Fandom giveth, and fandom taketh away.
It provides us with community, ideas, art, writing, support, critique, meta, inspiration, crack, humor, sexiness, angst, and all varieties of delicious, vivid, vicarious emotions to play with.
It also demands energy, patience, time (oh, so much time), and more often than not, a thick skin.
It brings us drama, wacky anons, NOTPS, popularity contests, burst bubbles, raised hackles, disillusionment, and draining arguments.
Sometimes fandom can be too much of a good thing. It can seem like it’s sucking the joy out of something you love. Your muses can become inaccessible to you; activities and topics you once loved now seem fraught with peril and stress.
When it starts to feel like this, it is time to take a time-out.
Make a nice cup of tea, sit down, and reassess what fandom means to you, and whether or not you’re getting what you want out of it.
Here are 10 questions/considerations to ask yourself about your muse and your creative process, to help you find your way back to your enthusiasm, or as the case may be, point you in an altogether different direction to seek your bliss:
1) What is it about this story/character/world that got me so interested in the first place?
Take a moment and reread your favorite chapter. Watch the movie again. Find that one quote, that one picture, that made you think “AAAH I NEED TO SPEND HOURS ON TUMBLR PRETENDING TO BE THIS PERSON!!”, or “AAAH THESE EMOTIONS ARE KILLING ME, NEVER STOP”.
Even better: reread your own work. I’m serious! I know for some of us, this can be a painful task– but trust me, it’s the best sort of medicine. Because whatever you were MOST passionate about, you poured into your work at some point, and it is still there.
Reread your old work. REPOST your old work. Don’t apologize! Chances are, there are people that haven’t seen it yet! Tumblr is a rolling river that stops for no one; don’t be afraid to recycle some of your Greatest Hits.
2) What was it you wanted to contribute/consume when you started blogging? Has that changed?
Probably! If you’ve been here for a while, and you’ve been interacting with new people and seeing new ideas, I can almost guarantee that you’ve found some new sources of inspiration, AND/OR you’ve exhausted your interest in certain topics.
Take a look at the blogs you are following, the content you are reblogging or posting about: Are you treading water? Do you need to move on to fresh topics? Are you holding back because you feel like you’re a certain kind of blog, and the topic that interests you now would be incongruous? –Relax. Let yourself change. Start a new side blog, or just throw congruity to the wind and say “THIS IS WHAT I’M INTO NOW. LET ME SHOW YOU IT.”
If you lose some followers because you changed content, it’s okay. You’re excited again, and new people who are excited about the same thing will follow you instead. Easy come, easy go.
3) Do you have a Fandom Endgame?
That is to say, is there some driving goal behind your exploration of a certain character or topic that you feel is achievable? Can you see yourself saying “I’ve answered all the questions I had about this character/topic, and now I can move on”? That’s okay if you do!
Not every pairing has to be your perpetual OTP; not every character has to be your eternal muse; not every fandom is forever.
There’s no shame in having a trajectory for your muse. Saying “I want to explore these situations and these facets of their personality, and when those headcanons are fully developed, I’ll be satisfied”, is JUST as valid as having a perennial muse that lives with you and comes with you everywhere.
Ask yourself what sort of relationship you have with your muse/story. Is this something you want to keep exploring forever, or just until you are satisfied with the development? If you do not have and end goal– that is fine too! Shine on, you crazy diamond, keep musing that muse! You might consider setting some goals for your development of that character too, just as a good exercise to stay fresh.
4) Is it the format or the content that is dragging me down right now?
Yo, I’m gonna drop a truth bomb on you: Roleplay is not the perfect medium for everything.
Roleplay is AWESOME. It provides collaborative ideas, and interactions that you just can’t invent on your own. It challenges us, provides us with new frontiers to conquer, real-time negotiations, and intense emotional stimulation.
Some of us are addicts. We need our roleplay fix, and NOTHING else will fulfill that need. It’s how we express ourselves, how we identify, how we work through our own personal evolutions.
Some of us are roleplay enthusiasts. RP is one of the ways we expand our understanding of a muse, and their repertoire of responses, but it’s not the only way we explore our characters or express ourselves. We use RP as a tool as much as a pastime.
Some of us are roleplay tourists, who are just here for the fun times and because our friends are here and it’s a great way to escape the daily grind.
Wherever you fall on this spectrum, it’s important to remember that roleplay is interactive. It is collaborative. It requires two, so you can tango.
It’s easy to lose track of your muse when you are performing them for an audience. You want to please your partner, right? Even if that means breaking character just a little, right? Little adjustments and compromises over time do add up– they are not necessarily bad! But let me tell you, it is GOOD to have some alone time with your muse. It is GOOD to have them be the center of the universe sometimes, the sole hero of their own story, the narrator, the focus. When you collaborate, you have to make allowances for the other mun/muse!
Remember that you can touch base with your muse by letting them have control over a story where YOU are the only story-teller, and YOU control the action.
CONTRARYWISE: Playing in the sandbox alone can get boring too! If you are primarily a fic-writer, or a meta-writer, and you feel like you are stagnating: why not give RP a try?
It is an EXCELLENT way to flex your character muscles and improve your dialogue!
5) Am I stressing out over my follower count? My theme? My post formatting? Are my drafts a source of anxiety because I want them to be just right because if they aren’t perfect i will shame my family and my followers will hate me and then i will live the remainder of my life in a dumpster, wearing a sign that says “i mADE a TYPo”?
Perfectionism is the leading cause of Drafts-Avoidance, and it is a serious malady amongst experienced and talented roleplayers. If left unchecked, in can lead to Fandom Exposure Burns, and in extreme cases, Blog-Death.
Remember that at one time, we all of us had NO followers, and only our enthusiasm fueled us.
Find that thing that makes you want to write or draw, even if you’re doing it alone in the dark. If you lost every one of your followers– what would be the thing you’d still want to talk about, or read about, or see? Is it a pairing? A scene from canon? A particular interpretation? That one fanfic that changed your life? Find that thing and DO THAT THING, BRUH. PUT IT IN YOUR EYEBALLS, MASH IT INTO THE KEYBOARD!!!1!
6) “Man fuck this dash-drama/fanon/ship, I’m out.”
Dealing with competing interpretations of the same character or story can cause a lot of stress and cognitive dissonance. I recommend alone-time with your muse/topic, and some quality skype chats with a buddy who shares your interpretation.
Not only will you bond over your mutual hatred of a thing, you will keep that negative, albeit theraputic, outpouring off of other people’s dashes.
Also, it is perfectly fine to disengage with a fandom if the fandom itself causes you stress, anxiety, sadness, anger, depression, or just generally gets you down. Do not stay in a fandom space that feels toxic to you. There are other ways to get your feels than forcing yourself to trudge through tag-hate or an interpretation that triggers you.
Take care of yourselves, my darlings! ;_; ❤
7) Am I loving my muse, but struggling to find things for them to do?
Having your muse wander around in an ambient dream-space is a great way to forget what makes them awesome. Don’t imagine them in a blank white box talking to a cardboard cutout– put them in a cave! A tower! A battlefield!
Take some time to develop not only your muse, but your muse’s environment. Take some time to imagine the significant people in your muse’s life. Make some headcanons about those characters. Imagine what they look like, how they change over time, how they’d interact with their surroundings.
8) I just feel a little… stale?
Have you been playing the same muse for a long time? Have you written/drawn/read about most of the major scenarios they’re involved in? Do you feel like you’re recycling the same material? Using the same metaphors?
It’s time to give your muse a little space!
Your brain needs food, just like the rest of you. Don’t feed it the same thing over and over again! Always be mindful of what content you are consuming, as well as creating.
Read about a topic that barely relates to your muse/story, and then try and build a bridge that connects them.
Read someone else’s interpretation of the same character (preferably one that is dissimilar enough to your own that you don’t feel like it’s competition).
Watch a movie and imagine your muse in that setting, or saying the same lines, or in the same epic fight sequence.
Try roleplaying or writing a different character; maybe the total opposite of your muse!
Get some new material for your imagination to use as muse-fodder!
9) I don’t want to bother anybody and it seems like my partners have all moved on.
That’s a tough one.
Everyone has an identity outside the internet, real-life problems of their own, and their own creative struggles. People leave the fandom. People you care about, who you’ve never met in the flesh, suddenly vanish from the internet and there is no way to contact them. Fandoms change focus, or stop providing new material. Fights happen, and even messy RP divorces. It can be rough! I’m not gonna lie, it sucks when you build yourself a great, vicarious internet family, and then the fandom glue that stuck them together starts to dissolve.
But: please remember, new people join, too! Just be flexible. 🙂 Remind yourself that things like Tumblr Roleplay, or forums, or even whole blogging platforms, aren’t forever. Fandoms aren’t always forever! But that DOES NOT have to kill your enthusiasm! Find those new people, and those new forums to be passionate with.
Make new friends, introduce them to fandom, find a new role to fill, let yourself adjust to a different group chemistry. Remember that it TAKES TIME to build a new house, and try not to get too frustrated when you’re laying the foundations.
10) Am I forcing myself to participate when I’m just not feeling it?
If you are– hey man, no hard feelings, take a break!
Interests change. People change. New movies come out. New books are written.
So take time away, put your blog on hiatus, or just close shop. Start a new shop. Take up flower arranging. Learn to ski. It’s all good.
Maybe your muse and your passion for the fandom will come back! Usually it does, once you give yourself some breathing space.
And, maybe it won’t! If it doesn’t come back– at least you made some nice memories while you were here, right?
But DON’T, for the love of bread and butter, DON’T LEAVE A MESS WHEN YOU GO. Don’t blame your community for not providing you with your demands. Don’t shit on your RP partners. Don’t berate the fandom for not catering to you specifically. Don’t claim you were driven off because everyone else was boring or had poor taste.
Don’t make your buddies feel guilty for failing to entertain you.
Exit gracefully, like the noble and courteous Peer of the Tumblrage that you are.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 