[ SECRET POST #3378 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3378 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 053 secrets from Secret Submission Post #483.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The one time I get annoyed by a fic writer abandoning their WIPs is when they abandon the vast majority of their fics. True, they still don't have a responsibility to finish anything. It just makes them seem like a flake and kind of...IDK, a fic tease? Like, "I'm just going to dangle this fic in front of my readers and make it sound awesome and get people into it and enjoy the validation of that, but they won't get any satisfaction out of it because I'll abandon it halfway through. And I will do this not once or a few times, but pretty much exclusively, over and over and over again."

[diet_poison]

why do people still read their stuff then?

[(Anonymous)]

I think they get a lot of new people coming in, who see their fics have lots of kudos and don't realize at first that they're all either current or abandoned WIPs.

Then, people keep checking in and getting updates because they're waiting (often fruitlessly) for one or more of the WIPs they read to update. And they end up giving in and reading more of the writer's WIPs out of a futile hope that "maybe the writer will actually finish this one." Or else they get smart and don't read any more of the WIPs, but they notice them being posted, and they notice that every time a new WIP is posted, updates on the last one taper off.

Bottom line: the writer isn't doing anything wrong, and it's up to the readers to decide what they read and don't read. However, just because the writer isn't doing something wrong, doesn't mean it's not annoying and flaky.

I haven't encountered many fic writers who are this extreme about abandoning their WIPs though. Just a couple.

[(Anonymous)]

The authors like this that I've seen tend to fall into a new fandom, post a bunch of WIPs that they update for a while, get distracted by a shiny new fandom and abandon their old WIPs, post a bunch of WIPs for their new fandom that they update for a while, lather rinse repeat. So if you're searching AO3 (which is where I've noticed this phenomenon) by fandom or pairing tags, you might not notice that the author you're reading is a serial WIP-abandonner until and unless you investigate why your favorite WIP hasn't been updated in a while.

Their readers aren't following the authors per se (in which case they'd know their habits), they're following the fandom/pairing that the authors are writing in.

[(Anonymous)]

Aren't fic writers like this fairly obvious, though? If someone's got 15 fics already on the go, and most or all of them are WIPs, the "tease factor" is going to be hard to miss - unless they're mislabelling them as 'complete' or something.

I do agree that seeing a clutch of fics with "Chapter xx/??" on each one is a humongous red flag. No idea what the writer's motivation is - maybe they're a flake, maybe they just lack the ability or inspiration to see them through to their stories' endings - but yeah, I don't want to commit myself too far if that's a pattern of theirs.

(Incidentally I subscribe to a wonderful Avengers/Agents of SHIELD writer who just finished Chapter 36/36 of their latest. They've got an untarnished reputation for actually completing their WIPs, which is why I have no problem taking a chance on them ♥)