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i see a lot of fanweeks going on and i just want to share my experience with them, hopefully as a way to keep people from creating unhealthy and harmful expectations for themselves. i fell into a trap without knowing it, and it& #39;s taken me a lot of time & work to come out of it -
imo, as someone who has run quite a few in the past, the purpose of a fanweek is to create in a space with several other fans of the same thing. you make friends, inspire and encourage each other, collaborate, and hopefully have a lot of fun together. ideally, this would be the -
experience. however, it& #39;s inevitable for some people that competitive feelings will start to rise. you want to create for every single day, and maybe that starts as immense love for the subject matter, but that can develop into something worse: the desire to prove your -
commitment to something. this isn& #39;t inherently bad, but when you& #39;re starting to force yourself to make something/finish things, or start to compare yourself to other people, that& #39;s when it gets unhealthy. and it& #39;s a very slippery slope. especially when you don& #39;t realize that -
you& #39;re sliding down it. it can be especially difficult when the fanweeks get a lot of participation. people with more followers will get more likes/rts, people that the algorithm favors will end up showing up more, fics will unfortunately get less interaction than fanart, & you -
HAVE to remember that you shouldn& #39;t compare yourself to other people. numbers have nothing to do with your worth as a creator, and i wish i& #39;d stuck to this belief before i started to count rts and likes and immediately look at other people& #39;s. i started to create out of spite -
and a sense of obligation. if i didnt make birthday art for my favorite character then how could i consider myself a fan? if i didnt write fic for every single day of my favorite ship& #39;s fanweek then how could i expect anyone to believe i actually cared? it was hurtful thinking. -
i started to create less for the love of the subject matter and more for fighting to be the most relevant account in the search tab. coming out of this was very difficult, in my experience. i had to step away, ignore the nagging voice insisting that i wasn& #39;t doing my job, that -
i was losing my self worth and my identity online. that& #39;s easier said than done, but i promise you it feels so much better to be free from that voice, to simply sit back and enjoy content instead of feeling like i have to compete with it.
basically: i hope that everyone can have fun during these fanweeks, and i hope that they won& #39;t feel bogged down by feelings of obligation. whether you& #39;re taking part in every single day or only one day, whether you& #39;re writing drabbles or multichapter fics, whether you& #39;re -
creating a painting or a sketch, whether you& #39;re participating as a content creator or simply consuming the content others make, you are a valid and important part of the fanweek experience. remember that it& #39;s all about enjoying the subject matter with other people, it& #39;s -
