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unioncolours · 3 years

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A 2nd Majsasaurus Year!

Today, 22nd of September 2021, it’s been two years since I officially joined the magical world of fandom. 22.9.2019 I uploaded the first chapter to my fic Shadows and Sand, and the rest is history.

I did a deep dive into my first year as a fic writer and active member of fandom last year, when it was my first anniversary. You can read it here!

In that meta discussion about my membership of fandom, I presented it as if walking on clouds. I was so, so happy and talked during all the discussion about my happiness in fandom.

Since that post was written, my life and also my perception of the fandom I am part of has changed. Change isn’t always bad, as I really had a honeymoon phase with fandom over a year ago, and the low after hit hard.

But let’s see what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been writing! The following year provided much change and fun things! Please keep reading 💜⬇

The first fic I wrote since 22.9.2020 was a Sakura x Ino fic. I had for a longer while been interested in writing a woman-loves-woman ship, which I had never done before, and as a wlw-person myself the urge to explore that part led to Promise me this is just a kiss. The pairing itself was chosen on rather random, it had to be two women and I like Ino, so I chose the most popular Ino-wlw ship for this for convenience.

I really liked writing the fic and it was well-received! It was the first time I had written a fic that was entirely centred around exploring feelings and having sex.

After this I jumped directly onto the next idea that had been boiling inside me for a longer while. Up to this point, all I had written, except the wlw-fic, had been set in the Naruto canonverse and I was itching to try to work with a multi-chaptered modern au! The pairing was of course my beloved Shikadai x Inojin.

It was during the creation of this fic I began to struggle. This was a new genre, as this was romance only and all my other works had been action and fantasy based, except the sex fic of course. I was maybe over critical and stressed, which resulted in me having a hard time writing it. But I made it. Was the sky always this beautiful? ended up being 35k long, and in hindsight, I freaking love, love, love how it turned out in the end and what it represented. I am very proud of this fic.

I “upgraded” as a fan by the end of October when I bought myself a digital drawing tablet. I began drawing fanart of Shikadai and Inojin and preferably them two together, haha! I still draw a few days a month and find it extremely fun as a side hobby beside the writing.

We are now in November 2020. By this time, I had completely finished my zine fic, Under the Scorching Sun, which I had written during September and October, for the Shikatema zine I was kindly accepted to. I was proud of what I had created and was eager for the rest of the contributors to wrap up theirs, so we’d have a wonderful zine for sale in 2021. It was lovely to write ShikaTema again. As the zine fic was about to be released in months from when I had at first finished it, I wanted of course to write something fans and friends could immediately take part of on the internet. I had hyped myself up to a state where I wanted to write a third and final story in my series To love and never let go, my epic series about Shikadai and Inojin.

Now, I should maybe have waited another month, but I was worried the readers would give up on me if I didn’t write it right away. In December, I began writing To find hope in the Universe, with my usual speed and love for the art.

What I by then didn’t realise or even recognise was that I was very slowly turning burned out. I ignored all the signs.

In December I wrote simultaneously as Hope in the Universe a fic that was part of the Shikatema server’s Secret Santa event. The fic’s name was The Ghost Stories of our Hearts, and it was ShikaTema, as the event’s name suggests. It was fun to write and despite the final big fic, Hope in the Universe, pressing down on me, I finished The Ghost Stories of our Hearts and was very happy with the result. Sadly, at this point the burnout began taking control over me, and I never managed to reply to the comments.

The 15th of January, I began uploading To find hope in the Universe. It was a lovely experience, even if it was tainted by negative feelings coming from my decreasing happiness and the fact that it didn’t do as well as To dance above the Stars, the second fic in the series. To deal with two very contradiction emotions, loving my work, the characters, how I have painted an entire world around the characters and how I knew some people honestly loved my hard work, and then the negative feelings coming from not feeling good enough and depressed, was a difficult thing to navigate and still is when I think back to that time. It didn’t help that during the process of uploading the fic I went through grief, and I chose distraction as my coping method. I kept writing and working, the only thing I ever knew.

Our pre-order of the Shikatema zine was in full motion by this time and it was a nerve-wracking time! Mostly because of excitement but also worry. I’m super happy for my friends who were part of the zine, with whom I could share all the excitement and nervousness with. The zine ended up making good sales, which made me happy among the uploading of the long fic.

To find hope in the Universe was completed 31st of March 2021. When I uploaded the final chapter, I felt nothing. It was so weird, so spooky, to have finished a long fic and a series on top of that and not feel anything. But deep down, beneath the layer of depression, I felt great pride.

That was the emotion that broke free once the burnout left me. Pride.

I had created this empire of Shikajin, a whole alternative timeline, an alternative canon from my own head and to this day, that is my internet legacy. I love Trial of the Heart, which I wrote in 2020, but if I have to choose between ToH and this series, I will choose To love and never let go in a heartbeat.

So, even if it felt depressing and hopeless in the moment, I look now back with pride and happiness. Never forget that. Never forget that I made that.

April was a curious time. I swore to not write anything, because I had by now recognised that I was burned out and needed to rest, yet managed to scrape together three smaller fics.

The first one was another wlw-smut fic, TemaSaku this time called Another Light. I wanted to explore that part once again. I wrote it in canonverse and honestly think the fic ended up extremely nice. Perfect amount of feels and sex. It didn’t feel hard to write at all, because the setting, characters and emotions were so different from the fics I had written the last five months.

Now more interesting things lay on the horizon! A new zine, the Ino-Shika-Cho zine called Beyond a Bond had an interest check during the spring, and later the contributor application. I urged in the interest check to please give us the next gen kids, Shikadai, Inojin and Chocho – my kids and babies, and when it turned out they were going to feature, I had to apply as a writer. For this application I wrote a one shot, called It’s just hair, and I loved this spunky little story featuring the best babies that I created.

I also edited one of my tumblr fics, And then I kissed him, into a longer, better version that I later in May uploaded onto AO3. It was once again a Shikajin, a sequel of Trial of the Heart, and it was a fun little project.

Now May came and I sent in the application for the zine early, which I now am relieved I did. I am happy that I did the work for the application in April instead of May, because in May I had a few breakdowns and another grieving period, which lead to complete creative paralysis. I didn’t write a single word during May, only uploaded the two one shots I had prepared in April.

What I did do in May was to read through the Shikatema zine I had contributed to! It arrived in the mail! I was so nervous; my whole body was shaking when I opened the package right outside the post office. The zine now resides on the parade place in my little zine shrine in the bookshelf. Thank you to the mods who made this a reality!

To my great happiness my zine adventures continued as I was accepted to the Ino-Shika-Cho zine as a writer and was assigned to write my favourite characters. I felt so relieved and overjoyed, mind blown by the sheer talent among the contributors.

On the other fandom front, June didn’t continue any brighter, with stress and mental pain still having a strong grip around me, despite the very happy news that I am still so grateful for. I wrote a Yamanaka family fic which to this day hasn’t seen the light of AO3, because of negative emotions surrounding it. I turned into a complete wreck compared to me in June 2020. In June 2020 I was flourishing, I loved what I did, I loved fandom and I loved the friends I had made through Discord servers. Now I could find myself crying my eyes out over a wip not going the way I wished it would. What had happened to Bex 2021?

I was so incredibly frustrated with myself, groaning in defeat when my hands just couldn’t write. I managed to push through 6k of what I called my “emo au” – more of that later – and finish the Yamanaka fic which is still buried, and on top of that I had the zine and another fandom event, The Naruto Photo Album, to create content for. Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I find happiness in something that once was my reason for happiness?

In the end, I managed to write 15k in June. My former monthly word count used to be 30k. One could think this would turn into the end of my fic writing career, or the beginning of a longer hiatus, but I am stubborn and want to meet the expectations of the people who love my content, so I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to try. I wanted to be whoever I was before.

Funnily enough, the healing came in the shape of the most self-indulgent fic I have ever, ever written, a fic I like possessed began writing July the 1st 2021. It was nothing less than a freaking fairy tale AU, namely a Shikadai x Inojin Peter Pan AU. I can hear you laugh at the silliness of it, but this whimsical AU gave me back my love for writing. I hyper-fixated on this story quite a bit and stopped writing on everything else, something I almost never do.

Only happy boys fly ended up being 21 000 words long! I knew it was a niched story, and true to my guesses, the story has to this day very low stats. Today, two months after it was published, it has just above 100 hits and 10 kudos, so for all I know, only ten people read and liked it. I try to not care too much, since I love the story and in some way, that story saved me from going batshit insane over my emotions about writing.

At this point I had begun writing my fic from the Ino-Shika-Cho zine, finding joy in silly scenes with my favourite characters and trying to heal. The writing process was frustratingly slow, but one word at a time I got forward and as of today, the draft is done. The pre-orders are in December. At the side of the zine fic I wrote a short fluffy Shikajin story, CLEAR, a story with almost no plot, because I knew how much self-indulgence could help me.

And then, I finally began writing for real on my emo au, A gang of fallen stars, which has the first few chapters up right now! I have for the first time in six months a longer fic (if we don’t count the Peter Pan story) and it feels… good. This fic is once again a modern au, but in darker tones than my other modern au from November 2020. I honestly like what I have so far, even if I during June and July almost planned to never finish it. I am so relieved I managed to begin the upload. In September the Photo Album was released and I could show my two fics I wrote for it.

It sounds like this year has been nothing but misery, and at times it felt like it. However, there are a few fandom friends who brought light to my life when I couldn’t see it. The first ones to mention are of course my partners in crime, @notquitejiraiya and @thespookymoth. Together we created a server dedicated to Ino-Shika-Cho during the spring and it has been tons of fun with the members there! Thank you two for listening to me and for being my friends during 2021.

I also have to mention Soverel, who carefully begun taking contact through comments and likes on my twitter, and later through direct messages, and it has been a fun ride ever since. We’ve had lovely discussions which are very dear to me and your support means a lot to me. Thank you for being you and for drawing so many wonderful artworks you’ve shared with me. Haha, and for making me play Genshin Impact, even though I do it like twice a month!

Another person who has made my days so much brighter is @sugarriene. Thank you for sending me that one dm that made us chat regularly, thank you for popping up and sharing panels and your wonderful drawings with me, and for vibing head canons with me. You are a lovely person, and you make me happy.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to @yoboseyokyu for listening to me when I had to yell into the void and for making me happy with your cute posts on both twitter and tumblr.

Since September 2020, I’ve written around 195 000 words and drawn close to 35 illustrations, most of them of Shikadai and Inojin. Almost 200 000 words of Majsasaurus. I’ve created a Discord server and I’ve been part of two zines as a writer, plus a free PDF-project.

It has been a wild year. A year filled with passion for my favourite characters and ship, with the excitement that came with being part of projects and hyping them. It was a year where I learned to draw digitally, and heck what fun it was.

This also a year where I learned people can be mean to me because of what I ship and that fandom friends won’t necessarily always stay to be your friend anymore and how much it can hurt. I also learned what my limits are, and what punishment I get if I don’t listen to my own mind and rest when I have to.

It was a year, guys.

Now, onto the third Majsasaurus Year. Cheers!

And those of you, who supported me when I needed it – thank you and I love you.

#majsasaurus

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