A nice fandom moment

 A few weeks ago, I read my way through a series of James Sirius/Teddy fics (The Color of Deception by Unkissed if you're interested) and left comments on each of the 10 fics that make up the series. They weren't particularly long comments, a couple of sentences at most, and I left them and as you do, moved on.

Yesterday my phone started buzzing as the author's replies to each of those comments came through and I sat and read through all of their replies. It was such a lovely moment, being able to remember the fics, and how nice it had felt to leave appreciative comments for the author, and how wonderful it was to get their replies in turn. It really just made me feel good about fandom, and reminded me of all the brilliant parts of it and the community that you can build around fanfiction.

There's a lot of talk in fandom about how good comments are for the writer, and how much they appreciate them, but this has reminded me how nice comments, and replies to comments, can be for readers, too - how great it feels to know that you've made someone happy by leaving a comment on something they put lots of work into, and how it can really build that feeling of community. 

I'm terrible for letting comments on my fics pile up before replying to them, and I'm sure some popular authors just do not have the time to reply to all the ones they get, as well as there being many other legitimate reasons that authors don't reply to their comments, but this has made me want to make more of an effort to reply to any comments I receive, so that hopefully my readers can experience the same feeling I got last night. 

It's the little things like this that make me fall in love with fandom all over again.