Poll Results (Patreon)

...Oops? I meant to post this last night, actually. But, well, I got wrapped up in multiple projects with deadlines. As well as with getting the next story release ready. Anyway, I just ran the vote weighing calculation, so here's the polling results:

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One Piece - Halfway Broken: 115

Harry Potter - Pandora's Box: 55.5

A Very Confused Pokemon Adventure: 47

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Yeah...this was a bit predictable, huh? Admittedly, both Pandora's Box and the new story both put on surprisingly good showings, but neither could come all that close to overcoming the reigning champ of Halfway Broken. Partially, that's due to the simple fact that several people on the higher tier Patron options routinely vote for Halfway Broken. In fact, only a single person above the basic $3 voter tier voted for either of the other stories. That's where a lot of that difficult gap to overcome comes from. Which, honestly, fair. The whole reason I make those tiers available is to allow people to put their thumb on the scale a bit more for their favorite fics.

I do have a tiny bit of good news for the people that voted for A Very Confused Pokemon Advetnure, though! For those of you have actually been paying attention, I announced during the last My Hero Automata release that I needed a little time to fill in some better detail on my future notes/outlines for that story. As such, the first story release of the month won't be My Hero Automata as usual. (Don't worry, it's still getting its mid-month release!)

Instead, in recognition of A Very Confused Pokemon Adventure actually getting a fairly decent amount of interest, despite having less than 2k words of teaser...it will be getting roughly another 6-7k release in My Hero Automata's place! I actually have 5k of that already written. I'll add a bit more to it tonight, edit it, and post it tomorrow. I'll likely let it have a second run on the monthly Poll, as well, rather than moving on to another story concept. That way it gets a fairer shot at dethroning the giant. Though I do have another story concept planned as well, which will get its own shot sooner or later.

I have to admit I'm also considering ways to make it harder for a single story to dominate the poll long-term. I'm a member of a few fanfic Patreons myself, and I've seen various ways to attempt to keep slightly less popular works in circulation. Frankly, most of them always felt pretty unfair to me, as usually they mean that a more popular fic, that was legitimately more heavily supported by people contributing to funding the works, gets shafted in exchange.

Currently, my only thought of something that might be vaguely fair is to start adding a building bonus percentage to the other fics. In example, a fic that didn't win in one month gets a +20% to its votes the next month, then if it loses again, a +30% the month after that, and so on. As you can see if you apply it to this voting result, that's not a staggering advantage. Pandora's Box still wouldn't have won even with a 20% boost. But it would ensure that eventually the weight of time would force an update for every fic....

Feel free to chime in either for or against that idea. If enough people are interested, I might run an extra poll this month to see if the idea has enough support/acceptance to justify trying it?