#regrettable updates

Years ago, before 2020, before even Endgame, I decided that whatever the sequel to Black Panther was, it would be the last Marvel film I would try to see or have any real feelings on. I’ve never been quiet about it, but I also don’t think I’ve been necessarily vocal about my growing disinterest and frustration with the franchise. But I mean, there’s already a metric crapton of Youtube and Tumblr essays on why the MCU “sucks now”, so go look at those. (Though my personal growing lack of interest was based on how suffocating the franchise was becoming by the end of Phase 2 for me, what with the expectation that you keep tabs on every single film but I digress.)

The plan, despite my emotional hesitancy following Chadwick’s death, had always been to eventually see the movie and let that more or less be the end of my “relationship” with Marvel (god that sounds so needlessly dramatic but whatever). By extension, though, this would mean bringing a close to the writings I did for characters from the MCU.

And to a degree, I was fine with this: I barely wrote for them, the ones I did write for never really got requested when I did headcanon memes, the others I tended to get requests for belonged to lines I just couldn’t keep up with for one reason or another. The final few I still had on my Who I Write For list were predominately characters from Black Panther, so they existed within a sort of holding pattern until the sequel came out anyway. And while, yes, I did have plans for fics and perhaps some headcanons regarding a few of them, I couldn’t honestly say when or even if those would ever see the light of day. It frankly just seemed for the better to just call it a day and let things be.

Not everything needs to be written or written for, after all.

But as I mentally prepared myself for that, I also couldn’t help but keep thinking about it. A mental spring cleaning, if you would.

By the end of it, I was left with piles: A pile for things I no longer wanted to write for, a pile for things I wish I had the focus or energy to write for, a pile of things I just don’t know how to feel about, and so on.

And the thing is, these piles have all existed for far longer than even the trailers for Wakanda have been out. All seeing the movie really did was make me have to confront them, and what doing that meant was coming to the following conclusion:

I know I’ve said it before, but I genuinely mean it when I say here right now that I don’t know how much longer I’ll be doing this for. Writing on this blog, that is. Potentially writing at all, really.

I know: Hell of a time to come out and say it but the truth is that I’ve been feeling this way for a long while now.

I haven’t really enjoyed writing the way I used to. Every time I try, it comes out like garbage or it feels like it’s a bird trying to fly on broken wings. But every time I thought about just going on a regular hiatus, I’d start drafting up new ideas. So I stuck it out because I thought maybe all I needed to do was muscle through but . . .

And yeah I know to some, this is a hilariously small number to have in one’s drafts. But remember: I tend to write very thoroughly and verbosely for even things meant to be small, like preferences or headcanons. I’ll own up to it and admit that that played a part in my downfall, and that my perfectionism and the high expectations I place on myself aren’t any more helpful, but that doesn’t fix the fact that this is where I’m at for now. Even trying to reel it back and keep things simple makes me feel like I’ve hit a wall. I mean, look at all I’ve written so far just to come clean about something as simple as “I don’t know if I want to keep doing this anymore”!

Gonna be real, the uptick in followers I’ve gotten these past few weeks has had me telling friends “It’s like finally starting up a Twitter account, only for Musk to buy out the site right after.” (Too soon? Too funny.)

But on that note comes the question of what happens next. And the answer is: I have no idea. I really don’t. I’ve battled with that question for at least half of to possibly a full year now. There have been days where I wanted to just delete the blog and move on. I’m too noncommittal to stick to just ghosting. And, like a pack rat, I’ve convinced myself that some of these fics might even eventually get posted. But the truth simply is that I don’t know what the future of this blog is, yet I still wanted to come clean about how I’ve been feeling about it.

I’ve humored the idea of just starting from scratch with a new blog but without alerting anybody because I think I might miss those days where there weren’t any expectations. After all, I never once thought this blog would get as many followers as it has now: I started Regrettablewritings as a literal dumping ground for the headcanons and oneshots I would give to other blogs over anon because that was how I showed admiration. Writing is one way I show love; so it’s frankly a little devastating to me at times that lately I just don’t enjoy how I’ve been writing. But what’s also pretty amazing is that it got this far at all. And I have y’all to thank for that, so . . .

There’s really not going to be a way I can truly express this: Thank you for sticking around even when there were dry spells, even when my perfectionism meant taking longer to complete a request, through my ranting, my obsessing, etc. The fact that for five years, there were people who would think that my stuff was halfway decent will never cease to amaze me. Truly!