the (less cool) neptune

Not Safe For Work

E | 23k | by bluegreenish

I want to drown myself in Harry’s scent until I smell like him.

“I think I’m open to trying that too. Sounds very good.”

Louis shakes his head a little to get out of the Harry’s-scent-spiral. “Huh?”

“The dish your finger’s pointing at. I thought that might be what you’re choosing?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

or, the one where the boys work at Niall’s fashion start-up 28 Programme Designs, and omega Louis has a lot of not safe for work thoughts about his colleague Harry, but little does he know that the alpha can read minds.

Welcome to the Rom Com One Direction Fic Fest!

Whether you miss the classic 2000s rom coms, think One Direction could be the perfect actors in one, or have watched most of the Christmas movies out there, this fic fest is designed for you!

These are the rules:

To participate, you must be +18 years old at the time of signing up.

All fics must have a minimum word count of 2,500, but there's no maximum!

All fics must feature at least one member of One Direction in the main pairing, and we accept all pairings.

Please make sure your fic is completed before posting it to the AO3 collection. We do not accept works in progress (WIP).

We do not accept any underage, major character death, or rape fics. All fics must have a happy ending.

Although it is not a Christmas fic fest, since it takes place in December and most Christmas movies are romantic comedies, only five Christmas fics will be accepted.

Prompts will be assigned on a first come, first served basis, but participants are also welcome to use their own prompts.

This fic fest is not anonymous, so feel free to share your snippets with us by tagging us #romcom1dficfest.

If you think you won't be able to make the deadline, you need to inform the moderator as soon as possible and we will find a solution.

Please check your email regularly, as I will contact you there.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

I can't wait to read your amazing rom com fics! 💖

Schedule:

Prompt submissions: April 15th - May 14th

Author Sign Ups: May 15st - June 25th

Fic Due Date: December 1st

I love this gif on so many levels. I love how they are making what I call a love chain. 

important, this!:

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom.  I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it.  On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button.  Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked.  Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos.  Before that - 10%, and then 16%.  I’m not even going to get into the comments.  Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot.  I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc.  And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted.  Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them?  Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button.  It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert. 

I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 - and I do sometimes see it - that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;

Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.

And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.

When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve. 

I think as writers our assumption (my assumption anyway) is that the portion of hits that don’t convert to kudos equals the portion of readers who looked at your fic, didn’t like it, and never finished it. But it would seem that is an overly pessimistic assumption.