TheKillingAlice
Schinken
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2023
- Messages
- 227
- Points
- 43
It's the most savage collection of R's, I tell ya.
Anyway, this is a rant, so don't take it too seriously, but I didn't know where else to vent out my frustrations. I put my stories up on Royal Road, because I was told they were very vocal with their criticism and harshly honest. The HH of RR, basically.
But now that I'm there, it's frustrating, if nothing else. I do have two reviews, both of them super positive, mentioning no downsides. One of them ending with "So far, I'm loving it" - Review came in with 3 out of 5 stars.
Kay, but I know it's positive and readers will see it and think so too, so 3 stars is fine to me. It's also not that bad ratings are the majority, it's mainly 4 through 5 stars, with most of them being 5 stars. So it seems to not fall flat completely. But for a few months, whenever there's a new positive rating, a negative one (2 through 3 Stars) pops up right after. They always come together, I'm not even joking. I had 20 ratings until a few days ago. Then it was 22 over night (2 and 5 Stars) and last night, it came up to 24 rating (2 and 5 stars respectively). You can follow it without having any insight, by the overall rating going marginally up and down somewhere around 4 stars.
But anyway, guess what I didn't get? Right, criticism of any kind. The most critical comments I have received was that a character that isn't physically around most of the time, but connected to the MCs mind, was "not adding anything" to the story when randomly chiming in (though he always comes in to give valuable information or make a comment that serves as a situational joke), but though might not be around, he's super important to the story, so what can I do about it? It's also a taste thing, rather than objective criticism. Then there was a person who questioned how a thirteen year old could know about spring cleaning the dorms she had been living in. And when I answered it with all bases of doubt covered why I thought it was a logical thing to know and why I was confused about why they would even question something so basic, I was called aggressive.
Other than that, they mark the occasional typo or grammatical error (like one or two in a chapter, nothing grave, but I do appreciate getting to "clean up" my story, so it's not like I'm sad about it). I'm not saying there can't be anyone who doesn't like my story, nor do I believe that subjective criticism is worthless, but that's just not what I would expect to be worth a 2 star rating.
And if it is, why not say a word? Don't get me wrong, you aren't obliged to say anything when you dislike a story, but if you feel strongly enough about it to rate it, wouldn't that mean you could write down at least three sentences on what was wrong with it in your eyes? That wouldn't just help me gain a better understanding of how the story is viewed by the readers, but also help other readers by telling them what is good and what isn't. They might feel differently about certain things.
For example, someone might not like Harem and review that the Harem had gotten too front and centre (my story isn't harem, for that matter, it's an unrelated example), with the girls in the harem dumbed down after they are collected. But the next reader loves such a setting, so what is pain for one, is pleasing for the other. Same can be turned around as well. I would run if I read something suggesting this as a positive review.
Either way, I'm sure someone will tell me I shouldn't give a shit, because Ratings aren't important anyway and nobody looks at them, but the truth is, I truly thought people would say something on RR. But now there's nothing. Most comments are either what I already mentioned or "Thanks for the Chapter". And when I went on hiatus, someone asked for when the story would continue. I'm not trying to be ungrateful here, I'm always thankful for any type of comment, but I literally have no idea what people actually think about anything in the story and it's been going on for more than 60 chapters.
I don't usually mean to whine, but I want to whine, so I do whine. It's frustrating.
So I'm just over here feeling meh. Humor me and let me whine about it here.
Anyway, this is a rant, so don't take it too seriously, but I didn't know where else to vent out my frustrations. I put my stories up on Royal Road, because I was told they were very vocal with their criticism and harshly honest. The HH of RR, basically.
But now that I'm there, it's frustrating, if nothing else. I do have two reviews, both of them super positive, mentioning no downsides. One of them ending with "So far, I'm loving it" - Review came in with 3 out of 5 stars.
Kay, but I know it's positive and readers will see it and think so too, so 3 stars is fine to me. It's also not that bad ratings are the majority, it's mainly 4 through 5 stars, with most of them being 5 stars. So it seems to not fall flat completely. But for a few months, whenever there's a new positive rating, a negative one (2 through 3 Stars) pops up right after. They always come together, I'm not even joking. I had 20 ratings until a few days ago. Then it was 22 over night (2 and 5 Stars) and last night, it came up to 24 rating (2 and 5 stars respectively). You can follow it without having any insight, by the overall rating going marginally up and down somewhere around 4 stars.
But anyway, guess what I didn't get? Right, criticism of any kind. The most critical comments I have received was that a character that isn't physically around most of the time, but connected to the MCs mind, was "not adding anything" to the story when randomly chiming in (though he always comes in to give valuable information or make a comment that serves as a situational joke), but though might not be around, he's super important to the story, so what can I do about it? It's also a taste thing, rather than objective criticism. Then there was a person who questioned how a thirteen year old could know about spring cleaning the dorms she had been living in. And when I answered it with all bases of doubt covered why I thought it was a logical thing to know and why I was confused about why they would even question something so basic, I was called aggressive.
Other than that, they mark the occasional typo or grammatical error (like one or two in a chapter, nothing grave, but I do appreciate getting to "clean up" my story, so it's not like I'm sad about it). I'm not saying there can't be anyone who doesn't like my story, nor do I believe that subjective criticism is worthless, but that's just not what I would expect to be worth a 2 star rating.
And if it is, why not say a word? Don't get me wrong, you aren't obliged to say anything when you dislike a story, but if you feel strongly enough about it to rate it, wouldn't that mean you could write down at least three sentences on what was wrong with it in your eyes? That wouldn't just help me gain a better understanding of how the story is viewed by the readers, but also help other readers by telling them what is good and what isn't. They might feel differently about certain things.
For example, someone might not like Harem and review that the Harem had gotten too front and centre (my story isn't harem, for that matter, it's an unrelated example), with the girls in the harem dumbed down after they are collected. But the next reader loves such a setting, so what is pain for one, is pleasing for the other. Same can be turned around as well. I would run if I read something suggesting this as a positive review.
Either way, I'm sure someone will tell me I shouldn't give a shit, because Ratings aren't important anyway and nobody looks at them, but the truth is, I truly thought people would say something on RR. But now there's nothing. Most comments are either what I already mentioned or "Thanks for the Chapter". And when I went on hiatus, someone asked for when the story would continue. I'm not trying to be ungrateful here, I'm always thankful for any type of comment, but I literally have no idea what people actually think about anything in the story and it's been going on for more than 60 chapters.
I don't usually mean to whine, but I want to whine, so I do whine. It's frustrating.
So I'm just over here feeling meh. Humor me and let me whine about it here.
