Second only to the wonderful stories and art I found in R/S fandom, the social aspect is what drew me to it. Even though I only lurked at first, I found myself not only reading the stories and looking at the art, but also wanting to see what others said about them. And it was clear from the back-and-forth in some of the comments, what a special experience that is. It's a bond not often experienced between readers and writers, and I wanted to be part of that. Now I wish I'd joined years ago! But I'm especially glad to be part of this fest—I the idea of creating specifically for someone and having them create something especially for me is so cool.

The best comments I've received are the ones where the commenter is a bit inarticulate because they're still reeling from emotion—that to me is the best compliment, to know you affected someone on such a deep level. Comments that reference specific things the reader liked are always appreciated, but just getting comments in general is nice. It's always disheartening when your work is posted and you only get a couple of comments. I think this tends to happen near the end of a fest—the work posted first almost always gets a high number of comments, and then things drop off after a while. I've been guilty about this myself because I got behind in one fest and never finished commenting on the works. In the last two fests I've participated in, I've tried to give good comments on every piece because I know how disappointing it is to not know whether your work resonated with people or not.