Reasons someone may not have replied that arenāt the bad reasons your brain suggests to you (theyāre mad, stopped caring, you arenāt important, etc).
Theyāre asleep/resting.
They have no service.
They want to take time to form their reply.
They donāt have the energy to reply right now.
Theyāre working / donāt have access to their phone.
They accidentally opened the notification and meant to reply and got distracted (this doesnāt mean they donāt care either! I do this a lot and I love my loved ones dearly. My brain is just chaotic sometimes.)
Theyāre in a really bad place.
Theyāre in a situation where itās rude to use their phone.
They really just want a break from talking to people.
They are enjoying a movie, game, activity, etc.
Something came up they had to deal with asap.
They may have thought they responded (Iāve gone to check a text convo only to see my message sitting in the typing box and I hadnāt hit āsendā)
A lot of the time, to challenge irrational thoughts we need alternative explanations to combat them. Here are some for a situation when a loved one hasnāt replied to you. I encourage you to plan for other situations that come up for you as well.
In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.
I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!
From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!
I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.
The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.
(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)
If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.
The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.
insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
delete -> self explanatory
on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic
The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.
Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.
what a beautiful thing, to be queer. how lovely it is to be strange, to have edges that spill out over the lines, to be undefinable. the oddity of our hearts is something to be treasured. never change for anyone.
i just heard the phrase āif you wouldnāt trust their advice, donāt trust their criticismā for the first time and i donāt think iāve ever needed to hear anything more
"Keep Eyes On Sudan. Write to your media org. Your rep. Your mother. Your group chat!!! We need people to speak on what is happening in El Fasher. Today!" from Yasmin Abdel-Magied, 25/Apr/2024: