Temporary · 6:44am Sep 1st, 2014
I find myself sitting here, late at night, a new school year baring down on me, thinking about the temporary nature of... well, everything.
I crawled out of my cave after reading over 110,000 words of R63 Twidash over the past two days, and found myself rather inspired. It was some of the best Twidash fanfiction I'd read in years. But... the author of those fics has stopped writing fanfiction, and did so more than a year ago. The Twidash group is all but stagnant, no more threads or contests or discussions. Some of the best authors in the ship have started moving on or simply stopped writing, and I find myself feeling as though it was all a waste of time in the end.
One day, someone will click the favourite button on one of my stories, and that button will never be clicked for that story ever again. Same with every story. One day, someone will click the 'logout' button, and no one will ever log in again. Some day I will hit the publish button for a chapter, and I'll never do it again.
I know this is all true. It may be a long, long time away, but it'll happen.
I try so hard to fill the void left by other people moving on from Twidash but... I don't get that kind of enjoyment out of writing or reading my own fics. I love writing, don't get me wrong, but... I love reading the fics even more. I said once, a long time ago, that I write the kinds of fics I want to read. That I write because I want to read. This is true even now, but... in the absence of something to read, it becomes harder and harder to think of things to write. Because... I don't want to write them; I want to read them. I know for a fact a million people could write my stories better than I do. I don't want to read my own stories, I want to read the stories from people who can do it better than I.
I remember when I was scavenging through the Twidash group, devouring every fic I could get my hands on. I can't do that anymore; I've read pretty much every Twidash story I can find, and they're hardly being replaced.
I try so hard to replace them at a rate so people don't run out of Twidash for long. Other authors are still writing Twidash as well, of course, but it's just not fast enough. Over the month of August I wanted to publish 4 Twidash fics, and challenged others to do the same. I was the only one who delivered, and in the end had to drop out of the challenge because life decided I didn't need all that free time I had. I wanted to pump out 35 thousand words this month alone, and pass 60 thousand over the summer months. It didn't happen.
I'm just... I'm trying, but I want more than just my own fics; I want to read. God damn it I want to read Twidash. High quality Twidash that turns me into an emotional mess by the end of it. That's something I could never write; I don't have that kind of skill.
In the end, I suppose Twidash might be a dying breed after all. A sinking ship left to float alone in the deep, dark waters without a captain to guide it safely to shore. A good Twidash story these days means the world to me. I can think of four or five stories that I can immerse myself in almost completely. It used to be I could find a new one every day. I'll never give up on it though; I love it far too much.
I thank you all for your time and your support. I'll get to work on Missing Dreams now.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
While I don't read as many fanfics (at all) due to RL issues, consider this:
We're in between seasons right now. New inspirations aren't being provided by the show, meaning less people get inspired, meaning less fanfics, meaning less chance of great fanfics, at least in theory.
Yes, all things come to pass. This is a simple fact of life. But if things remained stagnant, then we wouldn't have any change, no new stories, no nothing. So don't feel bad about a sudden dip in quantity; even the dip will be temporary, and as soon as Season 5 gives us a TwiDash episode or another screenshot of the pair in a compromising position, you'll get your desires, I'm sure.
Peace.
It's not so much that TwiDash is a "sinking ship," just that we've hit a snag. They happen with every ship from time to time. I mean, look at AppleDash and TwiLestia and TwiLuna. These are three of the biggest ships in the fandom, yet you're not likely to see new stories flooding their groups every day, week, or even month. If you're lucky, you'll get a really good fic for any of these ships every couple months.
TwiDash had a big boom period, where a bunch of writers rose and hardly a day went by without a new TwiDash fic getting submitted to the group or sittin' there in the feature box. Now, we're in the middle of a "bust" time. Some of the more prevalent and frequent writers (bats, Wizard of Words, CalmnQuiet, etc.) have either moved on or are flooded with real life problems. And as for the lack of contests... that's partially because the majority of the admins/contribs are either unable to do anything with the group or because they are simply inactive/don't really seem to show that much of an interest.
The lack of group notifications also hurts.
It's a reason why I want to pick up writing fan fiction, I even have one or two ideas rearing to go, but I just don't have the infinite patience that authors do, let alone the skills to actually do it.