Full-Time Fangirl, Serial Shipper

thank you.

a.k.a. you may find your work Bad and Cringy™️ but you wrote something and that’s a Good Thing™️.

That not all of the writers/artists/creators that you follow actually have more free time than normal due to Quarantines and Stay at Home directives. 

Some of them are doctors, nurses, grocery store employees, emergency personnel etc, etc, etc. Some of them may, in fact, have less time than normal as they step up to the communities needs and may also, with the worry that comes from that, not be in a very good headspace afterwards to work on anything.

And sure, not everyone is still working right now. Some of them suddenly are stuck at home 24/7 with family, including small little’s that are just happy to have their loved ones home and are demanding extra time. Littles demand a lot of extra time and constant attention. 

(from experience, even my teenager does. there are days when i can’t go five minutes without being interrupted. i love her dearly, but constant interruptions does make it hard to word - its worse for someone with a toddler or more than one kid - though that also can depend on the kid/kids)

Some of your creators may have anxieties and depression etc, that this forced stay at home is only making worse. it’s hard to create anything when you’re in such a state…

Some of them might also be sick or otherwise affected right now. We might never know.

Demanding that your favorite creator update something because you now assume they have all the time in the world to do so is not cool - and actually stress inducing. 

Hoping is one thing, demanding… is kind of rude.

This has not happened to me (Thank you guys, for being so cool :D I love you all!) but I’ve seen other creators getting hit with this, and how upset they’re getting. 

So please, please, please, do not make assumptions on your favorite creators current situation. 

Please be understanding. 

We’re still here, we’re still making stuff. Promise!

here’s to the readers who stay up past midnight reading just one more chapter

here’s to the readers who like one fic - so they go through our archive and read everything else

here’s to the readers who are still learning the language of the fic they’re reading, but they’re making it through anyhow

here’s to the readers who are too shy to tell us how much they love our story, so they just tell all of their friends about it instead

here’s to the readers who kudos - and then comment “kudos” when they can’t do it again

here’s to the readers who make rec lists or run fic reccing blogs

here’s to the readers who give out prompts and ask for metas and suggest ideas of things they’d love to see

here’s to the readers who hide their phones so that no one sees what they’re reading, but omg this fic is just so good!

here’s to the readers who keysmash, reaction gif, tag, comment, quote us back to us, and otherwise let us know that they loved our work

here’s to the readers

To the readers who tell us not to worry about the long waiting lists or the updates which take longer than we like too.

To the readers who send us random messages to have random small talks with us.

To the readers who not just work out one specific request but an entire series.

To the readers who overload your inbox with requests of a second part because they loved the first part.

To the readers who are confident enough to share their struggles with us for a request to help them through their struggles.

To the readers who give their honest opinion on our works even if they think there’s something that could be done better, so that we can improve in our work.

To the readers that help us through a writers block.

Here’s to the readers who know exactly how to make our day, just by reading our work.

Tag them in a meme

Send them an ask

Share a story that you think they'd like

Post your art

Comment on a fic or reply to a comment

Tag a reblog with kind words

Write a fic and share it out

Send them a post you think they'd find interesting

Make a rec list

Play a tag game

Post the start of something and ask others to add on

Share a happy thought

Post a pretty picture

Add meta to a gifset

Say thank you

Tell them they are important to you

In trying times, reaching out to people makes everyone feel better. Whether it's to a specific person or to anyone who happens to find it, reach out. Share joy. Make connections.

Well, sometimes it’s longer than anything on God’s green earth needs to be, but my point is that there’s really no rules about fic length.  In traditional publishing there’s this awkward middle where nobody wants to print a novella that’s too long for a short story collection but doesn’t really fill out a book.  Ebooks have changed that somewhat but it’s still a convention that a book is about 75,000 words.

Fanfic is not bound by this standard.  If your story takes 25,000 words to tell, then you can do that, and there are readers for whom that’s a sweet spot.  If you just want to keep going and going for 350,000 words and beyond, nobody’s going to say “only famous authors with grand ideas get to do that”–text is low bandwidth and there are readers who will love the feeling that your story is a home where they’re invited to stay as long as they like.

extremely time consuming. Remember someone actually took time out of their life to create that, time they could’ve used to, idk, sleep, for example

entertainment you’re consuming for free. I can’t stress this enough: you’re enjoying someone else’s craft for free. You paid exactly zero money to look at/read/watch it.

S H A R E D  with you, not made for you. This is the most important point: someone created that, put it online and you found it. No one forced you to consume that fanwork, you C H O S E  to do it.