Earlier this year, I took notice of a story called United Destinies: the Hero and the Hybrid by an author named Dragon’s Blaze. While the story was by no means free of flaws, I still found myself fascinated by its charm and potential, so added it to my favorites list. Soon after, I began conversing freely with the author, helping her bounce ideas off of me, and even proofreading a few of the earlier chapters. I was very much fascinated by the story and eager to see where it was going.

Unfortunately, it’s not going anywhere. As of July 29th, 2018, Dragon’s Blaze announced the cancellation of her story. It seems that over the last several months, she’s been facing a great deal of bullying from other authors on this site, and when she reached out for help, nobody was willing to give it to her. To my chagrin, I didn’t realize just how bad things were for her until it was too late.

Here is a message she gave to me, which I would like to pass on to you:

“Hey a bit of advice there are seven trolls running around the community. Farla, St Elmo's Fire, Act, The Reeds of Enki, thisispingas, BeHopeful, DPLxBeAsTxSnIpE and Talarc. The seven of them are basically jerks or trolls depending on who you ask. They basically go around nitpicking what they don't like which is rather petty. Using Arceus as Poke God, not using Pokemon in lower case (it agreed they are both proper and common nouns), calling you a j* for treating Pokemon as "slaves" (basically they dismissed Gen 5), consider the world tap as a completely necessary, demand you use horizon lines in an author note despite most using a different style, and generally telling you to use the beta readers who think like them.

It's best to block them before they become a problem for you

This was what I have everyone... I had hoped the fandom would block them.. warn one another. All it took was just me to push them to the brink twice... If everyone had joined... If people had done so... we would be free! One USER!

They all thought it was impossible... I nearly did it. I just needed more help. In both moments of triumph... I asked those that hated them to stand with me. Those they disliked to help. No one answered because they thought it impossible.

The fandom needs to stand and fight for their fiture. Because if not their will be no future.

https://www.fanfiction.net/game/Pokémon/?&srt=2&r=10

Here's the filter they use its how I fought them do so long.”

As I’m sure many of my longtime readers are aware, I have not been active in the Pokémon fandom for quite some time. My long-dormant mega-epic, Brave New World, can attest to this. As such, I was unaware that this sort of cyberbullying was going on in the background until brought to my attention. I confess that I don’t really know what to do about it, but hope that if, like Dragon’s Blaze, you have been persecuted by these individuals, or in general want to keep this corner of fanfiction.net a friendly and welcoming place, you can pick up where she left off.

I’m doing this because someone I considered a friend suffered, and I couldn’t do anything to help her. I hope that in this manner I can begin to make up for my failure, and inspire others to succeed where she could not. Thank you for your time.