Random Ramblings CCCXCIII · 1:45am Feb 11th, 2020
IN WHICH I PONDER THE END MAYBE
So this hit Youtube with a bang yesterday and I only just around to watching it. You should too.
I'd like to give my thoughts on this and parallels to myself after the Read More, if you will…
First off, I just want to say I massively respect Team Four Star for being able to admit they hit creative burnout and deciding they'd rather just cancel DBZAbridged rather than deliver an inferior …well, "product" is too corporate a word even for them, but you get the idea. Another plus was they didn't just stop mid-arc like most abridged series do because creators either lose interest or life gets in the way. They stopped at the end of Cell, which also happens to be where the original Dragon Ball manga ended.
Meanwhile, Little Kuriboh, bless his heart, still wants to finish YuGiOh Abridged but has had health problem (physical and mental) on top of health problem. He never should have moved to the USA -- if he were still in Britain he wouldn't have the exorbitant medical bills he's facing since they've got the (imperfect but a thousand times better than our "system" where literally everyone is a bad guy) NHS.
As much as I'd LOVE to go into a political rant, since, y'know, I'm legally allowed to call myself a political scientist and knowing policy and process is kinda my thing, I shall refrain this time.
How many writers on this site have written stories, some fantastic, only to abandon them and often drop off the face of the Earth? I look at one of my personal favourites, Daniel-Gleebits, whose Sunset×Sonata story had a tremendous influence on how I write both characters, but who abandoned his far more ambitious follow-up story and hasn't been heard from in, what?, two years? There's my friend Dusk Melody, who writes about Wild Fire. I need to PM him to see if he's doing okay. In fact, I out of the dozen authors I follow, only two or three are still actively producing work.
As for me, concern about burnout is a significant factor in my slow pace and relatively short character arcs. You can literally breeze through five years worth of my writing in half a day or less. But one thing I can say in my defense is that I haven't abandoned a story yet. Even Antonovka, I returned to after letting it lay for just over two years and completed it -- additional tweaking and rewrites resulted in several more months' delay, but I was satisfied with the final result even if almost no one read it.
When I finished the final story in Sunset's Recovery Arc, I felt a sense of relief because a series I'd spent over three years on had finally come to an end and I didn't have to think about it anymore. I enjoyed writing most of the stories, although some are higher quality than others.
Then there's the Burritoverse. I have ONE more story to write for it. My plan is, if at all possible, to write it this week and next in order to upload it on February 22nd, which is the 5th anniversary of the very first Burrito story. I'm sure I'll say this again in its Author's Notes, but I've planned for Sunset and Sonata to reconcile ever since I wrote that story (the Sonata POV flip-side was also in my mind from about Day 2). I'm still not sure how it's going to play out, but Sonata's unexpected character growth certainly looks to make it interesting.
Anyone who writes knows how it goes -- you throw something in on a whim and it works better than you could have imagined so may as well run with it. Well, that's what happened when I decided to have Sonata work at the Burrito Barn. Readers of the time seemed to be happy for her too.
I hate incomplete stories, and I don't like that I have three right now. I hope to fix this this Winter & Spring. Regrettably, I'm not sure if I'll ever have the chance to truly finish off (in every sense of that phrase) the EQG Universe once and for all. There are so many plot things I've set in motion where readers have been waiting, sometimes years, for a payoff.
Speaking of, the "Shipping Addition" to the Recovery Arc is something I do not really consider "canon", but rather an AAU spinoff. For me, the Recovery Arc ends with A Midsummer Day's Quest, which is ambiguous at best about Sunset's relationship with Rarity.
Speaking of, much as I hate tooting my own horn, that story happens to be one of my favourites. Please give it a read if you haven't yet. Despite its positioning within SRA, it doesn't require much foreknowledge because I originally intended it as an independent one-shot to celebrate my own computer replacement, and it turned into something more. I love the little world I created in that story, which Sonata will be visiting at the start of the final Burritoverse story.
And yes, once this last Burrito story is completed, there will be no more. One total fucking asshole whined that I continued beyond the first story. I'm not sure which entry it is, but you can see my measured responses until he stated he was there just to bitch and not to contribute anything meaningful.
Yes I do often downvote my critics. Only once or twice have I ever flat-out removed their comments. You can read the MeToo slap I was given for that chapter of Anon-A-Fix which I discussed in the previous blog. You might even agree with it. She gave a critique that, although I disagreed with much of it, was well-reasoned enough that I felt the need to address it and consider the parts of it I thought did have merit.
There have been a few authors on this site who have offered constructive criticism of my work and, although I wasn't happy with the criticism to begin with (who ever is?), they offered specific areas they felt I was deficient and could improve upon, and I think my writing, while still crap, is better for it. I want to believe I've improved over the past five years. It may be difficult to tell since, due to my word-count OCD, I've gone back and edited much of my work. That's the beauty of the Internet; I can do that, although it does make specific criticisms in comments threads retroactively nonsensical since I fixed the problems they were pointing out.
Anyway, I just wanted to let y'all know that I'm NOT feeling burnout just yet, and I hope I don't get to that point before I'm able to complete the many ideas I have in the pipeline. I think actually catching up on the show proper may rekindle the spark. Wish me luck!
Peace out.
Eyy man. I also dislike leaving incompletes behind. I think it's held me back from divinv into some bigger works lately, because I don't want to hit the point where you have to risk burnout to push through to finish something bigger. I actually did release a couple chapters of a new/longer/incomplete story in my BronyCon Bookstore book last year, but I feel a little less pressure to finish it (even though I do want to) because I know only ~10 people have maybe read it.
Finishing up the Burritoverse will definitely be cool. Can't believe it's been 5 years since it started! Though my own 5-year anniversary in the fandom is coming up as well...
I hate incomplete stories too which is why I am MASSIVELY determined to finish mine. I've left enough in my life unfinished, it's time to complete the shit out of EVERYTHING I come across creatively. Even if people don't feel the same way about completely reading my content, that's fine.