First off, this is a story a lot of people who knew me 2 years ago were expecting after my hiatus from a year ago. But, I felt like this was necessary, since I left without explanation. And, after a year of thinking it over, these are the reasons why I left.
**Before I start, I don't mean to offend anybody. But these bothered me for so long that I felt like it needed to be said, and I'm sorry if you feel like anything negative in here relates to your work. All of you on here are talented writers that will go places if you pursue writing like I did, and branched out into places you might be scared to tackle.**
So, I'm listing the reasons here, but if you want a better explanation I will be writing those out under the reasons.
1. The community changed a lot from when I started writing.
2. A lot of idea theft was happening with my stories, and I didn't like it.
3. I outgrew writing fanfiction.
4. My interests changed.
1. The community changed a lot from when I started writing.
OK, so small anecdote time. When I first started looking at the Minecraft fanfiction archive, there were only 70 pages of stories about Minecraft. There were barely any YouTuber stories, and it was mainly poetry about Minecraft or longer stories about characters getting sucked into Minecraft and escaping, which is why that's such a cliche idea now, since so many original writers wrote those stories.
Then, once I joined, a lot of people started joining. The small community of people grew outrageously, and the older works were lost to the last archive pages where they barely got views. I loved so many of those stories, and this was when the YouTuber fanfiction era started. I wrote my first story, and I started to gain fame from that and then the sequel story.
But my point is that a lot of the original writers, like myself, left once the archive became full of writers who write stories with extremely fast plots, or people who will throw any idea that comes into their head into their writing (like I used to), or people who are extremely egotistic. My point is that so many new writers came in that I left because of the next reason, and because there were so many people that were starting to write in the archive that the Minecraft fanfiction archive suddenly has 4,000 stories published on there.
2. A lot of idea theft was happening with my stories, and I didn't like it.
OK, imagine this. You're super excited about posting the next chapter of your story, and you decide to read some fanfiction since you don't have access to a computer and you want to read some fanfiction. And then, you see it. Literally the same plot as your story, but with different character names. So you click it, and find it's the exact same situation you wrote earlier that day. You're seething with anger, since you never gave this person permission to write this.
You guys drove me away. That's it, I said it. You guys literally got me so upset that my stories were constantly being copied that I just stopped posting, and I deleted all of my stories. Congratulations, you guys literally gave me a writer's block that lasted for 1 year. I felt so confused about whether writing was actually worth it; I stopped drawing; I stopped playing Minecraft. I tried writing to fight through it, but you can't exactly beat writer's block.
I got into a writing class, and I started writing again. The positive motivation from my peers got me back into writing, since I realized how much fun writing was again. I got better, but I will never forget about how you guys literally stole my ideas and passed it off as your own work. You guys drove me away from writing, and that's why I stopped posting.
3. I outgrew writing fanfiction.
Alrighty, so this is a bigger point. Once I started writing again, I realized that fanfiction wasn't everything. I treated this as a holy place, when in reality it was just a bunch of people starting their writing careers. I started to develop my own characters, I started to look for beauty in the world, and I started to really think about what I wanted to do with my life. I started to create alternate universes, I started to write about characters with magical abilities, and I started to explore how far my imagination stretches.
Now, let me tell all of the writers that are just starting out something. When I first started out, I thought fanfiction was everything, and that I would never write another genre again. But here I am, writing about Greek mythology and sci-fi for fun when I would have cringed at that years ago. I'm writing about florists meeting tattoo artists and falling in love, and I'm writing about bloggers finding happiness. I'm writing so much that I would have never wrote years ago, and I love story prompts. I love writing things based off of prompts from online, and I love film and photography.
My point: The writing community might seem beckoning and scary, but pursue what you want and you might find yourself happier than before.
4. My interests changed.
I'm an anime nerd now. I love Steven Universe, and I love Supernatural, Sherlock, and The Walking Dead. I love drawing more, and I'm obsessed with Tumblr. I have an unhealthy addiction to figuring out Minecraft mods, and I love designing Sims. My point is that Minecraft YouTubers don't really interest me now. I like vloggers now, and I like horror games. Minecraft YouTubers aren't that interesting to me anymore, and to prove it I'm not even subscribed to them anymore.
I'm also interesting in psychology now. I don't really want to pursue teaching now, since I realized it's not a high-paying job and I like psychology now. I love helping people with their issues, and I'm great at understanding problems and working them out to benefit both parties involved.
And so, I'm sorry that this is the end. I really am. But there was too much going on in my life with fanfiction, and I couldn't handle the constant theft and people that demanded for chapters when I was busy. I have a life outside of fanfiction, and a lot of people demanded chapters for stories after a day passed. I couldn't handle that, and it bothered me greatly to see a message pop up that was like:
"OMG, where's the next chapter?"
"Why didn't you post last night, did something happen?"
"wHy nO pOsT?"
"I'm not trying to be rude, but why didn't you post? Don't you like your fans?"
"Your fanbase is going to go down if you don't post."
Like guys, guilt-tripping me into posting chapters definitely drove me away. I wasn't going to look at a message, see that I should post, and then think "well, I'm at school right now during math but this user told me to post so I guess I'll stop working to write out a chapter so I don't disappoint my fans." Like, I understand there are different timezones and all, but you guys would berate me with messages about posting during school, while I slept, while I was with friends, and when I was with family to the point where I wrote chapters constantly so I could proof-read them later on that night and then post it to stop messages.
I literally wrote a chapter before a Spanish test that was extremely short, but that only brought on messages like:
"Why didn't you spend more time on the chapter?"
"You better post a longer chapter tonight to make up for this."
"What the heck was that?"
My point is that you guys constantly messaged me over every little thing, and it bothered me.
And... here's the hard part. Saying goodbye to all of you guys. I won't be posting anymore, so this is the last time you'll hear of me.
Thank you so much for being part of my life, all of you. This was a great start into writing, even if I was constantly bombarded with messages.
If they ever make this place into a memorial or something, remember me as LilKinny.
Remember, my lovelies, stay awesome and start asking permission for when you want to borrow an idea.
From, for the last time,
~ LilKinny