>tfw there's an undocumented 4000 word minimum for the feature box · 4:30am May 8th, 2013
I wrote a huge amount of text on why knighty's average technical competence doesn't justify his overwhelmingly awful artistic taste, but fuck it. I could talk about bad authors being whiny, but fuck it. I might just talk about successful authors barely capable of speaking English being overrated and then criticising the same system and people that made them overrated, but fuck it. I could talk about repealing universal suffrage and moving to weighted voting, but fuck it.
If I were younger, I might be mad; as it is, all I can do is giggle at the sheer helplessness on display. "I'll bring the issue to knighty's attention"? It's like nobody knows how to learn things any more.
Next I'll be hearing about people asking carpenters to build IKEA furniture for them.
Jesus Christ.
Hmm... nah. It isn't worth it.
Would you really want anyone to make changes? Like half the things NTSTS mentions on his wish list are actually horrible (especially the Norman Bates-style, I will accept violent dismemberment in my fanfiction but sex is bad, dirty sinful and I can't look at it or mother will get upset).
The whole 4000 word thing was a change in response to complaints about how horrible it was that shortfics were getting featured. Now it is horrible that shortfics can't be featured. Either way, the contents of the featured box are horrible.
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The 502 error (my favorite FIMFiction feature) seems to be making quite a come back of late.
FiMFiction doesn't stand a chance with knighty himself plotting against it, but if you want there is this group.made for specifically attacking supporters of Fimfiction
Heck, sugarcube, I've written more poni words than there are in Narnia or LOTR, apparently, and I've got the feature box for my _four_ books exactly once, for about five minutes. I have a screenshot of it.
It didn't matter. Repeat, it didn't matter. Don't even sweat this stuff. I know it's unfair and ridiculous. It's the National Enquirer, it's the supermarket check-out. There's a part of you that longs for Plato (or, insert your own favorite 'epic timeless outburst of deep truth and meaning' here) and demands to see it popularly celebrated because it's objectively that good. It will never happen—but what you're missing is that the ephemeral DIES.
I'm totally 'obscure', but on a good day I pull more re-reads than 'My Little Dashie' and it's fairly evenly distributed throughout my books, not centered on one 'meme hotspot' piece. And I know that those books are crafted right, with all their emdashes and such in place: because as I picked up that sort of typographic craft, I went back and PUT the emdashes and things in place—hundreds of thousands of words worth, knowing there would be no feature box.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It DOESN'T matter.
Do YOUR writing to the best of your ability. I will never forget you're the 'Edmund Crispin' pony, capable of English usage that truly challenges my erudition and a curious academic frivolity that sometimes really hits the spot and tickles my quirkybone.
Pay absolutely no attention to the feature system and write more, especially stories (though your bullfighting with other authors can be amusing).
As for Knighty, somepony had to do it (it being, make the fic site that caught on and snowballed). I keep off-site backups of everything I care about. As long as things muddle along, my energy is better spent not trying to do his job, or even audit it.
1062802 I can only agree.
That said, popularity certsunly feels nice.
Actually IKEA offers assembly services by their own staff.
/irrelevance
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The thing is it isn't sex. It's ponies having sex. There's a very big difference, as ponies having sex is most definitely an out-there fetish. Not to mention there's a lot of trashy smut clopfics getting featured right now. I'll read sex if it's got decent story behind it, like sleepless' stuff, or as part of a romance subplot like in Fo:E. But I really wish I would stop seeing 2nd person stories about you having near-spontaneous sex with characters. Or just characters having near-spontaneous sex with other characters.
Fact is, there is some correlation between quality and word count. And when you dip down to one shots below 3k or so, the amount of bad stuff increases, as does the amount of bad stuff with a pandering nature to get featured.
It sucks, because in hindsight my currently almost 99% rated fic, that's on EqD, probably should have gotten featured if it weren't for this limit. The story finished its opening run with ~130 views, most of which it got in the first hour. Although now it sits at 4.4k views or something.
Is it fair? No. It excludes some good things that may possibly deserve to be featured. Is it good for the site? Yes. It does improve the quality of the featured box. And while you can argue that 'well, it won't get featured if people don't want it there', I could remind you that just because enough people liked it to bring it there, doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't hate it.
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And ponies + gore makes any more sense?
I write gorefics. I read gorefics. I adore blood and violence and nastiness in all its forms.
But it doesn't make any damn sense in the MLP universe, and most people on this site aren't interested in it. It is a pretty "out-there" thing, as you say.
Is it such a horrible affront to you that whilst wading through knee-deep pools of blood, prolapsed intestines, industrial accidents, demons from Hell, and whatever other nonsense people fill the Mature tag with, you might also see Twilight Sparkle with a penis?
And the stuff that panders to get featured now also includes being almost exactly 4,000 words long among its sins, making it four times as painful to slog through and four times as pointless.
If anything, the 4,000 word requirement has lowered the requirement to get featured, as now a good portion of the competition has been removed. Reduced competition = lower quality standards. Which is why bullshit like that Shrek story gets featured.
As for whether other people like stuff being in the featured box? TDB. The world ain't made specifically for your benefit, I weep and cry, gnash my teeth and play my violin. Know what I'm tired of seeing? Video game crossovers. Seriously, Commander Mass Effect must have enough frequent flier miles to redeem for an entire damn plane by this point.
The solution is to write the stories you want to see, read the stories you want to read, and quit trying to save other people from themselves. Let the cloppers have their 0-3 featured stories. Let the cuteporn writers have their 0-3 featured stories. Let the people vote in what they will. Quit trying to fix things that were never broken in the first place.
I used to bartend in a country pub. One of the locals was a carpenter who'd fallen on hard-ish times because of the recession. So she set up a side business called 'The Flatpack Fairy' building people's IKEA furniture for them. She had a van and a shirt and everything.
Dissolution is already at hand. Cease your puny resistance.