Four Years of Hurt · 3:01am Jan 24th, 2018
So… where to begin, the title alone might be some minor cause for concern… but allow me to explain, let’s start at the beginning of my fimfic career/hobby, shall we?
Four years ago, maybe a little over five I had written a story called Trial of the Damned. It was similar to Without You in a sense, but it focused more on Pokémon and my self-insert. It was a fun idea, I loved Pokémon and I loved Resident Evil, so my goal was to make an awesome crossover.
I was young back then and thought I could do just about anything with writing, thought I could make an awesome epic of a fanfiction and shit. Typical mindset for new writers starting out, and I won’t lie when I say that I had it in my head to ‘make it big’ in the fanfiction community, how could I not want that even a little?
Of course, I also started writing primarily because I loved the idea of weaving together my own universe and exploring it? That was… exciting, thrilling, even. And soon enough, I had thought up a universe that involved heavy doses of Pokémon and Resident Evil.
I had completed one story for it; The Discovery, that was a nice story.
And Pokemon: Hope was another in that series that was ongoing, and would have two stories hooking up into it. The Discovery was one…
And the other? Well that brings me to the problem…
Trial of the Damned was the other story that would hook up into Hope. I had finished it, actually, at 77,397 words spread across 9 chapters. It was… a story I had a massive interest in, because it’s my first ever self insert story on the internet, and being the noob writer I was… well, I fucked it up, did a lot of cringy shit, and I ended up rushing to end the story for whatever reason.
After rushing through the ending, that’s when I started getting a feeling of inadequacy involving my works, and struggled to try and perfect them to make them better. I did improve a lot though over the next couple of years, but the Trial of the Damned lingered on in the back of my mind like a ghost, poking me and aggravating me to the point of wondering why keep this up?
But then I joined the My Little Pony fandom in early February 2014.
It was a new place, new things to work with, new ideas, people, a new audience… more importantly, it was a way that I could revive what I thought was a dead hobby of mine. I still wrote stories though, but I didn’t feel… into it, as much as I did way early on or like I do now. So I spent most of my time lurking, reading horse words, watching the show, studying and learning things.
Over the next month or so, an idea brewed in my head. The Kickassverse and by extension, a rewrite for Trial of the Damned, I thought, no… I knew I could revive that in the pony fandom. I had to, it was something I wanted to do, no one was forcing me… except myself, I suppose. So I penned down a rough draft of an idea, though up the characters, the plot, and so on and so forth. I had written up the story, I still have the old draft on here and it’s about 70K+ words.
And all of it is pure garbage. I grew unhappy with it, the reason? I grew as a writer, my skill and style changed drastically, I branched out into other types of things, my writing continued to change and grow and I realized just how… absolutely cringy and garbage the idea was. It went down the typical routes you’d think of in a self-insert story. Mary Sue-ish in some parts, atrociously done fourth wall breaking, antagonists that were just horrible, and the story? Good grief… looking back on it, it was…
The only word I can think of is just cringe. Maybe it’s not as bad as I’m saying it is, but it’s definitely… not post-worthy material. So after months weeks of working on it, I scrapped it, and tried to rewrite it…
And I scrapped that idea too, and tried again… and again, and again, and again…
You get the point, right? This is where the pain and emotional issues started to pop up.
This went on for a few months… more months passed, a year, another year, another year, and… it just kept going on and on. The pain, the aggravation at myself, and the turmoil in my stomach and heart doubled, I felt like such a fucking failure and it hurt. But I never really expressed it to anyone in great detail like I am doing right now in this blog. I hated the story, but then it morphed into me hating myself, hating that I failed at such a simple fucking rewrite.
To some this may seem really stupid. It’s just a fanfiction, calm down, it’s not that serious, right?
No… it is serious, it was important to me that I rewrote this. The story itself was important to me.
The reason? Truthfully, around the time I started getting into MLP, I ended up crushing hard on Rainbow Dash, yeah… you can probably see where this is going and I’m not going to blame you if you decide to just hit the exit button and walk off somewhere.
I crushed hard on Rainbow Dash. In my eyes, she was strong, fast, she had her quirks and stuff I’ve seen fleshed out in fanfiction, she had a love of flying like I do, and she was my favorite color. She stood out to me as a character that I felt like I could relate to in some aspects. She was courageous, headstrong, she was loyal. But she had her faults as well. Obviously… some might say she’s perfect, some would say she’s a horrible character.
But I’ve seen and read some amazing stories of her on here that painted her in this light that just… made me love her character, all her quirks, her faults, the things that made her amazing. That was perfection, because she was real, she had pros and cons, good things and bad things about her character that I loved.
Loyal but not blindly, strong in a fight, fast on her hooves, fearless to the point she’d jump into a fight head-first if it meant to save a friend. But, obviously, she has her faults too. She’s stubborn and it makes it hard to something through her hard head, egotistical to the point she’s full of herself and it makes her blind to a few things.
I live with the idea that perfection is a false concept, there’s no such thing as perfection. But… despite all of this, everything I’ve seen of her in the show in earlier years, the fanmade interpretations of her, and all of that… that made her perfect in my eyes.
And being the young fantard I was, I did like most and immediately fantasized about her like a goob. I liked her character, her voice, who she was and what she stood for. I fantasized about these little adventures we had together through Equestria and beyond.
I mean… obviously I’m not special in that regard, because everyone has done this to some degree even if they don’t want to admit it.
So… anyway, as a result of this and one little dream I had of her, I decided to build up the Kickassverse and make it a self-insert with me and Rainbow, something where I’d get to live out this fantasy of mine. Because deep down, I liked the idea of shipping myself with her, be it as a direct self insert or one of my characters.
I liked her, obviously… and obviously I’m never going to meet her or hug her. So the next best thing was to write a fanfiction to live out that fantasy of mine, that’s all of what most fanfiction is anyway isn’t it? To live out those little dreams and ideas, indirectly or directly, a part of us lives them out when we write them. And this was important to me, but I guess it wasn’t important enough for me to actually finish?
Four years and I had failed so much. I failed myself, I failed in this one goal to achieve for myself, because deep down it was important, but I got sidetracked and pulled away to focus on other things. My emotions got the better of me, my heart hurt and my mind hated everything and made it all shit in my eyes. Everything just piled up on top, but I buried it and focused on other crap, as best as I could anyway, and that was a mistake.
I didn’t even tell my best friends about this, not in explicit detail or anything. I felt like crap for so long but never explained it. I think I hid it fairly well. Recently I think I just broke down finally. I didn’t cry or anything, no no, I just took a break from Discord. I cut off contact for a few days or kept it to a bare minimum to try and reflect and focus on myself.
I fucked up, basically. I tried too hard to finish things, I let my mind latch on to bad shit and I ended up thinking I was an inferior author, that I failed because I wasn’t good enough. I started thinking that my stuff was garbage. Comments, favorites and such were great, but overall it didn’t help me overcome this retardation. I pushed myself daily for four years, constantly churning out itty bitty chunks of words for dozens of different stories that’ll probably never see the light of day. It taxed me but I never particularly noticed or cared that much to do anything about it.
I’ve also made myself out as this person who… just listens, I guess, to other people. I’m the friend who listens to another friend vent and I try to help them, and I get dumped with a lot of emotional baggage that I try to help deal with while silencing my own. I sort of hurt myself (emotionally, not physically) to help my friends out with their shit, and I rarely if ever vent heavily about stuff… or if I do now I can’t remember, my memory is fucking garbage nowadays.
Christ almighty if anyone is still reading this…
I fucked up, and put myself through shit for four years because of something I wanted to do but never did. I pushed it into the back of my mind, and focused on other stuff, and it didn’t really become a big thing for me. I was writing other stuff that was… somewhat similar but very different, and I never thought about the story, at least until the new year started and the anniversary of when I first joined coming up next month.
But now? I came back from my break, I feel better knowing that I figured some shit out and I cleared my mind. So I wrote the final rewrite, something I had sitting in a dusty hole and diddled around with, thinking it’d help me. And in a way, it kind of did help, I wrote a bit for it, I have a solid idea for it overall, a plot, a story even. Almost three chapters, but hey, it’s something, right? And you all probably read it, perhaps, perhaps not.
The story ‘Without You’ is something incredibly important to me now, because it’s… more or less a way for me to express this idea of mine I liked and have fun with it at last. So to finally publish the fucker feels great. It’s a burden off my shoulders, and working on it now I’ll have a reason to keep’er going. The plan in my head doesn’t make me want to throw up or (metaphorically) kill myself, so that’s a plus I suppose.
Good god, this is almost 2000 words in length, I’m so fucking sorry for anyone who read this shit… >~> I’ve given off this demeanor of trying to be the happy guy in the group so… being down and depressing like this feels weird. Showing a moment of weakness or something like that I guess just makes me feel vulnerable, I suppose? It’s different…
But anyway, I have some great friends who helped me a lot with shit. A lot of fellow authors on here, friends far and wide, who provided me with support and good laughs, they’ve all helped me become a better writer and a better person in a way. My skill’s improved a bit, and I felt confident enough to post this story and try to work on it.
Four years of buried emotional pain finally coming out… good grief.
So you all know the story now, I basically released this unholy monster that is my feelings out into the world for all to read, and by monster I mean this blog.
To anyone who read this entire thing, thanks I suppose? I started out with the intention of explaining the reasoning behind the story and why it was important, but I got off-track, heh… oh well?
Damn… shame I don’t have alcohol right now, I could use a stiff fucking drink…
Ugh…
Anyway. Thank you all for reading so far, thank you all for your support, favorites, comments, whatever you threw at me, I appreciate and love all of it and all of you. To any of my friends reading this… I’m sorry I never said anything, or even hinted at this, or came to you for help. The reasoning is fucking petty, I know, cause I didn’t want to worry anyone with my shit, but I did and do that anyway when I shouldn’t have.
GAH! Fuck me sideways.
POINT IS. Thanks, and… I’ll see you guys next time, in a hopefully happier blog post, cause this is basically almost 3000 words of just pure shit, so.
Goodbye for now, hope you enjoy both stories I have posted, and have one hell of a good time.
Chao.
~Dustchu
I may be new, but glad you got it out there. I can relate, in a way, but to a lesser extent.
I can relate to being a listener and trying to help out with others problems while bottleing your own up.
It's nice feeling isn't It? Getting back to the swing of things I mean. In a way this blog post is letting us know the most important question we had for a author we followed liked and commented in many story's we liked and waited to be continued. Why? Why did he suddenly stop? I'll give your remake story a read. See were this one will go. And hope this is not the end of others. I'm not the only one who thinks you write some good shit and sure as hell glad those you confide in were able to help you out bud.
I'm glad you've finally realized what brings you down.
TRUST ME. I know EXACTLY how you feel, I've been spiraling down a path of hating myself practically since I was born. It was only a few months ago, after a suicide attempt, that I realized all of the people in my life who abused me and called me worthless consciously or subconsciously, which has been going on since I was born, were the reason I thought I was worthless. So, now I'm breaking away from that. I'm so glad myself that I realized what the problem was. With that I can attack it straight on. I hope you do the same, until what makes you feel horrible and worthless is gone. It has no place in your life.
I can relate to some of your desires. I want to tell you something important, though. If you have a story inside of you, it NEEDS to be told. Don't you dare keep it inside. It's a disgrace to writers everywhere if you keep it in. You need to believe in yourself. I'll cheer you on, whether you do or you don't.
Well I hope you are feeling better soon. We all have bad times that come to us and do their best to tear us down. I myself last year had a massive breakdown after I was laid off and I had no other job lined up to take its place. Seriously I was a mess I literally could not leave my bed some days because I was a nervous crying mess. This was exacerbated by the fact that i had a lot of monthly payment on loans and stuff that were not going to get paid because of my firing. Eventually I found another job and with the help of family I am in a much better place mentally. So I will say it does get better in the long run.
I started reading the story because it was great and I will continue for that as well, but I want to read it because it means something to you and people enjoying it will help. I thoroughly enjoy any crossover and with Rainbow Dash, it's perfect. Also like many of the other comments on here I relate to you but in more ways than one
1. I had been trying to work on my own story about meeting my favorite character
2. said story pretty much fell flat and I got depressed over it
3. I refused to check back on the story and silenced myself from writing it
Now though with you having the courage to do yours, you gave me the courage to continue mine. Stay strong dude, I bet the story will be great
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I genuinely am speechless and have no idea what to say. Like... thank you all for reading and sticking by me n' shit. For years I've been doing this, bottling things up, not going to my friends, my mind went to dark places and shit was just... bleak, bland, boring, even. But I'm doing better now that I've finally posted this story of mine. I certainly do not plan on dumping my other stories, they'll continue on, but it'll be slow, I'm still a fairly slow updater, heh.
I'm doing better, again, so... no worries on that front, I suppose.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep these stories going and not get sucked back down into the bullshit that are my emotions, so again... thanks. I appreciate everything you guys have told me, so
s and hugs all around!
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I wish you luck my friend, and I hope you can overcome it like I have
Love you all.
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I'm a very slow writer, I get out about 3000 words a month. I had the feeling of inadequacy too.
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Heh, here's to overcoming that