The Legend of the Princess

[rynling]

I'm working with Lightsintheskye on a series of illustrations for my Zelda/Ganondorf fic The Legend of the Princess. She did the cover illustration a while ago, and yesterday afternoon I posted her illustration for the first story arc.

Despite the incredible quality of her art, the post only got 11 notes.



I was really surprised! I know that this piece will get the attention it deserves when the artist reblogs it later during the peak time for her blog, but I still can't help but wonder why so few people who follow me on Tumblr or track the fandom tags were willing to offer their support for a collaboration like this. (The people who did like or reblog the post are lovely and wonderful and have my eternal gratitude, of course.)

I think this is what it what it means to "create for yourself" - you need to have faith that what you're doing has worth and value, even if it's not something that's immediately recognized by the larger community. Despite the doubts I have regarding my own writing, the artist's talent is readily apparent. Like, what she does is really good, and I'm so lucky to be able to work with her on this project. Even if it's difficult for me to have faith in myself, I can believe in the quality of the artist's work. Along with the artist, I'm creating something interesting and unique and meaningful, and I'm gonna keep going, no matter what...

...if only because the actual process is so much fun. I mean listen, as much as it sucks to get so little positive feedback on Tumblr, I'm not going to complain about how cool it is to get to play around with concept and design sketches like this one of Zelda in fancy princess clothing.

Comments

[auronlu]

Not my fandom but-- I just spent a year and a half, 20-30 hours a week, researching and planning and writing an 8-chapter, 52K word fanfic of professional quality. You know how many years I've been in fandom. I have over 700 followers in one fandom account alone.

I used every online marketing trick I could to garner a few eyeballs. Professional banners. Fanart. The works.

160 views altogether for all chapters. A few kudos. No comments apart from one close friend. The fandom liked my banners and comments on some of the background research went into it, but they just. Did. Not. Care.

I'm afraid that Tumblr's firehose of content has dampened everyone's ability to engage, and the newer fans don't realize that comment culture was ever a thing.

(And yes, that is indeed gorgeous and professional, even if I'm one of the last people on earth under the age of 50 who has NOT played Zelda.)

[rynling]

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave this comment. It was sobering to read, and I've been thinking about what you wrote on and off for the past few days.

First of all, sharing your writing metrics - "a year and a half, 20-30 hours a week, researching and planning and writing an 8-chapter, 52K word fanfic of professional quality" - makes me feel less weird and alone about the metrics of my own fandom writing. I feel that writers generally don't talk about these sorts of details unless they had, like, a wildly productive session, so it's good to know what a normal rate of progress looks like.

I also want to say that, for what it's worth, I fucking love your Final Fantasy fic. I'm not a huge FFX fan and would generally never read fic about it, but Love Her and Despair was one of my online happy places a few years ago. I don't think I ever commented on it, probably because I didn't feel like I was a big enough deal in the fandom to have anything worth saying, but you never know who's silently reading your fic and may one day, idk, decide to teach a college class based on your meta.

Anyway, this is an idea I've been playing around with regarding the fic I discussed in this post, but I wonder if you ever consider filing off the serial numbers of your lesser-trafficed fic and submitting it, if not to a magazine or an agent, then to a writer's workshop?

[auronlu]

I don't have any idea what's normal – – I suspect it's one of those incredibly varied spectrums, akin to the vastly different ways various musicians use to improve or practice that can vary from "a few hours a day" to "oh, just getting together at folk music circles and sharing music, you know, socialzing and singing."

Thank you for the positive comments about the fic, to some extent I can't transfer what I do because it's very much prizing out the connective tissue in canon that the creative teams themselves often don't see, so it's incredibly contextual and embedded in the 'verse it came from. That said, there's no reason one can't adapt/rehash ideas.

But I didn't mean to hijack your post, I have a bad habit of speaking in analogy and relating something somebody's talking about to similar experiences -- an attempt at saying "you're not alone" but it tends to refocus the conversation away from the OP.

I hope that art has picked up more views by now -- it's funny how a post may initially get almost no notice. then one blog with a large following reblogs it days, weeks, or months later, and suddenly it's all over the place.

But that doesn't always happen. You're very wise to focus on the enjoyment you get creating for yourself.