You are not OWED fanfiction
I’m gonna go on a little rant here.
As a fanfic reader, you are not owed a single thing from writers. You have no right to demand updates, to harass writers who don’t post as often as you’d like, or who don’t fill your prompts, or to call out writers for not writing fast enough.
Here’s the thing: fanfiction authors are not professionals. We don’t get paid for what we do. We don’t get to wake up in the morning and sit at our computers and write fics for you to access for free. Fanfic writers know that we will never make a career out of writing fanfiction. We write because it’s a hobby, a passion, a stress reliever. We write because we love the characters, because we love the story, because we have more stories to tell. Most importantly, we write for fun.
We go to school. We work jobs. We have kids. We have homes and apartments and rooms to clean and meals to make and chores to do. We have business meetings to attend and essays to write. Our worlds don’t revolve around fanfiction. Fanfiction is something we do when we have the time, late at night when we can’t sleep, on the weekends, between classes, on our lunch breaks.
If you don’t write, you can’t even imagine the amount of work and time that goes into fanfic. You can’t begin to understand how much planning writers do, and how many hours get spent setting up the plot and developing the characters in the ways that make sense.
You can leave comments on our work. We love it when you leave comments on our work. But when we’ve just spent 10 hours putting together a new chapter, the last thing we want to see in our notifications is “I have waited FOREVER for this! What took so long!” “omg! don’t wait so long between updates next time!” “Am I gonna have to wait this long for the next chapter, too?”
There’s a difference between being supportive and letting the author know that you’re still there after months of silence and shaming them for those months of silence. Every single one of us has a life outside of fanfiction. Things happen. Plans change. Accidents come up out of the blue. When I’m sick, when I’m stressed, when I’m flooded with assignments, I don’t have time to update fics, and I don’t need to tell you that. I don’t need to justify why it takes so long for me to update. You don’t need a reason explaining my absence.
Fanfiction is a gift, and just like any gift, when you receive it, you say “thank you”, because no one was obligated to give it to you. It’s rude say “cool, but I want more, too.”
I just loved this! I'm writing the sequel of our collab with @warriorteam1924 but...
- I'm studying to be a computer teacher... And the exams and homeworks season just begun...
- Sometimes I haven't inspo or I'm not in the mood to write.
- If I have inspo, I haven't time
- I have a LIFE.
And this happens with all the fanfic writers... This is for mere amusement. So, me and all the writers would appreciate comprehension from the readers. Ah! And another thing...
