#fairly sure i'm in the midst of a manic episode

[magentagalaxies]

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[violetvoid-colorpower-wisp]

A Bit of Transparency

I'm sure y'all have noticed that this blog hasn't been very active in the past month or so. I wanted to come forward and provide a bit of insight to what's been happening behind the scenes, while also discussing where we'll go from here.

TLDR; I've been unmotivated to provide new content to share recently for a variety of reasons, and I've run out of items from my backlog to share. This backlog includes the Origins fic, which I have to put on hiatus for now. I don't know when I'll begin uploading at a more consistent schedule. Until then, I'm opening up a Discord server to have a more casual and direct way of chatting with y'all and bringing you a larger variety of content.

Why Hasn't the Blog been Very Active Recently?

Well... it's complicated. This blog was never really built on the strongest foundations, even if it seemed to be before I went on a soft hiatus.

I came up with the idea behind this AU and made this blog on a whim in the midst of a semi-manic episode. For a few weeks I had an unhealthily strong creative drive and pumped out at least two sketch pages a day, while also working on larger illustrations for this blog and other projects. I also wrote around 200 pages of various fanfic in that time too.

In short, I had no plan and was creating at an unsustainable pace. As I worked, I did eventually come up with a plan for this blog, but ended up burning out before I could begin to actually progress towards the end goal I set.

This burnout wasn't helped by the current state of affairs with this blog. It grew much more rapidly than I was expecting early on, and the fairly high amount of engagement I was getting ended up weaving with my enthusiasm for creating this art. For a while, with both of those incentives in place, I had no problem cranking out content to share. However, more recently... both of those incentives have waned.

Now, I want to be clear: I'm not trying to complain about the number of notes my more recent posts have been getting, and I'm not going to whine about people engaging with my inbox less- I'm just trying to say that the relatively low engagement recently is one of the several factors that has led to me neglecting this blog.

The last nail in the coffin for my creative drive, though, has been my mental health recently. Please don't worry about me, I have all the resources I need, but as of late I've had very poor mental and emotional stamina, and it's made content creation a lot more challenging for me. I haven't been making nearly as presentable artwork, and I've been struggling to find the bandwidth to write. So... and god, I hate to say it, but...

The Origins Fic is Going on a Hiatus

I never wanted to have to do this. It was my goal to always have a few chapters ready to post ahead of time just in case I fell into a rut like I did, but I've run out of the backlog I had built up and just don't have anything else to post for now. I've been trying to work on the next few chapters, believe me, but it's been hard while I deal with my mental health issues.

The Origins fic is currently at a bit of a transition point. We're entering the rising action, and I've been struggling enough to structure its foundation- never mind drafting the next chapter. I don't know how long it'll take me to work out the plot structure and get back into the swing of drafting and editing, and so... I don't know how long the fic will be on hiatus. I don't want to call it "indefinite", but it's the only fitting word.

For now, the Origins fic is on an indefinite hiatus.

And it's not the only thing I've been struggling with.

I'm not Content with the State of this AU

There are a number of things I am no longer happy with when it comes to this AU. I don't want to pull out the exhaustive list here, but one of the reasons I've struggled with posting is that I'm not sure how much I want to change, how people would take retcons and redesigns, and so on.

And it's not just the characters, lore, locations, and such that I'm not content with... it's the medium in which I've been sharing them that's been grating on me recently. The format of a Tumblr blog has left some things to be desired for me. For one, I feel the need to talk in this semi-professional tone, and keep myself at an arms length from y'all to moderate this space. It's tiring for me. I'm a very stream-of-consciousness, casual person, and I love chatting with people on an equal playing field. I also like attention, and sharing WIP's, and basically- I've been pining for a way to shoot the shit with all of you in a different medium than this blog. I think I know the best way to do this.

An Official Voidhog Discord Server

Now, let's make this clear: I'm not deleting or abandoning this blog. I just want a different, more casual way to chat about this AU and share my work. I kind of hope that by opening up this channel of communication, I'll rekindle my interest in working on this AU again.

Why? Because I work best when I can interact with my audience directly. I actually prefer Discord over Tumblr as an art sharing medium in general. Here's the kind of content I can offer a lot more frictionlessly there that I haven't been offering here:

Art Livestreams

Art and Writing WIPs

Casual Q&A (with me and the characters)

Content that Tumblr won't Allow

If any or all of these things interest you, stay tuned. I'll be creating the server today and providing a link to it in another post.

If you've read this far; thank you, and I'm sorry. This blog is in an unideal state, but I hope that changing up how I do things a little and providing stuff through a different medium will revive my creative energy and interest in this AU.