#a personal note

[pedrospookie]

hi friends—

I just wanted to drop a line and say hi, I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been going through an intense work period on top of personal stress. My work requires lots of travel and weird hours and I am just exhausted. I haven’t had mental space or the creativity to write and I am sorry for being behind on my requests and writing challenges.

I probably won’t be back to full capacity for another month or so as I’m on the road again. I also had to have a very difficult goodbye this morning at the time of my departure that has left me a lil heartbroken. I anticipate not wanting to write about lovey dovey things for a minute. And if you’re curious, it’s all good things— I’m only sad because it was beautiful and kind and I will miss this person immensely. I will see them again in the coming months, but I just don’t do well with change these days and this transition is hard. It’s hard to be away from the people who are your village. The people you care so deeply about and who make you feel less alone. I selfishly got used to having a companion and it was so nice not to live in the world feeling alone, even if it was only for a few months.

thank you to everyone who has checked in, I promise I will be okay ❤️ I will do my best to get back to writing soon and to get back to the Eldest Daughter Collection.

thank you for your patience ❤️

[dotterelly]

Hey, so I just wanted to say how nice it's been to vibe with you all today. Seriously, thank you. It's been a long time since I last really interacted with any kind of fandom community, and I wasn't sure about joining one again. I've not been in the best place mentally recently, but I've had such a good time and I'm so grateful to everyone for facilitating that.

I have more to say but I'm throwing it under a cut because it'll be long and not relevant to most people here.

For a long time I've not chosen to join communities for things I liked, either because I already had friends to chat with about it, or because I just kind of felt like people would hate me (I have an internal voice that's always telling me people hate me it sucks ass). Like I seriously think the last time I interacted with a fan community in any meaningful way was the yogscast back in 2012 (yes, I am old.).

In the time between, I've had some big life upheavals and some subsequent mental health breakdowns. I've never got really bad with it, but this last year a lot of the big changes in my life have caught up with me. Turns out immigrating to America the day they closed the borders for covid to enter lockdown in an unfamiliar country with barely any local friends isn't good for your mental state. (Still worth it, I got the best husband ever out of the deal. I'd do it again every time.)

I found the qsmp at my lowest point of last year, when a situation with a colleague and a sudden change in position and responsibility at work caused a 2 week long anxiety attack in a way I've never experienced before, with a side of insomnia. I fell back on old coping habits and found something to escape into, and starting with technoblade I consumed a vast amount of media in a short amount of time, catching up with half a decade of minecraft stuff I'd missed out on. Finally deciding I wanted to follow Philza going forward, I then spent 2 months catching up on all his qsmp vods. I've not been this into something for a long time, and my desire to find people I could screech with when stuff went down brought me round to dusting off my mildly neglected Tumblr account. And I'm so glad I did. I didn't know how much I missed this sort of community.

Thanks to everyone who's interacted with me directly or with my posts in the last couple of weeks. As a heads up, I am not good at consistent tagging and I will just reblog and post any random crap I like in a sort of crazed stream of consciousness, so follow at your own risk! Also I truly intend to just vibe and not engage in any fandom drama. If I reblog anything controversial it is most likely because I'm new and didn't know, or because my neurodivergent ass did not pick up the context or subtext of the thing I reblogged. I do have opinions about things, but I simply do not have the emotional or mental health capacity to properly research situations or deal with discourse like that rn. I just want to vibe and see cool art and fics and theorise a bit and maybe make some friends if I find people I click with.

So that's a bit of an introduction to who I am and what I am about. Thank you all again so much for helping me start to rebuild myself again after a shitty end to the last year. I hope to continue this adventure with everyone going forwards! <3

[st-louis]

a few years ago when we still used to actually go to parties my party trick after a few drinks was picking up my husband and carrying him around (he HATES it) so this is to say: cole, i get it

[privateanxieties]

a note on writing and living

Happy New Year, everyone! I know time feels meaningless these days, but it keeps moving forward and I hope you all manage to make something of it - this unreal year of 2023. I think it might be one of those numbers that if you were to be shown it when you were five, you would’ve said it’s made up. Wherever you find yourself in life, remember that there is no wrong or right way to be alive. Too many of us feel like time is wasted when we are not at our best, producing, working, advancing towards some far-away goal; as though the time we spend hacking through dense emotions, figuring ourselves out and simply being alive is not worth anything. There is no score board at the end of our time on Earth. All the people we have known, befriended, made happy or disappointed have their own lives to inhabit. We can’t exist defined through and by them without completely stifling our own lives.

My biggest lesson of the year we’ve only just left behind happens to be letting go - of aspirations that no longer suit the person I am, of goals that have someone else’s ambition tangled in them, of everything that requires bending into shapes that don’t suit my nature. I can’t say I’ve done brilliantly, or that renouncing these things doesn’t still ignite endless guilt. But it’s the only way forward.

I’ve written more in 2022 than I have any other year (over 200K words!), and there have been moments when I felt the happiest I have ever felt. And the best thing is, those feelings echoed in others. I’m grateful to all of you who have read my stories of the year past, and who have shared with me your precious thoughts on them.

In this year ahead, I hope to keep writing more of what resonates with people, but I also hope to change, and these two intentions may, at times, be at odds with each other. Writing fics is fun. It is also hollow in many ways. Writing is a rich experience, meant to be indulged without restrictions. Fic writing, aside from being set in worlds of someone else’s making, is also restrictive in what readers will allow. What they will even give the time of day. It’s a tricky balance.

You can’t very well write whatever you please when it comes to fics. You want your stories to be read, but your stories will not be read unless they fulfill certain requirements. So write whatever you want, you might say. But then it will not be read. I know it won’t. So the reward only exists insofar as the writing experience is concerned, but it fades in the response. Then, I might as well enjoy writing my own worlds and characters. Plenty of writers here have made the choice to either leave or devote their time to original writing. I can’t say I’m not leaning towards making the same choice.

For now, I want to say thank you for this year of discovery and community, and I hope we can still indulge from time to time. I love this fandom and I still want to be a part of it. I hope you all have a peaceful year where you continue growing into yourselves and enjoy living life, less by metrics and more by moments.

Have a good one!

[runnning-outof-time]

700 Followers !!!!!!!

So I’ve just noticed that I hit 700 followers not too long ago, which is absolutely unreal to me.

The fact that y’all want to see my silly posts on your dash, and that you take time out of your day to read my stories makes me the happiest person in the world. I never would have expected to be getting the level of love that I get on this site.

I’m so happy that I make you happy with my fics. You, in turn, make me probably one of the happiest writers in the world when I see all of the love that you send to me in response to my stories. It’s what keeps me motivated and going. I absolutely love talking to y’all.

Also to my mutuals, to the people who have been spreading my works far and wide, you are a big part of this milestone that I’ve reached. I’d be nowhere without you. You’ve welcomed me into this community with open arms and I hope to never stop talking to, and creating with/alongside you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!! 🥰❤️

[leather-n-laces]

Hi guys I have moderate to severe POTS and chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s official now. I’ve likely had POTS my whole life (my symptoms date back as far as I can remember) but were made worse by my COVID infection last year.

If you wanna know why I disappear every so often, or why my stories haven’t been updated as frequently as they were back in 2020/when they were first posted - that’s why. I pretty much get bodied by my symptoms daily and writing varies from being a little hard to like the most impossible thing mankind has ever faced.

Now that we know what’s up, we’re gonna work on treating my symptoms and managing severe flare ups better. Maybe getting my brain back too when I can safely start new prescriptions!

I’m not going to be removing any work. I am still working on updates as I’m able, so no plans to abandon any stories or anything. Just gonna take a little longer to see results but I’m still chugging along rest assured :)

[stonedzier]

hello idk how many of you are still active but i’ve been thinking about this for months and decided to finally say something. no need to reply or whatever i just wanted to... explain myself

tbh i fucked up with this blog

this was a side blog i made because on my main blog people were so angry and loud about shipping the it kids and i was in a weird place in my real life AND fandom life so when i made a secret side blog (not following anyone from my old blog) i decided to... reinvent myself. “emma” and details about her life were carefully twisted from my original life and made different enough so i appeared like a different person

the thing is i didn’t expect my stozier stuff to get so big. i never expected to make friends or have so much fun in this fandom! and 2018 was a weird time for me so it was easy to ignore my main blog and other friends and focus all my energy over here

but i couldn’t keep it up forever. when i lost interest in it i kinda faded away from this blog but i also lost contact with my friends. i regret it bc as much as i wasn’t honest about certain things about myself, i did really enjoy my time here, talking to swamp squad and hal and my other mutuals. i was just... too paranoid to have this part of shipping associated with me and i was so focused on hiding who i really was, “emma” started to feel exhausting to keep up. 

maybe emma was actually a more honest version of myself but either way, i shouldn’t have gone about it the way i did. so for that i’m really sorry. even if i had never updated my fics again, it was fucked up to abandon my friends. i am sincerely sorry for that. 

but more than anything, thank to anyone who was ever my friend on here, who told me nice things about my writing, who listened to me when i was happy or sad. i’m sorry, and thank you. if you’re reading this, i hope you’re well.

sincerely miss emma stonedzier!

[vulpesmellifera]

February Killed Me

At the end of January, a number of RL circumstances impeded my time set aside for writing. A family member died (at the age of 98 and peacefully in his sleep), something changed at my SO’s job that left me as a single parent for a week, my daughter had pink eye and had to be taken out of daycare, followed by a week-long head cold that also kept her from daycare, followed by an ear infection that also kept her from daycare. I spent parts of this time working at home, and coming into my office when I could. Simultaneously, things blew up at my work that kept me from completing parts of my job and led to many stressful discussions around the office. I had to travel to Maine to see family somewhere in there as well. 

In other words, it’s been a mess.

I wrote Written in Skin in January, with the exception of parts of the fourth chapter. So I was able to post the first three chapters for #MystradeSoulmatesWeek. I’m rewriting the fourth chapter when I can. I was able to do a read-through of Taking Flight to try and catch any plot holes or forgotten threads. That was the most enjoyable part of my month. This past week I got down to brass tacks and started polishing up the first few chapters in anticipation of handing them to my betas. 

I know life happens and things don’t always go the way we plan them. I’m just super bummed. I had planned on posting all of Written in Skin in February. I planned to finish Magnetic North (Johnlock canon-divergence). I have The Killing Principle (Johnlock AU) 60% outlined and had thought I’d finish the outline in February. Into the Gloaming (another Johnlock AU) has been hanging around in my head, so I thought I’d outline that one, too. That way, in March I could have Magnetic North and Taking Flight in beta, while writing Into the Gloaming and The Killing Principle. I planned to finish Into the Gloaming in April or May, and The Killing Principle sometime in the summer. It’s gonna be a long one. 

I built a brick wall of plans, and like the Kool-Aid man, life busted it down.

Now I’m having a hard time getting back into the swing of writing. I need to just shake off the malaise and get it together. Do 1,000 words per day Monday-Friday like I used to. May is #MystradeIsMagic month, and I have A Song for a Siren, which has been simmering on a backburner, all ready to finish writing. Magnetic North is half-written. I need to finish outlining The Killing Principle so I can start it by the end of March. I’ll move everything in my timeline forward. It’s okay. I lost a month. I didn’t lose everything. Bonus, I managed to stay on track for Taking Flight, and I have a tentative post date of April 3rd.

Now if Written in Skin could just finish itself for me. 

But. but but but but. In all my complaining about my stresses, I’ve had some very kind people say comforting things, AND @copgirl1964​ commissioned camillo to create the following:

Isn’t it glorious? It’s from an off-screen scene in my fic Hand Me Your Armour. Camillo does amazing work, and I am forever grateful to copgirl1964 for brightening up a stressful time by surprising me with this. 

Anyway, that’s where I’m at this WIP Wednesday. All in all, it isn’t terrible, just frustrating, and something wonderful came out of it anyway. 

Cheers,

Vulpes