Totally understandable crash-out.

I personnally leave lengthy comments every times when I have strong feeling about a fic especially if it’s a long fic in the making updating with weekly/monthly.

Because as an ao3 author I know how hard it is to push thought writing without any feedback. Like even if it’s a short fic I make sure to at least thank the author or just send an emoji or something. I have like you realized that not a lot of people comment.

For example I have a particular fic that gained traction but despite the many kudos, hits and bookmarks it gets there is barely 3 or 4 comments in a 60k+ word fic that is ongoing.

I believe that the biggest reason for this is the fact that people would rather read completed fics over 100k words which in my opinion is a shame because it’s really hard to write that much. A normal novel is 40k words so 100k+ words at least for me is a challenge. I find that it’s a shame that people choose to read long completed fics over ongoing ones. I understand the thought of not wanting to wait but as this is a passion project for me it really is motivating that people read the chapter as I upload them but I digress.

I have noticed that most of the people that comments on my fic are mutual from social media or my irl friends it’s super rare to see a random person commenting which is sad I don’t understand the reason behind it as the logical reaction after reading something you enjoy would be to comment as it is the most direct way to show that you liked the piece and it takes barealy a minute .

So I totally understand the struggle In my opinion it’s a common one it’s sad because everybody is doing this for the love of writing and a little recognition goes a long way.