Well, this tumblr is a great way to! And I still intend to write DCMK stuff later on… I just need a break right now, and I definitely need to put up some better, firmer boundaries if I ever want to get involved in the RP community again.

Writing in character journal entries, answering questions, and doing drabbles was really fun. But there are a lot of inherent problems with open RPing communities that I wasn’t really prepared for. It boils down to me not having the time/energy necessary to keep up with the community… and if you can’t keep up, you are basically left behind, replaced, forgotten about, guilted, or a combination of the above.

I’ll put the following rant under a read more:

It killed the motivation to put so much work into my writing. Good, thoughtful posts take time… but the community doesn’t wait. If you’re not fast enough, they’ll move on and pick up whoever IS, regardless of quality. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing… I mean, it’s hard to RP if the other person is too busy to, you know, play.

Add in the blatant copycats lifting headcanons (often verbatim and with no attempt to disguise the fact that they quite literally copy/pasted my work), “borrowing” my OCs for their own RPs, taking plots I’d pitched and playing them with other people – and telling me how fun they were without me, and those that drop RP partners who aren’t willing to do NSFW, the jealous ones who get passive aggressive if you spend what little free time you have replying to one particular thread that has your attention…

…and the not so passive aggressive ones who actually stated that they wished they could kidnap me and make me write for them 24/7, and only specific characters… and people who would say “do you want to rp?” and if you couldn’t (you know, because I’d be at work or something) they’d just stopped talking to me entirely until the next time they could try to push me into it…

I got tired of RP partners dropping threads with me for such-and-such reason and then continually bragging to me about their other threads with whoever. Like, yay having lots of RP partners! I’m glad they’re having fun! No one should be limited! But boo completely ignoring me except to tell me how much fun you’re having with other people without any explanation as to why you stopped playing with me. What happened to “how are you?” and actually caring about RP partners?

Do I sound bitter? Ah hah.

Plus the shipping wars… and the character hating… 

oh gosh it’s so exhausting to put so much work into writing stuff only to have people tearing the character down and asking you to defend theories/actions/etc that you have no control over… most of which are completely up to interpretation and headcanon… “why did such-and-such do this thing”  “uh well first, they didn’t…” “yes they did !!!!!!!” and you just sort of squint at them but they go off hating and ugh it’s hard not to take it personally.

I enjoyed writing/interacting as Conan, Hakuba, and (gasp) Anokata, but it became way too much work/stress… and that sucked all of the fun out of it. To the point where I had to add dcmk to my blocklist because seeing posts from the fandom makes me all worked up and upset right now. 

Hopefully I’ll get over it because I still love the canon stuff (to a point), and a lot of fan stuff is fun, too.

Again, this is exactly why I refuse to look at any TMNT fandom stuff because I don’t want this to happen… like it did with ponies, the lion king, furries, and to an extent, pokemon. 😐 

Ahem. I have my private RPs still going (hi Clover!)… still intend to write some fics… I’d LIKE to get back to doing asks/journals/drabbles some day. Just not right now. Especially since I would just freak out and be all “no one wants me” and “they don’t need me” wah wah wah. If I do it, it needs to be for my fun/entertainment with no other strings or expectations attached. 

I really don’t want to be that person who whines and cries and “No one begged me not to quit, they didn’t even notice I LEFT, wah wah wah” etc. That’s just silly. I have more important things to worry about in life.

Like my career. And my novel. Commissions. Family. And my HEALTH. 

Anyway. It was fun while it lasted. But it was putting me into spirals of bad habits. Escapism is only a healthy coping method to a point. And this one was particularly time-consuming and, often, thankless.

Life is much better when I cut the clutter and simplify.