Before I begin on that: I hope to return to Season 5 of Friendship is Magic with "Make New Friends But Keep Discord" in the next day or two.
As we look towards a new year, I think it's time to mention a few little things that I intend to do with Ponyfic Roundup in 2022. These won't be huge changes: it will still be weekly on Wednesdays (mostly...) and it will still have the same basic layout as it has for years now. The first PR of 2022 will be a Spotlight on Nine Days Down this coming Wednesday. But from the first regular edition, expected on 12th January, there are three small changes that I'd like to make:
1. G5 fics will become eligible. Actually, all generations will become eligible, but I think it unlikely that I'm going to be reviewing more than a tiny handful of those from the pre-G4 days, if even that. With G5, though, there are already over 350 fics on Fimfiction and that number will only grow, especially if the forthcoming series proves a success. Since my Read it Later list has been all-G4 until now, don't expect any G5 fics for a little while – but they're coming eventually! However, I expect G4 stories to remain the large majority of reviewed fics for the foreseeable future. Most PRs will remain all-G4 unless G5 fics truly take off.
2. Only fics with ratings enabled. Fimfiction has for some time now allowed authors to switch off the ability to upvote or downvote their stories. While I have had an unofficial policy for a while not to review fics where this has happened, I am now making this official. The overwhelming majority of reviewed stories come from Fimfiction, but in the tiny number of cases where I find a fic elsewhere, I will apply a broadly similar policy. Stories in hard-copy books produced by or with approval from fic authors will almost always be considered eligible. (That "almost" is to cover any exceptional circumstances I haven't thought of.)
3. More reviews! Those with long memories will recall that Ponyfic Roundup used to review five stories a week, not the mere three seen more recently. While I don't think I can reasonably commit to going back to that, at least for now, I will aim to review four fics each PR. I will also try to give at least a little more room to reviews of mid-length stories (say 10k to 50k words) as these have tended to be neglected both in regular Roundups and in the occasional Spotlight issues that usually focus on a longer fic.
Sounds good! :D On #2, how do you feel about stories with comments turned off?
ReplyDeleteHmm, interesting question. There aren't very many, fortunately, so the question doesn't arise that often. I'd probably be inclined to skip those as well, though if they have ratings left on I'm not sure I could honestly call that quite such a hard rule.
DeleteI've kind of written off anything that has either turned off myself, though I have also seen it used to effect with the content of a story. Like, being unable to respond or speak in the comments adds to the experience. But yeah, I understand why people might not want comments if they're getting abuse, but one or the other is kind of the limit as far as I'm concerned.
DeleteI don't have any experience with this, but can you tell the difference between a story that has ratings disabled and a story that doesn't have the minimum 10 ratings required before they show up publicly?
ReplyDeleteAs long as I'm logged into Fimfiction, which is nearly always, yes I can. The thumb up/thumb down buttons are disabled, and I think there's a short text note as well.
DeleteI'll never say no to more reviews! Even just an average of 4 a week over 3 will really make quite the long-term difference. I just hope the themed roundups (author spotlights, fics from a specific contest, a whole post on a novel-length fic, etc.) continue to abound, they're always fun!
ReplyDeleteDespite my relative coolness on many aspects of A New Generation, and that I find it, relative to FiM, far less inspiring to write and/or read fanfiction for, I have nonetheless found myself reading a fair share of G5 fanfiction over the past three months. Thus, I find myself with first-hand evidence as to the trends of its fanfic output thus far. A few interesting observations emerge from there.
1. It's dipping off in popularity. Thus far, it peaked in September (57 fics) and October (165). It's actually gotten less fics then Equestria Girls since then (60 vs 82 in November, 57 vs 105 in December). Makes some sense, when it's all based on just one film – it would be like having just S1E1/2 of FiM to work from (probably not the best comparison, given how that continues to inspire tons of fics a decade on, but you get the idea).
I suspect G5 fic output will remain in the 40-60 range until we start getting more content. After that? The May special should rejuvenate output briefly (I suspect it'll basically be the Pilot/Season Premiere for the show, more directly foregrounding what the show will actually consist of), and depending on how inspiring it proves to write fanfiction for, we'll see either another drop off until the show in September, or a flatness.
2. Overwhelmingly short stories. The average word count across the 371 G5 stories thus far? 5,524 words. EqG is 18,397, while FiM is 16,289. Only 30 G5 stories have over 15,000 words, and even lowering the cap to 10,000 words only extends that to 46 (even down at just 5,000 words, it's only 98). Obviously, 3 months means some incomplete fics haven't yet had the chance to reach their final length, but clearly this is mostly because people are hesitant to embark on longfics that could be rendered non-canon by future material (not that this ever stopped past FiM fanfiction, as well it shouldn't, but A New Generation left so many deliberately hanging threads that it's far dicier here). And, well… the lore and world isn't exactly FiM-level inspiring. Yes, just my opinion, but clearly not an outlier.
Still, this does mean you can squeeze the majority of G5 fics into normal Ponyfic Roundups! Especially as most of them (293 of 271 – almost 80%) are complete. Perfectly suited to your short form preferences.
3. The quality is… eh. Now, since we're still in the early stages, I've not had nearly the selection choice FiM fics offers, where I skirt by fics that don't look at least worth a read. So I've read G5 fics I probably wouldn't have otherwise. But I definitely feel Sturgeon's Law applies here, and even that may be generous. The quality of much of these reminds me of past fandoms I wrote/read for, where people are just chucking down their thoughts and clicking Submit.
Again, I admit my biases – Zipp, Pipp, much of everything involving Zephyr Heights and the social media aspects are big turn-offs for me, and one's choice is limited if totally omitting fics with those elements. Easily the best selection of fics thus far, for me, are the little prequel-building character pieces, and mostly for the older ponies (I'm actually stunned at how many great Queen Haven character building pieces we've gotten).
Anyway, not a problem here, and even the small handful of fics I'd recommend adding to your RiL list may well be enough.
Also, hm, didn't know there were separate toggles for disabling reviews and comments. Always assumed they were linked together. I stay away from Ratings Disabled stories in any case.
I just hope the themed roundups (author spotlights, fics from a specific contest, a whole post on a novel-length fic, etc.) continue to abound
DeleteYes, those will still be around. The Spotlight next week of course, but I have a couple of other ideas. They'll be fairly rare, but not vanishingly rare.
The quality is… eh
To be fair, you could say much the same if you took a random sample of 300 recent G4 fics. One of the themed editions I may revive at some point is reviewing a bunch of stories by completely new authors. Usually those throw up one or two goodies and considerably more mediocre-or-worse stuff, but it's still quite fun to leap into the unknown.
I think Logan's got a point here, unless you controlled the quality of the G5 fics by how experienced the writers are. Yes, no matter when you sample G4, you'll get some newcomers to writing, but I would suspect G5 skews pretty heavily that way, at least for now. I'm not sure how best to control for that, though. Only look at G5 fics by people who have at least 5 stories, who have been active on the site for at least 2 years, etc.
DeleteYou're both quite right, of course. Were I to randomly look at the 371 most recent FiM fics, I'd get a lot of… "subpar" fics too, I'm sure. I noted as much, what with the "reading fics I wouldn't have otherwise" bit. Again, it's the short length: many of them I clicked on only because they were short enough for my curiosity to get the better of me. Only brought this up at all for Logan's benefit as regards the odd G5 fic that'll appear here going forward.
DeleteWeirdly, not as many G5 fics are by newcomers brought in by it as you might think. Instead, a lot of them are by people who joined between G4 ending and G5 beginning. Which makes that 5 stories/2 years metric is an interesting one (well, up until the point that I slot in there due to having only written 3 stories and started publishing Ponyfic just over a year ago, even though I joined the site in August 2018, heh). Don't think I'll apply it religiously, mind.
Anyway, it's not too hard to find the gems, if one has been around long enough to have gotten adept at deciphering descriptions to figure out the actual quality and skill of the author. Which isn't the only metric, sure, but it's definitely a useful one. And for better or for worse, the types and lengths of fics will change irreversibly once we get the show. Let's wait and see!
Also:
(293 of 271 – almost 80%)
That was obviously meant to be 371. And I missed italicising some words too. Happens.