I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.
For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"
It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"
I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
On encouraging reblogs —
I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!
But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.
As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.
So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.
I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
no you have to contribute to your fandom if you don't want it to die. most fandoms die because people say 'it's so sad watching the fandom die when the hype dies' without doing anything about it. I'm not saying you have to push out 100k word slow-burn fic, I'm not saying you have to make fan art or gif sets or edits or anything. I'm just saying we as a community should contribute to our fandom if we don't want it to die, and by contributing, I'm talking about giving kudos, commenting on your favorite fics, reblogging your favorite art and just talking about your favorite characters. that's enough to keep a fandom alive. that's the most effective way to keep a fandom alive in my humble opinion.
fandoms die because people stop talking about it, fandoms die because people stop engaging with fan content once the hype is gone. what I'm saying is, mainstream media's hype may be gone, but our fandom can stay alive and thriving if us as a community don't let it die.
Each week has a suggested theme, but you should also feel free to simply post something about the season that corresponds to the week (i.e. something about s3 during week 3), or honestly just post whatever you want, we won’t stop you.
Tag us with @spn20fest to make sure we see your contribution and we’ll reblog! We appreciate it if you can add some identifying tags as well, but otherwise we’ll do our best to make sure things are categorized properly.
This will get long, so please continue below the cut to see the prompts for each week!
Please join us at our Discord if you'd like to chat about your take on the prompts or the show in general: https://discord.gg/Eaxx3dEXVA
1: May 31
Introductions
How'd you start watching the show? What made you first fall in love with it? What was the first episode you saw, which was the first one you loved? How’d you get into the fandom?
2: June 7
THEN
Posts/fics/meta about pre-series, Stanford era, weechesters and more — what happened before Halloween 2005? What was Castiel doing back then?
3: June 14
The Family Business
Saving people, hunting things: what does the job do to a hunter? What’s it all for? What does it mean to be a hunted thing? What about the society and rules built around it? What are your favorite monster of the week episodes?
4: June 21
Two of Us Against the World
Sam and Dean Winchester appreciation — favorite moments, favorite stories for each of them (or both). What are the most interesting aspects about the Winchester brothers to you?
5: June 28
Agents Beyonce & Z
Castiel and Crowley appreciation — favorite moments, favorite stories for each of them (or both). What are your favorite storylines for them? How do you imagine they got to where they were?
6: July 5
Ship Appreciation
SPN has enough ships to fill an armada — talk about your faves! Write a manifesto, share a rec list, comment on some of your favorite stories, etc.
7: July 12
Legacies
History looms large: talk about John & Mary’s joint legacies, the Winchesters and the Men of Letters, the Campbells and hunting society — all the way down from Cain & Abel. Alternately, what legacies do you think the main characters leave behind? What will people remember about them when they're gone?
8: July 19
Family Don’t End in Blood
Celebrate the tangled web of family and friends accumulated over the years: Bobby, Charlie, Jody, Kevin, Rufus, and more.
9: July 26
Heaven & Hell (& Purgatory)
Time to revel in the big hitter angels and demons and critters that populate the supernatural planes — celebrate archangels and the dukes of hell, or your favorite vampires and ghosts.
10: August 2
The French Mistake
Supernatural’s fourth wall is so flimsy it might as well not exist. Whether it’s the “Carver Edlund” books, in-universe fanfiction, busting through to Vancouver to film an episode, hanging out with high school girls making a musical, Chuck’s “alternate universes” that give us a glimpse at other realities that might exist — talk about meta madness.
11: August 9
Cast & Crew
The show wouldn’t exist without them! What are your favorite things about the actors, writers, directors, showrunners, and general crew? Any technical work you want to shout out? What other projects that they’re involved with do you love? Favorite interviews or wisdom from Word of God you want to share?
12: August 16
Big Hitters
What’s your favorite overall plot arc? What are your favorite episodes? This is a great time to make top five lists — favorite characters, favorite moments, favorite fics. All the love!
13: August 25
Fandom History
Put on your favorite archeologist outfit and go digging — what are some great moments from the sprawling history of the fandom? Shout out some old Livejournal communities and groups you know about and rec some that are still chugging along; what do you remember about the transition to Tumblr and the move to AO3?; what are some of your favorite fandom creators throughout the years?; or, remember how SPN technically invented a/b/o?
14: August 30
#SPNFamily
Have you been to a convention? Have you made fandom friends along the way? Have you been involved in any charity or volunteer work or Random Acts that you want to share? What are some of the biggest ways the SPN Family has impacted you?
15: September 6
Carry On
We come to the end. Time to talk about the montage period between 15.19 and the end, post-series, Heaven, new gods, new endings. But does anything ever really end? What do you want to see next? What ideas do you have to keep the love going?
This week ends on Saturday, September 13: Pilot Day. We hope you look forward to celebrating it with us!
(I should be screaming right, that's what Skelly does??) I contacted the best detectives, and they're going to help us investigate Skelly's disappearance.
YOU can help by leaving COMMENTS COMMENTS COMMENTS! Each day, one of our detectives will head up the investigation with a special comments theme. Details on each theme to follow, watch this space!
Fun fact: You are part of keeping a fandom alive. Every interaction, every person in a fandom has their own part to play. If that’s reblogging art, fanfics or making cursed edits, that’s good enough.
I think everyone should leave comments on the fics they read. And like not just because it's a nice gesture to thank the author for their hard work or because it's lazy not to or whatever, but just because it makes you feel like you're actually part of a community and that makes it so much nicer to be in fandom.
Like I used to be really bad about leaving comments, mainly because when I really loved a fic I would be like "I have to come back and comment on this when I have time to write a properly long comment that truly reflects what I appreciated about this amazing piece of fiction" and then I obviously never did that and then I felt bad about it for a while and then I forgot.
I told my friend about this, how I had fics that had like impacted me so much, that I had read multiple times and never commented on, and she looked at me like I was insane. And she was like "I comment on every fic that I read and like", like that was self-evident and uncomplicated.
And then I started doing that too. If I read a fic and I like it, I leave a comment right away. If it's like 3am and I have no brain power to put words together, then I just write like "I loved it" or something like that and it has genuinely improved my fandom experience so much. Because I don't have to feel bad about not commenting or whatever, but mainly because I just really like having those small interactions, like that there's actually communication going on, I'm not just consuming fic, and sometimes the author responds and that's nice too, but it's not really about that. Like I haven't published a new fic in almost half a year, but I still feel like I'm actively contributing to this fandom/the spn community and that makes me happy.
-> people stealing, binding and selling fics on Etsy, risking everything that AO3 has built since the Anne Rice lawsuits
-> AI scraping being everywhere and Gen Z seeing nothing wrong with using AI to "help" fanfiction or outright "write it" for them, while older fanfic authors have struggled for years to perfect the style you love
-> comments being down across the board and consumption culture being at an all time high. a fic gets 800 notes practically overnight and doesn't get a single comment (and sometimes I literally have to beg for comments/feedback on my fics when I know that hundreds of people are reading them)
-> me, grinding my teeth while pouring my heart and soul into a 40k fic that I know will be forgotten by fandom in a month or could possibly be stolen to be sold as a "novel": I do this because I love this. I do this because I love this. I do this because it's my passion. I don't want to quit doing something that I love so much.
Me writing my soon-to-be 60k Sasunaru fic to practically no one. Guess it is just easier to think it as a solitude comfort act that people join in occasionally. Nice to have someone comments on it though. Like I reread the few ones I had more than 10 times each lol. Those are my inspiration to see it through. Have a feeling it’s going to be more than 100k
There also needs to be a button for “this is the 5000th time I’ve read your fic because I’m having a horrible day and this is the only thing in the world that always brings me happiness.”
Honestly though, comments like that are gold to me. I love to write and a comment telling me that something I’ve done has improved someone’s life even in a small way? That’s impact. We live in societies that tell us over and over we have no value and nothing we do is ever good enough. So for someone to post a comment telling us that we improved their lives with our stories? That tells us our effort had value. We writers set out to improve the world in tiny ways, offering random acts of kindness in the form of a few minutes’ entertainment, and comments tell us we’ve achieved that little goal.
I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.
For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"
It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"
I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
On encouraging reblogs —
I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!
But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.
As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.
So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.
I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.
But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.
for a whole month (and beyond?) i want to encourage everyone to praise and celebrate all the works and authors they’ve enjoyed, neatly separated into prompts open to interpretation 💛
to participate: when publishing your recs as a tumblr post, mention @spnficrecfest and tag the post with #spnficrecfest so i can reblog it.
you can also request recs! send me an ask with what you're looking for, and someone out there might have a few recs ready for you later. be as vague or specific as you like.
info:
all pairings and gen fics are welcome during the entire event.
you can include as few or as many recs per post as you want.
there are no limitations — just make sure to mention major warnings (mcd, non-con, underage) in your recs.
i think what most people fail to understand is that curating your online experience doesn't just mean blocking and filtering the things you don't like or don't want to see but that it also (and maybe more importantly) means engaging with the things you do like and want to see. if someone creates something that makes your experience better, let them know! tell them! reblog their things! you get to see/share more of what you like and they get to know that someone out there appreciates their work it's a win-win situation for everyone involved
Do folks who are someone’s favorite fic writer, fan artist, etc. know it? Are they aware that their work has made a genuine impact on the lives of other human beings walking the planet? That there are real flesh-and-blood people who have been touched and affected by what they’ve made, and that they are thought of and discussed frequently with affection and gratitude and awe?
DONT BE AFRAID TO COMMENT ON OLD FICS DONT BE AFRAID TO COMMENT ON FICS IN A FANDOM THE AUTHOR MAY NO LONGER BE ACTIVE IN. IF THE STORY IS STILL UP LET THEM KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS IT MIGHT JUST BE THE REMINDER THAT MAKES THEIR DAY.
SINCERELY SOMEONE WHO JUST GOT A REPLY THAT MADE ME WANNA MAKE THIS POST
anyway the actual point of fandom is to inspire each other. reading each other's fics and admiring each other's art and saying wow i love this and i feel something and i want to invoke this in other people, i want to write a sentence that feels like a meteor shower, i want to paint a kiss with such tenderness it makes you ache, i want to create something that someone else somewhere will see it and think oh, i need to do that too, right now. i am embracing being a corny cunt on main to say inspiring each other is one of the things humanity is best at and one of the things fandom is built for and i think that's beautiful
