Cobra

cuz… Look. I’m not gonna lie, this year more than ever, especially as i fell back into steven universe, i got REALLY burnt out from making tts content. and that’s never happened to me before. I’ve loved the damn movie since it came out when i was 4 years old and, despite being a little late, i’ve been in the tts fandom for three years now. But this year something seemed to Change. And for a long time I wasn’t sure what. I realized i didn’t want to go on the tags anymore. I couldn’t really find anything to reblog. In fact looking through the tags usually made me more miserable than anything else.

I realized that i kinda…knew what to expect. it was usually always the same. I knew everyone who was posting, and i knew the posts that were gonna come up. a few pieces of fanart, mostly varian or VAT7K related, some moon cass…but they’re few and far between. more than anything, it was just a lot of critique/analysis posts expressing their dissatisfaction with the show. And I know I’ve kinda mentioned this a few times, so I cannot overstate that i have NOTHING against those kinda of posts. im not attempting to refer to anyone in particular, or “call out” anyone, because i understand those posts just as much as anyone else. But it all started to feel the same to me. there wasn’t much fanart or fanfic anymore. And the less content i saw, the less inspired i felt. it pushed me away from making anything related to the show for a while. and that made me really sad.

Ive found myself looking back at the fandom in the early days, when the show was still airing. one that i unfortunately wasnt a part of (was too steven universe/splatoon pilled in my early teen years alas). And sure, it was messy, and full of drama, and had plenty of issues in its own right, and i’m absolutely certain i would NOT want to have been there— but to it’s credit, it was absolutely bursting with joy, and excitement, and creativity. Because people still had high hopes, they were still eager to speculate, and create, and theorize. there was still that potential lingering in the air, yknow?

I feel like once the show ended, and we had time to look back on it— that all changed. The disappointment started to set in. I don’t think it was what anyone expected, or wanted. I think everyone felt disappointed, or even betrayed, at least in some way. I feel like there used to be this spark in the fandom that just…flickered out. VAT7K came along, people moved on. and it’s been really depressing for me to watch it happen. I feel like all that’s left has been people just mourning what could’ve been.

And i know its just a given that when new people come in, they’re obviously gonna have critiques about the show that have been said before. There really arent any new critiques to make. but thats the thing. I stopped looking, because i realized that once id heard all the critiques and done all my personal analyses that i hated feeling miserable about something i was supposed to enjoy. something i do enjoy.

And I don’t fault them for it. I understand. know nobody does it out of malice. They all care about the show just as much as i do. And it’s not like we SHOULDNT analyze or critique the show either…we ABSOLUTELY should. because the show is flawed. it wasn’t great. but it wasn’t horrible, either. It gave us things we do like. That’s exactly WHY we make those posts. because we love it. because the show made us care about these characters enough to feel hurt when they’ve clearly been pushed aside or treated poorly by the narrative.

So its not like i don’t have critiques or opinions about the show. I’ll still voice my personal critiques if prompted. I get worked up about things too. There are objectively serious issues in the show and its narratives as well, and those things need to be discussed. theres a lot of racism and conservative beliefs baked into the show that we need to talk about. But at the same time, i don’t feel like i’ve seen anything in general recently thats caught my attention, or that made me rlly feel anything other than just…Sad. I realized id much rather take the show for what it is and do something new with it instead. thats why i started drawing fanart, because i wanted to encourage people to do the same. but instead, i feel like the flame just died out faster. I don’t know, sometimes i cant help but feel like other people felt the same way i did….that that’s why the fandom died out so quickly, why everyone left and the ones who remained just gravitated to VAT7K instead.

And i do know thats definitely not the case for everyone. its not just a case of a dying fandom, i know its also a case of an aging fandom. its been almost six years since the show ended, and eight since it came out. people who started watching and creating stuff in their teen years are adults now. we don’t all have the same time we did back then….that’s just a fact of life. It’s normal that a lot of people would gravitate towards other things and grow out of old ones….and that’s why I’ve kinda assumed for a while that theres just not much i can do about it. that as much as it pains me, this is just how it is. this is what the fandom is now.

but this damn event, man— coming into the tags this evening was like a fucking christmas miracle for me. i mean, onviously birb doesn’t post much for the fandom anymore either, so when i saw them post the signups for the event, i was surprised— but i thought to myself that surely, there wouldn’t be many people joining. there aren’t that many people here, after all. and boy was i wrong.

I’m gushing over gifts that arent even mine right now, dude. I dont even know where to start. im seeing faces both new and old, posting what feels like the most fanart and fanfics i’ve seen in over a year. This series means so damn much to me, flawed as it may be…and to see this explosion of pieces made with love, and not just of one particular character, but the whole damn cast— it fills me with more joy than i can even begin to explain. there are rarepairs and characters i haven’t seen in forever. schnitzfam, casscaine, the brotherhood, oc x canon, new dream, freckle siblings… I feel like i’m seeing that spark reignited again. And I don’t want that to die. I want to keep that.

So please, and i cannot stress this enough— keep creating. Don’t spend all your time lingering on what could’ve been. there’s no way for us to change what already happened. But keep thinking about what CAN be, and make it happen. because that’s what fandom is about.

I truly don’t like to call fandoms “dead”. I think as long as there are still people who are passionate about something, and keep creating because of it, the fandom will never truly die…which is exactly why I don’t want that to happen to tts.