Flayer

An Apology, An Explanation, and an Update

TW // Mentions of Sexual Assault, Pedophilia and Suicide

Hello readers. I know a lot of people who have been anxiously waiting for me to update "Pretty Girls" are probably going to be annoyed about me releasing a disclaimer to this completed story instead. The truth is I have been hesitant to continue contributing work to this site. This fanfiction, while clearly my best, is something I have extremely mixed feelings about. I have often debated taking the whole story down. On one hand seeing so many people enjoy it has made me so happy, and it's given me confidence about my writing skills. On the other I hate the message of this story and what it romanticizes.

I begun writing this story at the age of 14 - right when I was being groomed by a man nearly six years older than me who would later very violently rape me. For various reasons that are way too personal to explain I did not tell my parents this happened to me until senior year of highschool (long after I'd finished this story) until a fellow student who I'd told in confidence outed me as a rape survivor in front of my whole class, including my teacher, who was then forced to tell the school's social services. That means that for nearly 3 years I did not seek any professional help for my post traumatic stress disorder and I was extremely suicidal. I didn't know how to cope with these extremely traumatic memories, so I wrote.

I am now 21, in a very good place and in a very loving relationship. Also my rapist killed himself a couple of years ago (rest in piss). However, re-reading this book makes me afraid that a 14 year old child like I was might find it, read it, and then interpret this fanfiction's depiction of love as acceptable which will leave them more vulnerable to groomers and abusers.

I have decided that - knowing the backlash I'd get if I removed the story from so many people who genuinely enjoyed it and go back to read it every other month for comfort - I am not going to take it down BUT really I don't feel comfortable leaving it up as it currently is. There's many things I don't like that this book promotes, but I will leave it as untouched as possible as not to ruin it either.

However, I am big on accountability instead of failing to address the problem. Even after I update this story I want people who open this fanfiction to know that it was updated after completion, why it was updated, and how my story beforehand could have caused harm. So, before announcing the updates, I would like to issue an apology and an explanation:

I want to apologize firstly because, due to me trying to convince myself that the abusive relationship and sexual trauma that I went through at a very early age "wasn't that bad" so that I wouldn't want to tear my skin off or jump out of a building, I romanticized many disgusting and downright abusive behaviors in this fanfiction. I guess I thought that if I could write a love story about a man who shows his love for a young girl my age (back then) by hurting her I could fool my memory into replacing the memory of my rapist hurting me with a fiction character from a show I watched who wasn't actually real. This is not okay or healthy, and is not an excuse. Especially since this story blew up. This story actively promoted - and even after the update will sadly still actively promote - abusive behaviors and power dynamics.

Next, I want to specifically address and apologize for the age gap in this fanfiction. The original story features a relationship between a 14 year old girl and a man in his 20s. That is pedophilia. I chose the age 14 because when I started writing this story I had just turned 14, had a crush on Ramsay Bolton's actor, and was being groomed. I did not have the wisdom to know how not okay my situation in real life was, and how not okay this fictional reality I had created in this fanfiction during the time I was being groomed was. I continued writing this story until I was sixteen, about the same age that the main character originally was at the end of this book. I didn't really look back at the earlier chapters in my book. I just kept writing until I finished. Once again this is no excuse, and that's why I am changing Edda's age to 18 when she meets Ramsay Bolton . In order for this to make sense in the story I'm gonna change her from being Rickon's twin sister to being the third Stark Child (between Sansa and Arya in age). This means that I'm going to change the beginning of the book's scene to Edda at the Red Wedding instead of in the forest with Rickon and Osha. It also means she will be aged up to 18 when the Red Wedding happened, against cannon, and that there'll be a significant time jump between when the Boltons capture Edda and when she actually meets Ramsay.

Finally - and I know this one is going to get hated on - I want to apologize for even writing a fanfiction about Ramsay Bolton. He is a horrible human being, and in an effort to be as "realistic" as possible to his character - which is that of a psychopath - I wrote an entire 50 chapter long book about him being a horrid human being and getting rewarded for it with love. Evil, rich men don't deserve love. They deserve to get gutted like a pig in the town square by all of the people whose family and friends they murdered and abused. They deserve to get mauled by their own dogs while the survivors of their crimes watch.

I can't change much else in this story without changing what people love about it or completely changing the plot. I know I couldn't have written a fanfiction about Ramsay Bolton and not make him extremely problematic unless I changed his entire personality, so I should give myself a little bit of grace for being true to his character. It still sucks to know that if I removed the abuse from the plot there would be scarcely anything left in this story to work with.

I am very grateful to everyone who expressed their love for this story. I value your affection towards my writing. It's made me see something I wrote when I was living the darkest times in my life in a positive light. It's because of the overwhelming support and care people have for this book that it will still remain up. However I ask you to please respect my age update decision (and if you do not then that's extremely gross and you should be put on a watchlist). I also ask you to respect that even after these updates I am uncomfortable with this story being up and will not want to interact with the readers of comments (doesn't mean you can't comment, just that I will probably not reply). Understand that while for you this is a tragic and sexy piece of fanfiction about a dark relationship, for me reading this reminds me that I once had to romanticize the abuse and sexual assault I went through to keep myself from committing suicide.

That doesn't mean it's bad for you to enjoy this book, after all the reason why I wrote it has nothing to do with why you read it! And I wrote this book in the hopes that people would find it sexy and tragic. Just be mindful that I am a person behind this screen who is walking a delicate balance of trying to heal and grow and also not take a story beloved by thousands, several of which have direct messaged me begging me to not delete it, off of the face of the earth with no explanation.

Best,

Mother of Solos