#I've dipped from social media like this before for my health it's real good for me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nyoggets · 4 months

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Some thoughts on fandom, burnout, process of creation and never feeling good enough.

(it is now 4am and I've given up on sleep)

So I've avoided ever talking about this on twt because? The platform is such a mess, people use it to liveblog their feelings but it's also got that usual socmed feel to it - only show the good, funny, relatable or glamorous stuff.

I like art, obviously. Love it even, it's been the one constant in a life of switching hobbies and obsessions on the weekly. But it's also been so, SO difficult at times. I draw, so gotta share it on social media, right? The first time I shared my art online was when I was 9, on a ratty, now defunct forum.

I don't recall many responses aside from "I don't think she's ever been to the hair dresser". Instagram was released in 2010, and I made the switch, continued to post my drawings in earnest, participating in art contests that were super popular at the time. Obviously I never won any, I was just learning, starting out. Winning wasn't my goal, my goal was to get a spot in the honourable mentions or likes and attention from the bigger artists hosting these. When that didn't work I tried to game the algorithm before I even know what an algorithm was. I also made some friends this way, most of which had a higher follower count despite our (in my mind) fairly evenly matched skill. I entered more contests, I begged friends for collars, I drew things I dislikes because I saw them being popular. Nothing worked, I became obsessed over numbers, a drawing was only worth something if it got enough likes, which it never did. I tried for a while longer, then didn't pick up a pen for almost 2 years.

Eventually, because I just couldn't leave art behind I started again, focusing on original works and punching myself for losing 2 years of practice time. Things were fine, I stayed away from social media aside from Tumblr but never really posted anymore, stayed quiet. Of course, I still resented those artist friends a bit for their ever growing following, but what right had I? I'd given up and spent 2 years moping.

Eventually I got really into Love Live and with it finally a new ship I could sink my teeth into and draw - ChikaRiko. Inevitably, I wanted to feel part of communities again, I didn't have anyone in real life to share my obsessions with. I was very much the weird quiet kid, and as much as I craved being around people, being deaf with my hearing steadily dying away even further without anyone noticing, talking to people was just Hard, so so very hard. But online, where I could read, didn't need to be able to listen? It was easy, besides, my only friends so far had all been online. What's the harm in dipping my toes back into fandom?

So, I created a twitter account, discord, found people to chat and share my art, pretty much exclusively ChikaRiko, with. And things were fine again! People were reacting to what I posted, engaging, asking questions, providing advice. Then... I opened twitter back up, looked at numbers, compared them, and became angry at myself again. Comparison is the thief of joy indeed. Several years ahead, fire emblem three houses comes out and with it dimilix hits me like a sack of bricks (affectionately). Another new ship! And the fandom was active, I could fit in here, maybe! And I'd like to believe I did, if only because the fandom is just so truly relaxed, given my unfortunate decline of my mental health it was probably the only sort of fandom environment I could exist in. Still, I kept comparing myself, kept being dissatisfied with the direction my art was taking. I had all these symbolic ideas, things I wanted to try, wanted to be more like the artists I looked up. Wanted to do my own stuff, original art, instead of confining myself. But any time I did do so the reception was lukewarm at best, nonexistent at worst, so I stuck to fanart that became increasingly removed from the canon. Which, still super fun and honestly we were all just screaming into the void of time between the two years until three hopes came out, delusional fanon felt very much encouraged. Again, loved and still love the general vibe of the dmlx community (stares lovingly at DTF and For Years). But still, I wasn't satisfied with what I was doing, and my motivation to draw at all regularly died off for months at a time, which really isn't ideal when you're trying to feed the all-devouring behemoth that is the algorithm.

This October I tried something I hadn't done since 2018 - inktober. Back when I did it it was just 31 days of increasingly delusional ChikaRiko (are we seeing a pattern here), this time around I wanted to be "self indulgent" and draw only original art, loosely oriented on two lists of prompts. Of course, I didn't finish, still haven't, but I'm only missing a few prompts now. But!!! I've drawn!!! More in these 3 months than I have in recent years, and my ideas aren't slowing down yet, I keep coming up with new ones on the daily. It just feels so, so Good to find joy in art again. Best of all, I felt no need at all to share this stuff anywhere but the small discord server I've been nodding for years, with friends who at this point weren't really expecting art from me that matched their interests. I was finally drawing for me and me alone, so the response was of no importance to me, and the moment I dropped a finished piece I started the line art of the next one. Of course, I'm slowly unleashing everything into the void that is Tumblr and while any notes delight me, the number really doesn't concern me much anymore.

Not that all my fanart didn't spark joy to me! I just have too many things I wanna get out of my head that aren't very fanart compatible at all.

Fandom is weird and wonderful and I don't really remember a time in my life where I wasn't in any fandom at all, but frankly, my mental health and self image is a mess, and most social media actively does more harm than good to me, despite the friends I made.

Either way, I'm finally, finally for the first time in years excited to see what the future brings for me and art, how I'll improve, what I'll draw over the next year.

#4am thoughts #but like nice warm thoughts #anyways dmlx fandom is still the best <3

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dynamics-of-an-asteroid · 5 years

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Hey. Found you through Elementary reblogs and wanted to say thank you for being so blatantly pro-villains in general, pro-Jamie x Sherlock in particular, and against anti-villain discourse. I never fully made the switch to Tumblr, but I've been attacked on and off on other social media these past few years and internalised a lot of crap that I believe comes from here. Scrolling back your archive this week has been incredibly healing. Feels like I can breathe again. Thank you.

I’ll put this under a cut cause it got a little long.

Listen, the greatest flex you can do to people whose entire self-worth and identity is dependent upon receiving the attention and validation they can’t get outside of the online personas they’ve specifically crafted to imitate the type of power and control they wish they had in their real life? Is to deprive them of the ego boost they get projecting their feelings of insecurity, unhappiness, and resentment on to others by being a constant reminder of the peace of mind they can’t have simply through enjoying what you like and being comfortable about it.

Cause nine times out of ten the discourse that follows is not actually about whatever moral crusade it’s dressing itself up to be. It’s about those people having a platform to signal to others that they’re the right kind of person with the right kind of opinions by creating the dichotomy that you’re not. In return, they gain a massive following, endless amounts of notes, messages, hits, views, and whatever else is considered currency on social media these days for it. That, in turn, causes them to do anything to hold on to that positive feeling regardless of how many lines it can, and often does, cross.

And unsurprisingly, the culture of this website encourages that behavior cause a lot of people here have the same stories. They don’t have a lot of friends (let alone access to communities of people marginalized in the ways they are), they come from environments where being themselves is discouraged or even dangerous, they have zero support systems or tools in real life to help them figure things out in a healthy way, etc. So they just feed off each other’s narratives and keep themselves trapped in this microcosm where the politics of online fandom spaces becomes the be-all-end-all in forming their ideas and views about the world, which in turn is how they come to define themselves.

I mean, I hope they have fun trying to reconcile the self-loathing they feel when they’re left alone with their thoughts at night with their newfound addiction to discourse allowing them to pretend they’re beloved by strangers on the internet for who they are. But no one should be subjected to their frustrations about wanting to feel less worthless by being attacked over what’s honestly non-issues a majority of the time. Very rarely is it ever serious enough to warrant the kind of reaction that happens daily over incredibly subjective opinions that “as long as you admit” to will spare you the drama when it absolutely won’t.

So you might as well spend your free time, your headspace, your creativity, your mental health doing what you love cause it’s not your job to make those people happy or satisfy their demands.

You don’t have to tack on a billion disclaimers about what you do and don’t condone, or submit your understanding of morality before you do anything. You don’t have to apologize or put yourself down (even jokingly) for what you like. You don’t have to remind people that you know what happened in the source material. You don’t have to center all your fannish activities on constantly criticizing what you like and operating under the terms of those criticisms all the time. You don’t have offer any personal details up for justification about why you like something. And you certainly don’t have to continue this trend of telling your generation and the one behind you (especially women) that if you like ABC you’re gonna grow up to be XYZ, since fiction is influenced by reality and vice versa but you’re too stupid to know how, so those enlightened few are gonna teach you their own biases to pass on how to not fall in to that “trap”.

I certainly don’t do it now, but in the past even I’ve dipped in to pacifying the wankers (cause that’s really what most of this is; we just dressed up old fashioned “wank” , put a bow tie on it, and called it “discourse” for some reason) in the hopes that I’ll be free to enjoy stuff without having people down my throat. I can tell you it changes nothing cause like I’ve said before - the ultimate goal for how to interact with villains in a way that everyone can agree on is “don’t”. If that’s the case, why bother? Might as well slap that flower crown on your favorite villain and have fun, you know?

At the end of the day, the only person you have to answer to is yourself. You know what you’re about, and again, owning that person without the approval of others? Is such a powerful and freeing force, and gonna be way more healing than my blog in the long run, I promise. I know it’s easier said than done, but keep trying to detox whatever poison you’ve been speared with by understanding what your relationship - however deep or not deep it is - to that character, ship, etc. and go from there. It’s a lot easier than letting others tell you what they think is happening there, and then having to go on defense when they inevitably get it wrong cause they don’t know shit.

Good luck and feel free to talk to me at any time

♥

#clowns are supposed to entertain you not the other way around hon lol like i don't have time for it.#i'll just tell them to get some hot butter rolls and sit down somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#long post

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