flesh on them bones

[lobelia321]

My bare-bones reccing technique from last night did not work. Nobody seems to have read either the rec or the pimp. Interesting.

So here is Round Two: reccing with a bit of flesh on the bones. Let's see how this will turn out.

Rec
Through the night yield no glimmer by rainspots
HP. Unusual, gritty and gorgeous. Malfoy/Goyle, and beautifully done. I love rare pairings but they can be written a bit lazily and sometimes veer too much into crack. This, though, was just stunning. I liked the way lots was left unsaid. I loved the gritty atmosphere she created, with the fag hanging out of Draco's mouth and so forth. The way that Gregory steals up on Draco, and on us. And the way she makes it believable that Draco would choose him and not Blaise. Very unusual and very gorgeous. :-)

Self-pimp
The Orc's Tongue by me.
Lotr fps. Pippin / Orc. Pippin is licked by his Orc-captor. Various bodily fluids are secreted and ingested.

I love my warnings: Kinky, squicky. Has rape, blood, murder, infanticide, coprophagy, urophagy, scatology, anolingus, necrophilia, some het, interspecies, angst and rude language. I think that about covers it.

I re-read this a few days ago because I was looking for the words 'grume' and 'gleet'. Because I may want to re-use them for the wraithfic as orc = wraith. This was my first fps and it allowed me, for the first time, to write true evil and the abject. This was liberating, and it was also instructive because, as ever, the thing ran away with me at the end.

ETA I would love to rec some earlier stories but for the purposes of monitoring my Amazing Bones Experiment, I need to be able to access others' feedback via LJ. But! The future beckons! *g*

Comments

[shusu.livejournal.com]

...... orc = wraith!

*quivers in anticipation*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Well, um. In my head, orc = wraith. In the fic, wraith = wraith. But they are both rather gleetous and gruminous, are they not? And evol. And have scabrous skin. And are Teh Hot. And kind of the opposite of your icon!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

omg, you have just given me a croos-over plot bunny...!!! wraith/orc, omg

[shusu.livejournal.com]

HOT.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh hello Shusu! You are an evol influence who made me do evol wraith/orc/elf. Well, you never mentioned elves but it kind of segued seamlessly... Also, your comment 'HOT': this is in relation to my rec or my fic? :-) Ah, the ambiguities of dual posts. ;->

also, this icon is secretly an evil bunny.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

I was referring to the bunny, but it can be a universal exclamation of hottness. :D

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay, this comes from going only to the 'recent comments' and clicking on 'comment' and not on 'thread'. Your HOT is quite clearly re wraith/orc WHICH I HAVE NOW WRITTEN. *hides*

I blame you.

wheee.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

*is blamed*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Are you judging hits by feedback? I should add that old stories rarely get feedback.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am checking my website statistics to see if anyone reads the self-pimp (answer: no). And I am zooming over to notpoetry's LJ post to see if anyone has posted a comment since I posted my rec (answer: no). Lesson I am learning from this highly scientific and Rodneyishly thought-through experiment is: nobody reads fics that are simply linked without any explanation as to why.

Yes. I have a sample of one! Also, this is kind of fun. I hadn't been to my website in eons. What a weird and wonderful place it is. I started re-reading all my stories. Also, all my recs from yesteryear.

Why do old stories not get feedback?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, only now am I understanding your question. In my own case, I am judging hits by hits. But in notpoetry's case I can obviously not monitor hits, and I don't think we can monitor LJ hits, can we? So there I'm just going by feedback comments.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Heh, an idea just occurred to me for how to monitor lj hits on someone else's lj - by leaving a comment with an embedded graphic hosted on your own website, and counting hits for that graphic. Say, a 1x1 transparent pixel gif. You can't check referrers, so you won't know if it's due to you, but...hmm. You have just given me an idea for a leetle experiment.

And I don't know why people don't leave feedback on old stories, but that's the way it is. I get perhaps one comment every few months on e.g. Clarke's Law or Double Occupancy, my most popular stories.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I get perhaps one comment every few months on e.g. Clarke's Law or Double Occupancy
Er. I count one comment as every few months as feedback! Maybe I'm just not up in the halcyon heights of others' feedback counts here but for me, one comment every few months is pretty good going and I certainly and very anally add it to my feedback count lists! *g*

By embedded graphic, you mean what? An img src link? A 'hot link', as it were? *is intrigued by the evol transparent pixel spying*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Right, an img src link to a 1x1 transparent gif, which people won't notice but acts as an invisible tracker. I used one for the story mentioned here so I could track how many people chose to read the story at my website vs at the community lj where it was also posted.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So how does this work? Presumably you had the image uploaded to your website and could track how often it was visited? So that everytime somebody opened up the story, the image would also automatically be activated and give you a visitor number? Even if people chose not to feedback on LJ?

Of course, simply clicking a link or opening a page says nothing about whether the person read that fic or not.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Of course, simply clicking a link or opening a page says nothing about whether the person read that fic or not.

Ignore this comment. Repeated study of your amazing GRAPHS OMG has revealed that you know more about clicking, linking, feedbacking, reading and referring than I ever imagined was even possible to know.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Probably not an issue in comments, but. Remember to put the height and width tags on that graphic on something visible in flists. LJ has an option of picture placeholders, which puts up a generic gif if there's no height/width information. Some people's graphics that are supposed to be invisible are visible to those of us using placeholders.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

*makes note for future seekrit evol plans!*

I ramble:

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I do like explanations when people link to stuff -- I'm not much of a one for clicking on links wot I don't know wot they are. And when it's fic, I just find it interesting to know why something appealed to the pimper.

I'm going to try and do more recs myself - I do think it's nice to spread the love, and having recently been tromping all over the Doctor Who fandom, I've noticed people seem to rec much less there than I remember from the halcyon days of lotrips. But then I got recced on crack_van the other day, which made me awfully happy and have a little dance. And at least one person read it because they fed me back! :)

/blowing own trumpet