A Prayer for Good Internets

[rynling]

Do you ever have one of those days where you really encouragement and support?

This is one of those days for me.

If the internet pornbot overlords are listening, this is my prayer:

Please let people leave kudos on my fic on AO3. Please let people like my art on Tumblr. Please let me not lose any followers on Twitter after tweeting about gay comics.

These are such small things, Oh internet pornbot overlords, but they mean the world to me.

Comments

[flonnebonne]

I love your FF fics! I think I've already left kudos on the ones from the fandoms I know, so....just want to say I like!

[rynling]

That is 100% true, and I will never forget it. And you, saintly person that you are, read those stupid stories back before I had any idea of how to write. I wasn't even taking writing seriously, and still you encouraged me. Thank you!!

AO3 can be weird sometimes. I think that, unless you're a BNF who managed to write some sort of epic fic about Harry Potter or Supernatural or Naruto or something, most people probably have good days and neutral days when it comes to kudos. On some days you may get, like, one kudo from a guest, while on other days you get surprise kudos and comments from other writers. Ditto with Tumblr. Some days I'll get less than fifty notes, and some days I'll get more than five hundred, and this has nothing to do with when or what I post.

When people talk about fandom, I think there's a lot of survival bias. You always hear about megapopular fic writers who became a professional novelists, but you almost never hear about the median experience of people just chilling out in their small communities and doing their best. Good luck to both of us!

Anyway, I just checked and saw that you've posted new FF fic, and by "new" I mean "written in 2017." Where has this year gone, where has it even gone.

[flonnebonne]

Ever since one of my fandom friends got into an actual depressive funk because of Tumblr and A03, I've made some effort to not pay attention to the numbers game. She was calculating her hit count to kudos count ratio and everything--good thing I'm too lazy to do things like that. It's still hard not to pay attention, because I do love getting kudos and comments and notes, but I figure it's not worth my mental health, dang it.

That said, thank you for reading and giving kudos! I've been meaning to re-read your fics since you edited them but just haven't gotten around to it. Fandom is reciprocal, yeah? Or at least it's supposed to be.

Speaking of which, if you're ever looking for someone to be a writing buddy, let me know. I'm having trouble getting motivated to write lately, mainly because my job is crazy right now, and I feel like most of the writing I forced out this year wasn't the greatest quality. Still, I want to try! It's especially hard to get myself to do original writing, but that's really what I want to try out more. Fanfic is fine too though. Anything to get me back into the mindset. But, uh, I'm not into Zelda or Mario fandom-wise so you're on your own there :)