Fanfic moaning

[galadhir]

It's very odd how it always seems to go this way: You write what you think is one of your best fics ever, and it gets absolute silence from readers. You write a throwaway thing that you don't think is much good, and it gets more comments than you could have imagined.

I'm currently doing the first thing of those. I think 'Visitation' is really good. And more than that, I'm actually enjoying writing it to the extent that I am excited about it and rotating it in my head like I used to do with stories back when I was a proper writer. But I post it and... crickets.

Meanwhile I've just come off what I thought was a rather pointless piece of kid-fic, and that was getting twenty comments per chapter.

And it wouldn't matter so much if I had any idea what made one more popular than the other. Is it just that this one is in Xichen's pov instead of Jin Guangyao's? Is it that JGY is dead in this one, and it might take him a few years to come back? IDK. I cannot have become a worse writer in the space of the two weeks between one fic and the next, so it must be the subject matter and not me, but it is a bit baffling and discouraging.

Never mind. Visitation is for me, so I'm going to continue to write it for me. Whether I continue to post it or not is another matter.

Comments

[seleneheart]

Visitation is for me, so I'm going to continue to write it for me.

Good for you!

I can't even tell you what makes fic popular - I've had these same thoughts, many times.

[galadhir]

It's so odd, isn't it? I've noticed it before, and always found it a bit odd and disheartening. But I suppose that's the price you pay for writing something just for yourself. If it's entirely for you, perhaps it doesn't share well.

[shipperslist]

You write what you think is one of your best fics ever, and it gets absolute silence from readers. You write a throwaway thing that you don't think is much good, and it gets more comments than you could have imagined.

Lol yeah. One of the best fics I've ever written got crickets despite some people performing Great Interest when I talked about it. And then there's my tongue-in-cheek sterek thing that's going on 6K kudos and counting. Like. Why.

[galadhir]

It is something I've noticed before. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I should deliberately write stuff that I don't care about much, but sometimes you've got to write something for yourself - so I guess paying the penalty for that is just what you do :)

[shipperslist]

I mostly write for myself; the kinds of stories I want to read and explore. My reader numbers plummeted when I archive-locked all my fic but I knew it would happen. It is what it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[galadhir]

Oh that's interesting! I did archive lock my fic half way through the last story, and it didn't seem to make any difference then, but that is something that has changed between this story and the last. With all the AI scraping going around though, it felt like it needed to be done.

[watervole]

Erm, am I missing something? Visitation seems to have 20 comments and a fair bit of kudos too. Or did you link to the wrong fic? (Didn't read it, as it's a fandom I know absolutely nothing about)

[galadhir]

It has about three comments about how much the reader hates the character I'm writing about, and then a conversation under those comments about how they're interpreting the character wrong, and how if they don't like the character they won't enjoy the rest of the fic.

It's essentially had three comments that actually engaged with the fic as it is, and all the others are attacking the main character. And the three comments are one per chapter from the same lovely reader :)

This is in a really big fandom where my previous story got about 20 positive and engaged comments per chapter (Which I would then say thanks for, resulting in 40 comments per chapter) - so if I was getting comments at the same rate as before it would have been up to 120 by now.

[shipperslist]

Oh, good that you pointed out comments, I got to mute and block yet another user.

[galadhir]

LOL! Thank you :) I seem to get quite a few comments that are more or less 'this character you love enough to write a fic about is a terrible person'. Normally I'm mentally prepared for it because I tend to stan villains, or at least unsympathetic characters. but I was staggered to receive one about Lan Xichen of all people, who genuinely tries to be good and nice to everyone. The whole experience of posting this has been deeply cursed. I wonder what I did!

[shipperslist]

I mean, he IS gullible to the point of idiocy at times and he's willfully ignorant (pointing at your icon) but he isn't cruel or mean or evil. He tries to please everyone and stay as diplomatic as possible which is why everything goes to shit.

Back when I started to post CQL fic, I used to put an A/N that said something along the lines of "don't be a dick, that's a stupid choice and will get you blocked." My tolerance for idiots is very low.

[galadhir]

LOL! I don't really see LXC as gullible so much as being someone who is aware that they're all operating in a system where you can't always choose to do what you would want to do, and sometimes you'll be forced to pick the lesser of two evils.

So he's willing to overlook some of the stuff that JGY does because he is always willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt. Which is reasonable since JGY saved his life and made sure the Lans had the money to rebuild. He owes JGY as much gratitude and goodwill as he can muster. (Even aside from the fact that they're friends, brothers and soulmates.)

I suppose I think of him as 'open-minded' rather than 'gullible' but I can see why sometimes that can come to the same thing.

(The icon is really more of a joke. I actually think what he's doing there is struggling to contain a sudden collapse/descent into horror and despair without giving way to an unseemly display of emotion.)

[shipperslist]

I suppose I think of him as 'open-minded' rather than 'gullible' but I can see why sometimes that can come to the same thing.

I feel like he's one of those characters that is very easy to shift around without much character study, whereas making JGY (or XY) a good guy needs a bit more fleshing out.

[galadhir]

100% agreement there :) But making good guys out of bad guys is most of the fun of fanfic for me, so I'm up for that challenge :)

[watervole]

Ouch. If they don't like the character, why read the story? Or is it that a lot of people don't like that character and hence aren't reading the story?

Mind you, back in the day, I would read any good story in my main fandom, and actively sought out the ones about minor characters, as they tended to have different story elements.

(I'm completely ignorant of the fandom, so please forgive if it's actually about a very popular character)

[galadhir]

Ouch. If they don't like the character, why read the story?

I know, right! And it's especially bizarre because I thought nobody could possibly hate Xichen, who is a genuinely kind man trying his best to understand and help everyone. (Sometimes he fails but that's because the world of the narrative is against him.)

Xichen's soulmate is the final villain of the fandom, Jin Guangyao, who I also write, and I was 100% prepared for pushback on my JGY stuff, because it makes sense for him to have haters. But poor Xichen whose only crime was being deceived? It's very strange.

(To be fair, if you're reading the book entirely with the POV that the heroes are infallible and anyone who disapproves of them must be evil, then you can get to a position in which Xichen is either stupid or bad.

1. He doesn't want his younger brother (one of the heroes) to throw his lot in with a necromancer who uses ghosts to kill people and who is rapidly becoming public enemy number one.
2. When his brother does publicly fight against his own elders in defense of the necromancer, Xichen allows him to be punished for this. (Because the punishment keeps him safe from the judgement of the world and allows him to re-enter the world later with his reputation unblemished.)
3. Xichen is in love with a guy who turns out to have murdered his way to the top of the cultivation world, who becomes the final villain of the piece, and he asks his brother (and the necromancer, now hero) to show him proof before he will believe their words about it.

So, you know, he's never really much more than lukewarm about the novel's main romance, and for a long time he's the villain's biggest fan. Which when I put it like that is probably enough to make people hate him. But they're wrong! He's just trying to do his best in a very flawed and horrific system.

[watervole]

What you're saying makes complete sense. I would have though that background would make Xichen a layered and interesting character.

Sadly, as you say, may people expect characters to know what the viewer knows about who is good and evil. But they are not omniscient - they do not know how the story ends.

[galadhir]

Esactly - you really have to take into account what the character knows, and what their intentions are, and that requires taking an emotional step backwards from the immediacy of what is going on in the story. For some reason I've never been able to like heroes, so that part comes easily to me, but I daresay it's harder if you can always expect your favourite characters to triumph in the end, because you think that's what storytelling is all about.

[shipperslist]

A fic's popularity depends on what fandom it's written for. For a tiny fandom work that would be awesome, for a megafandom like this, it is low.

[galadhir]

It really is :) We'll have to see if it picks up in the next chapter, because Wei Wuxian will be in that one. He usually helps :)

[evilwriter37]

I completely understand this. There are fics that I put my heart and soul and energy into that get almost complete silence, and then fics that I bust out in half an hour or so get more of a reaction. It's just strange how that works sometimes.

Though, I'm currently taking a hiatus from posting, and I think it's helping my writing a lot, actually! I'm glad you're writing your fic for yourself, because writing for an audience can be stressful. I had to relearn how to write for myself, because posting was just causing too much anxiety.

[galadhir]

I had to relearn how to write for myself, because posting was just causing too much anxiety.

Yes, I think that's exactly it. I had stopped writing altogether and lost my confidence in my ability, and then I started doing a bit of fanfic again and that really helped me to rediscover the joy of it and the certainty that it is something that I can do. But posting is such a crap-shoot, and you never know whether you're going to get more comments than you imagined or none at all. And that's not great for the nerves!

It is so odd that it's always the fic you care about most that seems to do unexpectedly poorly. I suppose it's some sort of tax you pay for writing something that is specially for you, but it does make you feel like you're a bit of an outcast from humanity because your tastes are so strange to everyone else.

[watervole]

I think some people only read short stories, because of lack of time. I know one of my ultra shorts got a lot more hits than my novel.