Twilight's Bird Feeder being added to groups · 4:18am Jun 15th, 2013
This is undoubtedly the most annoying thing I've had to write a blog post about, but here goes.
As anyone reading Twilight's Bird Feeder should know, the current conflict of the story centers around a love triangle involving Luna and Rainbow Dash both having feelings for Twilight. Because of this, I had actively decided to not submit the story into any shipping groups that would categorize the story as a TwiDash, or a TwiLuna... or anything else. This was done to preserve the tension of the romantic conflict so that the group tags would not influence readers' perceptions or lead them to a specific conclusion about the ending.
With that in mind, I was quite surprised at the sudden influx of views, faves, and comments on the story that started about a day and a half ago. After looking around for an explanation, my curiosity was finally sated when I noticed that the story had been added to the TwiLuna group. This was meaningful because it finally gave me an explanation for the odd comments the story was getting. Some of these comments have been annoying to deal with as I'm suddenly forced to explain that, no, I have not given away the plot, and I am not being indecisive with the ship, etc.
This entirely could have been avoided had whomever the heck shoved the story into the TwiLuna group had taken a damn moment to ask me if I wanted my story about a love triangle to be in a group dedicated to a specific ship pairing.
With that said, I'm having the story removed from that group, and I would very much like to stress that I do not appreciate not being asked if I wanted my story added to that group. Normally, I don't have any issue with my stories being put into groups, but in the case of this story, where the nebulousness of the relationship and who gets paired up is the central plot of the fic and that spoiling who Twilight ends up with effectively ruins the story, I would greatly appreciate it if people would freaking ask me before submitting it to a shipping group.
Just to be clear, I am not complaining about the influx of new readers, just the inconsiderate nature of how my story was added to the group. The group does not fit the status of the story thus far, whether or not it will in the future is up to my discretion, but at this moment, Twilight and Luna are not a ship, and I'm sorry if anyone was led to believe such.
To reiterate, I am not confirming or denying any possibility of a Twilight and Luna pairing either now or in the future.
could add it to group not about luna, rainbow, or twilight. comments might go full retarded then and just be interesting.
1145467 Yeah, that's just what I need. I'll confuse everyone! Now I just need to add some random group-related thing into the background of the next chapter.
I recently discovered one of my fics was added to the twidash group, so I gather it's not uncommon for people to just submit stories to groups and not ask the writers. That I think should be changed.
1145557 It is a fairly common practice, especially with popular stories. I agree that authors should be notified about requests to add their stories to a group. While groups are generally a positive thing in terms of exposure and sorting, there are instances where an author may not wish for their story to be added to a particular group.
Even though I've gotten quite a lot of additional traffic to the story, it was a conscious decision on my part not to add it to shipping groups in the first place, knowing full well that I was foregoing additional exposure in order to preserve the mystery of the story. I sincerely wish that people would respect that and either ask me about group submissions or let me submit my works to groups that I feel are appropriate.
1145574 In my case it was fine but I never knew, i think we should be asked out of respect at least. Notifying us would also be nice, give us a chance to veto it if we don;t want it
Well that... explains a fair amount.
Why not a Love triangle group?
Still though, you handled the situation very well in my opinion, can't wait for more!
Do you have an outline of a schedule for the story's completion? I've read the first scene and really enjoy the writing, but don't want to emotionally invest in it until there's a definitive ending, as this has happened one too many times to me.
1184845 I have an ending planned, but I do not have a set schedule for Twilight's Bird Feeder right now. I am currently focused on another project. I do want to come back and finish this story at some point, but right now I am not sure when I will get back to this story.
The only advice I can offer is to either track the story and wait for it to be marked complete, or to just forget about it entirely.