a couple of years back i was pretty vocal about not getting when people complained about their art not getting "enough" notes. but i'm getting to recognise a sub-category of that frustration these days that, in fairness, was maybe what people were talking about all along? but i've also seen other posts mention how fandom spaces feel changed since the last few years, so maybe it's a new thing or at least a thing that hadn't reached my fandom corner until now.
i truly don't mind if my writing doesn't garner a lot of attention (although i say this from a place of priviledge where my writing has so far always garnered some attention, and often a lot more than i anticipated). but what is really starting to grate a little is the amount of attention vs. the amount of reaction. For example, before the latest update on my big multichapter fic, it sat at ~ 33,050 hits. since then the fic has been clicked 400 times. the kudos count went up by maybe three and there were three new bookmarks - this isn't super surprising because i don't expect to be reaching a lot of new people with an unfinished 100+k word fic in a dwindling fandom, and if they're return readers they can't leave new kudos.
but five people have commented on the fic since the update. One percent of readers who have clicked on this fic have reacted. Did all these people see it on the recently updated feed, started to read it, didn't vibe with it and moved on? That honestly wouldn't bother me. But it's been steadily gaining attention for the last few weeks, long after it moved off the first page of the recently updated view for the fandom. so rather, I think it's mostly subscribed users (the fic has a little over 400 active subscriptions so that would make sense) or people actively checking back on the fic. in which case they must be at least somewhat invested in it.
and again, i'm not owed any feedback. i put my work out for free and people decide what to do with that. but fandom is a collaborative space, and it's been feeling like less that for a while. people seem less ready for conversation, and i think that's sad, and quite demoralising for creatives (at least for me personally).
fandom work isn't meant as bingeable content that you consume and then leave. if you do that on netflix, that's fine, because you're paying the platform and they're at least supposed to recompense the creatives who made the show you just watched. fandom artists don't get that. we make things for the love of it, and because we wanted to share that love. it doesn't feel like sharing though when you put something out there and nothing comes back. it feels like standing in an empty warehouse telling my stories to nobody. and, again, i'm personally lucky enough that it's not like that all the time, but i get why people stop doing it. and i get that engaging with art as an audience member doesn't come easy to everyone, but fandom culture needs it. it's supposed to be an exchange. it's supposed to go both ways, and i think if you want to sustain the culture, you simply need to try and give something back, whatever that is.
because putting something you made out there and nobody looks at it is definitely not a great feeling, but having anonymous masses file by and look at your thing and then meet you with deafening silence feels... worse.
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hi @liliana-von-k, thanks for the follow! i have answered this question before but i love talking about kids in the hall and my "origin story" with them so i'm happy to tell it again (jsyk it will be a long post bc i always have to tell the full story bc i love it so much)
basically my parents have both been kith fans since the 90s, so even before i had seen any of the show itself there were certain kith quotes that were just part of my family's vocabulary. the first sketch i watched was "these are the daves i know" when i was like 8 years old and i became obsessed with that song. i watched a few other sketches/the first few episodes from season one but i didn't truly get into kith until after their documentary "comedy punks" was released
see, my mom is a big documentary person so she was like "oh hey there's a new kids in the hall documentary! do you want to watch it?" and i just kind of shrugged and was like sure i'll be in the room while it's on, probably working on my own stuff or scrolling on my phone. but like not even five minutes in i was hooked. while i'd always enjoyed kids in the hall's comedy, something about hearing the very personal histories of how the troupe came together and survived for all these years was so affecting. i think it was scott specifically that really signaled to me that this show was something special, and the part where bruce talked about comforting scott while he had cancer by telling him how the rest of the troupe would die first was so powerful. honestly no individual movie has changed my life more than comedy punks did specifically bc it gave me that push to get into kith and approached it from such a human perspective, which definitely informed my approach to the rest of their work and them as people. i remember watching comedy punks for the first time and getting this strange feeling i couldn't pin down yet that was like this is important, not just referring to the show or the troupe, but like this feeling that i had just crossed a turning point in my life, and i remember feeling this pull towards toronto which seemed frivolous at the time but has been so heavily solidified as i'm now planning to move there in just over a year.
so i bingewatched all of the kids in the hall tv show in summer 2022, as well as brain candy, death comes to town, the amazon season, etc. basically as much kith stuff as i could find. but i needed more. so i started getting into side projects, which brought me to "mouth congress" (a queer-punk band scott thompson and paul bellini had in the early 80s that they've recently started putting out new music with again). i found a youtube channel with a bunch of recent live performance clips of the band and each video had like less than 10 views. so since i didn't have anyone to infodump about kith with irl (aside from my very patient mother lol) i started commenting on every video, complimenting the performances and pretending i was talking to a friend, confident no one would actually see it
after 2 weeks of this, turns out someone did see it. PAUL BELLINI HIMSELF. this led to a whole back-and-forth which eventually ended up with him emailing me a copy of the unreleased mouth congress documentary, i emailed back asking if he'd be interested in meeting on zoom (since i am a queer comedy writer myself so both he and scott are my biggest comedy inspirations), and yeah bellini is a delightful person to talk to and we very quickly became friends. i ended up offering to run mouth congress's social media, which can be found on both tumblr and instagram as @mouthcongress and posts both vintage videos from the 80s/90s and recent live clips. they're currently working on an album of entirely new material written in the past 2 years which is going to be released soon (we don't have a specific release date but the recording is completed and they've started filming music videos for it!! but i'm getting ahead of myself lmao)
a few months pass and mouth congress is set to perform at a new year's eve show at a local club in toronto. i'd never been to toronto before, never even left the united states, but paul says it would be so great to have me there and by some miracle my parents say yes to making the trip (they still can't believe this is happening either, since they were kith fans first!). the trip is wonderful, i immediately fall in love with the city, i get lunch with paul irl for the first time and get to have my very first face-to-face conversation with my number one comedy inspiration scott thompson. it's honestly a little awkward but in an adorable funny way. i also have my first legal drink at that show (bc canadian drinking age is lower than the us), specifically saying i want to have my first drink with buddy cole, which both scott and paul are very into
it's actually only a couple weeks until i'm in toronto again, because scott is debuting a new buddy cole show consisting of monologues that were all censored by amazon that he pitched during the revival season. this is my first time traveling a long distance without my family which my mom is anxious about so paul bellini lets me have him as my emergency contact. the show is amazing, i get to stay for the afterparty, and while i'm there i casually mention that i'm surprised no one has made a buddy cole documentary yet. like, this character has such a rich history even beyond the kids in the hall (which i can infodump about all day lmao) and is such an important staple of queer comedy that doesn't get the attention he deserves. the kith documentary is great, but where's my buddy cole documentary? paul accepts my pitch (that i didn't even realize i was pitching), passes along the idea to scott, and yeah now i'm legit directing a film with my number one comedy heroes and i haven't even graduated college yet. what the fuck. i expected this to be the type of thing i accomplish over 20 years into my career, not at twenty!! so yeah that's how the buddy cole documentary started. i'm still in preproduction on it but we're launching an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it in the next 2 weeks bc this has evolved into a full feature-length film with some incredible celebrity interviewees, both kith and otherwise.
anyway a few months later it's announced bruce mcculloch is bringing his one-man-show to the city i go to school in. not only that, but his theater is literally 2 blocks from campus. i ask paul if he'd give me bruce's contact so i can set up an interview for my school's newspaper, paul gives me bruce's assistant's email, and i set up a 30-minute zoom two weeks before bruce will be in town. the conversation honestly goes bizarrely well. like it's honestly surreal how close bruce and i got after only knowing each other for a half hour? he's such an easy person to talk to and literally by the end of that conversation he was already calling himself my mentor, asking about my comedy, and offering to let me meet him backstage after his show. which is exactly what i did, launching yet another incredible friendship-slash-mentorship with one of the kids in the hall.
bruce eventually signed on to executive produce the buddy cole documentary (alongside paul bellini), i've been up to toronto in january, april, june, august, and october this year (so essentially every 2 months, though it was slightly offset by going twice in january) and i'm planning on going up in december, every time not only do i find time to meet up with scott, paul, and bruce but they all deliberately try to reserve as much "jess time" as they can because i have a unique and powerful friendship with each of them, every time i finish a new creative project paul has to see it bc he loves how ambitious i am, i repeatedly wake up to texts scott sends me at 3am about the documentary and how excited he is to have me on tour with him to film it next year, bruce thinks it's hilarious he used to think i was "shy" bc i've gotten so comfortable going on infodumps and tangents about things i'm passionate about, and the three of them all feel like extended family. best of all, i actually have plans to graduate from college a semester early so that i can use the money (and time) i've saved to find a place in toronto and start making even more connections with the comedy community up there (also for the record: no i have not met mark, kevin, or dave yet. i know kevin is aware of my existence from bruce giving me a shoutout at a show they both did but that's about it. but i know i will interview all of them for my documentary)
so anyway that's how i got into kids in the hall. i know only the first 2 paragraphs answer your question, but at this point my love for this show has become so so intertwined with my relationships to bruce and scott and paul as humans that i don't really consider getting into kids in the hall and getting to know the kids in the hall as separate things in my life.
(also if you have any follow-up questions on anything mentioned feel free to reply or dm me, this goes for everyone else too!)
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