Let This Be A New Beginning

You leave comments on the fics you've read, sometimes even very very long ones because the fic is great and you feel the author deserves a good comment about their hard work. You even write them for 'older' fics because it doesn't matter, right? Every post you read on tumblr is that even old fics deserve love and every author loves them and would be ecstatic to get interaction. - You get no reply- not even a 'thank you' which would be enough--just an acknowledgement at all. You don't get even one reply to the fifteen or more comments you left on different fics for different authors. You feel foolish for even leaving them in the first place and barely resist the urge to delete them. You'll not make this mistake again.

You write fic for your rare pair fandom. The response is disheartening, especially considering the amount of hours you put in. The promotional post gets lots of likes, but the fic itself remains (mostly) without comments. -What is it? Has your writing quality declined so rapidly? Is it so shitty it doesn't even warrant a single sentence? Maybe you shouldn't be writing at all. Even after 80 fics posted and over 15 years of writing you finally had enough. You vow not to post your fanfic publicly again. You will still write, but if it's just for you, you don't care about typos or whatever else. So you leave it as you have written it (for yourself) and don't put in the effort to make it the best it could be.

You make a post on tumblr, tag other people to participate in a game or you post a snippet of your upcoming wip. You get likes, but nobody says anything. Nobody you tagged takes up the game or the challenge or responds. - You vow to never to tag anyone again because you feel like an idiot for ever having done so in the first place.

You comment on the fics of your "friends or the people your interact with the most", You put in more effort than you usually would because you want to encourage them to write more and make them happy. You point out what you liked, sentences that made you feel something, plot points that you found surprising. You interacted with those people for months, some even years. - None of them comment on anything you write. Don't interact, just like a post on occasion. Sometimes they tell you "this was so good I'll leave you a comment" and you kind of look forward to that, but after weeks you realize it's not coming. You don't even get a response to your comments most of the time. It makes you feel like a total moron and you ask yourself why you even bother.

So you just stop leaving comments altogether.

You get anon messages asking about when you will finally post updates of your fic. They've read 30k worth of your story but have nothing to say about the story itself. (You haven't gotten a kudos or comment in weeks, so they didn't even leave that). They just want another update. And they tell you to hurry the fuck up.