#(it's actually a skipinnish lyric!)
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masked-disciple · 1 year ago
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I can actually sort of add my own experience to this, with the caveat that I pay very little attention to my AO3 stats and honestly only ever throw stuff up there when it's that or share a gdoc with several people.
Most of my fic is in three fandoms - Saint Seiya, an 80s anime with a not-big but pretty dedicated fandom; 3rd Life SMP, a Minecraft youtube series that was insanely popular and rewrote most of how Minecraft youtuber fandom acted; and Ace Attorney, a video game series from 2006 that sometimes does show up in con artist alleys still.
Only one of my StS works has over fifteen kudos, and that's the one with 10k hits and 10 chapters. It has that many exclusively because I was (and still am) friends with a very popular StS artist on twitter who drew me some fanart and linked to my fic. The fic itself focuses on characters that don't actually have any characterization canonically, and is pretty genfic.
My AA fic, even though it's a pretty active fandom, have maybe 100 hits and three kudos between the lot of it. This is because I wrote an AU that I proceeded to Not Bother Explaining, entirely for myself and my fiance.
However, my 3rd Life fic I still get emails one a day letting me know someone's given it a kudos, and there's only three fics I wrote for that.
Best guess on why my 3L fic is still hanging in there, despite the fandom having moved on to the next season of the Life series? (I think we're up to six seasons now.) Because I got in pretty early in a fandom mostly full of teenagers and slammed down the "I'm a reasonably experienced fic writer, here's the most popular ship with everyone's favourite codependent trope, and I have a good amount of experience writing smut that's enjoyable to read."
I'm actually pretty sure I was one of the first to slam down explicit fic for 3L, let alone the most popular ship of the time. Unsurprisingly, that's what people were really happy about in the comments.
This post checks out to my experience. You want the popularity, just get in early, write the big ships, write mostly palatable stuff and throw in one or two distinct* qualities to your writing style. (*Being the only smut writer, pioneering a specific meta theory that people really like, etc etc.) Keeps tags and summaries reasonably small, keep to popular tropes, don't write too long or too short.
Then I guess, when you've got a bunch of dedicated readers, hit 'em with the 100k rarepair AU with just enough bait to lock them in with you and then they have no choice but to keep loving you through your bullshit. (This line is tongue-in-cheek.)
I personally don't advise writing fic to try and be popular. It's more fun to just write whatever you want and not check the numbers. But if you want to anyway, yeah, this checks out.
i also have a whole post i could write about how kudos on ao3 correspond to marketability rather than quality, exactly how the actual publishing industry works, but. the question is… do i have the energy
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thirddeadlysin · 2 years ago
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i was like wait which skipinnish song is it that makes me weep and surprise it's like eight of them but tonight it's definitely this one
youtube
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astriiformes · 2 years ago
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Can I ask how you go about finding songs for character playlists? You are very good at playlists and I wish to know the secrets.
Ooh, this is a fun question!
I will say that step one is that I already have a fairly eclectic music library, which certainly helps, but I for sure still have something of a process I can share.
Usually I start by skimming through songs I already have saved -- my personal music library, my big list of favorites on Spotify, etc -- and pulling anything that feels like it has potential. I might give some songs a listen to see if I'm remembering the vibes or lyrics right, but it's very much the casual "throwing things at the wall" phase where I know I might toss songs that don't fit later.
I like to physically make a list of songs during the brainstorming phase, so I'll write down my favorite candidates from trawling my existing music. From there, I start thinking about where to find more songs that complement them. Usually this starts with me thinking about the genres/vibes of the songs and artists I've already pulled, and what other artists feel like they match, even if I don't have a song in mind. I'll make a short list of artists who I think might have something that would fit, and then I spend a while digging through their discographies. This usually yields at least a few more songs, and sometimes checking out one artist will remind me of another one (Spotify's radio and "Fans also like" features can be helpful for this too).
After that, I'll often start looking at other playlists. Occasionally that means dipping into other people's playlists for the same character, although more often than not that makes me decide there's songs I want to avoid, since I'm very committed to having my playlists be unique! What I'm more likely to do is something sort of silly and oblique, which is thinking about other characters that I feel like have something in common with the one I'm making the playlist for and looking up songs people have put on playlists for them. I'll also dip my toes into other non-fandom, non-character playlists -- ones that are on topics that feel connected to the character, or even just playlists that are focused on one of the genres I've identified I'm leaning towards. Sometimes I'll even outright google "songs on [x topic]" -- although I will say that's only ever been successful in specific, narrow contexts.
The other thing I'll say about playlists, which is less about finding songs although it does tend to help guide my searching, is that it really helps to brainstorm a vision for it -- What is the playlist about, and what do you want it to sound like? Are you focusing on a specific part of the character's arc, or their whole, completed narrative? Did you pull a lot of a specific genre in your brainstorming phase, or a bunch of different ones -- and are you going for songs that mostly sound similar, or trying to find a way to tie together ones that sound different?
As far as what that actually looks like for me, here's some examples.
When I was working on my Fjord playlist, I knew I wanted to include a decent number of actual shanties/sea songs (which was one area where googling "songs about x" actually served me well; I searched for lists of traditional shanties online and got some solid results). But I also noticed that I'd pulled out a decent bit of rock music. To blend the two I ended up trying to work in music by folk rock artists, like Skipinnish and the Derina Harvey Band, which helped with making the whole thing feel a lot more cohesive.
For my Raine Whispers playlist, I knew I was going to be smashing together a lot of genres. I focused on trying to find songs that felt like they "bridged the gap" (like Kenji Bunch's more modern quartet compositions, folk/protest tunes with prominent strings, and Flobots' modern rock/hip-hop featuring a prominent viola) and also thought a lot about the artists I was putting on it. I listened to a lot of curated playlists of trans and gnc artists, as well as classic protest music ones.
And for a last example, one of my current in-progress playlist projects is working on a Lilith Clawthorne playlist, which since she's a canonically aro/ace character has seen me listening to a lot of people's aspec playlists along with thinking about songs that feel like they complement her character arc, since I'm hoping to weave the two themes together!
I hope some of that is helpful to you! And know that I always love talking playlists and wouldn't mind throwing out song recs from time to time (as long as I have some idea what you're going for)
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thebogdiaries · 7 years ago
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Eilean Dorcha Festival (portaloo) - Greg Pegleg - July 2017
This was a portable toilet. In a music festival. On an evening in July. No matter what praise I give this toilet I want you to remember that this is a portaloo in a scottish music festival. I’m afraid this review can only end ONE way so I thought I would be honest and upfront early on and give the result before I begin my rambling. Don’t think I’m trying to fool you into anything else, I promise this is going to end with a ONE (See Introduction to the Bog Diaries, December 2013). 
For those unfamiliar with what I mean when I define the toilet as being a portaloo in a scottish music festival: you’ve led a charmed life. These plastic cuboids are infamous for their ubiquity in unhygienic standards. I have seen many variations in design and quality over the range of my scottish music festival experiences and I am yet to see one which would be fit for a Queen. Or even members of Queen. Actually, that catchphrase depends on your view on the monarchy and Freddie Mercury et al, so let me rephrase that to ‘fit for someone with high hygienic standards’. Despite the variation in appearance, these toilets typically share similar specifications: a lightweight plastic door, toilet paper which resembles sand-paper or tracing paper more than it does with what you use at home, small space for maneuverability, a tap that doesn’t work(genuinely I’ve always wondered if they are there, purely as decoration to taunt you as you squirm), and a lightless design which means if you go in the dark you are literally pissing in the dark and having to feel your way around which is not the place you want to do this, particularly as you are at the end of a day of everyone and their granny using it(providing it’s one of those ‘for all the family festivals’). 
 Now as I go on with this review it’s important to revisit my opening paragraph. The toilets I visited during my two days at this festival shared most of the previous paragraphs design flaws. The only characteristic that differed was the level of spaciousness in the EDF’s toilets. This was evidenced by a 10 second video I took that I had the pleasure of watching the next morning where there was enough room for me to dance with serious vigour. Unlike my last toilet review I also couldn’t feel the breeze of the hebrides rushing through me as I sat. However, there is solace to be found in the wonderful context this toilet appeared in. Eilean Dorcha is Gaelic for Dark Island which is the name of a very famous song and the pub and hotel on which the festival is based behind. For both years where I’ve attended it has been this pub’s mental atmosphere which has given me some of my fondest memories(and snapchat videos) before and after the festival. Their toilets are a different kettle of fish but that’s for another review. The Isle of Benbecula itself is a beautiful island with white sandy beaches, green seas and friendly people who live for a session. The revellers at the festival this year were an eclectic mix of locals and apparently people from over 40 different countries from the far side of the world attended. The music, if you’re not familiar with the Park Bar in Glasgow, I’ll describe as ‘dance-trad’ with my body aching on the sunday morning from my enthusiastic dancing and jumping from bands such as Trail West and Niteworks. On a tangent of a note here, I thoroughly recommend listening to Tide Lines (The Robert Robertson fronted Skipinnish spinoff) for pure lyrical entertainment and inspiration. Aside from Scottish inspired music there was even an ABBA tribute act who brought out the dancing queen in everyone under the tent. Thanks to the attendance of the local bakery Macleans, the food was potentially excellent as well. I say potentially as I didn’t notice their van until I bought my dinner but going by their restaurant and bakery in Benbecula and my fiendish addiction to their oatcakes I’m going to confidently predict their van was excellent. 
Back to their toilets however, and I wanted to share the story of what happened after I danced my way out of one of the portaloos in question. As I made my way to meet friends and people I’d just met I was offered hand sanitiser by a lovely local. I accepted with a relieved grimace and then I watched as the next several patrons all left their portaloo to accept the hand sanitiser being passed round with the same relieved grimace. Last year and this year, the festival has been my favourite couple of days in the year. No amount of terrible toilets can take that away from me. For me, the hand sanitiser story sums it up. I left the disappointing toilet experience that had been made the most of by vigorously dancing, and was met by a stranger offering to help. I then went back and continued dancing, like a mad man possessed, with the Highland girl.  When the world is devoid of emotion, the rating has to be a ONE but I urge you not to hold this against the EDF festival and indeed join me next year. 
As Robert Robertson(lead singer of Tide Lines) once said: “We promised we’d run with the reckless, the young and the restless, we’d run for the rest of our lives”. With this I’ll be at Eilean Dorcha 2018, dancing merrily with other reckless and restless people of all ages and nationalities. BONUS: points on offer (or a pint) for anyone who can find the six other Tide Lines lyrics carefully positioned around this bog blog post. Cheers!
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