Fic link & thoughts on nicheness and feedback

[extrapenguin]

My icon collection grows! This one is a crop of a fanart by xiyoumiyu, probably. Full ver in this tweet. Huge thanks to reverse google image search, because no-one believes in crediting fanart.

Week before last, I finished up posting a long WIP of mine for Modao Zushi, hence the shiny new icon. Compared to my prior fandoms, this one is pretty allergic to leaving any feedback, especially ones with more than two sentences, but I'm actually pleased with the response to this one! (Mostly because it had one regular commenter who left very long comments that basically picked out everything I'd meant to accomplish and approved of it all. I, uh, may have doodled hearts.) I'm especially thrilled with it, and the few super positive bookmark comments, since this is very niche content. First of all, it's coming of age, but set in the aftermath of sexual abuse by an authority figure, so the premise counts as dark. Second of all, the fandom's canon juggernaut doesn't get together. I'll give you the link and copypaste the bookmarks' text, as they're actually a really good advertisement, then share some thoughts about this fandom vs my mode of fandoming, and how nicheness affects feedback.

Rediscovery, Reconstruction (27059 words) by ExtraPenguin
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Relationships: Jiāng Fēngmián/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Qǐrén & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn/Original Character(s)
Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Qǐrén, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Rape Recovery, bildungsroman, Self-Discovery
Summary:

When Wei Wuxian was 13, Jiang Fengmian invited him to his rooms to ‘help him on his journey to adulthood’. At the age of 15, he was sent to the Cloud Recesses to learn from the esteemed teacher Lan Qiren. When Lan Qiren found out how the Jiang sect treated its head disciple, he arranged to keep him at the Cloud Recesses for longer – and Wei Wuxian is left with the hard part of trying to fix himself and grow up at the same time.

notdexterousatall

I was unsure about this, because very often rape-recovery fics turn out to be rape-porn in deceitful packaging. I was also very wrong, because this is one of the most deeply-moving fics about recovery, healing, and personal growth that I've ever read. The characters are removed from their canon-selves, but in a way that stays true to themselves and adds another level of depth to their personalities. Wei Wuxian isn't shipped with Lan Wangji here, which is unusual for this fandom and was a turn-off for me at the start, but here it is done so in a way that feels very true to the circumstances the characters are presented in, and truthfully, having read up to chapter 4, I don't see any other way Wuxian's relationship with Wangji could have been presented. The OC's are also well developed and add to the story rather than subtract from it, and I yearn for every new insight into the characters that I am granted.

Bittersweet, but the bitterness comes at the beginning so that Wei Wuxian's personal growth can bring the sweetness at the end. I very much recommend, and I also suggest that at the end of each chapter you read the author's comments as well.

Gerifalte

ahhh, this was gold. I couldn't stop reading until the very end, and the setting is /well/ fleshed-out -very believable, consistent and real. Don't even get me started on the OCs, for all intents and purposes /people/ you could connect to and take an interest in. I was very invested in their development and context, to the point I honestly wanted to make them happy. Also LQR characterizarion is the very best, and the foreshadowing was spot-on (I had my suspicions from the first time LYH talked about her backstory, so I didn't feel like it came from the blue.

All in all, 12/10 would read again.

PS: gdi I just realized this isn't the comment section. I hope the author gets to read this -or that I remember to drop a comment when I have more time. Fingers crossed.

Modao Zushi is a ... well, it's billed as a romance novel, though I've read stuff shelved as SF which have equivalent ratios of romance to not-romance (Bujold's Shards of Honor, frex), so it's got a very strong romance throughline, but there's stuff going on that is mostly unrelated to the romance plot, and is enjoyable in its own right. The fandom is very heavily into the canon ship, and exploded with the animated adaptation. The adaptation made some changes I heavily disagreed with, and interpreted a lot of things Wrongly, and the fandom sucks at distinguishing the sources/is mostly a fandom of the animated adaptation that's wrongly occupied the book's tag on AO3, so I loathe the adaptation. The fandom at large is very young and very OTP-y, in that they browse the ship's tag, and are only interested in their ship(s). This is very weird to me, as I fandom primarily based on character, so my attitude to shipping is "if the dynamcis sound interesting, sure, why not?" but don't really OTP. (Also, the setting counts as a character. Very often my favorite one.) I also tend to multiship at the drop of a hat, and don't really see the problem with that, as in different scenarios, a different relationship – or none! – would obviously develop. This means I'm way out of step with this fandom, especially as they all seem to kink on every single one of my relationship squicks, so the majority of the fanworks are essentially unreadable for me.

My approach to ficwriting, too, is that I get a story idea, and try to plot that out, instead of "how do I get A and B together?" In 2018, this has meant that I've written several of my past utter and complete squicks/dislikes (mpreg, omegaverse, canon character/OFC, [spoilers for Yuletide]...) because the story would be better for it, which, let me tell you, has been quite a ride.

Due to the fact that I'm way out of step with the fandom, the stuff I tend to write is also out of step with the fandom! Nevertheless, due to the fact that my fic is better than average for the fandom on the spelling and grammar level (see: lots of youths in the fandom), I still get hits. I even get kudos! And the times I've written the juggernaut, well, I should've gotten lots of comments, right? Ah yes, I did, but the comments were (almost) all stuff like "Woah" or "that was cute" or other comments of two lines at most, which were comments, yes, but light on the actual commentary. As someone used to fandoms where even the shortest of comments will pick out at least one element the reader liked, it was a bit annoying that people were talking so much without saying a thing. – But with this one, with its niche readerbase, I got nice comments and nice bookmarks. Thinking back, the fandoms with the nicest comments have always been the smaller ones, where that fic I wrote might be the only fic for fandom + premise for the whole year. And so, because I'm in this for the reader engagement as opposed to the kudos, I'll continue with my most niche ideas. The juggernaut shippers get a whole bunch of things already; the people who like a more niche thing or just some variety will come, and they'll be glad that my fic exists.

Oh, and a funny thing: every time I've promoted this fic by eg posting links, there has been a peak in feedback ... for my other fics in the fandom. :P

Poll #20882 Feedback poll!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

View Respondents

Have you observed a difference in the quality of feedback your mainstream and niche content receives?

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Yes
5 (100.0%)

No
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[extrapenguin]

I think it's that for mainstream stuff, the readers might have read 10 such things before breakfast already, so the only way to "win" a comment is to be memorable/unique. With rarer stuff, you might be the only person to ever write it for the fandom. This means that rarepair shippers etc will have all those years of squee they can only rarely indulge, and thus the comments get longer and more involved, because they want to encourage you to write more. A similar principle applies to more unique mainstream stuff – it's the only mainstream popular ship/character/setting that has dragons/politics/a realistic look at the inside of a nuclear power plant/whatever, so they're there via the mainstream thing, but squeeing about the unique concept.