"commenting is hard i never know what to say" this is an actual comment i left on a fic last night
you can literally write anything you want

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"commenting is hard i never know what to say" this is an actual comment i left on a fic last night
you can literally write anything you want

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"I sort fics by kudos and only kudos on stories with high kudos counts, why aren't there more stories with high kudos, I ran out of things to read." You're part of the problem.
"Authors artificially inflate comment counts by thanking people, I can't find anything with a real comment count to read." No they fucking are not, they're grateful for engagement.
"I can't read anything under 100k." That's the majority of fics you're ignoring, most novels aren't even that long.
"I don't have time to look for the incredibly rare diamond in the rough, so I won't read anything below a certain amount of kudos, comments, and hits." Those fics are popular because people gave them a chance and then snobs like you found them.
"I won't read anthing with a single typos." You made typos in that sentence, get off your high horse.
"One singular author didn't thank me for commenting, I'm never commenting on any fic again so I don't get burned." You're punishing people because someone didn't give you engagement they don't owe you that they might not have seen.
"This fic is three months old, it's so old, it doesn't matter if I comment or kudos, it's old." Fics do not have expiration dates, comment and kudos.
You're killing your fandoms with your snobbish behaviors.
Normalize leaving unhinged comments on ao3 fics you like. I'm tired of being the only one brave enough to write "I am chewing on this fic" in the comment section. Be weird. Authors will love you for it
I debated posting about this because I know it will be controversial and because I myself have complex feelings about it, but to quote an intrepid intergalactic explorer: we can talk about this.
A discord fic club recently advertised they would be reading one of my fics. I was actually really excited about this! Hopefully new people get to enjoy a thing I worked hard to make for them, and I was really looking forward to hearing what they thought about it.
Except the advertised date came and went with silence on the actual fic, so I assumed that it got canceled or something.
But, no, it didn’t - I heard later that the group had in fact read my fic and apparently loved it. Quietly. To themselves.
And, like, look — I’m trying to write this with a minimum amount of snark, because on one hand I’m a fic reader too and I firmly believe that people have a right to enjoy fic however they wish. As I writer, I also don’t think I’m entitled to comments, but like 90% of writing fic for me is to be part of a community, and being a part of a community means commenting on fics so that there are more fic and the community continues.
On the other hand, as a writer, I have to be honest — hearing that people specifically scheduled time to read a fic I wrote and then loved it while not sharing any of their thoughts with me? That doesn’t make me feel good. I feel like it should, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel like my fic is just content to be consumed without regard to the effort that went into making it.
The fic in question? I worked on it on and off for literal years. It had to be betaed. It had to be formatted to be posted to AO3 properly, I had to work on the meta bits to properly tag and warn people.
All of that is work, and the only thing I ask for (and any fic author, really) is engagement and encouragement from the people reading the fic.
This isn’t snark or bitterness to say that if the trend is going to be people talking amongst themselves about my fic in a group chat with total silence to me as the author, then I don’t see the point in going through all the effort to post fic publicly. I’ll just send it to my own group chat. If that’s the community now, then that’s where I’ll go. I’ll hate it, honestly, but like. If that’s the deal, that’s the deal.
Anyway, I’m clearly in my feelings about this. I really am truly glad people liked my work. But this really bummed me out.
We’ve temporarily lowered the AO3 comment rate limit due to bots leaving spam comments.
Posted: 16:42 UTC July 15, 2025

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shoutout to readers who like, kudos, bookmark and comment on older fics, it really means so much, especially for those of us stuck in a writing rut who haven't written for some time, you guys are awesome <3
A Simple Guide to Not Being Afraid to Write Comments to Fic You Read
I've seen a lot of posts about the current state of fanfiction comments. Writers, especially writers who have been in fandom for a decade or more, are frustrated by the lack of comments, and have noticed a definite decline in comments (and all other forms of reader interaction) in the past ten years or so. Many readers feel daunted by the expectation of leaving comments, afraid they'll do something wrong. As a fandom old maid, the latter confused me for a while, until I realized that most of the people who feel that way probably have not been taught this form of communication.
But your loving fandom elders are here for you. Come along as your auntie tumblr user icemankazansky makes this shit easy.