prisoner_24601 | Some thoughts about popularity vs. quality...

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Some thoughts about popularity vs. quality...

I am constantly fascinated about what makes a story popular and how does and doesn't relate to the quality of the story in question. Sometimes the stars align and you end up with something amazing that is both popular and well written (Heroes is a good example of this). Unfortunately, it seems that far more often they don't and that something is either wildly popular and sucks ass or is freaking brilliant and criminally overlooked.

I don't really mind that the stuff that I find mediocre is popular. Although I am baffled by it, I tend to write it off as a subjective taste thing. And I also realize that not everyone is going to agree with me about what a quality piece of fiction is - and that's okay. If everyone had the same taste, that would be horrible really. And hey, as I've gotten older, my tastes have totally changed. When I was a teenager, I loved wanky romances and poorly written fantasy novels staring blatant mary sue characters, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but the older I got and the more that I read, the picker I've gotten. I think partially that's because the more you read, the more you realize how certain things are clichés or just ripped off of other writers who did it better in their story (yes Robert Jordan… I’m talking to you, you asshat.).

When it comes to my own personal taste - it seems like if I like whatever it is - it's doomed to early cancellation or obscurity (I like to call this the Prisoner24601 effect). I keep waiting for Battlestar Galactica to get canceled because I really love it (especially now that the wanky Starbuck/Apollo romance seems to be over).

I admit that I find it frustrating when I stumble across stuff that's so brilliant and no one is watching or reading. There are tons of examples of this in popular media and hell even in our own little tiny fandom. I mean, we live in a world where Firefly was canceled but a show like Everyone Loves Raymond (which I admit - I could never stand) was the number one show for years. In television and movies, it seems like the more bland the entertainment is, the more likely it's going to be popular.

There are some truly amazing pieces of fan fic in our community that that have been criminally overlooked (and I'm not talking about my own stuff - which I think gets a nice amount of feedback actually) or aren't even as remotely popular as they should be - and I just don't get it. It seems like if something isn't a romance, light side or fluffy, that people simply tune out. And I don't see anything wrong with people wanting those kinds of stories - it's just that I wish people would be more open to other kinds of stories too.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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I whole heartedly agree. I've seen some wonderful stories on KFM and even FF.net. They either have one or two reviews and sometimes none at all. The same could also be said about art. I've seen really fantastic pieces, but there are others that are not so great get more praise.

I think it would be awesome if on websites that host stories could do a featured story of the week or something. Maybe more people would notice them.

I think the reason some not-so-good stories get lots of praise and attention is because the authors work at it. Not work at their writing, but work at getting as much attention as they can, be it review-whoring or just basically cultivating their own precious circle. It must really hard work to constantly maintain their fan-poodles, so it's not surprising they have no time left to improve their writing.

Oh I think that's one possible reason. There does seem to be a type of author that seems to hold court over their story, with page after page of authors notes responding to every review (I've actually seen stories over on ff.net where the author's notes are almost as long if not longer than the chapter). However, even with those authors, I don't think their popularity is due only to that kind of attention and flattery. It seems like they must be writing something that's at some level appealing to those readers in the first place. I just don't see what the appeal is as usually those kinds of stories tend to be feature an Exile or Revan Sue and a wanky romance with out of character crew members of the Ebon Hawk (usually Carth or Atton).

So I'm still kind of baffled as to why they're so popular in the first place - although maybe it's because they are sues that they're popular. I mean, maybe it's that the main character is so bland and devoid of a personality that the reader can just insert themselves into the fic and kind of live out the wanky romance they've been looking for.

Okay this has nothing to do with the subject, but I keep meaning to link you to this post: http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/5932570.html

Roflmao - that's so hilarious.

This is not only extant in fan fiction. Half of a successful writing career is promotion. The other half is up to the market. And nobody has the secret formula.

You know, that's an interesting idea - although I don't know if it would work on kfm in particular, just because I can see people being all "how come my story isn't featured" and then whining ensuing.

I've thought about making a lj community just for fic recs of stuff that people think are overlooked or undervalued. People could post one rec a week - and there could be rules about it and stuff, but I'm not sure there'd be enough interest for it (or that I'm willing to put the work into something like that). And again - I can already hear the drama drama starting.

I'm really hoping some of the upcoming changes to the kfm search engine will at least help people be able to find stuff better - so if they're looking for something a bit more obscure or minus a romance or game walkthrough they'll actually be able to find it. I think that might marginally help the situation a bit.

I had that idea for an lj comm with recs years ago. (okay like last year), but the idea kept falling through, because I think people would send me shit like "Exile LUVS ATTON" and I'd shoot them in the face.

Also I am lazy.

Hahaha I'm too lazy to do it too. I think we should nominate someone to do all the work for us - like Pluts or Midnight Hawk and then take all the credit.

I think I actually tried to get Pluts to do that, but she was lazy too.

Damn us!

I snagged the comm name, kotoreview a jillion years ago, but don't want to go at it alone. I wanted to have a group of people review a fic maybe once a month (probably have to be someone volunteering their fic so not too much wank ensues if they get a crappy all around rating.) Because that way, it wouldn't just be my bloated opinion on things, maybe even bring in someone on the panel that likes the fluff stuff so that reviews can contradict each other.

Oh yeah. And I'm lazy.

Because I'm such a dumbass:

kotor_recs

Come be a mod with us... you know you want too...

I like the idea of a "recomend" section.

We used to do something similar with the Komad Fortuna hunt - the idea was to get people reading the fics they might have missed or that were outside their usual fare. It got buggered when we couldn't search by author anymore to dig up the fics to put on the hunt.

Reccing still has its problems, because of the popularity contest aspect of it. I'm not sure there's anything much anyone can do about that--unless people are made to say *why* they recced a fic. Which wouldn't be a half bad idea. I noticed in the DCC, there were more people (self included) giving thoughtful reviews.

I do like the idea of making people say why they're reccing a fic. That's an interesting idea. I really wish there was a good way to do this over on kfm that wouldn't cause people to freak out. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to do it there that wouldn't start people crying.

Agreed that reccing brings a ton of problems. If I recall correctly - popularity drama, drama thing was the reason why we don't allow rec threads on the kfm boards in the first place. I'm not even sure how it would work or who'd get to do the reccing. Would it be "Moderator's Pick?" (oh man... I can already hear the whining over that) or would people in general be able to recc stuff. And what's to stop people from reccing a ton of the popular stuff - and the good, overlooked stuff getting lost in the shuffle again?

I think that's why it would almost work better as a lj community or something - that way the people who ran the reccing community would be able to have tighter control on what gets recced or not - which would be separate from the kfm stuff.

I think that when, in popular media, things that are critically acclaimed and are cancelled because of bad ratings, it means that in five or ten years time all the popular shows in the same genre will be emulating them.

I think it's similar to how each generation sees a certain movie in a different way: Something that was subversive, controversial and original for the generation of its time, can become ordinary for the next.

I'm stil pissed that Angel got five seasons that I found sucky, while Firefly didn't get a full one.

Hahaha I think you're right. I can think of two shows off of the top of my head (Twin Peaks and Star Trek) that were before their time ended up getting canceled, but still influencing entire genres of shows.

I mean, so many shows owe a debt to Twin Peaks that it's not even funny. You can see it's influence throughout all of Joss Whedon's stuff (he even pays direct homage to it at one point) and in shows like Battlestar Galactica (every time Baltar and imaginary six have a dream conversation, I think of Twin Peaks lol). Same goes with Star Trek - although that was a bit different as it started it's own franchise too. But still it did influence a lot of sci-fi shows that came after.

It's kind of interesting that often while a lot of people don't watch those shows, a part of the small audience of fans tend to be other authors that then carry those influences into their more successful stuff. It's kind of cool really.

Popular media is a fickle thing. The good stuff sometimes gets canceled, sometimes it goes on to for years. I wish it was true when comes to my animated shows. How could you cancel Samurai Jack? Granted sometimes the creators/writers just run out of juice. That's rare in toon land. The really crappy ones get aired and the quality ones get killed. Why are the good ones killed and bad ones allowed to run. Advertising! Emmys seemed to no longer matter. If a show can't cross over to other media its doom to fail. If the demand for a show about dogs that talk to ghosts, then that's what coming next fall on ABC.

Oh yeah, I get that ultimately television networks are a business, and that their bottom line is really going to decide what shows get aired and what don't.

What I just would like to understand is why some of those insanely mediocre shows appeal to people in the first place and are popular enough to make it are popular in the first place.

Not everybody gets the brilliant stuff. Popular stuff is, by nature, that which appeals to the broadest swathe of people. Romance is hugely popular not because it's brilliant or not, but because it focuses on themes that a great quantity of people can relate to. And if you want to get meta about it, romance as a genre, transcends genre (you can have a romantic thread in a space odyssey and it falls under the SF category, but you can't have an historical set in space).

As for the "why the LS fluff?" My answer is that people can get depressed by reading the news, and prefer their fiction with happy endings and noble characters. My personal taste for leaning towards LS fluffiness is that I don't have the brain cells these days for emotionally investing in characters that are just going to end up either dead or asshats at the end of the story. :D

Those are entirely legitimate reasons for preferring those kind of stories. I personally like stories with happy endings and noble heroes too - I just don't understand why there doesn't seem to be room for the stuff that kind of breaks that mold. To me, that's kind of sad. And I don't think that stuff with light side characters, heroes and romance automatically makes it fluffy either - I think some brilliantly written, thought provoking, different and interesting stuff can be written with those subjects.

It just seems like more often than not, it's the same cardboard cut out of a story - you know the one - where Revan and Crew go to an after Star Forge celebration/cocktail party where there is some token angst and some token sith kind of show up in a poorly thought out plot and once they're dispatched everyone goes back to their angsting and discussion of each other's relationship problems (there are other story archetypes that people overuse - this is probably the most popular one though). I guess I just don't get the appeal of those stories or why some brilliant stuff gets overlooked in favor of something like that.

The only currency that fan fic writers and readers have is the knowledge that someone is reading and paying attention to their hard work. It just kind of sucks to see some brilliantly written stuff fall through the cracks - and the authors get discouraged because most people are off reading fluffy Carth/Revan romance #1278.

It just seems like more often than not, it's the same cardboard cut out of a story - you know the one - where Revan and Crew go to an after Star Forge celebration/cocktail party where there is some token angst and some token sith kind of show up in a poorly thought out plot and once they're dispatched everyone goes back to their angsting and discussion of each other's relationship problems (there are other story archetypes that people overuse - this is probably the most popular one though). I guess I just don't get the appeal of those stories or why some brilliant stuff gets overlooked in favor of something like that.

I'd venture to guess that in kotorfic, these plots are so prevalent because there are so many people who light on that as the first thing they think of after playing the game. They write it to get it off their chests before they lose interest, or to answer the question of "what happens next?" in their own minds, rather than writing to stretch a creative concept. Or they're writing to fill in the gaps left by the limitations of the game. By nature of the game, the romances are stripped down to a few short conversations (because people don't play CRPGs solely to get romanced by pixelated characters. I mean, I would, because I'm that kinda tool, but I'm not the target demographic, either. :P ). The external plot is a little more developed because it's full of action and adventure, and it's relatively complete at the end of the game--the girl is saved, the bad guys are defeated, the heroes are rewarded.

It just kind of sucks to see some brilliantly written stuff fall through the cracks - and the authors get discouraged because most people are off reading fluffy Carth/Revan romance #1278.

There isn't much you can do to change people's preferences, but the sheer amount of kotorfic that's out there can easily drown a good fic just by volume alone. I'm really hoping the new search system will help.

Booksellers will tell you that the books that really break out have no rhyme or reason to them, besides the element of word of mouth. Someone likes a book enough to tell their friends about it. Maybe we ought to bring a discussion about opening up the forums for fic discussion. Traditionally, we've avoided a "fic recs" thread because of the potential for pimp-spamming, but maybe we could set something up on a trial basis. maybe "nominations for recommends" where you have to give a reason for your rec.

Oh, cool topic to distract me from a very unproductive day.

I think one idea regarding--what were the words... pimp-spamming!-- is to set up some blatant and explicit tensions and differences among your fic recommenders/reviewers. For example,

+ Recommender A: I'm a sucka for mushy romances and slutty...
+ Recommender B: I hate typical romances. I want unusual, twisted plots...
+ Recommender C: For me, character development is crucial. I don't care about action or romance, I want to delve into...
+ Recommender D: Dark side, baby! I want gore and betrayal up to my knees...

Once a week, a different recommenders could choose a piece of their preference that they think readers have missed. The others reviewers would weigh in before the piece is put up.

The potential readers could, knowing the preferences of the reviewers as well as thier reviews, make their choices.

The trick is setting up credible reviewers who are seen as individuals rather than all part of one group or clique.

Cheers, BaM

Yeah, I think if you were going to do it as a panel (say on kfm) - or only have certain people make the recs that would be the way to go. But I admit that while the idea of having closed fic recs appeals to me, in the end, it seems kinda... elitist which is why in the rec community (http://community.livejournal.com/kotor_recs/profile) I started, simply anyone who becomes a member (and anyone can become a member) can make recs. Partially because I like the idea of everyone participating and thinking about why it is that they think a fic should be recommended. Partially because I think if you give people a chance, they'll surprise you on occasion and come up with something really good. Partially because I know how fandom works - everyone assumes that you're in a clique and sometimes no matter what you do you can't convince them otherwise.

You know, I've thought long and hard on this one, but have concluded that you'd probably have better luck trying to cure cancer with only some glitter and a gluestick than to try to figure out trends in popularity and taste.

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Some thoughts about popularity vs. quality...

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