SpicedWatch

[mx_rumpleteazer]

In the latest creepy move from Spiced, she recently updated her A03 profile and it has similar sentiments to Verhalen's A03 and DW profiles ("I write for myself"). But let me talk about this for a moment:

I do not like the fandom and how it is becoming, with bullying, ageism. (I think we should just write what we want and peacefully ignore anything we don’t like).

That's rich considering Spiced is the biggest bully in the fandom. She's been talking shit about Verhalen constantly for over a year, and still has that (edited) version of Burnt Offerings up which is an attack on him. (She should put her money where her mouth is and take that fic down.)

I've made a grand total of three entries on the subject (this will be #4) and I guess she thinks that's "bullying", even though I've never once commented on her fic, I've never messaged her, I've never contacted her in any way. It wouldn't do any good. I've kept my opinion here on my own space, where you'd have to be snooping around pretty hard to find it...

And I've said far less about her than she has about my friend, and I have a right to defend and stick up for my friend since almost nobody has. I wouldn't say anything about Spiced at all, actually, if she hadn't gone there with bullying him since mid-2020.

Also? If we were all "bullying" and "harassing" Spiced, we wouldn't still have our A03 accounts, we would have gotten suspended. Hello, there's your reality check.

"Ageism"? Are we playing Oppression Olympics now? Try being a person of color in Tolkien fandom, especially when it's the norm to see fanart of elves with very pale white skin, like the fanart that Spiced repeatedly commissions and holds as the gold standard for what elves "should" look like.

Also, I'm in my thirties, Verhalen is in his forties, AMX_Leclerc and DarthKilljoy are both over fifty. As far as supposed "ageism" of anybody criticizing her, the only issue we have is with a Gen Xer acting like they're still in fucking high school with the gossip shit-spreading for over a year, which would be bad whether they were twenty or eighty. Spiced's age has nothing to do with it, it's her behavior.

It’s better for me to go back to writing for myself

And that's why she keeps bumping Verhalen down the tag every time he updates, like she's waiting for him. That's why she posted "Fëanor as Jon Snow" with a big long snark about Kit Harington and how she'd like to hit him, which was a thinly veiled way of saying she'd like to hit Verhalen by proxy (KH is his faceclaim for Sören and Verhalen uses that as an avatar). Totally for herself. Just for fun.

By the way, nice dig at "don't like the fandom". Let me translate that for you: "Verhalen won't go away! People give him kudos! They didn't cancel him like I demanded! WAAAAAA!" Boo fucking hoo. Let's take a big steaming crap all over the entire fandom because they like someone's porn.

Comments

[darthkilljoy]

That's rich considering Spiced is the biggest bully in the fandom. She's been talking shit about Verhalen constantly for over a year, and still has that (edited) version of Burnt Offerings up which is an attack on him. (She should put her money where her mouth is and take that fic down.)

Yes. But also, this is not an isolated incident. With the exceptions of Narya and Verhalen, every single person Spiced has collaborated with or allowed to borrow her OCs has left Tolkien fandom, most of whom have disappeared from the Internet entirely. This is why I delurked when I did and offered Verhalen my support, because I'd been watching this pattern of behaviour for years. I am a Jew, we are not supposed to sit idly by when we see wrongdoing.

Spiced thought she could drive Verhalen away with her dramamongering, and to his credit he has not given in and gone away. He is the first person she's attacked who's dug in his heels. Good.

Meanwhile, Narya's updates are getting fewer and farther between, and almost every time she updates nowadays she has to mention Spiced and how wonderful Spiced is, which makes her look like a toady with no mind of her own, and begs the question of how much longer that collaborative relationship will last.


If we were all "bullying" and "harassing" Spiced, we wouldn't still have our A03 accounts, we would have gotten suspended. Hello, there's your reality check.

I myself have never commented to Spiced or messaged her. Like you said it wouldn't do any good to try to reason with her about any of this.


DarthKilljoy are both [sic] over fifty.

I'm over sixty, dear. 😂

[amx_leclerc]

That's really interesting that people who collab with Spiced end up leaving the fandom. Almost like there might be reasons for that.

I'd feel sorrier for Narya if she hadn't attacked Verhalen on Faerie just before Verhalen's birthday. The fuck was that shit.

[enbylicious]

i want to see narya and spiced implode. lol. narya seems too good at kissing her ass for that though. "oh here's another wonderful idea from spiced wine! she wrote half this chapter! she gifted me this art of coldagnir! isn't she the best! spiced spiced spiced!"

[mx_rumpleteazer]

Yeah, same. The part of me that tries to be compassionate wants to see Narya as a victim being controlled by Spiced, but Narya chose to kick Verhalen when he was down so I have no sympathy for her.

[ex_flameandsong751]

The way Narya ghosted me and then proceeded to say I was *~draining and difficult~* (for setting boundaries) and started wank re: Anthony, tbh, hurt worse than what happened with Spiced. What happened with Spiced hurt, but Narya and I were able to stay friends for some months after and I genuinely liked and cared about Narya as a friend and now, I wonder if she was sincerely my friend or if she put in just enough "show" (like a short fic here and there) to maintain the illusion of friendship so she could spy on me on behalf of Spiced. It's worth pointing out once again that when I said on a locked entry that Spiced's IP was showing up on Statcounter, all of a sudden that stopped and I started getting visits from proxy IPs instead (but same OS and browser as Spiced uses, and the same time of day she typically came around). Additionally, the entry I mentioned that on was filtered so there were two people who have Spiced as a mutual who could have said something to her, one is Narya, one is Ysilme. I don't get the feeling it was Ysilme.

Now, I've also wondered if maybe Narya was pressured to stop associating with me by Spiced, and has said/done what she has, since then, because Spiced put her up to it. For example, Narya didn't seem terribly invested in Anthony at all (she didn't even like him initially), so suddenly caring seems like the sort of thing Spiced would do to try to push me out of fandom, to try to sour me on Anthony or something.

And if Narya was put up to any of this by Spiced... she still made a conscious choice. To a certain extent I empathize with not wanting to be next. She *has to* have seen what DK pointed out with the other people who've left the fandom who were closely entwined with Spiced, and she's probably seen how Spiced has become more unhinged as time has gone on (she seems to be more obsessed with me now, not less). That's a difficult position to be in, but she put herself there. At any point when she and I were friends, she could have decided to stop being "neutral" and nip this shit in the bud before it escalated to the point it did. She was in an ideal position to do so with her standing in the community. Now it seems that she can only "decloak" to pay public obeisance to Spiced and that's... really fucking sad. But she made her bed, and she can lie in it. If Narya comes to me to apologize, we can talk about it, but I'm not holding my breath.

[enbylicious]

i'm glad you're still writing anthony. he has a nice ass 😂

[ex_flameandsong751]

😁

IDK if you saw my post on the subject, but I've done so much work on fleshing out Anthony's character that I don't associate him with Narya at all. She gave him a name, a profession (law), and that's basically it. I gave him his personality, a whole bunch of other stuff, and he's not even a lawyer in every universe I write (and I gave him his motivation for why he went into law, in my verses where he is a lawyer). I kind of resent that I had to change his surname because Narya decided to get grabbyhands over what was a throwaway character of hers she didn't even like. But she can go pound sand, I'm not ever going to stop writing Anthony. I already made enough concessions to those two.

Anthony has a great ass 😂😂😂

[amx_leclerc]

Spiced and I are both Gen X so I fail to see how what I've said publicly in your comment threads is "ageism". All we've said is that it's sad a grown-ass woman is acting like she's 12. That's not ageism any more than saying Donald Trump acts like a toddler is ageism.

If she doesn't like "how the fandom is becoming, with bullying", she should look in the mirror and see how she's a big part of the fucking problem. But she seems to be really into projection.

Try being a person of color in Tolkien fandom, especially when it's the norm to see fanart of elves with very pale white skin, like the fanart that Spiced repeatedly commissions and holds as the gold standard for what elves "should" look like.

^HOLY FUCKING SHIT, THIS. Way way way back when the LOTR movies were new, I suggested on a discussion forum that maybe in a fantasy world with wizards and dragons and shit, there's no reason to not cast black people (which was given as the standard reason for why you don't cast black people in historical pieces). You would not FUCKING BELIEVE the flames I got for daring to suggest maybe Legolas could be black or something.

Since that time I've flown under the radar. I kept to myself and quietly enjoyed my shit for years, lurking in some spaces but not really coming out to try to make friends and find myself disappointed again. In 2017 Verhalen had a Star Wars AU series, which he pulled down, that got into real talk about the brutal reality of war and combat PTSD, and he seemed very gracious in his comments so I decided to take a chance on saying hi. I'm still glad I did. There are many assholes in fandom, but Verhalen's not one of them.

Spiced, though, can go fuck herself.

And I'll admit that way back in 2020 when this started I'd been tempted to leave a nasty comment but I didn't, I still haven't, and I've never messaged Spiced on any platform. It isn't worth my time or my spoons, and I'm not risking my account for her. She needs to get the fuck over herself if she thinks a small few of us saying a thing over here in this tiny corner is exactly the same as the smear campaign she's been running against Verhalen for over a year. Her disabling comments all of a sudden isn't because she's getting "bullied" by any of us, it's because she wants to pretend she is as a ploy for sympathy and attention. Anyone with two fucking brain cells to rub together can figure it out that none of us are trolling her or we would have gotten banned from A03 already. She's mad that Verhalen won't leave the fandom and still gets kudos from people, more than she is on some stuff, so now she's all "I don't like the fandom" and doesn't see the problem is her.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

She might be responding to this comment from you and failed to notice where you said you're in your fifties. I didn't read your comment as ageism, you were addressing a kind of specific behavior. If Spiced was in her twenties it would still be apt to say she's behaving like a hag. The thing is you can be old and still not be the "old people stereotype" of mean people.

That said, that comment was tame compared to all the nasty shit-slinging at Verhalen. And it's hypocritical for Spiced to cry "ageism" over that when her fic is full of racism, misogyny, and she's been bullying an LGBT+ disabled person for over a year. Maybe she'll claim it has nothing to do with it, but it's a really bad look combined with the casual bigotry I've observed in other areas from her. It's not a coincidence that of the five people who've discussed her over here, three of us are POCs.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Three POCs, three GNCs, who feel unsafe interacting more in the fandom because of her.

Maybe she'll claim it has nothing to do with it, but it's a really bad look combined with the casual bigotry I've observed in other areas from her

She can claim that but the other people she pushed out of the fandom were, to my knowledge, all cis women. Sooooo. Maybe it's a coincidence that she has such a big, obsessive problem with me and I happen to be queer/trans/crip and on a fixed income and from intergenerational poverty (while she likes to emphasize how rich and suave and sophisticated her characters are). Maybe.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

OMG have you seen her latest round of fanart? She is way hyping how rich Van is.

[ex_flameandsong751]

I've told you, I have her muted 🤣 I don't give a shit 🤣🤣🤣

I'm not surprised though, she went on and on about how rich he was when we were friends. I'm sure part of why she hates me is because Sören's not remotely posh and he'd be offended to be written that way 😂

[mx_rumpleteazer]

I like Sören the way he is.

[darthkilljoy]

It's also very tacky. It's not only in poor taste to flaunt such wealth when COVID has impacted the economy so hard, but it's not even an attractive display of wealth.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

Listen, I know people who were personally badly affected by the Texas blackouts back in February and every time I see yet another mention of how much money Van has, I think about that, and how Joel Osteen wouldn't let people in his church to get warm.

For someone who thinks the concept of an evil Eru is boring, she doesn't realize there is nothing more boring than going on and on about how wealthy and fabulous someone is.

[amx_leclerc]

The best part is she probably thinks people who watch reality TV are vapid, and that's exactly what she's writing. Van Kardashian. Vanye West.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

OK real shit: when I first saw this I did a double-take like "Is that one of the Kardashians?"

(And that's supposedly better-looking than Kit Harington, please.)

[ex_flameandsong751]

🤣🤣🤣

[enbylicious]

that is not better-looking than kit. she has problems

[ex_flameandsong751]

Vanyë

"I am happy for thee, and I wilt let thou finish..."

[enbylicious]

vanyë west i'm dead

[amx_leclerc]

It's why I edited that comment to make a note of my age. I would have made that comment if she was twenty-five, IDGAF.

It's an extremely bad look. Y'all know she'll claim that's not why, but white bigots love to shout over cries of bigotry from marginalized groups and claim they're not, as opposed to sitting down and listening to why people might be complaining or feeling that way.

[enbylicious]

i'm in my 20s but i legit do not care how old spiced is. bad behavior is bad behavior.

i wonder how long she's going to keep comments disabled. she's so much of an attention whore with the bumping to show these low-effort, shitty animations and videos that i can't imagine she'd leave them turned off forever. then again maybe she might so she can keep trying to garner sympathy over being "bullied".

(i've never interacted with her either. don't want to. don't need that bad energy on me lol.)

i also wonder how many of the people who kiss her ass will take kindly to her saying she "doesn't like the fandom" anymore because that includes them.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

I've been wondering too how long she's going to be able to endure the drought of no comments, considering her attention-seeking activities.

[amx_leclerc]

I give it till the end of the year.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Same, unless she gets enough sympathy asspats from milking the "I HAD TO SHUT OFF COMMENTS BECAUSE VERHALEN AND HIS *~FOLLOWERS~* WERE *~ABUSING~* ME" game (which... no, A03 logs IPs, I can't afford a VPN [like she uses] and just prefer to pretend she doesn't exist as much as possible, I don't have time for that nonsense with all the shit on my to-do list anyway).

[ex_flameandsong751]

*walks into thread* Hey what's up g-

[ex_flameandsong751]

OK, let me try to pull my thoughts together.

1. The "peace, everyone!" when I have "Namaste" on the public post in my sidebar that addresses the wank is... yeah. Wow when I titled that fic Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery I didn't mean "hey paraphrase my profiles".

2. I feel like she's trying to follow some sort of popularity formula by styling her "I'm just doing this for me now" (she's totally not) after my statements on the fact, and, like, I explicitly state on A03 that fandom is my escape ("pretendy fun times") and on DW I explain I'm a hermit because I'm brainweird. (Because other people have given me shit about being brainweird, so I feel it's just best for me to keep most people at an arm's length.) So she's already not grokking that my "I do this for me" thing isn't some cute rebellious statement to make me look cool, it's because I'm autistic as fuck and socially awkward as fuck; I've stated openly I don't grok parasocial relationships where I have to be friends with someone to enjoy their creation/product, like interpersonal relationships are transactional for promoting one's brand. It happens that some of my closer friends are people I can share fandom-y things with, like my roommate and like SemperViridis, but also, I like forms of media where the creators are shitty people (I'm looking at you, Marilyn Manson and Joss Whedon), conversely I have friends whose fic I have never read.

3. still has that (edited) version of Burnt Offerings up which is an attack on him. (She should put her money where her mouth is and take that fic down.)

Yeah, this. If she's so anti-bullying, why the fuck is that still in my Related Works?

And I'll say it again: I have had zero contact with her since April 2020. I tried to extend the olive branch when I saw things going pear-shaped in April 2020 (they had been declining since November 2019 and it had nothing to do with Mr. Bronze Hair), and she yeeted me from her DW and I did so in kind. Since then, nothing. I don't use social media like Tumblr. I barely leave comments on fic I do like because of crippling social anxiety, never mind trying to work up enough nerve to say something mean to her that would never see the light of day because she had comments moderated. I don't see the point of leaving hateful comments to people anyway. When I burn bridges with someone, I burn bridges. She does not exist to me anymore.

Meanwhile, I actually *was* harassed on A03 at the end of 2020 by whoever, and that's why I had comments disabled on everything for some months. I only just turned them on selectively a couple months ago but it's still off on most of my stuff. And I gotta tell you, I do *actually* write for myself and the months with no comments whatsoever was hard, which is why I took the risk of turning them back on for some things, because even if one person says "hey I like this", it's that hit of serotonin. With the bumping that you guys have noticed, it seems like a little kid shouting the loudest for attention (but I guess that's "ageist" to say or whatever) so I'd be very surprised if she doesn't turn comments back on within the next few weeks/months, she seems like she needs that serotonin more than I do. LOL.

I'd love to believe that she's trying to turn a new leaf and start to move on, but that Burnt Offerings still exists as it does and she's done things like say KH looks like a "sulky brat" who needs to get "dinged about the ear", I don't buy it.

And it's just... so easy to fucking mute people on A03 with that site skin. If my existence offends her, she should do that instead of obsess over me. Really. I had COVID, it was not fun, it kicked my ass, it made me acutely aware of how short our time is. She's gonna spend the last couple decades of her life refreshing the Silm tag to see when I update so she can bump me and "be first", like she thinks she's sticking it to me somehow? LOL OK.

4. Let's take a big steaming crap all over the entire fandom because they like someone's porn.

^She's exhibited a "my way or the highway" Silm Fandom Pope attitude as long as I've known her (she honestly did me a favor by not collaborating with me anymore, I actually have fun now and don't feel like I have to walk on eggshells because she's very just so about her headcanons and her ships), but it's particularly arrogant of her to assume that everyone in Silm fandom is going to stop reading me and leaving kudos just because she says they should. Kudos are really not that deep, and I say this as someone with OCD who overthinks everything. Kudos does not equal my endorsement of you as a person. I write stuff some people enjoy. That's all it is. She doesn't fucking own the fandom much as she acts like it LOL.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

Well, she seems to think we're all your sockpuppets or "followers", which is pretty lulz. I don't follow anyone but Allah, thank you. I'm not sure where she's getting the sockpuppet accusation from. It's pretty obvious you and I aren't the same person.

[ex_flameandsong751]

I've made my stance on religion pretty clear, which is to say that while I'm live and let live about it, I'm not a fan of religion either, so it's actually pretty fucking offensive if she's saying you (or anyone else present) is a sock, like I would write pro-Islam stuff for... what, exactly, to get away with boosting my kudos count?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Mind, I'm not anti-Islam (AS YOU KNOW), I'm just... not pro-any-religion generally (but I support the right to religion, if that makes sense).

It's also major projection because she has way more people kissing her ass than I do. I don't have "followers", I have friends and friendly acquaintances and people who just like my fic but that's it, once again LOUDER FOR THE CHEAP SEATS, kudos is not a personal endorsement. If she thinks that no works / no bookmarks makes someone a sock, at least half the people who kudos her at any given time fall into this category too, I hate to break it to her but that's like 90% of A03's population is people who are there to just read and leave kudos. You can't subscribe to someone without having an account, and I have a lot of subscribers. (No, I am not stating how many publicly.)

[darthkilljoy]

I don't write fic, that's not going to change. I do enjoy reading. I got off my tuchus to make an account when I saw what was happening to you, but that also makes it more convenient to bookmark and subscribe to authors I like.

But sure Spiced, keep thinking that we're all the same person.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

Dude, if I thought you were anti-Islam you wouldn't be here. You support the right to religion and I support the right of people to not believe in anything. Just from what little I know about your background I can't really blame you for not wanting anything to do with religion.

Someday I might write fic but it's not going to be for a long time, and people like Spiced make me afraid to post it with comments enabled, and I don't really want to post it with comments disabled. It's also insulting for her to assume that anyone who doesn't write fic who's on A03 must be a sock, which comes off like "only writers have anything to contribute to the fandom".

[darthkilljoy]

Yes, the atheist is pretending to be Muslim and a Jew! 🙄

I don't know how that woman's brain hasn't collapsed in on itself yet.

[mx_rumpleteazer]

Bold of you to assume she has a brain.

[amx_leclerc]

I want to know where she thinks Verhalen gets the time and energy to run multiple sock accounts AND make the amount of material he does (writing and fanart) on top of real life, when he's mentioned he's frequently low spoons.

[ex_flameandsong751]

I used to run a few RP accounts on Dreamwidth, in addition to this journal, to test muse voice. When COVID kicked my ass I had to consolidate onto one journal, because it's a huge fucking pain in the ass to log in and out of accounts to keep a thread going. And that's for RPing, something that's serious and meaningful to me.

There is no fucking way I have the spoons to do the amount of juggling I would need to do to keep up with a bunch of A03 socks like that, for what, a few extra kudos? Fucking please.