I know people “hate” WIPs and “don’t usually read/comment on them” because “it’s so frustrating waiting for updates” and “what if it never gets finished?”, but let me just say something from the point of view of someone who has written several multi-chaptered fics over the years, including one that has sat unfinished since 2010:
It’s lonely. It’s a huge investment of time and energy into a project that you hope people will like, but most of them will never tell you until it’s finished. It’s easy to get frustrated. To feel like no one cares, or is paying attention. To feel like giving up, or shelving it for later.
Encouragement along the way is like rain on the desert for writers of WIPs. Knowing people are excited about your story, and eager to see what happens next. Your questions and your love can light a fire under a writer, keeping them going when they might otherwise feel like maybe it’s not worth it. Your feedback might even give them a new idea when they are feeling stuck.
So take a risk. What’s the worst that can happen? You get to read something you enjoy, even if it’s unfinished. Balance that against maybe being the reason something does get finished, after all.
THIS.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly!
Honestly reading people’s replies to my fic really inspires me and motives me to write more, y’know?
“are you really going to tear a friendship apart over different opinions??”
listen, I got tons of friends who like pineapple on their pizza, but once you reach that “you, your community, or other marginalized communities don’t deserve basic human rights or even perhaps the right to live” level, you should just accept that it’s your fault no one wants to be your friend.
More accurately, no one really breaks up friendships (or families) over differences of “opinion”, but they will do so over differences of fundamental issues of morality.
The fact that large numbers of people think that “moral positions, often about issues that are literally life and death” and “personal opinions” are interchangeable concepts is a large part of what’s wrong with society.
this really put into words something i’ve always struggled to articulate, especially the last paragraph.
basically, if you don’t see how the treatment of individual human beings is less “opinion” and more “a good rubric of how you will treat humans in the future” then we aren’t compatible as friends anyways
