Fic updates after a long time

[mekare]

Since one of my favourite fics has just been updated after 8 years (and the current part is now finished) - what‘s the longest that you have ever waited for an update?

Btw, I love the AO3 subscription option for individual works for this reason because it lets me know, even if it‘s been years, as in this case. Part 1 was posted to an archive (not AO3 back then) in 2001 by the way.

ETA: schneefink reminded me that I forgot to tell you which fic I‘m talking about. It‘s the Identical Series (Smallville fandom) which of now has 11 parts and about 300.000 words.

Comments

[naath]

wow, a huge wait. I think I've not waited more than a year

[mekare]

It simply is that good and I became hugely invested in the original characters as well. Plus, it is very long, so I had already invested a lot of reading time (roughly 300.000 words worth).

[schneefink]

Clearly this means you need to share ^^

[mekare]

Whoops, I edited the post. I meant to link, thanks for reminding me.

[rionaleonhart]

It was a five-year wait for me!

I first discovered Zarla's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac fic Vargas in 2004 and absolutely devoured it, despite knowing nothing about Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

In April 2020, looking for something to do in lockdown, I remembered the fic. It was still a work in progress and hadn't been updated since 2015, so I doubted it ever would be, but I reread the entire thing, leaving a series of increasingly lengthy and enthusiastic comments as I fell back into it.

The fic got three enormous new chapters a month later, totalling over 40,000 words. I was delighted. I hope all my overinvested rambling had a hand in it.

[mekare]

That‘s great! I do think that new comments on an older fic can give authors the inspiration to continue.

[trobadora]

The one that immediately comes to mind is a Highlander fic - auberus's Shades and Echoes. It started in 2007, got a bunch of new chapters in 2014, and I'm still hoping it'll be continued.

[mekare]

Hope springs eternal in the WIP world...

[ruuger]

Is a POV from th eother side allowed? Because I have a Buffy WIP that I started in 2008 that is still missing it's final chapter (though to my defence, it's been only 4 years since I last posted a chapter) and I swear one day I will finish it!

(if for no other reason that I suspect that the lingering final chapter has caused me to fall under a curse where every WIP that I subscribe to on AO3 will immediately stop updating)

[mekare]

Sure, I‘d love for more authors to share their views on this.
I get that life happens, muses leave or plots and/or characters can be uncooperative.

[arcanetrivia]

Clearly, you must appease the fic gods.

[annathecrow]

Oh, ow. Sympathies.

I have one tiny 10k fic that took me 3 years to finish, with the gap between last two chapters longer than a year. There's nothing worse than getting stuck in the middle of a story that clearly has a plot, knowing there might be people waiting on the resolution, and not being able to kick yourself to get it done.

When the story is intended as open-ended, at least the reader knows what they get into... at least that's what I tell myself when I think about that one WIP I'm writing right now XD

[zing_och]

I'm currently scrolling through 10 pages of subscriptions on AO3 and rediscovering stuff I like, even if it's not finished yet. *g*

But that's what I love about the subscribe feature - when there is an update after a long time, I've usually forgotten all about the fic (or given up hope), so it's a nice surprise!

As for waiting time - I'm bad at keeping track, but I remember that astolat finished the Scholomance series seven years after the first parts. (That was in 2007, but I'm blanking on more recent stuff. It's not that uncommon, though.)

[mekare]

>>I'm currently scrolling through 10 pages of subscriptions on AO3 and rediscovering stuff I like

Ha, this is me.

And I agree, it feels like a present when it happens.

[schneefink]

I can't find the original posts rn to make sure, and the imported works don't have the original dates, but I'm pretty sure Maldoror_Chant updated some of her works (like "The Source of All Things" after more than a decade. I was so excited!

[mekare]

I can imagine! It‘s like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one sometimes.

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

I think the longest I've waited was between one and two years for the final chapter of Everywhere and Waiting by ruthwrites. The time since the last update had been a little over three years though.
I haven't been reading fanfiction for very long (I only really got into it in 2019 though I had read a few before then) so there's a pretty hard upper limit of how long I could have waited for anything to update.
I think it's nice to get a surprise update after a long absence if I'm still interested in the fic.

[sabotabby]

NGL there is this one Nick Cave/Blixa Bargeld RPF fic that was last updated in 2016 and I'm still subscribed.

[arcanetrivia]

I wait 2 years. After that point I decide whether I want to save the fic as-is as "abandoned" and clear out the subscription.

eta: I really, really wish that AO3 would include last-updated date on the subscriptions page itself, like FFN does. As it is I have to individually click through to every single one to see when it was last updated.

[unfeathered]

Ooh, I love this! I still have a couple of fics I go back periodically to check on to see if the author has ever got around to adding any more (sadly most of my fic reading took place before AO3 really got going, so I couldn't make use of that subscription facility for those)!

And as a writer, I had a lengthy Doctor Who fic (Master Plan) which I started in 2007 and then just lost momentum on in 2008, with the final two chapters begun but never quite knowing how to finish them. But in 2019 I finally went back to it and finished those two chapters, which were eventually posted in February 2020, after a break of 11 years and 3 months!

I don't know, though, if any of the people who were originally following it on LJ back in 2007/8 are actually still around and have enjoyed finally being able to read those last two chapters. I hope they have!

[chelseagirl]

I don't think I've hung around long enough to find out. However, I did pick up a series I was writing after a break of 17 years -- posting the originals to AO3 for the first time (they'd been in zines and on a fandom-specific website) as I was working on more stories. But they were individual fics.

[soldierwitch]

I'm on year 5 of waiting on AJRedfern to update Weave Me A Myrtle Crown which is a bellarke AU where they're reincarnations of Vulcan and Venus.

As for the oldest WIP I've left on read, it's my Hunger Games fic, Vorare, which is a canon divergent Victory Tour era everlark fic. It's been three years since I updated. I am working on it and will start posting again in January with *fingers crossed* the hope to finish it in the next couple of years.

[allekha]

I think the longest for me has to be twelve years - a fic I still had on my ffn follow list (In Short Supply) updated this year after not updating since 2009! It's not finished yet, but the author claimed to have almost finished the rough draft and has since posted a snippet or two, so they still seem to be working on it.

[yourlibrarian]

I can't say for sure but I know that 3-4 years has happened on several occasions. I'm currently waiting for a story which was deleted and then began being reposted with revisions to catch up to its original length (which was 4 chapters short of being finished) for at least 2 years now.

[writerkit]

I was incredibly gleeful when we got a couple of new chapters of "Ink of Seshat" after four years. Of course, it's now been a few years since those chapters, but I live in hope. (It is a Criminal Minds/Grimm crossover. It is *amazing*.)

[silverusagi]

For me, probably waiting a couple years for an update to Vejiitasei Ascendant.

It remains unfinished but I still out hope that there may be another update someday (though I don't know where the author would put it, since it was on Geocities and that's long gone, as is now the Yahoo mailing list too).

:(

[goneahead]

so um **shuffles feet** I finished a couple of WIPs in 2021 that hadn’t been updated since 2013 and 2014? I had some real life stuff that sidetracked my writing but I’ve finally finished all the older WIPs, and my hope is to also add some timestamps to some of my older verses this year…

**slinks back off**