Update
@mask-of-prime, here:
I was inspired by another post in the Bionicle tag just now and felt like opening up about my inactivity on this blog for the past 5 years:
Content Warning for adverse internet-related experiences and resulting emotional struggle:
As you may know, sometime in 2018, my hyperfixation from Bionicle completely shifted into a hyperfixation on The Lion King.
Shifting main fandoms has allowed me to start fresh from a dirtied reputation in the Bionicle fandom as a young teenager and has allowed me to start fresh and more mature as a young adult. Joining an art-oriented fandom has even saved me from a steady decline in art.
However, what with the focus on digital art and more focus on things related animated works (what with that being a career goal and all), I've been shifting away from designing MOCs, making Bionicle-related fandom ramblings, particularly of comfort characters, and inevitably, RPing as Jaller, Tehutti, Macku, and my Self-MOC Tiridak.
Not only did focusing on a whole other flavor profile of fandom experience with TLK make it hard to switch back to Bionicle, but so did the poor relationships with other Bionicle fandom members I've caused:
I would portray Jaller extremely out-of-character, I had this uncontrollable need to make him this constant whump character, and I would be very insensitive and inexperienced with subject matter that I would choose to bring myself and RP partners into. Looking back at it now, forcing roleplayers to do what I wanted to do and me making the stories we'd write super weird and self-indulgent is a manipulative tactic comparable to grooming.
But yeah, it's these things that would lead to constant frustration with other roleplayers. This frustration and overall cringe subject matter I wrote or did would result in criticisms from fellow fandom members that I took way too hard, and was an early point in internet-related depression that manifested in anxiety and anger issues that I still face to this day.
There were some people who were genuinely rude about my RPing and it would get things nowhere, but even constructive criticisms would hurt just as much for some reason. I would just always be sensitive to displeasing people and seeing them angry, and I would harbor feelings of disgust with both them and myself. I think it might be Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria, which makes it really hard to control negative feelings after real or even perceived rejection.
Buy yeah, I just remember never wanting to talk to other Bionicle fans again and developing a huge prejudice assuming everyone in the fandom was blunt and rude all the time. Thing is, years went by, people's attitudes changed, and a new generation of fans with a completely different outlook had changed the flavor profile of the fandom as I still continued to check the tag daily.
In that fandom change, I discovered the Bonkle Word Game. The introduction of the Wordle-based Bionicle game called Bonkle caused me to slowly get back into Bionicle by looking up vocabulary on the BS01 Wiki, and has ultimately allowed me to become duel-fandomed, so now I'm fixated on both Bionicle and TLK. Specifically, I became fixated on working on my OC universe called Terra-Magna, which has completely different worldbuilding from the rest of Bionicle, but still technically considered an alternate universe if we're following Spiderverse possibility logic. So I'm mostly on a kick with OCs rather than favorite canon characters, now.
But anyway, I think what all this means is that if people would really like me to go back to RPing as Jaller, I probably can as I feel better about it now, now that I got all of these messy thoughts out. It's just that I think I'm still not very good at roleplaying and I never really did learn much about it to develop a true passion for it. There's also the decline of Bionicle RP over the last decade, possibly due to how much the internet has changed from a not-so-private escape and the prevalence of cringe culture that I'm sure everyone has an internalized form of to some degree nowadays.
