Re-uploaded Earthmother with ratings disabled. News and some thoughts about it. · 12:35pm Jul 4th, 2019
For those who wanted to read my one chapter, it's back up. The story is canceled and will not be updated.
I realize now that posting yesterday was suicide with the American Fourth of July holiday sapping readership across every new story posted that day. I suspect the like button has also experienced massive deflation in value due to the hard falloff in fimfiction's traffic numbers in 2019, meaning likes are more valuable today than they were back in 2015 when I was somewhat relevant. I also note that a number 1 feature clopfic these days almost always falls off the top with fewer than 300 likes with quartz-like precision. Fertile Ground never even hit the featured box and was showered with 47 likes at the cost of 7 dislikes in 23 hours back in 2015.
War... has changed.
There are excuses to be made for this disaster but the buck stops with me. I posted a story almost no one wanted to read and spent more effort than I ever should have to make it. I've been stuck in this pit of overwriting fiction for the last three years producing story after story (with the exception of Fallout Equestria: The Angels of Oasis and my previous effort, Movie Night) that people have just shrugged at and put down. I was wrong to de-list my story. I was tired. I was stressed. It was a long day at work. If anyone wants to download it, you may do so but I refuse to answer for it anymore so ratings have been disabled.
With that out of the way, I have a confession to make. Yesterday I said that people only wanted to read clopfiction that lacked effort. This is only true in the sense that time = money and when a reader is picking up a new story they are investing their limited resource into a work they only expect to briefly interact with before moving on to the next product. Clopfiction is a bit like going to McDonald's: You know what you want and buy off the dollar menu more often than not because your gut understands that ordering the soda and fries is little more than markup for the sake of empty calories.
'Well you're just being a cynic, AJA', you may reply. Aren't you friends with Firesight? He's never sold out! He is proof that there is a market for high-quality erotic fiction. You're right. There is a market... of sorts. It's not a very deep market and what exists of it is something he has largely cornered because his work is of such high quality. Firesight has been writing fanfiction for over twenty years. He has copyediting experience with training from an actual copyeditor. He's smart and knows his craft. He's spent years on this site working his ass off to get a largely ignored, epic-length erotic novel, Five Star Service: A Gentleman For Mares Tale, off the ground and made a name for himself producing one of the most widely-known and beloved crossover fics on the site — Pheonix Wright - Turnabout Storm!. He's since taken ownership of that story and I have helped him edit it.
I, on the other hand, have a much thinner file. My entire online body of work is right here from my lowest point to my highest. Firesight has been a mentor, a teacher, and a friend but I am no Firesight.
Fimfiction.net was once a site where there was an overlap between cloppers and non-cloppers and non-clop readers would occasionally read erotic clopfiction because the worldbuilding was kinda neat and the canon of MLP itself was very bare. You can really see this when you dig through the comments on old stories. You saw non-cloppers bitching and moaning about sex being written with characters from children's programming and the back and forth between those who supported the idea and those who didn't. You saw the middle-of-the-road types waxing eloquent about their nuanced centrism and claiming while they didn't support nasty, evil, porn fiction, they enjoyed the worldbuilding and gave it an upvote. The universe of Gen 4 was a giant sandbox to play around in and pony fiction was a more meritocratic market. The fimfiction of Firesight's time was more open to a trailblazer like himself.
Today nobody. Fucking. Cares. No one wants to read about Thestralslovakia. No one wants to know about the racial composition of a thestral. Very few eople probably give a damn about why Roseluck is even there. They just want her to get drilled out by a feral pack of bat ponies so they get on with their day! Life is short, pony hard. brah! I got commitments like addictive phone games and Reddit and social media! I don't have time for that bollocks! Just make the ponies fuck already! What are you doing, AJA?
... and then they either left or in the case of my active, supportive followers they downloaded the story to a mobile device to read later. Out of politeness, they left an upvote figuring they'd like what they'd read.
The heartiest of souls who slogged through 10,000 words of worldbuilding to get to the sex was greeted by a fetish few were accustomed to and even fewer likely found erotic. Readers of this blog... this not going to cut it. I can't produce content almost no one is going to read. It just feels... pathetic.
I want to write again, I really do but I want to write for an audience. This dude who barely speaks any English requested a commission from me based on what sounds like some Fall of Equestria edgy shit — Roseluck and two zebra stallions. I have no desire to swap stories with anyone and even less to read Fall of Equestria but I think the concept has merit... with a friendlier and more consensual angle. So that's what I'm going to work on next.
To everyone who helped preread for me, I'm sorry I wasted your time. To my readers, I'm sorry I interrupted your read. I need to go walk in the woods and have a redemption arc or something. If you're gone when I get back I consider you completely justified in leaving.
Some of us are still here from the old days. Unfortunately, you're not wrong. Bad Horse did a study a while back, and the FiMfic-commenter part of the fandom had mostly divided into sub-fandoms with different tastes (and political views). They didn't talk to one another or read the same stuff. The clop-readers just want cloppy fun stories, get these complications out of here. The drama readers want angst and convoluted stories that could be worked out by characters spending five minutes talking to one another. The adventure readers want ADVENTURE, not this shippy stuff.
The good/bad news is, most of the readers aren't part of the sub-fandoms, they're lurkers. They don't leave feedback, and most of them don't even follow authors. They just read and go. Aside from bad timing, you'd probably have gotten more traction than you did. Just don't expect feedback, as you're not targeting the few dozen comment-heavy people in each sub-fandom.
Remember me asking for the password so I could read it? AJA say what you will but do not deny that I ever loved your Roseluck stories.
I sorry you got discouraged. I was following the story to see where it went, one chapter normally isn't good enough to see if a story is a good or not, but ultimately it's your choose to write or not. This is a free site, and really it's only up to you if want to tell a story.
Enh, this is why I don't really try to make art but on the occasion I feel the itch to make something. I make it, I enjoy making it, and a few other people enjoy looking at it, win right? Well... not quite. The few art things I put a lot of effort into, vector images that take a week of 8 hour days don't get near the recognition that the little 1 hour project does. Not lying, this kind of pisses me off to a lesser extent. At least it does for a little bit, then I sigh and move on... heh. I guess I'm saying you are not even close to the only one with this kind of issue.
This is not unique to fan works though, or really books and art. Having worked in the manufacturing industry a lot of years now, I can say this happens across basically all industries. It is really common for somebody to develop a superior product for cheap, put it on the market, and go out of business a couple years later. You are literally learning these things the cheapest way possible, so try to not be so upset. Heh.
PS: I've read fertile ground several times over... it is fantastic.. more from that universe would be adored.