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#sometimes you have to produce the rarepair content you wish to see
dappersheep · 3 years
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Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (3/3)
Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at our final destination.
Again before we start, we have our obligatory disclaimers. I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the true history and likely fate of this game. I am entitled to the thoughts and opinions written within this post. Feel free to agree or disagree with the points being made.
This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.
We are in the third and final stretch, and the checkpoint is past the cut.
Community
So... here we are, fellow Master Attendants.
As consumers of this piece of entertainment media, we are free to enjoy it however we wish. Appreciating what is there, creating something new from what exists, playing the game by the meta or however you want to play it (within your means and at your own risk of course). There's no one true and absolute way to experience the game.
However, just as you can enjoy something, doesn't mean you can't also point out flaws or shortcomings of the media in question. As an active veteran player, I've already pointed out the many gameplay design flaws  already. And I'd be pretty dumb to say that Food Fantasy's writing is perfect. Hell, it has a lot of holes from a worldbuilding consistency standpoint. 
And what of things from the community side? Yes, there will be times you'd see content you consider cringe, or something in fanon you don't agree with. Or there happens to be fan theories and fangirling posts you don't like the take of because of X or Y.
And that's fine. If we all happen to play the same way, like the same thing, agree on the same thing and produce the same thing, well, this would be one helluva boring community, wouldn't it?
But what if someone decides the way you're playing the game is wrong and harasses you over it? What happens if someone decides that their interpretation of the game's flavor text and lore is more important than what anyone else thought about it? What happens if someone decides that they're absolutely right, and you and everyone else who disagrees deserves to be bullied out of the fandom?
As much as I want to say we aren't part of the problem why the game is deteriorating, we are unfortunately, part of the reason why the game is as such even if most of the blame is directed towards Funtoy and Elex themselves.
⦁ Whale Authority. Whales will always be part of a gacha game's ecosystem. Without them, the game won't be able to maintain its upkeep costs, moreso  for one that services global regions instead of just one. But when a game decides to cater its decisions of what features should be prioritized and when it should be launched around only its most elite paying players' voices  -even if that influence has since tapered off-, you know there is something wrong with the publisher's management team and priorities.
⦁ Interguild drama. While I did not personally follow any of this, this has certainly been the peak of in-game tension back in the day. Poaching good players from both competitive and smaller guilds, guild mergers that often ended up making the annexed guild/s the equivalent of UK colonized India or Australia, suck-ups chummying up to guild leaders to keep a spot in an active, high ranking guild (for bragging rights!) despite never contributing much to overall damage, and just general dislike of certain players' attitudes. Actions like this have disillusioned many players about their playing experience and the reason why many eventually just lost the motivation to log into FooFan.
⦁ Cheaters. You know very well about the Hacker-teme I've mentioned before, but that was in context of Elex being incompetent with dealing with them. Here, I would like  to point out the players who are desperate to dominate  the playing field for whatever reason to the point that they would resort to cheating the ranks with forceful modifications of the APK. Whether it is to rank high in catacombs weekly, get a top spot in daily disaster damage, or weasel their way into the competitive whale ranks of a major ranking event, these are the people who have no qualms messing with the code to give themselves an easier time with the game. And if they're caught? Some pretend that they've made a mistake, some quickly sell the account to escape the blame, some others just scamper away into the dark and hide in the lower ranks where they can't be found. Others simply don't care and keep cheating until Elex decides to finally ban them... if Elex ever decides their rebates score isn't worth saving the account.
⦁ Ship wars. Ah yes, a staple of drama in any fandom. There doesn't need much explanation to this as we've all had our fair share of running into a battleground in whatever fandom we visit. Someone ships BB52 wholeheartedly? Nope, problematic 'age gaps'. Someone likes Napoleon with Pastel? Someone's bound to misinterpret their bios in order to justify that Napoleon was being abusive. Spaghetti and Borscht? Borscht is minor coded, ship her with Vodka instead. Whiskey and Pizza or Cassata? Cancelled! And I've never heard of the Foe Yay trope or pretend I don't know about it! Rarepairs? Disgusting! No fanon in my canon playground! Turkey and Eggnog? Gasp! How dare you, you pedo-shipper-even-though-you-never-said-you-shipped-them-romantically-but-that-isn't-my-point!
⦁ Character Obsession: Bias. On one hand, you love a character so much. Relate to a character so much. You have thus pulled this character into the folds of your bosom and coo at them like a mother dove and get so minutely triggered if someone so much as makes one disagreeable or joking comment about the character that you fly into an overreactive ballistic rage that would make a Canadian goose honk in fear. You don't care what they are in canon. You don't care about the possibility of mistranslation. What matters is the fanon space you carved out for them to exist in and that's all that matters. The problem with this is when this obsession takes over common sense and social etiquette and it steps into harassment territory. You begin to think: I'm the only one who 'understands' the character. I'm the only one who wishes better for the character, everyone else is out to defame them! Oh wait, you like them too? Do you like them the way *I* like them? No? Maybe if you're my 'friend', I'd let it slide. But to everyone else? No one else has the right to like them as much as I do. No one! Never mind that they're completely fictional- No one hurts my bias because in turn, they're hurting *me*!
⦁ Character Obsession: Anti. On the other hand, you hate a character so much. This character just makes you see so much red. Their smug little smirk just makes your blood boil. Their fictional backstory makes you recoil in disgust. You hate that someone else loves a character you hate so much.  You cannot *believe* that someone could be so daringly stupid to like a problematic character. They must be problematic too then. They must be hiding real life secrets that are problematic! Yes, yes. That's right. That person's a supporter of abuse. That person's into pedophilia. That person is into military lolita fashion that Japan started the trend of but clearly Japan was part of the Axis Powers! And that... that person... that person... is a roleplayer and a yaoi fangirl properly interacting with minors and adults. How dare they...!
⦁ Fan Translations.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem that a group or two or several are translating pieces of the game's lore ahead of the official. But with Elex's very delayed translations and extreme allergic reactions to translating Food Soul bios, people have become dependent on fan-translation groups to get their fix. The problem herein lies... is when the translators get drunk off the power that they are one of a handful in a small community who can magically transcribe the oriental moonrunes into English. The problem starts when the translator starts to have an inclination. The problem starts when the translator loses their professional detachment and start adding in details here and there into the fan translated product that ultimately changes the meaning and direction of the entire story. The problem is also escalated when that translator's embellished product is touted as the truth by their followers. If there was an upcoming character whose backstory is connected to a character they hated (either because of someone or they just don't like the character) and you were hoping to read the fan translation? How would you know that what you get isn't something doctored to the point it's basically fanfiction?
⦁ Social Justice Vigilantism. Sometimes someone does not have a character obsession or need it to be annoying. Sometimes, someone just wants to ring the alarm over something they find 'problematic' in order to police and sanitize the enjoyment of the media for 'everyone'. They no longer really take enjoyment out of a new Food Soul design being leaked, they no longer read the lore just to enjoy what it has to offer. Instead, they nitpick bits and pieces of the design and point it out repeatedly as a reason why the whole thing is bad. They point out bits of the story and inject their interpretations of it without really comprehending what they've read in full and react badly to it. What's worse is that they have no qualms publicly posting their reactions and eagerly and hungrily await those likes and echoes of agreement that they were right.
⦁ Circles of Influence. Everyone has a group they eventually gravitate to in a fandom. It comes with its own pros and cons. Sometimes you join a group because someone you admire is in there, sometimes you join a group because you just want to mingle and see more content. All valid reasons. Arguments can't be avoided in a group, it has to happen... But you have to take care. You have to take care to feel the change in the air of the group. When someone starts pushing people to agree with them. When your most admired people start to feel overly sensitive about certain characters or issues. When you start to feel obligated to spy on other groups outside of this one for 'nonbelievers', 'traitors' and 'heretics' who do not think the way this group does, and that bringing back bits and pieces of gossip as offerings would somehow make you more favored in the eyes of the inner clique or remain inside it. There is a gripping sense of annoyance when that person comes in to complain but you can't do anything about it but nod and agree. There is a pervading sense of fear and apprehension of overstepping an invisible boundary. There is fear that you might be next on the chopping block, after witnessing one of the others being ganged up on and thrown out without a second thought, their name spat upon like they're worth less than dirt. And so reluctant you are to give up what you have with them that when they push you to do something you are reluctant to do, all in the name of 'harmony and justice'... You do it. Even though it would mean offering yourself up to the mob with no salvation, and the stark realization that... [they] never cared about you as a friend.
And we've come to the end of this analysis trilogy. The writing got a little bit strange in this post, but honestly this is the best way I could put it. I'm aware things can and will be more complicated than the bullet points I've written but I'm just one person and I tried very hard to keep details of all the drama that happened in this fandom as vague as possible. Of course, that wouldn't work if you know what I am talking about.
The community is quiet now for the most part, the game is somewhere between limbo and the living plane. Things could be better for us, but I don't really count on it.
I wish I could leave a bit of a moral warning or something. But rather than do that, I just hope this was an entertaining read into one individual's eyes into Food Fantasy and everything that makes it up.
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leofemt · 6 years
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Being a fic writer is a horrible, thankless, vain pursuit. This is an objective fact.
tl;dr: I prove it: on two opposing fic- for both of which this meta-writer vouches for the quality- less than 10% of readers left kudos, and less than 1% commented.
A few facts:
Let's take one fic. A Tiger & Bunny fic for a rarepair. Personally, I love this fic. This is the best fanfiction of all time. Every time I reread it, I end up in tears and almost incapable of finishing it. It's long, artful, and emotionally devastating. It should have a great reception, right? No.
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This fic has been on ao3 for more than 5 years. In its time, it's gotten almost 2.5k hits- not bad for a rarepair. It's almost 80k words long. I can personally vouch for the quality. Do you see how many comments it has? 23.
Of course, this can vary by popularity of the subject matter you're writing for- I've written a 7k fic that has more individual comments than this, just because the pairing is popular- but generally speaking, this is the case. Let's turn to some statistical analysis.
What percentage of fic readers leave kudos? In this case, 145 out of 2483 readers who opened this fic left kudos. 145/2483=0.0584, so 5.8% of fic readers leave kudos. (This doesn't account for quality of writing or people who are just trying out a ship, but even that's not that large a margin.) 6% of your readers will take the time to click a button to say "I enjoyed this!". 6%. 
Of course, that can be the case for other forms of art as well, in which case you shrug and say, producing art sucks, viewers take what they want and leave, let's move on. (If I were to do an analysis of the difference in response to popular fanart-type artists, though, I would look at view vs rt statistics on twitter. One place where this differs is: profit. Making actual money. How many artists do you know sell some kind of merch, or have a patreon, or do commissions? Probably a good number of relatively popular ones. How many writers do you know sell hardback copies of their fic? None, probably, unless you personally know EL James. How many writers do you know who actually get commissions? I don't know about you, but I can think of maybe 3 off the top of my head. Visual art is much quicker to consume than written art, and much easier to propogate, since it takes little effort to take in. How many visual artists take open requests on their blogs, instead of commissions? How many writers? A clear pattern starts to emerge.)
And now we move on to the most depressing part- comments. Of course it means a lot whenever someone comments, even if it's a few words of encouragement or telling the author you enjoyed their work. What percentage of fic readers leave comments? This example fic has 23 comments. 23 comments after writing almost 80k words, and I know for a fact that 3 of those comments are mine. This author doesn't reply to comments (which is relatively common, and don't take it personally- it doesn't mean they don't take your words to heart), so this is 23 individual readers who expressed their appreciation for this work. 23 comments out of 2483 hits: 23/2483=0.00926, or 0.93%. Less than 1% of readers left comments on this 80k behemoth of a fic. And 13% of that less than 1% is me. 
Of course, you can say, how do you know an abnormally large amount of people didn't just open this fic, decide it wasn't for them, and close it again? Maybe this is the Spider Georg of fanfiction. This is not the case, but if you propose the challenge, I will prove it to you. 145 readers enjoyed this fic enough to read all the way to the end to leave kudos. Don't forget that this is only a little less than 6%. 23 comments out of 145 kudos-leavers: 23/145=0.1586, or a little less than 16%. Of readers who liked this fic enough to leave kudos, 15.9% liked it enough to leave a comment. On normal fics, a comment isn't even that long- probably a sentence or two, unless the commenter is particularly moved, or happens to be me- and only 16% of the 6% that deigned to leave kudos decided to leave one. For an 80k word fic. I haven't even looked to see how many of them are followers of the fic who had commented on multiple chapters as they were published. 
What kind of response can you expect for your work, you ask? Surely, if I'm good enough, you think, the praise will come flowing in. Surely, you say, others will see the brilliance of my idea. Tough shit, Pinocchio. Writing sucks. Readers suck. Writers grovel for any kind of recognition of their work. On this fic, 23 comments were left on a total of 78491 words. 23/78491 is such a small number that my calculator went into scientific notation to try and figure out comments per word. The number is 0.000293 comments per word. Of course, no one expects a comment per word, so let's extrapolate a bit- let's see how many comments this fic got per 1k words. 0.000293*1000 is 0.293, or about .3. Less than a third of a comment per thousand words- and remember, average comment length is a couple sentences, or a series of emojis, or, "I like this!!!!! Thanks <3", which takes the average human maybe twenty seconds to write. Despite this, and despite the fic having nearly 2500 hits, only 23 users commented. 
And 3 of them were me.
If this doesn't convince you of the futility of writing, and that if you are a fan-content writer, or want to be one, not to base your writing's worth on the amount of comments or make yourself miserable catering to the whims of the masses, I don't know what will. For balance's sake, let's observe another case study. The fic I think is my most popular one- the aforementioned 6.6k fic- was written in 2016, over the span of a week and two days. It's for a popular pairing in a popular fandom.
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8110 hits?! You shriek. For less than 7k words? While that other masterpiece, by a writer far greater than you, had only a measly 2.5k hits?!
Let me calculate it- this fic recieved 8110 hits for 6633 words: 8110/6633=1.223 hits per word. That's more than a hit per word, which is outrageous, but that's beside the point. This statistic in itself should convince you that popularity as a writer is based not on your actual talent or skill but on both the whims of the massless entity dubbed "the readership" and the objective popularity of your subject matter. Writing blows. Writing for an audience blows. Never write for anyone but yourself, if you choose to write at all, and if you do, do not be disheartened by a lack of reception. Readers take writers for granted. This is a given fact. 
I'll do the same calculations I had done in the previous case study. In this case, of 8110 hits, 745 users decided it was good enough to leave kudos. (Again- this is literally the act of pressing a button. Not too strenuous, though appreciated.) 745/8110=0.0919, or 9.2%- so performing a little better than the 80k rarepair fic, though not by much. This is still <10% of readers. 
Further, on the subject of comments- this fic garnered 33 comments, none of which I, the author replied to, just like the case of the previous fic. 33 comments from 8110 hits: 33/8110=0.004069, or 0.41%. What does this mean? This means that, firstly, larger viewships are sometimes a curse, because of something like the bystander effect- more popular ships means more material by other amazing authors, and less focus concentrated on one work- and secondly, this statistic is no different from the first case. Unless a fic gets wildly popular in itself, and becomes a staple and a brand-name and all those other things, you can expect little to no return on any investment you put into writing. This is a terrible fact and a solid truth. 
Readers are thankless, insatiable, demanding consumers who take for granted that the stories they crave will be there, prepared for them, and give little thought to the author behind the characters. Of course, this is the case in the professional writing industry as well, which is why writing is an undertaking that can only be undertaken with one purpose- something within the author that compels them to write. Writing sucks. Objectively, if you're looking for ways to be validated in your work, it's a waste of time, and sometimes I wish I could take all the fanfiction archives on the internet down for a day or two, just to see readers panic. People take for granted what has always been there. Don't write unless you want to.
Readers- the consumers I've bashed so thoroughly- if you are a fic consumer, and you've read all the way to the end, I implore you- show some gratitude. If you are someone who regularly leaves kudos and comments on fic you love, congratulations. You're probably some writer's favorite person. If not- well, I don't have much to say to you. Books should be free, but fan content writers write for less than free- they write at a loss. Appreciate them, just a little. Every time I see a writer groveling for a handful of comments, the lack of respect for something so many people claim they "love to read" and "don't know what they would do without" makes me hate "the readership" even more. Being a writer is a thankless, horrible, useless pursuit, because few people care deeply enough to do more than consume the content and leave- you can make it not so much so, just a little bit. Just a few words, and you could bump that comments button up a number. You could be the reason that percentage improves. All it takes is to give back, just a little, to the people who provide you your fan-content for free, at the expense of their own time.
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