Four Years of Mummery!

It was four years ago today that I chose Amon as my FFXIV role play character and launched the creative project that would become Spot of Mummery. While it originally started out on the Tumblr platform, the content is now in the process of being hosted on my own personal website – a project I began undertaking last year.

In older anniversary posts (Year 1) (Year 2) (Year3) I talked about the fact that RP with Amon didn’t start out so smoothly. In fact, the first attempt at writing a Tumblr for him failed and I almost deleted the character because I thought I’d probably never use him for anything.

Endwalker Lore Bomb!

This past year has been an interesting one due to changes in canon and lore developed by FFXIV – this is always a risk you run when you write for an NPC, of course. But if four years ago, you’d told me that the mid-boss NPC I’d picked to RP would have a backstory associated with both Ascians and the Ancients, I probably would have laughed.

After all, when Spot of Mummery began, Crystal Tower wasn’t even a required raid for MSQ. In fact, most people I interacted with as Amon didn’t know who he was because they’d never stepped foot in Syrcus Tower! I fondly recall helping a number of them unlock the raid and run it the first time just because folks wanted to give Amon a beatdown. :)

That being said, I had a pretty strong emotional reaction when Endwalker dropped a lore bomb on the character I’ve been lovingly developing for three and a half years at that point. I wasn’t sure what to do about it at first – but thankfully a number of folks approached me with concern and encouragement, and I was able to find some work-arounds that allowed me to squish my story into the cracks of lore in a more or less acceptable way.

Forging Ahead & Journaling

I’m really excited that after four years, Amon has finally reached the First and has access to the Tower in the Forge Ahead storyline. Having Amon make connections in the First has been in the plans for many years, and will help to continue his development in new ways.

I want to try to encourage myself to write more in the future, and so I’ve decided to find a fresh new spot with a blank slate. I’ve started a Journal of the First for Amon on Dreamwidth.

Dreamwidth is no Tumblr, and that’s absolutely fine with me. I’d like to spend more time writing and less time scrolling or being distracted by things associated with social media. Going back to an oldskool Live Journal type environment will hopefully let me clear my mind and think more about the creation process.

While I still want to write the Forge Ahead main story, I’m hoping that approaching content from a smaller-scale journal posting format will encourage more consistent writing. Of course, all of the journal writing will be added to the archive on the main website as well.

About Tumblr Specifically

With Tumblr, I struggle with a like-dislike relationship that I consider quite often. I’m fond of a number of folks there, but have had my scrapes and unwanted drama with a couple folks that tend to sour the platform for me. I won’t go into much more detail on that, but it’s a reason I’ll likely be easing off posting at Tumblr going forward.

Tumblr also doesn’t work all that well for me in a technical sense anymore – the sheer amount of filtering I have to use just to get a satisfactory content experience causes the site to drag, sputter and often refuse to load. Sometimes just clicking the like button on a post takes three tries. Not to mention we’ve seen cases of individuals who have had their Tumblr blogs deleted for no true reason as of late, which does not instill confidence.

So that tells me that it’s probably time to move on for good when the site itself can’t serve up the content I want to see without heavy filtering that causes lag. I’m a bit sad to leave behind some of the connections I’ve made over the years that I can’t find in other places, but I guess that’s the nature of social media.

On To Other Adventures!

As I move original Tumblr content month-by-month, the main website will remain the home of the Spot of Mummery story and project going forward. For a while, I tried to build a WordPress account, but given the changes WordPress.com is making to their packages, I’ve decided against that. I’d prefer to own my own content, and building my own site is the best way to do that.

I also have a Pillowfort for Amon, but the platform still has trouble keeping FFXIV community interest even though it’s ripe for the sharing there. I’m going to keep trying to support it, though, because I like what it’s trying to do.

Twitter has been a strong source of interaction with folks for the past couple years – Amon’s account just broke 2,000 followers, which is crazy to me. I foresee it as being the social media outlet for this project going forward.

Aside from that, I’ve been posting images at Instagram – though I haven’t been super active in the community there. I’ve been trying to build up some archived galleries at DeviantArt as well, though with all the work on the blog moving, I’m inconsistent at posting there.

I’m hoping in the next few months that I can get the original blog content completely moved to the main site. And from there, who knows what’s next!

Journaling for sure!

Thanks again for anyone who’s been along this ride for all these years. It means so much that people enjoy interacting with and reading about my version of Amon.

Until next year – take care! ♩♪♫♬