Hi! I was wondering about your Lost Guardian au from ages ago, do you think you’ll ever plan on updating it and if not, could someone else take up the fic?
So heres the thing. If someone wants to write a fic *inspired* by The Lost Guardian, i’m not gonna stop them, and i’d probably feel super honored so long as the inspiration was correctly credited!
As for ‘taking up the fic,’ the short answer is no.
I have active drafts and the rest of the story already planned out to its finish, notes, even a branch-off fic set post-story that will likely go up on my nsfw blog if i ever get around to editing it. The Lost Guardian hasn’t been abandoned, it’s simply on hiatus. (And yes, i recognize 3 almost 4 years so far is a really fucking long hiatus. The Chapter 9 draft doc was made in december of 2020, and last edited in July 2022)
I started writing that fic whilst still in highschool, a time where I was 17 and didnt have to worry yet about getting my license or maintaining a part time job, i had an over abundance of freetime even partially to my detriment, the fandom was booming and I had plenty of feedback, and this fic was (and still *is*) a story im proud of.
But i’m 22 now, working a full time job to pay rent and account for a number of minor ‘disabilities’(best word i have for them atm) that I cant ignore or push to the side nor treat poorly, from the lasting effects on my body of stunted growth to celiac/glutent intolerance to adhere to that directly determines how easily my body functions for the week, to dealing with glasses i cannot afford to break and taking care of teeth i cannot afford to fix, taking care of my mental health and using the free time i have to do what brings me the most joy at that time.
The sanders sides fandom has heavily quieted down with the season finale hiatus and I’d like to think I did pretty well for going six long years dedicated solely to that without cracking under the silence, because *I knew* when I caved to something else it’d be a long while before I had the drive to come back with any sort of resolution to my active works. Thats just how my hyper fixations work. I cannot focus on multiple at once, it’s too much to process simultaneously and takes away my enjoyment bc I tend to watch/consume things repeatedly to catch every little detail i missed. And it doesn’t help when one loses steam because their content barely breaks 100 notes(80% of which are likes, 15% are reblogs with the occasional comment, and 5% are self-reblogs) when back in the height of it all, a few thousand notes was pretty average interaction. This blog still has about 11.5k followers, almost all of which came from the height of the fandom period. So for now i’ve moved onto the FNAF DCA fandom, bc it is fresh and new to me.
I know you didn’t mean to poke the bear here, I get it, but like.. C’mon. Any other fic of mine likely wouldn’t have gotten the same reaction in full but, still. I’ve had to answer this question a handful of times over the years at the point, which might be why this response feels so charged, and i’m sorry.
I don’t mean to come off as snippy or rude, but it *is* kind of invasive to offer to finish one’s creative work when it’s taking too long and theres very little payback for it. I’ve got adhd, delayed satisfaction isn’t a thing I experience. Just guilt that it wasn’t finished in a way for me to post it in time before I broke and lost all motivation to share it.
In my head, TLG has been long finished and held the ending for years, theres just been no energy to put in the effort of finish writing it for others to read. I’m still trying to get my life together to change that, don’t get me wrong, but the American economy is literally in shambles so who knows how or even if i’ll manage that. Call me selfish for being content with only mentally having my creative story’s ending and a collection of rambles and notes to show for it, but at the end of the day, it’s still my story, and i dont feel comfortable with people trying to ‘take up the mantle’ to finish it, when they don’t know how it ends.
I’m glad you like it enough to want to, though, I really *really* am. I’m just sorry I haven’t been able to finish it for you all. And i just don’t know when that will be, I just know that I *want* to do so, however long it takes.