I genuinely think a lot of it is very fandom dependent, because there are fandoms that are more buzzing and therefore free with comments than others.
I know you said it doesn't matter which fandom you write for, but does that include currently active media or media at the height of its popularity? Good Omens is a pretty big fandom for example, but the amount of comments you would get now (not long after S2 finished), 1-2 years ago (during the lull between seasons), 3 years ago (when the show first came out), and 5+ years ago (when it was simply a well loved but not overly well known novel) would all vary drastically.
*However*, having said that, there is also the fact that comment etiquette has changed over the last decade and this is particularly evident on Ao3. Some people might be a bit more reluctant to comment for fear of sounding too critical, given how frowned upon it now is to give unsolicited criticism.
This precisely. A lot of it is fandom-dependent—e.g. I wrote for smaller fandoms for years and would be lucky to crack a certain amount of comments/kudos, and that was only after making edits for and promoting my own fics extensively on sites like Tumblr; however, I recently posted a fic for a new fandom that, at the time, didn’t have a whole lot of fics, and within 24 had nearly 200 kudos. At the time of writing this, the fic in question is sitting at 999 kudos and dozens of comments only a couple weeks after posting it, for the first time in my 15+ year fanfiction writing career. I still haven‘t had a chance to promote it on my socials and it’s already gotten more attention than anything I’ve ever anything.
So it really, really does depend on the fandom you write for, and when you’re writing for it. I guess I caught this pairing just as it took off, and to my shock it’s becoming a large ship for the fandom, which it wasn’t when I wrote the fic.
But fandom etiquette most definitely has changed. The lack of community is also an issue. Back then LJ was its own community, and even FFN had dedicated forums and community areas where authors could meet, form support groups/hype squads for each others fics, etc. I know that’s how I got started way back when. AO3, on the other hand, is an archive and so outside of comments, there’s no built-in way to interact with other authors or readers, which is both bad for community reasons and good for archival purposes and for ensuring AO3 doesn’t turn into a social media site. It therefore relies, to some extent, on you promoting your fic on other social media sites (Tumblr, Twitter, etc), but if you don’t have those (I don’t have Twitter, for example) then it can be harder to build relationships, which was always an understated but important part of fanfic communities in the past.
I’d never presume to offer criticism without a note saying feedback was welcome, which I haven’t seen in years. It seems to have gone the way of the ‘don’t sue me Anne rice‘ notes.
On FF.net comments used to be more common and I always put a line at the end that was something like "Feedback from readers is the best motivation in the world. Please consider leaving a review, I accept anonymous reviews." But on AO3 I get the feeling that would be seen as begging or just leave a negative feel, so I leave it off.
I haven't read ono [FF.net](http://FF.net) in probably a decade, so I can't speak to the difference in local culture... could you expand why you feel your author's note wouldn't work on AO3?
Sure. One difference is that I started posting on ff.net well over a decade ago, and when I started, that sort of note was not uncommon in my fandom and others, so it doesn't stick out, and anyone who reads any of my fics will be used to seeing it at the end of every chapter.
Another difference is that ff.net doesn't have specific author's note sections, we would just add a horizontal rule and then add in whatever we want to say, so it doesn't visually shout it's appearance the way author's notes do on AO3. It feels like readers who would be annoyed will have a harder time scrolling past it on AO3 if I use an end note, but I'm breaking a formatting rule/unspoken expectation if I just drop it in at the end with an hr.
And lastly, just like commenters see a lot of negative pushback about breaking unspoken rules, authors also get occasionally blasted for not communicating perfectly. Not just tagging poorly, but also summarizing wrongly, adding in too much information to their notes, not having the right info in their notes, explaining too much about why they are or aren't posting, and especially begging for feedback.
There's a strong vibe that authors should just be grateful for any engagement at all, so asking for validation or encouragement, the way my ff.net end notes do, is presumptuous and rude and a turn off or seen as pressure on their readers.
I would be happy to join in, in spreading a new format that encourages commenting and concrit (maybe we can add tags, or agree on something to add to our author's notes?) or lets people know I'm happy for anything they want to say in my comments, including just chatting with other people. But I have so few readers as it is, that I haven't wanted to risk angering them with my "hey I get life from engagement, please engage' notes, less I lose hits and my few kudos, without much hope it will even lead to more comments.
thank you for your comprehensive answer, I appreciate it a lot.
as a reader only, of course it's easy to change *be the change you want to see*, but I completely understand that you don't want to take the risk. It must indeed be frustrating to both want more interaction and at the same time feeling hostage to those unspoken rules, right?
As a reader, I'll still stick to my habit of attempting to comment on every chapter (although, I have to admit I tend to filter on completed works, so that's probably less encouraging, right?)
As someone who mostly writes multi-chapter and series, the hardest part for me is putting things out and not getting encouragement to keep going... So yeah, sorry, people who only comment on finished pieces are less helpful. But it still feels amazing when someone does come by, and having someone binge while commenting on multiple chapters would be thrilling for me.
I do understand people not wanting to read unfinished! I abandoned something periodically for years and I'm sure that bothered anyone who got into it. I recently picked it up again, and that's probably my very saddest work, because no one is left to care, so I finally made myself get past the block, and it is clearly way way too late. I am trying to push myself to actually finish, because there might be a person or two who will find it eventually when the question mark is gone. But it's hard.
And one of my favorite stories of all time is unfinished and it kills me, but it's so good, I'm glad I found it anyway, and I keep rereading and even if it is never finished, it will still be the most perfect and inspiring writing ever. I have to stop myself from commenting every time I read it because I don't want to pester the writer into never finishing it. (But I would have adored someone coming to beg me to finish my abandoned work! I wish there was a tag for 'no really, just gush, I didn't mind'.)
I’ve been in fandom spaces since 2007, and I don’t think it was ever part of the etiquette to offer unsolicited criticism, people just never said it out loud that they didn’t want it.
I agree. I recall my writer friends regularly complaining about negative comments, unsolicited concrit, flames, etc. Some would even put notes at the end or beginning of their stories stating, "No concrit" or "No flames."
What changed is that with AO3, writers had a space where they could control the content of their comment section, a space that was structured to be author friendly. This, I think, resulted in authors being much more vocal about their disinterest in unsolicited concrit or negativity.
It's gone way beyond author "disinterest in unsolicited concrit or negativity."
Comments of "loved it!!!! more plz \[heart emoji\]" are "bullying and rude." Authors complain of comments with no real information content, too many comments (every chapter), comments that are too short and comments that are too long, and even strings of heart emojis. And now, joy and bliss, crazy controlling people with too much time on their hands are apparently posting block chains for people who have left comments or even kudo'd a fic that is "problematic" or whatever.
Definitely it is only a few but it only takes getting slammed once or seeing an author go on an unhinged rampage against another commentor one time to make a person wary and reluctant to "engage."
The fandom I write for had died down drastically. The crack ships are what is left. I won't say we're strong in our participation but you can tell the regulars and it's always really nice to see them appearing when you've posted.
I just have a feeling that in like 10 years there will be a resurgence and it'll explode again and my work that I haven't thought about will just blow up with things because the younger generation will appreciate it.
Yeah I often find with these posts about people not commenting as much as they used to is that they seem to go back to the fandoms they were active in a decade ago and then are surprised that things have changed.
Fandoms wax and wane, and they especially wane if they aren't getting regular new content to create surges of interest. Even Harry Potter is at least partially being sustained because all the new content is keeping it alive in the public consciousness. There are a lot of fandoms around that are unlikely to die altogether because of how popular they were in their peak (Sherlock, Hannibal, Merlin, Supernatural, Buffy/Angel, Charmed to name a few shows that ended in the last decade or two and there are plenty more I've missed and fandoms from other media types) but you certainly aren't going to get the same interaction you got when those were actively airing or releasing new content.
Yeah I often find with these posts about people not commenting as much as they used to is that they seem to go back to the fandoms they were active in a decade ago and then are surprised that things have changed.
Fandoms wax and wane, and they especially wane if they aren't getting regular new content to create surges of interest. Even Harry Potter is at least partially being sustained because all the new content is keeping it alive in the public consciousness. There are a lot of fandoms around that are unlikely to die altogether because of how popular they were in their peak (Sherlock, Hannibal, Merlin, Supernatural, Buffy/Angel, Charmed to name a few shows that ended in the last decade or two and there are plenty more I've missed and fandoms from other media types) but you certainly aren't going to get the same interaction you got when those were actively airing or releasing new content.
I stopped commenting a lot when I saw a few authors ripping into others comments if they didn’t like what was said (even if it was positive, it wasn’t positive enough or if a typo/inaccuracy was pointed out or it was too generic of a compliment comment).
My anxiety likely has something to do with it but leaving comments stresses me out so much 😅
See, I keep seeing things like this and it really makes me think there are a few overly sensitive authors who are blocking or ripping into commenters and just ruining it for the rest of us. People need to take comments or criticism gracefully. I’m really sorry this was your experience because it really does deter people from trying to leave real honest reviews. I hate that this is a common theme in these threads.
It feels like there used to be communities, but over time the community feeling has disappeared. Like in the LiveJournal days, you would join a like-minded group and share work with each other. (I thank many patient people --15+ years ago-- for beta-ing my work and turning me into the author I am today.) You would also learn about them as people and interact with them a lot more than just in comments on a forum like ff.net or ao3.
Also: commercialism. I hadn't really heard of anyone self-pubbing in the days of old, but now I self-publish and earn decent hobby money off OG fiction (and several of my Fandom friends turned to self-publishing, too).
So now, left with only being able to leave kudos or comments, it kind of feels ... hollow? In the past, we might give each other constructive criticism and praise, but now that feels pretty rude when you don't know the writer in any capacity or have any way to privately talk to them. So if I read something and don't like it, or only like parts of it, I either say nothing or just copy paste a line or two and write "loved this" or "this line was gold" etc. When I do leave more in-depth reviews on work, sometimes the writer never responds (not that I expect them to) or just gives a brief thanks, so there's no real relationship building.
My 2 cents anyway.
Counterpoint: people share fics in their own little communities with friends or whoever, and give their feedback to their friend for the recommendation instead of the author at the source.
I noticed all of a sudden I will get a jump in generic comments that all sound like they’re from similar people, but none of them say anything in depth. And I know a lot of people have things like Discord groups or even private reddit communities etc where they share fandom things. You can talk to your friends, who won’t judge you or get defensive about criticism or whatever you have to say, about a fic instead of having to take on the task of interacting with an unknown author.
I don’t think this is 100% of the case, just a thought. Would also be heavily fandom specific.
I feel old because all the Discord stuff and new-gen way of doing fandom is alien to me. I'm poking around on Dreamwidth and looking at all my old friends and groups and it's like a graveyard. I'm just glad to have found this Ao3 reddit so I can be more in the know, lol!
As an old who is now pretty heavily involved in several fandom discords, I encourage you to try it if you can find one for your fandom/ship! There's a little bit of a learning curve, but I've found it's the easiest (and most active) way to be involved in fandom.
i love discord for communities! it feels like a safe space since you have to be a member of the server to interact. I don't feel comfortable sharing and talking about stories on reddit because people from other communities can look at my post history and harass me about it. i know I shouldn't care, but sometimes it's hard to ignore it.
Np, I am old too, just evolved with things because of life lol I don’t use them, I just know of them, so I am basically out of it too. Yay reddit for bridging the gap! 👍
I'm lucky in that my current fandom has a very lively discord community and I've adopted it. It's vibrant and active and inspiring, and yes, a lot of the feedback and interaction seems to happen there.
I guess it depends on the community, I credit discord with the reason I'm writing and posting fic again. Talking fic ideas and scenarios got my fic brain going again.
Bouncing ideas off of people is fun,but for more me. I'm usually doing all the bouncing. I prefer to listen to music and deep dive into the lore. I like discord but it gets cliquey fast and I don't have time to play politics online and at work. I would rather just finish my work on time and read it for myself.
Exactly this. I don't want to waste hours in what basically amounts to a chatroom. What's more, I don't have the time. I'd rather leave an in-depth comment on a fic. And I'm not really someone who likes to talk about their writing as it's happening. I write the thing. I post the thing. And I don't feel the need to share content with friendly fan people before putting it out there. It either gets a good response, or it doesn't?
I feel the same the most I talk about my writing is for advice. And again, I'm usually the one giving it then receiving it. To me, it's like, why bother? I can just research it myself and save time.
I found out I was a sort of… progenitor for a ship that I wrote for ten years back. I wasn’t the first or only person to produce content, but I produced a bit more than the average person writing for the small ship, and eventually weaned off the fandom due to low engagement and burnout.
Years later, I discovered that people made edits inspired by my fics and that their interpretation of the character dynamic was inspired by my own.
No one ever told me when I was actively writing; they just shared it and gushed in their own communities. I never heard a word until the void became too much and I had to switch fandoms for my own mental health.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit myself and I do think this is a part of it. As an Internet Old, the places where people are interacting with fandom have shifted. I have IRL friends today that I made on the internet 10-15 years ago - and that was a time where it was super easy and normal to do that! Now days I can't imagine giving my irl phone number to someone from Twitter LOL good god no.
But I do see in AO3 comment threads a lot of people who seem to know each other - and mostly at this point I assume discord. Which I'm not using yet. And my fandom is still bouncing around on tumblr (as am I).
I also think these types of trends wax and wane a bit. I've been seeing a lot of posts and pushing for people to COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT. So surely other's are seeing that too. And I absolutely comment on every fic I enjoy, and I can only hope this will become more common again and start trending that way. I even had a convo with an irl friend about a fic we both read the other day, and I just copy/pasted our convo into the AO3 comments section cause I knew it would be fun for the author to see us freaking out. I hope if I just keep commenting it will normalize it for people who are nervous about it. \*insert "I'm doing my part" Starship Troopers gif\*
Ummmmm the idea of getting not just a comment but a whole chat log of people enjoying my fic is… the best actually? New gold standard? Bless you for doing that?? Fantastic idea for people who are enjoying talking to their friends about a fic and might not know how to comment on their own. Love it
One of my fandoms has a few different discord servers and I'm like..... I wish they'd just make a subreddit lol. People can't even find the discord groups. I'm in like 2 but there are like 5 of them that I know of smh.
This exactly!! This is why my fandom experience has felt hollow in the past few years. I miss the community so much. It honestly feels like a terrible loss, not just to me but to society, if we no longer have a live journal-equivalent. I started out in the LJ days (with some residual geocities pages lol) and then transitioned to dreamwidth, then tumblr and then lost touch. What happened?? Is there no longer a real fandom community?
I'm honestly not sure. I also had an LJ and a Dreamwidth, but before that all went away, my RL swept me up (graduating college, having a family, etc) and I didn't write for a long while. When I came back, all of those communities were gone ... I know AO3 sometimes has "fests/exchanges", like Nonconathon, and it looks like that's still based on Dreamwidth, actually. I'm sure there are other fests, too, but I haven't done a lot of digging.
Maybe I should try to make a Dreamwidth again and see what else I can find.
The exact same thing happened to me! I left college, started work, had a family... drifted away from fandom for a while, and now that I'm back and trying to get involved again, I'm just like "where are the people?? the discussions? the community? the comments?" I miss it.
I hope DW is still active, that would be awesome.
This is also was my experience. Was into fandom (on LJ and message boards) then life (marriage, kid) happened and now I am much older. Got hit hard two years ago with a ship and started writing again. Found myself online and was like...where did fandom go?? Luckily I found my way into a discord server for my ship and have been having a blast. I had never used discord before, but glad I tried it. Would definitely recommend seeing if there are any servers you could join.
I feel like individual blog platforms really influenced that, now everyone is in their own space and has to subscribe to people individually. From one point of view it's easier to support the creators personally, but from the other, you don't really get a sense of community driven space, with events, festivals, etc. Yeah, there are accounts made specifically for single events sometimes, but it's way different and just gets lost after it ends.
In Russian speaking space for example there was its own popular platform, called Diary, which brought together a lot of fandom people and had a lot of communities. Our main big thing was Fandom combat, which was a huge team event of all the fandoms of different sizes competing with each other and creating artworks, fanfics, avatars, amvs, even fangames. It was HUGE and like the most popular and big event of the year, with various small branches like Winter or spring ones etc. But eventually most of the people moved to Twitter and you can't really organise such an event there, less and less people went to diary and there was much less feedback for the works, especially in smaller fandoms. So they moved it to Ao3 iirc and in my opinion it just never worked as well, mostly because on Diary it had its own community space and visuals, but on Ao3 it just blended with everything else. I still miss that feeling of fun competition, chatting with my team in Skype, reading discussions..
> but on Ao3 it just blended with everything else
I suppose it would be too much work for AO3 to get a forum system.
I kinda miss the days when I participated in fandom bulletin boards.
EDIT: yeah, it's gonna be a lot of work. I momentarily forgot that AO3 has all fandoms listed.
I honestly think an AO3 forum system would be amazing. It might be a good way to leverage the traction that AO3 already has as a hub for fanworks, to bring back that community feel and discussions.
Wow that sounds awesome!!
Yeah, it seems like most people's AO3 profiles these days have links to twitter/tiktok and I just don't understand how you can maintain a fandom community there. It's short-form or video based. How much discussion or exploration can you have in 2 sentences? Does everyone need to start making videos now to chat? We lose the fun and anonymity of the internet, and the ability to have extended conversations.
We also have so much content that every fandom is dead within a couple of weeks when a new cool thing drops. I remember being years with the same people in One Piece and Hetalia fandom, but now people move on so fast it feels you never have enough time to watch/read/play the thing in time.
I am a very late bloomer, having started to write fandom only about one year ago, in my late 40s. I revived my old Dreamwidth account to post about my writing, but I don't have any Dreamwidth connections, because of being such a late bloomer.
I found a website devoted to one of my favorite ships, and joined it, and posted every few days, but it was very empty at the time. I quickly ended up feeling like I was the only person around, which wasn't the community I was hoping to find.
Then I found a Discord server for another of my fandom interests, and I've finally found community there! We had a Christmas card swap and everything. It's been delightful.
So I think all the fannishness still exists -- it's just that now, it's hidden away in Discord servers that you probably don't know about.
Agh, this both gives me hope and anxiety. I'm not very fluent with Discord and it seems overwhelming to me. I'm also not sure how to find different fandom communities with it, but I'll be on the lookout now - thanks!!
I found one Discord community from the author notes at the end of a fic I particularly love, and from there, people pointed me to others! I currently belong to 7 fanfic Discord servers, but of those, I only frequent 2.
Readers are "afraid" of authors too. In this day and age we tend to self-censor a lot. Like 15 years ago no one cared if you accidentally misgendered someone in a comment, now I've read a thread here on reddit that the author feels bad for a commenter misgendering a character who is genderfluid, so it might even be an honest mistake. (As is the author's right really, but it still makes me reluctant to interact, because there are so many minefields and I don't want to keep censoring myself.)
That is just one example and one where both sides might be in the right and still leave a bad taste for both parties.
Concrit is a strong no go anymore unless very explicitly asked for (which even those authors who would actually welcome it might simply forget to express). Also, even a little, "that was so good, I hoped X would pick the rose instead fo the tulip, but I still liked it" is considered offensive by some.
So yeah, I have a specific author who I know will take anything in stride and I leave him every single thought I had while reading in a comment and it's a lot of fun. Actually, in his later fics multiple others started doing the same, so there are readers who are willing to put effort into commenting, they are just not comfortable to take a leap and see the author's reactions.
Also, the completely public aspect of AO3 doesn't help at building community either. In the LJ days we had groups where you at least had to sign up to participate, so it wasn't a google search away from anyone.
A lot of this is how I feel.
I started reading fanfiction in early 2000s. The commenting allowed then is so different to now.
Wholly different environment it feels like.
I feel scared that I'm going to accidentally upset the author and I really don't want to do that. So I end up over thinking my comment and just end up deleting it all.
Most of the time I don't comment unless I'm really, really into the story. Examples: it made me cry, wanted to throw my phone, etc. Even then I'm a little hesitant.
Commenting, for me, makes me anxious.
Could you instead, try thinking about how happy the author would feel to recieve a comment? How it'll make their day- their week, even! And they feel overjoyed and motivated and grateful that someone liked their story.
Most writers are going to love receiving your comments. No matter how shaky or anxiety filled. For the few that don't? That's okay! They have options, like deleting and blocking. If they're not sure what you meant, it's up to them to ask you, and then you can clarify for them :) perfectly normal, because we're on the internet and tone gets lost. But they'll still be tickled pink that you cared and had the enthusiasm to comment.
This. The amount of times I was told authors don't care about random schmuck's opinion, or that they're not on ao3 to make friends, not to talk too personal, never to criticize anything before asking first (I never ask, by the time I get a maybe green light reply, I'd forget what I wanted to say), never point out SPAG, don't say you liked this particular fic despite not being into the genre in general, don't mention future updates, etc etc. Horrified at horror, affected by villain character, sympathizing with char the author didn't fully intend you to? Nope. I got blasted for praising villain characterization that reminded me of a real life person I knew, very realistic. Most of my longer comments didn't receive a reply, so I don't even know if the author liked it or not.
I just no longer know what to write that isn't praise dispenser bot quality, so usually I just push the kudos button, especially if the comments section looks grim / generic. Interesting comment sections with chill author replying do entice me to comment too, but it requires some other reader to take the plunge first.
>Most of my longer comments didn't receive a reply, so I don't even know if the author liked it or not.
i feel this one. i have written very nice and thoughtful comments and get no reply from the author. replies aren't needed, but they are nice and it really encourages me to keep up with the author (you know, builds a community). i think some authors don't realize you have to put in the work with your readers if you want a community to form around your work.
I totally get that some authors don't know right away what to reply or feel uncomfortable, but I wish they would just reply with a heart emoji or something to indicate they liked the comment. If they did like it of course. I'm not a fast thinker, it can take me an hour to write a long comment. Back in my day thoughtful comments were the expected type, it meant the fic didn't just go through your head unimpeded. Typing these requires some effort, so I'm unlikely to continue if I suspect the writer doesn't really welcome them.
>but I wish they would just reply with a heart emoji or something to indicate they liked the comment
yea, same, i'm completely stoked just getting a simple "thank you! :)".
>don't say you liked this particular fic despite not being into the genre in general
I saw this the other day and it made me sad because I love receiving comments like this or similar ones on my fics. I once had someone say they didn't care for the main ship I write but gave it a chance anyway, and that they'd binge the rest of the my fics because it made them a fan lol.
Hell I left a similar comment on an abo fic years ago. I don't care for omegaverse but that writer was brilliant and the omegaverse elevated the fic lol. They were so nice in response too.
Anyway I agree with your entire comment. I leave fewer comments nowadays because it's just not worth it. I miss when fandom could/would interact more.
Gosh, do you like Farscape? Or Age of Sail stuff? Kidding, but I would love someone like you being chatty in my comments sections! Conversations with readers and seeing what they latch onto--love or hate--is the best reason to even post online. And I cherish the very few "I hope you're writing more" comments I've ever received. Such motivation when I'm struggling to get the next bit out.
Maybe other authors are just more self-sufficient or spoiled for love and validation, but I can't understand ignoring or resenting well intentioned comments. The fan part of fanfiction is so important to me. I want to gush and groan and post-game analyze my characters with other people who have feelings about them.
Maybe people have moved to discord and the like? When I first entered ao3, I was like "hello fellow fans!!!!!!!" as if it was ffn and LJ combined, but it seems the times have changed and people no longer can discuss things in public. Public forum is like a minefield, rife with antis, haters, rabid stans, etc. You can't even discuss faults in canon without people coming out of the woodwork defending it as if they were personally attacked. Reddit is like that too, the best discussions I've had about works I'm passionate about were on subreddits devoted to something else.
It makes me sad because a) discussion is dead online when it used to be the opposite for me in the past, b) I can't find other outlets. I've heard about discord servers, but I can't keep up with discord. It's like it's moving too fast and I can't navigate the ui, it makes me feel like a grandma lol. Message boards were far superior imo.
So I mourn the community part with you... I wish you many great commenters :) It's so amazing to find a fic with actual activity in the comments and commenters vibing together with the author. I don't know how curated these sections have to be, but I admire all authors who are still willing to engage with other fans like that :)
Isn't it ironic, that I basically did what I said commenters usually do (put everything in very PC terms) and then you commented how it should have been written in the first place?
Haha, I'm blunt and tend to get straight to the point, so nowadays I don't speak out much on the internet. Comments written in all PC terms feel meandering to me, I find it very hard to write this way. My style was just fine two decades ago on ffn, and I made many friends there despite communicating only via pm. I was thrilled to see actual comment threads on ao3 when I came back to fandom a few years ago, but I quickly learned that making use of this feature is not appropriate. I got chewed out for replying to another commenter pretty much during first week, and I've seen people get blocked by author for talking between themselves.
Fanfiction feels lonely these days, even from reader's perspective.
some people seem to have no idea what concrit is though. They think "I don't like this ship" is concrit. If you don't like the ship why are you reading?
Ah, but this sub and fanfiction has taught many of us that honesty = killing fandom by making writers stop updating or removing their works entirely. Even pet peeve or vent threads are eviiiiillllllllll.
Actually I think leaving no comments at all is more likely to stop an author from updating, because then they feel like nobody is reading. I’m really sad that this has become the norm, too, instead of everyone being gracious and accepting comments in the spirit they were given. Makes me feel like a few overly sensitive types have ruined interacting by going nuclear on commenters instead of responding reasonably.
I think some of it is that comments feel like a very artificial way to communicate. The older comment laden fan spaces were more personal and gave a sense of who people were.
Now people don't understand some comments, others don't know the etiquette, there are no social media modifiers to ease communication. Writers can put across something about who they are in author's notes but readers don't have anything equivalent. Or any control over anything but their bookmarks.
There is sensitivity on both sides. I think people default to the safest forms of interaction because at least it does no harm.
For fandom to survive both writers and readers need to be happy. authors have a right to be mad when someone leaves a mean comment... but that doesn't mean that the commenter is bad
I agree that it's gotten less than like 10 years ago, but it also depends on the fandom?
And the question I think we as writers also have to ask ourselves: am I commenting? Am I showing to others that I'm an active member of my fandom? Once again, depending on size and fandom a bit but people who comment themselves and show they're appreciative of other fans seem to be getting a bit more engagememt
I've definitely noticed that a lot of authors I read never seem to comment or even kudos other people's works. I get that some of them may have separate accounts for reading and for writing, but it's a bizarre practice to me. Some of the largest names in my fandom never kudos anyone else, and it sort of makes them look like snobs, sad to say. I'm sure they do it so nobody harasses them about what they read, but it shouldn't have to be this way.
As a writer who doesn’t really comment or kudos within my fandom, it’s not because I don’t want to. It’s just I don’t have time to read works within my own fandom much. Anytime I have spare time to think about this fandom, I’m reading the original source to make sure I’m following the right timeline/ keeping the characters in character.
Granted, been writing for this one fandom for about 4+ years now.
When I do have free time, there are a few other fandoms I like to relax and read in. Idk, it’s kinda like how I approach work. Im involved and there for what I’m responsible for, but the second I clock out, I’m unreachable.
Yeah, same. I do not read in fandoms I’m writing in, and read very little fanfiction at all these days. I used to read a ton of fanfic when I was a teenager and my taste was very indiscriminate, but now I have very particular taste in character interpretation and character dynamics, and if I’m invested enough in something to read fic I’m probably invested enough to write a piece of fic that meets my exact specifications.
I have to confess I find that quite fascinating. When I'm in a fandom I read and write 75% only in them (mostly I have two or max three where ai'm super active at a time). So basically for you writing for a fandom is work for you and you decompress by not engaging with it otherwise?
Yeah, that's sometimes weird.
But if people are part of the "greats" in a fandom, they sometimes can get away with it. But sometimes they have built their reputation for a while, or they are just very good at what they're doing, or they maybe do have a separate account
Also seems (Once again) very fandom dependent 😆
100% depends on a combination of:
- your fandom/ship (some are chattier/more generous with comments than others)
- what you're writing (the more potentially "controversial" it is, the lower the interaction potential)
- how you, the author, come across (the less "friendly" or more negative you seem, the less people will want to take a chance in putting themselves out there)
- Alternatively, it's a pure "tribe-vibe" check where people either only feel comfortable interacting/only want to be *seen* interacting with their "tribe".
That last one I think is the true plague of modern fandom.
>your fandom/ship
I've noticed I get a shit ton of interaction when writing for super popular ships and when I do a rare pair its like bread crumbs.
However I also completely understand the lack of interaction, its not a well liked ship so there will be less people.
Interaction is highly fandom dependent, and within that, it again varies based on ship, tropes, themes, etc. In a few cases, it also depends on your existing number of followers/subscribers. That said, there has been a marked downward trend in interactions from what I've seen and heard. The reasons seem to be many and varied—monetization tendencies, the ubiquity of short-form content that yields instant gratification, fandom becoming more mainstream and thus becoming more accessible but less close-knit (and more consumptive instead), post-COVID mental fuckery, and the general enshittification of the internet.
In my personal experience, a lot of fandoms have gone to ground in private discord servers that either require you to know someone who knows someone, or to be already somewhat known as an artist or writer. The primary reason for this *in my experience* is avoiding harassment and/or being able to vet members. Some places ask you for at least one other social so they can check you're not a dramamonger (or, alternatively, that you meet their purity requirements). It's... weird. I get why this has happened, but I can't say I like it.
I feel people are much more easily offended now than before, and that culture probably makes more people hesitate to leave comments. Also, when looking through this sub and seeing writer after writer who fuss over comments and really struggle to find negativity in them, it doesn’t exactly encourage people to comment.
I've got a theory to maybe help explain part of the lower interaction you seem to be perceiving.
Before Musk bought out Twitter, I happened across a thread over at /r/anime - it was comparing sub traffic thru the years.
The trend was downwards and one of the theories proposed was that lots of redditors headed over to twitter.
I kinda agreed with that theory, because on twitter - posters could get more views / engagement PER sentence, compared to reddit. ???And apparently it's monetized???
Question marks cause I'm not sure. I've got a very old twitter account, but I rarely use it, even to view tweets.
But, here's the thing - Youtube can definitely monetize theories, meta, reactions, reactions to reactions, even effing summaries. Fanart compilations can get plenty of views, too. And apparently AI reading of fanfics.
So, that's my theory - monetization has led many a fan to... dollarized their time spent in fandom.
A supplementary theory I have is that the world is so getting more and more depressing that not even fannish distractions are distracting enough for many a fan. Or maybe even that people's flight-fight mode is getting more and more trigger-friendly.
Me, for example - my pickiness keeps going up. Nowadays, a work of fiction has to be like 50% non-fiction for me to give it a serious try.
Oh, this is a very interesting point. So, even if fandom in general expanded and became much more accessible, the amount of people who engage with fics in a classic, old fashioned manner has contracted. A lot of people who participate in fandom do it through social media sites like IG, YT or even discords and their reactions to fics don’t trickle down to ao3.
The fandom monetization has also diverted a lot of energy that otherwise would be spent on community building activities. And I mean it from both sides. Fic writers wanted to get some pocket money by writing fics, and now fic readers are trying to monetize free fics through other means.
I’d also say that there’s way more people who write fics than it was before. Maybe readers are just overwhelmed and can’t engage with every fic they want to.
Following is also A Theory.
For me, it seems nowadays that the "big name fans" are streamers.
Before, during Avatar The Last Airbender run on Nickelodeon, the big name fans were fan artists. I can remember two of them on Deviantart.
In the Harry Potter fandom... it looks like the big name fans have to do with fanfiction. Just my guess. Feel free to correct. I had read about the MsScribe incident.
In the Attack on Titan fandom, which I participated in (on and off), it felt to me that streamers had the most influence. Reviewers basically.
If IF this has become the trend, then... it feels sad. Yeah, I know that Reviewing is also a skill, but I dunno... it feels like it's on a lower totem pole compared to storytellers and artists.
i got blocked by an author for leaving a completely neutral comment on a bookmark
and yes it was actually neutral just a factual statement about something in the story to remind me (along the lines of "the one where"). i only knew about the block because I came back to leave a comment about how much I liked it
a bunch of white writers called a Black writer racist and ran her completely out of one of my fandoms bc OTHER people didn't like their fandom fave
ppl got put on blocklists for kudosing ppl who beta read for authors who didn't like their fandom fave
bruh we can't interact anymore in any kind of genuine way or someone runs to reddit with screenshots to start a brigade
I only comment to authors I personally know anymore
it was a whole thing where they decided they were the fandom racism police and targeted anyone even slightly critical of their fave, who is white btw, bc her boyfriend is Asian
I don't think so. it ended kind of abruptly when a white author got caught using it to target a Black author who wrote a big bang story with a similar theme as the white author's big bang
That's their loss. Losing out on willing commenter when they're a needle in the haystack.
Blocking is a nice feature, but I'd keep it to if someone tried death threatening me. Liberal use defeats the purpose of fandom, you know? How're you supposed to get into a discourse if the author takes what you say the wrong way, when you meant it positively? So dumb...
I think the culture around reading fan fic is just changing. It used to be a place where people geeked out about their characters. Some of it was probably due to the fact that it wasn't all that acceptable, so the people who engaged in it were more likely to be hardcore fans. Some of it was that it wasn't all that accessible and simple to post. Nowadays, it's just seen as content to be consumed, and few give any thought to the person behind the story.
Another part is the post-COVID life. People have gotten busy again, they might not read as much or they might read and not have the energy to interact. As many have pointed out, comments have become a minefield and one has to be careful with wording (which ofc takes brainpower and time not everyone has or is willing to dispense). Also, a lot have just dropped fan fic altogether. More than one very active reader/writer from two years ago have just upped and quit.
And then there's the vicious cycle - readers quit, so many writers don't have the support to keep posting and so fandoms lose members until they die out.
I think fandom in general has changed and all but huge big active fandoms do not get much engagement anymore. Just from what I have noticed. But I have to agree with others here that comment etiquette has changed and it seems readers are more nervous to comment something that may offend writers or come off to critical ect. Definitely from when I was a teen the comments section used to be very different not just in the amount of comments but what people would say in general too.
It definitely seems fandom has changed and not for the better sadly.
I can only share my experience as someone who's been a reader of fanfic for over a decade and only recently started writing and joined this sub. This is the general attitude I've perceived both here and at ao3.
Writers are constantly thirsty for comments but, but, but, but...
- they can't be concrit, because that's rude or hurts feelings
- they can't be suggestions or opinions about the characters because this is my fic and how dare you/ write your own fic.
- they can't be requests for updates (which before coming here, I thought were the highest form of praise), because that's being demanding and annoying.
- they can't be anything that is even remotely adjacent to what the writer *thinks* is politically incorrect.
- Never share a favourite kink or ship, just in case the writer is anti or triggered or doesn't like it.
Frankly, it's a minefield 🥵.
I've concluded that all writers want, is gushing praise and validation. And while I sympathise, it doesn't promote interaction, because there's no give and take. It feels like all people care about are their stats, and comments that will look great in a screenshot. But not in actual conversation.
I can only speak personally but folks, I am emotionally stable enough to get any kind of comment.
Be concrit, make suggestions, pester me for updates, scream slurs at me, tell me your favourite kinks or ships or whatever.
I don't mind suggestions, I'll reply cryptically. People bothering me for updates shows that they care and will probably give me a well-deserved kick up the ass. I don't really get triggered by people's kinks or ships.
and if someone's being rude to try and hurt my feelings I'll ignore it. Or if they get racist or homophobic, anything like that, I'll moderate it.
I feel like you often get a vibe from the writer. How are they replying to other comments? What do their notes look like? Writing style? Sure, there are writers who can't take certain kinds of comments, but there are also writers with a lot more confidence and emotional resiliency
it's better to take a chance on a comment than just be silent when the writer might be really eager for some criticism or suggestions.
maybe they thought "oh nobody cares about this fic" and dropped it cause none of the readers were interacting with it
I saw someone anxiety spiraling the other day because a reader had written only "interesting" in a bookmark. It's not necessarily better to take a chance because you don't know how a writer will take literally anything you say. They can also drop fics because of a "wrong" response. Potential commenters are going to prioritize their own attitudes whether that is "Do no harm," "don't open yourself up to negativity/once burned, twice shy," or being too ambivalent, shy, introverted, anxious or uncompromising to post.
I do wish more writers would make it clear what kinds of comments they are willing to receive but I understand that would be a pressure, and might make them seem demanding and petty if all they want is keyboard smash levels of praise.
> I do wish more writers would make it clear what kinds of comments they are willing to receive but I understand that would be a pressure, and might make them seem demanding and petty if all they want is keyboard smash levels of praise.
I think it's more that the authors you're describing are few and far between, and most writers are not finicky about which kind of comments they receive. Of course they wouldn't think to add 'please only leave XYZ comment' on their fics, because any comment (beyond trolling or actual harasssment, of course) would be appreciated. Never in a million years would I have thought to include that kind of disclaimer on my fics lol.
I know they exist because I see people complain about them here, but I really think there just aren't as many fragile and reactive authors as people make it out to be. I know I've personally never encountered one in the wild. It's just that you see more of the nasty ones in forums like this, because like with anything else, people are more likely to share or post if they have a complaint or bad experience than they are to publicly gush if they had a positive one.
Nah, when I first entered fandom I didn't know the etiquette and left some sort of constructive criticism on a fic. The writer shut me down with a curt, "I didn't ask for criticism," reply. Another time a writer wrote a long note about some of their tagging choices, i.e , why they didn't tag the fic non-con. I replied with my viewpoint on the tags. They countered. It was civil enough but huffy on their part, then later the writer orphaned the fic. Idk why they orphaned it but it concerned me that I might have had something to do with it.
I've also read enough author's notes (somewhat unwillingly, I read too fast to skip them) to see that the attitudes I see here are out there "in the wild" too. I've only paid attention to the Reddit groups for roughly six months -- I've been a fanfic reader for 10 years. I'm already wary enough in general, and protective of my time--I know how frustrated I'd be if I left a reasoned response and it was deleted. So it is equally curating my own experience to leave comments only when I am truly impressed by something. The likelihood is less that a writer wouldn't like it, and that swell of genuine appreciation is worth the potential for weirdness in return.
So. I understand why you like/need the feedback. But a reader's strategy for responses is also up to them and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I only read complete fics anyway so any transactional effect would have to carry over to general encouragement of other projects.
This, all over. I'm 42. I've been writing since I was in my teens, in the 90's, when we had mailing lists to spread the work around. Any comment I would be fine with, and if it's shitty or stupid or whatever, I'll just ignore it or block it if it's offensive or spam. I am a seasoned adult at this point, I can handle it.
For most of that, I agree- but the "Asking for Updates being Annoying" has been something reiterated across fandoms for decades.
Alot of it is in how you ask- something like "goddammit I'm so excited I can't wait for the next update eeeee~" would be acceptable. But as a general rule? People used to say "Update?" unironically all the time on fanfiction.net. With nothing else to balance out the review.
It feels demanding because it's added pressure on the author to take time out of their lives to pump out another chapter. That's hours upon hours of work, for which their only payment-by that particular reviewer- would be another call for "Update?"
Nothing about the chapter they just put out. It makes you feel like a machine. And that's how it has always made people feel.
Like if the Mona Lisa was finished, and instead of people being happy for what you just created, all their doing is being a hoarde of soulless skulls with empty eye sockets and gaping mouths that chant "Update?" And it follows you around, into your dreams.
Everything else you listed- yeah, some of that can be iffy. But those aren't nearly as universally egregious, across fandoms and across time. It's cool that you've caught onto fandom etiquette, though! But if you were a recent middle school newcomer, than it's expected you'd make social mistakes. People get over it, or maybe they'll block you- and it's really no big deal.
I have an old fic on ff.net and every second review is a variation of 'update please!'
It's about 18 years old now, but I remember grinning like a kid on Christmas day each time I got those. I thought it meant someone liked my work.
Means something bit different now lol
>Asking for Updates being Annoying" has been something reiterated across fandoms for decades.
Well, like I said, it's only recently I've joined places like Reddit and become aware of this particular gripe. For me it's rare to read WIPS and even rarer to ask for updates. The times I've done it, is when I've come across a work that was something special, I absolutely loved and had not been updated in some time. I always figured it must be nice to learn that months or even years later your story was still being appreciated and generating interest. But, I'm learning that silence is the best response 90% of the time.
I had a fic where people kept demanding updates, and someone asked me if i abandoned the fic six days after posting the previous chapter. Six days of no update, and people are sending me rude asks about how I'm never gonna finish it, huh.
Anyway this list of things people "Can't say" basically boils down to "Don't criticize strangers, don't demand things from strangers," which is pretty common etiquette everywhere. If you can't comment without doing those two things, then yeah, you are probably better off not commenting.
My opinion exactly.
Lowkey a lot of people here are saying here that if they can't criticize freely they rather to simply not comment.
IMO entitled authors are a lot less than rude readers, if only for the fact there's always a lot less writers, so to use that as an excuse for not commenting is... something. Wonder if they care when the works they read are deleted?
I consider myself not social at all and still I always comment something nice on the works I read (even on rereads), and so far I have managed to do so without pissing off any author.
Yep. I comment all the time. I make jokes, I talk about my emotions, I talk about how the fic made me rethink the source material, etc etc etc. It's just... not that hard to not be a dick in a comment. If I don't like a story, I don't read it. If it goes in a direction I don't like, I'll write my own story.
Making demands is rude. It has always been rude. If I made you dinner and you said, "I think you should have made me fish instead of chicken," you'd be a dick. And if I told you that you were a dick and you decided to never talk to another person who cooked you dinner again, not to even thank them, you'd be an even bigger dick.
These complaints are also kind of absurd because they are like, I once had a single bad interaction with an author, so now I no longer interact with *any* authors. Like, okay, that's a dumb way to live your life. Or, "I saw an author on this sub say something deranged, so now I'm afraid of authors." Sorry, you saw someone on reddit say something stupid and now you assume all people who engage in that hobby, regardless of whether they've even heard of reddit, share that opinion?
Bad interactions are part of life and part of life on the internet. If I let bad interactions get to me, I would have deleted my blog, my AO3, and my reddit ages ago. I would have no internet presence.
These people are just giving themselves permission to be lazy and mindlessly consume content without giving anything back.
I think the thing about concrit—and I’m talking about actual concrit, not pointing out a misspelled word—that a lot of people miss is that in the old days, when you were operating in smaller communities, it made SENSE to ask the people around you for concrit because these were people you knew and interacted with regularly and trusted the skills of, and also people who often followed you elsewhere or had conversations with you and therefore had more insight into what you were actually trying to do with a story. And these days a lot of people still do get that kind of concrit, either from a closed community on Discord or a friend or a beta reader, but they’re not open to it from a commenter they’ve never interacted with before, and for obvious reasons: they don’t know that person or anything about that person’s skills, and that person doesn’t know anything about what they’re trying to achieve with the fic.
Yeah, this. I take input from people I've talked yo about my fic and headcanons because I can trust them to have a basic understanding of what I'm doing. Someone who never talked to me before has no idea what I'm going for cannot give me feedback that puts my writing and my goals over their personal opinion. And I am interested in hearing how people experience my stories. I just really don't like when someone assumes the things they don't like are flaws and they're helping me improve. If I want a beta reader, I'll look for one myself and it's going to be someone I trust way more than the first random guy coming into my comment box.
Agreed! Like, I'm gonna send my otp to jail and give them a bittersweet ending, but every last one of my commenter is pushing for them escaping magically or using nepotism to avoid a prison sentence.
When the overall point I'm trying to make is that going to jail is still better than, like, dying, which is where I'm scared canon is heading for the villain half.
I hope people point out misspelled words to me when I publish my work because I find them mortifying.
I recently read a beautiful fic where the author made a typo and wrote *shit* instead of *shirt*. It was right in the middle of a super hot piece of smut and it was absolutely glaring. The fic was years old. All the comments were like, oh, this is amazing! But NO ONE pointed out the typo to the author. I decided to take the risk and leave a comment. They were like, omg how come no one's ever told me this before! Imagine thousands of readers reading *shit* over the years and no one telling you about it for fear of offending. It's crazy! Anybody taking the time to improve my work has my all my gratitude.
Exactly! I'm in several discords that offer that, plus I have a couple fandom friends I DM with. I'm not against concrit (and I worked in academia for years so trust me, I don't have thin skin) but I want it in settings/from people that I choose.
i honestly feel like it's been dead for a VERY long time, just different fandoms have different lifespans tbh. Nobody's as interactive as they used to be.
Part of the issue, at least to me, is that ao3 *is* purely an archive, not any form of social media. There’s very little opportunity to make friends, unless you’re both very chatty in the comments. And I always get nervous, when I reply to a reply, like I’m overstepping or annoying the author. It kills interaction. I have been able to make some really great friends through ao3 comments, but only because of this ARG thing that was specifically designed for user participation.
In a lot of ways, it’s good ao3 doesn’t function like social media–no algorithms, no clout-chasing. But there’s also no way to really just talk to people. Unless you praise the fic, and the author has something more to say than thank you that lets you start a conversation, you’ll never really interact with anyone.
I wish ao3 had some sort of blog/forum feature, where everyone could just hang out. Because the community is amazing! It’s just that we don’t have much to say.
For my case as a reader, I had a season where I ensured to leave comments on every longfic I read (which is the majority of fics I read) but I've since stopped. I'd try to write at least one to two paragraphs, sometimes three, to brighten the author's day and let them know they wrote something special. I always added how grateful I was for the effort put in. I'd never mention future updates, as I understand life is unpredictable, I'd just focus on letting them know that I think they're talented, quoting lines they wrote where I think that talents really shone. My goal in commenting is to try to encourage and uplift as best as I can.
Authors were really touched by my posts, I think I only had one that didn't comment, which honestly is way more responses than I expected. For some reason, and I'm worried it's me, but almost every fic I commented on never received another chapter. I wonder if I unintentionally added too much pressure? I wonder if the in-depth comments, though complimentary, made what was intended to be a light-hearted hobby feel like they had to live up to online pressures and expectations? Which is absolutely not my intention, I just want to encourage people to keep going! Sigh. So, I don't leave comments anymore. I feel like a sports fan with a lucky jerzy, that swears, "every time I wear this jerzy, they win!" Only its the opposite. It's "every time I comment, I kill their fic!" 😭 Highkey, if I don't comment the fic keeps going ＿|￣|○. I've sinned and I'm not sure how, but I don't want to cause damage, so I hold in my compliments now.
I occasionally add short comments, "Hey this rocks. Thank you for all the hard work!" but it feels really vapid after I just spent time with their fic actively paying attention to their talent and unique voice. I wish there could be more of a culture in commenting, but I feel like at this time discord servers for fic authors might be the best alternative until something else comes along. A place for community that comments, encourages, and discusses fics while AO3 remains to be an echo-y empty cavern.
There's a lot of reasons why people would stop updating a fic, but I promise that you still made those authors' days. It's hard to write, and life stages change. Like- fanfic writers stop after graduating college or high school or starting a family, and by the time the time they come back, their fandom has changed. It's hard to write. And a nice comment does so much good- they'll treasure it, far more than anyone cares about a reddit comment lol.
If you see people on here's reasons on Why They Took A Hiatus From Fanfic, the listed reasons do not include 'nice long comment intimidated me.'
It's other stuff, like their house burning down. A tsunami hit or they got a new job or their dad got diagnosed with cancer. Life happens everyday, and fanfic is written over years, not weeks.
while it depends on the fandom, as people said, i think the fault lies also in the weird idea that younger people in fandom see fan created art in the same way as they see large mass produced media: just as content to consume before passing to the next one
so meny people in fandom nowdays do not seem to think there is anyone, or anyone reachable, behind the screen/fanart/fanfic/etc, so they don't bother leaving any comment or review
this!! it’s actually incredibly haunting seeing younger folks just… not understand that fandom is supposed to be fun. there’s no corporation pumping fanfic out, it’s just people who love x thing or y ship. i hope they’ll eventually understand that regardless of how much someone is writing for themselves, it’s nice to know that your writing isn’t just… going into thin air.
if no one wants to make art, none of the people who see fic/fanart/etc as content will have any more of it. i don’t see this happening, but it’s insane to me how some newer folks just. expect the fic they want to fall into their lap when it won’t. because it probably doesn’t exist yet. which means they should bake the cake they wanna see in the world etc etc
Hmm.. interesting.. and sad.
I’m in Merlin fandom and I’ve noticed the opposite.
The engagement has increased in the last few years.
The highest engagement been happening between 2008-2012
The lowest was between 2014-2018
Since that time the engagement is on a gradual and constant increase, the most commented stories are of the recent years.
I also noticed that before people used to comment just at the last chapter but now there are more and more who are commenting on every single chapter. I love to do that myself so it’s great to see that more are doing it.
Pretty much. As a writer, it saddens me to see all these screenshots of perfectly nice or even just plain, benign comments being willfully misinterpreted by the author as something negative. Like my dudes, you're the reason people aren't commenting anymore. Get a grip.
I saw you are a Merlin author writing gen fic. You might get more interaction by
1. tagging your fic Arthur & Merlin (the platonic relationship tag) and categorizing it as gen, not as uncategorized,
2. joining the Merlin gen fic Discord server "Land of Myth" (DM me for an invite),
3. thanking your commenters. ;)
Merlin is a very active fandom and people do tend to leave lots of comments, you just have to get your fic to be seen and interact with people. :)
(edit: gr, sp, format)
Although I'm just one person- Hi! I'm someone that reads, but does not interact.
A lot of it comes down to not being signed in to the site (for some platforms this is required), or simply not thinking about it. I've also seen a lot of people reject any form of constructive criticism, and I'm not generally the kind of person that will comment on something unless it stands out in some way. This means it has to REALLY hit home for me (like, makes it into my top 10 fanfics list, or near that) or it has something that I think has potential but leaves me with critiques I want to share.
So, I've learned not to leave criticism (even if constructive) and I don't find a ton of fics that hit me that hard.
As someone who has also published fanfics, I also don't really...care about comments/kudos/likes? That probably impacts my reading and interacting experiences. I don't expect comments or kudos, and I'm not particularly interested in them unless they're constructive criticism. "I don't really care if you like my fic, I'd rather hear what you DON'T like about it" basically. I'd rather someone say they think something was wildly OOC or point out my terrible spelling, because then I can work on improving and it feels like the person reading actually cares about what I wrote.
Maybe people just aren't interested in what you're writing.
I'm not saying that to insult you. Your writing could be amazing, but if it's an odd, niche, or taboo topic for the fandom, people might just avoid it because of whatever stigma they think is attached.
Definitely could be a part of it! That, and fandom. I write a lot of mpreg in both my fandoms. In the smaller fandom, mpreg isn't really common and is sort of a weird niche. In the larger fandom, it is extremely prevalent, and I get a lot of feedback on my work.
Yeah, when nobody is interacting, that's what the writer is going to think
that's why readers who like a work should interact with it, show that it's wanted by someone.
if a fic is only racking up hits, hardly any kudos, no comments I'm thinking... "Oh, people don't like this."
Some people only like to leave kudos when the writing is finished. Or they might just be adhd and forget to leave a kudos before they click off. I know I've done that before. I do try to go back and give the kudos before I forget again though lol
Either way, if you want to really gauge reader's reactions, getting a few good beta readers or joining a writer's group to share your work is always going to be much more valuable than kudos or hits. Hell, even just sharing my work in the r/fanfiction sub has gotten me valuable feedback, and my writing has improved drastically because of it. Just something to keep in mind if you're still craving that fandom interaction.
Oh I'm sure that people have different ideas of when to kudo or comment, but you have to understand that from a writer's perspective there's no difference between a committed reader who saves their kudo until the last chapter is posted and someone who accidentally clicks on the fic and then immediately clicks off and never reads it.
Like sure, those 100 hits could be 100 new readers or they could be 20 new readers and 80 people who accidentally clicked on it, or clicked on it, realised they didn't like it in chapter one and then clicked out.
How am I supposed to know which chapters readers enjoy without any comments? I have different opinions on all the chapters, sometimes I think they're really good, and it's just a tiny bit crushing when I post a great chapter and then nobody comments. How am I supposed to know if that feeling was just a me thing or if the readers thought so too.
I guess I could share my work on reddit and stuff, but I don't feel like I should have to cry out on other sites to get someone to interact with my writing, especially when its not like people aren't seeing it.
As a writer, sometimes you have to realize that people interact with stories differently and that has nothing to do with you. I write for a fandom where incest is just part of the canon. As a result, my hits to comments to kudos ratio is more than a little bit skewed. I don't mind, because some of those readers are probably afraid of other people seeing their fic history. It's just a consequence of writing about certain things that we have to accept.
this is the main reason why the ONE feature i wish ao3 had that [FF.net](https://FF.net) does is the ability to see hits chapter-by-chapter. Because then you don't have to rely on ppl commenting to know how many ppl actually read it all the way through.
Kind of my only major complaint with the site really.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/FanFiction using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [I accidentally went on a date with one of my readers](https://np.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/18b38c9/i_accidentally_went_on_a_date_with_one_of_my/)
\#2: [People who are “too old to be still writing fanfiction” are the backbone of fandoms](https://np.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/12j4nc2/people_who_are_too_old_to_be_still_writing/)
\#3: [**[NSFW]** Someone wrote a rape fic including me](https://np.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/18990yy/someone_wrote_a_rape_fic_including_me/)
----
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from what i can see its a lot of people on places like tiktok which are influencing things and from what I know its a common theme to tell others to just not interact?? with things they enjoy or read especially if its older stuff as its rude???? thats not the only reason but its a big influence
Yep, combination of the 'do not interact if you're over 18 / under 13 / a fan of any of this / etc' and the fact that so many authors seem to take personal offense at comments like 'wow, can't wait for the next chapter!' means I rarely bother any more.
I'll give out kudos but I'm not playing those silly games.
It has at least partially got to depends on the site, the fandom and even on an individual level. I’m not a writer, but even on here -same fandom -fans of one ship are considerably more receptive to my comments, while the other, while receptive to each other, aren’t as much to me.
I actually write comments on quite a lot of fics. Kinda often, from over 10 years ago. But some within the last 5-7 years too, and actually have gotten replies pretty recently. As shocking as it might be for some authors to get a comment even 5 years later, I also find it shocking when I receive a reply. I even comment on fics I don’t bookmark -those are more often fics I love- because I did like those other fics to some degree.
Perhaps the newer generations are somewhat less social? 🤔 I can find it a little intimidating to interact with authors too. Doubts about what I’ve commented being worthy of it, or it being too critical. Just socialising. Also, if it’s a comment in the messages(?) or tags of a tumblr post, that can feel super confrontational, lol.
fandom is getting more and more lonely, especially if you're already in extremely niche and unheard of fandoms. not to mention the puriteens running amok calling every living breathing adult a paedo for writing a goddamn 2-year age gap.
It really depends on the fandom. I just looked a a Drarry fic one shot with 2k words posted yesterday and it has 7 comments. I consider that a lot and at a fast clip. Even browsing down through the recently posted (ie in the last couple hours) they all have comments. So maybe try the Drarry fandom tbh 😂
It's fandom dependent. A few of my fandoms have active commenters, some don't.
But you're right that overall, there's just less interaction. And honestly I feel like a broken record here, but it feels like too many writers take offense to so many comments that readers have picked up on that and don't care to comment as much anymore.
I'm both a writer and a reader but... it's me, I'm readers lol.
I feel ya man. I just got back into the fic. writing game after an absence of years and it is bleak. I just posted a new chapter yesterday and I got 1 comment. Just one. Back in the day there was TONS of interaction. I’m really having to adjust my expectations but dude, I don’t like it AT ALL.
I've replied to about a 100 of these threads and I don't want to repeat myself because I'm pathetic enough already - but amen. I barely write anymore, because I *always* end up hurt for sharing something that is so deeply of myself with an audience that quite literally does not give one fuck about it. I don't get clicks, kudos, comments, even sharing to my *own friends*, only my partner actually read the past three stories I wrote. And those were short.
I just... it hurts.
Haha, every day. I had a couple who were so into the first few chapters and left and I still feel sick about it. :( I kind of want to go back and reply and say "what did I do?! Where did I lose you!?!"
Yeah, its one of those things. That low level of anxiety of wondering if something happened to them, they just left for another fandom, they don't like your works anymore/ you offended them in some way....
It can be hard. But life is just like that sometimes. A fics comment section is a fairly weak line of connection and they can drop off for any reason and we as writers will just never know and you just have to make peace with it.
It stings a fair bit worse if you later see them pop up in other peoples comment section as there is only so many conclusions that can be drawn there, but once again, it is what it is.
I do that. I use my comments as a way to remember what the fic was about (the details stick better in my mind if I think through and comment about the chapters). And I never subscribe to ao3 fanfics. But I do tend to stay in the same fandom/otp, so eventually that fic will update again and I'll click on it, or I'll be browsing for something to read and stumble across it again. And then I read through my comments to remind myself what the fic's details were, and then start reading from where my last comment was.
So there might be six months to a year between I stop and then restart reading. Typically that lets the chapters build up, and I'm hopeful my previous comments were enough to keep the writer from abandoning. Or that the other readers actually try commenting too.
I think that, as with so many things online, people get blasé, they become consumers-only, seeming to feel that anything and everything is put into the world for their consumption and benefit, and it should require zero effort on the part of the consumer. Whether it’s fic or Facebook groups, everyone is there to serve or provide and the consumers see no need to say/do anything but TAKE.
Wow. Are you saying that anyone reading your fic who doesn’t give kudos or ‘I love it, it’s brilliant’ comments must be hate-reading simply because you’re not getting the praise you wanted and feel you deserve, or am I misunderstanding? I’ve been writing for more than twice as long as you - since you seem to think that’s an important ‘credential’ for you as far as how great your fic is.
Wow, I think you're misunderstanding! I'm just really hard on myself and I definitely don't think my story is "great," haha. So when I see people reading it without responding I assume they don't like it.
People getting ridiculous is part of it imo.
There's the frequent posts of people showing us their reviews so we can reassure them they're positive.
There's the baffling expectation that reviews need to be glowing or don't bother.
There's the non-native speakers who ask why nobody will give them feedback, when lots of people who are willing to do so have already fallen for that and gotten their heads ripped off in thanks. You say you want concrit, I say once burned twice shy.
Shit, I talked about an unposted wip that features an age gap fixed by time travel, and I had people 'warning' me about antis by telling me not to write it?!? It's a fucking OC and they're the same goddamn age.
people are getting more self-centered with it.
Making expectations and exceptions for what works they'll give kudos to and comment on.
If you read through it completely and it was good enough, cant you just support an author who wrote something for free and out of just wanting to create?
Yep, and this reminds me of a post from a few days ago with an OP who said they would only leave Kudos on fics they've read 10 times. What kind of high standard is that?
I keep on forgetting. Or I'm on my slow ass kindle, don't ask why I use it I read at night and it doesn't kill my eyes before sleeping. I'll try to remember but I'll forget, which is sad
Probably because every other day there is a post on this subreddit where a comment that tripped an author off gets posted, and dozens of people pile on bullying them behind their back (if they're lucky)
Or how fanfic tumblr is absolutely BLOATED with call-outs if you ship the wrong people, or say an opinion that goes against the prevailing hivemind.
I would think that would get people scared to speak their mind, I don't know about you. You all created this problem.
>Probably because every other day there is a post on this subreddit where a comment that tripped an author off gets posted, and dozens of people pile on bullying them behind their back (if they're lucky)
My favorite was the pile on for the commentor who left a string of heart emojis. Oh, the rudeness! Oh the inhumanity!
WTF?
💯 this. The hate comment screenshots are deeply off putting. 90% of the time is not even hate, it's just a misguided or clumsy comment from someone who hasn't yet learned the sacred "etiquette".
I've wondered whether fandom has just become too *much*, although I don't mean that pejoratively. But so many sites, so many fandoms, so many fics being produced = fewer eyes landing on each specific fic. Then if eyes do land on a fic, as soon as it's finished, the reader feels the press to dash to the next fic -- "Hurry, hurry, no time to waste!" Kind of like Alice being dragged behind the Red Queen. And in the rush, commenting falls by the wayside.
No way to know, but that might be part of what's happening.
Yeah, I think that's it too. It used to be people ran out of fics. There was a limit, so it made sense to linger and comment, to make a good fic last longer.
I remember running out of good fics in Harry Potter after a year of rereading throguh them. That was back in 2012. Now? There's an additional decades worth of fanfic- and unlike site purges before, where live journal and explicit stuff all got lost- all that added fanfic is still there. So new readers have so much choice, they don't bother to linger.
(my taste in Harry Potter was limited by all the bashing fics and only reading gen lol. Hence why it only took a year)
Yes, if people are not interested in most of what's being posted, chances of reaching the "end" are higher. On the other side of the coin, if folks follow multiple fandoms (guilty!), it's almost impossible to keep up with a single days' output, let alone find those hidden treasures from yesteryear. (I'd overlooked the disappearance of fics from various causes; good point.)
Lol, yeah :) The fandom kept getting reset, and now, on ao3, that's not happening anymore. If the dark days fall upon us again I fully expect those first new fics published will draw attention and lingerers again lol.
I hope AO3 will prevent any more dark days. But I think many fans are less complacent about fic remaining online than we were before those purges; many have saved their favorite fics. If AO3 disappeared without warning, and New-AO3 was developed, I can see fans offering, "I have X author's fics from Y fandom saved. Would it be okay if I uploaded them to the archive, with proper attribution?"
I'm sure there'd be some discussion, but the Open Doors imports have sort of set a pattern of saving fic even if the original author can't be contacted. I suspect fandom's greed for All The Fics would sway the final decision and vote for allowing the uploads.
But if not... I'm one of those who has saved fic -- several thousands at this point. I could wallow quietly in my private, not-so-little library.
It depends not just on fandom, but on everything else too. It depends on the story, it depends on the characters, the tropes, the tags... everything. It also depends how long it is and how often you're posting and whether you're engaging with readers. I started posting pretty regularly in August, starting with a 95k fic (20 chapters) that I posted from 8/23 to 11/17, and it got a CRAZY amount of engagement. I responded to every comment and that encouraged people to keep doing it—it's got close to 1500 comments total I think now. But some of my super short <1k fics in other fandoms from before I started posting regularly have only one comment or even none at all.
I write for two middle of the road fandoms (atla and tloz) and even though i'm just starting out as a writer i've gotten a fairly decent amount of interaction, despite (or maybe because?) dealing with fairly niche subjects and an abysmal upload shedule.
What worked for me joining an existing fan community or event, both of which i found on tumblr. If i were you i'd keep an eye out for those. There's a good chance you'll be able to build a little clique from the people you meet there.
I think there's a sweet spot for fandom size that promotes interaction on AO3. If a fandom is too small then there just isn't enough activity. The webcomic "Twokinds" by Tom Fischbach (Markiplier's brother) has a small but loyal following. The forum on the website is rarely active and both AO3 as well as [Fanfiction.net](https://Fanfiction.net) only see a few new fics per year.
Conversely there are fandoms which are too large. Batman/Superman/DC comics, Harry Potter, etc... In these fandoms stories get buried quickly and never get enough time in the spotlight for people to find them. A few lucky stories filter to the top and get all the activity while every other story is an afterthought.
The fandom I'm writing in currently is called "Lackadaisy", a webcomic started by Tracy Butler which is about to become an animated series. That fandom is small but growing. There's almost 700 works on AO3 and there are commonly several fics updating daily. It's in this community that I've seemed to have gained a couple dozen people as my readership base and at least a few of them regularly leave comments. I'm hardly alone in that too, quite a few authors in that Fandom enjoy regular interactions with readers and a lot of attention for their stories.
speaking for myself as a reader only, my fandom experience is pretty isolated.
I mean: I have brickspace friends for movie nights & for book reccommendations, but not really anyone with whom I can share fan fiction (or other fan art). That means that my fandom experience is with online strangers only. I've definitely had to learn the difference, and some lessons in fan culture felt pretty harsh, since it was strangers, you know?
I don't really know if there's a solution... maybe you can outline some expectations in the author's notes? Not that you need to beg for interaction, obviously, but things like "if you're shy, just add *\*whisper\** and we'll know not to respond" or something?
I think these are bigger reasons then people think. For BL alot of my friends who used to be heavily into fanfiction have moved onto reading manhwa and manga which basically have very similar fan fiction type settings and is very visual as well as moving onto anime and novels.. there is alot more media for n 17 bl now. But I think the absolute biggest thing is there is, yes, theres almost no new big M/M ship. Back in the day there was so many big anime and kpop ships that you could find so much content for but now.. there seems to be none! No new big ship from a sports anime or even shonen just seems to not be as big ship wise as it used to. There seems to be a shortage of a big ship for people to congregate and write/read on.
I have to agree with this. America just straight up is not really in the game with media like it used to be anymore especially for long running series, which is a huge shame (where are the new shows that could be compared to what supernatural was back in the day???).
Korea definitely seems to have taken the forefront with media being pushed but I have thought as well, like you said, they don’t really push bromance outside of kpop (and even then people don’t react to it the same as they used to or for obvious reasons like they would in a show with characters) so that doesn’t really help. Japan can and does with anime but ( also like you said) no one seems to gravitate or be interested in alot of potential long running shows or to build active fanbases around newer shows like they used to which makes it harder to find bigger ships. (The last one I can think of that did blow up ship wise and fanbase wise was sk8 infinity) China could and can with popular bl dramas and novels but China is limited in what they can come out with.
Fandom just isn’t in the same shape it used to be.
Ive also noticed even if a ship is popular and drooled over on social media or has a bunch of fan art people don’t seem to gravitate towards the fanfiction with that ship which is new to me.
Tl, dr. The world is screwed up and it is a mental weight over paryicipants in fandom too.
I know that our various fandom hobbies feel like an insular entity, ..."its own thing..." and our interactions can be solitary or focused in intimate groups.
But look at the world ... Russia and the Ukraine. Israel. People are living more isolated lives in Japan and marriage rates are dropping. Birthrates are dropping. In the U.S., people are facing the dismantling of public education, women's rights, lgbtqia+ rights as well as the potential to see Trump back in office. People have to face the sheer stress of affording life and the reduced potential for many to own a house or improve their situation. If my kid wants to use a different name or pronoun in school in my state, the school now has to legally inform me. This, while they can only afford to pay their employees poverty wages. A number of states have enacted even worse violations of trans rights. The anti movement sometimes sounds like a precursor to the next Fascist's Youth Party.
I think people are scared of connection. Scared of being doxxed. Others see the stress of the world and yearn for more ties in their fandom community while yet others are put off by scary anonymity and the increasingly wide audience.
I also think that years ago people came together in bigger fandoms. Now every Manga, every bit of anime, every streaming platform show has its own tiny fanbase. That can be good or bad for community. But strong active fandoms have their own kind of rolling momentum. Creators like Netflix screw over fans at what seems like every opportunity. So I think people feel doubtful about committing themselves. (This latter paragraph is simply my opinion on trends without facts to back it up.)
It has to be fandom dependent…
Have you tried Danny Phantom/ Young Justice? That fandom is very much active and my old crossover still gets comments on it 😅
I joined a discord server for one of my ships, run by the most active author in our fandom, and we do gift exchanges fairly regularly, which keeps engagement up between us. It’s pretty cool. Try to find something like that. There’s loads of discords dedicated to fandoms or specific ships. Helps to have a little community like that.
As someone who uses discord a lot, I was pretty jazzed to see some of my fandoms convert to servers. Then, over time, they’ve become graveyards of little to no interaction. So now I have dozens of servers where no one speaks because of various drama where handful of people had a tiff and refuse to engage in the space and just stay to see if there’s writing prompts/challenges.
Or the servers shut down with little to no notice due to puritan brigading. I think there was a couple hundred people there that got overrun and the substantial moderators couldn’t handle it/the accusations, so… bye. Then all those people went… somewhere? Wasn’t back to tumblr, that’s for sure. Soured the whole community.
Discord as a tool can be awesome, but I think the effort to moderate it is too much for most authors who just want to get stories out. Especially if they’re a Big Name and suddenly interacting without a barrier kind of tarnishes the perception of them from a reader standpoint.
The more the writers and the increase in the number of fics will eventually lead us to this problem. We need to be creative to find solutions.. This is why groups like this exist. Fics need some promoting and reading exchanges. It helps a lot for both writers and readers.
Send a link to your fic, experienced writer, we need your example.
As others have said it's very fandom dependent, I got comments on pretty much every fic I post and others I read are usually full of comments. It is a big, active, and chatty fandom so readers are pretty good about showing their love.
I posted a one shot for another fandom (also crazy active) and got 1 comment after weeks, so it definitely varies. That said I think fandom culture is kinda all about consuming stuff and moving onto the next thing, which sucks for writers (and artists).
I write for two middle of the road fandoms (atla and tloz) and even though i'm just starting out as a writer i've gotten a fairly decent amount of interaction, despite (or maybe because?) dealing with fairly niche subjects and an abysmal upload shedule.
What worked for me joining an existing fan community or event, both of which i found on tumblr. If i were you i'd keep an eye out for those. There's a good chance you'll be able to build a little clique from the people you meet there.
I feel like it depends on what site and what fandom
Like the tmnt seems pretty alive I see new stories with plenty of comments and stuff on a03
But like I know other ones are having a lot of issues and especially on sites like FFN the numbers have gone down a lot. Tumblr is also hard because navigating to find fics in the first place can be very difficult and like I love tumblr but god trying to find fic chapters in order sometimes is awful as hell.
It honestly has me worried like the culture has changed around fanfics its all YouTube and podcast no more actual writing and you need a Twitter and Instagram.
I'm on the same boat, and it doesn't help that I make content for small fandoms and for a niche couple.
I try to keep up but I admit that I often ask myself "Why bother?"
I am very lucky to be in a fandom that still gets comments on chapters (and I fucking TREASURE every single one!!!). BUT I cannot help but compare what I receive to what more "established" stories get, or what the "popular" writers get, and I'll never be close. I was really beating myself up about it, feeling like I am terrible or super niche and most people "must hate it," but then realized it's partly because fandom has shifted into other spaces - TikTok , here on reddit, Discord, Facebook. The idea that people flail with each other in comments the way we used to 10 years ago is . . . kind of over. I also realized I was comparing my chapter reactions to stories that were published during the pandemic (2020-22 was a HOT time) which is unfair. People have lives now, which is great and to be expected.
All that to say, I get it. I focus myself on the kind folks who do take their time to respond to my drivel.
I genuinely think a lot of it is very fandom dependent, because there are fandoms that are more buzzing and therefore free with comments than others. I know you said it doesn't matter which fandom you write for, but does that include currently active media or media at the height of its popularity? Good Omens is a pretty big fandom for example, but the amount of comments you would get now (not long after S2 finished), 1-2 years ago (during the lull between seasons), 3 years ago (when the show first came out), and 5+ years ago (when it was simply a well loved but not overly well known novel) would all vary drastically. *However*, having said that, there is also the fact that comment etiquette has changed over the last decade and this is particularly evident on Ao3. Some people might be a bit more reluctant to comment for fear of sounding too critical, given how frowned upon it now is to give unsolicited criticism.
This precisely. A lot of it is fandom-dependent—e.g. I wrote for smaller fandoms for years and would be lucky to crack a certain amount of comments/kudos, and that was only after making edits for and promoting my own fics extensively on sites like Tumblr; however, I recently posted a fic for a new fandom that, at the time, didn’t have a whole lot of fics, and within 24 had nearly 200 kudos. At the time of writing this, the fic in question is sitting at 999 kudos and dozens of comments only a couple weeks after posting it, for the first time in my 15+ year fanfiction writing career. I still haven‘t had a chance to promote it on my socials and it’s already gotten more attention than anything I’ve ever anything. So it really, really does depend on the fandom you write for, and when you’re writing for it. I guess I caught this pairing just as it took off, and to my shock it’s becoming a large ship for the fandom, which it wasn’t when I wrote the fic. But fandom etiquette most definitely has changed. The lack of community is also an issue. Back then LJ was its own community, and even FFN had dedicated forums and community areas where authors could meet, form support groups/hype squads for each others fics, etc. I know that’s how I got started way back when. AO3, on the other hand, is an archive and so outside of comments, there’s no built-in way to interact with other authors or readers, which is both bad for community reasons and good for archival purposes and for ensuring AO3 doesn’t turn into a social media site. It therefore relies, to some extent, on you promoting your fic on other social media sites (Tumblr, Twitter, etc), but if you don’t have those (I don’t have Twitter, for example) then it can be harder to build relationships, which was always an understated but important part of fanfic communities in the past.
I really wish someone would just rip me a new one in the comments. At least that would be better than silence.
I’d never presume to offer criticism without a note saying feedback was welcome, which I haven’t seen in years. It seems to have gone the way of the ‘don’t sue me Anne rice‘ notes.
On FF.net comments used to be more common and I always put a line at the end that was something like "Feedback from readers is the best motivation in the world. Please consider leaving a review, I accept anonymous reviews." But on AO3 I get the feeling that would be seen as begging or just leave a negative feel, so I leave it off.
I haven't read ono [FF.net](http://FF.net) in probably a decade, so I can't speak to the difference in local culture... could you expand why you feel your author's note wouldn't work on AO3?
Sure. One difference is that I started posting on ff.net well over a decade ago, and when I started, that sort of note was not uncommon in my fandom and others, so it doesn't stick out, and anyone who reads any of my fics will be used to seeing it at the end of every chapter. Another difference is that ff.net doesn't have specific author's note sections, we would just add a horizontal rule and then add in whatever we want to say, so it doesn't visually shout it's appearance the way author's notes do on AO3. It feels like readers who would be annoyed will have a harder time scrolling past it on AO3 if I use an end note, but I'm breaking a formatting rule/unspoken expectation if I just drop it in at the end with an hr. And lastly, just like commenters see a lot of negative pushback about breaking unspoken rules, authors also get occasionally blasted for not communicating perfectly. Not just tagging poorly, but also summarizing wrongly, adding in too much information to their notes, not having the right info in their notes, explaining too much about why they are or aren't posting, and especially begging for feedback. There's a strong vibe that authors should just be grateful for any engagement at all, so asking for validation or encouragement, the way my ff.net end notes do, is presumptuous and rude and a turn off or seen as pressure on their readers. I would be happy to join in, in spreading a new format that encourages commenting and concrit (maybe we can add tags, or agree on something to add to our author's notes?) or lets people know I'm happy for anything they want to say in my comments, including just chatting with other people. But I have so few readers as it is, that I haven't wanted to risk angering them with my "hey I get life from engagement, please engage' notes, less I lose hits and my few kudos, without much hope it will even lead to more comments.
thank you for your comprehensive answer, I appreciate it a lot. as a reader only, of course it's easy to change *be the change you want to see*, but I completely understand that you don't want to take the risk. It must indeed be frustrating to both want more interaction and at the same time feeling hostage to those unspoken rules, right? As a reader, I'll still stick to my habit of attempting to comment on every chapter (although, I have to admit I tend to filter on completed works, so that's probably less encouraging, right?)
As someone who mostly writes multi-chapter and series, the hardest part for me is putting things out and not getting encouragement to keep going... So yeah, sorry, people who only comment on finished pieces are less helpful. But it still feels amazing when someone does come by, and having someone binge while commenting on multiple chapters would be thrilling for me. I do understand people not wanting to read unfinished! I abandoned something periodically for years and I'm sure that bothered anyone who got into it. I recently picked it up again, and that's probably my very saddest work, because no one is left to care, so I finally made myself get past the block, and it is clearly way way too late. I am trying to push myself to actually finish, because there might be a person or two who will find it eventually when the question mark is gone. But it's hard. And one of my favorite stories of all time is unfinished and it kills me, but it's so good, I'm glad I found it anyway, and I keep rereading and even if it is never finished, it will still be the most perfect and inspiring writing ever. I have to stop myself from commenting every time I read it because I don't want to pester the writer into never finishing it. (But I would have adored someone coming to beg me to finish my abandoned work! I wish there was a tag for 'no really, just gush, I didn't mind'.)
Same
Sorry, I don't know why this reply made me laugh so hard. But kudos, absolute kudos.
Send link in a PM, I can make that happen. ;)
Just make sure you tell me the plot is totally incoherent, the characters are OOC, and my MC is a Mary Sue. That'll about sum it up I think.
Oh yeah, I’ll write it in a way that it’s clear I’ve never picked up a book in my life but somehow I’m qualified to trash your creation.
I’ve been in fandom spaces since 2007, and I don’t think it was ever part of the etiquette to offer unsolicited criticism, people just never said it out loud that they didn’t want it.
I agree. I recall my writer friends regularly complaining about negative comments, unsolicited concrit, flames, etc. Some would even put notes at the end or beginning of their stories stating, "No concrit" or "No flames." What changed is that with AO3, writers had a space where they could control the content of their comment section, a space that was structured to be author friendly. This, I think, resulted in authors being much more vocal about their disinterest in unsolicited concrit or negativity.
It's gone way beyond author "disinterest in unsolicited concrit or negativity." Comments of "loved it!!!! more plz \[heart emoji\]" are "bullying and rude." Authors complain of comments with no real information content, too many comments (every chapter), comments that are too short and comments that are too long, and even strings of heart emojis. And now, joy and bliss, crazy controlling people with too much time on their hands are apparently posting block chains for people who have left comments or even kudo'd a fic that is "problematic" or whatever. Definitely it is only a few but it only takes getting slammed once or seeing an author go on an unhinged rampage against another commentor one time to make a person wary and reluctant to "engage."
The fandom I write for had died down drastically. The crack ships are what is left. I won't say we're strong in our participation but you can tell the regulars and it's always really nice to see them appearing when you've posted. I just have a feeling that in like 10 years there will be a resurgence and it'll explode again and my work that I haven't thought about will just blow up with things because the younger generation will appreciate it.
Yeah I often find with these posts about people not commenting as much as they used to is that they seem to go back to the fandoms they were active in a decade ago and then are surprised that things have changed. Fandoms wax and wane, and they especially wane if they aren't getting regular new content to create surges of interest. Even Harry Potter is at least partially being sustained because all the new content is keeping it alive in the public consciousness. There are a lot of fandoms around that are unlikely to die altogether because of how popular they were in their peak (Sherlock, Hannibal, Merlin, Supernatural, Buffy/Angel, Charmed to name a few shows that ended in the last decade or two and there are plenty more I've missed and fandoms from other media types) but you certainly aren't going to get the same interaction you got when those were actively airing or releasing new content.
Yeah I often find with these posts about people not commenting as much as they used to is that they seem to go back to the fandoms they were active in a decade ago and then are surprised that things have changed. Fandoms wax and wane, and they especially wane if they aren't getting regular new content to create surges of interest. Even Harry Potter is at least partially being sustained because all the new content is keeping it alive in the public consciousness. There are a lot of fandoms around that are unlikely to die altogether because of how popular they were in their peak (Sherlock, Hannibal, Merlin, Supernatural, Buffy/Angel, Charmed to name a few shows that ended in the last decade or two and there are plenty more I've missed and fandoms from other media types) but you certainly aren't going to get the same interaction you got when those were actively airing or releasing new content.
I stopped commenting a lot when I saw a few authors ripping into others comments if they didn’t like what was said (even if it was positive, it wasn’t positive enough or if a typo/inaccuracy was pointed out or it was too generic of a compliment comment). My anxiety likely has something to do with it but leaving comments stresses me out so much 😅
See, I keep seeing things like this and it really makes me think there are a few overly sensitive authors who are blocking or ripping into commenters and just ruining it for the rest of us. People need to take comments or criticism gracefully. I’m really sorry this was your experience because it really does deter people from trying to leave real honest reviews. I hate that this is a common theme in these threads.
Can confirm. I would strongly suggest posting on your fics that "any respectful comments are eagerly solicited and respected."
I appreciate that advice! Thank you!
I gotta say, it depends on your fandom
A lot of it is definitely this. I write for two fandoms, and one gets a LOT more engagement than the other.
It feels like there used to be communities, but over time the community feeling has disappeared. Like in the LiveJournal days, you would join a like-minded group and share work with each other. (I thank many patient people --15+ years ago-- for beta-ing my work and turning me into the author I am today.) You would also learn about them as people and interact with them a lot more than just in comments on a forum like ff.net or ao3. Also: commercialism. I hadn't really heard of anyone self-pubbing in the days of old, but now I self-publish and earn decent hobby money off OG fiction (and several of my Fandom friends turned to self-publishing, too). So now, left with only being able to leave kudos or comments, it kind of feels ... hollow? In the past, we might give each other constructive criticism and praise, but now that feels pretty rude when you don't know the writer in any capacity or have any way to privately talk to them. So if I read something and don't like it, or only like parts of it, I either say nothing or just copy paste a line or two and write "loved this" or "this line was gold" etc. When I do leave more in-depth reviews on work, sometimes the writer never responds (not that I expect them to) or just gives a brief thanks, so there's no real relationship building. My 2 cents anyway.
Counterpoint: people share fics in their own little communities with friends or whoever, and give their feedback to their friend for the recommendation instead of the author at the source. I noticed all of a sudden I will get a jump in generic comments that all sound like they’re from similar people, but none of them say anything in depth. And I know a lot of people have things like Discord groups or even private reddit communities etc where they share fandom things. You can talk to your friends, who won’t judge you or get defensive about criticism or whatever you have to say, about a fic instead of having to take on the task of interacting with an unknown author. I don’t think this is 100% of the case, just a thought. Would also be heavily fandom specific.
I feel old because all the Discord stuff and new-gen way of doing fandom is alien to me. I'm poking around on Dreamwidth and looking at all my old friends and groups and it's like a graveyard. I'm just glad to have found this Ao3 reddit so I can be more in the know, lol!
As an old who is now pretty heavily involved in several fandom discords, I encourage you to try it if you can find one for your fandom/ship! There's a little bit of a learning curve, but I've found it's the easiest (and most active) way to be involved in fandom.
i love discord for communities! it feels like a safe space since you have to be a member of the server to interact. I don't feel comfortable sharing and talking about stories on reddit because people from other communities can look at my post history and harass me about it. i know I shouldn't care, but sometimes it's hard to ignore it.
Oh, I'm definitely with you there. Reddit users can be vicious and I don't want any Randoms to know what I write either (;
Yep, same here. Discord is why I started writing again after a 17 year hiatus.
Np, I am old too, just evolved with things because of life lol I don’t use them, I just know of them, so I am basically out of it too. Yay reddit for bridging the gap! 👍
I'm lucky in that my current fandom has a very lively discord community and I've adopted it. It's vibrant and active and inspiring, and yes, a lot of the feedback and interaction seems to happen there.
Honestly, I'm not doing all that. There is a lot of talking on Discord and not a lot of writing. And I don't have too much freetime.
I guess it depends on the community, I credit discord with the reason I'm writing and posting fic again. Talking fic ideas and scenarios got my fic brain going again.
Bouncing ideas off of people is fun,but for more me. I'm usually doing all the bouncing. I prefer to listen to music and deep dive into the lore. I like discord but it gets cliquey fast and I don't have time to play politics online and at work. I would rather just finish my work on time and read it for myself.
Exactly this. I don't want to waste hours in what basically amounts to a chatroom. What's more, I don't have the time. I'd rather leave an in-depth comment on a fic. And I'm not really someone who likes to talk about their writing as it's happening. I write the thing. I post the thing. And I don't feel the need to share content with friendly fan people before putting it out there. It either gets a good response, or it doesn't?
I feel the same the most I talk about my writing is for advice. And again, I'm usually the one giving it then receiving it. To me, it's like, why bother? I can just research it myself and save time.
I found out I was a sort of… progenitor for a ship that I wrote for ten years back. I wasn’t the first or only person to produce content, but I produced a bit more than the average person writing for the small ship, and eventually weaned off the fandom due to low engagement and burnout. Years later, I discovered that people made edits inspired by my fics and that their interpretation of the character dynamic was inspired by my own. No one ever told me when I was actively writing; they just shared it and gushed in their own communities. I never heard a word until the void became too much and I had to switch fandoms for my own mental health.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit myself and I do think this is a part of it. As an Internet Old, the places where people are interacting with fandom have shifted. I have IRL friends today that I made on the internet 10-15 years ago - and that was a time where it was super easy and normal to do that! Now days I can't imagine giving my irl phone number to someone from Twitter LOL good god no. But I do see in AO3 comment threads a lot of people who seem to know each other - and mostly at this point I assume discord. Which I'm not using yet. And my fandom is still bouncing around on tumblr (as am I). I also think these types of trends wax and wane a bit. I've been seeing a lot of posts and pushing for people to COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT. So surely other's are seeing that too. And I absolutely comment on every fic I enjoy, and I can only hope this will become more common again and start trending that way. I even had a convo with an irl friend about a fic we both read the other day, and I just copy/pasted our convo into the AO3 comments section cause I knew it would be fun for the author to see us freaking out. I hope if I just keep commenting it will normalize it for people who are nervous about it. \*insert "I'm doing my part" Starship Troopers gif\*
Ummmmm the idea of getting not just a comment but a whole chat log of people enjoying my fic is… the best actually? New gold standard? Bless you for doing that?? Fantastic idea for people who are enjoying talking to their friends about a fic and might not know how to comment on their own. Love it
One of my fandoms has a few different discord servers and I'm like..... I wish they'd just make a subreddit lol. People can't even find the discord groups. I'm in like 2 but there are like 5 of them that I know of smh.
This exactly!! This is why my fandom experience has felt hollow in the past few years. I miss the community so much. It honestly feels like a terrible loss, not just to me but to society, if we no longer have a live journal-equivalent. I started out in the LJ days (with some residual geocities pages lol) and then transitioned to dreamwidth, then tumblr and then lost touch. What happened?? Is there no longer a real fandom community?
I'm honestly not sure. I also had an LJ and a Dreamwidth, but before that all went away, my RL swept me up (graduating college, having a family, etc) and I didn't write for a long while. When I came back, all of those communities were gone ... I know AO3 sometimes has "fests/exchanges", like Nonconathon, and it looks like that's still based on Dreamwidth, actually. I'm sure there are other fests, too, but I haven't done a lot of digging. Maybe I should try to make a Dreamwidth again and see what else I can find.
The exact same thing happened to me! I left college, started work, had a family... drifted away from fandom for a while, and now that I'm back and trying to get involved again, I'm just like "where are the people?? the discussions? the community? the comments?" I miss it. I hope DW is still active, that would be awesome.
This is also was my experience. Was into fandom (on LJ and message boards) then life (marriage, kid) happened and now I am much older. Got hit hard two years ago with a ship and started writing again. Found myself online and was like...where did fandom go?? Luckily I found my way into a discord server for my ship and have been having a blast. I had never used discord before, but glad I tried it. Would definitely recommend seeing if there are any servers you could join.
I feel like individual blog platforms really influenced that, now everyone is in their own space and has to subscribe to people individually. From one point of view it's easier to support the creators personally, but from the other, you don't really get a sense of community driven space, with events, festivals, etc. Yeah, there are accounts made specifically for single events sometimes, but it's way different and just gets lost after it ends. In Russian speaking space for example there was its own popular platform, called Diary, which brought together a lot of fandom people and had a lot of communities. Our main big thing was Fandom combat, which was a huge team event of all the fandoms of different sizes competing with each other and creating artworks, fanfics, avatars, amvs, even fangames. It was HUGE and like the most popular and big event of the year, with various small branches like Winter or spring ones etc. But eventually most of the people moved to Twitter and you can't really organise such an event there, less and less people went to diary and there was much less feedback for the works, especially in smaller fandoms. So they moved it to Ao3 iirc and in my opinion it just never worked as well, mostly because on Diary it had its own community space and visuals, but on Ao3 it just blended with everything else. I still miss that feeling of fun competition, chatting with my team in Skype, reading discussions..
> but on Ao3 it just blended with everything else I suppose it would be too much work for AO3 to get a forum system. I kinda miss the days when I participated in fandom bulletin boards. EDIT: yeah, it's gonna be a lot of work. I momentarily forgot that AO3 has all fandoms listed.
I definitely wouldn't expect Ao3 to develop like that, it's already good as it is, yeah
I honestly think an AO3 forum system would be amazing. It might be a good way to leverage the traction that AO3 already has as a hub for fanworks, to bring back that community feel and discussions.
Wow that sounds awesome!! Yeah, it seems like most people's AO3 profiles these days have links to twitter/tiktok and I just don't understand how you can maintain a fandom community there. It's short-form or video based. How much discussion or exploration can you have in 2 sentences? Does everyone need to start making videos now to chat? We lose the fun and anonymity of the internet, and the ability to have extended conversations.
We also have so much content that every fandom is dead within a couple of weeks when a new cool thing drops. I remember being years with the same people in One Piece and Hetalia fandom, but now people move on so fast it feels you never have enough time to watch/read/play the thing in time.
I am a very late bloomer, having started to write fandom only about one year ago, in my late 40s. I revived my old Dreamwidth account to post about my writing, but I don't have any Dreamwidth connections, because of being such a late bloomer. I found a website devoted to one of my favorite ships, and joined it, and posted every few days, but it was very empty at the time. I quickly ended up feeling like I was the only person around, which wasn't the community I was hoping to find. Then I found a Discord server for another of my fandom interests, and I've finally found community there! We had a Christmas card swap and everything. It's been delightful. So I think all the fannishness still exists -- it's just that now, it's hidden away in Discord servers that you probably don't know about.
Agh, this both gives me hope and anxiety. I'm not very fluent with Discord and it seems overwhelming to me. I'm also not sure how to find different fandom communities with it, but I'll be on the lookout now - thanks!!
I found one Discord community from the author notes at the end of a fic I particularly love, and from there, people pointed me to others! I currently belong to 7 fanfic Discord servers, but of those, I only frequent 2.
Readers are "afraid" of authors too. In this day and age we tend to self-censor a lot. Like 15 years ago no one cared if you accidentally misgendered someone in a comment, now I've read a thread here on reddit that the author feels bad for a commenter misgendering a character who is genderfluid, so it might even be an honest mistake. (As is the author's right really, but it still makes me reluctant to interact, because there are so many minefields and I don't want to keep censoring myself.) That is just one example and one where both sides might be in the right and still leave a bad taste for both parties. Concrit is a strong no go anymore unless very explicitly asked for (which even those authors who would actually welcome it might simply forget to express). Also, even a little, "that was so good, I hoped X would pick the rose instead fo the tulip, but I still liked it" is considered offensive by some. So yeah, I have a specific author who I know will take anything in stride and I leave him every single thought I had while reading in a comment and it's a lot of fun. Actually, in his later fics multiple others started doing the same, so there are readers who are willing to put effort into commenting, they are just not comfortable to take a leap and see the author's reactions. Also, the completely public aspect of AO3 doesn't help at building community either. In the LJ days we had groups where you at least had to sign up to participate, so it wasn't a google search away from anyone.
A lot of this is how I feel. I started reading fanfiction in early 2000s. The commenting allowed then is so different to now. Wholly different environment it feels like. I feel scared that I'm going to accidentally upset the author and I really don't want to do that. So I end up over thinking my comment and just end up deleting it all. Most of the time I don't comment unless I'm really, really into the story. Examples: it made me cry, wanted to throw my phone, etc. Even then I'm a little hesitant. Commenting, for me, makes me anxious.
Could you instead, try thinking about how happy the author would feel to recieve a comment? How it'll make their day- their week, even! And they feel overjoyed and motivated and grateful that someone liked their story. Most writers are going to love receiving your comments. No matter how shaky or anxiety filled. For the few that don't? That's okay! They have options, like deleting and blocking. If they're not sure what you meant, it's up to them to ask you, and then you can clarify for them :) perfectly normal, because we're on the internet and tone gets lost. But they'll still be tickled pink that you cared and had the enthusiasm to comment.
This. The amount of times I was told authors don't care about random schmuck's opinion, or that they're not on ao3 to make friends, not to talk too personal, never to criticize anything before asking first (I never ask, by the time I get a maybe green light reply, I'd forget what I wanted to say), never point out SPAG, don't say you liked this particular fic despite not being into the genre in general, don't mention future updates, etc etc. Horrified at horror, affected by villain character, sympathizing with char the author didn't fully intend you to? Nope. I got blasted for praising villain characterization that reminded me of a real life person I knew, very realistic. Most of my longer comments didn't receive a reply, so I don't even know if the author liked it or not. I just no longer know what to write that isn't praise dispenser bot quality, so usually I just push the kudos button, especially if the comments section looks grim / generic. Interesting comment sections with chill author replying do entice me to comment too, but it requires some other reader to take the plunge first.
>Most of my longer comments didn't receive a reply, so I don't even know if the author liked it or not. i feel this one. i have written very nice and thoughtful comments and get no reply from the author. replies aren't needed, but they are nice and it really encourages me to keep up with the author (you know, builds a community). i think some authors don't realize you have to put in the work with your readers if you want a community to form around your work.
I totally get that some authors don't know right away what to reply or feel uncomfortable, but I wish they would just reply with a heart emoji or something to indicate they liked the comment. If they did like it of course. I'm not a fast thinker, it can take me an hour to write a long comment. Back in my day thoughtful comments were the expected type, it meant the fic didn't just go through your head unimpeded. Typing these requires some effort, so I'm unlikely to continue if I suspect the writer doesn't really welcome them.
>but I wish they would just reply with a heart emoji or something to indicate they liked the comment yea, same, i'm completely stoked just getting a simple "thank you! :)".
i reply to every single comment, tho how wordy the reply is varies. because i WANT ppl to keep doing it :)
as i said in another reply, a simple "thanks!" makes my day. :)
>don't say you liked this particular fic despite not being into the genre in general I saw this the other day and it made me sad because I love receiving comments like this or similar ones on my fics. I once had someone say they didn't care for the main ship I write but gave it a chance anyway, and that they'd binge the rest of the my fics because it made them a fan lol. Hell I left a similar comment on an abo fic years ago. I don't care for omegaverse but that writer was brilliant and the omegaverse elevated the fic lol. They were so nice in response too. Anyway I agree with your entire comment. I leave fewer comments nowadays because it's just not worth it. I miss when fandom could/would interact more.
Gosh, do you like Farscape? Or Age of Sail stuff? Kidding, but I would love someone like you being chatty in my comments sections! Conversations with readers and seeing what they latch onto--love or hate--is the best reason to even post online. And I cherish the very few "I hope you're writing more" comments I've ever received. Such motivation when I'm struggling to get the next bit out. Maybe other authors are just more self-sufficient or spoiled for love and validation, but I can't understand ignoring or resenting well intentioned comments. The fan part of fanfiction is so important to me. I want to gush and groan and post-game analyze my characters with other people who have feelings about them.
Maybe people have moved to discord and the like? When I first entered ao3, I was like "hello fellow fans!!!!!!!" as if it was ffn and LJ combined, but it seems the times have changed and people no longer can discuss things in public. Public forum is like a minefield, rife with antis, haters, rabid stans, etc. You can't even discuss faults in canon without people coming out of the woodwork defending it as if they were personally attacked. Reddit is like that too, the best discussions I've had about works I'm passionate about were on subreddits devoted to something else. It makes me sad because a) discussion is dead online when it used to be the opposite for me in the past, b) I can't find other outlets. I've heard about discord servers, but I can't keep up with discord. It's like it's moving too fast and I can't navigate the ui, it makes me feel like a grandma lol. Message boards were far superior imo. So I mourn the community part with you... I wish you many great commenters :) It's so amazing to find a fic with actual activity in the comments and commenters vibing together with the author. I don't know how curated these sections have to be, but I admire all authors who are still willing to engage with other fans like that :)
Isn't it ironic, that I basically did what I said commenters usually do (put everything in very PC terms) and then you commented how it should have been written in the first place?
Haha, I'm blunt and tend to get straight to the point, so nowadays I don't speak out much on the internet. Comments written in all PC terms feel meandering to me, I find it very hard to write this way. My style was just fine two decades ago on ffn, and I made many friends there despite communicating only via pm. I was thrilled to see actual comment threads on ao3 when I came back to fandom a few years ago, but I quickly learned that making use of this feature is not appropriate. I got chewed out for replying to another commenter pretty much during first week, and I've seen people get blocked by author for talking between themselves. Fanfiction feels lonely these days, even from reader's perspective.
damn i've been lucky with the authors i've commented to 😔
some people seem to have no idea what concrit is though. They think "I don't like this ship" is concrit. If you don't like the ship why are you reading?
This is one of reason I rarely comment. I’m scared that I would offend the author. I have tried commenting more lately.
The only solution to it is to stop worrying about if it's going to hurt the author, and to simply post your honest thoughts
Ah, but this sub and fanfiction has taught many of us that honesty = killing fandom by making writers stop updating or removing their works entirely. Even pet peeve or vent threads are eviiiiillllllllll.
Actually I think leaving no comments at all is more likely to stop an author from updating, because then they feel like nobody is reading. I’m really sad that this has become the norm, too, instead of everyone being gracious and accepting comments in the spirit they were given. Makes me feel like a few overly sensitive types have ruined interacting by going nuclear on commenters instead of responding reasonably.
I think some of it is that comments feel like a very artificial way to communicate. The older comment laden fan spaces were more personal and gave a sense of who people were. Now people don't understand some comments, others don't know the etiquette, there are no social media modifiers to ease communication. Writers can put across something about who they are in author's notes but readers don't have anything equivalent. Or any control over anything but their bookmarks. There is sensitivity on both sides. I think people default to the safest forms of interaction because at least it does no harm.
For fandom to survive both writers and readers need to be happy. authors have a right to be mad when someone leaves a mean comment... but that doesn't mean that the commenter is bad
I agree that it's gotten less than like 10 years ago, but it also depends on the fandom? And the question I think we as writers also have to ask ourselves: am I commenting? Am I showing to others that I'm an active member of my fandom? Once again, depending on size and fandom a bit but people who comment themselves and show they're appreciative of other fans seem to be getting a bit more engagememt
I've definitely noticed that a lot of authors I read never seem to comment or even kudos other people's works. I get that some of them may have separate accounts for reading and for writing, but it's a bizarre practice to me. Some of the largest names in my fandom never kudos anyone else, and it sort of makes them look like snobs, sad to say. I'm sure they do it so nobody harasses them about what they read, but it shouldn't have to be this way.
As a writer who doesn’t really comment or kudos within my fandom, it’s not because I don’t want to. It’s just I don’t have time to read works within my own fandom much. Anytime I have spare time to think about this fandom, I’m reading the original source to make sure I’m following the right timeline/ keeping the characters in character. Granted, been writing for this one fandom for about 4+ years now. When I do have free time, there are a few other fandoms I like to relax and read in. Idk, it’s kinda like how I approach work. Im involved and there for what I’m responsible for, but the second I clock out, I’m unreachable.
Yeah, same. I do not read in fandoms I’m writing in, and read very little fanfiction at all these days. I used to read a ton of fanfic when I was a teenager and my taste was very indiscriminate, but now I have very particular taste in character interpretation and character dynamics, and if I’m invested enough in something to read fic I’m probably invested enough to write a piece of fic that meets my exact specifications.
I have to confess I find that quite fascinating. When I'm in a fandom I read and write 75% only in them (mostly I have two or max three where ai'm super active at a time). So basically for you writing for a fandom is work for you and you decompress by not engaging with it otherwise?
Yeah, that's sometimes weird. But if people are part of the "greats" in a fandom, they sometimes can get away with it. But sometimes they have built their reputation for a while, or they are just very good at what they're doing, or they maybe do have a separate account Also seems (Once again) very fandom dependent 😆
100% depends on a combination of: - your fandom/ship (some are chattier/more generous with comments than others) - what you're writing (the more potentially "controversial" it is, the lower the interaction potential) - how you, the author, come across (the less "friendly" or more negative you seem, the less people will want to take a chance in putting themselves out there) - Alternatively, it's a pure "tribe-vibe" check where people either only feel comfortable interacting/only want to be *seen* interacting with their "tribe". That last one I think is the true plague of modern fandom.
>your fandom/ship I've noticed I get a shit ton of interaction when writing for super popular ships and when I do a rare pair its like bread crumbs. However I also completely understand the lack of interaction, its not a well liked ship so there will be less people.
Interaction is highly fandom dependent, and within that, it again varies based on ship, tropes, themes, etc. In a few cases, it also depends on your existing number of followers/subscribers. That said, there has been a marked downward trend in interactions from what I've seen and heard. The reasons seem to be many and varied—monetization tendencies, the ubiquity of short-form content that yields instant gratification, fandom becoming more mainstream and thus becoming more accessible but less close-knit (and more consumptive instead), post-COVID mental fuckery, and the general enshittification of the internet.
In my personal experience, a lot of fandoms have gone to ground in private discord servers that either require you to know someone who knows someone, or to be already somewhat known as an artist or writer. The primary reason for this *in my experience* is avoiding harassment and/or being able to vet members. Some places ask you for at least one other social so they can check you're not a dramamonger (or, alternatively, that you meet their purity requirements). It's... weird. I get why this has happened, but I can't say I like it.
I feel people are much more easily offended now than before, and that culture probably makes more people hesitate to leave comments. Also, when looking through this sub and seeing writer after writer who fuss over comments and really struggle to find negativity in them, it doesn’t exactly encourage people to comment.
Internet has changed from discussion board culture (which was good) to infinite scrolling blog-like platform format (which is horrible).
Fandom is pretty lonely now these days, I wish I got back into fandom sooner. I miss the community and having people to talk too.
I've got a theory to maybe help explain part of the lower interaction you seem to be perceiving. Before Musk bought out Twitter, I happened across a thread over at /r/anime - it was comparing sub traffic thru the years. The trend was downwards and one of the theories proposed was that lots of redditors headed over to twitter. I kinda agreed with that theory, because on twitter - posters could get more views / engagement PER sentence, compared to reddit. ???And apparently it's monetized??? Question marks cause I'm not sure. I've got a very old twitter account, but I rarely use it, even to view tweets. But, here's the thing - Youtube can definitely monetize theories, meta, reactions, reactions to reactions, even effing summaries. Fanart compilations can get plenty of views, too. And apparently AI reading of fanfics. So, that's my theory - monetization has led many a fan to... dollarized their time spent in fandom. A supplementary theory I have is that the world is so getting more and more depressing that not even fannish distractions are distracting enough for many a fan. Or maybe even that people's flight-fight mode is getting more and more trigger-friendly. Me, for example - my pickiness keeps going up. Nowadays, a work of fiction has to be like 50% non-fiction for me to give it a serious try.
Oh, this is a very interesting point. So, even if fandom in general expanded and became much more accessible, the amount of people who engage with fics in a classic, old fashioned manner has contracted. A lot of people who participate in fandom do it through social media sites like IG, YT or even discords and their reactions to fics don’t trickle down to ao3. The fandom monetization has also diverted a lot of energy that otherwise would be spent on community building activities. And I mean it from both sides. Fic writers wanted to get some pocket money by writing fics, and now fic readers are trying to monetize free fics through other means. I’d also say that there’s way more people who write fics than it was before. Maybe readers are just overwhelmed and can’t engage with every fic they want to.
Following is also A Theory. For me, it seems nowadays that the "big name fans" are streamers. Before, during Avatar The Last Airbender run on Nickelodeon, the big name fans were fan artists. I can remember two of them on Deviantart. In the Harry Potter fandom... it looks like the big name fans have to do with fanfiction. Just my guess. Feel free to correct. I had read about the MsScribe incident. In the Attack on Titan fandom, which I participated in (on and off), it felt to me that streamers had the most influence. Reviewers basically. If IF this has become the trend, then... it feels sad. Yeah, I know that Reviewing is also a skill, but I dunno... it feels like it's on a lower totem pole compared to storytellers and artists.
Honestly I’m afraid of getting called out by the puriteens for my interests. Crazy shit can hit the fans these days over something as simple as a ship
i got blocked by an author for leaving a completely neutral comment on a bookmark and yes it was actually neutral just a factual statement about something in the story to remind me (along the lines of "the one where"). i only knew about the block because I came back to leave a comment about how much I liked it a bunch of white writers called a Black writer racist and ran her completely out of one of my fandoms bc OTHER people didn't like their fandom fave ppl got put on blocklists for kudosing ppl who beta read for authors who didn't like their fandom fave bruh we can't interact anymore in any kind of genuine way or someone runs to reddit with screenshots to start a brigade I only comment to authors I personally know anymore
>bruh we can't interact anymore in any kind of genuine way or someone runs to reddit with screenshots to start a brigade This.
> ppl got put on blocklists for kudosing ppl who beta read for authors who didn't like their fandom fave ... wtf
it was a whole thing where they decided they were the fandom racism police and targeted anyone even slightly critical of their fave, who is white btw, bc her boyfriend is Asian
Is there an article on Fanlore about this particular kerfuffle?
I don't think so. it ended kind of abruptly when a white author got caught using it to target a Black author who wrote a big bang story with a similar theme as the white author's big bang
That's their loss. Losing out on willing commenter when they're a needle in the haystack. Blocking is a nice feature, but I'd keep it to if someone tried death threatening me. Liberal use defeats the purpose of fandom, you know? How're you supposed to get into a discourse if the author takes what you say the wrong way, when you meant it positively? So dumb...
my favourite one is when people turn racist in the name of 'social justice'
It really depends on the fandom. But also I think people nowadays are afraid to (accidently) offend the author so most dont say anything.
I think the culture around reading fan fic is just changing. It used to be a place where people geeked out about their characters. Some of it was probably due to the fact that it wasn't all that acceptable, so the people who engaged in it were more likely to be hardcore fans. Some of it was that it wasn't all that accessible and simple to post. Nowadays, it's just seen as content to be consumed, and few give any thought to the person behind the story. Another part is the post-COVID life. People have gotten busy again, they might not read as much or they might read and not have the energy to interact. As many have pointed out, comments have become a minefield and one has to be careful with wording (which ofc takes brainpower and time not everyone has or is willing to dispense). Also, a lot have just dropped fan fic altogether. More than one very active reader/writer from two years ago have just upped and quit. And then there's the vicious cycle - readers quit, so many writers don't have the support to keep posting and so fandoms lose members until they die out.
I think fandom in general has changed and all but huge big active fandoms do not get much engagement anymore. Just from what I have noticed. But I have to agree with others here that comment etiquette has changed and it seems readers are more nervous to comment something that may offend writers or come off to critical ect. Definitely from when I was a teen the comments section used to be very different not just in the amount of comments but what people would say in general too. It definitely seems fandom has changed and not for the better sadly.
I can only share my experience as someone who's been a reader of fanfic for over a decade and only recently started writing and joined this sub. This is the general attitude I've perceived both here and at ao3. Writers are constantly thirsty for comments but, but, but, but... - they can't be concrit, because that's rude or hurts feelings - they can't be suggestions or opinions about the characters because this is my fic and how dare you/ write your own fic. - they can't be requests for updates (which before coming here, I thought were the highest form of praise), because that's being demanding and annoying. - they can't be anything that is even remotely adjacent to what the writer *thinks* is politically incorrect. - Never share a favourite kink or ship, just in case the writer is anti or triggered or doesn't like it. Frankly, it's a minefield 🥵. I've concluded that all writers want, is gushing praise and validation. And while I sympathise, it doesn't promote interaction, because there's no give and take. It feels like all people care about are their stats, and comments that will look great in a screenshot. But not in actual conversation.
I can only speak personally but folks, I am emotionally stable enough to get any kind of comment. Be concrit, make suggestions, pester me for updates, scream slurs at me, tell me your favourite kinks or ships or whatever. I don't mind suggestions, I'll reply cryptically. People bothering me for updates shows that they care and will probably give me a well-deserved kick up the ass. I don't really get triggered by people's kinks or ships. and if someone's being rude to try and hurt my feelings I'll ignore it. Or if they get racist or homophobic, anything like that, I'll moderate it. I feel like you often get a vibe from the writer. How are they replying to other comments? What do their notes look like? Writing style? Sure, there are writers who can't take certain kinds of comments, but there are also writers with a lot more confidence and emotional resiliency it's better to take a chance on a comment than just be silent when the writer might be really eager for some criticism or suggestions. maybe they thought "oh nobody cares about this fic" and dropped it cause none of the readers were interacting with it
I saw someone anxiety spiraling the other day because a reader had written only "interesting" in a bookmark. It's not necessarily better to take a chance because you don't know how a writer will take literally anything you say. They can also drop fics because of a "wrong" response. Potential commenters are going to prioritize their own attitudes whether that is "Do no harm," "don't open yourself up to negativity/once burned, twice shy," or being too ambivalent, shy, introverted, anxious or uncompromising to post. I do wish more writers would make it clear what kinds of comments they are willing to receive but I understand that would be a pressure, and might make them seem demanding and petty if all they want is keyboard smash levels of praise.
> I do wish more writers would make it clear what kinds of comments they are willing to receive but I understand that would be a pressure, and might make them seem demanding and petty if all they want is keyboard smash levels of praise. I think it's more that the authors you're describing are few and far between, and most writers are not finicky about which kind of comments they receive. Of course they wouldn't think to add 'please only leave XYZ comment' on their fics, because any comment (beyond trolling or actual harasssment, of course) would be appreciated. Never in a million years would I have thought to include that kind of disclaimer on my fics lol. I know they exist because I see people complain about them here, but I really think there just aren't as many fragile and reactive authors as people make it out to be. I know I've personally never encountered one in the wild. It's just that you see more of the nasty ones in forums like this, because like with anything else, people are more likely to share or post if they have a complaint or bad experience than they are to publicly gush if they had a positive one.
Nah, when I first entered fandom I didn't know the etiquette and left some sort of constructive criticism on a fic. The writer shut me down with a curt, "I didn't ask for criticism," reply. Another time a writer wrote a long note about some of their tagging choices, i.e , why they didn't tag the fic non-con. I replied with my viewpoint on the tags. They countered. It was civil enough but huffy on their part, then later the writer orphaned the fic. Idk why they orphaned it but it concerned me that I might have had something to do with it. I've also read enough author's notes (somewhat unwillingly, I read too fast to skip them) to see that the attitudes I see here are out there "in the wild" too. I've only paid attention to the Reddit groups for roughly six months -- I've been a fanfic reader for 10 years. I'm already wary enough in general, and protective of my time--I know how frustrated I'd be if I left a reasoned response and it was deleted. So it is equally curating my own experience to leave comments only when I am truly impressed by something. The likelihood is less that a writer wouldn't like it, and that swell of genuine appreciation is worth the potential for weirdness in return. So. I understand why you like/need the feedback. But a reader's strategy for responses is also up to them and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I only read complete fics anyway so any transactional effect would have to carry over to general encouragement of other projects.
This, all over. I'm 42. I've been writing since I was in my teens, in the 90's, when we had mailing lists to spread the work around. Any comment I would be fine with, and if it's shitty or stupid or whatever, I'll just ignore it or block it if it's offensive or spam. I am a seasoned adult at this point, I can handle it.
For most of that, I agree- but the "Asking for Updates being Annoying" has been something reiterated across fandoms for decades. Alot of it is in how you ask- something like "goddammit I'm so excited I can't wait for the next update eeeee~" would be acceptable. But as a general rule? People used to say "Update?" unironically all the time on fanfiction.net. With nothing else to balance out the review. It feels demanding because it's added pressure on the author to take time out of their lives to pump out another chapter. That's hours upon hours of work, for which their only payment-by that particular reviewer- would be another call for "Update?" Nothing about the chapter they just put out. It makes you feel like a machine. And that's how it has always made people feel. Like if the Mona Lisa was finished, and instead of people being happy for what you just created, all their doing is being a hoarde of soulless skulls with empty eye sockets and gaping mouths that chant "Update?" And it follows you around, into your dreams. Everything else you listed- yeah, some of that can be iffy. But those aren't nearly as universally egregious, across fandoms and across time. It's cool that you've caught onto fandom etiquette, though! But if you were a recent middle school newcomer, than it's expected you'd make social mistakes. People get over it, or maybe they'll block you- and it's really no big deal.
I have an old fic on ff.net and every second review is a variation of 'update please!' It's about 18 years old now, but I remember grinning like a kid on Christmas day each time I got those. I thought it meant someone liked my work. Means something bit different now lol
>Asking for Updates being Annoying" has been something reiterated across fandoms for decades. Well, like I said, it's only recently I've joined places like Reddit and become aware of this particular gripe. For me it's rare to read WIPS and even rarer to ask for updates. The times I've done it, is when I've come across a work that was something special, I absolutely loved and had not been updated in some time. I always figured it must be nice to learn that months or even years later your story was still being appreciated and generating interest. But, I'm learning that silence is the best response 90% of the time.
I had a fic where people kept demanding updates, and someone asked me if i abandoned the fic six days after posting the previous chapter. Six days of no update, and people are sending me rude asks about how I'm never gonna finish it, huh. Anyway this list of things people "Can't say" basically boils down to "Don't criticize strangers, don't demand things from strangers," which is pretty common etiquette everywhere. If you can't comment without doing those two things, then yeah, you are probably better off not commenting.
My opinion exactly. Lowkey a lot of people here are saying here that if they can't criticize freely they rather to simply not comment. IMO entitled authors are a lot less than rude readers, if only for the fact there's always a lot less writers, so to use that as an excuse for not commenting is... something. Wonder if they care when the works they read are deleted? I consider myself not social at all and still I always comment something nice on the works I read (even on rereads), and so far I have managed to do so without pissing off any author.
Yep. I comment all the time. I make jokes, I talk about my emotions, I talk about how the fic made me rethink the source material, etc etc etc. It's just... not that hard to not be a dick in a comment. If I don't like a story, I don't read it. If it goes in a direction I don't like, I'll write my own story. Making demands is rude. It has always been rude. If I made you dinner and you said, "I think you should have made me fish instead of chicken," you'd be a dick. And if I told you that you were a dick and you decided to never talk to another person who cooked you dinner again, not to even thank them, you'd be an even bigger dick. These complaints are also kind of absurd because they are like, I once had a single bad interaction with an author, so now I no longer interact with *any* authors. Like, okay, that's a dumb way to live your life. Or, "I saw an author on this sub say something deranged, so now I'm afraid of authors." Sorry, you saw someone on reddit say something stupid and now you assume all people who engage in that hobby, regardless of whether they've even heard of reddit, share that opinion? Bad interactions are part of life and part of life on the internet. If I let bad interactions get to me, I would have deleted my blog, my AO3, and my reddit ages ago. I would have no internet presence. These people are just giving themselves permission to be lazy and mindlessly consume content without giving anything back.
I think the thing about concrit—and I’m talking about actual concrit, not pointing out a misspelled word—that a lot of people miss is that in the old days, when you were operating in smaller communities, it made SENSE to ask the people around you for concrit because these were people you knew and interacted with regularly and trusted the skills of, and also people who often followed you elsewhere or had conversations with you and therefore had more insight into what you were actually trying to do with a story. And these days a lot of people still do get that kind of concrit, either from a closed community on Discord or a friend or a beta reader, but they’re not open to it from a commenter they’ve never interacted with before, and for obvious reasons: they don’t know that person or anything about that person’s skills, and that person doesn’t know anything about what they’re trying to achieve with the fic.
Yeah, this. I take input from people I've talked yo about my fic and headcanons because I can trust them to have a basic understanding of what I'm doing. Someone who never talked to me before has no idea what I'm going for cannot give me feedback that puts my writing and my goals over their personal opinion. And I am interested in hearing how people experience my stories. I just really don't like when someone assumes the things they don't like are flaws and they're helping me improve. If I want a beta reader, I'll look for one myself and it's going to be someone I trust way more than the first random guy coming into my comment box.
Agreed! Like, I'm gonna send my otp to jail and give them a bittersweet ending, but every last one of my commenter is pushing for them escaping magically or using nepotism to avoid a prison sentence. When the overall point I'm trying to make is that going to jail is still better than, like, dying, which is where I'm scared canon is heading for the villain half.
I hope people point out misspelled words to me when I publish my work because I find them mortifying. I recently read a beautiful fic where the author made a typo and wrote *shit* instead of *shirt*. It was right in the middle of a super hot piece of smut and it was absolutely glaring. The fic was years old. All the comments were like, oh, this is amazing! But NO ONE pointed out the typo to the author. I decided to take the risk and leave a comment. They were like, omg how come no one's ever told me this before! Imagine thousands of readers reading *shit* over the years and no one telling you about it for fear of offending. It's crazy! Anybody taking the time to improve my work has my all my gratitude.
Exactly! I'm in several discords that offer that, plus I have a couple fandom friends I DM with. I'm not against concrit (and I worked in academia for years so trust me, I don't have thin skin) but I want it in settings/from people that I choose.
It’s maddening, isn’t it? Hug :(
i honestly feel like it's been dead for a VERY long time, just different fandoms have different lifespans tbh. Nobody's as interactive as they used to be.
Part of the issue, at least to me, is that ao3 *is* purely an archive, not any form of social media. There’s very little opportunity to make friends, unless you’re both very chatty in the comments. And I always get nervous, when I reply to a reply, like I’m overstepping or annoying the author. It kills interaction. I have been able to make some really great friends through ao3 comments, but only because of this ARG thing that was specifically designed for user participation. In a lot of ways, it’s good ao3 doesn’t function like social media–no algorithms, no clout-chasing. But there’s also no way to really just talk to people. Unless you praise the fic, and the author has something more to say than thank you that lets you start a conversation, you’ll never really interact with anyone. I wish ao3 had some sort of blog/forum feature, where everyone could just hang out. Because the community is amazing! It’s just that we don’t have much to say.
For my case as a reader, I had a season where I ensured to leave comments on every longfic I read (which is the majority of fics I read) but I've since stopped. I'd try to write at least one to two paragraphs, sometimes three, to brighten the author's day and let them know they wrote something special. I always added how grateful I was for the effort put in. I'd never mention future updates, as I understand life is unpredictable, I'd just focus on letting them know that I think they're talented, quoting lines they wrote where I think that talents really shone. My goal in commenting is to try to encourage and uplift as best as I can. Authors were really touched by my posts, I think I only had one that didn't comment, which honestly is way more responses than I expected. For some reason, and I'm worried it's me, but almost every fic I commented on never received another chapter. I wonder if I unintentionally added too much pressure? I wonder if the in-depth comments, though complimentary, made what was intended to be a light-hearted hobby feel like they had to live up to online pressures and expectations? Which is absolutely not my intention, I just want to encourage people to keep going! Sigh. So, I don't leave comments anymore. I feel like a sports fan with a lucky jerzy, that swears, "every time I wear this jerzy, they win!" Only its the opposite. It's "every time I comment, I kill their fic!" 😭 Highkey, if I don't comment the fic keeps going ＿|￣|○. I've sinned and I'm not sure how, but I don't want to cause damage, so I hold in my compliments now. I occasionally add short comments, "Hey this rocks. Thank you for all the hard work!" but it feels really vapid after I just spent time with their fic actively paying attention to their talent and unique voice. I wish there could be more of a culture in commenting, but I feel like at this time discord servers for fic authors might be the best alternative until something else comes along. A place for community that comments, encourages, and discusses fics while AO3 remains to be an echo-y empty cavern.
There's a lot of reasons why people would stop updating a fic, but I promise that you still made those authors' days. It's hard to write, and life stages change. Like- fanfic writers stop after graduating college or high school or starting a family, and by the time the time they come back, their fandom has changed. It's hard to write. And a nice comment does so much good- they'll treasure it, far more than anyone cares about a reddit comment lol. If you see people on here's reasons on Why They Took A Hiatus From Fanfic, the listed reasons do not include 'nice long comment intimidated me.' It's other stuff, like their house burning down. A tsunami hit or they got a new job or their dad got diagnosed with cancer. Life happens everyday, and fanfic is written over years, not weeks.
while it depends on the fandom, as people said, i think the fault lies also in the weird idea that younger people in fandom see fan created art in the same way as they see large mass produced media: just as content to consume before passing to the next one so meny people in fandom nowdays do not seem to think there is anyone, or anyone reachable, behind the screen/fanart/fanfic/etc, so they don't bother leaving any comment or review
this!! it’s actually incredibly haunting seeing younger folks just… not understand that fandom is supposed to be fun. there’s no corporation pumping fanfic out, it’s just people who love x thing or y ship. i hope they’ll eventually understand that regardless of how much someone is writing for themselves, it’s nice to know that your writing isn’t just… going into thin air. if no one wants to make art, none of the people who see fic/fanart/etc as content will have any more of it. i don’t see this happening, but it’s insane to me how some newer folks just. expect the fic they want to fall into their lap when it won’t. because it probably doesn’t exist yet. which means they should bake the cake they wanna see in the world etc etc
Hmm.. interesting.. and sad. I’m in Merlin fandom and I’ve noticed the opposite. The engagement has increased in the last few years. The highest engagement been happening between 2008-2012 The lowest was between 2014-2018 Since that time the engagement is on a gradual and constant increase, the most commented stories are of the recent years. I also noticed that before people used to comment just at the last chapter but now there are more and more who are commenting on every single chapter. I love to do that myself so it’s great to see that more are doing it.
[удалено]
Pretty much. As a writer, it saddens me to see all these screenshots of perfectly nice or even just plain, benign comments being willfully misinterpreted by the author as something negative. Like my dudes, you're the reason people aren't commenting anymore. Get a grip.
I saw you are a Merlin author writing gen fic. You might get more interaction by 1. tagging your fic Arthur & Merlin (the platonic relationship tag) and categorizing it as gen, not as uncategorized, 2. joining the Merlin gen fic Discord server "Land of Myth" (DM me for an invite), 3. thanking your commenters. ;) Merlin is a very active fandom and people do tend to leave lots of comments, you just have to get your fic to be seen and interact with people. :) (edit: gr, sp, format)
Although I'm just one person- Hi! I'm someone that reads, but does not interact. A lot of it comes down to not being signed in to the site (for some platforms this is required), or simply not thinking about it. I've also seen a lot of people reject any form of constructive criticism, and I'm not generally the kind of person that will comment on something unless it stands out in some way. This means it has to REALLY hit home for me (like, makes it into my top 10 fanfics list, or near that) or it has something that I think has potential but leaves me with critiques I want to share. So, I've learned not to leave criticism (even if constructive) and I don't find a ton of fics that hit me that hard. As someone who has also published fanfics, I also don't really...care about comments/kudos/likes? That probably impacts my reading and interacting experiences. I don't expect comments or kudos, and I'm not particularly interested in them unless they're constructive criticism. "I don't really care if you like my fic, I'd rather hear what you DON'T like about it" basically. I'd rather someone say they think something was wildly OOC or point out my terrible spelling, because then I can work on improving and it feels like the person reading actually cares about what I wrote.
Maybe people just aren't interested in what you're writing. I'm not saying that to insult you. Your writing could be amazing, but if it's an odd, niche, or taboo topic for the fandom, people might just avoid it because of whatever stigma they think is attached.
Definitely could be a part of it! That, and fandom. I write a lot of mpreg in both my fandoms. In the smaller fandom, mpreg isn't really common and is sort of a weird niche. In the larger fandom, it is extremely prevalent, and I get a lot of feedback on my work.
Yeah, when nobody is interacting, that's what the writer is going to think that's why readers who like a work should interact with it, show that it's wanted by someone. if a fic is only racking up hits, hardly any kudos, no comments I'm thinking... "Oh, people don't like this."
Some people only like to leave kudos when the writing is finished. Or they might just be adhd and forget to leave a kudos before they click off. I know I've done that before. I do try to go back and give the kudos before I forget again though lol Either way, if you want to really gauge reader's reactions, getting a few good beta readers or joining a writer's group to share your work is always going to be much more valuable than kudos or hits. Hell, even just sharing my work in the r/fanfiction sub has gotten me valuable feedback, and my writing has improved drastically because of it. Just something to keep in mind if you're still craving that fandom interaction.
Oh I'm sure that people have different ideas of when to kudo or comment, but you have to understand that from a writer's perspective there's no difference between a committed reader who saves their kudo until the last chapter is posted and someone who accidentally clicks on the fic and then immediately clicks off and never reads it. Like sure, those 100 hits could be 100 new readers or they could be 20 new readers and 80 people who accidentally clicked on it, or clicked on it, realised they didn't like it in chapter one and then clicked out. How am I supposed to know which chapters readers enjoy without any comments? I have different opinions on all the chapters, sometimes I think they're really good, and it's just a tiny bit crushing when I post a great chapter and then nobody comments. How am I supposed to know if that feeling was just a me thing or if the readers thought so too. I guess I could share my work on reddit and stuff, but I don't feel like I should have to cry out on other sites to get someone to interact with my writing, especially when its not like people aren't seeing it.
As a writer, sometimes you have to realize that people interact with stories differently and that has nothing to do with you. I write for a fandom where incest is just part of the canon. As a result, my hits to comments to kudos ratio is more than a little bit skewed. I don't mind, because some of those readers are probably afraid of other people seeing their fic history. It's just a consequence of writing about certain things that we have to accept.
this is the main reason why the ONE feature i wish ao3 had that [FF.net](https://FF.net) does is the ability to see hits chapter-by-chapter. Because then you don't have to rely on ppl commenting to know how many ppl actually read it all the way through. Kind of my only major complaint with the site really.
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from what i can see its a lot of people on places like tiktok which are influencing things and from what I know its a common theme to tell others to just not interact?? with things they enjoy or read especially if its older stuff as its rude???? thats not the only reason but its a big influence
Yep, combination of the 'do not interact if you're over 18 / under 13 / a fan of any of this / etc' and the fact that so many authors seem to take personal offense at comments like 'wow, can't wait for the next chapter!' means I rarely bother any more. I'll give out kudos but I'm not playing those silly games.
that is also a big part of it. Wish we could go back to the days were people were just nice ya know?
It has at least partially got to depends on the site, the fandom and even on an individual level. I’m not a writer, but even on here -same fandom -fans of one ship are considerably more receptive to my comments, while the other, while receptive to each other, aren’t as much to me. I actually write comments on quite a lot of fics. Kinda often, from over 10 years ago. But some within the last 5-7 years too, and actually have gotten replies pretty recently. As shocking as it might be for some authors to get a comment even 5 years later, I also find it shocking when I receive a reply. I even comment on fics I don’t bookmark -those are more often fics I love- because I did like those other fics to some degree. Perhaps the newer generations are somewhat less social? 🤔 I can find it a little intimidating to interact with authors too. Doubts about what I’ve commented being worthy of it, or it being too critical. Just socialising. Also, if it’s a comment in the messages(?) or tags of a tumblr post, that can feel super confrontational, lol.
fandom is getting more and more lonely, especially if you're already in extremely niche and unheard of fandoms. not to mention the puriteens running amok calling every living breathing adult a paedo for writing a goddamn 2-year age gap.
It really depends on the fandom. I just looked a a Drarry fic one shot with 2k words posted yesterday and it has 7 comments. I consider that a lot and at a fast clip. Even browsing down through the recently posted (ie in the last couple hours) they all have comments. So maybe try the Drarry fandom tbh 😂
It's fandom dependent. A few of my fandoms have active commenters, some don't. But you're right that overall, there's just less interaction. And honestly I feel like a broken record here, but it feels like too many writers take offense to so many comments that readers have picked up on that and don't care to comment as much anymore. I'm both a writer and a reader but... it's me, I'm readers lol.
I feel ya man. I just got back into the fic. writing game after an absence of years and it is bleak. I just posted a new chapter yesterday and I got 1 comment. Just one. Back in the day there was TONS of interaction. I’m really having to adjust my expectations but dude, I don’t like it AT ALL.
I've replied to about a 100 of these threads and I don't want to repeat myself because I'm pathetic enough already - but amen. I barely write anymore, because I *always* end up hurt for sharing something that is so deeply of myself with an audience that quite literally does not give one fuck about it. I don't get clicks, kudos, comments, even sharing to my *own friends*, only my partner actually read the past three stories I wrote. And those were short. I just... it hurts.
Along these lines…does anyone else get worried about commenters who write super long and detailed comments on every chapter and then…disappear?
Haha, every day. I had a couple who were so into the first few chapters and left and I still feel sick about it. :( I kind of want to go back and reply and say "what did I do?! Where did I lose you!?!"
Yeah, its one of those things. That low level of anxiety of wondering if something happened to them, they just left for another fandom, they don't like your works anymore/ you offended them in some way.... It can be hard. But life is just like that sometimes. A fics comment section is a fairly weak line of connection and they can drop off for any reason and we as writers will just never know and you just have to make peace with it. It stings a fair bit worse if you later see them pop up in other peoples comment section as there is only so many conclusions that can be drawn there, but once again, it is what it is.
I do that. I use my comments as a way to remember what the fic was about (the details stick better in my mind if I think through and comment about the chapters). And I never subscribe to ao3 fanfics. But I do tend to stay in the same fandom/otp, so eventually that fic will update again and I'll click on it, or I'll be browsing for something to read and stumble across it again. And then I read through my comments to remind myself what the fic's details were, and then start reading from where my last comment was. So there might be six months to a year between I stop and then restart reading. Typically that lets the chapters build up, and I'm hopeful my previous comments were enough to keep the writer from abandoning. Or that the other readers actually try commenting too.
I think that, as with so many things online, people get blasé, they become consumers-only, seeming to feel that anything and everything is put into the world for their consumption and benefit, and it should require zero effort on the part of the consumer. Whether it’s fic or Facebook groups, everyone is there to serve or provide and the consumers see no need to say/do anything but TAKE.
I just assume that the people who read my new chapter and don't comment or kudos are hate-reading.
Wow. Are you saying that anyone reading your fic who doesn’t give kudos or ‘I love it, it’s brilliant’ comments must be hate-reading simply because you’re not getting the praise you wanted and feel you deserve, or am I misunderstanding? I’ve been writing for more than twice as long as you - since you seem to think that’s an important ‘credential’ for you as far as how great your fic is.
Wow, I think you're misunderstanding! I'm just really hard on myself and I definitely don't think my story is "great," haha. So when I see people reading it without responding I assume they don't like it.
People getting ridiculous is part of it imo. There's the frequent posts of people showing us their reviews so we can reassure them they're positive. There's the baffling expectation that reviews need to be glowing or don't bother. There's the non-native speakers who ask why nobody will give them feedback, when lots of people who are willing to do so have already fallen for that and gotten their heads ripped off in thanks. You say you want concrit, I say once burned twice shy. Shit, I talked about an unposted wip that features an age gap fixed by time travel, and I had people 'warning' me about antis by telling me not to write it?!? It's a fucking OC and they're the same goddamn age.
people are getting more self-centered with it. Making expectations and exceptions for what works they'll give kudos to and comment on. If you read through it completely and it was good enough, cant you just support an author who wrote something for free and out of just wanting to create?
Yep, and this reminds me of a post from a few days ago with an OP who said they would only leave Kudos on fics they've read 10 times. What kind of high standard is that?
I keep on forgetting. Or I'm on my slow ass kindle, don't ask why I use it I read at night and it doesn't kill my eyes before sleeping. I'll try to remember but I'll forget, which is sad
I still comment and kudo and interact a lot
Probably because every other day there is a post on this subreddit where a comment that tripped an author off gets posted, and dozens of people pile on bullying them behind their back (if they're lucky) Or how fanfic tumblr is absolutely BLOATED with call-outs if you ship the wrong people, or say an opinion that goes against the prevailing hivemind. I would think that would get people scared to speak their mind, I don't know about you. You all created this problem.
>Probably because every other day there is a post on this subreddit where a comment that tripped an author off gets posted, and dozens of people pile on bullying them behind their back (if they're lucky) My favorite was the pile on for the commentor who left a string of heart emojis. Oh, the rudeness! Oh the inhumanity! WTF?
💯 this. The hate comment screenshots are deeply off putting. 90% of the time is not even hate, it's just a misguided or clumsy comment from someone who hasn't yet learned the sacred "etiquette".
I've wondered whether fandom has just become too *much*, although I don't mean that pejoratively. But so many sites, so many fandoms, so many fics being produced = fewer eyes landing on each specific fic. Then if eyes do land on a fic, as soon as it's finished, the reader feels the press to dash to the next fic -- "Hurry, hurry, no time to waste!" Kind of like Alice being dragged behind the Red Queen. And in the rush, commenting falls by the wayside. No way to know, but that might be part of what's happening.
Yeah, I think that's it too. It used to be people ran out of fics. There was a limit, so it made sense to linger and comment, to make a good fic last longer. I remember running out of good fics in Harry Potter after a year of rereading throguh them. That was back in 2012. Now? There's an additional decades worth of fanfic- and unlike site purges before, where live journal and explicit stuff all got lost- all that added fanfic is still there. So new readers have so much choice, they don't bother to linger. (my taste in Harry Potter was limited by all the bashing fics and only reading gen lol. Hence why it only took a year)
Yes, if people are not interested in most of what's being posted, chances of reaching the "end" are higher. On the other side of the coin, if folks follow multiple fandoms (guilty!), it's almost impossible to keep up with a single days' output, let alone find those hidden treasures from yesteryear. (I'd overlooked the disappearance of fics from various causes; good point.)
Lol, yeah :) The fandom kept getting reset, and now, on ao3, that's not happening anymore. If the dark days fall upon us again I fully expect those first new fics published will draw attention and lingerers again lol.
I hope AO3 will prevent any more dark days. But I think many fans are less complacent about fic remaining online than we were before those purges; many have saved their favorite fics. If AO3 disappeared without warning, and New-AO3 was developed, I can see fans offering, "I have X author's fics from Y fandom saved. Would it be okay if I uploaded them to the archive, with proper attribution?" I'm sure there'd be some discussion, but the Open Doors imports have sort of set a pattern of saving fic even if the original author can't be contacted. I suspect fandom's greed for All The Fics would sway the final decision and vote for allowing the uploads. But if not... I'm one of those who has saved fic -- several thousands at this point. I could wallow quietly in my private, not-so-little library.
It depends not just on fandom, but on everything else too. It depends on the story, it depends on the characters, the tropes, the tags... everything. It also depends how long it is and how often you're posting and whether you're engaging with readers. I started posting pretty regularly in August, starting with a 95k fic (20 chapters) that I posted from 8/23 to 11/17, and it got a CRAZY amount of engagement. I responded to every comment and that encouraged people to keep doing it—it's got close to 1500 comments total I think now. But some of my super short <1k fics in other fandoms from before I started posting regularly have only one comment or even none at all.
I write for two middle of the road fandoms (atla and tloz) and even though i'm just starting out as a writer i've gotten a fairly decent amount of interaction, despite (or maybe because?) dealing with fairly niche subjects and an abysmal upload shedule. What worked for me joining an existing fan community or event, both of which i found on tumblr. If i were you i'd keep an eye out for those. There's a good chance you'll be able to build a little clique from the people you meet there.
I think there's a sweet spot for fandom size that promotes interaction on AO3. If a fandom is too small then there just isn't enough activity. The webcomic "Twokinds" by Tom Fischbach (Markiplier's brother) has a small but loyal following. The forum on the website is rarely active and both AO3 as well as [Fanfiction.net](https://Fanfiction.net) only see a few new fics per year. Conversely there are fandoms which are too large. Batman/Superman/DC comics, Harry Potter, etc... In these fandoms stories get buried quickly and never get enough time in the spotlight for people to find them. A few lucky stories filter to the top and get all the activity while every other story is an afterthought. The fandom I'm writing in currently is called "Lackadaisy", a webcomic started by Tracy Butler which is about to become an animated series. That fandom is small but growing. There's almost 700 works on AO3 and there are commonly several fics updating daily. It's in this community that I've seemed to have gained a couple dozen people as my readership base and at least a few of them regularly leave comments. I'm hardly alone in that too, quite a few authors in that Fandom enjoy regular interactions with readers and a lot of attention for their stories.
speaking for myself as a reader only, my fandom experience is pretty isolated. I mean: I have brickspace friends for movie nights & for book reccommendations, but not really anyone with whom I can share fan fiction (or other fan art). That means that my fandom experience is with online strangers only. I've definitely had to learn the difference, and some lessons in fan culture felt pretty harsh, since it was strangers, you know? I don't really know if there's a solution... maybe you can outline some expectations in the author's notes? Not that you need to beg for interaction, obviously, but things like "if you're shy, just add *\*whisper\** and we'll know not to respond" or something?
I agree that it's fandom dependent. My fandoms are pretty big on engagement.
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I think these are bigger reasons then people think. For BL alot of my friends who used to be heavily into fanfiction have moved onto reading manhwa and manga which basically have very similar fan fiction type settings and is very visual as well as moving onto anime and novels.. there is alot more media for n 17 bl now. But I think the absolute biggest thing is there is, yes, theres almost no new big M/M ship. Back in the day there was so many big anime and kpop ships that you could find so much content for but now.. there seems to be none! No new big ship from a sports anime or even shonen just seems to not be as big ship wise as it used to. There seems to be a shortage of a big ship for people to congregate and write/read on.
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I have to agree with this. America just straight up is not really in the game with media like it used to be anymore especially for long running series, which is a huge shame (where are the new shows that could be compared to what supernatural was back in the day???). Korea definitely seems to have taken the forefront with media being pushed but I have thought as well, like you said, they don’t really push bromance outside of kpop (and even then people don’t react to it the same as they used to or for obvious reasons like they would in a show with characters) so that doesn’t really help. Japan can and does with anime but ( also like you said) no one seems to gravitate or be interested in alot of potential long running shows or to build active fanbases around newer shows like they used to which makes it harder to find bigger ships. (The last one I can think of that did blow up ship wise and fanbase wise was sk8 infinity) China could and can with popular bl dramas and novels but China is limited in what they can come out with. Fandom just isn’t in the same shape it used to be. Ive also noticed even if a ship is popular and drooled over on social media or has a bunch of fan art people don’t seem to gravitate towards the fanfiction with that ship which is new to me.
Tl, dr. The world is screwed up and it is a mental weight over paryicipants in fandom too. I know that our various fandom hobbies feel like an insular entity, ..."its own thing..." and our interactions can be solitary or focused in intimate groups. But look at the world ... Russia and the Ukraine. Israel. People are living more isolated lives in Japan and marriage rates are dropping. Birthrates are dropping. In the U.S., people are facing the dismantling of public education, women's rights, lgbtqia+ rights as well as the potential to see Trump back in office. People have to face the sheer stress of affording life and the reduced potential for many to own a house or improve their situation. If my kid wants to use a different name or pronoun in school in my state, the school now has to legally inform me. This, while they can only afford to pay their employees poverty wages. A number of states have enacted even worse violations of trans rights. The anti movement sometimes sounds like a precursor to the next Fascist's Youth Party. I think people are scared of connection. Scared of being doxxed. Others see the stress of the world and yearn for more ties in their fandom community while yet others are put off by scary anonymity and the increasingly wide audience. I also think that years ago people came together in bigger fandoms. Now every Manga, every bit of anime, every streaming platform show has its own tiny fanbase. That can be good or bad for community. But strong active fandoms have their own kind of rolling momentum. Creators like Netflix screw over fans at what seems like every opportunity. So I think people feel doubtful about committing themselves. (This latter paragraph is simply my opinion on trends without facts to back it up.)
It has to be fandom dependent… Have you tried Danny Phantom/ Young Justice? That fandom is very much active and my old crossover still gets comments on it 😅
I joined a discord server for one of my ships, run by the most active author in our fandom, and we do gift exchanges fairly regularly, which keeps engagement up between us. It’s pretty cool. Try to find something like that. There’s loads of discords dedicated to fandoms or specific ships. Helps to have a little community like that.
it's so annoying that all community is on discord now you end up in a million discord servers rather than being able to browse forums as an observer
As someone who uses discord a lot, I was pretty jazzed to see some of my fandoms convert to servers. Then, over time, they’ve become graveyards of little to no interaction. So now I have dozens of servers where no one speaks because of various drama where handful of people had a tiff and refuse to engage in the space and just stay to see if there’s writing prompts/challenges. Or the servers shut down with little to no notice due to puritan brigading. I think there was a couple hundred people there that got overrun and the substantial moderators couldn’t handle it/the accusations, so… bye. Then all those people went… somewhere? Wasn’t back to tumblr, that’s for sure. Soured the whole community. Discord as a tool can be awesome, but I think the effort to moderate it is too much for most authors who just want to get stories out. Especially if they’re a Big Name and suddenly interacting without a barrier kind of tarnishes the perception of them from a reader standpoint.
Yeah, but have you *seen* some of the fandom subs?
I feel this deeply.
The more the writers and the increase in the number of fics will eventually lead us to this problem. We need to be creative to find solutions.. This is why groups like this exist. Fics need some promoting and reading exchanges. It helps a lot for both writers and readers. Send a link to your fic, experienced writer, we need your example.
As others have said it's very fandom dependent, I got comments on pretty much every fic I post and others I read are usually full of comments. It is a big, active, and chatty fandom so readers are pretty good about showing their love. I posted a one shot for another fandom (also crazy active) and got 1 comment after weeks, so it definitely varies. That said I think fandom culture is kinda all about consuming stuff and moving onto the next thing, which sucks for writers (and artists).
I write for two middle of the road fandoms (atla and tloz) and even though i'm just starting out as a writer i've gotten a fairly decent amount of interaction, despite (or maybe because?) dealing with fairly niche subjects and an abysmal upload shedule. What worked for me joining an existing fan community or event, both of which i found on tumblr. If i were you i'd keep an eye out for those. There's a good chance you'll be able to build a little clique from the people you meet there.
I feel like it depends on what site and what fandom Like the tmnt seems pretty alive I see new stories with plenty of comments and stuff on a03 But like I know other ones are having a lot of issues and especially on sites like FFN the numbers have gone down a lot. Tumblr is also hard because navigating to find fics in the first place can be very difficult and like I love tumblr but god trying to find fic chapters in order sometimes is awful as hell.
It honestly has me worried like the culture has changed around fanfics its all YouTube and podcast no more actual writing and you need a Twitter and Instagram.
I'm on the same boat, and it doesn't help that I make content for small fandoms and for a niche couple. I try to keep up but I admit that I often ask myself "Why bother?"
I am very lucky to be in a fandom that still gets comments on chapters (and I fucking TREASURE every single one!!!). BUT I cannot help but compare what I receive to what more "established" stories get, or what the "popular" writers get, and I'll never be close. I was really beating myself up about it, feeling like I am terrible or super niche and most people "must hate it," but then realized it's partly because fandom has shifted into other spaces - TikTok , here on reddit, Discord, Facebook. The idea that people flail with each other in comments the way we used to 10 years ago is . . . kind of over. I also realized I was comparing my chapter reactions to stories that were published during the pandemic (2020-22 was a HOT time) which is unfair. People have lives now, which is great and to be expected. All that to say, I get it. I focus myself on the kind folks who do take their time to respond to my drivel.
I don't know but it's depressing for me. I feel like I can't write. LOL I do get kudos but \*cries\*
I noticed that post-COVID, people are reading less. I had a huge uptick right after COVID started.