I donāt know who needs to hear this but be nice to fanfic authors. Reblog their stuff. Tell them you liked it. How you felt when reading. What school assignment you didnāt finish because of how captivating their story was. Donāt just scream to your friends about it. But tell them.
So many wonderfully talented people out there donāt get the praise they need. If their work brought you joy, make their day better by telling them it did.
Long ago I wrote a fic. Posted it under a different name without telling anyone in the fandom group I was active in. Watched how the online fandom group loved the fic and had a conversation of it in a positive spirit with each other - what did they like it, theories of this and that, how nice it was to get a new fic into this small fandom etc. - but did they leave feedback to the fic? No. I think it was only one person who commented the fic from the group.
I know the fan group liked the fic because I saw the outside comments. But, if I hadnāt seen them - like readers donāt - then Iād think the fic was not worth of my time and no one read it, or read it but didnāt care about it as it clearly was not worth of any comment.
Weāre not telepathics. We donāt know. Tell the creators. They want it and appreciate the feedback. If we didnāt want you to interact with the stuff we create, like comment it/share it/reblog it/etc. we wouldnāt post the stuff online for you to see.
It occurs to me upon reading this that we don't have conversations like this in the comments to the author's fic---so much of fandom is interacting with each other about media we love, but in the fanfic comments section the conversation is almost just commenters talking directly to the author, and maybe the author talking back.
Nobody launches a metacommentary thesis for other readers to debate about in the AO3 comments, or has long comment threads gushing to each other about their favorite character's interactions; it's like the tendency to give the author space while we go play with their creations, a relic of our past when we weren't supposed to exist, has extended to fic authors who are themselves playing in the same mud we are.
We act like it's bad manners to love a fic in front of an author, in the ways the fandom that writes fanfic loves a fic.
And that shouldn't be the case.
They're one of us too.
I have had one or two fics where readers engaged with one another in the comments and I can say with 100% surety that it was REALLY COOL to see!!! Even if they werenāt talking to ME, they were talking about the thing I made where I could see it and that made me feel GREAT. Absolutely loved it.
Iām currently reading a fic with one of my best friends. every time it updates, the first person to see the AO3 email will text the other so that we can both open up the new chapter as soon as we can and binge read it. we live blog our reactions to each other.
but the important thing is, I donāt just leave it to die in our DMs! I copy-paste that shit right into the AO3 comment box!! the author loves it, and it barely takes any effort from me. everyone wins. remember that most of the things you say to a friend about a fic can be said to the author as well.
