Can I respond to you little fandom rant?
In all honesty I used to be one of *those* assholes. I used to look down on short fics, see them and be all like, "blah did they even put effort into this?? It's so shot that's barely a thing why bother." But you know what happened, I fell off my fucking high horse because I actually started reading shorter fics! And like how he hell do people cram so much passion, emotion, story, hotness, into so few words! That in and of its self is a talent! Its like fucking poetry man!
Fandom can be great but it's also sadly a hellhole at times and that is just fucking sad because we are a God damn community and should act like it! Why is the mentality of respect peoples works, write what you like, don't read what you don't like so freaking hard to wrap your head around?
Just be happy and grateful for the content you enjoy and ignor the stuff you don't enjoy. Simple as that. So any way as a reformed asshole that used to look down on drabble/ficlet writers, I would like to apologize for all the idiotic tomfuckery.
Ps. Your works are great, and please never fell guilty for not reading something. Fics shouldn't cause stress and anxiety they are for fun and relaxation. Assuming your friends are good people I'm sure they would agree!
Yeah I find it easy to tell other people I never expect them to read my fic, but a whole lot harder not to feel guilty for not reading All of the Things myself 😂🙈
Anyway I'm too tired to get my thoughts in very good order today (I probably should know better than to reblog while angry, but I can't say I really regret it either 😅)... but that's the thing, innit. I don't care if people don't want to read short fics, or long fics, they're allowed to have preferences! And like everything else, nobody needs to justify those preferences to anyone.
It's when I start seeing those personal preferences touted as Better Than or Worse Than that I get upset. I don't think I've met a single fic writer who doesn't get anxious about whether their fic is good enough on every possible front, and fic length is no exception. I've seen people who write longer works go "ugh I just wish I could write something short for once, how do they do it??", and I've seen people who write shorter things go "Idk if I should even post this, it's not long enough and I'll just clog the tag".
In about a single week's span of time, I saw one writer friend get an anon ask from someone who was apparently annoyed at how much time they "wasted" reading part of their incredibly epic beast of a longfic; and then I see another writer friend get an anon telling them they shouldn't write so much short fic cause longer stuff is better. Short and long works are different things. Neither one is inherently better or reflects more talent than the other, they use different skills. And the great thing about fandom is that there is a place for all of it, and there is stuff out there for all different preferences.
But fic writers already tend to be, on the whole, little bundles of constant anxiety about our writing. Seeing flippantly dismissive or downright mean comments about the type of writing we do is enough to bring anyone down, particular on an already-bad day / week / month / year.
So anyway... idk if any of that made sense, but thank you for the response 💙 And I'm glad you found that you do like short fics as well!
