Candlelight Awards ✔️

What Happened To This Contest?

Hello, everyone.

I over-explain, so I apologize if this chapter drags on a little. I will do my best to keep it as short as possible.

I will be posting this in both the Forever Gold and Candlelight Awards, so do not be alarmed if you get two notifications for it.

To rip the band-aid off right away: I am not shutting down this contest. Either one, Forever Gold or Candlelight.

I plan to do something new with them and revamp them, which is the contest overhaul I have been mentioning for several months now. It will officially take place ASAP, so in April. I will explain what I mean momentarily and why I'm choosing April instead of right now.

To begin, I owe you an explanation. I will try to keep it short: the main reason I randomly disappeared from not just these two contests but from social media almost as a whole is because I was being viciously cyber-stalked, and in the middle of this cyberstalking, my best friend committed suicide. The stalking began shortly after I started these awards and did not really end until February of the following year (summer 2024 - early 2025), and that when combined with my best friend passing away, I didn't want to be anywhere near Wattpad.

I don't want to go too into detail, but this individual was not just saying mean things. They were trying to leak my address (and did leak the address of my friend), were threatening to come and do things to me, photoshopping images to create illegal material of me, created fake accounts with nearly-identical names as my usernames to attempt to tarnish my image, and more. 

This occurred daily (and normally multiple times per day) on Wattpad, Discord, Twitter, and Instagram, and that is the reason I no longer speak to people in dms on any platform and deleted my Instagram (the Ravendipity on Instagram is not me). I also deleted my Snapchat and Facebook to further distance myself from social media.

The cyberstalking all stems from homophobia. The attacks were not just toward me but also several others, including minors. The common denominator is we either were LGBTQ+ and/or wrote LGBTQ+ material, and this individual took strong offense to this.

I was barely on Wattpad at the time, and, in hindsight, it was a mistake to post the WHO Awards during this since it ended up being neglected as well, but I had been planning that since June of 2024 to specifically go out on Jimin's birthday and wanted to post it anyway. I didn't want this individual to control my plans, y'know?

I'm not writing all of this for pity but rather an explanation because you deserve that transparency. And if you're wondering why I didn't say anything publicly, it is because I was not able to. I was advised to make a short statement on Discord before shutting down my server.

I apologize for the lack of communication during that period. Even though I couldn't have said the situation itself, I could have at least made an announcement alluding to a legal issue and needing to take a step back, and I wish I did that at the time or at least shortly after the situation concluded. 

I did make an announcement about taking a hiatus after my best friend passed, but the fact of the matter is the cyberstalking happened before (and after) then, and it was my duty to be transparent about my activity status. It probably would have been best to make an announcement in April—long enough after the cyberstalking that I didn't have to fear the person seeing it and making a return (which was an issue; they would be even more active whenever I updated anything, including going into the comments of awards I posted results for) but also not so long that it became obnoxious. But I didn't do that, and for that I am sorry.

Though, beyond that, it's not 2025 anymore.

I wish I could give you a clear answer for why I didn't post anything sooner even after I was able to speak about the situation again. I think maybe it was a bit of a trauma block? I received harassment during my Forever Gold Awards not on the same scale but of similar attitude, and going back to that contest in particular felt impossible. Candlelight felt impossible for some reason, too.