This bad boy is pretty long. If it seems to wander, pleae forgive. I'm
spouting, I guess...
On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Jason Liao wrote:
Frankly, I and most of us are here to write things that we like, not to
garner complements. Evidently, from the numerous crossovers, many people
happen to think Ranma and SM is fun material from which to base fanfics,
and who is anyone to say differently? If you believe that SMJ by itself is
great fanfic material, and want to see more SMJ fanfics, then spend your
ranting energy towards writing one, instead. It helps both the diversity
and the spam problem.
Three months ago, back when I first tossed myself into this list, this
came up. I assume this comes up often...
Anyways, while I agree with you, you have to admit that getting a reaction
from readers is very very nice. Personally, it's wht kept me going when I
wrote my fic. I would never have finished it without knowing that people
are both reading and liking it.
This list is like the music industry, really... you have two or three
major genres of fic/music, and a number of artists/writers write that
story because they enjoy it and it gets reactions. Lesser-known series,
like Boku No Marie (my fav) or 801 TTS Airbats are going to get overlooked
because they don't have the known-commodity status of a Ranma or SM. The
readers on the list know what they're getting in a Ranma fic, just like
they know what they're getting with a Jackie Chan movie.
If you wrote a fic you were proud of, that you put a lot of work into,
lost sleep over, and posted it to the FFML, and didn't get a response, how
would you feel? If you went to the FFML We'll Review Anything page and
saw that the reviewers ranged from Ranma-fics to SM-fics to AMG-fics,
where would you go? How would you get a positive reaction? Why, write a
Ranma fic, of course!
I think that there's more than one or two writers here writing for their
audience. Maybe they want to write that Video Girl Ai Yaoi fic where
Takashi and Youta find themelves. Maybe they just want to write an
original fic and not have it completely ignored. But they aren't. They
can't. They're writing Ranma-meets-Rurouni Kenshin because it sells, for
lack of a better term.
There's a subtle commercialism going on here on the FFML. Writers invest
time, and expect reaction. Readers pay a writer in positive reactions and
C&C. But they won't do it if the product isn't what they want. If
writers don't get what they want, they eventually stop writing (unless
they're delusional, which many writers have to be to continue writing
without reaction ^_^). If readers don't get what they want, they dont
react, and wait for it to go away.
I feel bad that the cycle of reader/writer reactions has lead to a state
where people are afraid to invest time in anything that's not known. If
more writers received more reaction from good indie fanfics, the cycle
could and would change. I haven't seen any big reader uprising, though.
So I agree with you -- the answer is to write a quality indie fic, and try
to sell it. Get people to review it, pre-read, react, whatever it takes
to keep you writing and to get more readers aware of it.
The key is quality. The other fics are very well represented -- they can
get away with lower overall quality because, while the ratios of gems to
duds is lower, the absolute number of gems is higher. Since there's fewer
VGAi Yaoi fics out there, your VGAi Yaoi fic has to be very very good to
get the attention of a reader who maybe selected your story by mistake.
So that' all out of me. Maybe I said something meaningful up there, maybe
not. Oh well. It doesn't matter. I made up for it in quantity. ^_^
--Matt
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