I'm Rather Disappointed · 3:41pm Mar 15th, 2015
I must admit, the reception Nightmare's Dream and Grey Hat have received is quite disappointing. After spending more than a year and a half working on the sequels, taking time away from my other fics, I was expecting at least a few hundred of the seventeen hundred followers of ItB to follow the sequels. Instead, I have 116 following Nightmare's Dream, and Journeyman has only 31 following Grey Hat.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type to throw a tantrum just because it's not doing as well as I hoped. No, the problem is I'm having trouble justifying putting most of my effort into these sequels when Dawn Shield is being followed by 415 people.
What I don't get is that there are 329 people currently in the ItB group, which was meant to follow the collab. Why would you join a collab group and not follow the collab?
I especially feel bad for Journeyman. He put so much work into fleshing out a world that isn't even his, and only 31 people (me included) give a shit. I wouldn't blame him if he decided he didn't want to do this anymore.
No, I'm not killing the stories, but I'm definitely having difficulty finding the motivation to write on it. Hell, I've only written 300 words since I posted the last chapter two weeks ago.
I'm going to have to find time to talk to Journeyman to discuss the future of the collab.
I didn't even know about Nightmare's Dream. I'll be reading it now.
2879627
This. I never even noticed. When it went up, there must not've been a huge fanfare about it because I missed it.
I went back and looked, Shirotora. Your blog post on Jan, 15th was announcing the sequels should come about near valentine's day, and that was the latest post about any of it.
2879627
Same here
Hate to say it but there's a few semi-facts that go into this, at least in my experience on the site, others might have different ideas.
Sequels usually get far fewer followers and likes then the original story, that's just the way things go on Fimfiction. As far as I've been able to figure out, it's usually because as your story sits there it accumulates more and more likes/favorites over time to the point that it's almost impossible to get the same number on a new story. Another factor is that people may have simply moved on, you said it yourself, it's been a year and a half. That's a lot of time to wait between stories and some may have completely forgotten your story in that time, or even left the fandom entirely. Is that right? Is that fair? No, it's not at all, but it's been my experience that the longer you wait, the less chance you have of making nearly as good of 'returns' on the sequel.
Another main problem (in my opinion at least) is that the Mods outlawed the ability to make a new chapter in your old fic simply to advertise your new one. It may have been a 'trick' to the word count but damn if it wasn't effective at making people realize that 'yes, there IS more, here's where you find it'. I know that the Feed system doesn't work as well as it should and that I often find my eyes just skimming over it entirely sometimes.
Anyways, I'm sorry for your trouble, I know how it feels, believe me. I hope you don't get too discouraged by this, I've been enjoying Nightmare's Dream.
2879667 I realize all this. I never expected to get the same amount of likes and favs, but usually sequels have at least 1/3 of what the last had. 116 out of 1714 is well under reasonable expectations.
Hadn't gotten around to read Nightmare's dream was waiting for a few more chapters while reading some other stories at the moment.
I need to reread the first book befor i get to the next one and i do not have time for that yet
What i do remember is that it will be worth to reread
2879892 There are reminders of the important things in the story. The first chapter is pretty much dedicated to reminding people of what happened (and catching up those that just don't want to read the first).
What sequel? There is a sequel? Since when?
Wait, there's a sequel up? Why haven't I gotten a notification yet?!
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2880056
Nightmare's Dream
Grey Hat
I'm afraid I'm just going to be another voice adding to this saying I hadn't realized there was a sequel. Now that I know, I'm going to go read it now! I had been waiting for it, and have no clue how I managed to miss it.
And another "Didn't realize there was a sequel" comment here.
I certainly see why people used to add a new chapter to their old story to announce a sequel, it's kind of a pity that the replacement mechanism doesn't announce itself to people who've favorited/watched the original like adding a chapter did.
These stories apparently somehow slipped entirely under my radar. I'll start reading them now.
Personally I fully intend to read the new stories, but I just haven't had the time, but one reason might be the dramatically different tone portrayed in the cover art and description of the stories in question might make some people who enjoyed the first pass on the sequels and some of the people who would think they might enjoy the sequels decide not to read them because of the original not meeting their tastes.
Its not going to turn me away, but combined with it evidently slipping under the radar, that would be my guess as to why they are not getting the same level of love.
I didn't even know there was a sequel
2880507 Oh, I fully understand. It does have a slightly different tone, having a romance at the forefront as opposed to romantic tension in the background, but at the same time it's still very much an adventure. Like I mentioned before, I didn't even expect half the people that enjoyed the last one to enjoy this one, but expecting at lease three or four hundred of the seventeen hundred is not at all unreasonable.
2880866 That's fair, but judging by the fact that most of the comments so far have been people not knowing about the sequel I would assume that was the issue.
2881300 Also, considering the number of likes have shot up from 61 to 81 (at the time of this post) and the number of people following it has gone from 116 to 155, I'd have to agree. Though, I do wish Grey Hat would get more attention. As I said, Journeyman put a lot of work into this as well.
i only find out about this now? whelp time to add more to the read list.
Personally – if I may be so blunt – I had a glance at the cover for Nightmare's Dream, immediately recalled just to what extent the original'd been mired in Mary Sues by the end (for all that I loved it towards the start), and decided that reading the sequels was a low priority.
2881738 What Mary Sues?
>looks at feed
>sees blog post from renowned author
>"sequel"
>never even saw it existed
>probably because I'm not following
>promptly freak out over a sequel that I didn't know existed for one of my favorite stories
>promptly leaves to go read it
Well I'll be honest, I just found ItB and I'm reading it now. Love the story by the way. I already got the next to stories on my to read list and will be doing so once I'm doing with ItB. In situations like this all I can say is 'Keep Calm and Story on'.
2881747 Huh, apologies. Wasn't my intention to say something like that and disappear, but I didn't get notified about your having responded, for some reason.
Any rate, I'd have to re-read the story to give anything like a full accounting (was a while ago I read it, and all), but I distinctly recall that, by the end of the story, at least all of the non-pony main cast had become Mary Sues. Twilight became the biggest of all. All of them over-equipped, under-challenged, and decidedly stereotypical.
And again, I'd loved it towards the start, even though Twilight was overpowered pretty much from the beginning. It was cool that she came along and was able to handle challenges that the non-pony characters weren't, not the least bit because her OP-ness was lampshaded, as I recall – everyone else was just as shocked at how well she was handling herself. But at least as early as the point where she was given that Swiss Army Ship, it started going downhill for me. Soon almost nothing felt like a real challenge, for anyone. Sure, characters would die, but all too often it only seemed to amount to fuel for another character's angst-driven rampage. And all the while, everyone would keep picking up new wish-fulfillment–y toys to make everything seem even more like a walk in the park.
I'll readily admit that I'm probably not remembering everything with perfect clarity, but that's the general nature of how I was feeling by the end of the original. The Twilight on the cover of Nightmare's Dream – bionic arm, scar in a cool place, slitted reptile pupil, draconic wing – really brought back that sense of how silly it had all wound up.
2884889 Twilight's appearance looks 'cool', yes, but to her it's a reminder of the monster she had become. It's one of her obstacles. Other than her, the only one of the Mane 6 to have an OP moment was Fluttershy, and that was also meant to set up a struggle in her sequel. A big part of Grey Hat is her dealing with the psychological torment of having to kill.
Besides them, the only real OPness was with Trixie, who shows that most of Avol isn't a nice as Equestria, and Vinyl Scratch with her 'bass cannon'. Let's face it, though; If Rainbow Rocks taught us anything, it's that Vinyl Scratch is best pony-ex-machina.
2885491
I believe what he's saying is that it lacks any tangible emotional weight.
And I wondered why I got so many notifications.
Now reboot skype.
Huh. Sequels. Guess I'll toss them on the to read list(currently at ~1200 chapters)...
Yeah, I really need to trim off the ones I lost interest in some day.
I feel the main problem with this was the time. For like 6 months you guys said 'It's almost ready!' and for the first month I was all geared up and stuff. But then my enthusiasm slowly dropped off like a leper's tongue at the post office. I think that if you said 'aight lads this thing that was a smash hit be getting multi-writer sequels.' about a month before the first chapter with three on the backburner interest would have shot up like a man with viagra. I didn't even know they were released.
Edit: Ohhh no, this blog was out a long time ago. Crap.
3037664 It was almost done... and then that one ass hole that likes to ruin thing showed up; Life. I hate that guy
3037711 When you announce things you gotta have it ready but let it hype a little before bringing it out. Kind of like marketing. In fact, exactly like marketing.
3037873 I mentioned it so early so anyone that wanted in could do so.