#commenters

A freeing decision, honestly, although it's unfortunate, since I do get a fair amount of those kinds of comments. There's so little positive interaction in the comments these days that it's not worth the energy of dealing with.

Block block block block block

From this day forward, until I hit the limit, I suppose.

There's enough negativity out there, why do you have to throw more needlessly around? Why take the time to read something that I've written and shared for free, out of my free time, and then tell me you don't like it, or lament how you wasted time reading it, or that "I can't believe it's abandoned uwu" as of that will make me want to write more? Just hit the goddamn X or back if you don't like it. I don't care. I don't want to know.

I didn't write it for you.

Like, no matter whether you ended up liking it or not (and absolutely no shade if it turned out not to be your thing after all!), even just the fact that you trusted the author so much you checked it out? That you enjoyed their other stories so much that you took a chance on something you usually give a pass?

Getting a comment like that is fucking incredible. For me, it surpasses even comments that say "I don't know this fandom/ship but still read the story because it's written by you" - jumping into the unknown is one thing, but jumping into something you typically purposefully don't read? Maybe even something that makes you uncomfortable? For me??

I think I've managed to lose a reader by introducing a lesbian Charity Burbage. Which upsets me because I was trying so hard to represent queer characters even though I was afraid I'd get something wrong and offend someone. I'm not "jumping on a bandwagon", and Charity is basically someone in my real life if she was a lesbian witch. I already feel guilty that I didn't represent as many diverse characters as I intended to because I got so swept up writing the storyline.

Ugh. I know neither me nor the reader have done anything wrong but I'm such a people pleaser and i worked so hard on the fic. It sucks that I've probably lost my one regular commenter.