[ SECRET POST #6864 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6864 ⌋

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


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[American Girl dolls]



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[Acotar/ Crescent City/Sarah J Maas]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #980.
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)]

Simply complaining about a lack of what you want is low-effort too. There are plenty of other things that can be done to stimulate production of wished-for the content. But these take effort.

But OP has tried being the change, so isn't doing that at all. Keep at it, OP! I once had a fandom take off five years or so after I wrote the first half-dozen stories for it, including a couple of longfics.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, complaining isn't the problem. I say let's all complain.

In this case (write more not less) is the result of the continual shortening of attention spans, the ability to get quick hits of pleasure posting short drabbles on tumblr, and the overall state of fast-moving fandom. I don't think that's something that can be changed by even a hundred fic authors writing 10k instead of 2k word fics, that's a sea change that requires a whole culture change.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'm curious as to what fandom OP is in where longfic was the majority of what existed in the fandom because IME that hasn't been the case in any of my fandoms, even the ones from the early 2000s. Like, out of curiosity, I went to look at the AO3 section for one of my fandoms from 2008-2009 and the vast majority of the fic there that was written during that time period was sub-5k words with only a small handful of long stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh yeah, you're not wrong. A lot of the fic I consumed between 00-05 is lost to the internet so I have no idea if they were long or short. Anime fandom in those days was def scattershot, the occasional longfic but a lot of short pwps. SW and Highlander fic tended to be longer overall but fewer giant multi-chapter book-length fics.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, complaining isn't the problem. I say let's all complain.

While I think mild complaining is fine, I do think there is a point where complaining does become (part of) the problem. For example, if you complain about lack of longfic in a fandom and people in that fandom are already doing their best to work on and put out longer pieces, it can feel like "what you're doing isn't good enough" which is demotivating the few people who could potentially produce longfic. Or if you complain about lack of longfic in a fandom and there IS longfic, with almost no comments or feedback, same -- it will burn out the few people producing it because OP seems to be overlooking it/erasing it. Or if you spend all your time loudly complaining, complaining, complaining in a fandom, then a lot of people might be like "Wow, this fandom sucks, it's so whiny" and leave it, which means fewer people to potentially write longfic...

So yeah, a tendency toward complaining over any other activity such as positivity or engagement with existing long fics, I think absolutely CAN be part of the problem leading to less longfic, so you should be careful about how you do it and the tone in which you do it.

[(Anonymous)]

SA.

Also, to be clear, I didn't think there was anything wrong with OP's secret! You can absolutely vent about missing longfic in your fandom, especially if you're one of the writers burnt out by trying to be the change. The only thing I took issue with was the statement that "complaining isn't the problem" -- I don't think that's *always* true.

[(Anonymous)]

Complaining is fine, and normal so long as you aren't taking it to extremes. Just having a complaint about something in the world shouldn't result in a knee jerk jUsT fiX iT yOUrSelF response, that's just a dick move by people who should close the tab or leave the discussion if they need a break.