Some knowledge of our fan group kerfuffle will put the following in context:
After much contemplation, I have decided not to name Listworthy5. Readers, you are all smart enough to know who he is but if you’re still not quite sure, you can ask me privately. Even though I don’t want anyone to lose love for him (this is all about me and my reaction to things you might not think are that noteworthy and that’s cool), I think it’s important for this to be out there if only for my own selfish reasons. He’s human with his flaws and unfortunately for me, the particular flaw of trusting the wrong person has affected my regard for him. So this post will not explicitly name him. Out of respect? Well, for my fellow fans more so than for him.
I would not be offended if he somehow found his way to this letter so if you, my gentle reader, feel the need to point out this post to him, you have my permission to do so. (Just be sure you point it out to the right fella. If you’re not sure, you can ask me.)
Just because I’m “breaking up” with him doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t still like to meet him someday. (I know, probably won’t happen, especially after I hit publish on this entry!) He seems like a really cool person in general. I encourage everyone to read the interviews he’s done with that other fan site as they are rather enlightening. You’ll have to find them on your own because I’m not so good-hearted to point you to the site of the person who tried to steal from us.
As for the one I call “hypocrite” in this entry, I stand by my words. She actually believes that what she tried to do was righteous but most people I know see it for what it was– a betrayal and an outright attempt at thievery.
So if you’d like some wordy fangirl melodramatics, read on. If you make it to the end, good on you!
Dear Listworthy5,
I’m breaking up with you. It’s mostly you and just a little bit of me. I wrote a version of this letter a few months ago that insisted it was all you but now I think it’s both. After all, I’m the one doing the breaking up, right?
Let me start by saying that I truly believe that you’re a good guy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to express my anger, disappointment, and, ultimately, my resignation in regards to you. I’ve read the words you’ve spoken in the fan interviews and you are warm and gracious and articulate and appreciative. Normally, these are things that warm my fangirl heart and would make me love you more. You have shared so much of yourself in those fan interviews and I’m struggling with getting past the person who’s asking the questions.
And therein lies my quandary– you have entrusted details of your life and thoughtful insights to a person who utterly betrayed the trust of fellow fans. Is it melodramatic to say it like that? Hell yes. But it doesn’t change the fact that this person is an unethical, backstabbing hypocrite who dares call herself a “fan.”
Maybe it doesn’t bother you how she got to her place of trust in your life. She cultivated your good will based on our long-standing fan account, using years of our support and calling it her own. We had made first contact with you and unfortunately for us, we trusted her to nurture that connection into the interviews that were conducted under our auspice. Maybe she spun you a tale of how she wanted to branch out of our group, that she made the decision on her own. Perhaps she left out the part where she changed the password and contact information on the twitter account in an attempt to take it for herself. She just wasn’t clever enough to cover all the bases, which is why she had to create a whole new fan account after we regained control and locked her out of all our group accounts. And because she couldn’t build a whole following on her own, she has to have you pimp out her fan site so that YOUR followers might check out her account and perhaps follow.
For this long while, I let myself believe that you didn’t know any part of the more unsavory details of her separation from our group. Even now, there’s part of me that wants to believe you’re basically “innocent” in all of this. But I think you’re smarter than that. So either you condone her actions or she didn’t tell you all the details. None of us in the group will ever publicly detail the incident with names (although if asked, I will tell exactly who I mean). I might not name you or her but hopefully there are enough clues in this letter for people to figure out things. (And if one of those people want to point you to this letter of mine, I’m absolutely cool with it. Permission granted!)
It HURTS that you chose such a hypocrite as your “fan” voice. If she had just branched out on her own without trying to steal our account, perhaps this would feel differently. But she did attempt to steal our account and if she tries to spin it a different way, WE HAVE HER WORDS. She told us of her intentions and insinuated that you approved. Did you? Maybe you did. Maybe you felt that whatever she needed to do to wrest OUR fan account from us was what needed to be done. It pains me to even consider it.
This shouldn’t feel personal but it really does. My friends and I have been supporting you and your work for several years and the hypocrite was brought into our group because of how supportive she was of you. She was certainly more active and started to hoard control over the twitter account. Please know that even though we split the duties of the social media accounts, we individually also had access to each account. As long as we posted about you and were respectful of our fellow moderators, no one really cared if someone else posted on one account or another. Except for her. I remember more than one time when a photo cross posted to the account she moderated and even though it was YOU (unlike half the posts she was posting), she deleted the photos. She wanted that particular social media account to be seen as HERS even though it belonged (and still belongs) to all of us.
So yes, it feels extremely personal to me (and to my friends as well) that you chose the backstabbing hypocrite’s sites as your official fan accounts. It’s a slap to the face to not just us but to all the other fan accounts out there that have been around for a long time. We all share our love of you and promote your work but you chose the person who insinuated her way into your good graces from the connection we created. Saying she has a “kind heart” and “gentle spirit” is such utter and complete BULLSHIT because we absolutely know better. She thought she was doing all the work in our group and we weren’t doing enough and therefore we shouldn’t get any credit at all. She used us to get to you all the while accusing us of only wanting attention from you. You probably don’t even know all of our names but you sure as hell know hers. So who exactly was wanting attention from you?
Your support of her legitimizes her “official” fan accounts. Allowing her to use the designation tells your fans that you trust her and we should too. I cannot. Our group cannot. We have held our tongues because we don’t want to shine negativity on the fandom but damn it, it really hurts that you chose her. No matter how amazing the interviews with her are, she’s still the one who attempted to break our group, to steal our account. Yet she’s the one with access to you. Your ever constant praise of her is like daggers to the heart. And because you praise her, our fellow fans follow suit because they don’t know better. And that might hurt even more.
I’ve been stubborn enough to keep chugging along with our fan group because I don’t want the hypocrite to think she’s “won.” But maybe she has already won. I don’t feel the same about you. I’ve actually lost some respect for you. The fans who follow her account think she’s great, a lot of it because you think the same. All of this uneasy energy is mine to bear. The practical side of me asks, why waste my time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it? Then I remember that the fans still appreciate our work promoting you. They are the ones who keep me going at this point. I don’t want to disappoint them even though I think they deserve the truth. I suppose if they find this letter, they’ll know some of that truth.
I do wish you well in your future endeavors. If your next project looks worthy, I might even watch it (I didn’t watch your last gig as it wasn’t my cup of tea and they utterly wasted your talent). I’ll probably still watch your past work because that one show is still one of my favorites. I hope someday I can just watch you again and appreciate your talent and forget the man. Are you that good an actor? Probably. If we ever meet in the future, I promise to be polite and adoring. I hope someday you remember that there are more fans out there than the hypocrite and that those fans deserve some praise as well. I don’t expect it for myself.
So thank you for sharing your talent. Thank you for sharing your time with the fans. Thank you for opening yourself up to that hypocrite because at least we could get some insight into you. And thank you for inspiring creativity in me, in us, in your fans. We spend our time screencapping, combing the internet for stories, posting edits, and promoting you because we care about you and want you to do well. So thank you for all of that. Even with this particular melodrama, I would never take any of it back. This was a great lesson in trust and betrayal. So I suppose I should thank you for that as well.
I wish you amazing roles and great work. I wish you long life and happiness. You seem like a really good guy and that does go a very long with me as a fan. But from me as a fangirl to you– I hope one day the hypocrite’s true character reveals itself to you. I hope it weighs on you even just a little bit that supporting her meant losing our respect for you. And just a thought– if she could betray us, what more could she do to you?
Best always,
Valerie