@mako-designated-driver So Rude That We Don't Get To Kill Him After Seeing All Those Horrible Memories

@mako-designated-driver So rude that we don't get to kill him after seeing all those horrible memories 😡🔪 Like if there had been a renegade option there I absolutely would have taken it, but all I got to do was punch him after all that!!

Oh fuck no

Somebody please tell me I get to kill Dr Archer at the end of this quest 😡

~💛

I genuinely started tearing up at the end of that quest. It got so fucked up so incredibly fast

I'm glad I was able to free David from Cerberus, even if I didn't get to kill Archer for what he'd done, but I'm stopping for tonight. That was almost too much for me

Oh fuck no

Somebody please tell me I get to kill Dr Archer at the end of this quest 😡

A timid heart Is a disadvantage To someone who likes danger. - DOES, Donten (曇天)

The Cirilla Hawke piece I used in my meet the creator template for thedasincolor <3

These are some terrifyingly low numbers! I do have 2 quick questions about the math here, based on my (limited) understanding of how the numbers in AO3 work

1) If I am subscribed to a fic, and therefore open it each time it updates, does that count as a separate hit each time even though I can't repeatedly leave kudos?

2) Essentially the same question, but for guests! If I don't have an account, and I am following along with your fic, does that artificially deflate your ratio of hits : kudos + comments?

as the crazy person with over 3,000 fics on AO3, who just hit over 2,000,000 hits, i have done... The Math

roughly 5% of readers leave kudos.

0.27% of people leave a comment.

truly, i GET that a lot of people, especially younger people who grew up on youtube and are living on tiktok, see "opening the page and viewing with their eyeballs" engagement in itself. but a) it's not, for fanfiction, that's not how it works; and b) "engagement" does not build a community -- interaction builds a community.

if you like someone's fanfiction, and you want more of that fanfiction, please react to it in some tangible way. leave a kudo. leave a comment. let the writer know that you didn't open it, see the first sentence, and decide it was garbage. let the writer know that you aren't a bot that trawls every webpage for AI content. let the writer know that their work is appreciated.

the point of fandom is to be a community, not a content engine. if people stop feeling like people are being reached with their work, they stop creating work for that fandom and move onto the next. there's a lot to be said for the way binge-model TV is killing fandoms prematurely... but there's a LOT to be said for the way infinite-scrolling consumption is killing fandoms prematurely.

if everyone binges a show on friday and feels weird about reacting to fics posted longer than a week ago/doesn't react to the fics they read at all, that fandom is dying out in about a month, max. even though there are probably a lot of people who would love to discuss it with someone or create more work or finish and post a WIP or whatever. because no actual community is created by consumption alone.

reading a fic is only step one.

reacting to a fic is the crucial step two of the equation.

step three is the fandom proliferating! and you getting more stuff to enjoy!

Nadia Hawke - Temperance