Content note: this post discusses harassment and threats.
I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately, and I want to address them directly: the Darkfaery Girls are not coming back.
I know that may not be what some of you want to hear. I also know the community meant a lot to many people, so I do not want to answer with a quick dismissal. I want to answer with the honesty this community has always deserved.
The practical reality is simple: I do not have dedicated management right now, and my attention is split across too many other projects to give something like this what it would need to thrive.
But honestly, even if I did have those resources, I have spent a lot of time sitting with what that chapter meant, all of it, and I do not think I would rebuild it the same way.
The word “girls” bothers me now in a way it did not then. Using that framing to promote events and build a team had a subtle diminishing quality I did not fully recognize at the time. I recognize it now.
But before I talk about why it ended, I want to honor what it was.
What It Gave Us
Watching those women thrive was one of the most genuinely beautiful things I have ever been part of.
We encouraged each other. We dressed up and showed up. We gave each other reasons to get out of bed, be bold, feel seen, and feel like we mattered.
I was told, over and over, that I gave women a chance to feel important.
That was the goal from day one, and in that sense, it worked.
What It Cost
What I kept mostly to myself, and what I tried to protect everyone else from seeing, was the other side of it.
Almost every day, I received emails that were degrading, explicit, and sometimes threatening. There were requests for sexual access to specific members of the group. There were graphic invitations to situations no one should ever have to read, let alone be associated with. There were also recurring threats of sexual violence.
I worked with the FBI on several of those cases.
I carried that weight mostly alone because I did not want it to touch the community we had built. But over time, the fear that something could happen to one of my friends, and that I might not be able to stop it, became too much.
That fear is ultimately why it ended.
Where Are They Now?
That is a story worth telling properly, and I would like to do that now.
If you were part of the Darkfaery Girls as a member, contributor, performer, model, artist, writer, photographer, supporter, or someone who participated in events, I want to hear from you.
What has your life looked like in the years since? What did that time mean to you? What are you building now?
Reach out by email at duvy@darkfaery-subculture.com or find us on the Facebook page. I would love to put together something that honors what we actually created together.
Because here is what I know now:
The best part of all of it was never the brand.
It was the people.
Where shadows dance and stories unfold.