meandering ramblings about fanservice
Dec. 27th, 2021 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticitydisclaimer one: i use words like "odd" "unusual" "different" "weird" "normal" "average" "typical" and such. these words do not have positive or negative connotations - neither is good/bad, better/worse. variance is merely variance.
disclaimer two: your mileage may vary.
critical role season 2 spoilers below.
as anyone reading this knows i am a fan of noted sad girl astrid beck, and out of all the unfilled out characters i find her the most interesting to fill. (there is a longer post here about why astrid beats out essek here, which i could write, but is not this post)
since C2 ended i have been both wanting to read/write about astrid killing trent, and also about astrid's challenge in becoming the archmage of civil influence, a job she has coveted for so long and wanted so much and been so absolutely damaged in the process of going after. i could of course just have written these snippets but decided not to. so for the better part of some number of months i have been working on an astrid fic which covers all these bases. it's about 20k now - i wouldn't be surprised if it ended up at 30 or 40k at the end. this is not really that long by my standards, to head off any of that kind of talk; i've already written one fic in that range for CR, and it doesn't come CLOSE to my two longer hamilton fics, one of which is longer than two hundred thousand words.
i have been writing this fic knowing that almost nobody is going to read it. that's fine - i'm not writing it for anyone else. heck, i already wrote a hamilton fic that was 70k words and got only 1300 hits and 95 kudos, so this is old and familiar territory for me. i don't really care about anyone else when i'm writing fic! but i also know QUITE well that this is not going to be popular - my astrid fics, even astrid/caleb, do not even come CLOSE to the hits that my SG fic does.
umbral pyriscience: 25k words, 6.6k hits, 614 kudos
barter system: 14k words, 2.3k hits, 230 kudos
mutual capacitance: 8.5k words, 1.5k hits, 205 kudos (!)
astrid stuff:
i hope you take a piece of me with you: 3k words, 458 hits, 90 kudos
anneal (which is my favorite): 4k words, 370 hits, 70 kudos
structural reinforcement: 6k words, 198 hits, 18 kudos
ok, so the astrid bits are shorter. maybe i'm not being fair. but..
a 630 word sg snippet got 807 hits. more hits than words!
some sg pre-slash: 2.4k words and 1.1k hits
evil sg: 1.1k words, 800 hits.
so it doesn't compare, really.
now obviously i know that hits and kudos are affected by many things that are out of my control. these were obviously posted at different times in different moods of the fandom and ship; at one point i was a member of an SG service which maybe gave me a nice bump; i also know that there are some snippets i posted during a shadowgast week which i'm sure helped.
the point of fanfiction imo has nothing to do with popularity, though do not get me wrong: popularity feels REALLY NICE. some years ago i wrote a very popular hamilton fanfic and got so many wonderful asks and comments! what a feeling! you can read a lot of those asks here! people took such a broad and wonderful interest. I ENJOYED IT SO MUCH. it DID improve my experience in writing, in fandom, etc. so do not mistake me saying "the point of fanfic is to have popularity" means that i don't WANT it, or don't find it BETTER, or did not ENJOY IT. lord jesus please ask me more about bitter essek, the nature of time magic, or what's in a name.
MAN it would be nice to be into what everyone else is into. but it's just not me! that's okay! i acknowledge i am the weirdo. it's the way things are? so here we are, doing the things that we are. you just gotta be okay with that! love yourself. what i actually want to do is write about the cycle of abuse vis a vis astrid, and how she finds victory and success despite her suffering, and the unending love eadwulf has for her, and her goals and plans and strategies and how they protect her, etc... her relationship with caleb and essek and beau now? i want so much to read a length fic about the five of them (+eadwulf).
i just... don't really care about the domestic intricacies of shadowgast! and that's cool! i'm glad you love it! but like... not my jam.
anyway, while i was writing this astrid fic i did FEEL sad that i would probably not get 1000 hits on what will turn out probably to be 40k words. it's not stopping me from writing it and it doesn't make me want to write it less, but it IS sad.
so in the middle of writing this astrid fic (amongst some other bad news bears stuff going on in my life), i said to myself "you know what, i just want to write something that will be popular."
so obviously this had to include caleb and essek and essentially discard the other characters. and i said "i know, i'll write 'thank god you're alive' sex." and when i started writing this, actually all i wanted to do was write about a complex dynamic between astrid and essek (which fascinates me), that's what i wrote. i actually cut a huge amount of it later, as it wasn't what "the people wanted," if you will. I had to coax myself, so to speak, to get to the fanservice.
what did i learn from this?
i was basically right about what the people wanted - i knew the sex acts i needed to include (obviously i knew this would be required to be essentially PWP) and the order i needed to include them, as well as how they should be performed. and i had a pretty good idea of of the characterization that the people would want.
some of the things i was definitely like "ugh, in another world i would not write this this way, but this is what the people want."
the most satisfaction i got out of this was the determination to FINISH something no matter HOW bad it was or how much i disliked it (the last thing i finished was in july). DONE. THANK GOD. RELIEF. A WORK. saying "who gives a shit if it's bad; it's fanservice" was pretty freeing in terms of the content, and i wanted to get it out on a specific date, which really drove me hard. the end i just vomitted out becuase i was getting to the end and i wanted to be done SO much.
it was interesting to find out i drew the line at NO PETNAMES. i didn't mind caleb or essek acting in a way i thought was out of character, but could NOT bring myself to have caleb call essek schatz, even though i knew that was popular. i wonder if part of this is that i would be less likely to tag pet names, which means they would contribute less to popularity.
even though the story IS popular AND has gotten more hits in a smaller amount of time than many of my other works... it actually just doesn't feel as good as i'd hoped. it's oddly self-affirming, to prove to yourself that you might as well just write what you want - becuase the hits are nice but not that nice? what really revs my engine is comments, and i simply DO NOT know how to even figure out how to write something that would get max comments.
what actually was valuable was:
1. writing something short and uncomplicated - i've given up on a few more complex stories because i didn't feel like untangling them. "caleb and essek have 'oh god you're alive' sex." done.
2. who gives a fuck if it's bad, just fucking write SOMETHING
3. it feels good to hit "publish"
4. you will probably get more hits if you write stuff "the people" want, but actually this doesn't really make you feel that much better. maybe a little better for like 2-3 days, but writing is fucking hard so honestly it probably isn't worth it.
5. when you look at this piece you will often go "ah yes, giving the people what they want works" and not "oh yeah i really enjoyed that, let me read it over and over."
6. i hate sg petnames
anyway, back to doing what i love to do: beating up astrid beck. while i'm working on this, read look forward lest the past catch up.. i wrote it for you, after all.
disclaimer two: your mileage may vary.
critical role season 2 spoilers below.
as anyone reading this knows i am a fan of noted sad girl astrid beck, and out of all the unfilled out characters i find her the most interesting to fill. (there is a longer post here about why astrid beats out essek here, which i could write, but is not this post)
since C2 ended i have been both wanting to read/write about astrid killing trent, and also about astrid's challenge in becoming the archmage of civil influence, a job she has coveted for so long and wanted so much and been so absolutely damaged in the process of going after. i could of course just have written these snippets but decided not to. so for the better part of some number of months i have been working on an astrid fic which covers all these bases. it's about 20k now - i wouldn't be surprised if it ended up at 30 or 40k at the end. this is not really that long by my standards, to head off any of that kind of talk; i've already written one fic in that range for CR, and it doesn't come CLOSE to my two longer hamilton fics, one of which is longer than two hundred thousand words.
i have been writing this fic knowing that almost nobody is going to read it. that's fine - i'm not writing it for anyone else. heck, i already wrote a hamilton fic that was 70k words and got only 1300 hits and 95 kudos, so this is old and familiar territory for me. i don't really care about anyone else when i'm writing fic! but i also know QUITE well that this is not going to be popular - my astrid fics, even astrid/caleb, do not even come CLOSE to the hits that my SG fic does.
umbral pyriscience: 25k words, 6.6k hits, 614 kudos
barter system: 14k words, 2.3k hits, 230 kudos
mutual capacitance: 8.5k words, 1.5k hits, 205 kudos (!)
astrid stuff:
i hope you take a piece of me with you: 3k words, 458 hits, 90 kudos
anneal (which is my favorite): 4k words, 370 hits, 70 kudos
structural reinforcement: 6k words, 198 hits, 18 kudos
ok, so the astrid bits are shorter. maybe i'm not being fair. but..
a 630 word sg snippet got 807 hits. more hits than words!
some sg pre-slash: 2.4k words and 1.1k hits
evil sg: 1.1k words, 800 hits.
so it doesn't compare, really.
now obviously i know that hits and kudos are affected by many things that are out of my control. these were obviously posted at different times in different moods of the fandom and ship; at one point i was a member of an SG service which maybe gave me a nice bump; i also know that there are some snippets i posted during a shadowgast week which i'm sure helped.
the point of fanfiction imo has nothing to do with popularity, though do not get me wrong: popularity feels REALLY NICE. some years ago i wrote a very popular hamilton fanfic and got so many wonderful asks and comments! what a feeling! you can read a lot of those asks here! people took such a broad and wonderful interest. I ENJOYED IT SO MUCH. it DID improve my experience in writing, in fandom, etc. so do not mistake me saying "the point of fanfic is to have popularity" means that i don't WANT it, or don't find it BETTER, or did not ENJOY IT. lord jesus please ask me more about bitter essek, the nature of time magic, or what's in a name.
MAN it would be nice to be into what everyone else is into. but it's just not me! that's okay! i acknowledge i am the weirdo. it's the way things are? so here we are, doing the things that we are. you just gotta be okay with that! love yourself. what i actually want to do is write about the cycle of abuse vis a vis astrid, and how she finds victory and success despite her suffering, and the unending love eadwulf has for her, and her goals and plans and strategies and how they protect her, etc... her relationship with caleb and essek and beau now? i want so much to read a length fic about the five of them (+eadwulf).
i just... don't really care about the domestic intricacies of shadowgast! and that's cool! i'm glad you love it! but like... not my jam.
anyway, while i was writing this astrid fic i did FEEL sad that i would probably not get 1000 hits on what will turn out probably to be 40k words. it's not stopping me from writing it and it doesn't make me want to write it less, but it IS sad.
so in the middle of writing this astrid fic (amongst some other bad news bears stuff going on in my life), i said to myself "you know what, i just want to write something that will be popular."
so obviously this had to include caleb and essek and essentially discard the other characters. and i said "i know, i'll write 'thank god you're alive' sex." and when i started writing this, actually all i wanted to do was write about a complex dynamic between astrid and essek (which fascinates me), that's what i wrote. i actually cut a huge amount of it later, as it wasn't what "the people wanted," if you will. I had to coax myself, so to speak, to get to the fanservice.
what did i learn from this?
i was basically right about what the people wanted - i knew the sex acts i needed to include (obviously i knew this would be required to be essentially PWP) and the order i needed to include them, as well as how they should be performed. and i had a pretty good idea of of the characterization that the people would want.
some of the things i was definitely like "ugh, in another world i would not write this this way, but this is what the people want."
the most satisfaction i got out of this was the determination to FINISH something no matter HOW bad it was or how much i disliked it (the last thing i finished was in july). DONE. THANK GOD. RELIEF. A WORK. saying "who gives a shit if it's bad; it's fanservice" was pretty freeing in terms of the content, and i wanted to get it out on a specific date, which really drove me hard. the end i just vomitted out becuase i was getting to the end and i wanted to be done SO much.
it was interesting to find out i drew the line at NO PETNAMES. i didn't mind caleb or essek acting in a way i thought was out of character, but could NOT bring myself to have caleb call essek schatz, even though i knew that was popular. i wonder if part of this is that i would be less likely to tag pet names, which means they would contribute less to popularity.
even though the story IS popular AND has gotten more hits in a smaller amount of time than many of my other works... it actually just doesn't feel as good as i'd hoped. it's oddly self-affirming, to prove to yourself that you might as well just write what you want - becuase the hits are nice but not that nice? what really revs my engine is comments, and i simply DO NOT know how to even figure out how to write something that would get max comments.
what actually was valuable was:
1. writing something short and uncomplicated - i've given up on a few more complex stories because i didn't feel like untangling them. "caleb and essek have 'oh god you're alive' sex." done.
2. who gives a fuck if it's bad, just fucking write SOMETHING
3. it feels good to hit "publish"
4. you will probably get more hits if you write stuff "the people" want, but actually this doesn't really make you feel that much better. maybe a little better for like 2-3 days, but writing is fucking hard so honestly it probably isn't worth it.
5. when you look at this piece you will often go "ah yes, giving the people what they want works" and not "oh yeah i really enjoyed that, let me read it over and over."
6. i hate sg petnames
anyway, back to doing what i love to do: beating up astrid beck. while i'm working on this, read look forward lest the past catch up.. i wrote it for you, after all.