#''here's my psychiatrist who is blatantly here so i can ramble about five's psyche!''

[sharkneto]

the last post you reblogged about not being able to predict reader's reactions--how would you say shifting together has faired in terms of how you expected readers would react versus reality

My uncertainty with sharing Shifting Together was I did not know how they'd be received with how OC heavy it is. I was not expecting the Rob Love. Or Sarah love, but especially not the Rob love.

A thing that stopped me from sharing those fics for a long time was-- well, primarily that I needed to get orsumfenix's blessing to do so because they're very blatantly based on their fic. But after that was because they are OC heavy, especially JT. There's something much more vulnerable about sharing OCs rather than fic with just established characters. We already know we like the established characters - it's why we're reading fanfic in the first place, to get more of them and their dynamics and relationships. OC's throw homemade blorbos into the mix and they do have a bit of a stigma; an unfair one, I think, but a stigma nonetheless for being self-inserts and Mary Sues and generally disruptive to the characters and dynamics fic is being read for in the first place.

What I expected from readers was... a tolerance. An understanding of what I was doing with my OC's to use them as an outside POV for a specific lens with which to look at and explore our Hargreeves. I love outside POV for bringing attention to weird shit we've gotten used to, and then their step away from the Main Plot let us have a different angle on characters, what was happening, and the plot in general. I started with HIT specifically to minimize OC presence. We have our Hargreeves and we start in their (Allison's) POV, rather than diving straight in with Walters' POV, like JT does. I was hoping dipping readers toes into Rob and Sarah with HIT would get you guys to like them enough to be willing to read much more of them in JT to see what Number was doing the two and a half years prior to HIT.

What I didn't expect was the pretty immediate love and thirst for Rob and the warming to Sarah that happened in HIT. I will say - I get the Rob love. I adore Rob, he's my special little Just A Guy. And he really gets more of a chance to shine in HIT than Sarah does because of his relationship he develops with Five. JT is Sarah's show. So, in retrospect, I Get It. But it's also just Very Special that you guys embraced Rob and Sarah, and Number to a lesser extent, so much that there are people who want to write fic with them, who have drawn fanart of them, who think about them on their own. Those are my guys! I made them up! And yet! They're off existing in your guys' heads! Wild!

In general, I wasn't expecting Shifting Together to be as big as it feels like it is. I didn't expect there to be a community around it. Hoped, obviously, as I've spent over two years writing it all, but didn't expect it. It felt too a little too niche, being an AU fic of an AU fic, and, with JT, too... unstructured? with it being slice-of-life.

It was strategic that I shared HIT first and JT became a prequel rather than the first in the series as I had originally written it. It was strategic that I shared the first three chapters of HIT within a week. I was desperate to hook you guys. See? Allison and Luther are here! See? Five is here and he has a big fight! I'm teasing that we'll get Other Five later! Just begging and hoping you guys would tolerate my OCs enough to hang around and see this story I'd written and was very proud of.

Over a year later and almost finished with JT, I see now I didn't have to be that nervous and desperate about it.

Thanks for the love, everyone <3