failure sucks

[sgatazmy]

 Well, despite finding people to look over the story ahead of time and despite being assured the story was awesome as was and a good read, this story completely and totally failed.

I'd like to say growth mindset and that it's a learning experience but the truth is that I worked really hard and did all I could to make the best story that was on my mind, and I completely and totally failed and failure sucks. 17,000 words and it's just what I wanted but apparently it just sucks.  I feel drained and let down and I don't want to pretend I'm okay.

Comments

[sholio]

oh nooooo, I'm so sorry. *huuugs*

How do you mean it failed? It didn't get comments/kudos?

Maybe people just haven't had a chance to read it yet because it's long? I wouldn't give up on it! Perhaps the audience just hasn't found it yet. You might have written someone's favorite story in the whole fandom once they get a chance to read it.

It really sucks to post something that you worked hard on and get crickets, though. :(

[sgatazmy]

In this fandom a fic is usually buried after a day and the number of clicks until then tells you where it is at. But it is worse. In this fandom, they have a feature I despise: Downvotes. So it isn’t just crickets, it is people just saying the story sucks by downvoting it. Granted ny fic has only one down vote and only one upvote but this is a fandom where a successful story usually has 40 upvotes fairly fast and people won’t click on a story doing poorly up front.

It isn’t as bad as it could be because people in the fandom can be even crueler and add docs to groups for “worst fics ever” and other such awfully named groups. People even comment to say they put the fics in those groups which I have seen on fics that aren’t even bad. So I didn’t have that at least.

Still, this fic will be buried quickly and out of people’s sight so I would say it is just a lot of unappreciated hard work. I want to not care, but I do. Maybe because I was so proud and excited by the story. Just once I want to be successful and 22 years of fic writing and I still haven’t figured it out.

[sholio]

*hugs you a bunch*

Could you consider putting it on AO3 and see if it gets more attention there? It might be that it's not the right audience for the ponies fandom that goes to that site -- maybe people don't read long fic or only read certain pairings or such. but it might be better suited to an AO3 audience.

I'm really sorry it turned out that way, though. :(

[sgatazmy]

AO3 audience for pony fics are usually nsfw stuff that are often people banned from the main site. I realized that wasn’t the right place. Fanfic.net seems to mostly have stuff in a spanish or original characters. Fimfic usually has a wide variety and most of the stuff I read, and usually will read the most varied work. So the site is the best one. And from what I can tell they usually love adventure fics or fics with my genre. I even had people look at it ahead of time to see it was a good story to post there and I got the thumbs up.

I think it is just one of those things that is what it is
:(

[sholio]

Awwww. I'm sorry. :(

[sgatazmy]

It is okay. Thank you for the support. I knew fandom could be tough here so I guess I knew going in. I just also know a lot of the fandom is kind. I think being the largest fandom I have ever been in (by magnitudes) has something to do with it.

Interestingly, the writers of the show had an entire episode that basically was to tell fandom they really complain and nitpick too much. I liked the episode but most of fandom hated it and got really offended. Which goes to show I do have tastes that are often the opposite of the majority in the fandom.

[sgatazmy]

oh, this is the song they made for that episode after the characters have been tormented by their fans: https://youtu.be/oC_bZPjwpVw

[conuly]

Wow. What sort of jerk do you have to be to downvote fic except for serious issues like... I don't know, like if it was really just 1,000 lines of "fuck you fuckers" or something?

[sgatazmy]

I know, right! There are plenty of fics I haven’t liked but I know the author took time and worked on them so I would never downvote without something being really wrong, which I have yet to do. People can be so cruel, too, with their comments so in many ways I am lucky mine is mostly ignored.

[conuly]

Hell, in certain (small) fandoms I will upvote fics I don't like if they simply use correct spelling and punctuation and aren't completely batshit-in-the-wrong-ways. Because I want to really, really encourage people.

*hugs*

[sgatazmy]

Yes! It is all about encouragement and kindness. It takes so much to put a fic out there. And, yes, it should be properly edited.

[frith_in_thorns]

Oh, that's such an absolutely rubbish feeling, I'm so sorry :( *hugs*

[leesa_perrie]

Really sorry, that's so hard and so unfair *mega hugs*