Musings on Fan-Fiction Views and Reviews
Yesterday I posted a new fic at The Petulant Poetess, "The Demise of Numerius Plankton". As of this writing, it's received 122 hits, but only 2 reviews. This is pretty normal for me; not many people read my work in the first place, and of those who do...well, I generally get 1 review for every 50 or so hits.
I'm not complaining; I'm hardly in a position to do so, after all, especially since I don't tend to review every time I read a fic myself. And when I do get reviews for my work, they tend to be overwhelmingly positive, and sometimes hilarious in themselves, like this review I once received at Sycophant Hex's "Wolfsbane" archive for "A Longing Beyond Reason", a Lupin-centric fic I wrote in 2004:
Okay...so here I am at past 3:00 in the A.M...I just can't sleep, and So, I come across this particular story and start reading. All of a sudden, my cat, (whose disposition makes Snape look like Ghandi) jumps up in my lap and calmly lies down...(er...that never happens, at least in this lifetime). It's dead quiet in the house, and I am reading along about...what?...jelly doughnuts? huh? I get to the part about the house elves beating themselves up and make the rather unfortunate mistake of suddenly BURSTING OUT Laughing. Startled into a terror reaction, the Cougar sleeping in my lap, promptly skewers my thighs with All 500 razor-sharp claws at the same moment the cup of freshly brewed tea and honey I was holding 4" above her head, falls from my grasp in a drenching cascade of Hot and Sticky! She screams, I scream, and we both fly up from the chair and hit the floor...and as I lie there, I hear a sudden, dull thud as she slams into the wooden leg of the couch, desperately seeking a hidey hole. Um...do you suppose large, carefully-grown dust bunnies would stick to a long-haired cat sopping wet with honey...? (sigh...) Where was I? Oh yeah...Great Story...Very Funny. I would expound on that, but I believe I am, at the moment, in greater need of a dry nightie and some antiseptic for my wounds. In the morning I will try my best to lure my frightened feline out from under the divan...maybe I should use a Jelly-Filled Doughnut!
For obvious reasons, this is quite possibly my favourite review ever. :D
Anyway, I do frequently wonder if of all the people who read my stories, only a handful of my readers actually like them. Sometimes I think that this is a sort of review karma...you know, because I don't always review, I don't tend to get reviews. Other times, I wonder if it's because of my choice of genre and category; the most popular fics tend to be het romances, particularly with Hermione Granger and Severus Snape as the central characters. I've only ever written HG/SS once, and that was a gift for someone who I know has a preference for those stories. And I'm not much of a romance writer; my love life has largely consisted of a series of emotional disasters, so I feel a bit out of my depth when I write something other than angst in a fic about love. Better to stick with humour; I may not know how to love in any romantic sense, but I sure as hell know how to laugh. Cowardly? Yes, without a doubt. But it's comfortable, and I don't really feel constrained by it.
Still, review karma or not, I do sometimes wonder if the relatively few reviews that my work tends to earn are a sign that no matter how good I am at laughing, maybe I lack the capacity to inspire laughter in many other people. :p
I'm not complaining; I'm hardly in a position to do so, after all, especially since I don't tend to review every time I read a fic myself. And when I do get reviews for my work, they tend to be overwhelmingly positive, and sometimes hilarious in themselves, like this review I once received at Sycophant Hex's "Wolfsbane" archive for "A Longing Beyond Reason", a Lupin-centric fic I wrote in 2004:
Okay...so here I am at past 3:00 in the A.M...I just can't sleep, and So, I come across this particular story and start reading. All of a sudden, my cat, (whose disposition makes Snape look like Ghandi) jumps up in my lap and calmly lies down...(er...that never happens, at least in this lifetime). It's dead quiet in the house, and I am reading along about...what?...jelly doughnuts? huh? I get to the part about the house elves beating themselves up and make the rather unfortunate mistake of suddenly BURSTING OUT Laughing. Startled into a terror reaction, the Cougar sleeping in my lap, promptly skewers my thighs with All 500 razor-sharp claws at the same moment the cup of freshly brewed tea and honey I was holding 4" above her head, falls from my grasp in a drenching cascade of Hot and Sticky! She screams, I scream, and we both fly up from the chair and hit the floor...and as I lie there, I hear a sudden, dull thud as she slams into the wooden leg of the couch, desperately seeking a hidey hole. Um...do you suppose large, carefully-grown dust bunnies would stick to a long-haired cat sopping wet with honey...? (sigh...) Where was I? Oh yeah...Great Story...Very Funny. I would expound on that, but I believe I am, at the moment, in greater need of a dry nightie and some antiseptic for my wounds. In the morning I will try my best to lure my frightened feline out from under the divan...maybe I should use a Jelly-Filled Doughnut!
For obvious reasons, this is quite possibly my favourite review ever. :D
Anyway, I do frequently wonder if of all the people who read my stories, only a handful of my readers actually like them. Sometimes I think that this is a sort of review karma...you know, because I don't always review, I don't tend to get reviews. Other times, I wonder if it's because of my choice of genre and category; the most popular fics tend to be het romances, particularly with Hermione Granger and Severus Snape as the central characters. I've only ever written HG/SS once, and that was a gift for someone who I know has a preference for those stories. And I'm not much of a romance writer; my love life has largely consisted of a series of emotional disasters, so I feel a bit out of my depth when I write something other than angst in a fic about love. Better to stick with humour; I may not know how to love in any romantic sense, but I sure as hell know how to laugh. Cowardly? Yes, without a doubt. But it's comfortable, and I don't really feel constrained by it.
Still, review karma or not, I do sometimes wonder if the relatively few reviews that my work tends to earn are a sign that no matter how good I am at laughing, maybe I lack the capacity to inspire laughter in many other people. :p