And that was short-winded (My thoughts on gray bars and writing in general) · 3:48pm Jul 26th, 2015

I've been reading a on-going debate between Titanium Dragon and Eldorado in that Site Update blog post the people have been talking about.

And let's just say that it has done wonders for my writing ego.

I always thought that if I could drum up enough upvotes and/or favs within a short amount a time, I could get into a slot in the feature box. All these months I've been paying attention to my hits and flops, experimenting so I could use what I learn for future stories. Also, I even made an alternate account to continue my research there. I'm kinda a scatterbrain in general but I'm ridiculously good at optimization and efficiency. Outside of my disappearing acts, of course.

And I can't help but wonder if this is the highest I can go from pure random chance.

Titanium Dragon said quite a few things about most stories on this website going unread, the gray bar acting more of a determent to new readers than fighting the slew of early downvotes. A story with low votes and views is probably more likely to be a bad story than a story with more exposure. But that just opens up a can of worms, doesn't it? Repeating the same lines that has been uttered at some point, there are plenty of good stories with low views and counts and plenty of bad ones with high views and counts.

It's always been a messy and random system as to who gets what. Just like life, you know.

And I really like being surprised, bad or good.

But I can't help but think of how to game the system now. It wouldn't be hard for me to drum up the upvotes for any of my new stories before I post, giving me a clear advantage if Titanium Dragon is correct with his hypothesis. Then it also wouldn't be hard for me to write exclusively to groups and shipping parings, ensuring that I will have eyeballs on said fic when it drops. Or even aim for niches that have gone silent due to a lack of fresh fics. And if I kept posting regularly, I know my follower count will rise just by having my name reappear in the new stories section.

If I kept my head down and grinded up my stats, I could force my way to a victory eventually.

But that feels kinda shallow, doesn't it?

The reason that I write and the reason why I'm here on this ponyfic site is because I'm a passionate perveted person sharpening my teeth for the wide ocean of actual publishing. (My perversions being theme, misery and etc. than just clop, mind you.) I dreamt of a day where I would write that one fic I didn't think much of and it would explode into the feature box because of all the writing experience that I had prior to writing it. And that I would feel horribly good for a while before writing the next one and the next one after that.

But that's why it was a dream, wasn't it? A highly unrealistic dream where I could be putting my mind and skills to better use.

Fimfiction is sort of a micro-ecosystem of how things work on official publishing sites like Amazon and B&N, I've noticed. Readers and writers. Signs of quality and attention fought over. Folks raging against any change in the system while others swiftly change their methods. Now that there's Patron, there's even writers receiving money for the efforts towards writing. The divide between original and fan fiction has gotten thinner these days and I can't help but wonder one day where it will disappear completely.

If I was treating Fimfiction the same way I would treat myself as an author self-publishing/traditional publishing, there is no doubt what I would do. And in a sense, I've already begun.