fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2321 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2321 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #332.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This just happened to me: a fic summary seems good and includes my preferred pairing, so I start reading it and more than a dozen chapters in, they throw in a new pairing, completely out of left field (needless to say completely OOC from canon), in the form of a threesome. Which I is something I happen to dislike and therefore avoid?! Then and only then does the author add this new relationship to the tags - which take up half a screenful, by the way...

The entitled 'Oh, if you are too narrow-minded to enjoy this story now that it's a threesome, it will start getting explicit in the next chapter, so you should just go away and return in about ten chapters by which time we'll get back to the original pairing' note from the author did not help my irritation any.

I did stop reading the story, thanks for the late warning, but I resent not being able to take off the kudo I had left a few chapters in. On the plus side, I now know to avoid this writer. Thanks for the time I will save in the future, which I can spend on reading more honest and better writers!

Seriously, I get that authors do not want their readers to wander off when they write unpopular pairings, but have some guts and just announce these pairings, there's nothing wrong with writing unpopular pairings: but don't just spring them on unsuspecting readers, hoping to recruit them to your preferred pairing without warning.

If you don't want to ruin the surprise, just announce straight off that you will not warn for pairings/ratings/triggers.

But if you write a story and don't even know the pairings from one chapter to the next, your chapters are too small. Or maybe a little bit more forethought should go into your immortal masterpiece.

Note: as a result, I've completely stopped leaving kudos or comments on WIPs and I am seriously considering reading only completed fics: so the next time a writer whines about not getting enough love for their multi-chaptered fics, they'll know who to blame - the writers who play that kind of trick on fandom at large.

/glad I got this off my chest. I know, first world problems! :D

I note that some comments below are completely missing the point of why one may regret giving a kudo for fics which one ends up being disappointed in for any reason.

You seem to forget that:

1) a lot of people use the number of kudos as recommendations, just like when purchasing from amazon.com - the higher the kudos count, the better the fic should be. Well, in theory anyway

2) WIPs, by their very nature, tend to collect more comments and kudos than fics posted in their entirety once complete. Regardless of length. And writers do tend to judge their readers appreciation based on the number of kudos. It's a very unreliable parameter, but still.

As a result, a lot of mediocre stories originally posted as WIPs end up with a huge number of kudos, completely out of proportion with stories posted only once complete, and therefore have a much greater chance of being read, which is really discouraging for the better and more considerate writers who can easily end up leaving the fandom or even worse, stop writing altogether.

So yes, misallocated kudos do matter.

3) Any kudo may represent anywhere between 10 to 200 happy readers, so any +1 or -1 kudo does count. Don't forget that most people do not leave kudos or comments: you just have to check the hits count to verify this in case you have not already noticed. But there is no way to tell if readers do not leave kudos because they
- did not like the story
- already left a kudo in a previous chapter (this happens to me more than half the time with multi-chaptered fics: when I try to leave a kudo, AO3 tells me I already did)
- think they already left a kudo (but are mistaken)
- were too busy
- were wary of leaving a kudo when the author could spring a horrible surprise on them in the very next chapter
- or a variant of the above: would love to encourage a new writer, but since they are unfamiliar with said writer, cannot tell if they belong to the group that like to surprise their readers with unexpected pairing or triggers and prefer to skip to another writer that they already trust.

All of the above reasons is why any kudo does matter and why I recommend only leaving anon kudos and only on completed stories.

[ SECRET POST #2321 ]

agree 100%

Re: agree 100%