#I'm tagging this just in case people in the da fandom would be interested; since this is mostly a draon age blog y'know

[the-blind-geisha]

im gonna ask this on anon cuz of shy. but... in your opinion or anybodys what is the diff between stolen/inspired? I'm half worried that i might accidentally write something that'll seem stolen from others if not careful. 😅

This isn't to scare anybody off. I just want to offer what insight I can for folks. ♥

Sadly, anon, when it comes to fandom content especially, people do get a bit...aggressive. lol I'm not gonna sit here and say 'what? who? me?? I WOULD NEVER!' Because like I said before: I HAVE been that way. It's been a good 10 or so years since I have, but your 30s tend to chill you out... It did me anyways, can't speak for others. lol

Do know that if anybody acts that way, it's mostly insecurity and or worry their inboxes won't be filled with love and want for more of their content. It's not something you should be ashamed of. Your writing was just so good it rattled them. How they act is not on you and never will be on you. I speak, again, from a place of knowing from being that way and being on the receiving end of it.

Being inspirited by someone: If someone or something inspires you to do something new or unusual, they make you want to do it. If someone or something inspires you, they give you new ideas and a strong feeling of enthusiasm.

So, basically, I've had people tell me they are driven to want to write their own Demiurge stuff thanks to my writings. And dang man, am I beyond ecstatic when I read that.

Now, if they write anything about a Supreme Being having been Isekaied with Ainz and the NPCs, and Demiurge is in love with them? That's inspired and also, to add to the point, a token love story that's often used in the fandom. I cannot take credit for this idea, nor can I claim anybody was inspired by me in particular to write it.

Nobody can who has done this formula layout.

It's basically a layout that's easy enough for first time writers to get their shoes wet in Overlord in my humblest opinion. Same for if they are suddenly in a relationship with Ulbert and then Demiurge merges that idea into the character in question.

If their OC is an angel? Same thing. I cannot take credit for that thought. Besides, as I told a friend: angel/demon relationships are as cliché as you can get. And I LOVE that cliché. I know I'm not alone there. ♥

I am sure there are a lot of people who claim that if you write ideas closely in relation to theirs, you're stealing somehow. If you use the same tropes, tags, ect. But no. As much as those people want to believe that, it's not the case.

So let's move onto my next part.

Stealing: When you take WORD FOR WORD someone else's story or are obviously just coloring on top of someone else's hard work. That the layout has only a slight tweak, basically, and I'll explain.

Now, I've mentioned these things on and off before, but I'll use them as reference again.

A long time ago, I was RPing an erotic story with a friend regarding her character being sold into a harem with a bunch of guys in another fandom who were basically shut-ins. Each new female had to be auctioned between these shut-ins and the highest bidder would get the female.

Now, I wrote a snippet (which I still have and is very much storaged on my DA) where the characters by the name of Thunderhawk and Sojourner were bidding heatedly for her character. The final, winning bid was 200,000. Against my friend's character's will, she was to be pushed off and stripped of her clothing as these two anthro snow leopard like lady twins were to bring the winner, Thunderhawk, his prize. The image I had drawn that used to be up was her character naked with her arms bound behind her back.

It was going to be a graphic novel, but my interests in the fandom was dwindling, and it didn't happen.

Now, I had someone comment on one of my art pieces saying 'oh that Rule 34 website has something up in the works called Spectre's Haven--you might be interested in it'.

And I went to read the pages up and...

The characters are all shut-ins (which is a given with the material we were both writing from, so that's no big), but then you had 2 obvious off screen characters asking for 'what was the starting bid' and having the woman bound naked before the men, going into bidding wars for the women they want for their harems... Sojourner and Thunderhawk were seen bidding heatedly side-by-side. Spectre, however, came out the victor....for 200,000. lol

The woman they got was nervous to be in the harem just like my friend's character was, but was told that it was not so bad. After there was nothing for them to 'grab from' where my snippets and stuff was concerned, it just went into pure on porn.

When I talked to the writer about it nicely and they had this to say to tl;dr it: 'yeah, I had the harem idea in my head for awhile now, read your stuff. Loved it btw, and I decided to make a reference to it as that's what I do. Thunderhawk almost won the bidding war but I decided last minute to make it Spectre instead. We didn't think it was necessary to put in credits, since it was obvious.'

Keep in mind: this is from a website that, while the comic was free, they still get ad revenue on their site. They got money from my work and never bothered to credit the original source because there was 'no point'. lol

It hurt but, I didn't bother to fight it.

Now, again, it's fine to have the same idea as me. But when stuff starts to align really closely like that? It's...alarming. You can easily do a harem idea without a bidding war. There's MANY ways to do that. But they just used mine because it was easier, I suppose. I dunno. They could have even used other characters that they grabbed from. There was like six total I used and that they were referencing too. I still feel there was other ways to do their comic. And besides, if you're going to reference me and admit to that when you work on a mature website that gets money for your work...? CREDIT me.

They had a far bigger follower base, and here I am getting nothing for it other than I loved the artist they had doing the comic, so I guess my idea was in their story and in the art I loved... ^^"

And the winning bid could have been anything. They said it was obvious nobody noticed the wink and nod at my stuff but uh...no. lol My friends/readers saw it and actually got madder than me at it. xD; I told them not to do a thing. As long as my friend's character wasn't used, I wouldn't be upset.

And to be honest? As long as someone takes something of mine like this again but does it for free? I really can't be that upset. Is it disrespectful? Sure. But I won't be heated about it if money isn't obtained from my ideas.

Now, fast-forward to 2020 where I wrote/illustrated to page one of Dancing with the Devil, my erotic/non-con Demiurge/OC comic, and then later the reader insert, Devil's Contract.

I was conversing with somebody at the time who instantly threw down the link to their story saying how similarly it sounded to their fic. Keep in mind, I never read fanfics in any fandom. My ADHD won't allow me to focus on someone else's works I am not close to let alone my own writing. (When it came to their story, I kudos it in a fit of mercy since they kept reblogging 'pity me posts' about their writings.)

As you can guess, we had some similar themes going on: non-con, bad BDSM etiquette, calling Demiurge 'Master', a human character he abuses but turns to love, the works.

But that's it, though. We had similar THEMES. Not similar deliveries.

If you read either of our fics, it's basically night and day.

However, this caused her to be furious and think I was stealing from her. Especially when my kudos, bookmarks, and comments took off. She would vent read my comments and obviously stay on top of my stats more than me, because she's that kinda way, I guess. Noticing that people not in Overlord were reading/loving my story was making her irate, as she had already damaged her reputation in the fandom twice before. She hated she couldn't get that sort of fanbase, so she started to falsify her own through dummies and anons when she 'rebuilt her fic'. (I'll leave this here, because it doesn't need to go beyond this.)

Now, another friend of mine is nervous to write her own version of something like this given the prior hostility in the fandom where this person was concerned. I told her in DMs "I'll support the hell out of your fic. Whether you post it publicly or just snippets to me in private".

And that's the truth.

I don't care if other people write something with similar themes to me. I really don't, and others shouldn't either. It means the world gets two cakes with (hopefully) different deliveries.

Now, if someone were to take some of my snippets here and replace the blank reader with a character of their own choosing? That's theft.

Please, don't ever do that to anybody. lol

If you want to do that, because you want to use it as a backbone for your fic? Ask first and then credit the person. Even if you requested the snippet in question: the person wrote your idea. You still deserve to give that person full credit for the thought they put down for you. ♥

But, I am only one person in a sea of many. And to be honest? As long as you're not making money off of my stuff, then good. I just don't want my ideas being sold is all.

Otherwise, it's our playground, and fanfiction I feel is a great way to learn where to go. ♥

I honestly and truly hope nobody ever feels scared to write to, post their writings.

I hate that some places have become like a warzone, but you can always do your best to curate your experiences. ♥

And, again, while I am ADHD and have a hard time reading, if you link me to your story and ask for my opinion, I'll be happy to read it. ♥ You know I will.

#best of luck anon #and oml so sorry this became so long lol #fanfiction #inspiration vs stealing #writer woes #mod answers #anon

[pikapeppa]

Oh Mighty Word Wrangler, bestow upon me your wisdom!! ♥ What do you think makes your amazing fics so popular? Apart from your OBVIOUS talent and writing ability, of course ;) Is it frequency of posting? The pairings? Amount of smut? I'm curious :D

HAHAHAH THANK YOU FOR THAT COMPLIMENT YOU SNUCK IN THERE but also I’M PANIC at the thought of trying to answer this question lol?? I mean, this is the question for the ages, right? What makes a fic popular, and how do we boost the engagement with our own work?

Let me preface this reply by saying it is based just on my experiences and hypothesizing, and NOT on anything systematic. Trust me, I’d study this like a science if I could, but then I wouldn’t be writing. HAHA. Also, I’ll mostly focus on popularity on AO3 and not on Tumblr, since I would argue that I’m only “known as a writer” on Tumblr because people followed me here from AO3. 

First of all, I want to highlight the fact that popularity does not equal quality, and vice versa. I’ve read some fics that are AMAZING but have little engagement. Some examples are Last Call by @galadrieljones (Ameridan/Lavellan) and this very short Fenris fic that I just read recently. On the other hand, I’ve tried to read some fics that are extremely popular with tons of hits/kudos/comments, but my judgmental ass thinks they’re poorly written and/or poorly characterized. There really is not a clear linear relationship between the quality of a fic and its popularity. (Anyone who is discouraged by the lack of engagement with their work: please keep this in mind.)

Another thing to consider: what do we even mean by popularity? On AO3, is the most popular fic the one with the most hits? The most comments? The most kudos? Even then, a longfic that’s been updated weekly for a year is going to have more hits than a completed oneshot, just by virtue of its length. Frequently updated fics will show up week after week in search results, since AO3’s search results show the most recently updated fics by default. So when I think about popularity… ehhh, I guess I’m thinking about a vague combination of all three of these things – hits, kudos, and comments – while keeping the length of the fic in mind. Given all of this, in the grand scheme of things, my DA fics really aren’t that popular. I didn’t actually do a search because I didn’t want to make myself sad, but if you search my DA pairings (e.g. Fenris/female Hawke) on AO3 by number of hits/comments/kudos, I won’t come up on the first few pages of search results. We’ll come back to the topic of search results later.

ANYWAY. Let’s pretend I’m relatively popular, leaving out the Big Names™ in DA fanfic (whom I won’t tag here because I don’t want to annoy them with a random tag lol). What do I think make my fics somewhat popular? I can think of four things:

Frequency of posting

The combination of fandom and pairing: filling a gap

Varying lengths of fics for a single pairing: something for everyone

I have no idea

Frequency of posting

The most obvious factor that jumps out to me is that I post regularly and frequently. Currently, I update my two ongoing longfics weekly or every other week. When I first got really heavily into Fenris/Rynne Hawke, I was updating almost every day. As I mentioned before, AO3’s search results are shown by the most recently updated fics by default. So if I’m posting regularly, that means my fic is regularly appearing at the top of the list of search results when people search my tags or pairings, which means a higher chance of new readers seeing it and deciding to dive in week after week. 

Fandom and pairing: filling a gap

For this point, I’m going to call back to the fandom where I first became “well-known”, which is Horizon Zero Dawn. I’ve written a number of ships for that game, but my OTP is Aloy/Nil. My fic Stormbirds and Stalkers is the second most kudos’ed fic if you search for that pairing on AO3, and the #1 most kudos’ed fic if you exclude fics that are multi-ship (i.e. shipping Aloy with multiple people in a single fic, which is common in the HZD fandom). Importantly, this was a popular pairing in a very small fandom. There weren’t many fics for this pairing at the time, and there weren’t any fics that did what I was doing: a monogamous love story, with explicit smut, that was actually being updated. 

Funnily enough, though, my second most popular fic in the HZD fandom is my fic for Aloy/Ikrie. This is an extreme rarepair even within a small fandom, with only 19 Aloy/Ikrie fics on AO3, but my fic for this pairing is the one with the most hits/kudos/comment and is also my one fic with the most subscribers on AO3. Clearly people were excited about this fic and wanted to see more of this pairing. 

So what’s the logic here? A rarepair in a small fandom, a popular pairing in a small fandom… what’s the pattern? From what I can tell, a fic will be more popular if people are starved for that content. If a fic falls into that gap where people clearly want MOAR, but MOAR doesn’t yet exist, it’s going to get more engagement. Popular pairings in a small fandom fall perfectly into that gap, as do highly-coveted rarepairs with little existing content. A Dragon Age example of this is my little Cole/Lavellan romance fic. Colemances are quite rare, sexual ones even more so, and I think the reason for my Colemance fic’s popularity is because it fills that gap. 

If we return to the rest of my Dragon Age fic, however… [nervous laugh] the logic I just outlined above doesn’t really apply. That takes me to the third factor.

Varying fic lengths for a single pairing: a little something for everyone

Most of my Dragon Age work is for the most popular pairings for the games I’ve played: FenHawke for DA2, and Solavellan for DA:I. (Yes, yes, Cullen is even more popular, but I’ll leave my Cullen/Inquisitor work out of this analysis because I think it’s a special case.) I’ve heard that it’s notoriously difficult to get engagement when you’re writing a popular ship for a bigger fandom, since readers get inundated with choice and your fic can get lost in the shuffle. I would in no way say I’m “popular” for the pairings I write, considering that the most popular Solavellan fics have like… tens of thousands of hits and thousands of comments. Still, I have been surprised and thrilled by the engagement I have gotten in this fandom, especially since I’m kind of a noob to the DA world. 

One of the reasons my DA work might be relatively popular is that I write fics of varying lengths and types for my pairings. For Fen and Rynne in particular, I’ve got everything from non-smut oneshots to smutty oneshots to smutty longfics to AUs. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone, and I suspect that someone who was like “I just want a oneshot” might get interested enough by the one thing they read to check out my other work, even if they didn’t start out looking for more than a oneshot. Similarly for Solavellan, and also for Abelas/Lavellan, I’ve got oneshots and a multichapter drabble collection, so there’s something both for the people who are searching for a quick oneshot and for those who are searching for multichapter fics. In short: more variety means more potential to show up in AO3 search results. 

Don’t get me wrong; some of my Dragon Age stuff has fallen flat, namely my Blackwall/Lavellan work. That was actually the first DA ship I ever wrote for. The smutty oneshot collection has been relatively popular in terms of hits and kudos, but the two little multichapter mini-fics I wrote for Baewall have had very little attention, and I don’t really know why. Baewall isn’t the most popular ship in the fandom, I know, but it still doesn’t really explain the popularity of the smutty oneshots versus the mini-fics, which are also smutty. 

Which brings me to my final point…

I have no idea.

LOL. Seriously though. I’m sure there are other things at play that I’m not aware of, so maybe this can open a little discussion! What do you guys think? Any other theories on why some fics get more popular than others? 

Thanks for the interesting ask, Elvenybae! I definitely spent too much time thinking about this today, LOL!! 😂 😘

- Love from your friendly neighbourhood Pikapeppa xoxo

#fanfic writer's life #pikapeppa thinks #ao3 #food for thought! #dragon age #horizon zero dawn #hzd