Bookshelves · 4:20am Jan 16th, 2018
Inbound rant warning; grab your adult beverages.
Okay, I'm not the first to point this out, and I'm sure I won't be the last. Ever since Knighty and company gifted us bookshelves and the ability to name them, there have been a few that have given them passive-aggressive names.
I'm sure that anybody who's a writer knows exactly what I'm talking about.
And sometimes the names do hit close to home. I've seen a few of my stories that are kinda inactive and not updating as often as they should go onto shelves like "waiting for an update" or "I hope this isn't dead" and so on and so forth. And I'll admit, I feel kinda bad whenever that happens, especially since I have nobody to blame but myself for the lack of updates on certain fics.
And I do feel their pain, as well, because some of my favorite stories have fallen by the wayside over the years.
While I could rant on about people expecting entertainment for free,* I still stand by my statement that I don't want your money for ponyfics. And I'd like to see any one of them write good quality stories at the same speed that they can be read (If Kudzuhaiku or Skirts ever put one of my stories on an 'author doesn't write enough' shelf, I will eat crow).
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*Seriously, do you think any one of those people who's put a story of mine on a bookshelf titled with some variation on "the author doesn't give me free entertainment as quickly as I would like" has sent me a PM saying "gosh, I know you're doing this in your free time, and I love your story so much I'd love to send you some money as payment for the hours of enjoyment you've given me?" Has this happened to anybody?**
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**There are people who would sponsor me on Patreon if I had one; in my experience those are generally not the people who put stories on passive-aggressive bookshelves--they are the ones who do recognize that writing ponyfic doesn't pay the bills, and sometimes real life affects my publishing schedules or which particular story I happen to work on [as I'm sure is the case with many authors].
<takes deep breath>
Anyway, every now and then I poke into one of those bookshelves to see what's there. Morbid curiosity, plus the chance to see how other authors are doing when it comes to updates.
I'm not gonna name names, but this particular person threw one of my fics that has a particularly good ranking and a lot of comments into a bookshelf that was titled something like 'stories that suck.' And he (or she) implied that such stories had been downvoted and abandoned by him (or her).
Now, I get that people don't want to read every story that comes across their radar, even if it's an objectively good story. Different people have different tastes, and there are literally a billion words of ponyfic on this site alone. If it's not what you like, that's fine; give it a pass and move on to something else.
I did note that the story in question had picked up one more downvote, and my morbid curiosity got the better of me, so I clicked onto his bookshelf to see what else he had there.
I was not prepared for what I found.
Interestingly, the story in question is mentioned in an upcoming blog post, along with the reason why some people didn't like it, and believe me, I get it. I can actually think of a lot of reasons why people might not have liked it, some of it depending on how far they got, and that's fine. But it was a small library, so I was curious what other stories he didn't like. What other ones that he'd found somehow and then decided that they weren't for him.
Well, here's a sample, in no particular order:
Past Sins; A Voice Among the Strangers; A Taste of the Good Life; Whom the Princesses Would Destroy; Anthropology; The Sisters Doo; On a Cross and Arrow; Shipping and Handling; It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door; The Life and Times of a Winning Pony; Five Score Divided by Four; Through the Well of Pirene; The Empty Room; School of Hard Knocks; The Terrifying Prospect of Swans in Love; and The Luna Cypher.
I am boggled.
Author's note ('cause you can't put author's notes on blog posts):
I haven't read all those stories, and there are a few on the list which I started but never finished. And I'm sure that there are people who didn't like all the stories on that list, and that's fine. But back when I was figuring out if fanfic was the thing for me, those stories were the ones that kept appearing on lists of the best pony fanfic, and even now I wish I was half as good as some of those authors in terms of either creativity or just straightup skill.
Sounds like a rogues gallery of meh
Sounds like a "to read" list to me.
I'm not convinced it's even physically possible for a pony fan to dislike all of these stories.
I side with you on this one, Admiral. I've read quite a few of those stories and they were excellent on most all counts.
I guess you just can't figure or please some folks.
I just just write them off as ignorant heathens and ignore them, for they know not a thing.
4774527
I probably shouldn't tell you that you made the list, too.
The arrogance of readers... well, shit. You can't argue against taste, by definition. But fuck y'all. If you're hitting all the stations of the cross, maybe it's goddamn you, and not the church which has an issue.
(And yeah, maybe I'm on my fourth or fifth whiskey of the night...)
I feel like this has to be a troll. Sure people could dislike any number of those stories (I dislike a couple of them) but it's such an extensive who's who of famously good pony stories that having them all on such a shelf can't be coincidence, it has to be deliberate in some way.
4774532
Good if I’m in the $5 bin then I know they have taste
I can forgive everything but The Luna Cypher. I love Iisaw's epic Twilight tail and would say it is in the top 10 series I've ever read.
So yeah, zero confidence in this user's opinion.
4774537
Don't sell yourself short, buddy.
~Skeeter The Lurker
4774537
If I'm interpreting correctly, you have self-esteem issues. 
If you're in the cheap bin, then you know other people have good taste??
Edit: Your stories seem well-liked and I even have one in my read later list, so I don't see why, at least in so far as your writing. Or is that a quote from one of those self abasing writers I learned about in college?
This actually makes me curious: do authors get a notification when their story is added to a private bookshelf?
4774544
I've heard that they don't. In Moth's rants on the issue, that's what he said bothered him most I think, that people made bookshelves titled "meh" and such and didn't make them private.
4774544
I don't know about private, but we do when it's public.
Make a private bookshelf, stick a few of my stories randomly in it, and tomorrow I'll tell you if I got notifications or not.
4774544
Nope, people don't get notified when their stories are added to private shelves.
Which is another reason why I think most people with rude shelf titles are just outright trolling.
4774543
It was a jovial spot of japery
You're boggled that overrated classics are being dismissed as overrated?
Half the time, when I hear about a story as old as Past Sins, it's something along the lines of 'back when this fandom was just playing in the mud, this story was the gold standard', with a clear sentiment that if anyone were to go back and read the golden boys of that era we'd find something that reads like a poorly-written stack of cliches.
And the sentiment is the same with classical literature in general, hell, even media. People are extremely quick to dismiss anything that critics praise as quintessential or a classic. The amount of essays pointing out that Citizen Kane isn't actually the greatest movie of all time nearly keep pace with the amount of essays calling it God's gift to cinema, and the most common reaction anyone has to actually reading an old classic is "Wow, I didn't expect this thing to actually be any good, I thought the books remembered as great classics were just dry shit that my English college teachers jack off to!"
One more specific example: Robinson Crusoe. A dry, bland piece of work largely comprised of inventory lists, from a time where the general population was so creatively sterile that this piece of fiction had to market itself as non-fiction in its introduction just to get people to actually read it. Regarded as a classic, the first novel as we understand the form, and pretty much the forerunner of the entire idea of fiction as something that can make money. Historically important. Physically difficult to read, and I would subjectively argue it as impossible to enjoy.
The only literary tradition anywhere near as old as the veneration of classics is the instinctive dismissal of classics as something only enshrined by the people of the past, and not by the enlightened folk of today.
Clearly they were afraid of running out of room so they left off "me in."
Hmn... I've got a bookshelf named Dead? for fics that haven't updated in over a year. I check the fics on it once every few months (just in case), because they're all stories I want to read someday. Maybe I should change the name to something neutral.
Last week The Celestia Code was added to several bookshelves, among them two named Absolute Masterpieces and Overrated Junk. So, at least there're a few ego-boosting shelf names out there to balance the negative ones!
4774539
Thank you!
4774544
Yep! Plus the name of the bookshelf!
Good Lord, that's like a who's who of classic, famous, and Infamous stories of the fandom.
Maybe it's just because I don't really use bookshelves much (and i'm just a nicer person than that), but it boggles me that someone would even make a bookshelf like that. I haven't read everything on the list (although I have read some of them), but I can see why someone wouldn't like some of them (and there are fics on there that I don't like or have had problems with).
4774555
Ah, never mind then.
4774557
Both of which can be seen as self-serving viewpoints. The first is venerating the old from which we came to raise our own status, and the second is dismissing it as beneath our own exalted "modern" understanding.
4774560
How about "Dusty Tomes" then?
4774565
...was I arguing that one of them wasn't a self-serving viewpoint? I was just trying to explain why it seems odd that Biscuit would be surprised at the dismissal of classics as junk.
4774569
Ooh, I like that! Thanks!
4774570
No, but I wouldn't want anyone to think otherwise without being informed. I got your point about it not being surprising and agree. You can't please everyone, and there will always be people on the other side of the fence no matter where you sit.
4774571
No problem.
>Past Sins
Meh.
But yeah, been there. Even if the story does legitimately suck, it's pretty fucken low for somebody to just put it in a library called 'shitty stories,' etc, when that library is public and set to notify writers when their stories get added.
What the fuck, people.
4774557
Lots of the fics in that list are actually really good (and at least one is mind-blowingly amazing) but I gotta say, "Dangerous Business" contains blatant plagiarism to an extent that it simply should not be allowed to exist on this site. I made the mistake of saying so once (ok, twice now); to this day it remains my most unpopular comment.
That guy sounds like a hipster to me. If it's popular, then it's clearly terrible, right?
I can see why people would have shelves for stories they think are dead. I have two shelves that are set on private that I reserve for stories there are between 6 months to a year with out an update and another story for stories that I wish to see continued that have not seen an update in over a year. However if a story has stopped updating and is unfinished and can be found in my Favorites list, it will remain there till the day this site dies.
People are dicks and I think whoever this entity is they are mainly doing this for the shock value more then an actual opinion. Like the people who do a drive by down vote a story with few down votes becuase they don't like to see stories with a large amount of likes to dislikes.
Ok, here's the thing, Admiral: bookshelves are public by default. This is fucking awful site design.
Do you really think that people are going to assume that when they organize their own personal collections of stories, the authors will be notified? Of course not! When you have your personal Reshelving Day at home, do you send letters to the authors? Why the hell would this be public at all, much less by default and without anything warning the user that they will be sending out personal communiques to specific people by doing it? It's sheer amateurism on the part of the site.
I would apply a generous measure of Hanlon's Razor here, and assume that few if any readers intended to send you passive-aggressive notifications, and that instead it's an easy mistake that lets people's private judgment go embarrassingly public due to shoddy site design.
4774610
It kind of just shows how obvious they are trolling. If someone can change the name and description of a bookshelf to "stories that suck," then it'll be fairly obvious to them what the next drop-down says: Public.
image.prntscr.com/image/8eNqcW54TXKEoxsJPNg6Kg.png
If someone can take the time to change the settings, then they can take the time to change the setting in the middle of the 'new bookshelf' box. The site is not the only one at fault.
Personally, I like the bookshelves being public by default for two reasons: I don't have to go through the drop-down every time I want to make a new shelf (I don't make private ones often); and it gives authors a notification (particularly the small ones) that they had someone shelf their story.
Here's an easy fix: make it a requirement to have the user change the shelf to one of the three options.
4774528
No kidding!
Whaaaaat!? Are you kidding me?
I mean granted a couple of those have been on my RiL FOREVER but most of those are cherished fics at one point in time or even still amazing. (Anthropology was one of the first fics I followed and one of 2 that made me sign up on the site)
I mean I think most of my bookshelves are private (ESPECIALLY the abandoned fic one) because I don't want to discourage the author. But I can't think of any of your fics that would fall into that category off the top of my head.
4774619
Why would you assume that just having a bookshelf marked "public" would proactively send notifications to the authors? Why would you not simply think that it meant that people browsing your profile could see what you had on your bookshelves? It certainly doesn't tell you that.
Nice Crowne Prince screencap.
I actually agree a few of the stories in that last bookshelf are pretty bad, but a few are genuinely good, so I'm basically saying I have no idea what the hell they're on about.
4774610
I'd have to agree with this. And it's really a simple flag to change that would spare a lot of us the aggravation of seeing this shit in our notifications. But more to the point, it'd be even better if people stopped abusing this site feature in such a passive-aggressive, douchebaggy way in the first place.
Honestly, there are days I'd be fine with going back to the three-shelf system. JUST to put a stop to this shit. I'd be willing to give up my carefully sorted shelves if I never had to see one of my stories go into "on life support" or "Meh." ever again.
theres no accounting for taste
4774610
I still question the character of anybody who needs a shelf to memorialize "shit". Like... why? To re-read it and hate it again later? Even assuming innocence on the front of letting the author know this opinion of their work, I question the need to save said opinion for later in any case. It seems awfully negative to me.
4774624
I mean, you do have "thanks for favorite" comments. That should tip people off that there is a notification system in place.
Huh... I've read many millions of horsewords but only three of those stories, one of which I thought nice, one okay and one decidedly meh that got a rare downvote from me. Anyway.
I haven't experienced the problem myself yet albeit I had one that made me smile: 'So... that happened.'
I'm fairly certain that a lot of people aren't aware of the author being notified when you add a story to a public bookshelf (or that clicking 'favourite' is actually doing just that). I wasn't until it happened to myself. Call me an idiot.
Now of course there will be numerous trolls who do this on purpose even though that would appear to be a rather unrewarding way of trolling since there's no audience. Why people would give bookshelves weird or hurtful names in the first place? *shrug* People are weird.
But thanks to this blog post, I think I might add a shelf called 'Dusty Tomes' as well. Doesn't that sound like respectful, quiet longing for a masterpiece to be finished - abandoned 2013 or so but of such quality it remains fresh in memory despite the passing of fimfic ages?
4774662
You have hit the nail on the head... that was the blurb in my mind as I read people's replies... What would drive anyone to make a bookshelf called "Crap" or "Sh1te" etc unless they wanted to be a troll to the authors and make sure the authors were sent a literal message?
I mean, sure, even the best stories in history do not appeal to everyone and even your favourite mainstream or fanfic author will probably write at least one story that does not float your personal boat. So what? Sure, if they ask for feedback you can give respectable and thoughtful feedback (as opposed to 'u sux') or a critique on plot issues, editing possibilities and concepts... or simply say "Well written, just not my cup of tea."
Seriously, if you don't like the story just move on, why bookmark it? Are you a masochist who wants to have a bookshelf of stories to feel miserable about or an ego who needs to stoke itself by rereading things you think you are superior to so you can feel even more superior every time?
There are some great authors in this comment trail. For some of them I like most of their stories, some who I like just one or two and others whose writing I can admire but whose choice of subject is not my thing but that is because of my tastes not due to any failure by them.
As for bookshelves for stories we still have hopes for an update on, a title like "Awaiting Updates" is not necessarily a horrid name and, let us be honest, we all have a mental list of stories that were great or had potential or we just want to know what was gong to happen to the characters at the end the story... but the author has since 'moved on' in one way or another. It is an honest title, although I like the "Dusty Tomes" suggestion... but if you have tagged the story to be tracked then why do you actually need a bookshelf at all? The tag will do it for you... this means that an author's umbrage is likely justified as it was most probably an unneeded and tactless poke at them. If you want to know what is happening then read their blogs or put on your 'big person pants' and send a polite PM and, heaven forbid, maybe start by telling the author how much you have enjoyed the hard work they have put in so far and why you like the story before you next type something better than "Why U no updatez?" and be prepared that the response may not be what you hope or may never eventuate at all... that is just life folks.
Hokay, I'll shut up now....
TL;DR version Authors, yes, those bookshelf titles likely are crap from trolls, you can generally ignore them like all trolls. Readers, appreciate your authors and actually tell them you do but also understand that they are not just writing for you and their real-life may be more important sometimes.
Took me 3 years to work out what Read it Laster, Tracking, and Favourites were for and how they worked. Ill leave booksheleves for people who actually know what theyre doing.
Lets see, 3 Read it Later, including Skirts notes, 200 something Tracking, which can lead to a couple hundred thousand words if I miss a week and big chapters update.
Over 700 on favourites, 70 Million words plus.
No idea on how many comments, how much in comments, or Like/Dislike ratio on comments, etc.
(Looks at description of “following” bookshelf and coughs guiltily)
NO MATTER! FEAR NOT, VICTIMS OF BOOKSHELF ABUSE! YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD FRIEND CIRCUIT HAS A PLAN! FOR NOT ONE, BUT TWO MAY PLAY AT THAT GAME!
None of my stories made it, that means I'm good, right? in fact, I'm better than you, admiral! because some no name nonsense mudsucker didn't think I was as bad as you!!!!!
4774624
4774665
1) I agree with readsponies, here. Kagemao, you're making an assumption there, that authors do that. Upon reflection, I've had an author do that once, and due to my need to sort and file, I've, at this time, 1374 stories on bookshelves, including, yes, two shelves dedicated to stories that have not updated in over a year, sorted by how invested I was in the original story.
2) I do not believe that this is the readers being passive aggressive, or trolling. I do believe that by assuming a negative relationship, you're simply borrowing trouble for the future, and putting up barriers between yourself and your readers. In real life, lack of personal cyber-security is endemic. The vast majority of people are simply unaware of how open and exposed they are to outside visibility. That being true in general, why shouldn't it be true in this specific case as well? If a person has a "shit" or "crap" bookshelf, likely they did not know that everyone can see that. It's far more likely that they are doing that which is far more common, which is to say things about people in private that are less complimentary that the things that they say in public. Not that either of these are lying; it's just that sometimes one's flaws can become more grating than one's strengths. So, if there's a story that just grates on you, and you don't understand that others can see that which you're doing, why wouldn't you flag it as such? Certainly, there are more polite or verbose ways to phrase it, but if it's simply for private consumption, a person might not go to that level of effort.
3) Keep in mind that some people use the word "shit" as a synonym for "stuff". Or, even more confusingly, I would absolutely argue that some of those stories are "the shit", meaning something that is very, very good.
4) You may find examples where a reader absolutely is in fact being a jerk. I urge you all not to automatically assume that their attitude suffuses the readership as a whole. That is, please don't extrapolate the general from the specific. If nothing else, this seems inimical to the overriding philosophy of Friendship is Magic. Let us not forget the positives that drew us all together in the first place, please.
4774557
I came here to say basically this, but you said it better than I would have.
Eh, some of those are good. But Past Sins and Cross and Arrow are steaming shite piles.
I've read A Taste and found it passable, got most of the way through Shipping & Handling, but none of the others really ever enticed me very much.
Hey Admiral:
I logged on today to see if one of your stories updated, actually, cause I love it and was thinking about it. It's not on any sort of 'dead stories' list of mine, because I don't have one. I just hope for the best on my favorites and look for an update notification.
I kinda get a kick out of the haters, myself... it always blows my mind that someone would bother to make a nasty nonconstructive comment on someones hard work. What planet do they come from? I feel bad for them, because often I suspect they feel jealousy over one's hard work at learning a craft: Something that the comment writer probably hasn't found it in themselves to be assed to do.
Anyway, love your stuff. Keep the pone coming along for as long as you're enjoying it.
On a side note, it's a bit stressful writing comments to an author. I keep checking to make sure there's not any grammatical errors that I can sense!
Toodles.