i held a fallen star and it wept for me

Notes From the Last Row - Episode 3

Munoh is starting to piss me off in a not good/engaging way because it's so obvious to me that Kang is lying about almost everything/telling a very convenient story that always changes to suit Munoh's preferences, meanwhile Munoh refuses to fact-check any of it for himself when he very easily could. Characters being willfully ignorant and dumb is never enjoyable for me.

hahah yeahhh I got really annoyed seeing all this discourse on twt about AI-generated fics taking over a particular fandom and felt like I needed to vent. Then I deleted it after like 5 minutes because I just don't want to be involved in any discourse 😅

The only point I really wanted to make is that the reason AI-generated fics are becoming more and more frequent on AO3 is because of how fanfic itself is being treated these days in general - as a commodity, as content to be rapidly consumed one after another, and as just another victim of late stage capitalism that has destroyed almost everything else online. If we don't want this situation to get worse, we have to get back to what fandom used to be - a community where you talk to other people about your favorite shows and characters, create fanworks out of genuine inspiration, and support the other fanwork creators. And that means that people need to start commenting again. I'm happy being in small fandoms where it's expected that I get fewer comments because there's less drama than huge fandoms, but at the end of the day, I have poured hours of my life into my stories and I would like it if more people would comment. It's really disheartening publishing a fic and watching the hit/kudos count go up and up into the hundreds, sometimes even thousands, while I don't get anymore than 3-5 comments.

Lately, I've even gotten comments from people saying things like "i hope I'm not bothering you" or "i feel like I'm stalking you by commenting on more than one fic in a row" Like what??? You are not bothering or stalking me! Where does this terrible mindset come from? Why do people think authors publish their works if not to share it with others and get the reader's opinion?? I understand that people are socially anxious, but for the love of God, my stories are one side of a conversation I am trying to have with the fandom about my thoughts/feelings about the characters, and readers are the other side of that conversation. If there's no answer, it kinda just feels like shouting into the void for nothing 🤷‍♀️