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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.
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Date: 2024-07-08 03:44 pm (UTC)From: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!
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Date: 2024-07-08 07:36 pm (UTC)From: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.
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Date: 2024-07-09 09:30 am (UTC)From: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.)
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Date: 2024-07-09 04:39 pm (UTC)From: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.
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Date: 2024-07-14 03:29 pm (UTC)From: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 :)