Pathetic Wet Cat

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

If you read the fic, leave the kudos. Leave a comment too, if possible. Just do it. It takes a few seconds of your time and it means the world to the writer.

Sincerely, me who just got told that my writing feels like watching a blockbuster movie. I don't care if they were sincere or not, I'll be thinking about that comment for the rest of my life and every time I feel bad about my art, I'll remember that someone once liked it.

WE ARE SO BACK

Das riight, I've finally made some decent progress in my fanfic endeavors and we are continuing Ume's story!

This time it is a bridge fanfic that I hope you will enjoy!

(Imma tag everyone who appears in this mess teehee)

Idk i just wanted to draw souyo and finally had a nice attempt

Shmooch

Couldn't come up with a dialogue so just imagine whatever u like lol

ID in alt

i freaking love pirate yakuza in hawaii

What if I post one of my fics on AO3...

I draw on paper once a week for my classes and today I had some time to draw after classes so I decided to draw my new WuWa pookies/mains

Mortefi is so dreamy like actually, and the game gave me 5 copies of him already -flutters eyelashes-

And Lingyang is a furry (with horrible voice acting direction I cannot stand his english dub. At least hes adorable) that I got twice... One from the 50 pulls thingy and the other from the event banner... Yikes

I'm also glad that ppl find the english dub to be abysmal. I might switch to japanese or smth cuz the story is driving me insane with eng.

Might draw Scar soon too, hes also my pookie <3

why is it that we all thought we wouldn’t make it past our teenage years. that’s crazy

wife

I love adding wips to my already massive wip collection

Tis Arvo again and it is now a splash art of him

Idk what to add on the background but Im sure I will figure it out

Today was a nasty day, felt sick from drawing at my classes it was miserable. Art was not arting.

And the fic with him is at the boring part so writing it is kinda a slog rn ngl