Feedback on A Shortage of Priests!

[artemisdart]

I was very happy to receive my first comment on a fic I posted back in March, A Shortage of Priests, in the fandom 本好きの下剋上 - 香月美夜 | Honzuki no Gekokujou | Ascendance of a Bookworm Series by Kazuki Miya.

I wrote it for the Kink Lucky Dip 2024 challenge, and although I hadn't read the manga, I had watched the whole anime and thought I could do a decent job with the requested pairing, Ferdinand / Benno. 

My gift recipient never left a kudos or a comment. It made me sad, wondering where I had gone wrong. I thought I had done a pretty good job, incorporating many of their requests and likes into the fic. But I thought maybe they didn't like my depiction of Ferdinand as asexual, and that's okay. Gift recipients don't "owe" the creators their thanks; that would be too transactional. They should only give a kudos or a comment if they want to. And they didn't want to. 

Anyway, my feelings were hurt, and then no one commented on it at all for months, making me feel like I must have really missed the mark more than I thought. 

But the other day I finally received a comment on it! They said they enjoyed it, but I got some things wrong in lore. Not too surprising since I had only seen the anime. 

I replied saying I'd be curious to hear what I didn't get right, but not committing to rewriting it. If the issues were big, I didn't want to try to scrap and rewrite after I already gave it to someone. A small tweak here or there, fine, but nothing too huge...

The commenter was kind enough to reply with a few things I didn't get quite right. Some of them are small and easily fixable, but one of them undermines the entire premise of my story. 😭

So I'm feeling pretty cast down about that. I don't think I could have known any better just from watching the anime. Still, maybe the oversights / inaccuracies are why my gift recipient never clicked Kudos.

At this point I think I'll tweak a few small things, but just ignore that the whole premise for my fic is fatally flawed. 

Comments

[himbeersaft]

I'm sorry you had this experience. I know nothing about that fandom and have also never participated in any kind of fic exchange, but I do feel that you should at least thank the author who worked hard on your story. It's not about being owed gratitude, but someone still took their time to fulfil your request and I'm sure the story itself was great if you ignore the canon problems. And maybe that's just me, but isn't plot in a kinky fic rather secondary anyway? (At least to me it would be.) :P

I'm wondering, if you didn't get some things right because it wasn't in the anime, couldn't you just put a disclaimer that you're basing the story on the anime only?

Please don't let it get you down. You worked with the information you had and I'm sure the story is as well-written and enjoyable as all your others. :)

[artemisdart]

Thank you so much for replying to my little pity party with so much support. Writing is a scary act, because we're exposing some secret and vulnerable parts of ourselves to strangers.

It doesn't feel great to do that and then get no kudos, so although I tell myself it's okay that my gift recipient never bothered to leave one, it really wasn't okay. I feel like in an exchange, the bare minimum you should do was leave one, but I really need to let it go for my own peace of mind!

(The funny thing is that in the same exchange, I requested the same pairing, and my recipient fulfilled a "treat" for me -- also Ferdinand/Benno! Of course I left a kudos, despite it being so short that it was barely there at all -- only 300 words. Still, leaving a kudos is the least I could do for someone who wrote something for me!... That just makes it weirder they didn't return the favor...)

I fully realize I'm being weird about this and hahaha I should probably get therapy or something, because whether a complete stranger clicked a button on my story is not that important. And it's *not* that important, in the grand scheme of things. I have a rich, busy life with many people and lots to enjoy. I am still holding a grudge about this one little thing, though -- lol. It's like having a splinter in my toe. Overall, not that bad, but still a problem, still irritating, and I would still like the splinter to be gone, please!

Your kind comment is soothing that annoyed part of my brain and making me feel like yeah, I can be irked about this and my feelings are valid. But also, I need to just stop thinking about the situation and let it be what it is.

In the end, I resolved not to write for this person in any future exchange. Their loss!

[himbeersaft]

I don't think you're weird about this at all! Like you said, we're pouring some of ourself into our writing, so having a story you specifially wrote for someone go ignored must definitely hurt. It costs you nothing to press the kudos button or drop a simple "thank you", so to me that's the least you can do when you receive a fic in such an exchange.

And you can never know if you'll get what you asked for. That's always the risk that even if the author incorporates everything you want in their fic, it might still not be what you would have wanted. If you have a very specific idea how you want a story to go, then you will just have to write it yourself.

So yeah, I think your disappointment is very understandable and valid. I hope you can soon put it behind you though. Not writing for this person again is definitely a good decision! Like you said, it's their loss though! But whoever you'll write for instead in the next exchange you'll participate can definitely consider themself lucky. <3