Remix thoughts

[edenfalling]

I haven't properly started reading through Remix and Remix Madness yet. Work is a little crazy because of issues at the other store (two people quit and another has a family crisis), so PM had to get people to cover all her shifts up here and go work down there instead. Which means we are running short-handed for several days.

Also Monday morning, after losing power for an hour and a half in the dead of night and having to use a flashlight to find my way around my apartment -- stupid spring snowstorms, grrr! -- I woke up around 11am only to discover that the ceiling fan in my bathroom was leaking disgusting red-brown water all over the floor. Yuck. I mopped up the worst of the spill with a sponge, put out a bucket to catch the drips, and left a note for my landlord who was coming over anyway to replace light bulbs in a fixture that's too high for me to reach, even with my stepladder. (I have HIGH ceilings. My windows are so huge I use twin bed sheets as curtains.) The fan was working again Tuesday morning, so either he fixed it or it was just an ice clog in the vent slowly melting its way into oblivion. :-/

Anyway. Remix. I started reading stories other than my gifts tonight, but I think I am coming down with a cold -- I have that horrible raw throat thing going on -- so I am calling it a night and going to bed without even getting through all the Narnia fics, let alone all the other fandoms. :-(

As for the stories I wrote, I have heard from all three of my remixees, so yay! Two are otherwise languishing in obscurity, which is pretty much what I expected, but the third... I guess I accidentally hit a collective fandom button or something? Because people are actually reading it. And apparently enjoying it. Which is nice, don't get me wrong! But definitely not my past experience of how Remix Redux works!

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you are getting good response on one of your stories!!! I have to say that the Narnia presence is wonderful -- it was another great showing -- only 3 in the Redux but 7 in the madness, definitely making it one of the better represented fandoms.

Remix is weird. I didn't do the Redux, just the madness this year, though I did 2 stories. Both are doing fine, one much better than the other. The Susan, Rabadash Book of Judith story I did for remix last year was different. Feedback came very slowly which I expected given the triggers and explicit warnings. But the story has legs and continues to garner response. It's definitely one of my more popular works on AO3.

I've not been in the Narnia fandom long enough but it does seem that the popularity of it is very solid and even growing.

[edenfalling]

1. I am not upset about the low response to two of my remixes -- as I said below, I knew going in that they were about obscure side characters in their respective canons (and the original stories were not by authors who are big names in those fandoms), so while they are anonymous, there is no inherent 'hook' to draw readers in. Such is life! The third one surprised me because I was expecting a low attention year all around.

2. Good stories are good stories and will continue to gather an audience long after the fests and exchanges for which they were written. :-)

3. I think the movies have been good for Narnia fandom, overall -- I may not write movieverse fic myself, but I can appreciate the raised cultural awareness and the influx of people they produced. :-)

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Now I'm extra excited to see what you wrote because I'm curious why your experience is not many people read rem redux. I've always felt like remixing got a larger audience... though, my number of hits is much lower than a lot of people's so maybe I am skewing the expectations a bit...


And, well, I also want to know because I like your stories :)

[edenfalling]

I think the audience for Remix depends heavily on what fandom you remixed in, for one thing. This year my primary remix is not in one of the currently big and popular fandoms and is about an obscure side character besides. So without an obvious hook like an author's name, it won't generate a lot of interest. Which I knew going in! But it was the story that wanted to be written, so I wrote it. :-)

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Now that everything is revealed...what story got the reaction you were not expecting?

[edenfalling]

"Problems and Solutions (All Things in Time)" got way more hits and kudos than I was expecting! It was consistently in the top twelve Madness fics by hit count during the anonymous period, out of 134 stories. (It is at #8 as I type this comment. That will probably change.) Also the kudos-to-hits ratio is still running about .15, which is ridiculously good -- my average ratio falls between .02 and .09, generally hovering around .06. (I gather that this is not too far from the fandom-wide average experience, btw.)

I thought people would probably like the story, since the entire reason I remixed cofax7's fic was that I thought it was an awesome idea, but it's much more a Narnia fic than a Stargate fic and I still reflexively think of Narnia as a small fandom. I mean, Narnia was eligible for Yuletide not that long ago! But I guess it's a very culturally known series, even if the fic-writing fandom was tiny until a few years ago, and a lot of people have issues with Susan's fate, so. *shrug* Like I said, I think I hit a button by accident. :-)