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be_compromised2024-08-06 09:42 pm
archers_and_spies) wrote in be_compromised2024-08-06 09:42 pm
Entry tags:
Comm Love Letter
Hi everyone, Aster here!!! (I'm lunarvalleysinmymind wherever I'm not archers_and_spies.) Hope everyone has been having fun prompting, I can't wait for this year's fills :D Interrupting all the fun with more fun, which is the article/love letter I wrote for this community last month—I know a lot of you have already read this but I just wanted it to be somewhere on the internet so that a) more people can read it and b) it feels more Official (TM) hehe. I love you guys <3
The Monday before Christmas 2022, a lawyer in Ottawa, Ontario receives a black mug in the mail. She is delighted: snaps a picture of it without remembering to turn off the flash, sends an enthusiastic text to the Discord server in all caps. A year and a half later, it sits proudly on her DVD and action figure collection shelf, white splotches from the dishwasher and all.
The mug’s design proclaims ARCHERS DO IT WITH A RECURVE. The server is titled be_compromised. The woman’s name is—we’ll call her Alpha. But that’s not the point.
When the pandemic hit, Hong Kong was one of the first regions in the world to suffer. By the end of January 2020, I was already in quarantine, cooped up in my room to keep away from my family, who were growing meaner by the day. The Lunar New Year holiday stretched on interminably. We all felt the stress.
I was thirteen. I had a laptop in my room, and, just like everyone else on the planet, a lot of time to kill.
It would be a long while before we’d be able to go back to school, infinitely longer still for the mask mandate to lift. But 13-year-old me didn’t know it. During the day, I would attend classes on Zoom, click on so many meeting links my eyes would start to cross, but the nights—the nights were heaven. With my earphones plugged in, I had a whole arsenal of my favourite Marvel movies to choose from, and then I would scroll in the dark through my own safe harbour, a secret garden of flowers I didn’t plant, a wonderful little website called the Archive Of Our Own.
And I started to notice things.
Little things, small enough to go unnoticed by first-time readers, popping up here and there between stories about the same two characters. A T-shirt with a bullet hole in it. The cafeteria lady’s meatloaf and baklava. A mug.
You couldn’t find these details anywhere in the movies or even the comics, but enough writers were using them that it absolutely had to be more than just a coincidence. It felt maybe like an inside joke, a secret nod, a movie prop passed around and shared.
And all these fanfiction works had one thing in common: a shiny tag at the top of the fics, Community: be_compromised.
And isn’t that wonderful? Most of these people have never met each other. They only ever talk on online forums, where their love for the same fictional ship brings them together. And despite it all—the distance, the time zones—they have created a community, a sanctuary, that interweaves everyone’s stories so deeply that it can be observed even from the outside.
It’d be another year before I joined the be_compromised Discord server (which I thought would be a long, formal process too, rites of passage and everything, but all it really took was simply clicking on a link, and I was immediately part of the family). Suddenly being able to talk to so many usernames I’d idolised from a distance, who’d given me a safe space without even knowing… These people were almost celebrities to me. I was starstruck.
But over time, that turned to plain admiration. No matter their age, career, where they were on the planet, everyone was eager and welcoming, quick to dote. Only fourteen, they’d exclaim, delighted that the ripples the community was making were felt across generations.
I’ve been here for a good while now, three and a half years. While I was picking my high school subjects, going through my first breakup, writing my university essays, I grew up with this community. I’ve been among the first to congratulate new mothers, I’ve received (and cherished) homemade quilts from across the world, and I’ve lamented the time difference between Hong Kong and the States ad nauseam. I’ve mourned with the server, staring at old exchanges on my phone, struggling to understand how people I’ve never met can just disappear from the world so suddenly. How I’m supposed to feel about it.
I wouldn’t be able to count the number of life-altering conversations I’ve had with all the friends I’ve made. “If I can’t tell younger me,” one of them—Ink, from the UK—has said to me, “I can at least tell other younger people.” And I am honoured, every day, to learn from them: about politics, video games, what I can do with the degree I’m getting; how to say sorry and the existence of boxed cake mix—but I haven’t quite picked up, to everyone’s irritation, the art of going to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Sometimes, I still can’t believe I’m friends with these wonderful people. I lie in bed at night while the server is discussing shows or shoes or sharks, and grin up at the same ceiling I was crying under three years ago. Now, they know me as the enthusiastic resident Swiftie and say happy birthday to me at midnight sharp and believe so fiercely that I do, after all, have a place in this world. Having all these badass guidance figures of all ages from all over the world at seventeen is definitely not something to be taken for granted, and I try to show my gratitude in different ways (which does unfortunately include murder jokes sometimes, I’m working on it Gabrielle).
The truth is that my life would look drastically different had I not joined up. Between then, the COVID pandemic, and now, the summer after high school, life has gotten a lot lighter and freer for me: kinder friends, less academic stress, a better understanding of the world, overall. But I will never forget that when I was nothing more than a quiet kid in a bedroom, these people and the writing they were generous enough to share were what got me on my feet, dusted me off, and told me, it gets better, and that’s a promise.
So I was beyond proud to have been there when Alpha asked the server: Which one of you turned the mug in my stories into a real thing, and then mailed it to me for Christmas, and Ink simply replied, Guilty, and everyone else rejoiced over what a perfect gift it was. And for what it’s worth, even the splotches feel like a fitting analogy: Fandom friendships, like real-life ones, aren’t perfect. But they’re worn, and real, and cherished for what they are, a kind of love that crosses oceans and miles to change your life one word at a time.
Last December, I half-joked that after I finished all my exams and graduated, I’d write a paper about the community’s shared history and lore, and most importantly, about the mug. Well, the paper has since turned into an article-slash-love letter, really, but I remember how everyone’s icons lit up, contributing more to the discussion, how despite it being a throwaway idea from a kid on the other side of the world, all of them were quick to say what they always do: We’ll read it.
The Monday before Christmas 2022, a lawyer in Ottawa, Ontario receives a black mug in the mail. She is delighted: snaps a picture of it without remembering to turn off the flash, sends an enthusiastic text to the Discord server in all caps. A year and a half later, it sits proudly on her DVD and action figure collection shelf, white splotches from the dishwasher and all.
The mug’s design proclaims ARCHERS DO IT WITH A RECURVE. The server is titled be_compromised. The woman’s name is—we’ll call her Alpha. But that’s not the point.
When the pandemic hit, Hong Kong was one of the first regions in the world to suffer. By the end of January 2020, I was already in quarantine, cooped up in my room to keep away from my family, who were growing meaner by the day. The Lunar New Year holiday stretched on interminably. We all felt the stress.
I was thirteen. I had a laptop in my room, and, just like everyone else on the planet, a lot of time to kill.
It would be a long while before we’d be able to go back to school, infinitely longer still for the mask mandate to lift. But 13-year-old me didn’t know it. During the day, I would attend classes on Zoom, click on so many meeting links my eyes would start to cross, but the nights—the nights were heaven. With my earphones plugged in, I had a whole arsenal of my favourite Marvel movies to choose from, and then I would scroll in the dark through my own safe harbour, a secret garden of flowers I didn’t plant, a wonderful little website called the Archive Of Our Own.
And I started to notice things.
Little things, small enough to go unnoticed by first-time readers, popping up here and there between stories about the same two characters. A T-shirt with a bullet hole in it. The cafeteria lady’s meatloaf and baklava. A mug.
You couldn’t find these details anywhere in the movies or even the comics, but enough writers were using them that it absolutely had to be more than just a coincidence. It felt maybe like an inside joke, a secret nod, a movie prop passed around and shared.
And all these fanfiction works had one thing in common: a shiny tag at the top of the fics, Community: be_compromised.
And isn’t that wonderful? Most of these people have never met each other. They only ever talk on online forums, where their love for the same fictional ship brings them together. And despite it all—the distance, the time zones—they have created a community, a sanctuary, that interweaves everyone’s stories so deeply that it can be observed even from the outside.
It’d be another year before I joined the be_compromised Discord server (which I thought would be a long, formal process too, rites of passage and everything, but all it really took was simply clicking on a link, and I was immediately part of the family). Suddenly being able to talk to so many usernames I’d idolised from a distance, who’d given me a safe space without even knowing… These people were almost celebrities to me. I was starstruck.
But over time, that turned to plain admiration. No matter their age, career, where they were on the planet, everyone was eager and welcoming, quick to dote. Only fourteen, they’d exclaim, delighted that the ripples the community was making were felt across generations.
I’ve been here for a good while now, three and a half years. While I was picking my high school subjects, going through my first breakup, writing my university essays, I grew up with this community. I’ve been among the first to congratulate new mothers, I’ve received (and cherished) homemade quilts from across the world, and I’ve lamented the time difference between Hong Kong and the States ad nauseam. I’ve mourned with the server, staring at old exchanges on my phone, struggling to understand how people I’ve never met can just disappear from the world so suddenly. How I’m supposed to feel about it.
I wouldn’t be able to count the number of life-altering conversations I’ve had with all the friends I’ve made. “If I can’t tell younger me,” one of them—Ink, from the UK—has said to me, “I can at least tell other younger people.” And I am honoured, every day, to learn from them: about politics, video games, what I can do with the degree I’m getting; how to say sorry and the existence of boxed cake mix—but I haven’t quite picked up, to everyone’s irritation, the art of going to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Sometimes, I still can’t believe I’m friends with these wonderful people. I lie in bed at night while the server is discussing shows or shoes or sharks, and grin up at the same ceiling I was crying under three years ago. Now, they know me as the enthusiastic resident Swiftie and say happy birthday to me at midnight sharp and believe so fiercely that I do, after all, have a place in this world. Having all these badass guidance figures of all ages from all over the world at seventeen is definitely not something to be taken for granted, and I try to show my gratitude in different ways (which does unfortunately include murder jokes sometimes, I’m working on it Gabrielle).
The truth is that my life would look drastically different had I not joined up. Between then, the COVID pandemic, and now, the summer after high school, life has gotten a lot lighter and freer for me: kinder friends, less academic stress, a better understanding of the world, overall. But I will never forget that when I was nothing more than a quiet kid in a bedroom, these people and the writing they were generous enough to share were what got me on my feet, dusted me off, and told me, it gets better, and that’s a promise.
So I was beyond proud to have been there when Alpha asked the server: Which one of you turned the mug in my stories into a real thing, and then mailed it to me for Christmas, and Ink simply replied, Guilty, and everyone else rejoiced over what a perfect gift it was. And for what it’s worth, even the splotches feel like a fitting analogy: Fandom friendships, like real-life ones, aren’t perfect. But they’re worn, and real, and cherished for what they are, a kind of love that crosses oceans and miles to change your life one word at a time.
Last December, I half-joked that after I finished all my exams and graduated, I’d write a paper about the community’s shared history and lore, and most importantly, about the mug. Well, the paper has since turned into an article-slash-love letter, really, but I remember how everyone’s icons lit up, contributing more to the discussion, how despite it being a throwaway idea from a kid on the other side of the world, all of them were quick to say what they always do: We’ll read it.