Slice_of_Apple

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

IT’S NOT FUNNY IT’S VERY LOGICAL THAT HE WOULD HAVE ADJUSTED TO LIVING LIFE WHILE HE WAS IN SPACE BECAUSE IT’S DIFFERENT FROM EARTH BUT I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE

It's the wikipedia image??? How big could it be

What

but the person didn't fucking leave a comment. (it was only random luck that I happened to see the bookmark). the lack of commenting is pretty rude and very dispiriting. i also just don't understand how if you really liked something you couldn't be bothered to tell the author. is it laziness? entitlement? i dunno, man, but whatever it is, it serves as a real deterrent to wanting to post anything else... (esp when comments that do come in all too often are variants on the theme of asking why it's taking so long for more chapters or similar)

this was another fic that people seemed to have fun reading. i mean, > 900 kudos, that's a lot of people, right? almost 300 liked it enough to bookmark it? but *9* comments? pretty shitty ratio 🤣 kudos are nice and all, but comments are way more precious to me. like, actual engagement is what is the most fun about posting in the first place. someone could have maybe 20 kudos but ten thoughtful comments and that is a bonanza in my book.

roughly 5% of readers leave kudos.

0.27% of people leave a comment.

truly, i GET that a lot of people, especially younger people who grew up on youtube and are living on tiktok, see "opening the page and viewing with their eyeballs" engagement in itself. but a) it's not, for fanfiction, that's not how it works; and b) "engagement" does not build a community -- interaction builds a community.

if you like someone's fanfiction, and you want more of that fanfiction, please react to it in some tangible way. leave a kudo. leave a comment. let the writer know that you didn't open it, see the first sentence, and decide it was garbage. let the writer know that you aren't a bot that trawls every webpage for AI content. let the writer know that their work is appreciated.

the point of fandom is to be a community, not a content engine. if people stop feeling like people are being reached with their work, they stop creating work for that fandom and move onto the next. there's a lot to be said for the way binge-model TV is killing fandoms prematurely... but there's a LOT to be said for the way infinite-scrolling consumption is killing fandoms prematurely.

if everyone binges a show on friday and feels weird about reacting to fics posted longer than a week ago/doesn't react to the fics they read at all, that fandom is dying out in about a month, max. even though there are probably a lot of people who would love to discuss it with someone or create more work or finish and post a WIP or whatever. because no actual community is created by consumption alone.

reading a fic is only step one.

reacting to a fic is the crucial step two of the equation.

Link

A reminder that this is what censorship leads to and that it wasn’t all that long ago when purity culture was going after ships that antis would consider to be “normal” today.

I can’t stress enough how you should not ever, ever mention, hint at or otherwise infer that a fic was commissioned on AO3. I’ve seen accounts get warnings even without a direct Patreon link.