announcement & apology
So, here we are, how long after things have started, largely in the same place we were... Which is no fault of your own, and entirely falls on me. Even though it may seem like I’ve done diddly squat for the game, I assure all of you I tried my best. Unfortunately, though, sometimes - despite trying your best - things aren’t destined to work out. After how many months being plagued by personal issues that forced me to delay... And delay... And delay... Followed by an honest effort to get things rolling (that, ultimately, didn’t quite work as intended,) I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m honestly not fit for being the GM, head mod, whatever you’d want to call it, of a game like this and, as such, The Smudge will unfortunately have to come to an early, early demise.
Basically, coming into this, I was ready to give modding another shot. I modded another Tumblr game before not too too much unlike this one (despite being a different fandom, but that’s okay) and, ironically, had to leave because of personal issues, too. Strangely still, the issues were... Largely similar, at least starting off. I’ll just say that my family life is turbulent, that hasn’t changed, and I’ll leave it at that. I’d rather not get into it.
But I thought this time would be different! And I had never seen a Homestuck RP go to completion - every one I’d been in, and I’d been in a bunch, had fizzled out after a while for many different reasons each time. So, I thought, I’d just give it a good, solid try. And, well... Hey, I’d say this was a good, solid try. Ultimately, though, when the start of things get delayed as far as this did, hype is going to die down. Homestuck itself seems to have almost completely disappeared off the fandom map (at least from people I follow,) further contributing to the hype dying. I, personally, felt my excitement going away and being replaced with an anxiety of oh lord I made everyone wait this long and now I have to do everything right now no more waiting ever. As anyone knows, doing everything right now doesn’t work. Personally, I either did a lot on a single day and was burnt out afterward, or was basically rendered incapable of doing anything because of anxiety that I wasn’t doing enough, or enough quick enough, that I had too much to do and couldn’t do enough. And in the end, there aren’t really any solutions to that - it started and ended with my own internal issues. Bringing in co-moderators, as fantastically helpful as they were (much love y’all <33,) can’t solve my every issue, and I shouldn’t expect them to. Every other solution thrown out there by one party or another just didn’t seem like it would do anything in my opinion, and that’s when I realized the root of the problem is I’m just not in the right head space to be a mod of a game like this. Will I ever be? Who knows. But all I know is that right now, I’m not.
The other RP I modded before, I had felt this coming, too. The only difference was, I pushed through until I basically broke and stopped RPing for months and months afterward because it wasn’t fun for me anymore. I see the writing on the wall, y’all. Either I pull the plug now, or I prolong the misery for a couple more months before pulling the plug then, while also killing any desire to engage in what honestly is one of my favorite hobbies. If you think it sounds selfish, I don’t blame you. I started this group, I should have been aware that I needed to take responsibility to finish. And I didn’t, I haven’t, I won’t, and I apologize sincerely. I’m sorry for everyone who applied thinking this was going to be a super promising, cool, engaging thing and then... It ended. I’m sorry to those who just got the chance to know a bunch of new people - me and other people in the group - only to have it end abruptly like this. I hope all of you can understand and aren’t too disappointed. But, hey, this leaves more time for other things, now, right? Silver linings. Characters still exist in your heads, ideas are still running around in there looking for a way out. Think of this like a long hallway that, unfortunately, led to a dead end. It was a cool ass hallway, but the lack of a door at the end really put a damper on things.
tl;dr: Modding is taking its toll and making my anxiety spiral to ridiculous heights (lows?) and because of that, I can’t continue modding anymore. And because of that, Smudge is unfortunately going to come to and end. I apologize deeply to everyone and hope that you can understand where I’m coming from in this.