• Member Since 6th Jun, 2015
  • offline last seen Jan 16th, 2021

SprocketProductions


Creativity in its purest form is self-expression. I choose to try to express myself in everything I do.

More Blog Posts36

  • 283 weeks
    Talking About My Issues

    I honestly do try to not talk about my personal issues much here, because what little I have actually talked about here has been seen as pandering, or attention seeking. I've realized that if I don't talk about my issues here, people won't really get why I am the way I am, and the same hate will continue whether I want it or not. So, here we go, time to talk about my issues.

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    0 comments · 278 views
  • 308 weeks
    My experiences with plurality

    Plurality is a phenomena where multiple personalities exist separately in a single mind. This can occur in multiple ways, whether through a tulpa, or split personalities. I've had my fair share of experiences with plurality, and would like to share them now. Be aware that this blog post will touch on some very heavy subjects which not everyone will be able to take. If you are sensitive to

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    2 comments · 302 views
  • 308 weeks
    I'm so happy to see you all again!

    Okay, aside from internal crises about whether or not I should delete stories, I have a lot to talk about since I was last active on the site. there's so much to tell you guys that I'm having trouble even starting! Oh my goodness, where should I start?

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    0 comments · 256 views
  • 308 weeks
    Considering deleting Aria

    I realize how many people who enjoy my writing are here because of "Aria" in specific, but there's honestly so much drama surrounding it, and I don't know if I should keep it up or not. I'm not going to take it down at least until I'm more well into writing "In My Head," but I just feel like because of the better story, "Aria" doesn't really have a place anymore. It's not that I don't want people

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    9 comments · 304 views
  • 333 weeks
    In My Head: Chapter 3

    I don't know what the next chapter of In My Head is going to be like. What I was previously trying to do with it wasn't working. It seemed more like simple message fiction, which lately, I very much don't enjoy writing, as it doesn't make people enjoy reading it. I may take a break before retrying on it, I may not. I haven't really decided yet. But, do look forward to marginally more activity

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    1 comments · 281 views
Jan
24th
2017

My relationship with the downvote button · 2:58pm Jan 24th, 2017

Good Luna, if you don't like my stories, TELL ME why you don't like my stories so I can improve.

I've had a huge problem with the downvote feature on this site since I started. I hate the downvote button. No, that's not an over exaggeration, I actually hate the downvote button. Even when reading stories I don't like, at this point I'll often times just end up ignoring their existence because I know how demotivating downvotes can be. What's the worst negative feedback? Feedback that literally has no voice. I don't care how many people dislike Aria, you're not improving it as a story by downvoting it. That's not how it works.

Honestly, if I were to add that feature or a similar one, I would make the downvote option require the user to give a reason as to why they don't like the story. If the reason is, you know, actually a reason instead of "I skimmed through this and I don't like the premise" then the downvote can stay and the feedback can be used to improve stories in the future, but that didn't happen with this site. It's like they just decided "We should let any user on the site bring down the rating of a story for literally any reason, regardless of how much work, time, and care they put into it, even if the writer presented every story element to other people before writing to see if it would be good" and it feels like such an unfair system. I work for countless hours and deprive myself of sleep so I can make a quality long story, and then people downvote it and make my work look like trash at first glance. Then a one-off of a One Punch Man parody makes front page cause it's a reference and everyone loves references to anime? That makes literally no sense!

Don't get me wrong, I love One Punch Man, and I enjoyed the one-off parody of it that was posted on this site. But I feel like it's unfair for something like that to be so highly rated in comparison to the piece I've put my heart and soul into making. I feel unfairly treated with pieces like Aria. And the big problem there, I think is mostly because people don't expect the main character to be an OC. But that's why I have cover images! If you don't expect Aria Melody, the OC I designed and put my own time and effort into writing to be the main character, then you didn't even bother looking at the cover image which I also put several hours into in order to clearly see that you're mistaken. So the main character of Aria isn't Aria Blaze from the Dazzlings. I don't tend to write stories about canon characters, it's not something I enjoy doing. Is there anything wrong with that?

And then there's probably some people who actually legitimately have something wrong with the story. If you know of a way the story fails, TELL ME. Don't just downvote it and give me no input whatsoever. Tell me what you have against the story, and maybe I can improve it instead of keeping the same piece of trash you apparently think it is. I'm not going to be mad if you tell me "Oh hey, this character has inconsistencies here and here" instead of just downvoting the story. You showing your dislike for it and nothing else doesn't change the story itself, it just hurts its rating. And honestly, if I didn't like writing the story as much, I probably would've given up on it with this amount of downvotes. That's also why I haven't had much motivation to write more Bloodstained Rose. I've gotten nothing but downvotes on that one, and nobody's read further than the prologue. Is that the problem? Are people reading the first chapter then if they don't particularly like it, giving up completely on the story?

There's a little something my friends and I tend to do for TV shows and anime called the three episode test. The pilot often isn't the best, and the second episode often builds up on the pilot, so sometimes you have to get about three episodes in for the story to pick up. I don't think stories here are any different. I think if people would give stories a chance, there'd be quite a few really good pieces that are currently ignored because people hate the first chapter. And I'm not saying that the one-off stories shouldn't get attention, because they're fun and enjoyable. But I think people should give other types of stories chances too. That would make a lot of writers on the site happy, and I'm not just referring to myself.

Alright, rant over. Hope I didn't sound too angry about it.

Comments ( 1 )

I used to think that too, but I saw a long, detailed discussion with the mods chiming in which gave me a new perspective. The downvote button is, in principle, supposed to be no different to the upvote one. It's like liking something on Facebook, just a thing to gauge community reaction to a story. So most obscure fetish stories on the site will have a high downvote ratio, because most readers don't like to read them. It doesn't mean that they're bad stories, or not worth reading, just that they aren't most peoples' cup of tea. So the idea is that a downvote is no worse than an upvote is good.

That's the theory, anyway. I'm not saying it always works, by any means, but I think that's the reasoning behind it. I think the problem mainly comes from people using the like/dislike ratio as the main basis for judging whether or not they should read a story. That's why I think it can be quite beneficial to keep the comments section spoiler-free, so that people have an alternative feedback section to see how readers have responded. There are bookshelves and tracking statistics too, of course, but I doubt many look at those when deciding whether or not to read.

I agree with your three episode idea about TV shows. In theory, I do the same, though sometimes I get impatient and stop earlier. I think doing that is a much better judge of how well-written a story is than looking at its like/dislike ratio, as that's often the sort of thing you can tell from just the first three paragraphs.

EDIT: I posted this before the like/dislike bar on your new story became publicly visible. I appreciate, today probably isn't the best day for neutral discourse on this topic.

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