The good place
Mar. 25th, 2019 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowhive(This is gonna be locked and tagged as depression thoughts but it’s not really)
I am in a good place now, about myself and about my writing, so this is just like. A vent thing, a fleeting thing but a thing that needs to be said all the same
Last year I had a fic drought. After March my will to write started to dwindle until I just... stopped altogether. I was sure for the longest time that I’d never write again. Certainly if you told me I’d be writing daily (and posting it on ao3) I’d not believe you.
It’s weird to think that if Nat was around still she would mostly likely hate what I’m doing. She would silently judge me and guilt me about it. Hell, if she was still around I’d probably have ground to a halt writing wise because of it.
I miss her and I’d like to have her around. But at the same time there is part of me, small but growing, that is glad she’s not. Because I know I’d get guilt.
Why?
I didn’t move from lj to ao3 like most people. I posted a few things to ao3 but it never felt... write. I was used to lj, used to the comments, to the interaction. Ao3 just felt a bit... odd. Kudos, to me, felt so impersonal and comments seemed to be a rare thing. It was very off putting after getting comment chains on lj, which was always awesome.
So I never moved to ao3 and I stayed on lj. Over time people fell away. Some vanished into the ether. Others just switched to other places. But I stayed and I wrote there. It got to a point, shortly before the move here, that the only regular commenter I had left was Nat.
She’d comment on everything, regardless of the pairing or who was involved. (I think the only thing she never did was scat but I hardly ever did it, even though I wanted to.) In return I’d do the same, I’d read everything she did even though I wasn’t terribly interest in the Finnish band’s she got into. When I moved here it was in part because of her and she was, still, my sole commenter. So I wrote for her and she wrote for me.
Then all of a sudden she started not commenting and subtly guilting me for what I wrote. As a result I stopped writing things, like waycest and my focus was more on things she’d like (towards the end she said what I wrote made her feel ‘uncomfortable’ despite me not writing anything she wasn’t herself). I became scared to try new things, new pairings, new bands.
I gained a confidence boost late 2017. I joined a discord and through it I felt encouraged to write more of the things that I liked. (Not that the stuff I wrote for Nat, like Kinkverse was stuff I didn’t like, I loved that stuff.) I felt encouraged to start posting on ao3 again properly, so I did. Most stuff would still be here, but the non-Kinkverse stuff would go on ao3.
Then last year my confidence got knocked. I was blocked by the people from discord I thought were friends and I stopped posting on ao3. Two weeks later Nat fucked off too. A few weeks after that I stopped writing entirely.
(And got further put off ao3 due to abuse.)
But now, the Umbrella Academy fandom is like a dream. My confidence is back, I feel good about being on ao3 again, I have the kliego discord (and the Ben/Klaus one again) and now I feel like I can write what I want again (hell i may even do a scat one again). It’s strange, it still feels alien, but it feels so good, so nice. Hell Im even talking to people again heaven before then I was, thanks in large part toturps and then Brandon holidays and snowflake). My faith in people has been restored a great deal over these past days and weeks.
And while, sure, there’s still asshole out there, I’m still in a good place, better than I’ve been for awhile (or perhaps ever!)
I am in a good place now, about myself and about my writing, so this is just like. A vent thing, a fleeting thing but a thing that needs to be said all the same
Last year I had a fic drought. After March my will to write started to dwindle until I just... stopped altogether. I was sure for the longest time that I’d never write again. Certainly if you told me I’d be writing daily (and posting it on ao3) I’d not believe you.
It’s weird to think that if Nat was around still she would mostly likely hate what I’m doing. She would silently judge me and guilt me about it. Hell, if she was still around I’d probably have ground to a halt writing wise because of it.
I miss her and I’d like to have her around. But at the same time there is part of me, small but growing, that is glad she’s not. Because I know I’d get guilt.
Why?
I didn’t move from lj to ao3 like most people. I posted a few things to ao3 but it never felt... write. I was used to lj, used to the comments, to the interaction. Ao3 just felt a bit... odd. Kudos, to me, felt so impersonal and comments seemed to be a rare thing. It was very off putting after getting comment chains on lj, which was always awesome.
So I never moved to ao3 and I stayed on lj. Over time people fell away. Some vanished into the ether. Others just switched to other places. But I stayed and I wrote there. It got to a point, shortly before the move here, that the only regular commenter I had left was Nat.
She’d comment on everything, regardless of the pairing or who was involved. (I think the only thing she never did was scat but I hardly ever did it, even though I wanted to.) In return I’d do the same, I’d read everything she did even though I wasn’t terribly interest in the Finnish band’s she got into. When I moved here it was in part because of her and she was, still, my sole commenter. So I wrote for her and she wrote for me.
Then all of a sudden she started not commenting and subtly guilting me for what I wrote. As a result I stopped writing things, like waycest and my focus was more on things she’d like (towards the end she said what I wrote made her feel ‘uncomfortable’ despite me not writing anything she wasn’t herself). I became scared to try new things, new pairings, new bands.
I gained a confidence boost late 2017. I joined a discord and through it I felt encouraged to write more of the things that I liked. (Not that the stuff I wrote for Nat, like Kinkverse was stuff I didn’t like, I loved that stuff.) I felt encouraged to start posting on ao3 again properly, so I did. Most stuff would still be here, but the non-Kinkverse stuff would go on ao3.
Then last year my confidence got knocked. I was blocked by the people from discord I thought were friends and I stopped posting on ao3. Two weeks later Nat fucked off too. A few weeks after that I stopped writing entirely.
(And got further put off ao3 due to abuse.)
But now, the Umbrella Academy fandom is like a dream. My confidence is back, I feel good about being on ao3 again, I have the kliego discord (and the Ben/Klaus one again) and now I feel like I can write what I want again (hell i may even do a scat one again). It’s strange, it still feels alien, but it feels so good, so nice. Hell Im even talking to people again heaven before then I was, thanks in large part to
turps and then Brandon holidays and snowflake). My faith in people has been restored a great deal over these past days and weeks.And while, sure, there’s still asshole out there, I’m still in a good place, better than I’ve been for awhile (or perhaps ever!)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-25 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-25 10:27 pm (UTC)Thank you
no subject
Date: 2019-03-26 04:38 pm (UTC)I had a similar friendship (read pretty much everything for each other) before it ended while I was feeling very low and she blamed me for being honest about my feelings and for writing things she felt were dark and how dare I write suicidal characters (which 1) is my right 2) something I do frequently for many reasons 3) was definitely a way of coping and a way for me to write anything at all 4) hypocritical of her since her fave character canonically attempted suicide and she liked to write angst....)
And it hurt badly and I'm still a bit angry about it but I know I'm better off now. I don't spend hours and hours tumblr messaging and putting up with her increasing anti stances and invalidating of my asexuality. I think it's ok we both stil these people who were once so important to us, but better that we can recognise we don't need them.
The thing I've never had to experience however is outright abuse. I write things people don't like, pairings that are ~problematic and the more antis spread the more things fall under the spectre of ~problematic.
As I posted in that meme the other day, my OTP of OTPs is from the Borgias, a canonical brother/sister pairing. If anti culture had been around then would it have been/still be the most popular pairing in the fandom? We had more LJ and less tumblr back then and things were better contained and moderated.
You're brave to keep posting and ignoring the assholes.
So I'm sorry you've been through all this and I hope it feels good to vent. I'm so glad you're happier now and writing again. I know you miss your ex-friend but I'm glad you're able to see you're better off now. ♥
no subject
Date: 2019-03-26 08:42 pm (UTC)My friend left me when I was low too! Two weeks after other friends screwed me over and she said she’d never leave :/
I’m so sorry about that, you need to do whatever you need to cope (and better to write than act on it)
Anti people are so awful, I hate them so much:(
I had some abuse but not much. I had some idiots start stuff on twitter last month which pissed me off. Tumblr seems a hotbed for this attitude which I hate
That sucks so much I’m sorry. I agree. I’m glad with TUA that so many are embracing the sibling ships.
Yeah, venting helped. I am in a good place now but apart of me will always miss her. 💜
no subject
Date: 2019-04-02 04:41 pm (UTC)Then all of a sudden she started not commenting and subtly guilting me for what I wrote
That is all kinds of wrong and not something a friend should ever do. Some of my longest and closest friends haven't read all of my stuff because some of it isn't what they like, and that's fine. Simply because they know I like it and support me writing what I want even if they'd never read. That's what friends should do.
I hate that you had to go through that, and it makes me so happy to see you writing up a storm and so obviously enjoying doing so.
I'm so glad you did take a risk and start to interact ♥
no subject
Date: 2019-04-02 06:10 pm (UTC)Thanks it was awful ugh. But now I’m writing like crazy which is odd
Yeah me too!