Sins With Pleasure

Tumblr was great. The eight or so years or however the fuck long I've been on here. Going from literally nothing (I sure as hell didn't have two dozen known people reblogging my debut fics, not that I'm angry about it), to over 16k followers is a crazy number. It's actually unfathomable.

Building a following, getting that first ask, getting a second, a third, and then years later having an inbox stuffed with 50+ asks is wild. It's a weird feeling to be "popular", even if that popularity is just for writing smut.

It's great having a fanbase, having dedicated readers send you love, wonderful messages, praising your latest work, whatever it is. Even if you get the occasional weirdo or some smelly entitled fuckhead.

Until it isn't.

Until 16k stops feeling like 16k. Until all your hard work stops feeling rewarding, because you no longer get the modicum of feedback you wish for. Because your fics go literal days without a single person saying "hey, peach, I really liked this. Thanks for writing it."

Nothing. When the pendulum swings the other way, it makes you think. If you've put out bad content, if you're just washed up, if what you put out isn't enjoyable anymore.

Now you could say, hey peach, shut the fuck up, all of your fics get 1k notes. Stop whining.

Sure, most of them do. That wasn't always the case, either. But what exactly does that number even mean? That a small portion of those 16k people click a button (which is always appreciated), but besides that, not a whole lot. Watching the number go up is fun, but it doesn't do much.

A big number doesn't mean that a large portion enjoyed it. It doesn't even mean that a large portion even read it. The asks don't come in, even before. The comments don't either,

So once the frustrations start to boil up, we have the need to move elsewhere. But where? Wattpad? Hell no. AO3? Doesn't quite have the community. Asianfanfics is outdated, ugly, barely has a tag system, and suffers from many of the same problems. Where else?

That's where Fanprose comes in. Some of you are rolling your eyes already, and that's fine. I'm not here to shill because I feel like that's been done enough. But it offers a vastly superior experience. For both writers and readers. I can see in real time what people think of something I've posted. I get hundreds of comments on a single fic, whereas I'd be lucky to break double digits here.

It's hard to feel like its worth posting here anymore. Not that I write just to farm comments, but It's hard to feel any real motivation when it's the same thing over and over. Spend hundreds of hours writing, rewriting, editing, only to release something into the void. Where it felt like seemingly nobody gave a shit anymore.

Writing should always be for yourself first, but if you're posting for an audience of thousands, and nobody else has anything to say about it, what's the point?

So if the options are stay on tumblr, hate yourself, hate your writing, potentially hate your audience, give up on your hobby—and then the alternative is the exact opposite in every single way, why wouldn't you want to go there? And stay there. Not stay on a platform that isn't safe, that deletes accounts based off egregious false reports, and awful, awful UI changes, one that gets threatened by weirdos who try to gatekeep smut of all things. Along with a myriad of other problems that will never, ever be fixed, because this site is lucky it survives another year.

Fanprose has reignited that spark to write in a way I thought would never happen. The same way I felt during my rookie year, where I was putting out multiple fics a week, not one every few months. And I'll be eternally grateful for that.

If you've been here from the beginning, if you followed last year, last month, last Saturday—thank you. I'm sure most of this isn't news to anyone given my lack of anything, but I've made the decision to detach myself fully from this platform. Ningning will be my last posted fic, and I'm not even sure if enough people are left to read this post judging by the post count (not just me, on everyone.)

I appreciate and love you all, from the bottom of my heart, especially those that have been with me on this journey from day one. I hope to see you all on Fanprose if you aren't there already, and I'd strongly suggest giving it a shot if you haven't. I have a newly released annyeongz fic that I'm very proud of that I'd love for you to check out.

So goodbye tumblr. I'll miss you.

and to steal from one of the greats