• Member Since 2nd Jul, 2012
  • offline last seen Jan 30th, 2019

adcoon


More Blog Posts29

  • 335 weeks
    A New Hope

    Someone made a suggestion in my last post, and it was a good suggestion, so without further ado:

    Read More

    3 comments · 687 views
  • 340 weeks
    Endings and Beginnings

    Hey'all. Once again it's been embarrassingly long.

    Read More

    15 comments · 829 views
  • 365 weeks
    Back at it

    Oh boy. It's been more than two years, but Uniformity is finally out of hiatus. I didn't expect it to be that long, but things like that are hard to predict.

    As they say, better late than never.

    Along with the new chapter there's a brief summary of events so far, since I expect I'm not the only one whose memory needs a bit of jogging.

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    8 comments · 502 views
  • 439 weeks
    Here again

    It's that time of year again. I'm talking about NaNoWriMo of course.

    I have been writing practically zilch all year. Just haven't had the energy for it. I know you're all waiting for some sort of update - new chapters and new stories - but sadly I can't promise you any of that yet.

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    0 comments · 480 views
  • 464 weeks
    Uniformity officially on hiatus

    I think I owe you all an update on the status and progress of Uniformity.

    With Back and Forth done, I had hoped to get right back to Uniformity and finally give you some regular updates. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened. I haven't been able to write anything lately, and I kinda feel like a mess right now, trying to juggle everything.

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    7 comments · 568 views
May
17th
2014

One year of uniforms · 6:53pm May 17th, 2014

One year ago today, I published the first chapter of Uniformity. 15 chapters and 130000 words of Lyra and Bonbon later, it's become my longest story yet and remains the most popular of my multi-chapters. It's been an interesting ride, and there's even more coming.

I had hoped to have chapter 16 ready for today to celebrate the occasion, but it needs a little more work and I didn't want to rush it just for this. Expect it around Monday instead. I know the last several chapters have been slow to come, and I certainly never wanted them to take a month or longer each. That's just way too long. I hope I can pick up the pace again and get the chapters out in a timely fashion from now on, and that the waiting hasn't put people off the story.

I'm a little worried that the last half or so of the story hasn't been exactly like it should have been or not exactly what the story deserves, that maybe it could have been better or more inspired somehow. I've had similar misgivings with my other stories, though, and it's impossible to say how bad it really is until I reach the end and see how everything ties together. In the past it's turned out fine in the end, so I hope Uniformity will too.

Can't say the small flood of downvotes on the last two chapters isn't making my worries all the more, well, worrying, though. I wish people who downvote would at least give me their reason, maybe it should even be required (if we really must have downvotes at all). Freakin' downvotes no good for nothing :ajbemused:

Anyway, big momentous occasion, yay! And I just recently passed 300 followers too, and half a million words of pony too, so here's to the future! May it be filled with lots of ponies and many more words! :rainbowkiss:

Oh, and Lyra is Bestest Pony!

Report adcoon · 444 views ·
Comments ( 6 )

I wish there was like a dropdown for stating a reason for disliking a story and showing up on the statistics. If we can see who likes and favs, I see no reason why we can't see for Dislikes, as well. Though, I can see many being petty and doing revenge downvotes if another author downvoted a story or people being whispered to change their votes or something.

Huh, well f that, just stick with the dropdown options ala how you cancel subs with a certain MMO that plays 20 questions as to why you're quitting! lol

Anyhow, I'll do my best to catch up on all those words and let ya know. Been a super slow fic week so I been playing catch up on read laters. Haha, I wanted to be a few chapters ahead on Uniformity, but it seems I lost track after getting so Diamond Cutters involved! That little pink adorable terror is just too much fun to read about.

Doesn't Uniformity have twelve downvotes? I suppose a full 4.1% of your pure binary feedback being negative is something to fret over...

See what I'm getting at? You're an amazing author Adcoon. You need to take every comment with a grain of salt, because your art should be for you.

Although I suppose you should take this comment with a grain of salt too. I haven't even read Uniformity yet, I have a policy to not read things until they're over because the stretch between my reading sessions is often quite long and I tend to forget things.

2120178
I'd sooner they just did away with downvotes entirely. They tell you nothing and disproportionately affect ratings. One downvote will drag your ratings down like nothing else, and it takes many upvotes to undo its effect. That is not a fair and balanced system.

I never downvote anything, ever. Even if it's the most awful story in the history of awful stories, I just leave it and forget about it. I don't feel any need to spite the author by giving them the virtual analogue of the finger. If I'm generous and think it might help the author, I leave a comment explaining what I didn't like and why.

If you have something bad to say about me or my writing, say it with words to my face, or don't say it at all. Don't downvote.

2120801
Well, for one, five of those downvotes happened on the last chapter. That's worrying. Normally when I get maybe one downvote every three chapters or something, I can just shrug at it and assume it's probably nothing to worry about. But getting five downvotes on a single chapter makes me worry that I legitimately did something poorly in that chapter, but the problem is that downvotes tell me exactly nothing, and people who downvote never seem to leave a comment telling me why. Downvotes do not help me improve, they do not help me fix any problems that might be there.

I'm pretty sure a lot of downvotes happen because of stupid things, like the reader spotted a single typo and rage-quit the story because of that, or they didn't like one minor character. But five downvotes on one chapter is very unusual for me, it's something I practically never see. That means I can't say it's probably just stupid reasons.

Hmmmm... The whole upvote/downvote thing to me is an odd mix of helpful and useless. Personally, I hold off on an upvote until I have finished a story completely or (on a rare occasion) have had enough confidence in a story that I don't need to reach the end to say I've enjoyed the story immensely.

Downvotes I rarely use. If a story was not to my liking because it just wasn't for me, I don't downvote, I just leave it neutral. I do however downvote sometimes to counteract overwhelming positive when a story clearly does not deserve it. There is a trend on this site of fics that are a great concept yet have only one or two chapters done, have gotten essentially nowhere, and yet have many, many upvotes (1000+ in numerous cases) for just the good premise alone. I don't downvote all of these, but a few I feel the need to because what is written already is lackluster or screwing up the concept it began with I do downvote (I can go into more details on an example, but having hard time finding it at the moment).

The up/down can also be devastating to lesser known fics. When one only has 30 votes, every downvote is a big blow. Hell, my only published fic is at 14/1 and that 1 shows (also it has a strangely bloated view count of almost 500, so I don't get why there are so few votes). Which is why I'd say not to worry too much on your fic. Even if a few didn't like it, a large majority does. It just might be the downvoters don't care for this kind of fic and that caused their votes.

With people using votes so casually, it does sort of screw up the system. But, for the most part, the system has held up so I can't complain too much. For your downvotes, who knows. Uniformity drew me in more than I ever expected from the very beginning, so I cannot say unless I guessed they voted without reading a word. Or hate changelings. Meh, their loss.

As I say to every writer, take your time, we'll still be here. And I'll be enjoying every second. Er, sentence.
:twilightsmile:

2125653
Thanks :twilightsmile:

Looking more closely at the downvotes on Uniformity, I notice that most of them appeared after the last three chapters, coinciding very much with the changelings. Before that, it only had 4 downvotes. I suppose it's impossible to be sure what the reasons are, but your guess might not be completely off. I think it's sad if people downvote just because a story has changelings.

2125836

I know a small few people really dislike them, but don't think that's why the votes might be changeling-based. Over the last two years, changelings have been way overdone, especially within fics in general. Overdone doesn't mean bad, just far too common and sometimes are a crutch a story uses (though commonly as an overall theme and not a midstory arc). Even I was iffy when hints of changelings came up, but it was in that break I got to reading II and saw you could handle writing changelings well and went back to worryfree enjoyment.

If it was changelings, they just should have given their debut here more of a chance.
:ajsleepy:

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