{"id":10061,"date":"2016-01-03T04:37:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T04:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/01\/03\/a-note-for-fanfic-readers\/"},"modified":"2016-01-03T04:37:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T04:37:17","slug":"a-note-for-fanfic-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/01\/03\/a-note-for-fanfic-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"A note for fanfic readers."},"content":{"rendered":"

keyofjetwolf<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

seananmcguire<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I am currently in the process of porting a lot of my older fanfic onto AO3, because I want it all in one place\/don\u2019t want it to be lost\/want to revise it to be a little more in-line with my current standards of both quality and language use.\u00a0 It\u2019s so quick and easy!\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember why I didn\u2019t do this before!<\/p>\n

\u2026oh, right, she says, as the hit counter goes higher without the comments, or even the kudos, to match.\u00a0 Because I feel like I\u2019m screaming into the void.<\/p>\n

I come from very comment-heavy fic environments, and like most fanfic authors I have known, I am a little twitchy about \u201cwhat if this is awful what if I am awful what if nobody likes my shit at all.\u201d\u00a0 So when I have 50 hits and one kudo, I actually feel pretty rotten, which makes me less eager to do the job of cleaning and posting.<\/p>\n

This is hence a plea on behalf of all fanfic authors: remember that the people who write the stories you enjoy are not getting paid for their time in anything other than \u201cyou did good, have a cookie\u201d comments from people.\u00a0 Please consider commenting if you liked a story.\u00a0 Please consider leaving a kudo if you read all the way to the end.\u00a0 There are stories that are qualitatively bad that I\u2019ve left kudos on, because hey, I read them, they gave me an hour of enjoyment, they deserve a cookie.<\/p>\n

We have infinite cookies to give.\u00a0 We should share them freely, because wow, does it suck when fanfic makes fanfic writers sad.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This feels particularly relevant to a lot of chatter I\u2019m seeing cross my dash.<\/p>\n

Writing is hard. Writing is scary. Writing takes time and effort and care and love love love. Which is true of any fanwork of course, but fanfiction also requires a significant investment from its audience before it can even begin to be seen. With art or gifsets or any other visual medium, the work can be consumed, appreciated, and commented\/reblogged\/whatever within seconds. It takes longer than that just to read the description on a work of fanfiction.<\/p>\n

But in the same vein, your fanfic writers give you hours of entertainment in return. Whether it\u2019s a smile or a sob delivered in ten minute ficlets or 100k monsters you\u2019re still reading at 3 am, fanfiction will give you a level of immersion unique to the fandom experience. With fanfiction, the characters live forever and the story never ends.<\/p>\n

Still, that commitment from the audience means we\u2019re already looking at a sliver of the same attention, without hope of the same scale of interaction and response. That makes what we DO get so very critical.<\/p>\n

If you read something, take a moment to click those kudos or likes or whatever. If you liked it, leave a comment, If you loved it, love your fanfic author back and tell them. TELL THEM EVERYTHING I PROMISE YOU WE WANT TO HEAR<\/p>\n

Remember that the only thing that nourishes fandom creators are your responses. Your fanfic writers are timid, starving creatures. Feed them. Love them. I said the characters live forever and the story never ends, but that\u2019s only true if the storytellers keep telling stories. To do that, they need an audience. Make sure they know they have one.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

keyofjetwolf: seananmcguire: I am currently in the process of porting a lot of my older fanfic onto AO3, because I want it all in one place\/don\u2019t want it to be lost\/want to revise it to be a little more in-line with my current standards of both quality and language use.\u00a0 It\u2019s so quick and easy!\u00a0 … Continue reading A note for fanfic readers.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3066,137],"class_list":["post-10061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-this","tag-writing","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}