protecting one's heart

[prixmium]

I did about 15 minutes of "work" on plotting the most OC/adding stuff type fic I've ever worked on.

Back before COVID hit everyone, I had gotten really passionately into the idea of this fic about my Fallout New Vegas player character and a few of the other characters.

The initial groundwork I did got written at the beginning of 2020 before I was out of a job. It was going well.

Then, everything in the world changed in ways that one couldn't really brace for, even knowing it was coming.

My life on the other side was never really the same, either. My mom died that year but not from COVID.

Anyway, I have occasionally poked with a stick the idea of trying to finish that fic. I recently heard a clip from Jason Pargin that made me realize why I was stuck after writing the four prologue chapters.

However, every time I start to poke it with a stick, I just wonder if I am really ready to be vulnerable enough to actually put in the work.

The last time I did the work to finish a chapter fic I thought was at least decent, it was a pretty heavy flop except with my big bang artist partner and beta. That was back in the spring. And since then, I dunno. It's like I just cannot make myself do the work that is required to really put something out there that I cared a lot about in order for it to get the sting of being completely ignored even when I try to get friends and likeminded fandom people to look at it.

I feel like some people responded to the art that was posted on tumblr as part of the event who never got around to reading the fic.

And I know I'm being a baby because I've only finished like 1 or 2 of the other long fics that came out of that event, but I have been working on at least a few others. I just feel this rejection sensitivity thing.

Not only that, but the same thing happened when I did a SnowBaird Secret Santa thing last year. The person I got assigned to never actually came around and commented because they sort of ghosted the community it was in before the event concluded.

I know that we are all tired and worn down to a lot less than we were, but it makes me want to reassess how I seek connection with likeminded people, and I just don't know how.

I keep wondering if I should write shorter lighter or more encapsulated stuff due to the attention span and overwork problems people have, but I don't really know how to find the motivation for that anymore, either, and it makes me think that the era of fandom being a community and not a competition is kind of dead.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

It is really hard when you can't find the audience for your fic.

That has happened to me in the past as well. And I have been ghosted by recipients of challenges/ficathons too, no fun.

Just observing, I can see that fandom really is different now than it was when I joined LiveJournal in 2002. It's HUGE and public and we have the huge archive, and you can find anything you want to read. But the size of it makes it so different.

I am having a hard time getting interested writing again too and I wish you all the best as you try to find your motivation.

[prixmium]

I was just a kid but have been in internet fandom spaces on and off since 2002 or 2003. I even saw them a bit earlier than that. I didn't actually learn to participate much beyond posting on fanfiction.net until maybe 2005 or so. But yeah, I remember how it felt. I was definitely one of the younger people around, and I looked up to adult fans a lot. Now it's really weird and different.

[mxcatmoon]

I believe that thinking about it is an accomplishment in itself. But definitely these days there's no point in writing fanfic if it's not 99% for oneself. It seems the trend these days is that fans don't want to leave comments or engage that way. Depends on the fandom, though.

I hope you find something that motivates you. I surprised myself by falling in love with an old show from my past, and I'm having a blast doing all the fannish things, after a long time of thinking it would never happen again -- so it can.

[prixmium]

Definitely! Just have to wait for the overlap of time, energy, and interest...

[matsushima]

It's so hard, with fandom being scattered across platforms and the lack of moderated spaces. That, and now that it's widely accepted that you can file the serial numbers off your fic and sell it as a book, it seems like some number of fans are writing fic just to get picked up by a traditional publisher? So I know what you mean about the feeling of competition instead of community.

[prixmium]

While I don't want to begrudge people getting paid for their art, it does really frustrate me to be in fandoms like that. I was into reylo for a bit, and after it happened to one, it happened to several of the most prolific writers in that fanfic, which made the environment turn really weird. There was this sense that it could happen because you could get connections within that fandom and that several of the major writers had gotten noticed by trendy publishers and that since the reylo part of the fandom felt betrayed by the mainstream fandom and the final movie that there should be something transactional about it.

[popkin16]

I totally get what you mean. I participated in a secret santa fic exchange, and while my recipient did comment, it was a very generic, "thank you, i liked it" kind of thing. And I've never participated since.

I'm sorry things along those lines have happened to you. You're smart and talented, and you don't deserve that.

[prixmium]

I wonder if it's the lower participant exchanges that suffer from this, because I did exchanges for YEARS and it was usually middling-to-good response.

Thank you <3