#makes me feel ungrateful

[strawbubbysugar]

Man I’m having such a hard time writing. When I was writing fanfic all the comments I’d get really kept me going (and the comments I get on my original work send me into orbit with how much I love them!!) but without that same influx of people showing interest I’m all in my head like is this not good enough? What if my ideas suck actually? And I keep gettin roadblocked by my own brain telling me that what I’m writing isn’t worth it q-p

[fischiee]

the way that the freelancers can shut their ai off in some way (as tex says to north bc she doesn’t like omega) and yet everything still played out with maine..

sigma must have fucked with his head so much to convince maine that this is what he wanted to do, that maine himself wasn’t human enough without the ai so that he would be willing to go along with it to the point of succeeding in trying to kill all your found family

[clown-eating-pig]

Podcast episodes feel so short when you don’t have another one to instantly consume :(

[aimseytv]

shirt that reads don’t compliment me i’ll cry

[hella1975]

hiiii haha. hello. exceptionally awkward introduction bc idrk how to start something like this so let's just jump right in. im taking a break from this account for a bit. i know i said i wanted taob out before halloween and currently im fine sticking with that deadline, but if i decide i need longer away then i will take longer away. every time ive reassured people that id never abandon a fic and updates will always come eventually i never once considered that my writing and ability to feel safe and comfortable on this site would be actively taken from me, so im not even going to apologise. i dont want this either and more importantly i dont fucking deserve it. i dont know what it is in the past year, if ive hit a certain amount of followers or 'popularity' that's made it so the natural ratio of positive to negative interactions must in turn go up, but there's been a serious uptick in weird asks for me. the annoying part is that a very small amount of them are actually objectively mean and hateful, the rest are just weird and invasive from people who seemingly dont realise that's what they're being. ive reached a point where i dont care if the intentions are good. it's not my job as a 20 year old tumblr user of all things to defend the morality of someone who couldnt even bother to come off anon. unfortunately, after blocking only one or two anons, the weird asks have decreased substantially, which says all you need to know about the fascinating and exhilarating lives led by these people, but ive also gone on to turn anon asks off entirely. this is something i actively fought against doing and had to be pushed into by my mutuals (who have been the coolest people on planet earth during this entire thing). turning off anon was a big deal to me even if it sounds silly. i felt betrayed and like id been backed into a corner because it was so vehmently something i DIDNT WANT that to feel like i had to do it anyway for my own mental health??? that sucks. so even though ive 'fixed' the problem, im still kind of reeling and uncomfortable every time i come on tumblr. i hope it's just something i need time to ease because i'll truly be devastated if this becomes 'ruined' for me. tumblr exists as the only place in the world where i am honestly every facet of myself without shame or hesitation; losing that would be insanely harmful to me. and to the people who cant appeal to the actual human behind the post, let me put that in words you can understand: we wouldn't get any more writing 😦😦😦 riots and fires and sirens, i know. so yeah. to anyone who has sent me an anon ask and you're now wondering if you were part of the problem, im firmly of the belief that you'll know if you are. when i say 'weird asks' i dont mean 'you sent me a para about your personal life just to vent or ask for advice' or 'you sent me a really deep emotional compliment about the impact me and/or my writing has had on you' - i love asks like that, so much that i put off taking a break and turning off anon solely for the joy they bring me. im sorry that it might feel like you're being punished too bc of the actions of what in reality is a HANDFUL of weird people, but this is what i feel like i have to do to feel safe and not go insane every time i log in. love you guys, hopefully ill see you soon x

[yuridovewing]

So I do get the anger in the Warriors fandom about how aggressively anti adoption the series is, don’t get me wrong. It’s incredibly insidious how a character will learn that their parents adopted them and not really even be mad or frustrated, but will just completely drop them and pretend that there’s no connection there whatsoever, good or bad. How Gray Wing, despite them preaching about how he’s a wonderful adopted dad, literally is manifested a new wife to have bio babies with him as a “reward”. its so aggressively anti found family it hurts

But that being said…. I don’t really like how people apply this to Twigbranch. At least from what I’ve seen. Twigbranch wasn’t lovingly adopted after her mother gave her up, she didn’t scoff and say “Lilyheart doesn’t count, she can’t love me like a REAL mom”, she didn’t preach about how blood is thicker than water or anything . Her mother died tragically through a series of circumstances that couldn’t be controlled. She was just given to Lilyheart because she was the only one available, and she was only accepted into the clan because they thought she’d fulfill a prophecy, and treated her like a burden when she wasn’t instantly special. She was excluded and teased by her foster siblings, her doctor verbally abused her which turned more people against her, including said foster siblings. Her sister was pried away from her into an abusive environment and she was denied access to her in any way. She wasn’t even told about the full circumstances of why ThunderClan is even doing all this. Lilyheart and Alderheart are good to her, sure, but that seems to be it. And later on, when her family seems to be out there, her own mentor sabotages the patrol for selfish reasons and no one steps up.

Um. Yeah I think I’d want to know my biological family too in that situation. She’s allowed to mourn the mother she never got to know and to want to know her father and be with her sister, especially after how ThunderClan treated her. “Oh she’s turning against her found family!” WHAT found family?

[bugeyedfreaks]

Okay guys, what is going on?! 😳

I had to make an emergency stop at a Wal-Mart this weekend and found OG Powerpuff Girls pants and a hoodie?! With the original logo and everything?!

(Actually, credit and love to @burninglilly-art for telling me about the pants in the first place, but I couldn’t find them at my local store and thought it might be a lost cause! Fate thought otherwise! 💖)

Then today I ended up having to kill some time because of some surprise traffic, so I went into a Five Below for the first time in forever… and look at the magnet I found right before I left that was at the exit?!?!

And it was the only one there!

All I can say is that fate has been ultra weird this weekend for inexplicably drawing me to these stores to find these things, but I’m thankful for it! 💙💖💚

[skunkes]

the way I've been raised has shown itself in a recent awful experience I had and the realization won't leave me because I'm not sure what to do about it.

I don't like feeling anger/upset and it's rare for me to feel it anyway but it's led to me being unable to tell what's worth getting upset over anymore. If my wants upset somebody, then, well, maybe I shouldn't have them? What is so serious that I need it to go completely my way...? What desires am I allowed to have. It's not that serious, it's okay if not, you can't always get what you want....

every time I feel Upset I am later wracked with guilt because it wasn't a big deal and I was just being selfish... What IS a big deal then? How can I tell? Its admittedly never a big deal... But I keep being upset. And stepped on....

[rollercoasterwords]

hi! thank you for the kind words, i'm happy you're enjoying the fic. but i also want to use this message as an opportunity to talk about something/set a boundary that i haven't really known how to discuss, and i've blocked out your name because even though i'm not angry or upset with you, i want to make sure i'm not sending any hate back your way. 

i know that this message is well-intentioned, and i know you likely think it's nothing but a compliment to ask me to write more--after all, you're only asking me to write more because you enjoy the story so much! shouldn't that be a nice thing for me to hear? 

and like. i think that's why this is difficult for me to talk about. i don't want to come across as ungrateful or overly sensitive or like i don't appreciate the compliments, because i do. but at the same time, hearing someone say, "please write more of this fic for me, i love your writing so much!" is still hearing someone say "please write more of this fic for me!" like. 300,000 words is incredibly long. most novels are between 70k-100k words. a 300k word book usually takes years to write--years, and hundreds of hours of labor. maybe you chose that number randomly, or you're exaggerating for emphasis; but no matter how nicely you're phrasing it or how facetious you're being, ultimately this sort of message still puts pressure on me to produce a massive amount of writing in a short period of time. and even if you meant it as a compliment, it doesn't feel nice to me. being pressured to churn out hundreds of thousands of words makes me feel as though i'm being seen as a content-creation machine for the entertainment of others, and i don't like that. writing is a labor of love for me, but it is still labor--hours of time and effort that i'm putting into these works which i share for free, with no expectations of anything in return except maybe a few kind words from those who feel like reaching out. when i get messages or comments like this pushing me to write more, to write faster, it makes me feel as though my time and labor are not respected at all; as if there's absolutely no consideration for the amount of effort it takes to write the stories. which, again, makes me feel like i'm being viewed as some sort of fic-writing machine that can just pump out hundreds of thousands of words on demand for others' entertainment.

and none of this is helped by the tongue-in-cheek comment about how you're "suffering" waiting for updates. again, i understand that this was well-intended and maybe even a playful exaggeration that's supposed to be complimentary. but there are ways to tell me you enjoy my writing and eagerly wait for updates without telling me how much you dislike waiting between chapters. posting once a week is already a difficult schedule for me to maintain, and it's entirely possible that i'll need to take another break in the future or skip a week or something. i've been very clear about the fact that my update schedule is subject to change since i started writing the fic; that's just part of reading a wip. but when i get messages or comments like these with people telling me how they don't like waiting for updates, or comments directly asking me to post more than once a week, or--back when i did take a break--comments begging me not to take a break, it all adds together and builds up and creates this pressure to write more, write faster, post the new ch now now now. if you were the only person making this type of comment, it probably wouldn't bother me and i'd just respond and go "thanks lol" and move on. but the problem is that you aren't the only one--since more people have started reading the fic, i've consistently been getting comments like these, where the backhanded pressure to write more or write faster is couched in compliments. it's just so hard to wait for updates because i love your writing so much! i just want you to write more and post now and write faster because i love your writing so much! i know it's all well-intended, but none of it makes me feel good. it just makes me feel a mounting pressure to produce produce produce.

i feel like there are so many conversations happening in this fandom about how we need to treat writers better, where people go "the fandom is so shitty" and everyone goes "yeah!" but no one ever thinks they're part of the problem. and i think it's because everyone thinks the problem is like...really blatantly rude and entitled messages. and like, i get those too--people telling me they don't like a certain characterization and asking me to rewrite the fic; people repeatedly demanding that i write a certain fic for them; people just outright shitting on things i've written because they don't like it and for some reason think i want to know that. but none of that is super common. what is super common is the steady stream of comments and messages like this one, where they are so well-intended and don't see anything wrong with what they're saying because they think they're giving me a compliment. but all these "compliments" build up and create this pressure that hangs over my head to be constantly producing and writing, which is ultimately what leads to burnout and also makes me feel like i'm not being seen as a person so much as a machine. 

so like. idk. i'm not gonna try to speak for every writer in the fandom; maybe there are people out there who do appreciate this kind of message, who feel like it motivates them to write. but for me, i want to make it clear: i really don't appreciate being asked to write more or write faster or to write a certain trope/ship/etc; i am not a waiter taking your order at a restaurant. writing fic is not a service i'm providing for you that you pay me for in comments or kudos or messages or any sort of attention, because i am not writing for that attention in the first place. so when it comes to interacting with me, i'd ask that you reevaluate the way you give compliments and think about what sort of pressure you're putting on me, regardless of how well-intentioned your message is. again, no hard feelings towards you--like i said, this message probably wouldn't even register as pressuring to me if not for the fact that i get so many little comments like it, all from equally well-intentioned people who think they're just giving a compliment, all of which builds up together. 

anyway. all that being said. to answer your question: the fic will likely be four parts, not three as i originally intended. it will probably end up somewhere between 100-200k words based on the fact that we're already at 80k and i've only just started part iii, but i am not going to put pressure on myself to write a certain amount of words or hit a certain length. i'm just going to write what i want to write when i want to write, and share it as i want to share it. i'm happy to have you along if you want to be here, but if the cliffhangers or waiting for updates becomes too unenjoyable for you then there's no pressure for you to stay, yknow? no hard feelings on my end either way :•)

[sunsafewriting]

new do a flip chpater will be up tomorrow night :D it's 10.5k and was very uncooperative but is now in final editing / touch ups etc :D

[kaladinkholins]

i think im gonna take a break from my fic to write my original work instead

[iamfabiloz]

It still my dream to start comic with my oc who’s rhe daughter of scourge 🙏 idk as a first (fourth) try into actuallt makinf a comic project LOLLL idk

[opens-up-4-nobody]

Not liking Naruto as a character is a big red flag for me tbh

[hollyhomburg]

I have such an intolerance to being rude, like I accidentally do one thing and I feel like SHIT for the whole night like this is why I like to stay home and never do things 🫠

[phoenix-rising-starbird-one]

German punctuality means everyone is on time except the fucking train. Except that one time you have to catch the train and it leaves right in front of your eyes. Two minutes early! Fucking gotta love this place.

[notetaeker]

Wow I was so unappreciative of my own accomplishments when I was in college. I'm trying to put together a portfolio and it turns out I wrote 5 whole news articles for the school paper ???