Is FimFiction Dying? · 2:30am Apr 29th, 2015
So as I've been browsing through my old favorites as of late, I've been noticing two things:
#1: I used to favorite stories a lot more often than I do now.
#2: A gaggle of stories that had been running at a constant pace reaching mid-to-final points in their plot lines have completely stopped.
What? Am I going crazy? Or is this really a thing?
The first point is a bit easier to take guesses at. Maybe my tastes have become a bit more picky throughout the years and after I've seen so many ideas presented to me in FiMFiction there's only so many I can favorite that repeat. Or, maybe, truly, the quality of fan fiction has gone down a little when authors lose interest and stop writing, leaving the backlog to fill the empty space up. Or maybe it's just me visiting the website to read less, only really going on it on my mobile.
The second point though, is a bit more of a mystery, and has me worried. There is a perfectly sensible explanation as to why popular stories that are well written into have halted in their tracks: Their authors simply lost interest. This is a common occurrence with writers on a fan fiction website, where they write a story but because it's not planned out or organized properly it goes on a bit longer than they would like and they end up giving up entirely. However, the fact that writers do give up with such massive followings (for a MLP fan fiction website, anyways) while they've got their groove on baffles me. I've gone through several author pages and one pattern I've noticed is that life is one of the primary sources of giving up, or, as many claims, "putting it off until they can get some free time and their life in control" That's understandable too. Even though I don't have as much as a life as the individual next to me, I can understand how it can get in the way of things occasionally.
However...
It's the fact that they don't come back to it that bothers me. Heck, it's the fact that they don't give closure to their fans is what bothers me. They don't at least leave a message saying "I can't continue on with this story. Here's the reason why and here's what I had planned for the rest of the plot." No, they don't do that. And that kind of sucks, because you just leave us hanging, waiting for some sort of input from you while we try to find another amazing experience on the website that can fill the gap of time-wasting that your story gave us! At lease give us closure! You don't have to be that selfish and just not care about what you've done, what you've created!
Jeez!
Maybe I'm just in over my head here. I've seen a couple stories come back from the dead after two-year hiatuses. And then I look at those stories and say "Hey, I remember that!", but those moments are far and few between. It's a real shame that this sort of thing is going on, or maybe I'm really just high as a kite and tunnel-visioning what stories are in front of me. As far as I can tell, the site hasn't really dropped in visitor count average over the past months or so. On the other hand though, I haven't been paying enough attention to gather some real data on the subject. It just seems to me that there are less stories to fawn over than there were two or three years ago.
Is FiMFiction dying very, very slowly? Or am I stupid? And who is going to take the blame for it?
That's just post off season. After the big lull without ponies, every one makes stuff, then the next season comes and every one stops what they're working on to watch, and to write mini fics based on the current season.
What 3027799 said.
Also, there's all sort of stuff like finals, taxes and other serious real life stuff this time of year A bit of a lull considering that is hardly unexpected..
As I see it, there are still a lot of good writers out there, writing excellent stories--but the popularity of this fandom has brought in writers who don't seem to know or much care about the characters, places, or history of Equestria. They just write what they want, and slap the names of the "Mane Six" on the OCs they create. When they run out of ideas, they write sex scenes.
There's still gold in the bottom of this river, but you have to pan through a larger quantity of muck to find it.
3119360 Sad to say but amen to that. :|
Sadly it's a self fulfilling prophesy. People think the site is dying so they stop updating their stories and then they stop logging in. That causes other people to think the site is dying, and repeat.
4781358
Pretty much. The only fix is to just relax and keep writing and reading.