Another Year, Another Fandom

I found loneliness and isolation instead.

I know that gift recipients won’t necessarily like what is created for them. Obviously the gifter hopes they’ll like it, and creates it with that in mind, but they might not, for whatever reason. I get that. Not everything is gonna be everyone’s taste. Of course.

Or maybe my writing just really sucks. Okay, fine. I know I’m no Ernest Hemingway.

But is it really too much to expect a mere acknowledgment? When you spend hours and weeks of time and effort trying to create something for someone?

It doesn’t feel good, being snubbed like that.

But the worst part isn’t even the snub itself. It’s feeling so invisible to everyone else, who got their own lovely feedback for the gifts they worked hard on. 

It’s how, when you mention it, your pain is ignored or dismissed.

“Oh, it’s not your giftee’s fault! They’ve had access issues!” (Uh, I can see with my eyes that my giftee has been active online on the relevant websites this whole time. I guess it’s nice of you to want to defend them [I guess? Gosh I wish I knew what it felt like to have someone stand up for you] but please don’t gaslight me when the truth is plain as day.)

It’s how the mechanisms in place in the exchange ensure that everyone receives a gift, but there is no concern for whether everyone receives an acknowledgment of their work. If I had to pick one or the other, I’d prefer the latter, honestly. I’d prefer to be seen. 

(It's easy enough to be understanding about real life coming up for someone else who might not have hours and weeks to work on creating a gift for you. It's a lot harder to be understanding when someone can't spare twenty seconds to say "Thanks for writing a fic for me! I'll read it when I have some free time.")

But then, because of the “everyone gets a gift” thing, you think maybe, at least, you can step in and create a gift for someone else whose original gifter didn’t come through, because there’s a very nice person in that situation who still hasn’t received a gift. Now’s your chance to still participate in the exchange in a meaningful way after all, right?

Right?

HAHAHAHAHA no, you lose out to the person who already served as backup for someone else – who has already produced two gifts – and got lovely acknowledgements for both of them. So, others ended up getting third helpings of what this exchange was supposed to be about before you got even one.

(Maybe it's just as well, since your writing obviously sucks. Better to leave it to those who are good at it, right?)

Nobody speaks up on your behalf. If you’re lucky you might get a hug emoji or two but then everyone else moves on. They’re not the ones who got burned. They all got their gushing appreciation for the gifts they made.

They rally around the person who hurt you, offering that same flavor of gushing praise to the person who couldn’t be bothered to say one single word about their own gift from you. 

And it just feels like… you don’t matter. Your feelings don’t matter. Your efforts don’t matter. Your work is so worthless it doesn’t even warrant an acknowledgement. You’d thought you’d found your people but the truth is that you will never fit in anywhere.

(And even when you try to maybe have a book club or something to discuss other people's cool fics with readers who might be interested, the modmin tells you to bugger off. No indeed, you can't find one little niche anywhere to enjoy a shared fandom experience with anyone, can you?)

Yes, I suppose I’m being petty. And I know I’m going to get some pushback for this little rant if I don’t just get ignored altogether. People don’t like complainers. Raising a stink is always more offensive than whatever gave rise to the stink in the first place.

There are reasonable, workable solutions to these problems and I promise there are community organizers looking to fight it. @forthetriforce’s Fic Fight had 429 submissions and almost every work in there has gotten a comment if not multiple due to its comments as points reward system.

One year ago, "Minuscule" started ! What was first a little joke inspired by fanarts and discord discussions became way more than expected ! I was really surprised to see how people loved the concept and embraced this story ! I never thought I would work on it for so long but I did, and it's far from over !

Thank you for the love you all give this AU !

One year ago, "Minuscule" started ! What was first a little joke inspired by fanarts and discord discussions became way more than expected ! I was really surprised to see how people loved the concept and embraced this story ! I never thought I would work on it for so long but I did, and it's far from over !

Thank you for the love you all give this AU !

Done on the fly…

With an additional lock in image…

LU Time…

Telling YOU, the person looking at this post, to SLEEP!

I've decided to go with fire for Time for several reasons, none of them are based on his personality though.

First, because he is Four's direct successor in the AU, and Four is an earth avatar.

Second, because his father, who was a soldier that died during the Hyrulean Civil War, was a firebender (I just picture most of the military men as firebenders, I blame ATLA... and LOK I guess, I mean the first big army man we see there is Iroh. Actually, don't quote me on that, I need to rewatch the show).

And finally, because I wanted to give him some extra internal conflict. He was raised as a waterbender in the Swamp Tribe, but would naturally be more inclined to use fire, which would highlight his "different" status similarly to how his lack of fairy in OoT did.

Hmmm, I might post them in the future, but as for the ones that I've made already - I'm afraid most of them are lost forever. I tend to delete the scrapped concepts right away so that they won't distract me, plus majority of them are so messy that even I can't decipher them after a while lol

I do save some of them though, because they are not essentially bad, they just don't suit the character, like Sky here

Like I said in the post, the outfit on the left looked to modern, and the color palette just didn't look like Sky. I do like the leg wrappings on the left though, but I felt like the diamond shape the they form would look REALLY good on... another airbender teehee

Time was such a pain to work on. In the designs for this AU I try to adapt their clothing to the avatarverse, because I want them to still be recognizable. With the rest of the boys it's pretty easy except for a certain pantless hero, but Time is just such a Knight, so heavily armored that I was lost at this point, and just started layering different pieces. Of course it ended up looking like a bunch of separate concepts glued together Frankenstein's monster style instead of one solid design. As you can see, I wouldn't even finish those, they just looked bad

Thinking about the possible design for the FD helped A LOT in uniting it all, and I'm really excited to reveal it eventually (it's not gonna be soon, I have a big thing planned on a high from watching the movie *winkwink*). It won't be exactly a fierce deity, but it's gonna be damn majestic.

The natural conclusion to my berrymania is blueberry pie!🫐✨🥧

I also realized that I've accidentally made a short comic about the fate of these blueberries with my 3 paintings haha

Painting process! The full hours long video will be DMed on Patreon.com/Yuumei on August 5th!

For @ixtaek 's LU March Madness 2026: "Incorrect Ancestor"

I like dabbling with the "OoT Link is Zelda's lost twin" theory from time to time, hehe. Just saying, it'd be cool if Time got his prophetic dream abilities from someone, that's all! >:D Of course this does have ripple effects... (Hope you enjoyed this silly comic!)

A Sort-of Part 2: Coming later this week or the next!