User blog:TJlive800/New Plans!

Hello everyone!

As you most likely noticed, I've been rather inactive for the past year or so on this wiki. Nothing in particular happened that caused me to leave, it's just that I lost interest in writing fanfics and just began frequenting other forums upon which I could contribute to discussions. Over the course of this time, I've started to take writing far more seriously than I thought I did back in the day, and my skills in the craft have evolved to something far more refined and sophisticated than what they were before. I'm still very nostalgic from 2014's summer when I joined this community and created Heroes of Evolution, but in retrospect, that series was a poorly planned, incoherent slew of my ideas thrown on a script with a severe lack of finesse or clear forethought as to my plans for its growth. Actually, I haven't mentioned this before but the whole show was just conceived because I drew a comic strip while on vacation in India (out of nostalgia to four years back when I was legitemately into the show) and decided I'd get out my story ideas faster via typing. From there on I improvised a few plots that haphazardly came together, and then slowly grew into the idea of expanding the franchise and developing a clearer vision for it. Obviously, a hastily-improvised concept that was once just a little reservoir of sporadic ideas is no good foundation upon which to build a proper storyline, and most of the ideas I had were borrowed from television shows I was watching at the time. There was no palpable vision I had as to what I wanted the series to be, and the idea of it being more mature and PG-13 existed purely because I felt creatively stifled when trying to write cartoonish dialogue/storylines. I was into crime shows and that was all I could emulate when attempting narrative writing.

Flashforward to two years later, AKA now. What I thought was the pinnacle of my literary capability back then has now shown itself to in fact be the absolute gutter of my literary capability. 2014 marks my first serious venture into writing, but it also serves as a good illustration of how excessive confidence and excitement do not at all bode well with lack of experience. I didn't even realize how horrid my writing skills were, and instead thought them to be strong just because I was having fun doing it. I wasn't aware of my own weaknesses because I'd revel in them under the delusion that it was something I was good at. I now view Heroes of Evolution not as a literary accomplishment but rather a record of how weak my writing was when I began. To have a piece of work so misrepresentative of my actual writing potential and capability be a major piece of my online identity is harmful both to my conscience and reputation on the Internet. Additionally, my username is known to personal friends of mine from Minecraft, Xbox Live, etc. and I would never want them to find out that I was alleviating my boredom through cartoon fanfictions alongside a horde of adolescents while in fucking high school.

All of which is why I'm planning on not quitting the wiki but rather changing my username and removing traces of my old work here. Earlier today I scrubbed through the wiki removing every instance of my username and deleting certain articles of mine that I deemed unnecessary or subpar. Certain pages pertaining to HoE (including the episodes) will remain for those of you who still enjoy it, but they won't have any references or credits to myself. I'm unsure as to what my new username will be but seeing as my current one overlaps with certain other accounts (all of which are deleted but of some of my friends' knowledge), I don't want my activity on this site to bear any connection to my activity outside of it. There are of course certain talk pages and forum posts from others that reference me, and I can't find or control those, but they're obscure enough to avoid showing up in search results and such.

But now onto the I M P O R T A N T part of this : the future state of my writing and content here. Seeing as this wiki has grown from a simple Ben 10 Fan Fiction site to a general means by which people can exercise their narrative ideas, I'm going to be going more "freelance" with my contributions here. Instead of always taking the pains to organize elaborate marketing structures and coding templates for new work, my writeups will be sporadic and freeform. I'm not even sure if much of them will concern Ben 10 or Cartoon Network or even science fiction for that matter. Some will be short stories. Others might be full-fledged series for which I'll put effort into creating multifaceted universes and networked articles and trailers and branding and all that lovely stuff. I'll more than likely post some royalty-free soundtrack I make on FL Studio for use in anything you want, same with visual artwork for setpieces. Hell, I might even write political dramas and romantic comedies if I feel like it just to imbue elements from those genres into bigger pieces that mostly concern action and science fiction. I might even start my own wiki or blog to keep these centralized, but this wiki is where I have a sizable and receptive audience that's grown more open-minded and mature (I'm proud of you guys for that).

The point I'm trying to make above is that I'm really fascinated by the prospect of eclectic art: creators who can apply their skills in wildly versatile manners and create drastically different, diverse work that doesn't need to feel thematically connected. I've found many examples of this in music, but it can certainly be translated to other forms of creative expression, especially writing. As much as I enjoy a sense of consistency and stylistic coherence, I feel that finding an artist (generalized use of the word) with a colorful palette is far more alluring and subject to my curiosity. Predictability is great for consistency but terrible for entertainment. I want to be become that artistic figure that I'm drawn towards: more unpredictable, more diverse, more "colorful". It'll allow me to expand what skills I have to newer areas and step out of my comfort zone more often. Even if I love being on the audience end of things in regards to this, I feel that behind the scenes, it'd still be as invigorating applying a sense of variety to my own skills and effort rather than simple consumption. It'll also enable me to think more freely and not have any creative boundaries to be confined within. In the long run it'd also improve my general skills with organization.

So yeah, that went on for a while, and quite ironically, despite the first paragraph being dedicated to flagellating myself for my incoherent and unstructured writing style, this whole essay itself was again just a stream of my conscience thrown on a document. Of course, this is but a little confessional/rant about myself and my ideas, and given how all-over-the-place one's mind is, it's no surprise that I went a bit off the wall here, but in regards to narrative writing, I can hopefully get you guys to expect work with a clearer sense of foresight and stylistic maturity compared to the shit you've been used to for so long. Even if you liked what I've had to offer thus far, it doesn't cut it for me personally because I myself am aware that I'm capable of much more. I would however like to thank all you readers who've supported me over the last two years, because even if the fun I had with my work blindsided me from the mistakes I made along the way, the fun is what matters in the end and having a community as positive and receptive as yours made the experience really quite gratifying.

See you soon!