I guess I'm feeling old and curmudgeonly, and as I've been writing mini-rants and saving them to my desktop for a while, I'm going to post them now and see what happens. Grar.
Rantlets like... If you do not know how many parts there are to your story, I know that I am not interested in opening even one of them.
Also, if your 'chapter' is less than 1,500 words long, but you have several dozen of them apparently ready to post - why not amalgamate, say, four or five pieces into one posting? Give me enough time to get interested in your story, and I might. Well, no, I won't, actually, because chaptered fic just pisses me off, but anyway. Also, get a fucking beta. Jesus.
It's no longer the confusion of discreet=/=discrete, your=/=you're, or even bazaar=/=bizarre. And I cannot remember the last time I saw someone use 'rein' when they meant 'rein', unless in a non-fic post relating to actual horses. But these days it's even worse. It's, like, not knowing that a sentence ends with a full stop. Don't these people *read*? What fandom needs - possibly every fandom, possibly just the select few—is a Ruthless Grammar Ninja who will swoop in from nowhere and Deal With It All. Or maybe it's The Internet that needs a Ruthless Grammar Ninja with a cattle prod. Oh well.
The fandom Thing these days, everywhere I look, seems to be comment-fic, whether for outright kink memes or something more general. Again with the 'how many parts, exactly?' I've no doubt there is good stuff posted, but oh, god, what is wrong with completing a bloody story *before* posting? Are we cultivating the twenty-second attention span on purpose now? I so much prefer the
fic_requests format of leaving a prompt in place until someone fills it.
Unless there is an actual Big Bang challenge, the sight of another layout-busting graphic accompanying a story just makes me page down faster.
Also, consent issues, people! Please!
Maybe it's an age thing, or a fandom-generational thing, or just that I'm tired and fed up and have mislaid my muse. Whatever it is, the fandom of my heart isn't giving me what I need, and what's available instead just does not feel like the right shape for me, and it makes me sad.