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Very true! Still, it’s nice to actually get feedback, and I even cherish mixed reviews, and negative reviews which I wholly disagree with as long as they’re not trollish.

It’s tough to tell. My best metric has been to record the dragon prints (hit counter). When I see that it goes up a hundred hits in a day after I post a chapter, consistently, then it’s reasonable to conclude that there are people who are enjoying it. Some people say it doesn’t matter, but it does, because I wouldn’t put as much effort in to polish/post the chapters otherwise. And when you get somebody who’s reviewing, consistently, cherish them

One thing I’ve found, is that it’s hard to tell how much love a story is getting without even just a “fave” or “kudos” system, so it’s even more important for people enjoying our stories to leave reviews. So when people don’t review, it can be a bit demoralising and there’s really no way to tell if folk liked the story or not. Anyway, yes, I’m really pleased—to this day—how my first “major” fanfic turned out (I still think it holds up better than some of my other more recent shorter fics), and unfortunately, it languishes unnoticed... to this day. My fic The Adventures of Bilbo and Tauriel (aka The Adventures of Bilbo and Itaril) is quite possibly (?) the first fanfic based on The Hobbit films to appear online, as it was written and posted on a Hobbit forum in the Autumn of 2009 while casting had only just begun (and when the proposed female elf character was named Itaril) and before the scripts were even complete, and a few months later I posted it at ff.net. And that’s probably one of the reasons it never got very far—it came out way too soon. It’s important to “catch the wave” of “less popular” franchises at just the right time as Anesor pointed out. And yeah, I know it seems weird to call a Tolkien property “less popular,” but compared to Potterverse and Naruto, Tolkien stuff is very under-represented in fanfic-world. I’m fairly certain that the other major factors in my fic’s poor showing are that it is a Bilbo/Tauriel pairing in a fandom dominated by Bilbo/Thorin and Kili/Tauriel pairings, and also that the sex is only implied at best. People like smut, and they tend to like detailed smut. Personally, though I have by and large conceded to the gods of smut and given the audience what they want in some of my fics, my general writing preferences actually tend to be on the same page as BronxWench’s. And indeed, when it comes right down to it, I really don’t let the audience have that much input, even when I am playing to them—my stories tend to be planned out to a certain degree, and I only allow the characters to drive any alterations to the plot (characterisation always comes first in my book).

Yeah, I got one recently where the reader thought my lead hated a group. They don’t, they’re just uncomfortable about slavery and free will issues that are to be addressed later in the storyline. But I had no idea where the dislike came from, which bled over into how another character was treated. I finally figured it out earlier, awaiting for confirmation, that the hating character used a pronoun when cursing the slavers and they thought it was cursing the slaves. I try to keep alert to pronouns like that, but it sneaks up on you. Comments like that confuse me, especially as the chapter I’m drafting is way later. But after confusion, annoyance, and quick to anger about what I hope is a good guy character, clarifying wasn’t an issue. I’ve found with some reviewers, addressing it is better in the long run. The mot trollish one wandered off to bother someone else, It could be they loved it because it was better than what they usually saw, even if you were dissatisfied. If any of their comments had substance, don’t worry too much. Over polishing a story makes it an orphan too, as stories don’t mean much if they aren’t shared.

But to answer the actual thread: I'm currently writing a story that in my opinion is my best (though that isn't saying much...) both in writing style and plot. And out of all of my stories it received the least lovin! I had stories (on other websites btw) that were total shit and ppl loved it! And its so bad I feel really embarrassed now by the shittynes of the plot that didn't make sense, the characters that were ether empty shells or sadistic fuckers and all of the grammatical errors. And it was my most beloved story… ppl suck!

In my case its mostly about fantasy vs reality. For example in real life I am very squeamish about things I put near my mouth and face and butthole but I read and write m/m and find it pretty hot. I also find rimming very hot in fantasy but in reality I wouldn't wanna have my tongue anywhere near an asshole. I have a lot of underage shit going on in my stories too (both written and still in my head) even though I don't find teenagers sexually attractive. I think that maybe that's because I find ‘sexual awakening’ interesting to write about. Also there are stories of mine that kinda demand it because of the marriage customs and the ideas of consent and sexual maturity are different in the story’s universe than in our own. And of course, since a lot of my characters have terrible childhoods, there are the backstories and flashbacks that are usually very... unpleasant to write. Hmm...when I look back I wrote a lot of things that were unpleasant to write… But I think I got a bit off topic, sorry my brain is just not working properly today...idk did I answer the question? I forgot what I was gonna say! Whaa am I so broken?!

The short answer in my case is that in one story in particular (Hermione’s Furry Little Problem) i wrote far more (detailed) smut scenes than I would have simply to keep up with audience demand. Frankly, it can get a bit boring and repetitive to read and write non-stop sex scenes in an epic length novel—some of the scenes were a bit perfunctory. I was far less excited for some of them and it shows. My preference is to only focus in detail on a few key sex scenes which advance the plot or advance the romance, and to present something new each time—leaving the other sex scenes implied or off-screen (which is mostly the way I handle my other major fics). But that’s not really what the question is about, is it!? The question is really about content. And to that, I have to say that I have yet to publish anything online outside of my comfort zone or which doesn’t excite me, which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t at some point write something that doesn’t generally float my boat. I’m actually entertained by quite a variety of fetishes and I’m pretty much open to writing anything, even outside of my comfort zone as long as it doesn’t feature prepubescent minors (taking into consideration that puberty can hit anywhere between 11 and 13—at eleven for me in any case ), older adults (anything over mid twenties) with minors, or snuff/necro, and I doubt I’ll ever publish anything which features non-con, nor Stockholm Syndrome style rape/slave fics (I have written some horribly filthy smut off-line which features hardcore non-con/slavery and bestiality, but it’ll never see the light of day). And for myself, I don’t really have any issues writing scenes featuring Minor 1 characters (pubescent ones anyway), because it’s always from the pov of the teen characters themselves and consensual, and it’s more about fond reminiscences of my own experiences and fantasies at that age (what can I say? I and my girlfriend were very precocious) than from the pov of a “middle-aged-perv.” There is some generally “non-exciting” content (to me) which I have planned on writing, but never got around to for one reason or another. At some point, I’m fairly certain that I will write some male slash scenes as out-takes from one of my stories which has male couples as secondary characters. Being of “ambiguous” gender identity myself (it varies depending on the day of the week) with a preference for women, I tend to mostly write scenes which reflect that: Het, Femslash, Bi, and sort-of-Trans gender-bending sex scenes. Going to JayDee’s point regarding writing stuff that loses regular readers, in my fics that tends to happen right around the part of my stories in which metamorphmagus!sort-of-Trans!Harry gender-bends and is ploughed by a girl (usually Hermione) with a strap-on dildo. Despite a lot of obvious foreshadowing, some are still surprised and it’s too “squick” for them. I’m also considering writing a metamorphmagus!futa!Tonks screws metamorphmagus!fem!Harry out-take scene. Futa isn’t generally my thing in a big way, but I enjoy it from time to time and I think it would be fun to have a go at writing a futa fic.