2018 review: or the year i gave up on fandom
2019-Jan-07, Monday 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felicitygsSo since my productivity this morning was entirely sidelined by my coworker bringing her (obvious to all of us, including her) faking-it ill son to work, who could not be quiet if his life depended on it, I guess I'm going to do this instead of actually write any fic.
I... did more than I thought I did in 2018 (certainly more than 2017, with all of one fic that it feels like no one read or cared about (let's ignore the 70k novel I wrote)), though the vast majority of it was when I started doing the Meet Ugly stuff near the end of the year. There were also the various awkward attempts to jump start any sort of interest in my fandom offerings (30 days of steve/loki basically); one finished and very, very late commission (Changes) which was as much me processing the grief of not being able to write as it was finishing something owed; and an angry fix-it that I didn't finish post-Infinity War (Promises)(and which I took the rough premise of and converted into the 2019 fic Tangerines are sweet enough). The vast, vast majority of 2018 was just... not writing, and I guess in order to review my 2018 output we need to talk about just why that was, because there were a lot of things that finally came to a head in 2018 that made it so I had zero interest in trying to write.
Through when I joined the Marvel fandom sometime around 2012 (based off that being when I published my first fic to AO3, though I know I was publishing a few things on fanfiction.net before I got my AO3 account), I followed some very prolific and well-liked authors. I even talked to several from time to time, and because I joined when I did, my 'baseline' for what was normal feedback levels was extraordinarily skewed. I saw people interacting with these authors daily, and I interacted with them, and I was lucky enough my work resonated with others and they would interact with me. This became, over time, more and more rare--at least for me, and in my head a lot of that was tied to the fact my output (despite, I think, increasing in quality enormously from when I started writing for the fandom in 2012) had slowed down.
But it didn't seem like it happened to those other authors, and there is a tendency (at least I have it) to try and see why, and where the community had gone, and... well look, I know, for a fact, that feedback on tumblr continued to drop off over the lifetime of the site. I know, for a fact, that comments also dropped off on AO3 as people took to just leaving kudos and moving on, if they interacted at all. I know these because I painstakingly archived the majority of my fandom tags on the waybackmachine, page by page, and could see the change taking place over the lifetime of my blog.
But it didn't change the fact here I was, trying to put out things, and getting... nothing.
I imagine writing for a new fandom (a rarepair at that) didn't help, but it didn't change that it felt like no matter what I did or wrote or anything, no one cared.
But they cared about these other people! Obviously. These writers I had been following for years (these writers who are and were and have always been far more prolific than me in fandom spaces, mind, which in and of itself helps to foster dialogue because there's generally something new to talk about) were still getting and answering asks daily.
The low point was, I think, 2017. But 2018 saw no real recovery, even as I did try to foster some sort of discussion, offer something to the communities. That was the whole point of 30 Days of Steve/Loki, but....
Well, it failed, frankly, because I came away hating myself and my work and looking at fandom and the people who had once inspired me so much and wanting to die. I came away hating fandom, because it felt so much like it didn't matter what I did (I did more art this year as well) or wrote--
I know I shouldn't compare myself to others, but part of me was comparing me to me.
So...
Well. I stopped following them. I tried blacklisting tags, I tried dancing around the fact that I was just so envious I could puke that they still had such active communities to talk to, I tried to find ways to keep going even though fandom itself felt like it wanted nothing to do with me. I tried so so hard, and then, ultimately I just
I took a morning, and I unfollowed basically every single person writing and getting asks and answering them and basically being in fandom, and blacklisted more tags, and then just.
Stopped trying.
Oh, I reblogged fanart and meta. But I stopped reading. I stopped commenting. I disengaged almost as completely as I could, beyond hype and excitement and anger (Infinity War) around new releases. It was very very clear to me, through 2018, that fandom did not need nor want nor care about my voice. It was clear that I cared too much, and so, in order to protect myself, I just.
Let it go.
2018 was full of so much want and grief for what I had and what could not be and feeling--
isolated.
2018 in fandom for me was defined by and marked by that isolation. Little glimmers of reaching out. Little attempts to urge people to respond to authors more. But, ultimately, deciding that I just... couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't exist in a fandom where my main experience was one of isolation and nothingness and screaming into the void for no response.
It is a feeling which, ultimately, led to this scream at the void, an attempt to be heard, goddammit.
And it... was.
It didn't help me, other than knowing I was not alone, but--
It was there, in the back of my mind, usually swamping my notifications.
So how'd I crawl back out? Whence this sudden burst of creativity right at the end of the year?
Two things, I think:
First, removing all those writers from my feed ultimately was one of the kindest acts I've done, no matter how much I miss them. On good days, I let myself browse blogs and such, because I love the meta and discussion, but--
it can't be always. It can't be unfiltered anymore. As much as I love fandom, and love these characters, I selfishly cannot cope with the knowledge that even when I do get comments, I don't get the level of engagement these people get. What inspiration there is to be had is ultimately stained by the pain and grief of being reminded how little anyone gave a shit about what I had to say. Whether because of timezones or because of tumblr or because I might actually be that boring of a person, it is too painful to open my dash up and find no one engaging with my work and a page full of others answering excited asks.
God that kills me to admit. I feel awful for that. I know I have it okay, and yet still--the mere thought, the ache of what felt like a neverending loneliness that was my fandom experience in 2018 is just--
I can't do that anymore. Better to simply cut myself off, than cope with the fact my words mean nothing. At least then I can pretend they do. It's still so raw, isn't it?
Secondly--we're still, somehow, circuitously, discussing how I managed to start writing again--tumblr imploded. I moved to other sites, and the hours and hours I spent backing up my blog revealed so much of how I used to engage with and what I loved about fandom again. It reminded me of how it used to be, in 2012, and while I'm so glad for some of the awkward shit we grew out of, I couldn't help but think about that. And the thinking and considering is what ultimately led me to decide to start working about--on dumb prompt memes, on finding safe ways for me to engage with the fandom again.
I still can't look at large fandom blogs unless they're aggregators. I still can't engage with fic that last more than 2000 words. I still can't engage with the darkness and angst and hurt/comfort that used to be so prevalent in my reading, and I certainly am tired of a thousand explicit fics that are amazing character studies but don't speak to my very particular experiences as a queer ace creator.
But having tumblr be nothing but shitposts, reblogs, and the rare crosspost has done so much good for me.
I've found a niche, and it is screaming into a void that I know is (mostly) empty. And somehow, that's better.
I... did more than I thought I did in 2018 (certainly more than 2017, with all of one fic that it feels like no one read or cared about (let's ignore the 70k novel I wrote)), though the vast majority of it was when I started doing the Meet Ugly stuff near the end of the year. There were also the various awkward attempts to jump start any sort of interest in my fandom offerings (30 days of steve/loki basically); one finished and very, very late commission (Changes) which was as much me processing the grief of not being able to write as it was finishing something owed; and an angry fix-it that I didn't finish post-Infinity War (Promises)(and which I took the rough premise of and converted into the 2019 fic Tangerines are sweet enough). The vast, vast majority of 2018 was just... not writing, and I guess in order to review my 2018 output we need to talk about just why that was, because there were a lot of things that finally came to a head in 2018 that made it so I had zero interest in trying to write.
Through when I joined the Marvel fandom sometime around 2012 (based off that being when I published my first fic to AO3, though I know I was publishing a few things on fanfiction.net before I got my AO3 account), I followed some very prolific and well-liked authors. I even talked to several from time to time, and because I joined when I did, my 'baseline' for what was normal feedback levels was extraordinarily skewed. I saw people interacting with these authors daily, and I interacted with them, and I was lucky enough my work resonated with others and they would interact with me. This became, over time, more and more rare--at least for me, and in my head a lot of that was tied to the fact my output (despite, I think, increasing in quality enormously from when I started writing for the fandom in 2012) had slowed down.
But it didn't seem like it happened to those other authors, and there is a tendency (at least I have it) to try and see why, and where the community had gone, and... well look, I know, for a fact, that feedback on tumblr continued to drop off over the lifetime of the site. I know, for a fact, that comments also dropped off on AO3 as people took to just leaving kudos and moving on, if they interacted at all. I know these because I painstakingly archived the majority of my fandom tags on the waybackmachine, page by page, and could see the change taking place over the lifetime of my blog.
But it didn't change the fact here I was, trying to put out things, and getting... nothing.
I imagine writing for a new fandom (a rarepair at that) didn't help, but it didn't change that it felt like no matter what I did or wrote or anything, no one cared.
But they cared about these other people! Obviously. These writers I had been following for years (these writers who are and were and have always been far more prolific than me in fandom spaces, mind, which in and of itself helps to foster dialogue because there's generally something new to talk about) were still getting and answering asks daily.
The low point was, I think, 2017. But 2018 saw no real recovery, even as I did try to foster some sort of discussion, offer something to the communities. That was the whole point of 30 Days of Steve/Loki, but....
Well, it failed, frankly, because I came away hating myself and my work and looking at fandom and the people who had once inspired me so much and wanting to die. I came away hating fandom, because it felt so much like it didn't matter what I did (I did more art this year as well) or wrote--
I know I shouldn't compare myself to others, but part of me was comparing me to me.
So...
Well. I stopped following them. I tried blacklisting tags, I tried dancing around the fact that I was just so envious I could puke that they still had such active communities to talk to, I tried to find ways to keep going even though fandom itself felt like it wanted nothing to do with me. I tried so so hard, and then, ultimately I just
I took a morning, and I unfollowed basically every single person writing and getting asks and answering them and basically being in fandom, and blacklisted more tags, and then just.
Stopped trying.
Oh, I reblogged fanart and meta. But I stopped reading. I stopped commenting. I disengaged almost as completely as I could, beyond hype and excitement and anger (Infinity War) around new releases. It was very very clear to me, through 2018, that fandom did not need nor want nor care about my voice. It was clear that I cared too much, and so, in order to protect myself, I just.
Let it go.
2018 was full of so much want and grief for what I had and what could not be and feeling--
isolated.
2018 in fandom for me was defined by and marked by that isolation. Little glimmers of reaching out. Little attempts to urge people to respond to authors more. But, ultimately, deciding that I just... couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't exist in a fandom where my main experience was one of isolation and nothingness and screaming into the void for no response.
It is a feeling which, ultimately, led to this scream at the void, an attempt to be heard, goddammit.
And it... was.
It didn't help me, other than knowing I was not alone, but--
It was there, in the back of my mind, usually swamping my notifications.
So how'd I crawl back out? Whence this sudden burst of creativity right at the end of the year?
Two things, I think:
First, removing all those writers from my feed ultimately was one of the kindest acts I've done, no matter how much I miss them. On good days, I let myself browse blogs and such, because I love the meta and discussion, but--
it can't be always. It can't be unfiltered anymore. As much as I love fandom, and love these characters, I selfishly cannot cope with the knowledge that even when I do get comments, I don't get the level of engagement these people get. What inspiration there is to be had is ultimately stained by the pain and grief of being reminded how little anyone gave a shit about what I had to say. Whether because of timezones or because of tumblr or because I might actually be that boring of a person, it is too painful to open my dash up and find no one engaging with my work and a page full of others answering excited asks.
God that kills me to admit. I feel awful for that. I know I have it okay, and yet still--the mere thought, the ache of what felt like a neverending loneliness that was my fandom experience in 2018 is just--
I can't do that anymore. Better to simply cut myself off, than cope with the fact my words mean nothing. At least then I can pretend they do. It's still so raw, isn't it?
Secondly--we're still, somehow, circuitously, discussing how I managed to start writing again--tumblr imploded. I moved to other sites, and the hours and hours I spent backing up my blog revealed so much of how I used to engage with and what I loved about fandom again. It reminded me of how it used to be, in 2012, and while I'm so glad for some of the awkward shit we grew out of, I couldn't help but think about that. And the thinking and considering is what ultimately led me to decide to start working about--on dumb prompt memes, on finding safe ways for me to engage with the fandom again.
I still can't look at large fandom blogs unless they're aggregators. I still can't engage with fic that last more than 2000 words. I still can't engage with the darkness and angst and hurt/comfort that used to be so prevalent in my reading, and I certainly am tired of a thousand explicit fics that are amazing character studies but don't speak to my very particular experiences as a queer ace creator.
But having tumblr be nothing but shitposts, reblogs, and the rare crosspost has done so much good for me.
I've found a niche, and it is screaming into a void that I know is (mostly) empty. And somehow, that's better.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-07 05:09 am (UTC)Secondly, I'm glad you managed to find ways to protect and heal yourself, even if it's progressive. I know anyone is allowed and encouraged to leave fandom if it doesn't work for them anymore on whatever scale, but I also know it can be super painful to let go of things we used to enjoy and I'm glad you seem to have found a way to thread the middle that seems to work for you.
Also, I know I don't comment much on fic (not just yours, I'm trying to practice leaving more feedback) but your voice still does matter to me, and I'm glad I still get to hear and share it even through tough times <3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-07 07:53 am (UTC)I totally get what you mean about motivation. I wrote a lot of Angel/Spike when I was in Buffy fandom, but after the shows ended, people drifted away and got interested in other things. I moved on to other fandoms, but none of them ever inspired me to write... and now, I do so much writing in my job that the idea of "writing for fun" just does not compute. So I'm glad to hear that you found something to motivate you.
Anyway, even if you never write another word, I just want to say "Thank you" for sharing your talent and producing work that has truly moved me. Kudos to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-07 02:15 pm (UTC)Honestly, the gigantic void of fandom is what's always scared me away from it. I've fangirled my heart out over all kinds of stuff (some popular, some...very unpopular), but never really engaged with any fandoms because there was so much going on, so many superstars, etc. It was like being at a party where I didn't really know anybody and when that happens in real life, I usually don't go at all, or I leave pretty quickly. That's what I did with fandom and, in a way, I kind of regret it. I'm an Old, I s'pose, so I've been around for lots of waves, but never connected with any of them.
Anyway, I'm glad to read that you found a way to engage that feels accessible and fun for you, that helps you participate in what you love without too much hurt. It's encouraging--maybe I will actually do a fan thing one day! Thanks for writing this, though I know it must be hard to wrestle with and put out feelings like these!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-07 03:11 pm (UTC)Your voice definitely matters to me! I'm not really in the Marvel fandom anymore, but I do enjoy seeing what you have to say! I'm glad I found you on this site, too, because it's easier to not miss anything! This post really resonates a lot, and I hope you continue to find ways to engage with the fandom that are safe and allow you to enjoy yourself!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 04:33 am (UTC)And yeah, dreamwidth is so much quieter and requires more going out to find things that it's much much easier to follow what friends are doing. I like that a lot, and it makes me feel a lot less isolated than tumblr has been of late.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 04:37 am (UTC)Yeah, I get that we're also older and so there's less time to comment and what not?? Can you believe we've been here since 2012? Still, that change is rough to go through, and the changes on tumblr didn't help lmao
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 04:40 am (UTC)First off, thank you so much. I'm glad that you've been enjoying my work, and all of frostiron really--it's still and will probably always be one of my favourite ships.
I definitely understand what you mean about job impairing that--I'm an English teacher, and it's been a lot of work to figure out how to fit in teaching English as a second language and writing and learning an entirely different language at the same time.
Thank you again, so much <3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 04:43 am (UTC)I guess I was lucky; all the fandoms I've ended up writing for, I didn't really get in because of the people so much as just needing to tell stories with the characters from those universes/worlds, and just happening to meet other people that way. People being second has helped, but marvel was the first fandom where I really connected extensively with the rest of the fandom for my ship, and got used to having other voices to bounce ideas and meta off of.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 05:16 am (UTC)But I agree with you re: tumblr, there was a lot of change in the culture and general atmosphere of the site and some of them were just not conductive to making people want to engage at all tbh :/
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 01:18 pm (UTC)