kt :)

okay, so. sirius can smell dorcas. she’s obviously everywhere in the house, as is mary and even traces of remus. but like, when he walked into the bedroom, specifically, he could smell her, and it was stronger. not super strong, but stronger. it’s also a different scent, so he’s uncertain on it. but he knows he can smell dorcas.

see, here’s the issue: you might not remember, but. there is like, no record of a vampire being turned the way dorcas was. james talks about it in chapter 24 of dstg: vampires just don’t get turned that way. dorcas was a freak accident due to multiple circumstances working together: the basilisk venom increasing sirius’s venom potency, sirius being a pureblood, even down to the timing - there was so little venom it definitely didn’t linger, and i feel if she had been killed even half an hour later it would’ve run through her system already. it’d also the result of a freak accident - NOBODY has EVER survived basilisk venom. they don’t know how it works. in sirius’s (and all of their) mind(s) there is no way that dorcas could be alive/a vampire. it’s statistically impossible.

so, sirius is faced with.. a tricky situation, because he walks into the room, and remus is on his knees saying that the stash of weapons is gone, and like. well. if he says, now, oh, i can smell dorcas and it’s weird and a bit stronger and might be recent, … that’s gonna make remus SPIRAL!!!!! SO bad!!! when there’s like, such a minor — in sirius’s eye, impossible — chance that she’s alive! when there’s so many options that are statistically SO much more likely to explain it (eg: dorcas is the last person who stayed in the room, so her scent lingered). remus will LOSE it.

so like. it’s understandable why he doesn’t say anything. at the end of the day, dorcas being alive is so statistically unlikely that it’s fair enough that none of them really even consider the possibility. really, he dismisses it almost as quickly as he thinks it/smells her. if he was to tell remus — especially because he is the person remus trusts most, the person he would follow to the end of the earth — it would literally just set him back a whole month of mourning. it’s frustrating that they’re so close, but. mmm

what i mean by that is, essentially, instances of fanfic writers playing into the idea that fanfiction is a product created for the consumption of readers (and thereby the idea that fandom is a community that can be clearly divided between "producers"/writers and "consumers"/readers).

some examples i've seen: people "advertising" their fics on platforms like tiktok, sometimes even before they've started writing said fic ("hey guys i'm going to start writing a fic with x y z who's interested??"), or making posts asking outright "if i wrote a fic with x y z would people read it??" i've also seen people share concerns that if they write a certain thing they want to write (i.e, heavy smut, heavy angst, etc) then it will make their fic less "accessible" to a broader audience ("i want everyone to be able to enjoy my fics!")

another recent example that comes to mind is the "jegulus strike." while i'm sure it was largely well-intentioned, a strike is a form of protest tied inextricably to a consumer economy, and positioning writers as laborers who are standing in opposition to readers demanding that labor reinforces the framework of a consumer economy in which fanfiction is a product for consumption.

something i want to make clear here--i'm not saying that any of these behaviors are like....Moral Failings deserving of Ridicule. i think we are all very much conditioned by late-stage capitalism + algorithmic social media to view everything, even our hobbies, within the framework of a consumer economy. this is just me observing some of the ways i see that mindset creeping into fandom spaces.

like. i think there's this unspoken assumption that art is only worthwhile if it has an audience; that creative pursuits only matter if you can profit from them. if people are applying this mindset to fanfiction, then it makes sense to see this impulse to advertise fics the way authors advertise their books on tiktok, or twitter, or whatever. it makes sense for writers to become preoccupied with audience perception, perhaps changing their stories to make them more palatable for a certain audience or even going into the writing process with the audience already in mind--an overhanging and ever-present anxiety, asking yourself "how will this be received?"

the problem is that fanfiction doesn't fit into this model. it has always been meant for a niche audience, never the mainstream, and it has always existed outside the profit economy. trying to turn fanfiction into broadly consumable content is antithetical to the medium itself, and, in all likelihood, will fail. the vast majority of fanfiction is never going to be read by hundreds of thousands of people. if you go into writing it with an audience as your end goal, you will likely be disappointed.

what makes fanfiction so wonderful and unique is that it is meant to be written, first and foremost, for the writer. fanfiction as a medium grew out of personal joy in creation, out of individuals who thought "I want to see this story for myself" and then wrote it. because fanfiction is specific, catered to individual tastes and niche audiences, it lends itself to a unique sort of community in which your work attracts other people with that same niche taste, making it easier to strike up a conversation or start a friendship by saying, "hey, i love this story you wrote for yourself! it just so happens to be the exact sort of thing i wanted to read."

so i guess at the end of the day, my question for other fic writers is: if nobody was ever going to read this, would you still want to write it?

and if the answer is no...i think that's something that calls for reflection! where is your motivation rooted? is it rooted in a desire to create, in the joy of creation? or is it rooted in a desire to be seen, to be validated? wanting to be seen and validated is entirely natural, and it is by no means a bad thing. oftentimes, both these impulses--creation and validation--will be part of the decision to write + post a fic. but if validation is your primary motivation, and if you have internalized the idea that validation means getting as many people as possible to look at the thing you're making and click a heart button, then you will probably end up disappointed. you will probably end up feeling like your writing isn't good enough, no matter how many people end up reading it--because no audience will ever be big enough to validate you if you aren't able to take pride in your creation independent of any metrics of consumption.

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