[ SECRET POST #2850 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2850 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 016 secrets from Secret Submission Post #407.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

i think the idea is that a pairing that's unpopular (not just rare) is obviously going to have far fewer dedicated readers than a pairing that isn't disliked by the fandom at large, so if someone was writing something just for attention, they'd be pretty stupid to write about X/Z when they could be writing X/Y and getting way more cookies and asspats.

[blitzwing]

It really depends. There are so many factors at play for what makes something popular or not. Whether the author writes the pairing prolifically--and thus has their own dedicated readerbase for their fics for that ship--or whether they're new to it (as OP's rival clearly was, since OP indicated they'd just written it due to a recent FST); whether they have a blog that has followers for that ship (OP mentioned reblogs)--for example if you have a tumblr dedicated to say, Sam x Gabriel from SPN, and have been running it for years and have a lot of followers, being able to promote your Sassy fics to it is probably going to get you a lot more hits and love than someone who just started writing Destial, a huge popular pairing in which the fic will have to compete against tens of thousands of other Destial fics in the AO3 search results, and which will most likely get lost in the depths. With no dedicated Spn or Destial blog its fate is even more uncertain.

I think there was even someone that analyzed the best times to post fic and determined that fic posted on Sunday morning got more traffic than any other time. Kinks; writing style and certain writing conventions that are popular in fandom, whether something is wanted by readers but underwritten by the fandom, all kinds of things can be at work.

I don't know; I just think there are too many factors and variables in play to deduct anything from pairing. My rarepair fics have always done better than fics where I wrote a juggernaut or popular pairing. That's why I find OP's point on that so mystifying. It could be argued that rarepair fic has less competition, and a mediocre fic for a rarepair will often be read in spite of its lower quality because its audience doesn't get much, beggars can't be choosers, etc, where people reading popular fic can be much choosier; they have alternatives.

And rarepair shippers are often very motivated to give encouragement and praise to writers of their ship, since they need all they can get.