Hit It and Quit

[rynling]

Yesterday morning I woke up, and I was like, "Fandom is stupid."

I don't know what triggered this, but I just had no interest in participating in fandom for any reason ever again. This feeling was absolute, and it hasn't gone away.

I'm going to keep posting my drawings, but I'm done with fic. In December I'm going to finish the two fic chapters and the Yuletide story I'm currently writing and then, in 2018, stop writing fic. Or rather, I'm probably going to finish The Legend of the Princess over the summer, as most of it is already drafted, but I'm not going to start any new projects. I'm also going to step back from supporting other writers and artists.

I don't feel liberated, to be honest. I feel very, very hollow, but it's not a bad feeling.

Comments

[rynling]

Yeah, I just... I blame Tumblr. There's just such a steady flow of easily consumable content that it's difficult for anything to attract feedback. Like, I feel that I'm putting a ton of effort into my fic, but I'm not getting any positive returns. I wish I were the sort of person who could write quickly and at length about popular pairings in popular fandoms; but, since I'm not that sort of writer, why bother? I still feel joy in creation, but at this point it's far outweighed by the disappointment of being ignored.

I've also been seeing the note count on art posts on the tags I follow drop over the past year and a half. This may be because a number of older artists and older fans have been moving to Twitter, but I also think it's part of a gradual culture shift on the platform.

To give a concrete example, I was really frustrated by the small number of notes on your recent BotW piece. Putting Zelda in stylish fantasy cold-weather clothing was a very good idea, so much so that a winter outfit for Zelda was a part of the official December DLC. It was a lovely piece of art, and the formatting and caption and tags were perfect, and yet... Why didn't people reblog it? Why didn't any of the big LoZ or Nintendo far art blogs pick it up? I mean, sure, you're not one of the huge BNF artists with 20k+ followers, but that doesn't invalidate the creativity and high quality of your work, you know?

I guess what I'm saying is that Tumblr-based fandom is starting to feel like a party where a lot of the interesting people have already left for an afterparty somewhere else. I'm getting the sense that the afterparty in question is Discord, but that platform presents its own set of problems, especially in the exclusivity of its communities.

Sigh... But what can you do?