#unbecoming jordan hennessy

[crimeronan]

The more you talk about what a bitch Hennessy is the more im tempted to read greywaren

the best thing about greywaren besides the ronanessy arc (which is perfect) is that after cdth came out, years before greywaren, i wrote a really dark dead dove ao3 series postulating that hennessy had purposefully driven several of her clones to suicide. & then had laughed at the others for being upset. & fully not cared about the consequences.

and then greywaren.... had flashback scenes. that canonized that i was wrong about some logistics and Completely 100% Totally Right About Literally Everything Else.

NO ONE knows hennessy like me. bitch of my heart forever. no one has ever hit bottom and kept digging like her 💕

[crimeronan]

there's been a lot of discussion of the horror genre and story craft on my dash lately & while i've seen plenty of things i've disagreed with or had quibbles about, it HAS made me realize that part of my struggle with plotting/drafting the og fiction project has been about.... just.... sanitizing the narrative. the internal messaging of "you can't write this because no one will want it and it's bad" is so fucking strong even when i've spent FOREVER unpacking and talking about how self-policing kills creativity. whoops

like. it's a story about the ugliness of chronic illness and the brutality of exploitation and the callousness of ingrained social norms. of course it's going to be fucking ugly and brutal and callous. why am i trying to pretend that it's anything else.

[crimeronan]

idk if it would be worse if the amitywalker came out as a baby.. or exactly around current amities age. but with none of her memories or personality.

i was Also thinking about a full-fledged teen grimwalker of amity when musing on worst case scenarios. that story to me is IMMEDIATELY about the grimwalker herself. like she doesn't get hunter's comfort of being raised from a relatively young age and given a backstory to believe, she doesn't even get to believe she's an original person. she's just. a copy. with no life of her own.

i'd say this is worth ficcing but i actually already have written this horror story, just for a wildly different fandom and in a different setting. it's the unbecoming jordan hennessy series.

[crimeronan]

hi i just read your series unbecoming jordan hennessey and im obsessed tyvm for sharing it w the world

:D!!!!!

assuming you're the person who just left an ao3 comment i'm even more delighted. there aren't a lot of hennessy fans in the fandom itself so having someone read my hennessy stuff when they Don't Even Know Her always makes me go WAUGHHHH. that's my evil bitch wife who has never done anything wrong, ever.

thank u . pleading emoji

[crimeronan]

YZ!

answered Y here!

Z: Is there a story you've written that doesn't seem to get much love?

always gonna pull unbecoming jordan hennessy for this because i don't know when i'll ever write another fic with LESS reader appeal. most of these narrators are dead when the canon opens, they only exist through one or two lines of backstory, the overarching story is a gutwrenching tragedy, it starts with the two main characters spiraling into codependency after faking the suicide of a 12-year-old girl to cover up a negligent homicide, life does not improve for them from there. it's ugly. so! reasonably, most people do not want to read it 😶

[crimeronan]

for the fanfic ask meme: E & K

E: What character do you identify with most?  Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

hennessy from the dreamer trilogy hands down. the final installment of unbecoming jordan hennessy probably has the most kitkat-adjacent hennessy narration, all in less than 1100 words! (the girl is miserable in those 1100 words.)

K: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

i don't believe in guilty pleasures but i will find any excuse for characters to fight with each other, which many people do not like. i need the catharsis of people being kinda dicks to each other and then causing problems and then resolving those problems. infinitely better to me than toothless fluff

[crimeronan]

march, august, september, ancient for fic asks <3

march: do you listen to music whilst writing?

yeah!! but i don't usually listen to music with lyrics, unless they're in a language i don't know. i'll go on youtube and find instrumental compilations that fit the mood i'm writing. you would be amazed by how many there are!

august: are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs/etc?

oh a SHITLOAD of my fics are titled after or inspired by certain songs. the two bands/artists that have the most fic influence are definitely rise against & regina spektor. unbecoming jordan hennessy, on the other hand, is an entire series where every piece is titled after one of the lyrics in unbecoming by starset, which is Such a hennessy & the girls song that i just.... hhhh

september: share a comment or review which still warms your heart?

people have left me a lot of really wonderful and deeply personal comments over the years ;-; a few come to mind -- here is one that's long and that i still need to reply to on ao3, but which is fairly recent and makes me lose my Mind whenever i reread it:

"ASD;HGLAJR;UWAGHFSDJKV.NLJ;OFOHULTR.EIJA/S I'M IN TEARS author, this fic is one of the most gorgeous things i've ever read. HOW did you manage to make this so hilarious and meaningful at once? i LOVE the platonic ronanessy that feels like a slow burning dumpster fire (in the best way). i want to give every character in this a puppy, a warm cup of cocoa, and a big hug (lmao they would all hate that). your hennessy made me reread cdth and mi because i missed how frickin wonderful she is the first time around and now i think i'm in love with her. also, not to sound like a completely crazed fangirl, but your characterization of adam is just. 😭🤗 i think i've read chapters 17-19 three or four times now (AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!) ngl, adam's "i wish you had died" in chap 4 almost made me stop reading the fic but i am SO GLAD i didn't because you know what you're doing. both hennessy and adam seemed so mean and awful in the beginning, and the way you slowly unpacked their respective mental states/past trauma was just *incoherent bawling* sorry if this is weird or too personal, but this fic resonated with me so much. i have bipolar and i'm more than familiar with SI and i was hesitant to read this in case it wrecked my fragile mental state, but that "Healing" tag really didn't lie. this was unbelievably cathartic and immeasurably comforting. thank you, thank you, thank you. i didn't know i needed a 113K anti-soulmate aus soulmate au to cure my book hangover from reading trc+tdt in <1 week and cure my depression(/j), but i did. seriously, thank you so much, author. i feel very called out. this isn't my fav quote from this because there are FAR TOO MANY ridiculously sweet moments to choose. this has a special place in my heart:

“I’m prettier than Parrish.” “Not to me.”

asashgj;afghkavnsa 😍😍😍 whoops i just realized this comment is a long rambling mess. sorry! i just wanted to say that YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE GOD and i can't wait for jordeclan thing/whatever the next installment in this fic is! if you read this whole thing ily and i hope you have a great day!"

ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?

it's long since lost to the ether, but it was a twilight fic i posted in 2007 on ffnet. it was set in the 1920's during edward's "rebellious years," and it involved him accidentally attacking & then turning a teenage girl OC.

[crimeronan]

probably the darkest detail i felt really validated about, this book, wrt the unbecoming jordan hennessy series, is. the girls who remembered jay the most are also the ones who died.

[crimeronan]

unbecoming jordan hennessy

a series of ten short pieces, each narrated by a different version of jordan hennessy. can be read beginning to end for a chronological look at their lives pre-canon, or read in bits and pieces to learn more about different girls

lots of dead dove content, so, uh, Please look at the warnings. thank u

[crimeronan]

on a completely self-aggrandizing note HELLO hennessy POV confirming Literally Everything i wrote about her for unbecoming jordan hennessy

[crimeronan]

okay i’m writing it.  

there’s a very good encouraging post (cannot currently find it) about how ao3 kudos don’t correspond to writing quality, which is true.

but if you don’t know WHY that is, it sounds like meaningless pat-on-the-back “keep your chin up, champ!” stuff.

it’s not.

kudos on ao3 are a marketing game.  i’m gonna use my own ao3 works to make my case bc that’s a lot easier (and Significantly Less Asshole-ish) than analyzing the marketability of other people’s ao3 fic

my two main fandoms over the past 8 years are homestuck and the raven cycle/dreamer trilogy verse.

my most popular homestuck fanfiction is vacation.  it’s a johndave fic i wrote when i was 16, and as of writing this post, it has 2,974 kudos.

by comparison, there’s breathe on the ashes.  this is an ancestor fic similar in length and chapter count to vacation.  it has 268 kudos - an encouraging readership for sure, but less than 1/10th of the engagement of vacation.  it has less than 1/20th the amount of hits.

quality-wise, breathe on the ashes is SIGNIFICANTLY better than vacation (though there’s a LOT about it i’d do differently if i wrote it today).  i wrote it when i was 19.  it has better characterization, more thoughtful character arcs, more compelling plotting, better twists, and a significantly more fulfilling resolution.

so why is vacation so much more popular?

a great deal of it is luck - it was the first (i believe?) mainstream mermaid AU in the homestuck fandom, and it inspired a LOT of fanart that brought readers in.  it was written in 2012-2013, at the height of the homestuck fandom’s engagement w/ fanworks

it also combines a popular AU concept with the most popular fandom ship at the time.  i have multiple very short, badly written johndave oneshots from 2012 that ALSO have significantly more kudos than breathe on the ashes.

breathe on the ashes, by comparison, is about the homestuck ancestors, who get almost no screen time in canon and have no canon personalities.  it’s plot-heavy rather than ship-heavy.  it’s dense, and at some times very dark.

much of its readership is tumblr mutuals and people who started following my writing for johndave.  but also, a significant part of its readership is people reading for the tagged relationships and the promised adventure story. that’s why it has over 200 kudos instead of, like, 10.

now let’s compare two series i’ve written for the raven cycle/dreamer trilogy fandom: the most self-indulgent vampire AU of all time and unbecoming jordan hennessy.

unbecoming jordan hennessy is my newest series, so it hasn’t had years to gain a readership.  but none of the fics have more than 70 hits, which is unusual for my profile.  in fact, only the first fic has more than 10 kudos.  by comparison, the vampire AU has 73 series bookmarks, 3,500 hits on the first installment, and nearly 450 kudos on the first installment.

that’s because i knew the jordan hennessy series had little potential readership going in and made no effort to mitigate that.  it’s an extremely dark dead dove series that has basically every available content warning and then some.  it focuses on a dreamer trilogy character (so, already a smaller fandom than the raven cycle) who gets very little fandom attention, and character spinoffs who get even LESS attention.  most didn’t even have ao3 tags of their own until i wrote them.  it’s all genfic, and it’s all gruesome and gutwrenching and awful.

meanwhile i DID take steps to encourage vampire AU readership, even as i continued writing what i want.  the main characters are in a polycule, but poly fic is rarely interacted with in this fandom.  so several installments focus chiefly on the main fandom pairing (pynch) with the polyamory as a background.  that way there was already a readership when i started exploring adansey, bronan, etc.

i wrote the vampire AU with fan-favorite tropes (i mean.... it’s a vampire AU).  i wrote it to be self-indulgent and fun.  i wrote it ENTIRELY as a series where I Do What I Want, but i also marketed it in ways that drive reader engagement.  i used tags that people often search on ao3.  i used popular & humorous title formats.  i used short, snappy summaries that told people what to expect from the fic.

both of these series are undeniably good.  i’m a good writer.  but only one was written With The Consumption Of Others In Mind, and it’s reflected 100% in the stats.  in fact, if i didn’t have tumblr mutuals who’d shared jordan hennessy, NO ONE would have read it.  

i’m not sore about people not reading jordan hennessy.  i wrote it for myself, like most of my writing is for myself, and i published it for maybe 3 or 4 mutuals who care about the content as much as i do.  i knew it wasn’t going to be mass devoured by the fandom.

(i have well over a million words of fiction that i’ve written for myself that no one else has ever seen.  unbecoming jordan hennessy is the closest public window into what most of that content looks like.)

so.

here’s how to market a fic to get kudos:

pick a large fandom.  raven cycle is a pretty big YA fandom, homestuck is a giant internet fandom.  if i cared to write for fandoms like the MCU, i could almost definitely surpass vacation’s success

pick the most popular pairing.  or a very popular pairing, if there are several in your fandom.

DO NOT write relationship-less genfic.  even if the fic itself is pretty genficcy, tag it with a popular relationship.  (use & relationship tags if there absolutely is no romance or it’s focused on familial bonding.)

DO NOT go overboard with relationship tags or with general tags.  do not write a summary that’s a million words long.

write a popular AU.  high school, college, supernatural, coffee shop, office workers, soulmates, whatever.

write a popular relationship trope.  fake relationship, enemies to lovers, there was only one bed, and they were roommates etc.

write a popular subgenre.  sickfic, slow burn, married shenanigans, plotless fluff, angst with a happy ending, etc.

write a oneshot or keep chapter lengths somewhere from 2,000 to 4,000 words.

profit.

does any of that have to do with the writing quality? no.  

it has to do with what people are searching for on ao3, what they’re likely to read, and how to reach the largest market possible in your fandom of choice.

so if you’re writing for external validation, use this formula and go forth and enjoy success, friends.  and if you’re worried that maybe you’re a bad writer because your fic isn’t being engaged with: stop worrying.  marketability and quality are not the same thing, and they never have been.

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