The end of an era

I can’t believe it’s over tomorrow. After starting Plotagon in February of 2015, all of my accomplishments there will be gone.

I was a moderator of the site and continue to be a beta tester for the program, and I made many tutorials on how to use it, how to write better stories and characters with it, and I generally tried my best to be supportive of others, and within the last month or so, have tried my best to do my part in keeping the community together and inspired.

Sadly, my Choose Your Own Adventure series with the community had to end. I’d started it to get the community involved in a series where they told the story and not me, which was a huge last bit of inspiration.

I’ll admit, this really hit at a time when I already had a lot going on in my life that hasn’t been good, so this loss is something I haven’t been handling well. I can slap on a smile and try to have a brighter outlook for the future, but with what I know and have experienced, it’s hard.

I feel like everything I’ve accomplished there — my followers, my staff picks, my featured status — will mean nothing now as it will be erased from the internet, save for the wonderful blog entries about us that the Plotagon Team put together. Now, all I have is my YouTube channel that is mostly quiet, this blog that is unknown and nothing to the internet, and a Facebook page that is equally as quiet.

I feel I won’t get the audience I had on Plotagon, or that kind of engagement and encouragement, again.

My YouTube channel was never meant for younger eyes, so Plotagon has, unfortunately, attracted a lot of kids to subscribe to my channel where I had meant to keep the two separate, as my Plotagon profile was the sole source to find my plots (what the community calls videos made with Plotagon).

This has put me in a very awkward situation since I don’t have the energy to maintain two channels, and people who subscribed to me before this didn’t care for the Plotagon films I made. Maybe this will change in the near future, although YouTube doesn’t like duplicate uploads so this is unlikely.

It just hurts. The place that helped the creator in me come so far and made me who I am today is gone. It gave me the confidence to speak to a large group of people in voice and then on camera, and I found my love and talent for voice acting.

It helped me finish stories where I otherwise couldn’t. I spent a month back in 2016 between illnesses writing, voice recording, and editing an entire film that was a little over an hour long.

It helped me progress to even better quality in my video editing by giving me new challenges. Most importantly though, I met so many cool people that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I hope we all stick together. I at least want to be able to keep my Plotagon friends around so we can continue to support each other no matter where our creativity takes us.

You guys are super important. Thank you for giving me a chance. Muriel, Maxfield, Klas, Maria, Quincy, Helen, Anthony, Arnaud, Martin, Lukesters, Lance, John, Jon, Gary, Reid, Stephen, Doodius, and anyone else from Plotagon who I may have missed, as well as anyone who has ever supported me on the platform.

The community may be over, but the program still exists and I hope we all keep creating with the software and sharing as before. We might be scattered across the internet now, but we’ll find ways to stay together.

Stay inspired.