you're stuck with a soulless guy, so you might as well work with me
About a week ago, I posted a poll here inquiring about people's expectations and likes/dislikes when participating in fandom. 35 people participated, so insert a mandatory disclaimer about sample size being too small, not being representative in reading tastes given that most/many people on my flist read at least some of my stories and may have tastes differing from the rest of fandom as a whole, etc. All that aside, interesting results emerged.
Nearly everyone has at least one OTP in fandom (not surprising), and nearly all voters identify with one or more characters they ship in fandom. This second fact was surprising to me, though. I suppose it's not really a conversation topic that comes up that often, so at least my surprise is justified. I, personally, do not identify with any of the characters I write about--I sympathize with parts of them and can relate to aspects of background or personality, but that's about it. It was very interesting to find out I am in the minority about this, and it makes certain patterns in fandom and fanfic make much more sense to me in light of that fact.
People were pretty split on the subject of Hurt/Comfort fic. 18 read and enjoyed it, while 7 didn't and 11 had more complicated feelings on the matter.
The things that people like or want to see the most in fanfic are, from most popular to least popular: interesting ideas, good characterization, plot, humor, happy ending, angst, and sex.
The things that people expect to see: good characterization, interesting ideas, sex, happy endings, and humor.
Things people hate to see in fic, excluding technical issues like SPAG or wild OOCness: the results were so all over the place it's a bit hard to summarize the results. But popular ones include: unhappy endings, stories with no direction or poor pacing, heternormativity and, weirdly enough, mpreg. LOL.
Dealbreakers AKA things that will stop the reader from reading a fic completely: poor SPAG, extreme OOC, bad style/purple prose, and unwarned for squicks.
Most people do look to fanfic to make them feel a certain way, though it can vary by mood. About half the participants have varying things that they are looking for depending on mood: soemtimes sad fic, sometimes happy, sometimes porny. The other half of the participants seek something happy to improve their mood, generally (I'd say this is a result that really demonstrates how skewed my sample is in terms of openness to reading various things; I think that amongst mainstream fandom there is a far larger contingent of people who are only looking for feel good things in fic). A few voters, interestingly enough, don't turn to fanfic to generate a particular emotion at all but rather, read for the writing or the writers.
Thoughts on the results, anyone? Surprised/not surprised/sleepy?
Nearly everyone has at least one OTP in fandom (not surprising), and nearly all voters identify with one or more characters they ship in fandom. This second fact was surprising to me, though. I suppose it's not really a conversation topic that comes up that often, so at least my surprise is justified. I, personally, do not identify with any of the characters I write about--I sympathize with parts of them and can relate to aspects of background or personality, but that's about it. It was very interesting to find out I am in the minority about this, and it makes certain patterns in fandom and fanfic make much more sense to me in light of that fact.
People were pretty split on the subject of Hurt/Comfort fic. 18 read and enjoyed it, while 7 didn't and 11 had more complicated feelings on the matter.
The things that people like or want to see the most in fanfic are, from most popular to least popular: interesting ideas, good characterization, plot, humor, happy ending, angst, and sex.
The things that people expect to see: good characterization, interesting ideas, sex, happy endings, and humor.
Things people hate to see in fic, excluding technical issues like SPAG or wild OOCness: the results were so all over the place it's a bit hard to summarize the results. But popular ones include: unhappy endings, stories with no direction or poor pacing, heternormativity and, weirdly enough, mpreg. LOL.
Dealbreakers AKA things that will stop the reader from reading a fic completely: poor SPAG, extreme OOC, bad style/purple prose, and unwarned for squicks.
Most people do look to fanfic to make them feel a certain way, though it can vary by mood. About half the participants have varying things that they are looking for depending on mood: soemtimes sad fic, sometimes happy, sometimes porny. The other half of the participants seek something happy to improve their mood, generally (I'd say this is a result that really demonstrates how skewed my sample is in terms of openness to reading various things; I think that amongst mainstream fandom there is a far larger contingent of people who are only looking for feel good things in fic). A few voters, interestingly enough, don't turn to fanfic to generate a particular emotion at all but rather, read for the writing or the writers.
Thoughts on the results, anyone? Surprised/not surprised/sleepy?