Desiderius Price

Don’t need to write out a sentence, I already know I’m an idiot (got the ID-10-T form to prove it) – oh, you mean grammar checker, well, still applies cause I’m still it.

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Favorite shout, from the “Sheogorath Shout – Call of Madness” mod, rains down hundreds/thousands of cheese wheels, and will tick off about everybody around you despite trying to cure hunger! Of course, the merchants should be suspicious of the shady character pawning off a thousand cheese wheels, but they don’t seem to care.

If you’ve got the patience, the stealth armor is about the best, IMO, at least for me. Snipe out a bandit, duck back somewhere to hide. Of course the others might say “nothing to see here, must’ve been my imagination” next to their dead friend, guess loyalty doesn’t run very deep there.

Grind your character high enough in any skill set and it’s nearly a one shot/punch to take out a dragon; two if you’re not quite there yet.

@Ditmag You can tell how the interesting conversations go around here, start off with a good question, and now it’s skyrim tactics

Think I spent way too much time playing that game. Preferred the stealth/sniper build myself, and got annoyed at mandatory companions who’d ring every doorbell, set off every trap, and push me over cliffs.

Jar Jar Binks meets Dragon Priest?

I’ve got stories posted to three archives, AFF, AO3, & FFN. Only FFN with my main potter fanfic seems to be getting hit by bots. AO3 & AFF both seem to be bot-free. 11k in 100 days might be bot driven, however, some fandoms are more active than others.

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I liberally lather up the minor1 tags, so it’s more likely my smut that does it. You’re welcome!

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Not saying it’s the greatest idea ever, simply what I do because there’s no other metric here, aside from reviews. (And don’t think asking the reader a comprehension worksheet would work either.) Now, FF.net has good enough statistics for me to ascertain that bots are coming through. I mean, I doubt humans are reading my 700k potter fanfic in a day. It was meaningful the couple of times I watched a slow progression through the chapters, that did let me know that somebody was willing to hit “next chapter”. On FF.net, though, they have other metrics, like alerts & favorite counts, to help know that readers are liking it.

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I’m one who was attacked by a rating bomb, the downvote would come in immediately after a chapter post, too short to actually read it. Lemme tell you, it was very discouraging to keep posting. (And this was in ORIGINAL fiction, where there wasn’t any “one-true-pairing” shipping nonsense – could’ve been a story-tag thing, but never really know why they attacked.) Sure, a like button is open to some abuse, but any author who bots it will lose the reason it’d exist, to know how many people truly like their story – less of a downside than a dislike button. Now back to this Hermione incest scene….

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It’s the age old question, whether people are enjoying the story. True, I’m writing for personal enjoyment, but there’s an extra level of effort required for polishing & posting (or publishing) a story; thus, some positive feedback is appreciated (& constructive criticism). TV producers have the Nielsen Ratings, publishers have sales numbers, and we have dragon prints (other archives have hit-counter equivalents). Discerning whether a dragon print is a hit-through, a random check, or a devoted reader is tough to do; similarly, book publishers don’t know from the sales figures, how many physical books are actually read vs those that are shelved away for “later” vs those that are burned or used to level furniture. Now, AO3 also has kudos (likes), bookmark counts, & subscriptions – this tells a bit more to the general enjoyment. FFN does have that per-chapter hit numbers, and they do show that there’s a lot who’ll click because it’s on the “updated” list but don’t click through to the freshly posted chapter. (However, FFN’s numbers are now getting drowned out by bots...another topic for another time.) In the end, for AFF, the best metric is recording the dragon prints, and relish when that occasional review comes through.

That’s the million dollar question, as your only metrics you have are dragon prints & reviews. (There used to be “ratings” but that got abused by trolls.) What I do is I record my dragon prints, daily, and plot them in a spreadsheet; I do this with all my AFF & AO3 stories, and it lets me know which stories gain X number of hits after a chapter post, that’s about the only way to measure interest. Now, the other thing you can do is to read stories, drop reviews, and hope the karma comes back to you. After all, a review is golden.

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