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[personal profile] rielity posting in [community profile] noyabeans
what in the world, it's june already.

I'm stuck in a writing hole again?! or rather, I don't know how to start... I haven't head-written anything in a very very very long time and I miss the feeling... (or rather, I headwrote stuff for reincarnation au but didn't write them down so I forgot what I headwrote, wth).

Hmm... some heavy stuff under the cut, cos I was thinking about stuff again.

[whining about stats and a little bit about fandom. please don't disown me, even tho I'm always whining about this.]

I realised I somehow... gave myself anxiety (?) over replying to comments, which is why I stopped replying completely this year. I've only replied two so far - the first was Rits' comment on ATA, and the second was in reply to someone's reply to my comment on their fic. as far as I can, I thank the people who comment on my fics if I can find them on social media/if we're mutuals/if whatever. but I've stopped replying comments altogether... even though I told myself I'd reply comments on my HQ fics.

I feel really bad that I never got around to replying the other commenters on ATA, but in my own defense it was because my self-esteem honestly took a pretty bad beating from ATA's reception. tbh the two-month break between ATA and bits and pieces wasn't for lack of ideas or muse, it was because of my confidence in my writing plummeted to rock bottom after I posted ATA. 

It's... ironic! Cos of how proud I was of ATA. I think that's exactly why I took the reception so hard - I had high expectations of it and it didn't perform. I seldom have expectations of anything, so I know that I had a lot of expectations of ATA... heck, even though I was already kind of ~eh~ that kira-kira didn't do as well as I thought it would, it wasn't like I poured days and nights headwriting and actually writing it, unlike ATA.

I think I mentioned before - I lived, breathed and dreamed ATA for the better part of December. it's definitely the fic that I've poured the biggest part of my heart and soul into. and okay, I know. I know I shouldn't always be hung up about stats, or get affected by my readers' reception/lack thereof. but at the same time, it's... the feeling when you see your hit count rising but the kudo count stays exactly the same - it's the shittiest feeling ever. it's the reason why I switched off public hit views, tbh. I mean, I still can see my hits, but my readers can't. maybe it's because personal bias tells me that if fics don't have 1 kudo per 10 hits at least, I won't read it at all.

who am I kidding, that's exactly why I switched it off. the kudo-hit count for ATA is actually abysmal. most days I don't like to think about it. honestly, At Sunrise is following in its footsteps. but that's the difference: I was absolutely broken by how ATA was received tbh. this sounds so egoistic but at the same time, it's exactly what I feel... lol. I definitely was expecting 1-10 ratio at the very least: it's the bare minimum for any fic I write. right now almost all my fics are 1-10 or below, besides ATA, Sunrise and kira-kira. also crossfire, but crossfire has the defense of being a Major Rarepair. (on another note: I sometimes wish I could aim for 1-5 but I know I'm just being unrealistic. hardly anyone has 1-5 unless they're BNFs or the fic is a fandom classic. I'm nowhere near either.) 

so the fact that ATA performed worse than any other fic I'd ever posted (bar my DGM fics, because the DGM fandom is a whole other can of worms) left me seriously shattered and I struggled a lot with writing after that lmao. it helped that I was talking to Mel about that time, and they managed to persuade me to get back on my feet. it's still very difficult for me to look at my stats now, even though it's been 5 months.

sometimes I wonder why reception is like this. rationally, I know why - it's a trippy AU. my style in the fic throws people off. it's a rarepair. the formatting of the fic is confusing. it's long. it's Plot. but other times it makes me question if the fic is as good as I thought it to be. if my writing is as good as I like to believe. maybe I've just been thinking too highly of myself all this while, lmao. that's how I ended up in that awful insecure loop where I couldn't bring myself to reply anyone who commented... lol. 

but yeah, it's been 5 months. I'm mostly fine with it now, though I don't look at ATA much anymore. the lousy reception also got me to mentally prep myself for when I posted Sunrise (trippy AU. major character death. pain. illness. angst. no happy ending. Plot. Kagehina.) - which came true, because reception of Sunrise is... actually even worse than ATA OTL;;; 

on the bright side, I did get a lot of comments and bookmarks on ATA and Sunrise, so there's that. most readers might not enjoy, but the ones who do, really do. so... it's not all bad. I would honestly have given up on Timeless if not for my co commenters, friends and mutuals being so incredibly supportive - because like, why write it when barely anyone's reading it? a number of readers (who are not my mutuals) also said that ATA was less of a story as it was an experience, which made me really happy. they were a big part of the reason why I decided to get back up. 

but it's just that... seeing stats like that on works that I poured time and effort and pain into, really sucks big time. especially when I see how they perform in comparison to fics that I know the fandom likes. yes, I'm talking about trope AUs. trope scenes. trope plots. why can't I just write trope fics then, instead of giving myself headaches and heartbreaks over painful plots and universes? (and also stats.) 

I kid.

no point being salty. what's done is done, and nothing I say will change anything! I'll just keep writing what I want to write and try not to let anything else get to me like that again.

after all, when you've hit rock bottom the only way to go is up. 

Date: 2017-06-02 03:37 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] aritzen
*pats

fwiw I really love ATA. It's the first kuroyaku fic I bookmarked o/ and would've been the only one if not for your Reincarnation AU lol



tbh I don't believe in hits on AO3 just like I don't believe in anon kudos on AO3. Partly because it's not really reliable as a measure, but mostly because of the anonymity. The hits for ATA could be from the same readers who read it over and over again because they love it so much.

From my perspective, the comments you received for ATA are what matters and enough to make other writers Very Jealous/Envious x) MR didn't get its first comment until 3 weeks after I posted it, and it was from someone who'd reread it 3 times by then. And right now, more than a year later, it's at 8 (unique) comments (mostly 1-liners) to ATA's 11? If I could get similar comments by adding 1000 hits, I would :P

Not saying that it's not demoralizing to see hits dramatically increase and nothing else - because it is. (When Bee posted her fanart for Nightingale, the hits for Nightingale doubled but everything else stayed the same, and I was like "thanks bee.... do I hate you or love you") Even now I struggle with the post-posting hangover. The worst are the readers who leave one comment and then disappear for the rest of the fic (where do they come from WHERE DO THEY GO do they hate the fic now or did they get into a traffic accident - and someone just unsubscribed... for real... second time it's happened orz)

FS and I are both dealing with few comments per update, and we still feel dejected even though we know and tell each other that we're not writing for everybody, that we're just writing for that one reader. For a while, it was just me commenting on FS's fics, but then one day she got a substantial and really touching comment from another physicist reader, and she was like "I LOVE PHYSICISTS, THEY COMMENT" lol It's worse for FS because she gets troll comments and some of her readers cherry-pick particular chapters to read and end up missing the whole plot, so she often wonders why she bothers posting instead of just writing and showing it to me. But those moments of getting a substantial comment make it worth it for us. And for me personally, the ability to attach that reception to a name rather than a number (hits or kudos) is much more meaningful. Not to mention the fact that I got to know FS and another close friend and, of course, you through the comments :'>

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