Fail

So my last fic failed. Hard.

I think I may need to take an extended break.

Comments

[Masterweaver]

...I am... wondering what you are considering a failure, exactly?

[Wise Cracker]

I wouldn't feel too bad about it. It's kind of been a trend for fics in general lately. For what it's worth, mine haven't been doing any better than yours, despite what little feedback given has been positive.

Shift your expectations, is my advice. The situation isn't likely to change when you come back.

[the7Saviors]

Do you mean compared to your other fics? If that's the case I can kinda see where you're coming from, but I wouldn't call it a complete failure. Maybe it didn't do as well as you hoped, but it's not too bad, and it's only been a day? Two days? Just give it some time.

I do kind of understand though. I recently wrote a fic and it got a bunch of dislikes right off the bat, and I suspect a good chunk of those might've been because there was an anthro tag, but I can't prove that... still can't help but wonder though...

[FanOfMostEverything]

Haven't gotten to it yet. Sorry, this weekend has been kind of nuts on my end.

[JD McGregor]

I read through the first chapter and it seemed fairly good. Why are you naming it a failure?

[Misty Spell]

I thought it was a really good fic.

[Trick Question]

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18:8 is a terrible ratio. It's not a good fic because there's no reason it should be that controversial. I'll stop short of taking it down but it ain't my best shot, apparently.

4897237
I'm not your responsibility, silly.

[Wise Cracker]

4897272
It has the Sex tag. You can reasonably expect 5 downvotes on that basis alone. Again, that's been my experience, at least. Anything that even reminds people of the more adult-oriented side of the fandom, or unpopular fetishes, that draws out spitevotes. If you've not had negative feedback to go along with the red arrows, it's just spite.

But do what you feel is best, of course. Hope you feel better soon.

[Olden Bronie]

I thought it a very interesting story! I just read it this morning and really enjoyed the idea of using an alternate world to watch your own. It is a bit creepy in that sense and I wonder where it could lead, both good and bad.
It's a bit like the drone discussions, in a sense.

Still, I thought it was a good tale!

[Skeeter The Lurker]

We all have at least one flop.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[ChakatRedstripe]

I'm getting to it, it's on my reading list

[Cold Spike]

We've all been there. But it could have been worse, at least it wasn't a super long multi-chapter epic that you started posting and then got sad that no one read it.

[Makuta]

I think you are expecting a bit much. You know the saying “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

[nemryn]

Hey, I don't think it failed! It's about a fairly difficult subject, and if people are having trouble wrapping their heads around it, that's a problem with them, not with the fic. (, mostly)

[Georg]

Not everything we write is gold. I think my Flim/Flam story is running at about 10% of... well, about everything else.

[toxbox]

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27:8 now! That's not too bad really. I think you're too hard on yourself, you can't expect every fic to do well.

[Fiddlebottoms]

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I consider over 2/3rds to be a fine reception, and if a story can't get downvotes into the double digits, it needed to be more interesting.

[Arzoo]

Failing to appeal to the fimfiction audience doesn't mean it's a bad story. In this case playing up a comedic angle probably would have gotten you more views, whether or not that improved what you actually wanted to write.

[Pun System]

My honest hypothesis is that 5 TrixGlam shippers and 3 StarBurst shippers found it. Around the clock the submarines lie in wait, torpedoing any ships they don't like.

[Fiddlebottoms]

4897767
"wherefore was that cry?"
"the glim, milord, is shipped."
"she should have been shipped hereafter, there would have been time for such a word. tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day today, and out, out, brief fanfic. 'tis a tale told by an idiot, fulll of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[Griseus]

You mean the fic you wrote and drop over the 4th of July fun times?

[mishun]

On the contrary, fuck yes.
What's your failure metrics here?
From what I could see, there's no harsh comments there.
If it's upvotes/downvotes ratio, those 8 downvotes popped up really quickly and their number hasn't been increasing since, which suggests something like guys who are still angry after the last fic
Votes/views ratio looks really good (well, maybe a bit worse if we disregard those 8 downvotes, but still good)
Absolute numbers being low? Well, I don't know, maybe those downvotes scared readers off. The only potential problem I noticed is that it's pretty complicated and requires some background (I still need to go back and figure out what was that thing about event horizon ), but it should be later-stage problem.

[Cold Spike]

I just noticed that you published this all in one go, may be a good idea in the future to space things out. ^_^ Good luck!

[Bad Horse]

You published it on a Saturday morning at 10:50 AM. Thus dooming it to obscurity. I told you this before when you complained about a story of yours "failing".

[G-AB Acid]

I wish I was horse-famous enough to signal boost your story

[Rocket]

Honestly, you don't even give people time to read stuff before you declare it a failure.

[Trick Question]

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It's just a story, so it's not the end of the world. But let me explain my metric because there may be some confusion over why I think this is a failure.

It's true that the story didn't take off, but that wasn't what I was complaining about. Posting it on a Saturday when the feature box was clogged with dozens of M-stories with heat meant it wasn't going to feature, and I knew that when I posted it. I didn't consider this one of my best works so I didn't care that much. The story did actually feature if you turned off the M stories, but most viewers leave the M filter off so being in the non-M feature box doesn't help views very much—and the early vote hate probably kept it from staying in the box long.

The real problem I had was that the story had an abysmal vote ratio for a story that was mostly non-controversial. There may have been a little shipping hate, and some readers might have hated on Twilight doing something morally questionable (most of my controversial stories are controversial for that very reason). But I received all eight downhooves very early on—I think I was like 14:8—and that generally means I either intentionally posted something controversial (like my last fic), or else I did something very wrong without realizing it. Eight downhooves for a story that doesn't take off is an intense amount of dislike, the worst I've seen (not counting a couple of stories which touched on foal sexuality that I knew would be downhoof engines).

Granted, now I'm at 43:8 and haven't had a single downhoof since; still not a good ratio but very odd timing-wise. Some of that is just because I complained and got some pity attention, but it's strange that all the downhooves happened the moment I released the fic. Sometimes I wonder if I have haters for other reasons. I have had ponies literally threaten to "boycott" my works before. But I'm not hubris-filled enough to assume those votes aren't legitimate. I know it's not just due to the shipping choice or the sex tag because other stories that actually feature for an extended period with those attributes don't draw that level of antipathy.

In the end, I'll never know because I didn't receive useful feedback this time. I've just been going through a rough patch creatively and needed to vent. Sorry if I went a little overboard.

And I'm considering entering the July 2018 Foalcon contest so that isn't helping things either.

4897405
Ow! Too soon!
(just kidding it's fine)

[Bad Horse]

4898765
I also get most of my downvotes for some stories within minutes of releasing it. I think there are a lot of readers who vote without reading. As I've said for years, this could be fixed--fixed well by keeping track of how much time elapses between clicking on a story title and voting, and then down-weighting or throwing out votes from readers who vote too quickly too often; or fixed partly just by NOT PROVIDING VOTE BUTTONS ON THE FREAKING TITLE PAGE. There is no reason to provide vote buttons on the title page.

[The Great Derpsby]

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My experience too. You get hit with the most downvotes either right at the beginning, or if you later put in something really controversial, moreso if it wasn't foreshadowed hardcore or flat out told it would happen.

My story is bound to rup some folks the wrong way, for example, I know that. The last chapter published got me six downvotes to twenty-ish upvotes, which is amazing considering I don't think it's very good.

[toxbox]

4898765
I've sometimes wondered if you might have an entourage of downvoters. Especially considering some of the comments on TSJ.