The Great Fanfiction.net Experiment
Apr. 24th, 2008 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseThe great fanfiction.net experiment results in pseudo-scientific format.
Idea: To see how easy or not easy it was to deal with fanfiction.net's posting interface and the fandom(s) in general.
What I did:
I went through my archive and chose a selection of fic I thought was decent. I didn't aim for one particular fandom, but I did avoid fic that I'd written with Beth or that I'd posted to fanfiction.net before. When I finished, I had twelve fics, 8 of which were for various Kamen Rider series (predominantly KR 555), 2 that were Super Sentai, 1 that was Power Rangers, and 1 that was Forever Knight. Two of the fics were OC-focused or OC-heavy.
The fics in order of posting were as follows:
1. Dust and Flames (Kamen Rider 555)
2. No Choice At All (GoGo Sentai Boukenger)
3. Stubborn Too (Kamen Rider 555)
4. Falling (Kamen Rider 555)
5. Not So Bad Luck (Kamen Rider Den-O)
6. Being A Hero (Power Rangers Mystic Force)
7. The Cat Has What She Wants (GoGo Sentai Boukenger)
8. Goodbye From Where It Hurts (Kamen Rider Hibiki)
9. En Paco, Flugas (Kamen Rider Kabuto)
10. But Together (Forever Knight)
11. Turns to Dust (Kamen Rider 555)
12. Boxed In (Kamen Rider Kiva - AU)
I posted them on a random schedule, based mostly on hit count. I didn't depend on number of reviews, adds to C2s, favoriting, or story alerts to get me through, as I didn't expect any of those to happen at all.
What happened:
On top of the hits (some 678 hits as of the day after the last chapter posted), I got 3 story alerts on two different fics, 3 favorites on three different fics, and 16 reviews over 4 fics (11 for one fic, 3 for a second, and one each for two other fics). I also got one really odd review, one PM from someone who pulled a "you're doing it wrong" (on the AU, no less!), and one person picking up a term I used in one fic and using it in theirs.
Posting-wise, it wasn't too bad. Fics uploaded in both .rtf and .doc smoothly. I was aware of the scene break problem (and most of the time remembered there was one, so I dashed two lines to indicate where I needed to add the scene line break), which was good as I sometimes forgot and it ate my scene breaks. Apart from some frustrations with that and continually losing the line breaks on my title/credit line, setting up the fics turned out to be no problem. More frustrating was that it kept forgetting that I'd agreed to the terms of service/rules several times, making me have to reagree about half the time, even though I was only supposed to have to do it once a week.
Adding stories wasn't too bad (apart from the terms of service glitch). I was glad that the software kept track of what categories I posted in so I wouldn't have to go hunt down the same categories again and again. The form, however, stripped parenthesis, which was very frustrating if I forgot. It also removed some dashes.
Of the twelve fics, eight landed in C2s (kind of recommendation/fic lists). The two Boukenger fics and the Forever Knight were left out, and oddly enough so was one 555 fic, "Falling". Why, I have no clue. I have to wonder if the C2 maintainer thought there was slash content there (though they totally missed the slight bit of slash in another fic, "Stubborn Too"). The three fics that were favorited were "Boxed In", "The Cat Has What She Wants", and "Goodbye From Where It Hurts".
Review-wise, it got interesting. Four fics, as previously mentioned, got reviews. One was for "Goodbye From Where It Hurts", my Hibiki fic. I wasn't expecting to get a review on it, because as heck, I didn't expect it to get hit much, Hibiki being one of the less popular recent KRs. The second one was "Turns to Dust", one of the heavy OC fics, which got a surprising (if good) review. The third was "Being A Hero", the one where I was *not* surprised to see a review (and in fact, got three); I'm not unknown in the Power Rangers section. The fourth was "Boxed In", which I was hoping to post fast and not get noticed; this again surprised me, getting me 11 reviews for its six chapters.
Hit-wise, if I average "Boxed In"'s Hits per chapter, The twelve fics ranked in terms of hits are as follows:
1. Being A Hero (Power Rangers)
2. Not So Bad Luck (Kamen Rider)
3. No Choice At All (Super Sentai)
4. En Paco, Flugas (Kamen Rider)
5. The Cat Has What She Wants (Super Sentai)
6. Boxed In (Kamen Rider)
7. But Together (Forever Knight)
8. Dust and Flames (Kamen Rider)
9. Turns To Dust (Kamen Rider)
10. Stubborn Too (Kamen Rider)
11. Falling (Kamen Rider)
12. Goodbye From Where It Hurts (Kamen Rider)
Not surprisingly, the PR and Sentai hits are bigger than the Kamen Rider (newer) and Forever Knight (older, less active fandom) ones, and the fics in those fandoms all were in the top half.
In terms of the Kamen Rider fics themselves, it's not surprising that "Not So Bad Luck" (Kamen Rider Den-O) got high up, as it's from a fairly recent incarnation. Ditto for "En Paco, Flugas", which was the incarnation before. "Boxed In" got a lot of hits overall, but the average is slightly lower than the others because of its AU status. The Kamen Rider 555 fics did okay, but not great (the best one was the one that had been in the longest), and the Hibiki fic suffered from the whole series-not-well-liked problem.
Something else that I didn't consider was the human element - my fellow fans. As mentioned before, I had a slightly odd review - one person who complained that my Power Rangers Mystic Force fic that focused on Madison should have had more Madison/Nick in it. (She also complained it was too short, which was a valid criticism.) Another person Private Messaged me to complain that I'd gotten the info wrong on Kivat in "Boxed In". I thought at first it was a simple lack of reading the author's notes about how early I'd written that fic, but it turns out that the person had assumed I'd read (at the time) about the article that had disclosed Kivat's origins. I ended up pointing out that I had not known of that at the time, and given that they couldn't tell me where that info had come from, I continue to leave it out. And then there was a piece of my fanon from the same story (the term "Fandiri", used to describe half-Fangaire like Wataru) that wandered into someone else's fic. I have to wonder if that will become general fanon in due time.
But, on the other hand, I wanted to make "Boxed In" as enjoyable as possible for the people reading it on fanfiction.net, so I wrote another ~2000 words/2 scenes that fit into part 5, giving me actually 6 parts instead of the planned 5 to post.
So, would I do it again?
Yes.
It may seem odd to those people who don't have high regard for the site known as the "Pit of Voles", but I didn't really mind posting there, especially my older stuff. I'm not going to post my some 200-300+ fics on there (I'm not that into torturing my readers), but I do plan to post one or two more. One is a Katie/Trip (Power Rangers TIme Force) that I plan to finish One of These Days. The other is the sequel to "Boxed In", as I've pretty much decided that I love that universe and want to write more in it.
Idea: To see how easy or not easy it was to deal with fanfiction.net's posting interface and the fandom(s) in general.
What I did:
I went through my archive and chose a selection of fic I thought was decent. I didn't aim for one particular fandom, but I did avoid fic that I'd written with Beth or that I'd posted to fanfiction.net before. When I finished, I had twelve fics, 8 of which were for various Kamen Rider series (predominantly KR 555), 2 that were Super Sentai, 1 that was Power Rangers, and 1 that was Forever Knight. Two of the fics were OC-focused or OC-heavy.
The fics in order of posting were as follows:
1. Dust and Flames (Kamen Rider 555)
2. No Choice At All (GoGo Sentai Boukenger)
3. Stubborn Too (Kamen Rider 555)
4. Falling (Kamen Rider 555)
5. Not So Bad Luck (Kamen Rider Den-O)
6. Being A Hero (Power Rangers Mystic Force)
7. The Cat Has What She Wants (GoGo Sentai Boukenger)
8. Goodbye From Where It Hurts (Kamen Rider Hibiki)
9. En Paco, Flugas (Kamen Rider Kabuto)
10. But Together (Forever Knight)
11. Turns to Dust (Kamen Rider 555)
12. Boxed In (Kamen Rider Kiva - AU)
I posted them on a random schedule, based mostly on hit count. I didn't depend on number of reviews, adds to C2s, favoriting, or story alerts to get me through, as I didn't expect any of those to happen at all.
What happened:
On top of the hits (some 678 hits as of the day after the last chapter posted), I got 3 story alerts on two different fics, 3 favorites on three different fics, and 16 reviews over 4 fics (11 for one fic, 3 for a second, and one each for two other fics). I also got one really odd review, one PM from someone who pulled a "you're doing it wrong" (on the AU, no less!), and one person picking up a term I used in one fic and using it in theirs.
Posting-wise, it wasn't too bad. Fics uploaded in both .rtf and .doc smoothly. I was aware of the scene break problem (and most of the time remembered there was one, so I dashed two lines to indicate where I needed to add the scene line break), which was good as I sometimes forgot and it ate my scene breaks. Apart from some frustrations with that and continually losing the line breaks on my title/credit line, setting up the fics turned out to be no problem. More frustrating was that it kept forgetting that I'd agreed to the terms of service/rules several times, making me have to reagree about half the time, even though I was only supposed to have to do it once a week.
Adding stories wasn't too bad (apart from the terms of service glitch). I was glad that the software kept track of what categories I posted in so I wouldn't have to go hunt down the same categories again and again. The form, however, stripped parenthesis, which was very frustrating if I forgot. It also removed some dashes.
Of the twelve fics, eight landed in C2s (kind of recommendation/fic lists). The two Boukenger fics and the Forever Knight were left out, and oddly enough so was one 555 fic, "Falling". Why, I have no clue. I have to wonder if the C2 maintainer thought there was slash content there (though they totally missed the slight bit of slash in another fic, "Stubborn Too"). The three fics that were favorited were "Boxed In", "The Cat Has What She Wants", and "Goodbye From Where It Hurts".
Review-wise, it got interesting. Four fics, as previously mentioned, got reviews. One was for "Goodbye From Where It Hurts", my Hibiki fic. I wasn't expecting to get a review on it, because as heck, I didn't expect it to get hit much, Hibiki being one of the less popular recent KRs. The second one was "Turns to Dust", one of the heavy OC fics, which got a surprising (if good) review. The third was "Being A Hero", the one where I was *not* surprised to see a review (and in fact, got three); I'm not unknown in the Power Rangers section. The fourth was "Boxed In", which I was hoping to post fast and not get noticed; this again surprised me, getting me 11 reviews for its six chapters.
Hit-wise, if I average "Boxed In"'s Hits per chapter, The twelve fics ranked in terms of hits are as follows:
1. Being A Hero (Power Rangers)
2. Not So Bad Luck (Kamen Rider)
3. No Choice At All (Super Sentai)
4. En Paco, Flugas (Kamen Rider)
5. The Cat Has What She Wants (Super Sentai)
6. Boxed In (Kamen Rider)
7. But Together (Forever Knight)
8. Dust and Flames (Kamen Rider)
9. Turns To Dust (Kamen Rider)
10. Stubborn Too (Kamen Rider)
11. Falling (Kamen Rider)
12. Goodbye From Where It Hurts (Kamen Rider)
Not surprisingly, the PR and Sentai hits are bigger than the Kamen Rider (newer) and Forever Knight (older, less active fandom) ones, and the fics in those fandoms all were in the top half.
In terms of the Kamen Rider fics themselves, it's not surprising that "Not So Bad Luck" (Kamen Rider Den-O) got high up, as it's from a fairly recent incarnation. Ditto for "En Paco, Flugas", which was the incarnation before. "Boxed In" got a lot of hits overall, but the average is slightly lower than the others because of its AU status. The Kamen Rider 555 fics did okay, but not great (the best one was the one that had been in the longest), and the Hibiki fic suffered from the whole series-not-well-liked problem.
Something else that I didn't consider was the human element - my fellow fans. As mentioned before, I had a slightly odd review - one person who complained that my Power Rangers Mystic Force fic that focused on Madison should have had more Madison/Nick in it. (She also complained it was too short, which was a valid criticism.) Another person Private Messaged me to complain that I'd gotten the info wrong on Kivat in "Boxed In". I thought at first it was a simple lack of reading the author's notes about how early I'd written that fic, but it turns out that the person had assumed I'd read (at the time) about the article that had disclosed Kivat's origins. I ended up pointing out that I had not known of that at the time, and given that they couldn't tell me where that info had come from, I continue to leave it out. And then there was a piece of my fanon from the same story (the term "Fandiri", used to describe half-Fangaire like Wataru) that wandered into someone else's fic. I have to wonder if that will become general fanon in due time.
But, on the other hand, I wanted to make "Boxed In" as enjoyable as possible for the people reading it on fanfiction.net, so I wrote another ~2000 words/2 scenes that fit into part 5, giving me actually 6 parts instead of the planned 5 to post.
So, would I do it again?
Yes.
It may seem odd to those people who don't have high regard for the site known as the "Pit of Voles", but I didn't really mind posting there, especially my older stuff. I'm not going to post my some 200-300+ fics on there (I'm not that into torturing my readers), but I do plan to post one or two more. One is a Katie/Trip (Power Rangers TIme Force) that I plan to finish One of These Days. The other is the sequel to "Boxed In", as I've pretty much decided that I love that universe and want to write more in it.
