Comments That Make Your Day

[AlexFourways]

I've had no comments for a while. I found some hen's teeth, so the comments are truly harder to find.

So true - strange how some authors get floods of comments and others a few.
I have many with none (even popular (for me) and hot ones) so I don't know what I am doing right or wrong!

 

[MillieDynamite]

Nothing is what you're doing wrong. Readers are fickle. Many heart a story but don't vote. Some vote a five but don't heart it. Some comment, but don't do either of the other things. I stopped worrying about what readers will or won't do, and I just write and appreciate whenever they do one thing, another thing, or all of the things they can do.

So true - strange how some authors get floods of comments and others a few.
I have many with none (even popular (for me) and hot ones) so I don't know what I am doing right or wrong!

 

[shelleycat1]

This made my day: someone told me that I can write well enough to get an emotional response.

I'm sitting here, all emotional after reading your story. Halfway through I had that sinking Black Mirror feeling, like everything was about to fall apart. You could have gone for the bitter ending (and I admit, it had already played in my head), but thank you for choosing the happy one in the end!

Its on "A Coned Wife", currently under that title until the edit get through. My oops.

 

[AlexFourways]

Nothing is what you're doing wrong. Readers are fickle. Many heart a story but don't vote. Some vote a five but don't heart it. Some comment, but don't do either of the other things. I stopped worrying about what readers will or won't do, and I just write and appreciate whenever they do one thing, another thing, or all of the things they can do.

No doubt you are right. Apart from enjoying writing for this site, part of my reason is to practice writing to improve stories I have written, but are not up to reading quality, let alone publishing. I wrote a bit of HHG2G* fan fiction that has over two years had a number of readers, (lots for parts 1 and then 2) but again no comments. But I know (now) that it is all a bit 'beathless', as in lots happening in a rush with little breathing space. At just over 83k words it would probably need to double in size! (or shrink in ways I have no idea how to do.)

*If you don't know what that is then a story about what happened to Fenchurch and why things happened just so in Mostly Harmless and And Another Thing (Douglas Adams and Eoin Colfer respectively). Search Fanfiction.net for Another One, but don't complain (or please do) if you get confused. My last action was to add summaries to the 16 parts so you can speed read. I had a big constraint that I had to ensure everything fitted with the other two books where they interacted.

 

[AlexFourways]

This made my day: someone told me that I can write well enough to get an emotional response.

I'm sitting here, all emotional after reading your story. Halfway through I had that sinking Black Mirror feeling, like everything was about to fall apart. You could have gone for the bitter ending (and I admit, it had already played in my head), but thank you for choosing the happy one in the end!

Its on "A Coned Wife", currently under that title until the edit get through. My oops.

I'll share again, that I use the following technique (in a word processor) to plan the title and summary before I submit (but delete it from the story file before submitting). You use Courier or another mono-spaced font so that it counts the 35 characters for the title and 60 for the summary. I also plan the TAGS so that they can be pasted (about 3 at a time) into the TAGS field. YMMV

12345678901234567892123456789312345
4 To Deal With The Danger You Know
123456789012345678921234567893123456789412345678951234567896
Can Herman escape a Droid Dealer? And Lilyan finds the past.

Sci-Fi, android, robot, artificial emotions, artificial sex, mistaken for human, sex gynoid, gynoid, anal

 

[shelleycat1]

I'll share again, that I use the following technique (in a word processor) to plan the title and summary before I submit (but delete it from the story file before submitting). You use Courier or another mono-spaced font so that it counts the 35 characters for the title and 60 for the summary. I also plan the TAGS so that they can be pasted (about 3 at a time) into the TAGS field. YMMV

12345678901234567892123456789312345
4 To Deal With The Danger You Know
123456789012345678921234567893123456789412345678951234567896
Can Herman escape a Droid Dealer? And Lilyan finds the past.

Sci-Fi, android, robot, artificial emotions, artificial sex, mistaken for human, sex gynoid, gynoid, anal

Yes thank you. I did all of that. What I forgot to do was cut and paste the correct title! You must have heard the saying, "He never makes the same mistake twice. But he has made all of them once".

(By the way, from this thread I saw and read one of your gynoid and android story, and loved it.)

 

[AlexFourways]

Yes thank you. I did all of that. What I forgot to do was cut and paste the correct title! You must have heard the saying, "He never makes the same mistake twice. But he has made all of them once".

(By the way, from this thread I saw and read one of your gynoid and android story, and loved it.)

Thank you, that is a comment that has made my day. FYI Part 2 is now up! You get to meet Streda! Just in time!

 

[NoTalentHack]

I don't know about "made my day," but this one on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons cracked me up.

She was a sick mother, he was a fucking bag of shit. She was a saint, and he was a piece of filth. I am Extremely sympathetic to men. I have never bought into male hate. This is pure male fantasy trash. It's an attempt to balance female infidelity, while allowing a man to get his own without being too hard.

Frankly, you are worse than the misogynist BTB folk. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they are. You are a fraud

It really is very hard for some people to accept that the writer and the characters aren't the same thing, isn't it?

Okay, now for one that really did make my day:

I’ve had a passion for reading for over 60 years. I find your writing captivating. Just finished “Also Ran” at 2:30 this morning, unable to stop reading till I read it to the end.
And this is not the first of your stories I’ve been unable to put down until I read through to the end.
I guess you could say I’ve become a fan. lol And look forward to reading the next story. But I need to stop now, and get to bed. Thanks!

 

[PennyThompson]

I don't know about "made my day," but this one on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons cracked me up.



It really is very hard for some people to accept that the writer and the characters aren't the same thing, isn't it?

Okay, now for one that really did make my day:

You Loving Wives authors are a different breed, are the terrible angry media-illiterate therapy-needing readers, like, a humiliation kink for you?

 

[NoTalentHack]

You Loving Wives authors are a different breed, are the terrible angry media-illiterate therapy-needing readers, like, a humiliation kink for you?

Ah, but for it to be a humiliation kink would require that I have a sense of shame.

More seriously, a lot of these guys are here as a form of therapy, as strange as it sounds. I figure that it I can help them come to some sort of peace with what happened in their lives--regardless of whether they did something, it was done to them, or both--a little flak is worth it.

My all-time favorite feedback is actually from the same story that the first commenter lambasted, albeit on a different site. He and I had a long discussion in PMs on that site, but, essentially, he told me that something somewhat similar had happened to him, that his wife cheated on him years before and passed the child that resulted from the affair as his for more than a decade.

He stayed with her because of the children, including the one that wasn't biologically his, but they had never really reconciled, just moved on and coexisted for the next thirteen years. He read the story, showed it to her, and they started going to counseling; according to him, the dialogue between the couple at the end finally got through to her just how much and exactly how it had hurt him, and by opening up that way, she was able to open up to him, too.

Even if I get a hundred thousand angry comments, I'll still have done that bit of good in the world. I'll take that trade any day of the week and twice on Sundays. And given that I've gotten messages from other folks telling me that a story had helped them through the suicide of a loved one, the feel of having wasted their lives with the wrong person, feeling seen as a long-term caregiver in a loveless marriage, etc., I've gotten way more fuzzies than frowns.

Plus, you know, sometimes it's also fun to write some crazy balls to the wall scenario, too. Noir revenge story? Femdom Mind Control body horror? "Cleverly" hidden X-Men AU? Cuck/bull pro wrestling bromance? Have to take your fun where you can find it.

 

[PennyThompson]

Ah, but for it to be a humiliation kink would require that I have a sense of shame.

More seriously, a lot of these guys are here as a form of therapy, as strange as it sounds. I figure that it I can help them come to some sort of peace with what happened in their lives--regardless of whether they did something, it was done to them, or both--a little flak is worth it.

My all-time favorite feedback is actually from the same story that the first commenter lambasted, albeit on a different site. He and I had a long discussion in PMs on that site, but, essentially, he told me that something somewhat similar had happened to him, that his wife cheated on him years before and passed the child that resulted from the affair as his for more than a decade.

He stayed with her because of the children, including the one that wasn't biologically his, but they had never really reconciled, just moved on and coexisted for the next thirteen years. He read the story, showed it to her, and they started going to counseling; according to him, the dialogue between the couple at the end finally got through to her just how much and exactly how it had hurt him, and by opening up that way, she was able to open up to him, too.

Even if I get a hundred thousand angry comments, I'll still have done that bit of good in the world. I'll take that trade any day of the week and twice on Sundays. And given that I've gotten messages from other folks telling me that a story had helped them through the suicide of a loved one, the feel of having wasted their lives with the wrong person, feeling seen as a long-term caregiver in a loveless marriage, etc., I've gotten way more fuzzies than frowns.

Plus, you know, sometimes it's also fun to write some crazy balls to the wall scenario, too. Noir revenge story? Femdom Mind Control body horror? "Cleverly" hidden X-Men AU? Cuck/bull pro wrestling bromance? Have to take your fun where you can find it.

Wow, that is intense! Okay, genuinely that gives me a whole different level of respect for what you're writing

 

[Actingup]

Ah, but for it to be a humiliation kink would require that I have a sense of shame.

More seriously, a lot of these guys are here as a form of therapy, as strange as it sounds. I figure that it I can help them come to some sort of peace with what happened in their lives--regardless of whether they did something, it was done to them, or both--a little flak is worth it.

My all-time favorite feedback is actually from the same story that the first commenter lambasted, albeit on a different site. He and I had a long discussion in PMs on that site, but, essentially, he told me that something somewhat similar had happened to him, that his wife cheated on him years before and passed the child that resulted from the affair as his for more than a decade.

He stayed with her because of the children, including the one that wasn't biologically his, but they had never really reconciled, just moved on and coexisted for the next thirteen years. He read the story, showed it to her, and they started going to counseling; according to him, the dialogue between the couple at the end finally got through to her just how much and exactly how it had hurt him, and by opening up that way, she was able to open up to him, too.

Even if I get a hundred thousand angry comments, I'll still have done that bit of good in the world. I'll take that trade any day of the week and twice on Sundays. And given that I've gotten messages from other folks telling me that a story had helped them through the suicide of a loved one, the feel of having wasted their lives with the wrong person, feeling seen as a long-term caregiver in a loveless marriage, etc., I've gotten way more fuzzies than frowns.

Plus, you know, sometimes it's also fun to write some crazy balls to the wall scenario, too. Noir revenge story? Femdom Mind Control body horror? "Cleverly" hidden X-Men AU? Cuck/bull pro wrestling bromance? Have to take your fun where you can find it.

That is such a powerful anecdote. I guess there are difficult stories behind so much toxic behaviour (and yes of course some people are just shits...). Therapy in the context where people are spending their time could be a whole lot more meaningful than trying to get them into the door of a counsellor's office. Good on you for fighting the good fight.

Also for the crazy scenarios....

 

[AlexFourways]

Thank you, that is a comment that has made my day. FYI Part 2 is now up! You get to meet Streda! Just in time!

I hadn't seen shelleycat1's comment at that time, and the full one did make my day!

The twisted, but correct, logic was brilliant. I read it again and again, laughing. Then the feme character also realizes the same logic too. Loved it. You must have read Asimov, to have twisted his laws.

I DM'd shellycat1 that I had read Asimov's works and was careful to respect them, the twists only involving the replacement of human with person for PC reasons and law with principles. I checked on line I had them right and VallesMarineris made sure!