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A lot of people this week have simply given up on their industry careers, seeing years of their life’s work just vanish into a corporate vault overnight. Being able to point to your work on a streaming service had apparently even become a pretty critical part of the portfolios they now rely on to get new jobs.

so you write

you write them broken, you write them human, you write them spitting blood out of bruised lips, sneering and crying.

you write them desperate, you write them lonely in their bathroom, eyes red. you write them with broken mirrors and you write them angry.

you write them like they could be loved, like they are on the edge of being loved, like they could just be loved if they were only to try harder, to be enough.

you write them hated, and hating themselves, you write them ashamed and begging to God, you write them ears ringing. you write them panicked and aching, and yearning and empty.

you write them hungry, you write them with cracked lips.

you write them and you pretend that it’s not you in the pages.

you write them and pray to God yourself, that you’re not being written too.

you write them.

you’re so tired.

yeah if humans tried to smell space just like that, we’d die, no doubt about it 

but the smell of space lingers on spacewalk suits, and docking hatches when astronauts open them!

apparently, space itself smells like burning hot metal, or a hot barbeque grill with a slight hint of spent gasoline. The moon, apparently, smells like a gun after its been shot!

The coolest thing about it all is that the smell is actually what are left of dying stars- it’s literally the smell of stardust, and the particles smell like that because they’re so rich in hydrocarbons- something so very essential to life, and speculated by a lot of astronomers and astrobiologists and such to be the very thing life on earth started from!

* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)

* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?

* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?

I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they "failed." Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn't matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON'T CHASE YOU.

And each time, they reacted with just... pure glee. "Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!"

Picture of a man holding a Spoink in his hands: I found this little guy in the forest! Doesn’t look native to Galar. What kind of Pokémon is this?

The comments: “r u n”

a) Most of my favorite books that I read within the past year were written by writers in their 30s-40s-50s+. 

b) Most of the books I read that made me think “eh, this one wasn’t ready, this one could’ve cooked a little longer”… were written by people in their early 20s.

c) I have all the time in the world. We all do. 

Bear with me. 

Fandom is a gift economy. Instead of services for money, we exchange fanworks for a response. Reader response comes largely in two forms because of AO3: comments and kudos. Receiving these can be a huge morale booster for authors. A lack of feedback from readers can make you feel like you’re writing in a void. Sometimes writers stop writing because they don’t feel it’s worth their time, or they find fandoms where feedback is more plentiful. A single meaningful comment can change that. Seriously. Someone liked a fic enough they figured out how to leave multiple kudos? That author is going to have a great day. 

Beyond supporting their writing, leaving feedback on an author’s work can also lead to friendship if a reader and a writer hit it off. And if the reader also creates stuff, a writer might even check it out (that shouldn’t be your motivation for leaving feedback and please don’t advertise your own stuff in a comment — that would be pretty rude — but it’s a neat side effect). 

So feedback is important. Feedback feeds the fandom economy by validating writers’ time, and in turn, those writers will probably churn out more fic. (Not surprisingly, positive feedback is considered the most valuable since it contributes to good feelings, and happy writers are usually happy to keep writing.) It’s also polite to thank someone for a gift. Just like you might send a thank you if someone sent you a birthday present, if you enjoyed a fic you read, consider pressing that kudos button or dropping a comment. For most fic writers, that interaction is the only reward they get in exchange for the time they put into writing. 

But no reader is obligated to leave feedback any more than a writer is obligated to write fic. To put it another way, writers are not entitled to a reader’s feedback any more than readers are entitled to a writer’s fic. If readers may not demand what authors write about or how often we publish new chapters, then authors may not demand certain types of feedback from readers (or any). The gift concept goes both ways. A gift is given willingly, without the expectation of anything in return, even a thank you. 

Don’t get me wrong. It’s rude not to acknowledge a gift, but there can be no obligation in the giving of one, otherwise it wasn’t a gift in the first place. Did you ever receive a “gift” with expectations attached? Tacky. Same concept.

Most fic writers I know adore feedback. It’s natural to hope for it and feels terrible when you don’t receive it, but if we turn commenting into a chore, I honestly think we’ll see less of it. So if you want to encourage feedback, let readers know you’d love to know their thoughts. Reply if they leave you a message. That’s all we can do. 

I do wonder if some people might feel shy about commenting or not know what to say. If you fall into this category, know that there is nothing wrong with saying simply “Loved this” or “Thank you for sharing.” You do not have to write an essay. And for anyone who would like to support an author but wants to avoid comments for any reason, here are some alternatives:

Leave kudos. There is nothing wrong with only leaving kudos. You don’t need an AO3 account to do this. Just click the button and your kudos will be given anonymously.

Share the fic with your friends. If the author made a post on their social media, maybe reblog or retweet it. 

Respond to an author’s fic post on social media with a brief message or an emoji. (I’ve been told some authors don’t really like feedback on Twitter, but I’m really happy if someone will talk to me in public.)

Make them something. If you are an artist and you loved a fic, but you don’t know how to express that, maybe doodle something from it. Do you make podfics? Record a chapter. I can almost guarantee the author will scream out of excitement.

Subscribe to the author’s AO3 account or follow them on social for updates