Well, thank you. And wrong story on my part, I suppose. But honestly, that story collection, Pieces of the Past — between the S situation and now this, this story collection seems to be pretty fucking toxic, isn’t it?
I did do some investigation into Pieces of the Past and well, the funeral director anon seemed to handle things pretty well, at least. And apparently, Chel used a real historical figure in Pieces of the Past. Doctor Sims. I…well, I don’t know what to make of that.
Picture me stumbling haggard out of the Post Mines with bloodshot eyes right now. Here's some samples of the pre-2019 Chel posting patterns that mostly (mostly...) weren't actively offensive, but made a lot of people think Chel was super-annoying. Spoiler: Etsy stuff I found no less than 4 separate threads that Chel started in multiple subforums related to their Etsy perfume business before they even had the shop open, which spanned more than a year. Sometimes, Chel would post effectively the same thing in a high-traffic thread right before or after starting another one- e.g., this one in "Things that are currently annoying you" on October 5, 2016 And then this new thread, titled "Making labels, need help" on October 6, 2016, which got zero engagement: After they started the Etsy shop, they made another new thread. Here is a list of questions Chel asked literally in the first three pages, which covered all of two weeks after it went live: I'm giving them a pass on "did you like the thing you ordered" type questions, and some amount of this sort of business shop talk would be totally normal and reasonable, but this was a lot of crowdsourcing questions that it would have made a lot more sense to consider much earlier, especially because Chel had already spent a lot of money just to be able to have something to sell. They were also posting in all sorts of other threads about it, and there were even some profile posts with even more questions and requests that turned up in my search: I wasn't reading any of this while it was going on, so I don't have a super complete picture, but at the very least Chel got a whole bunch of very specific and granular marketing advice in that thread. Chel rebranded multiple times over the course of a year, and made multiple threads about it. One of the more baffling ones was when they decided to rename the shop and said they'd already paid someone on Fiverr to help them, but didn't like anything they said, and then just... posted a list of random words they liked? They also, on multiple occasions more than a year apart, brought up the possibility that their constantly getting into fights with antis on Tumblr could be a problem for their marketing, including once making a thread called "Need Help to Break the Discourse Habit" that I did read, where they received a whole bunch of advice, and then... they started posting about people they were getting in fights with in Tumblr.txt again within days of their last response to the thread. However, people I've talked to said there was another extremely obvious problem that Chel paid no attention to, which was... all their product names were long strings of SEO gibberish. Their listings looked like spam, because they didn't even format the text to dress up the keyword stuffing. They also put out a ton of products at once, even though their biggest startup expense was legally-required safety testing that was per-product, managed to get themselves banned from an indie perfume community, and when I said Chel "paid someone on Fiverr to help them" come up with a new name, I, like Chel, was conveniently leaving out a detail I discovered from another thread: that when they didn't find him helpful, they cussed him out because he didn't refund their money for the work he did do and then dared to tell Chel "good luck." And I'm not sure if they ever actually followed up on the vast majority of the suggestions they received, which focused on the need to maintain a steady and reliable social media presence in as many venues as possible, with good visual presentation of the products, over a long period of time. But despite all that, something that really stands out to me is... Chel did not feel the need to beg people for help about what kind of scents they should develop, or which of the different options for types of ingredients to use were the best way to go. And from everything I can tell, they are actually really good at it. Everyone who actually ordered from them said the product was good, and they apparently got covered by several fairly prominent indie perfume bloggers and got glowing reviews. It's honestly wild for me looking through these threads for the first time and seeing the contrast between the Chel I know and loathe when it comes to the very basics of marketing and operating their business, and the absolutely unprecedented experience of seeing them casually mention finding problems in testing and experimenting to try to solve them. I know I've insulted their intelligence several times, but they are capable of developing specialized skills without requiring constant outside input and reassurance! They just! Don't!!! Spoiler: Kindle porn/writing stuff This both started before and continued past the Etsy perfume Situation. Chel started a thread called, "Kindle porn writers, assemble!" in 2016. Literally their first post gets straight to the crowdsourcing: Let's look at the first few pages again, shall we? The thread was reasonably active for a couple of weeks, Chel wrote one (1) thing and sent it to a publisher taking submissions for a collection, and then it quickly went dead. That said, this is by far the least objectionable of the times Chel has talked about trying to get into the field- they at least seemed like they were having fun. More than a year later, in another thread: (A version of this was originally posted in the Dead Dove thread two days earlier, but Chel reposted it to the new thread when there were no responses.) Once again they got a lot of advice, and- oh my god it was actually even the same person who gave them the most perfume marketing advice, Fs in chat for poor IvyLB who kept trying so hard- and then they made. This post. Charming. It's worth reading the whole rest of that page to showcase just how derisive Chel is about the entire concept of romance as a genre, but in short: they were unwilling to write anything except <5k word kink porn, and thought the entire idea of telling a story longer than a page or two was objectionable. They expected people to pay money for this, on a site where it is directly against the terms of service to offer it. A few days later, back in Dead Dove: Later that month, they revived the Kindle porn thread: And then a couple weeks later: They also started hanging out on smut writer subreddits at some point, and made several posts complaining about how the people there didn't like their ideas: And others where some mystery person told them X thing about the market: And once again demonstrating the amount of respect they have for the people they wanted to give them money: They eventually put up one (1) piece of short fiction! And then, less than two days later: Charming. This post was. Again. Made less than 2 days after they put on singular piece of fic up that people could theoretically spend money on. The entire rest of this thread was Chel having a pity party about it. This was all still more than a year before the big freakout, and I haven't even pulled up any of the stuff Chel did that was on my metaphorical forum lawn over in Writing What You Don't Know. People's patience had had a long time to start wearing thin before Cheltdown 2019.
i do it's horrendous Not outraged at you, idril, to be clear, just. Aaaaaaaagh!! Agh! Real historical racist torturer! giving him porn dialogue for your shitty fic to "raise awareness"! aghhhhh
Well, I’m glad that you’re not outraged at me, at least. And I don’t know if they gave him porn dialogue or not, but yeah, in that light, using him like that is kind of in poor taste.
Honestly, everything about Chel’s posts just feels self-righteous. TBH, I can actually almost sympathize with them regarding the whole "no market for trans guys” thing assuming that they're telling the truth, because it is transphobic (although honestly, Chel’s a fucking hypocrite regarding trans guys, they really are, after everything they did to S. Chel shouldn’t even be allowed near trans guys after everything they did to S), but everything else kind of feels like they’re insulting their female audience, IMHO. Then again, I think they always had issues with women. Even before the Essence situation, them making shitty comments about women (for example) was one of many reasons I felt uncomfortable in the WPARG doc. As for Chel being a socialist — well, they certainly do seem to hate billionaires with a sort of irrational passion. Which, honestly, is kind of hypocritical of them given that they were trying to exploit their romance audience for money while showing contempt for their intelligence for no discernible reason. Not liking the romance genre or not finding it your taste is one thing, but Chel seems to actively think that their audience is stupid if not actively bad people. And I severely doubt that their ship writing abilities are as good as they think they are. Regarding the Etsy thing — that’s kind of interesting, really.
Well, I spoke too soon. They apparently did give him some dialogue where it really felt like something out of an extremely crappy porn. For example, “You belong to me." I’m not going to quote the whole chapter for, well, obvious reasons, but yeah. It’s like, you would think that if you were dealing with a real life racist historical torturer, you would treat the whole matter of his victims with more delicacy and respect than that. Plus, why would you include a real life historical torturer in a fic about cartoon characters?
To be completely fair to Chel, the stuff I dug out of the Post Mines is from 2016-2018. (The reason I didn't link straight to most of it is just to make Chel's personal information and other people's discussions of NSFW subjects marginally less visible in a thread that's likely to have outside eyes on it.) The first 9 chapters of WPaRG that were written for the Disney Kink Meme went up July 2017, but Chel left it alone for a year and a half after that and only started updating again in 2019, and the incident with S didn't go down until 2022. It's entirely possible that most of what they wanted to write was totally fine within the standards of dark kink porn, content-wise, and for all I know maybe they could have found a modest niche doing writing commissions on Furaffinity or something if they'd handled things differently. Most of the frustration with Chel here that led into the 2019 incident was that talking to them felt like shouting into a black hole. They'd ask for help with all sorts of things over and over, but a lot of the time it felt less like they were actually seeking advice that they were planning to listen to and more like they were fishing for people to tell them that what they already wanted to do was a good idea and would definitely work. People kept telling them, "You're going to need patience and dedication to succeed at this, and you're going to need to stretch yourself to do things you aren't already comfortable doing, and even if you do everything right you might still not succeed, and even if you do it might take years," and then the most they'd get from Chel was "Okay," or a reason X thing they aren't already comfortable doing was totally impossible, or no response at all, and then Chel wouldn't do anything they weren't already comfortable doing and wouldn't get immediate results and then they'd make the shocked pikachu face and have a meltdown about how sad they were that they fail at everything they try. And it just kept happening- they wouldn't learn from their mistakes that it would be a good idea to do prep work and temper their expectations before they pinned all their hopes on something. They were always certain that it was going to be manageable, and someone (IvyLB) (god's strongest warrior) would tell them that there was a lot more work that Chel needed to do if they wanted to set themselves up for success, and Chel would say things like, "But I can't take nice-looking product pictures because flowers are expensive" or "But I can't write anything but 1-page kink porn because anything longer or containing more plot is meaningless drivel that makes me physically ill and I think everyone who likes it is insane." I might or might not venture back into the Post Mines, but the eternal standout for me from how often Chel did this for general writing advice is this post, from August 2018: I was so exasperated- because I knew Chel had read plenty of stories where this was a solved problem- that I responded by spamming every single obvious answer that came to my mind in the first five minutes. No less than five other people also chimed in, and I added a few more later. And then Chel replied, and it turned out that they had an incredibly specific scenario in mind that they hadn't bothered to mention, with so many details that it's unclear why they asked the question at all. None of us have a window into Chel's brain, but what it felt like to be on the other end of was that when Chel is struggling with something, they'd start asking vague, open-ended questions to anyone who would listen in the hope that someone would hand them a magical instant solution so that they wouldn't have to, say, learn basic photography or work out their magic worldbuilding in enough detail to be satisfied with it. And that's something that IMO you can see again in a much, much worse form in Chel's later interactions with S, Sparkles, Rats, Aon, and Rigel. Chel was theoretically open to improvement when the change was easy (e.g. Sparkles saying they should remove the remaining mention of an Algonquian cannibal spirit from a chapter it was in, or S just giving them suggestions for cartoons that they could use to feature Central/North/West Asian characters), but whenever it required Chel to do any serious work or introspection (e.g. S pointing out that Shan Yu's characterization had gaping plot holes from the group's lack of understanding of the history and culture of the region or Sparkles saying their depiction of trafficking was closer to conspiracy theories than to real life, let alone Aon just straight-up telling them to delete the Hanukkah fic and read actual books for at least a year), things went south very quickly.
That at least explains why they're such a dickhead, even if it doesn't really excuse it. I think to be perfectly fair to Chel, some of it could be potentially hard; nobody wants to really delete a fic that they've worked hard on (I'll definitely say from experience that when I've deleted fics, it just kills me), but that being said, Chel's feelings should have been lower priority than the feelings of Aon and other Jewish people, and there's no reason that they couldn't have just reworked the fic into a cutesy breather fic with the Jewish members of the Palace playing dreidel or having a cute Purim dance. I mean, there's no reason at all that Chel couldn't have done this. Even the Christmas special at least had the members of the Palace who celebrated Christmas having some kind of party or whatever, from what I can remember, so the Jewish members of the Palace could have just been playing dreidel and having fun. Even the Halloween special, at least one of them (I don't know if Chel posted it) did basically have just Vitani and Psycho going around and being themselves on Halloween and it was a cute sort of trick-or-treating fic. So there wasn't any reason why Chel couldn't have done something similar with the Hanukkah special or the other special. I guess to be perfectly fair, part of what set off the Hanukkah fic was some commenter suggesting it off the top of their head just because some of the Palace members were Jewish, but there wasn't any reason that Chel couldn't have handled things differently than how they did. And not to mention, there wasn't any reason to pull that particular dickery with Aon, honestly. And oof. That whole thing with Chel asking for feedback does sound frustrating. And it does kind of explain too why Chel turned on Sparkles so quickly even though obviously it's not excusable in the slightest; Chel just didn't want to do any serious work or introspection regarding trying to make sure that their depiction of trafficking didn't mimic conspiracy theories. They also didn't want to sort of do much research into Mongolian history, apparently. (Then again, didn't Chel explicitly call Mongolian culture misogynistic when they were trying to defend their stupid fic? I'm starting to wonder if Chel just thought Mongolian culture was misogynistic just because it was a culture populated by people of color and that was it. I mean, they really like calling marginalized groups misogynistic: trans people, people of color, queer people, all that stuff; I don't think they've often called non-marginalized groups misogynistic) And then of course there's the thing with the Hanukkah fic; they probably didn't want to lose a fic they worked hard on, but they also probably didn't want to work too hard in actually being a Jewish ally either. Or alternatively, they just didn't want to do too much introspection in general. Or both, or something else that I didn't consider. Incidentally, a friend of mine actually said that Chel's responses to Sparkles pretty much repeated some Q-Anon conspiracies with some of the links posted, so it's a lot worse than you think. It's one of those reasons I feel disgusting, honestly; it doesn't really feel good to get sucked into something with someone who got possibly seduced by Q-Anon. Kind of makes you want to take a shower, really. And it might have also added another explanation as to why Chel got so hostile towards Sparkles, because apparently, when something like that gets questioned, people get really very hostile towards the person doing the questioning and kind of verbally aggressive. Regarding the posting schedules for WPARG -- that is interesting. I will definitely say regarding WPARG, I think from the start it was pretty problematic given stuff like its depictions of the hyenas -- it just really felt like the start of a recurring theme in WPARG in portraying BIPOC as rapists. Basically Shenzi raping Timon, which isn't even in character for her given that she expresses outright disgust at the idea of even a semi-consensual relationship with Timon in The Lion King 1 1/2, saying that it violates the laws of nature. But she's portrayed as this sexually aggressive black woman, and even when the writers tried to at least give her a backstory as to why she is the way she is and even give her a redemption arc (um, make of that what you will), it's one of those things where it's not only out of character, but it's really kind of racist. Chel might think that they're not racist just because their heroes are people of color, but Thomas Astruc (the creator of Miraculous Ladybug) didn't really get away with that excuse regarding when he made some racist slip-ups in Miraculous Ladybug, so I don't see why Chel would think that using the same excuse is going to get them out of trouble. It's like, if I were in Chel's position, I'd at least apologize and try to fix my mistake. But I think that being said, there were still some gems in WPARG; the bit with Anna and Hans was actually in-character and plausible (it helps that Hans in Frozen really is supposed to be kind of a metaphor for...not really a sexual predator, but the sort of guy who seems nice but ultimately ends up using you and breaking your heart, which I think at least some people have dealt with, so making Hans a sexual predator might actually be plausible, if not in character), and not to mention heartbreaking. Just to begin with. It's not like Chel's completely devoid of talent or anything like that; there were some bits in WPARG that were actually some gems, but you have to dig through a lot of manure to get there. And I think the flaws in the story kind of got worse as time went on. I mean, for example, one thing I actually thought worked about WPARG was the fact that it had a sort of discretion shot regarding the worst of the violence and that was where the movie fragments actually worked, but lately, it just kind of feels like the fic's trying to up the gore and the edginess to the point where it's like...what's the point of this? Do we really need that much gratuitous gore? I mean, I guess it's all well and good if you want to make your brain go brrr, but it's not good storytelling. And a bit of a hypocrisy acknowledgment -- I admit in my Laurie Lives series, I've definitely gone into some dark content (though in this case, I pretty much have no choice. Like, as much as I hate it, I don't want to gloss over stuff like the Cult of Thorn's misogyny). And trust me, it's hard. But I think I at least try to be as careful as I can in terms of recapping that sort of thing. And yeah, maybe there were some instances where the stuff they wanted to publish between 2016 and 2018 could have been at least...passable in terms of porn? I haven't really read what they wrote in that timeline, though.
Yeah, one of the biggest reasons why I wanted chel to at minimum put up a more detailed disclaimer than "unrealistic" is that the exact reasoning chain and thought pattern in the fic chapter is verbatim one that leads people to these conspiracies and radicalizes them. Chel seeming to genuinely believe that there were strong elements of realism there set off some major, MAJOR red flags for me. A lot of leftists (people in general but I exist mostly in leftist internet spaces) think that they're immune to propaganda and conspiritorial thought because they think of themselves as the enlightened good guy and chel certainly seems to think that about themself, but it just means they can get sucked in because they think they're above it. And that was the impression of chel I came away from that discussion with. Someone who's convinced that they're too smart to ever fall for a cult or conspiracy who's been sucked in because they think they're the smartest and naturally then have secret knowledge of how the world really works. None of my other interactions have ever left me with a different impression.
(Hi, chel, dolly, or whoever may be reading on their behalf! You're not immune to conspiracies, cults, high control groups, an abusers orbit, or bigotry because you're smart. Anyone can be sucked into any one of those! That's why it's important to learn to think critically. Don't let yourself be used to harm and entrap other people because you think you're too inherently good to ever be able to do that. If you're stuck somewhere, you CAN get yourself out.)
Yeah, that sums up Chel. They just think that they're smarter than everyone, even though I don't think that they've ever done something to really make me think that they deserved that sort of inflated opinion of themselves. I think that from everything I heard from them (I know that ableist insults were pretty much their favorite insult, like saying that someone was too stupid to operate a computer just because they didn't get WPARG's "genius") and everything I read in Tez's document, they really had this belief that they were smarter than everyone else and better than everyone else, and I don't know where they got that delusion. I also know that on das_sporking, they really liked randomly referencing highbrow literature like Greek mythology to make them sound smarter or whatever, or stuff like the Westermarck effect, and I just kind of wonder why they feel the need to brag about how smart they are. Then again, I think that a lot of my confusion can be summed up as "What the fuck is wrong with you, Chel?" I mean, they just think that their way of thinking is so superior when in fact, I don't even know if they can back it up or anything like that. And that sounds about right regarding the people you mentioned, Sparkles. Hell, the scary thing about Q-Anon and whatnot is that even progressives have fallen victim to that shit according to one book I read. (If anyone hasn't read The Quiet Damage, I highly recommend picking it up. It's really a good look into how people get seduced by conspiracy theories and whatnot) It's one reason I try not to think that I'm above that sort of thing because honestly, it's so easy to get duped, especially since all this stuff really preys on your worst fears.
i mean the biggest issue really is that they can't seem to decide if it's Realistic And Raising Awareness or if it's Just Fun Idfic. you can't have it be both. if they hadn't mentioned a few times that they were trying to be representative of real-world issues, likely no one would have given a fuck about the unrealistic/borderline conspiracy theory level content tbqh.
Things like that really do prey on any vulnerabilities and insecurities you have. It's not QAnon, but most of us of a certain fandom age watched JKR get radicalized in real time! And there's a horrendous amount of antisemitism in all kinds of otherwise progressive spaces. Sometimes especially in progressive spaces! If you're not paying attention it's a very thin line from "billionaires are an exploitative elite class controlling most of the world's capital and pushing policy this way" to "group of secret elites controlling everything from the shadows especially money" and that one is a hugely prevalent antisemitic myth. Which chel's trafficking narrative fits into like a hand in a glove. That book looks REALLY interesting, I'll definitely try and check it out. Thanks for the rec!
Please don't make me think about Chel's long-running weird thing about defending JKR, I'm going to have flashbacks.
Ugh, I remember that. That was horrifying to watch. And well, I’m curious about your experience with antisemitism in progressive spaces. And why it especially seems to thrive there. That is kind of interesting, the idea of hatred of billionaires progressing to an antisemitic conspiracy theory, assuming I’ve summed that up right. And frightening. Given that Chel self-described themselves as a socialist who hates billionaires (I don’t know what billionaires ever did to them, though), I think your discussion of that has some traction. But yeah. Their trafficking narrative really does fit into that antisemitic narrative like a hand in a glove. On another note, you’re welcome; glad I could recommend something useful! A bit off topic, but I realized that Chel’s portrayal of poor people in WPARG is kind of awful. I mean, Nuka and co.’s poverty is used as kind of a shorthand for stuff like Zira molesting her own kid and getting pregnant by him, and I don’t think that I’ve seen a poor white person that Chel’s treated with anything resembling dignity. I mean, they usually end up as part of God’s Will First (the religious corrective rape Cult), and of course, Rattlesnake Jake is a poor BIPOC (in the villain backstory, he’s supposed to be from a poor rural area) who ends up in GWF, so…methinks Chel has some issues with poor people as well as rich people.
Is now a good time to say that on Tumblr, they actually accused someone who made fun of JKR apologists of hating people with BPD?
I don't necessarily want to be like "this conspiracy theory naturally follows hatred of billionaires" because frankly resentment of billionaires is perfectly natural and they're incredibly exploitative, let me be clear about that, haha. But that belief is a reasonably widely held one in leftist spaces, so if you're looking to radicalize or recruit someone into your ideology cult, it's easier to find a belief of yours that aligns with a reasonable belief they hold and convince them that it's actually the same belief, and then very slowly frog boil them in ideas until they end up in cult-like behavior and extremism where any attempts to reach them/get them out of that hole are taken as confirmation that no one but the extremist cult they're taken into will understand or accept them. Another common leftist belief I've seen that people do this to is "Israel is committing genocide." (True, imo!) But it generally goes "israel is committing genocide" > "Israel is a Jewish state" > "Israel as a Jewish state speaks for all jews" > "all jews support genocide and should be treated as if they do and if they say they don't they're obviously lying". I'm simplifying the process considerably, of course, and it is all antisemitic nonsense, but that's another in that QAnon and similar conspiracy groups like to use. A lot of leftists, myself included, have considerable distrust in the US government, and that's another avenue for people to exploit. Also, yeah, I agree, chel has at the very LEAST some unexamined issues with poor people. From what I've seen, the narrative is pretty vicious to them. (Let's not even get into the classism inherent in things like the way they treat accents or we'll be here all day.)
