in these screenshots, there is a pattern:

Luna approaches someone, usually someone with some sort of "value" - either with many followers, or because of their writing/art. (in some ways, I was the exception: she messaged me because we wrote an impromptu threadfic in replies) (this would later be turned into her fanfiction Mortifying Ordeal, once again without credit to me, which I didn't think to question at the time. )

She pulls them into her circle. When we were friends, it was "invite them to the server" - which may be dead now because I was the one usually working very hard to keep it from going dead. But this part features a lot of compliments, asking to sprint together, gushing about how she loves their work, messaging a lot, etc.

Then comes the part where she gets value out of someone. Last I heard, she was doing it through collabs.

Here is where it gets... fuzzy because this part is usually in DMs. But people I have spoken to have mentioned experiencing some form of manipulation or another, usually to satisfy Luna's ego - constantly comparing followers, statistics, etc. Or in my case, becoming a sort of sounding board, someone to be a cheerleader for her and constantly comfort whenever she needs it - but heaven forbid I ask for some comfort back.

Just to be clear: the amount of manipulation used varies person to person.

Since I was vulnerable and easily taken advantage of, she used a heavy hand with me: which is why she was able to completely destroy me in such a relatively short amount of time.

If you are someone who is older, or has more "star power", maybe you haven't noticed these things! Or she hasn't felt the need to use it on you! Or you are special, or I am somehow mistaken about everything.

There is a very good reason why, in our final conversation, I pointed out she would not be acting the same way toward me if I was older and had "popularity."

At the end of the day, Luna is someone who, when allowed power over someone else, uses it to hurt people over and over again.

I expect her response to be something like this: Pick a point or two to focus on, ones where it was harder to find proof, or ones where I did not think to include some related conversation beforehand. Make her entire point around that. Claim I am trying to hurt her; paint herself as the victim. Vent to everyone around it, make very sad posts, share her inevitable "defense" with everyone. (If I'm wrong, I'm gonna donate $20 to charity. Not joking.)

As mentioned before, this isn't a call for "cancelling" or whatever. First and foremost, it is a PSA, a way to show these techniques and to help people guard against them more effectively. Second of all, it is a way for me to heal: the nature of everything made it hard to talk about these things openly without having proof lined up. By making this post, I am allowing myself to open up, to be clear about my boundaries, to be able to be honest with people and say "sorry, I can't follow you because you reblog her stuff sometimes and that makes me have panic attacks." Yes, there is some small amount of petty satisfaction to be made making this post; but that is only its very last purpose.

I want to end the post on some positive information:

I am doing alright now. I was able to move out in March and adopted a kitty in April. I am in therapy and have been able to discuss this whole issue extensively. I have a close friend group within the fandom now, who I have been able to rely on, again and again. Thank you so much, everyone - you know who you are <3

And I was going to end with an image of the kitty but :c hit image limit. So, have a good day, everyone.

#hawkshadow #vegaspete #kinnporsche the series #fandom stuff #fandom drama

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