hey uh
this is probably somewhat awkward for a fiction written years ago, but today i read both of the mirror mirror-verse fictions and found them quite enjoyable. thank you for writing them.
Okay, so, I think the reason that explanations about this aren’t gaining traction is that we as ficauthors instinctively respond by focusing on our experience to reassure you–“No, it’s great! I love getting comments on older fic! No fanfic author is going to object to that!”–and the reason that doesn’t have much of an effect is that it’s inherently subjective. Just because one person has a positive reaction doesn’t mean everyone does, and besides, we might just be polite, right?
Here’s the actual explanation: Your anxieties are misplaced because you are mistaking a fanfiction site for social media.
Ao3 isn’t Facebook! It’s an archive. Works there are intended to be easily found and enjoyed years after their creation, exactly the same as books in a library!
It’s not “awkward” to say you just read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time even though it was written years ago, and in the same way, new readers are SUPPOSED to be constantly finding fic and enjoying it regardless of publishing date. That’s the entire point of publishing it.
Fanfiction sites are not social media. There’s no such thing as “creeping” in someone’s old posts. In a very real way, there’s no such thing as “old posts” at all. Again–by that logic, you’re being creepy whenever you pick up a book at the library that’s more than a few months old! That’s insane.
If this is your first time reading Macbeth, then it’s a totally new experience to you and you can and SHOULD talk about your impressions and reactions to that story in the context that you’re reading it. There’s entire courses and academic careers dedicated to doing exactly that. If today was the first time you went looking in the right section of the site to find our mirrorverse fic, then that fic is a new story to you and you should join the conversation.
These fics are there to be preserved so that people can always find and read and interact with them for the first time. That’s actually the entire point.
