#[waves hello to all my fellow TAZ sleeper agents who are chewing drywall about the Suffering Game graphic novel]

[epersonae]

I thought I had reblogged an earlier iteration of this (I definitely saw @chocolatepot's addition yesterday) but apparently not; instead that thought went into a separate post about the effect of syndication on fandom?!

in any case, yes to everyone here, and I've been thinking about this in the context of my experience with the Adventure Zone fandom, and the end of the Balance campaign, and I came into that fandom at its peak. (for context for my TAZ pals: started listening in 2016, got caught up in the middle of Suffering Game)

and I think there's a point at which it does start to fade, however much people had the! energy! - and Balance had maybe one of the best most satisfying endings of anything ever, but with lots of space to play with ideas for post-canon, and it has a canon that has lots of internal space to play with. But even with all that, people do fade out and move on, and the energy can't ever be what it was at the peak.*

(something about not being able to live in peak life experiences forever, I guess)

BUT!

I think it becomes something more permanent, actually; there are people who I follow here who have more or less stayed mostly TAZ blogs and they have ups and down of activity, and people who moved on to other stuff, multiple other stuff, and then remain sleeper agents who can be reactivated lol. I am definitely one of said sleeper agents, and honestly that's how it is for a lot of my interests! The IWTV TV show reactivated the Anne Rice sleeper agent who goes all the way back to when I was like 15.

I still have unfinished fics for TAZ that maybe someday I'll go back to; I have several ideas/drafts for OFMD fic which have varying levels of likelihood of being written. Hell, I have a start of a Star Trek TOS/Star Trek II fic that I would love to find the motivation to eventually write.

And it really does all come back to maintaining the creative spark and joy even given less engagement (can I add that I hate the word "engagement" for this? I'm trying to think of it not in the sense of Content Creation, but in terms of community and participation) - and maybe it helps for me that I've never had anything get big? I started out toiling in the rarepair mines, and then for whatever reason (not much porn writing? never did a big AU? idk) have always been a small fry in OFMD. So then it's connecting with that handful of people for whom it matters to me that they're reading, and the joy of that connection, and the joy of creation, and the love of our source material.

* Balance finale was August 2017, I feel like the fandom vibes were pretty strong for at least another year? year and a half? it's complicated for me by the fact that first I had Major Life Events thru 2018 and 2019, and then also that when the pandemic started I completely stopped reading anything, even fic; my brain came to a complete and total halt. there's still at least three big fic that I was reading that I just quit completely in 2020.

I don't know if other fic writers are feeling this, but it feels like there's been such a noticable drop in engagement lately. I'm still relatively new to the game, I only started posting my fics in November last year and I've been very lucky in terms of engagement, but especially the past months or so things have just felt sooo slow. When I think about the difference in the amount of comments I got on my earlier fics and what I get now, and I add in how lean my kudos emails are starting to get compared to how they looked a few months back, it's hard not to let it become discouraging, and promoting your own fics can feel like pulling teeth at the best of times.

I might be overly sensitive right now because I am home recovering from surgery and I'm just a bit raw emotionally and all, but I just keep thinking about this lately. I know the fandom is bound to become a bit less active over time, but it's hard not to let it bum me out a little bit.