underswap sans has baby jesus figurines instead of sexy action figures and he doesn't even know what christianity is
I often like 'beta couples'/secondary couples/couples that are accepted by fandom but not put into focus' waaaay more than whatever main couple a fandom has, so I have the recurring issue of trying to find fic for things to find it's literally impossible because the couple is just being tagged in something because they're in the background. For example: back when I watched free, the only relationship I was remotely interested in was reigisa, but how do you even find fic of that? They're always in the background of hundreds of makoharu or rinharu fics. (I also liked nitori / nitori relationship fic, but it has the same problem, and it's even harder to find something that focuses on his issues with codependency aside)
I know you're gonna have this bad bad dude end up with this good good fellow, author, so I understand why you are disinclined to make him too no good very bad dude, but having rape be a special kind of evil that this mind invading torturing murderous motherfucker finds repugnant is just kinda. Yunno. Is what I was gonna say, till further writing clarified that bad bad dude's objections are less 'this is a special kind of bad thing that is worse than the bad things i do' and more 'that's icky'. Same with cannibalism. Icky and gross. I'm satisfied. Like, bad dudes can have doublethink and weird morality quibbles same as the rest of us, but goddamn if I don't get frustrated when rape gets trotted out as the Line That Even I Won't Cross and the ultimate sign that There's Still Good In Him. Fuck off.
That's how I feel about that one Foundation Tale where SCP 231's containment procedures are an elaborate ruse to convince an evil god that unspeakable evil actions are happening in its name. Like, they had me, this is good, I appreciate this interpretation, and then someone says the Foundation would never ACTUALLY do what the procedures imply and I'm like "hahahahaha no, have you met the Foundation."
it can be kind of tedious, but the AO3 "Search Within Results" feature can help with this! first go to the tag of the background ship you like - for example, the Hazuki Nagisa/Ryuugazaki Rei tag (or the Free! tag, filtered by the Reigisa relationship.) then on the right, in the Filters section, go down to "Search within results," and in that box, for every ship you don't want to see, you're going to put: Code: -"the exact ship tag you don't want, in quotes" (eta: "exact" here means "the standard tag for the ship on ao3," which i find by looking at the Relationships filtering option and copying the tag for the ship in question.) for example, if you don't want Nanase Haruka/Tachibana Makoto or Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka, you would put in the box: Code: -"Nanase Haruka/Tachibana Makoto" -"Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka" and this should filter out most* of the fics that are makoharu or rinharu. (hopefully i guessed right as to which ship portmanteau names go to which ship). afaik there isn't a limit as to how many ships, characters, or tags you can filter out this way. you can then copy/bookmark the url of that search for later usage (for instance, this search is of the reigisa tag, with haruka/makoto and rin/haruka filtered out, and also sorted by kudos.) this can be done for any background ship, though it will also 1) filter out fics where the background ship actually has equal prevalence with the normally-"foreground" ships, and 2) potentially filter out poly fics that involve both the background ship and the foreground ship, depending on how the author tagged said poly ship. *i say "most" because if someone tagged it in a nonstandard way, like just "Makoharu" instead of the full tag, it won't get picked up by the filter.
tfw no one leaves comments on your work usually so like when you get two things even if they're just WOW I LIKE THIS you're so happy and then it is back to nothing and so you get sad again
My most recent fic on AO3 has 2 comments and one of them is me responding. This is a very familiar feeling.
Kudos just aren't the same and honestly I harbor a sort of hatred towards them. Unless it is for my Kencyrath fanfiction because like there's maybe like 12 of us. Soooooooo
Saaaaame hat. Although since I'm usually writing for a tiny fandom or an unpopular ship/character I'm used to it. Still dang annoying though. :/
i am gripe that ship is called "ship" those only float on surface fish are the deeper swim this are the better word for deep look of character am fish marceline and bubblegum
I like kudos in that I like to compare kudos to hits and make some sort of arbitrary-but-meaningful-to-me ratio goal. I know that people can like a fic A LOT, but might not have words for it, or feel too intimidated to leave a comments, or might just be out of spoons for comment writing, but they CAN click a button. In my brain, even if the fic doesn't get a TON of hits, if I see it getting kudos at a relatively good ratio to the hits it is getting, I'm winning... I guess. I can also compare it to larger, longer, or older fic better that way. Like, yeah, this fic over here has 500 kudos but it also has 10,000 hits, where as mine has 60 kudos but only 400 hits, so of the people who clicked our links to read, technically more people find mine enjoyable in any sort of note worthy fashion. It used to be something around 10% kudos to hits I felt was a good percentage, but the ratio that I have been getting has gone up lately so I may have to readjust???
I never compare myself to the numbers of others because I get very discouraged and resentful very fast.
You can use it to compare to your own fic as well though, and get an idea if you're improving. As a fer instance using myself as an example, All Tied Up with a Pretty Red Bow at a bit over a year old has 1879 hits and 127 kudos. That's about a 6.75%. Mooost fics I have are around the 10% mark, so not as good overall. Oh well. But then we have my most recent fic, Good Fucking Morning, a feralstuck amporacest pwp. It's been up for around 24 hours now, only has 375 hits, but it's got 51 kudos. That's about 13.6% NICE! That's a great improvement! It will probably go down after a couple months. IDK what it is about older fic gets more hits but less kudos than when they first went up, but I do expect it to stay somewhere in the 10-15% range for now.
I don't think you get how fucking upset and hateful I get. I didn't use the word resentful lightly. I get very, very, VERY angry and discouraged.
No, I do get it. Just, trying to offer a way to come at it from a different angle I guess? Brainstuff can sometimes be faked out if you come at a thing with different intent, because brains are weird like that.
Check it though, you got at least a 10% kudos to hits ratio! Which is hella better than what my stuff from 2015 was getting. Also, I have like 4k followers on an active fandom blog, reblog about every 4-ish hours for the first day when I post something new, and have at least a couple mid card BNFs that follow me and reblog my stuff as well. I get more hits because I'm more visible, not because the fic is better.
