you win some, you lose some
Dec. 25th, 2018 05:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I got a series of lovely comments on very old fic, recently, and some of them were just general nice comments, but there was one great one, on an old unfinished series, that so beautifully phrased how they didn't mind so much that it was unfinished, because it had been left in a hopeful place and not everything had been resolved but it was nice even with loose ends, and so on. It was lovely.
This morning, I was all pleased to have comments on the new stuff I posted, but mixed in there was another one on another old unfinished series.
This person was like "Since you're not finishing this, you owe it to readers to say that."
I wrote a pretty heated response because that is rude as shit, but instead I just wrote back, "How do you know I am not going to finish it?" because, I mean, did I say that? Then I've told readers that. Did I not say that? Then you're making an assumption there, and that will probably suit for your purposes.
Listen, if you don't know how to look at Last Updated stats on AO3 and make your necessary choices from there, then that archive is not a safe space for you.
I know of people who've come back to series after literal years, that's a thing that happens. Am I likely to? No. But am I going to say never?
Well, if I get enough of a preponderance of update plz shit. It's not like this person has ever left me any kind of feedback before. And it's a story for a TV show that went off the air in... 2009?? I mean, it's not like I'm waiting for new content or something.
That's what Subscribe To Work is for. Like, yeah, it's exciting to do it when the work is actively being updated, but where it really shines is in works you figured were abandoned. For me, now, I've spent so little time on AO3 this past year, there aren't many works I subscribed to anymore, but when I get a notification for one, hoo boy is that good news.
Anyway. Merry Christmas to everyone. Don't leave shitty archive comments. Believe me, I know I didn't finish that thing. But I don't owe anyone shit, after posting hundreds of thousands of words of free content that they get to read for free anytime they want to.
This morning, I was all pleased to have comments on the new stuff I posted, but mixed in there was another one on another old unfinished series.
This person was like "Since you're not finishing this, you owe it to readers to say that."
I wrote a pretty heated response because that is rude as shit, but instead I just wrote back, "How do you know I am not going to finish it?" because, I mean, did I say that? Then I've told readers that. Did I not say that? Then you're making an assumption there, and that will probably suit for your purposes.
Listen, if you don't know how to look at Last Updated stats on AO3 and make your necessary choices from there, then that archive is not a safe space for you.
I know of people who've come back to series after literal years, that's a thing that happens. Am I likely to? No. But am I going to say never?
Well, if I get enough of a preponderance of update plz shit. It's not like this person has ever left me any kind of feedback before. And it's a story for a TV show that went off the air in... 2009?? I mean, it's not like I'm waiting for new content or something.
That's what Subscribe To Work is for. Like, yeah, it's exciting to do it when the work is actively being updated, but where it really shines is in works you figured were abandoned. For me, now, I've spent so little time on AO3 this past year, there aren't many works I subscribed to anymore, but when I get a notification for one, hoo boy is that good news.
Anyway. Merry Christmas to everyone. Don't leave shitty archive comments. Believe me, I know I didn't finish that thing. But I don't owe anyone shit, after posting hundreds of thousands of words of free content that they get to read for free anytime they want to.
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Date: 2018-12-25 10:46 am (UTC)Forget them and have a very Merry Christmas ♥
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Date: 2018-12-25 11:09 am (UTC)Thank you! Same to you, dear! <3 <3 <3
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Date: 2018-12-25 11:20 am (UTC)And wow that commenter was so entitled! Bet they've never left you a nice positive comment on anything? How very dare they. (I personally don't *ever* say any variant on "please write more of this" on any story because that just seems rude and pressuring - I'm just grateful for what people choose to share. AO3 has literally made my life better, and got me through some Difficult Stuff, and my biggest worry is that I'm very bad at leaving actual comments but at least I always leave a kudos if I liked the story, and I *try* never to be rude.)
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Date: 2018-12-26 03:37 am (UTC)and their name isn't even an active link; I don't know what that means, but it seems that they don't actually have an active handle on AO3? Can you do that? Is it like, a semi-logged-in anon? I don't know! Their name doesn't connect to anything. I've never talked to them before.
And if you look at the comment thread, which I hadn't as a whole, literally the five comments above it are from this 12-month period, where people have said "oh, I looked at the timestamp on this and it's been a couple years, is this story still active?" and all of them have managed to sound politely disappointed or even encouraging, and every one of them, I responded with, "Oh, I do have more material, but it's so disorganized, my life kind of fell apart, I wish I could come back, I'm holding out hope, I might try but I might rework it into something original instead", shit like that.
Ugh I wrote a big long angry comment, and again, deleted it and wrote a more restrained one. What a shit sandwich to a lovely day. I hate that it takes so few negative interactions to totally overwhelm so many positive ones. :( That story has 168 comments on it, God I'd forgotten what it was like to write a popular pairing in a busy fandom...
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Date: 2018-12-25 11:32 am (UTC)Happy Christmas! Hope your day goes well.
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Date: 2018-12-26 03:46 am (UTC)here's the thing: so apparently, they think I should update the fic with some kind of announcement? to talk about how I'm not updating it? Thereby changing the "last updated" timestamp to the present day? and possibly sending out a notification to subscribed readers?
So my choices are to either get people's hopes up, by adding a bullshit banner to say what the "last updated 2014" already says and then will no longer say, and now the fucking thing's going to be in the recently-updated list and people are going to get excited? Or to orphan or delete the work. I mean, you can't mark a fic "as complete as it's going to get", or anything, can you? without making it look to be "complete", which it is not.
For something that, no, I haven't posted an update to since 2014, but I still have over 40,000 words of material for on my hard drive? For something I might rework into an original work? For something I might yet have time to look at again?
I looked closer, and their handle doesn't form a hyperlink. They don't have a profile.
I think they don't know how the site works?
It's not much consolation, because apparently the only fucking thing they know about the site is how to leave fucking rude comments. Ugh.
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Date: 2018-12-26 04:03 am (UTC)Yeah, that's not someone super clued-in, but also kinda creepy. Why would you do any of that? At least yours are from inside fandom, I've had the confusion of comments from someone I think non-fannish, who decided to fight about characterisation with me across several stories.