Hiatus, Blog Renovations, Future Plans, Explanations, and Event Announcement
“Ah, hello everyone! I have a very important announcement to make. I’m going to be taking a hiatus from this blog for about 10 days, starting tomorrow. Don’t worry. This has nothing to do with the way the blog is going right now, or anything to do with the roleplay community at all. I’m not taking a break because I’m upset, discouraged, or burnt-out. Actually, I’m taking a fun vacation with some people that I’m very close to but haven’t seen in a while. I’ll be really busy with them and I probably won’t even have access to internet where I’m going. I don’t have time to queue up posts for 10 days, so I’m just taking a break. But I’ll be back once my vacation is over, and trust me when I say that this break has nothing to do with my feelings surrounding my blogs, roleplay, or the community.
I will be doing something special during my hiatus, but I’ll explain that more at the end.
As far as my feelings toward the blog and the community go, that’s pretty much unchanged. I won’t lie; I have been feeling incredibly discouraged about how much my blog is failing. In the past few weeks, I’ve lost 10 followers, and not gained a single one back. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’ve never lost so many followers so close together and not come back from it quickly. I don’t know what to do to keep people following or get new people to join. Seeing my numbers drop has been only piling on to my feelings that this blog is dying out no matter what I do.
My old grievances are still here, too. I feel like the entire Danganronpa roleplay community is dying out. No one gets or sends asks anymore. No matter how much effort you put in, no matter how much you write, no matter how interesting you make things, no one sends in anything. No one cares. It doesn’t motivate me to come up with new events when it feels like no one will care about my blog no matter what I do. I don’t know how to make people care. You can only get asks if you’re in a certain circle of mods, interacting with their characters, and then they only send asks about those characters anyway. It’s so hard to feel like people care about my blogs on their own, especially when I can go days with no asks except for the ones I send myself in desperation.
I still feel like I’m fading away from the rest of the community. I feel left-out. I don’t get tagged in promo posts, I don’t get asked to participate in events, and I hardly get sent starters. No one new wants to come talk to me, and everyone old just ends up deleting or going inactive. I feel like the active section of the community has completely forgotten that I exist. I know that I should send people starters too, but it’s nice to be asked first sometimes, to think that people think about you without you having to first remind them that you exist. I just feel like no one really wants me here or cares whether or not I stay or go. I’m not sure how to get that to change.
In order to be involved in any community events, you have to be a part of a certain active clique of blogs, and I’m not. But you can’t really get into those blogs. You have to already know someone and have a planned relationship with them when you create your blog. I think that’s part of the reason that people are discouraged from making new blogs. If you see a brand new blog already have active relationships and planned events with the most active and popular blogs, you feel like a failure before you even begin. I know it’s affecting a lot of other people in the community, and several of my fellow mods have gone inactive or on official hiatus because of it. In order to get in on what those blogs do, I would have to indulge in, work with, and condone opinions that I hate, which wouldn’t be fun for me at all. But it feels like you’re not allowed into the clique if you don’t agree to believe and bolster those opinions.
I don’t feel welcome in the community either. I feel like I don’t fit here anymore. Now, only one type of headcanons are allowed. They’re all acknowledged and pushed by the more active blogs. I don’t share those headcanons, but that doesn’t matter. They are looked at as the be-all, end-all of ‘canon’ in the DR roleplay community. You can’t disagree or differ from those, or you’re being out of character. I’ve seen it happen to a smaller blog firsthand. They did something, and an ask was sent about how ridiculous it was, because the same character on a bigger more active blog hadn’t done that/wouldn’t do that. You have to agree and follow all the opinions of these bigger blogs, or everyone looks at you like you’re out of character.
The same has happened to me, although because I’m a larger blog, it only affects me emotionally, not in activity. I am based off of game canon, and a specific person’s interpretation of game canon. They do their best to analyze me and look at evidence and motives and get me to be as much like myself as possible. But all of that work doesn’t matter. Because their vision of me is not the same as the other active blogs. If the only other active blogs on tumblr are insisting that only the anime version of me is canon, or only some other version that I don’t adhere to, then that makes me feel unwanted and unwelcome. I don’t fit here, because these people don’t know this version of me and don’t want it. If the only active blogs on tumblr all insist on the same thing being canon, and I do the opposite, then I’m out of character. And that’s how it feels. I constantly feel like everyone is looking at me as if I’m out of character. That they’re only humoring me and my terrible writing.
Please don’t think I’m complaining about people having different headcanons. I’m not. Back in the DR roleplay community’s heyday, there were 10 other Nagitos at least. All of them extremely different from me, and I didn’t mind. I interacted with lots of them. I really don’t care if people have differing opinions. It was just that back then, it felt like everyone had their own interpretation of their characters, and let everyone else have a different one for themselves too. Now, it feels like everyone has to have the same opinion, and anyone who has a different one is not looked at as ‘differing headcanon’ but ‘out of character’. Like I said, I’ve seen it happen to smaller blogs. Several other mods have noticed this and brought it up to me. If every single active blog insists on one thing all together, of course people are going to think that’s the only option. And there’s no way to remedy that, because you can’t become part of those active popular blogs unless you do agree with and work around those opinions.
It makes me, and some other mods, feel very unwanted. I mentioned it already, but it’s true. I feel unwelcome. Like I don’t fit here anymore, and I never will again. Like no one will ever take my blog seriously. I feel silly and stupid and embarrassed, as if everyone is looking at my blog thinking how out of character it is, how badly I’m writing this story, and only indulging me and my stupid opinions out of kindness. I can generally handle differing opinions, but when everyone is insistent on one opinion, and insistent that I’m wrong about it, it gets discouraging. Especially since these are the people I’m supposed to be interacting with. I feel so embarrassed trying to interact with someone who’s made it clear how stupid and out of character they think I am. And these are my viewers. I feel so…alone and isolated when I go through my biggest fans and see them all with opinions that are the opposite of what I’m writing. I see them believe in and want a version of me that I’m not putting out. That’s perfectly fine, it just makes me wonder why anyone follows my blog, if no one wants me. I can’t find anyone who really wants the version of me that I am. That’s why it feels as if everyone is only following or interacting with me out of indulgence. Instead of people seeing my blog and thinking ‘this person has a different opinion’, now it just feels like people are seeing my blog and saying ‘this person is wrong.’
This has never been a problem for me in the community before. People have always had differing opinions, and I’ve always been alright with that. But before, everyone wasn’t so insistent on one specific opinion that completely ruled me out. All the active blogs together weren’t pushing for something that pushed me out. Everyone had their own opinions, and were lenient of others. They didn’t act like anything one blog did was ridiculous or unbelievable just because another blog wouldn’t do it. You didn’t have to condone and work with and write your whole blog around opinions that you don’t like in order to get involved in events. And before, I always felt like there was at least one person who looked at my blog and believed what they saw. Now, I feel like there’s no one who really wants me here for anything other than nostalgia. I promise it’s not just me being bitter or jealous, or whatever bad things you want to think of me. There are other mods who’ve talked with me about this, who’ve actually left the community because they’re hit so hard by this, or who’ve gotten angry anons over it.
All of that has made it incredibly painful and discouraging to run my blog. Every single thing pushes me further towards believing that my blog is just a slow-dying failure, no matter how hard I try to save it. And that no one will really miss it when it’s gone. I think a vacation away from all of this is exactly what I need. This blog means so much to me. To see it mean so little to everyone else breaks my heart.
That being said, I’m not faultless in this. There are things that I could be doing better, or things that I’ve done that have contributed to this situation.
Since late December, I’ve been having extreme mental health issues. Worse mental health issues than I’ve had in 6 years. I’ve been doing decently for so long that I forgot how to cope with extremely negative mental health, and I’ve been having a really hard time for months. Though I’ve ben increasingly getting better, it’s a really slow process. I’ve been in equal parts restless, bitter, dissatisfied, exhausted, feeling like everything is a failure, and feeling like everything is pointless. I go between all these moods by mostly I’m just sad or nervous. This has definitely negatively impacted the way my blog is run.
First of all, I know I’ve been out of character. I’ve been making myself too weak, too mopey, too sad, and too listless. I lost touch with the manic, excited, energetic, and dangerous parts of myself. I know that, and it embarrasses me. The problem is that my real life seeps into my blogs, and so every bit of my headspace is sad and hopeless and pathetic. I express myself and vent my emotions through my writing, by making a character experience what I’m going through. And since I’ve been sad, I’ve made myself sad nearly all the time. I know this is affecting the way I play myself, and the way people see me. I’ve been very out of character, and I apologize for that. It’s humiliating. But with the way that I am now, I can’t get the inspiration or headspace to properly write something manic or energetic or dangerous. I can only feel sad, and so I can only write myself feeling sad.
I know this is getting really boring to everyone. I can tell. Any time that I find enough energy to try and make something happen, it involves my sadness, and no one cares. No one sends asks. No one gets involved. I lose followers in droves and I even get asks complaining about it. I know that everyone is so tired of seeing me be sad and heartbroken. I understand why, but…it does make me feel even more embarrassed. And it makes me feel that my blog can’t make it through this. I can’t afford to have a mental breakdown. Everyone will get bored and leave, and my blog will fail. It feels like I won’t have anyone left by the time I finally feel better. That no one will stick by this blog while I’m like this, even if I’m trying my hardest to keep things going.
I know that I’ve also been a lot less active, and this probably contributing to the lack of asks. Normally I beg my friends for asks, send myself tons, reblog asks memes and M!A lists, and create events desperately so that I can get more asks. Recently, I just don’t have the energy for that. Sometimes I don’t even have the energy to answer the asks I do get, and I definitely don’t have the willpower to constantly mine and grovel and beg for asks. To constantly make new plans and write and spend all day at my computer. That’s what it takes to get asks these days. I just can’t do that anymore. I answer the asks I do get, and that’s all. I don’t have the strength to keep trying to force more.
And that’s the same reason why I’ve not been coming up with new events or plans to make things more exciting. I know, whenever I beg for asks, people always think/say ‘But I don’t know what to ask about.’ I know that nothing interesting is happening here. I just don’t have the time and energy to plan it, especially when I know that hardly anyone will care anyway.
I know those are all things that contribute to the failure of my blog. But there is definitely a dip in interest and effort and activity from the community as well. It’s been grinding to a halt since last March. Through both me and everything else, my blog is slowly dying. If I get better, I will try to fix those things. I really will. And I will try my best to keep my blog afloat until then. I’ve abandoned every other blog I have so that I can put all my limited strength into keeping this one alive. It means so much to me. But as time goes by, things seem more and more hopeless. I’m not giving up yet. If I can change those things for the better, I will. I doubt it will help much, though. And I’ll keep holding on for as long as I can. But I really think that one day, both my blog and the community will die if something doesn’t change.
That being said, I was able to plan something for the 10 days that I’ll be gone. It’s a (hopefully) fun and exciting little event that doesn’t involve my sadness at all. I can’t explain it very well, since I don’t want to reveal what it is, but I’m excited for it. I have lots of plans.
I probably won’t be able to post most of the time I’m gone, but there may be small opportunities when I can. This event is going to allow for both me not posting, and me posting a little bit here and there. I’ve laid all the plans and given them to the people involved. I’ll hint at those things while I’m gone, if I can. And when I get back, I’ll clear it all up for sure. In the meantime, you can find out and watch what’s going on if you follow and send questions to Hajime at @hopeforthefuture! And feel free to sends asks about it to Hibiki @loudgothbf and Mikan @ask-tsumikimikan as well, and anyone else that I’ve talked to (though they weren’t warned about this beforehand, so don’t expect anything huge from them). This might sound confusing right now, but I promise it will all make sense as soon as I’m gone.
TLDR; I’m going on vacation for 10 days and won’t be able to post most of the time. During this hiatus, I’m going to run a mystery event that allows for me not to post (or to post only small amounts) while still having something exciting for you to ask about. Follow @hopeforthefuture to get updates about the event once I’m gone.”
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