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beaslaysI have one hour, give or take a few minutes, till sunrise. I'm lying in bed, under my covers with only my phone for company, I have to wake up in four hours, and I'm not sleeping. Instead, I'm reading through my old fanfics.
The Transformers ones, to be precise. Granted, I can't really call these "old" since they were all written within the past year, when I finally got the guts to be part of the fandom instead of just watching it go by. I'm reading through these fics and I'm wondering 'what was I thinking when I wrote these?'
Not because I think what I've written is crap. On the contrary, I feel like everything I wrote during that period of time is so much better than what I'm turning out now. For starters, I actually finished things. Looking back, I can pinpoint around when I stopped writing regularly, and around when I feel my writin dropped in quality. I know exactly what happened.
Homestuck happened. I got sucked into it, and didn't look back. I saw all these cool and interesting ways the comic did things, and I fell for it and didn't think about much else for a while. Okay so I do that with nearly every new fandom of mine, but somehow Homestuck felt different. Feels different. And I'm not entirely sure why.
Maybe it's because the comic is still on-going, and in a way I personally can't build off it because I'll always be hampered by the question of what comes next. I'm the type of person who likes to know how these things end first before really investing in my own fanfic. I want to know all the details and how they could affect my work. If I'll have canon working with me or against me, and how I can actually use canon in both cases. I know, I know, fanfic can be anything, but I'd rather tie my stories to some degree of canon, or at least have canon inspire me.
Anyway, yeah, Homestuck. I know a lot of people say Homestuck improved their work, but thus far, the only improvement I've felt is in art. I feel like I'm falling behind in writing, like there's something that escaped from inside me while Homestuck was happening, and I have no idea how to get it back. And the reason I don't know how to get it back in the first place is because of Homestuck. There's something about it blocking my view of the bigger picture, and I'm the one suffering for it.
Welp. One other thing that makes Homestuck so different for me is the popularity, I think. The comic is so damn popular that you can't swing a dead rat in this fandom without hitting someone really good at what they do, be it in writing, art, animation, cosplay...you name it, Homestuck appears to have it.
That...doesn't sit very well with me, for some reason. I'm not sure why. I mean, I know it's supposed to be a good thing because you have all these amazing people united by a single interest, and I've met some really good folks I'm determined to stay friends with in this fandom, but at the same time, having so many different people from diverse backgrounds...well, there's this sort of tension I feel within the fandom.
Every fandom has it's problems, I'm well aware of that, and I'm certainly familiar with the wide variety of forms these problems take, but with Homestuck I feel like there's this weird competitive thing going on. People rushing to be first at every new update, people rushing to have a new unique AU...I know a good portion of the fandom probably - no, hopefully isn't like this, but this competitiveness affects me strongly, because I end up getting competitive too.
And then I end up churning out crap. And then I end up here asking myself what in actual slag went wrong and where the frag did all those damn good brain juices of mine from just a few months ago disappear to. It could be I'm just so damned used to being part of pretty small fandoms (Transformers notwithstanding) that I don't know how to handle being part of massive fandom.
And concerning Transformers having a pretty damn big fandom too - well, Transformers is an umbrella for several smaller subsets of fiction that I can safely ignore, say, the Unicron Trilogy, and still get all the full benefits of being part of a fandom that's older than me. I can even take one subset and incorporate elements of another subset into it and still get something that's easily recognizable as the first and everythig would still be fine and dandy. That is to say, I am now probably just spouting bullshit because I am so damn tired but still can't sleep.
Anyway, rolling back a bit, I think my writing is suffering because of all these things and the fact that I've been staring at Homestuck for what could be too long. I'm hitting critical point of the sheer level of insanity within one fandom and I basically need to get the fuck out more.
There, I said it. I have too much Homestuck suddenly in my life. I love Homestuck and all, but, as always, too much of a good thing isn't good at all. So I think I'm going to spend some quality time with the Beast Warriors and any other Cybertronian I can get my hands on come morning/when I wake up.
...it ain't a bad time to get back into Star Trek Voyager too, I think. I've also been playing Dragon Age Origins again lately, though I've never set foot in fandom territory before, so that's a potential haven for me, I think.
...and oh lord the Primal Directive bunnies are coming back to life just thinking about those two shows.
Help.
//
The Transformers ones, to be precise. Granted, I can't really call these "old" since they were all written within the past year, when I finally got the guts to be part of the fandom instead of just watching it go by. I'm reading through these fics and I'm wondering 'what was I thinking when I wrote these?'
Not because I think what I've written is crap. On the contrary, I feel like everything I wrote during that period of time is so much better than what I'm turning out now. For starters, I actually finished things. Looking back, I can pinpoint around when I stopped writing regularly, and around when I feel my writin dropped in quality. I know exactly what happened.
Homestuck happened. I got sucked into it, and didn't look back. I saw all these cool and interesting ways the comic did things, and I fell for it and didn't think about much else for a while. Okay so I do that with nearly every new fandom of mine, but somehow Homestuck felt different. Feels different. And I'm not entirely sure why.
Maybe it's because the comic is still on-going, and in a way I personally can't build off it because I'll always be hampered by the question of what comes next. I'm the type of person who likes to know how these things end first before really investing in my own fanfic. I want to know all the details and how they could affect my work. If I'll have canon working with me or against me, and how I can actually use canon in both cases. I know, I know, fanfic can be anything, but I'd rather tie my stories to some degree of canon, or at least have canon inspire me.
Anyway, yeah, Homestuck. I know a lot of people say Homestuck improved their work, but thus far, the only improvement I've felt is in art. I feel like I'm falling behind in writing, like there's something that escaped from inside me while Homestuck was happening, and I have no idea how to get it back. And the reason I don't know how to get it back in the first place is because of Homestuck. There's something about it blocking my view of the bigger picture, and I'm the one suffering for it.
Welp. One other thing that makes Homestuck so different for me is the popularity, I think. The comic is so damn popular that you can't swing a dead rat in this fandom without hitting someone really good at what they do, be it in writing, art, animation, cosplay...you name it, Homestuck appears to have it.
That...doesn't sit very well with me, for some reason. I'm not sure why. I mean, I know it's supposed to be a good thing because you have all these amazing people united by a single interest, and I've met some really good folks I'm determined to stay friends with in this fandom, but at the same time, having so many different people from diverse backgrounds...well, there's this sort of tension I feel within the fandom.
Every fandom has it's problems, I'm well aware of that, and I'm certainly familiar with the wide variety of forms these problems take, but with Homestuck I feel like there's this weird competitive thing going on. People rushing to be first at every new update, people rushing to have a new unique AU...I know a good portion of the fandom probably - no, hopefully isn't like this, but this competitiveness affects me strongly, because I end up getting competitive too.
And then I end up churning out crap. And then I end up here asking myself what in actual slag went wrong and where the frag did all those damn good brain juices of mine from just a few months ago disappear to. It could be I'm just so damned used to being part of pretty small fandoms (Transformers notwithstanding) that I don't know how to handle being part of massive fandom.
And concerning Transformers having a pretty damn big fandom too - well, Transformers is an umbrella for several smaller subsets of fiction that I can safely ignore, say, the Unicron Trilogy, and still get all the full benefits of being part of a fandom that's older than me. I can even take one subset and incorporate elements of another subset into it and still get something that's easily recognizable as the first and everythig would still be fine and dandy. That is to say, I am now probably just spouting bullshit because I am so damn tired but still can't sleep.
Anyway, rolling back a bit, I think my writing is suffering because of all these things and the fact that I've been staring at Homestuck for what could be too long. I'm hitting critical point of the sheer level of insanity within one fandom and I basically need to get the fuck out more.
There, I said it. I have too much Homestuck suddenly in my life. I love Homestuck and all, but, as always, too much of a good thing isn't good at all. So I think I'm going to spend some quality time with the Beast Warriors and any other Cybertronian I can get my hands on come morning/when I wake up.
...it ain't a bad time to get back into Star Trek Voyager too, I think. I've also been playing Dragon Age Origins again lately, though I've never set foot in fandom territory before, so that's a potential haven for me, I think.
...and oh lord the Primal Directive bunnies are coming back to life just thinking about those two shows.
Help.
//
