#r talks fandom

[thedamageofherdays]

Sending Hate Hurts Fandom

I don't really care if you like me or not. I don't care if you think others are better than me. You are entitled to your feelings. And while I think there's a better use of your time than sending me (and others) hate and bullying people, that's not why getting hate infuriates me so much.

When you send hate you actively make fandom an unsafer place for everyone. Not just for me. For everyone.

Every new writer, every new artist, every lurker, every reader, every shy person and everyone who doesn't feel secure is going to see the words you say. Those words make it sound like this is what this fandom is like. People are going to take your words to heart. People will leave fandom. And you are responsible for that.

You may be jealous or insecure yourself. Or have something else happening that causes you to lash out. But this is not the way to deal with that. All you achieve is making this fandom into an unsafe space for people where they feel only a certain group of people and only certain kinds of people can belong in fandom. And that's going to hurt fandom. So maybe reconsider what you are trying to achieve here. If you want more praise, keep in mind at some point there will be no one left to praise you. If you want to see more fics and more art, make sure people will continue to want to make art. And not just the people you have deemed worthy.

[thedamageofherdays]

I do wanna address a small thing because I have gotten a lot of asks about this subject. Some people seem to think all my fics do super well or that I am super popular and that I have a responsibility to promote their fics because of that. Plus I also get asks about people feeling insecure about declining stats etcetera and I want to illustrate they are not alone in this).

So I want to share some stats.

First some general stats

First is my total stats, second is my 2021 stats (I made my account in June so these stats are from June to December), third is my 2022 stats (from January until now - also June). As you can see 2022 has meant a decline in kudos and hits. (I believe more people in the fandom are experiencing this - though there are always going to be some exceptions. Exceptions are not the norm though!)

Now I want to share my stats for fics posted in June. All these fics were Stucky fics but did vary in length and rating a little. (Which can sometimes explain things but not always).

As you can see there is a big variety in hits and kudos. The fic with 131 is a fic that is "popular" in my terms. I have had some fics exceed that but generally I think a fic has done super well if it exceeds 100 kudos. This is more than what creators get but also less than what others get. And a lot of my fics don't even come near that number.

Declining stats and not being able to get people to read your fic is a struggle for many people, myself included. So please keep that in mind 💙

The popularity of a fic can depend on a lot of things and most of them are far beyond your control. Even if you do everything "right" (promoting, popular pairing, popular tropes, perfectly written, etcetera), people might still miss out on your fic. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. We are in a fandom that appears to be shrinking a bit (it's not dying but almost no one is gonna get the numbers you could a few years ago!).

It can get really frustrating. I get it, honestly. But please don't take these frustrations out on other writers, readers, or rec blogs. Everyone is in the same boat. So be supportive and kind and most importantly create what makes you happy 💙