Feedback?

[trilliumg]

Just posting this here to get some feel for why I lost readers on the kink!meme. Is it the ending? Is it one of the kinks? Hit me. Yes, I know this is only smut, but I'd like some honest yet gentle feedback. Thanks. Actually, any general criticism would be welcomed too. If anyone wants me to return the favor, I'd be more than happy to do so.

Title: A Royal Comeuppance (18+/NSFW)
Pairing: Alistair/F!Aeducan/Cailan
Words: 7472
Synopsis: Alistair and Cailan have each been seduced and dominated by Sereda. They decide it's time to take her down a notch.
Warnings:  Mild dub-con, bondage, group sex, rimming, "fake" slash, "fake" incest, almost-shaming

Link to story on the meme

Comments

[zute]

I loved it. I cracked up at "The King comes first, of course." Hahaha!

I'm commenting here since I don't post on the kink-meme any longer. I do read if people post links.

Maybe it was the kind of sad ending? It was very light-hearted and fun until the last bit. I thought your writing was brilliant!

[trilliumg]

Thanks, Zute. Yeah, I guess I have a tendency to want to make things believable. This is just not a believable prompt, and I shouldn't have tried to make it so (which required a sad ending). Glad you enjoyed it though!!

[msbarrows]

That's something you may need to watch yourself for, just because it wasn't believable within the overall context of the game doesn't mean it couldn't be believable within its own AU context, ie, one where Cailan did survive, as you so nicely set up in the little flashback off the top.

The thing that makes me feel a prompt is "good" is most often that sort of believability. Many of my favourite fills are quite wildly AU (Loghain and Alistair? Really!? Yes! - Garrett as geeky coffee shop barista and Fenris as hipster photographer - f!warden scaling the outside of the Tower of Ishal and lighting the beacon in time - Sebastian and Fenris having slashy good times together, etc.) but they all have internal consistency, which is much more of a selling point for a good read then adhering strictly to canon is. Especially if the characters are still arguably in-character and recognizably themselves even within the AU setting.

(I have mentioned elsewhere I'm verbose, haven't I? Verbose poster is verbose again...)

[trilliumg]

I don't mind somewhat AU as long as folks remain as in-character as possible. So…Alistair having a one-night stand and then sharing "his" girl with Cailan to teach her a lesson? I should have just avoided it. I did this as a favor to someone, too, which was my second mistake, and is partly why the lack of response bothered me so much. Ah, well. Several lessons learned this evening.

[msbarrows]

Yeah, hard to write something when you're not particularly invested in the scenario. I just learned that the hard way with a prompt on the k!meme too - filled one that was kind of tangentially related to a story I was thinking of doing anyway, and between having to change the story to fit the prompt, and then loosing interest in it because it wasn't focusing on the characters I'd really wanted to explore... yeah, it did not go well either. My first DA fic that I'm not at all happy with. I may eventually try to see if I can salvage enough good bits from it to cobble together something for the original idea I had in mind, and then post that on ff.net, but I certainly won't be cross-posting it in its current state. :\

Feedback

[msbarrows]

Okay, a little feedback... the two aspects of the story that threw me the worst that it wasn't tagged for are the slash and incestuous elements in a story that was tagged as het (at least here, on the filled prompts list for k!meme it more properly includes the slash tag as well).

People looking for a het pairing with strongly non-slash interests likely would have been a little squicked by the parts involving Alistair and Cailan kissing while stripping and fondling each other. Two sexy strong men all over the female Aeducan great, all over each other, not so great.

Personally I adore good slash, but Alistair and Cailan *are* half-brothers so that the contact between them also got a little too close to the incestuous line for my own personal tastes. The majority of it was fairly delicious through (and this from someone who normally finds het pairings boring).

I also agree with the commentor who found the ending jarring; it all having been a dream-sequence is rather a letdown to what was otherwise an enjoyable fill, and kind of negated all the buildup that had come before that. A sweeter ending of some kind would have been better, especially if it hinted that there might be future adventures for the threesome, so instead of a "haha, this was all a big lie!" it would have been "and I'll leave you to fill in their future with your own bunk-bound thoughts...".

Looking at dates, I'd guess another possible reason for the drop in commenting partway through might be time of year; I noticed a big drop in readership and posting everywhere at end of August/beginning of September (and got all twitchy waiting for my favourite WIPs to resume updating) which I'd assume is related to a lot of readers and writers being involved in some level of back-to-school activity of either themselves or their children, and resultant disruptions to their schedules.

Re: Feedback

[zute]

I second the notion that it's also the time of the year. I noticed a similar drop in my readership on fanfiction.net. It dropped off right exactly when hurricane Irene hit, but it could also be due to school.

Re: Feedback

[trilliumg]

There is that, too. *Damned school, rassafrassa…*

Re: Feedback

[trilliumg]

Thanks so much for your detailed comments! Yeah, I guess I assumed that since they were obviously faking it to push Sereda's buttons, it wasn't "real" slash or incest, and wouldn't require either tag. My bad.

The sad thing is, I don't even care that much for slash myself in fanfic. It just jumped out at me and said, "Hey, here's a way to get under her skin." I'll know to tag it next time.

Going back through it, it's ridiculous to try to pawn this off as Alistair's dream when there's so much of Sereda's POV in it. I either have to rewrite her parts or redo the ending. I'm guessing I'll go for the latter, something along the lines of what you've suggested, which will fit better with regard to tone.

Again, thanks for taking the time to write this up. It's a big help.