The Quiet Between Chapters 🤫
Sometimes I catch myself feeling bad when a new chapter gets fewer comments than the previous one, or none at all. It’s not about the numbers, not really. It’s about that strange silence after you’ve poured a piece of yourself into something and it just… disappears into the void. You refresh the page once, twice, three times... hoping for a sign that someone out there felt something, anything. But the quiet stays.
Writing fanfiction has always felt like being part of something shared: a little corner of the internet where stories are gifts, not products. A place built on love for the source material, on excitement, on connection. But lately, I can’t help worrying that the fanfic community is starting to feel like the service sector: someone creates, someone consumes, and that’s the end of it. No real conversation, no shared joy. Just quiet transactions that leave both sides emptier.
It’s a lonely feeling, the kind that makes you wonder if people are still reading with their hearts, or just scrolling for something to fill the silence in their own rooms.
I don’t want to measure my worth in comments, but I miss when stories felt like dialogues instead of broadcasts. When readers left a line or two, not just as praise, but as proof that the connection was real, that someone had been there, and felt something too.
I guess I just miss when fandom felt like community (messy, warm, full of chats) and not like a platform where creators quietly serve and audiences quietly consume.
Despite all this, and although I have experienced a drop in comments between chapters, I'm fortunate to currently have a small group of kind readers who send me very high-quality comments (300 words per comment? Marry me!). But I see the difference between visits and comments and I wonder why a reader would read 8000 words and have nothing to say. I always have something to say hahaha