Feeling bitter and disappointed... I need to vent. :( · 5:48pm Sep 16th, 2020
This has no place anywhere else. Not in the site forums or the Discord chat server. Maybe I shouldn't even be writing this, and it'll be completely counter-productive. Maybe not a single person will even care. If that's the case, then so be it. I guess I just need to let this out for my own sake. 
It was only two months ago that I uploaded the first couple chapters of Trigger Happy Equines. I was so excited, having been building myself for this fateful day. The initial reaction I got wasn't very good. 
Only around 70 views and with a 5-5 like to dislike ratio. I was honestly stunned. I genuinely didn't know what to think. It was saddening moment, but I kept my chin up and kept a steady flow of uploads, double and triple checking my edits. I had many, many chapters on the way, so there was still plenty of time.
After a few uploads I was still getting mostly the same response and pretty much no comments whatsoever. I decided to take my plight to Struggling Authors, and actually got some pretty sound advice from a few people. 
My long description was too long and somewhat repetitive, I had the Danganronpa tag despite it not actually being a crossover (which may have put some people off) and I had a few too many red tags that were actually unnecessary. I also made some much needed edits to the cover image, and came away feeling much better about it.
After a couple more weeks of updates (and not much change outside of a select few passionate commenters) I decided to bite the bullet and try some tactics to get more views. I didn't want to resort to shameless self-promotion just yet, so I decided the next best thing was to bring in some new readers by writing a couple quick, easy stories that I thought might get popular, and try gently guiding those readers to check out my other stories. (Namely Trigger Happy Equines) And these new stories did great! One even got picked up by an admin for a popular group called The Goodfic Bin and selected as the featured story for September. "Yes!" I thought. "Now more people will come across my username and Trigger Happy will get noticed!"
To a very tiny degree, it has, but that could also just be down to my regular updates. So I eventually decided to bite the bullet and make a post on the Shameless Self-Promotion Bureau. I made sure to explain what the story's about, let people know some details to decide if it's for them or not, and to clarify certain aspects to prevent confusion. Not long after that I had 2 new downvotes and ZERO new views, meaning they were drive-by downvotes. My self-promotion literally had the opposite effect. Now at 14-11 ratio, I'm left feeling disheartened.
What irks me isn't just having a low view count or poor ratio. What irks me is that if people are truly disliking my story, I haven't received a single comment explaining why. If I've made some mistake, if I'm guilty of poor pacing, of a convoluted setup, or something, anything that I'm doing wrong in the actual story itself, nobody is saying anything. I would welcome any and all critiques, simply for the knowledge that they took the time to read it! I've tried keeping myself in high spirits over it, to pretend it doesn't matter to me, but right now I'm left feeling well and truly saddened.
I don't expect everyone to like it. I don't expect everyone to even be interested in it. Far be it for me to impose on another person's preferences. The users of this site owe me nothing at all, and I would never claim that I am "owed" recognition simply for having worked hard. I do not think that in the slightest. But I cannot pretend that it does not disappoint me, that after eight years on this site and whole plethora of stories under my belt (most of which have seen some pretty amazing success that I'm genuinely appreciative of), the fact that I can crap out some simplistic comedy one-shots in a day or two with barely any effort, specifically to garner interest in my other stories, and see them get showered with love, but the story I have poured over three years of my life into, hundreds of working hours - full of passion and excitement - has the lowest recognition of anything and everything I've posted to this site, including random crack-fics that I wrote as a joke.
Despite this, I want to go on. I will continue with updates and finish this story no matter how long it takes. I'm giving up on writing random comedy stuff in the vain hopes that readers will migrate to Trigger Happy. I am more proud of it than perhaps anything I've ever done, and I can't wait to see what my select few passionate readers will think when some of the bigger story events happen. That will make it all worth it. 
I don't expect everyone here to rush to my story with support, nor would I think ill of those who choose to ignore it. And if you read it and don't like it, I will be happy to receive as much criticism as you can give so I can make the story as good as it can be. And I'm sure there are plenty of writers out there better than I am that have suffered even lower returns on their efforts.
But right now I need to vent, just to let out the frustration. *Sighs deeply* Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... That's better.
Back to playing The Sinking City. 😎
if you need to vent i can pm you my discord name
5356514
That would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Well, don't know what to tell you, sir. Sorry you're having a hard time getting the resposes you would like. I can only suggest to keep on promoting to show others you're serious about writing, and completing the story. Hope things work out soon!
I like a lot of your other work, so I took a look at the story description. It's not my cup of tea. Normally that would be the end of it, but it sounds like you are actively soliciting feedback in why people may not be interested in this story. So I'll say why I personally am not interested, and you can judge the extent to which that applies to other readers.
I like occasional action and adventure, but generally I prefer slice of life, and almost always with the comedy tag attached. This is a mystery, one where it appears ponies will not only die, but have to kill each other. I generally don't like mystery stories unless they are very light-hearted (like who stole the cookie jar" kind of stuff). Psych is probably the darkest mystery I've ever watched, and I didn't even enjoy some of the darker episodes there!
It also sounds like the story is a crossover in theme and tone with Danganronpa, even if its not actually a crossover. I haven't heard of this game before, so that's another reason I'm less likely to check it out.
Those were my personal reasons for not checking out the fic. Speculating on other people at this point, while there are other stories with murder as a prominent theme on this site, I haven't seen them do that well. (At least recently, stories used to get a lot more views in general around here). Have you considered cross-posting this in fanfiction.net or some other site for fans of Danganronpa as well as here? It seems like the dark themes and the mystery-solving audience participation might be a bigger hit for fans of the videogame, even if it uses the MLP setting. I think you should keep posting this story here for its current fans of course, I just think posting simultaneously posting it elsewhere (as I know some authors do) might increase your total views and comments.
5356825
This blog wasn't a callout to you guys, just a rant that I needed to get off my chest. 
Well... I wasn't really wondering why my previous readers weren't checking it out. Considering most of you came for my comedy and romance stuff from the past, I was fully expecting not everyone would be on board with psychological thrillers and murder mystery. Despite writing comedy/romance in the past, my favorite genres to read are actually dark/horror/thriller/mystery. Weird, I know.
As for posting the story on Danganronpa sites, that's actually something I've considered. I'm just not sure what the response would be other than "get lost, filthy brony!"
Fanfiction.net is a more difficult one as certain aspects of the story rely on various text options that Fimfiction has at its disposal that Fanfiction.net does not, so not sure about that one.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to comment.
5356654
I'll make an effort to find specific groups that might be more inclined to try the story out. Then again, most groups are about as active as a pensioner after taking their sleeping pills.
Except for the Clopfic group which is always active and has the most members, but as we all know, cloppers only make up a
small minority
of the fandom.
Winks so hard my eyelid collapses into a black hole.
Hey, I like your story. Keep on writing it, and I promise I'll participate and read it to the end. In fact, I even just sent you a PM about who I think did it. :D
Yea, it sucks when nobody reads what you wrote... I got barely any feedback at all on my first fic. (I'll... do something with it... someday...) But if it's solid (like yours), then whoever does read it will love it and want more.
5359244
I'm very grateful for the few passionate fans I have, yourself included.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I may be taking a little hiatus after the first trial concludes. I need some time to catch up with writing and give myself room to breathe. I just hope I can finish the story before the sun explodes.