I’d like to preface this by saying that while I do write fanfiction, it’s probably not the kind of fanfiction you’re thinking of. Maybe this isn’t true for you, but I’d say a good 70% of the people I reveal this particular hobby to immediately jump to ‘porn.’ That ain’t it, chief. Not my genre.
Now, while I don’t write porn, that doesn’t mean everything I write is… widely palatable to a general audience. And I don’t have some freudian excuse—my childhood was fairly mediocre, and, other than some intergenerational bullshit, I don’t have a deep dark past I’m processing through the realm of fiction or whatever. There’s just something cathartic about terrible things happening to good people, and so I wind up writing what we in the community call ‘darkfic.’ Torture, murder, toxic and otherwise fucked up relationships, etc. Obviously there’s a shit ton of controversy over this sort of content, but that’s not what this post is about. I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with antishippers, doxxers, haters, and even the parents of a twelve year old who traipsed past my content warnings and got caught doing it. Between my VPN and basic internet privacy skills, though, no one has ever gotten close enough to really scare me.
Except for Jeod<3.
That’s their username. I don’t know what it means, or even if they chose it themself… I don’t know how much I know about them is true, in the grand scheme of things—but I’m getting ahead of myself, here.
I met Jeod<3 about three months into my senior year of highschool on a fic-writer’s discord server. They were a pretty active member, offering no-strings-attached constructive criticism (con-crit), the occasional beta-read, and idea bouncing. Unlike lots of other members, though, we barely knew anything about them. No cat or gecko pictures ever dropped into our designated ‘cute spam’ channel, no dinner plans were ever discussed, no relationship drama was ever cried out into the voice chat at three AM. There wasn’t even a particular timezone rhyme or reason to their activity. Just detailed and incredibly helpful advice, no further comment or even a ‘you’re welcome’ to our enthusiastic thanks. And that was fine—not everyone was on the server to make best friends, after all. But, thinking back, I don’t remember Jeod<3 ever joining a voice chat, or even hearing about them PMing anyone with non-business messages. I guess I never realized how much of a red flag it was until they started talking to me.
Now, I was seventeen at the time, and despite having my shit mostly together online, I had revealed my real age to everyone in the discord and occasionally disclosed enough personal info to indicate I was a pretty lonely kid. I think that might’ve been why Jeod<3 picked me. Or maybe they just grabbed the first darkfic writer they saw—who knows. All I know is that about six months after I joined the server and met Jeod<3, someone with the same username began leaving comments and kudos (likes) on every single one of my works.
I was ecstatic. Anyone who’s written fic will tell you a good comment is worth pretty much a firstborn child, and Jeod<3’s were long, detailed, and incredibly flattering while still remaining helpful. By the time I’d hit the summer, my writing skills and feelings of goodwill towards Jeod<3 were at an all-time high. They’d even edited some of my college essays, and I’d managed a pretty sizable scholarship with what I believed to be their help.
That summer was what I consider the beginning of my darkfic writing peak. I started a new account, MidnightOil, short for my much longer and more embarrassing ‘sock tumblr’ username. This account was for stuff I didn’t think my normal followers—who were all hooked on my sad-with-a-happy-ending, enemies-to-lovers schtick—would enjoy. I posted my first fic, a one-chapter piece detailing the brutal murder of that fandom’s protagonist at the hands of the main villain, who I decided was his older brother. It was wholly unsuccessful—three of my five comments were wishing terrible things on me and a fourth was a pornbot—but the weird part was that Jeod<3 was still my very first commenter. I hadn’t told any of my fandom friends about my new sock account, so even at the time I thought it was strange—then again, I assumed Jeod<3 was just a darkfic fanatic who wound up reading my fic without realizing it was me.
Then I got the PM.
I liked your fic, the message read. Sorry if this sounds creepy—I just recognized your writing style and wanted to let you know it was really enjoyable. Try not to get discouraged by the antis—they don’t recognize talent when they see it. It was the first time Jeod<3 had ever sent me a message without a single piece of concrit and I was over the fucking moon about it.
Do you really mean that? I asked.
Yes! they replied, I’d love to read more!
So I sent them a bit of a second fic I’d been working on—that one was more of a psychological perspective from a character’s mother, who’d canonically had some pretty shitty things done to her. I’d dialed said things to eleven. Jeod<3 encouraged me to dial them to twelve.
While they helped me complete that fic and publish it to a resounding success, and would go on to assist me in building an audience with even more pieces, their mostly business comments were now sprinkled with information about Jeod<3 themselves. I learned about their favorite place to write, tropes they hated, what fandoms they liked. I even managed to pry out their date of birth, and published a gift fic suited to all their tastes. Imagining the smile blooming across their face as they sat in the back corner of a cat cafe gave me feelings I’m still not ready to unpack.
At that point, I was mostly through my sophomore year of college and building friendships almost by accident. I had a few people to talk about with fic offline, and I’d become something of a big name fan in a few circles. My tumblr kept getting requests, I started a twitter, and the antis trying to track down my identity numbered at two. I began to get serious about cyber-security, and I realized the only person who could really doxx me was Jeod<3. All of the above created some tension between the two of us, and I went from having easy, hour-long conversations with them every day to short chats a couple times a week.
And maybe that was what prompted it. All I know is that one lazy Saturday I was leafing through my chem notes when I heard my discord notifications go off. It was from Jeod<3, who rarely initiated conversation those days.
I was feeling nostalgic recently and I drew some fanart of one of your older fics, Jeod<3 said. Would you like to see it?
If comments are worth firstborn children, uncommisioned fanart is like… all of your children plus your favorite pair of jeans. Of course I said yes, and he responded almost immediately with an image. It was a big file and it loaded slowly, but once it did…
It was from the first fic I’d ever published on MidnightOil, the one with the grisly protagonist murder. Said character was depicted shoulders up, a knife pressed to their vulnerable throat, eyes half-closed and head thrown back as far as their limited range of motion would allow. It was disturbing, because at first I thought the character depicted was me. They’d drawn him with one blue eye and one brown, a trait I have and that character did not. Still, the art was beautiful, so I shook it off. I thanked Jeod<3 profusely and, with their permission, linked it in the fic, on my tumblr, and on twitter. The image blew up, bringing fresh popularity to my ancient content.
As I fell asleep that night, all seemed right with the world. Positive comments had flooded my inbox, I’d gotten a hilarious bookmark on a stupid crack (humor) piece I’d written, and I was all set for the chem test the next day.
And then came the dream. I was lying on my back, covered in dust, every muscle screaming with exhaustion. At first I thought the dorm had exploded or something—every sensation seemed hyper-realistic, incredibly detailed. I coughed and slowly sat up, assessing my body for any injuries.
The knife touched my throat about the same second I noticed my brand new penis.
“Well, well, well,” came a cold, callous, and utterly unmistakable voice, “what do we have here?” My mind immediately placed the scenario—I was having a nightmare about that first-ever fic. I tried to speak but my lips wouldn’t move—neither would my body. I only shivered, remained frozen.
“Just get it over with,” I said, but the voice and action weren’t my own. It was like my body was talking without me—moving without me, as it leaned into the razor’s edge of the knife.
“Oh, no,” replied the villain threatening me, “now where would be the fun in that?”
Half the fun of darkfic, for me, is the drama. Experiencing it through characters who can’t feel pain or actually die is a safe outlet for us sick malcontents who long to see blood, as long as it’s spilled ethically.
But when the villain monologued his whole story to me, intercut with various forms of pain inflicted on my body, the only thing I felt was agony. Fear. Despair. When he whispered the final sentence—the one I knew I would die after—all I could do was sob in relief. The last thing I saw as darkness closed in was the villain’s hair, long, curly, and shockingly blue.
I woke up after bleeding out with tears all over my face and sweat all over my sheets. The rest of the night’s sleep was immediately written off as I sprinted to the bathroom to vomit—that was one fucking hell of a nightmare. When I stripped off my sweat-soaked pajamas, I found myself covered in bruises and scratch marks. They’d faded a little by the next morning, but it was hard to write them off as accidents I’d forgotten.
Did I think Jeod<3’s fanart had somehow caused the dream? On some level… sure? I had spent the better part of my afternoon thinking about that fic, and their art had lead to that, but I didn’t blame them. I wrote it off as something to bring up if I ever went to therapy and tried to move on with my life.
Jeod<3 sent more fanart the next day. This one was of my second fic, the woman hunched over and sobbing as a figure loomed in the foreground.
I remembered her features very clearly from canon, because I was still active in that fandom. She shared the same eyes that the last character had. The ones that made her almost resemble… me.
I asked Jeod<3, cautiously, if they’d meant to draw the woman that way. It’s just my style, they replied. Don’t worry.
That night I awoke in a kitchen, preparing lunch boxes. My body was my own, and I whirled around to find the room exactly as I remembered it from the source materials, feeling dizzy. Children were asleep at the table behind me, and slow footsteps were walking down the hall towards us.
This time, I knew what was coming.
Piloting a body that isn’t yours is a strange experience. Everything seemed slightly too far away, my eye-level was shifted, and each movement was just… off. It’s like driving a new car—your spatial awareness is fucked, and even the simplest maneuvers require some concentration. I lunged for the knife I’d been using to slice veggies, but my aim was bad and I fell short. The door slid open behind me, and the husband of the woman whose body I was inhabiting paused on the threshold.
I didn’t have to look. I’d written about it happening.
Still, I turned, knife forgotten, and faced the imposing figure. His hair, while very clearly red in canon, was cobalt blue. I froze as he entered the kitchen, boxed me in against the counter with his bulk.
“You’re so pretty like this,” he muttered, arms coming up to embrace me. My stomach jerked—I knew how this fic went. I knew how the last one had gone, too, and that we’d stuck to the script. This time, I had control of my body… could I alter it?
I screamed. The children at the table shot up—that hadn’t been my line. The man’s eyes narrowed and his hands gripped my shoulders tightly, a threat on their own.
“Come on, pretty girl. Don’t be like this.”
I needed to wake the fuck up. How? Even if I got away from the man, there was no guarantee the dream would end. Last time, I hadn’t woken up until the script had run its course… until I’d died. In a final, desperate maneuver, I spun around, grabbed the knife, and slit my own throat.
I woke up coughing in my dorm room after watching three children try to save their dying mother while their father stood to the back of the room looking more annoyed than scared. My throat burned—I’d crookedly slashed my jugular in the dream, and there was a thin line of blood there in the bathroom mirror when I checked. It welled from a very shallow cut that I couldn’t explain away.
I put on a scarf, cut class that day, and reread the canon events of the series. It wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t end with the mom slitting her own throat and traumatizing her children even further. When my discord let me know I had a message from Jeod<3, I didn’t want to look.
I had to.
This one was from a short about two siblings, one eight and the other maybe six. It wasn’t much of a darkfic, really—a rare instance of canon being even worse than my own bent.
In Jeod<3’s picture, the big sister had my eyes, the little sister, blue hair. And that night we both froze to death trying to find our way home—I couldn’t bring myself to end it early. Not when she clung to my hand so tightly. Tears were frozen to my cheeks when I woke up, and my lips were blue.
In what would become a two week period of hell, I got a little less than 48 hours of sleep. Every day Jeod<3 would send me a new piece of fanart. Every night I’d stay up as late as possible, collapsing from exhaustion to find myself immersed in the horrors I’d written. Sometimes it followed the script exactly. Sometimes I could fight. Every night I had my own eyes, and without fail another character—or monster—would sport cobalt blue hair. My body was riddled with minor versions of my in-dream wounds, growing more and more severe each time. Jeod<3 didn’t respond to my frantic questions. When I blocked them, they simply tweeted at me. My followers were confused—why hadn’t I updated? Why was I upset with all this new fanart? Was I okay? My friends on campus had all the same questions. I did my best to ignore them, even as my grades tanked. What could I do? I was wearing turtlenecks and jeans in 80 degree weather just to hide to wounds—everyone would think I was crazy if I tried to explain it to them.
The final piece of fanart Jeod<3 ever sent was for a fic I’d written a long, long time ago. What you could probably call my first-ever foray into darkfic, a scene from a much longer piece. I recieved it via PM from a random account—I only knew it was from Jeod<3 because of the art style and the dream it brought.
“Seven tokens for the fat one!” I cringed, hearing the line and managing to sit up in the corner of a cramped wooden cage. Ignoring the winged, elderly woman who bent over to talk to me, I scanned the area for the trademark blue hair. Bodily control was a major win, but it didn’t mean I was safe. This body wouldn’t come into contact with anything sucideable for at least another few hours.
There were a lot of people in the cage, smelly and loud and pushing, all crowding the walls whenever the large door at the top was opened and another unlucky schmuck was pulled out. We were being sold—though, listening to the dialogue, I obviously hadn’t had the grace to handle such an experience at the time.
That was when I spotted the blue hair—one of the men pulling us from the crate had it, tucked beneath a rough-looking cap. He was staring directly at me, and he grinned when our eyes made contact.
“You next?” On-script. I’d made it a habit to memorize the fic before falling asleep—not knowing when it would end or what I could use to kill myself was worse than the horrible anticipation that came with reading it.
“Fuck you, Jeod,” I yelled, ignoring the confused stares of my cage-mates. “What did I ever do to you?”
To my great surprise, the blue haired man answered me.
“Your reaction to suffering is quite interesting.” I blinked at him, astounded—I’d long spoken to the blue-haired folks as if they were sentient, or Jeod<3 themselves, but I’d never once gotten anything but a canned or in-character response.
Before I could say anything else, the door opened and I was pushed to the center, too distracted to stop it. They hauled me up and onto the platform, wearing nothing more than a roughspun shift and some silver handcuffs meant to stop this character from using her powers. At this point, all I could do was wait to be sold, after which I’d come close enough to some weapons for a quick end. Ahead of schedule, thankfully. Jeod<3 watched me squirm as the auctioneer rattled off a list of attributes and began to take bids. They wouldn’t stop grinning, the smug bastard, even when I met their gaze with a glare.
At that point, I was beyond fear. Yeah, bad things were going to happen to me, but I was mostly just pissed off. What did Jeod<3 have that I didn’t? Why couldn’t I fuck with them for once? I’d written this narrative—what was stopping me from flipping the script and make my life easier? So I summoned my character’s powers—which I seemed to remember included fire—and began chafing at the cuffs.
I would later recall that said character had been drugged at the time to prevent this behavior, but fuck it. I was the author.
The cuffs melted, unleashing my powers. This did glue them to my wrists. I could feel my flesh cooking, even as I ramped up my power usage and began levitating, a ball of painful flames wrapped around each fist. The crowd gasped, Jeod<3’s face fell, and I lobbed a massive chunk of burning magic directly at their feet.
They began to scream, scrambling away, but the blaze grew and spread to their clothes. And, yes, they were standing on a wooden cage full of enslaved people, so the cage’s inhabitants began screaming, too. Sometimes I still have normal nightmares about that dream. Right or wrong, I didn’t really care in the moment, and that thought terrifies me to this day.
Add it to the list of things I should talk about if I ever go to therapy.
Jeod<3’s flaming corpse eventually fell into the burning wreckage of the cage, lifeless and bald. I’d never seen a prettier sight. Once I was sure they wouldn’t come back, I headed to the panicking crowd and stole a man’s rapier, dodging attacks from event security. I was the author—plot armor was my discretion. As I plunged the blade into my stomach, wishing I could’ve found a better tool for the job, I knew Jeod<3 would be pissed.
To this day, I don’t know why I did that—it was one painful way to go, and I usually went for something cleaner. Maybe it was Jeod<3 punishing me. White hot pain ate through my abdomen and I sank into the crowd, dying within the hour and waking up a few moments later in sheets soaked with blood and my wrists in agony. The whole thing is kind of a blur, but I’m fairly certain I retained most of both wounds.
My roommate called 911—she thought I’d tried to kill myself.
I asked her to delete everything that next morning from my bed in the hospital. Gave her the passwords. MidnightOil, my tumblr, my twitter… even my old stuff, from before I got popular. When they let me off psych hold, I changed everything else; phone providers, numbers, emails… I destroyed and recreated my entire online identity. The whole thing was a massive fucking headache, to say the least, but I never heard from Jeod<3 again. Though I tried not to question it, I’ve always wondered why. Was it the dream? The deletions? Had they given up, or had they simply not known where to find me anymore?
All of that happened a long time ago. I’ve been slowly creeping back into fandom spaces, and last week, with a little apprehension, I joined a fanfiction exchange. My first in years. I decided to write a little one-chapter piece, first, to shake the rust out. It ended up halfway decent and one of my new friends talked me into publishing it. When I fell asleep at three AM, I was half convinced I’d come to in another of Jeod<3’s handcrafted nightmares.
I woke up to ‘Inbox (5)’ this morning. One was a comment from my friend. One was an encouragement from someone I didn’t know, and one was hating on the pairing—which, if you ask me, was the least problematic part of that story. The fourth was a pornbot. I seem to attract those.
The fifth was Jeod<3.
Nice to see you again! You’re a bit rusty but I can still see the beautiful fic underneath. _Here’s a little encouragement art from an old friend._
I didn’t open the link on that last sentence. I just closed my browser and went about my day like it didn’t happen, like I don’t know what’s going to happen. But now it’s almost time to go to bed and I can’t get it out of my head, because I know I’m going to wake up with my two-tone eyes in a body we don’t belong in. I know Jeod<3 will be there with their shitty blue hair, ready to enjoy my misfortune to the fullest.
And I know I’ll have to kill myself.
When I started doing that, it seemed so novel. So distant. It was always in dreams, and I was so sleep deprived that it felt almost natural. Even the wounds when I woke up. Later on, after the whole thing ended, it really freaked me out. How close I came to dying in the real world. But now… I don’t know. I know Jeod<3 is likely mad. I know he has the means to end my life. And I know I no longer have a roommate to watch out for me.
I don’t know what what will happen, but I knew I couldn’t fall asleep without telling someone that story. Just in case Jeod<3 decides to move on, so that poor soul knows to kill them right away. Or maybe just because I can’t die with all of this inside my head.
I also don’t really know how to end this. I guess just like I used to end my author’s notes, back in the day. Y’know, for old times’ sake. Jeod<3, if you’re out there… this one’s for you.
So let’s go, ladies and gentlemen: mind the warnings, heed the tags, enjoy, and—as always—stay alive.