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.