Kezzia and Tommieo, sorry that my comments were confusing. Here's a bit of thread history that might help;
This thread used to be brilliant because somehow a group of disparate people got together and started amusing each other online. As ILOVE points out, the thread wasn’t started by any of us, so there was no sense that anyone owned it, it was a democratic thing for anyone to be part of. We were united by our love for Our Girl and none of us could find anyone in our real lives who’d been touched by it.
As time went on, the creative pace on the thread hardly slowed, there were oops! naughty furniture positions, flicky tape measures, operation bulges, trip reports, AGMs and wrestling matches, not to mention the incomparable Woof and Orphan side show. We ‘uncovered’ Ben Aldridge and then plotted his career! Hell, we even had our own language; with icebergs, orderly queues, staff meetings, anxieties about “decompression”, QS and RL Chris.
People are sensitive about FF on here and rightly so. Many here ventured cautiously into writing their first FF, some - too nervous to post on the FF site - started writing on the thread instead; and with help and support, gained confidence and progressed onto the FF site.
Icemist was big part of all that gloriousness. She took responsibility for setting up threads, downloaded pics, unearthed information and set up an OG FF Facebook group. We were all, of course, pleased, and we affectionately granted her an OBE and dubbed her the ‘ministry of information’.
But that changed at the launch of Series 2 when Icemist and a couple of her OG Facebook friends invited a select group down to London to stand at the entrance of the launch, meet the actors and try to get into the screening. Whatever they intended, the result was terribly divisive; some people were invited, others not, but as everybody was sworn to secrecy, no one knew who had been invited and who hadn’t until they turned up. And then it emerged that Icemist and her friends had already got themselves into the screening, while all of us she’d encouraged to come to London in the hope of getting in were actually to be left to wait outside on the pavement instead. These ladies were then told they could get into the after party, but when they tried, Icemists’ PR contact threw them out, humiliating them in front of the cast, Icemist and her friends.
After all the camaraderie of the previous years on Mumsnet, you can imagine how this felt. Also people had spent money on hotels, trains and flights (with some coming as far away as Scotland, Wales and Devon). Worse, for days afterwards we were treated to lots of social media messages about Icemist's brilliant night at the screening and photographs with the cast. When questioned, she defended herself, claiming people were simply jealous of her ingenuity in getting into the screening. It's depressing she still doesn't seem to realise, given what this group meant, what a betrayal many feel her actions were.
You will find few references to this incident on Mumsnet, (perhaps because many Mumsnetters had not been invited to the original screening) but more likely because posters here felt (and I imagine still feel) it was such a special group, they don’t want to tarnish it with arguments. To argue about it on here diminishes us all. On the Facebook FF group it was different; posters who complained had their messages deleted, were unsubscribed and reminded of Icemist's family problems – just like on here. It was ridiculous and awful. Once, in an effort to stop complaints, and without warning, Icemist deleted an entire Facebook group of about 40 OG friends.
So who are these writers are who are turning up causing trouble? Well of course it's obvious from their anger that most used to post here and some wrote or still write FF and I don’t know about the others, but I assume, like me, they’ve decided to post under different names because they want to avoid abusive responses like those above.
You have struck up a friendship with her, and I get that, because after all, we all did too. Perhaps she will invite you to the screening of OG3 (but do check you've got a ticket first). I imagine the lack of friends or posters supporting Icemist on mumsnet must say something. Hopefully this thread will go on. But for many of us, Icemist's presence here is like the elephant in the chat room.