Why do people stop commenting on fics if they’re more than a week or two old? Please comment on old fics. Tell me you like my one shot from 2014. Tell me you like my old multi-chap I finished in 2016 that I spent a year writing. I will be fucking thrilled.
Fics are not social media posts. There’s no “stalking” someone’s “old posts”. They’re meant to be found and enjoyed years down the line. No need to be nervous.
I reblog this message every time it comes across my dash because it’s true. And also:
When I first started writing fanfic, back in the mid 1990s (yes! the late twentieth century!) one of the discouraging things about it was that people treated fanfic as if it was disposable. It seemed like what most readers wanted was a constant stream of new content, whereas I tend to produce one big work every 6-12 months. It made me sad that people seemed to think there was no point to re-reading or saving old fic. There is no sell-by date on fiction! It does not get out of order! It can still work even years or decades later!
So yeah, I have stories up at ao3 that are literally a quarter-century old, and every time someone leaves a comment on them I am very pleased to get it. We get attached to our stories and it cheers us up to see that they are still finding readers. It means that they are still ‘alive,’ in some way.
AO3 is not social media, it’s (essentially) a library.
You’re meant to engage with any and all of it, regardless of age.
