Advanced Fantasy

I think it's just in the nature of episodic stories that the number of views goes down the deeper in the story people go, and consequently, so will the number of likes (though far less quickly!). In early chapters, new readers will give your story a chance just to see what it is, but after a while, everyone who enjoys it is already reading it, and everyone who has bounced off will stay bounced off. You'll also naturally lose some readers who simply got tired of the story or who have moved on to the next shiny thing, even if your writing is actually improving.

That said, I see you've gotten no less than 28 comments on the 7 main branch chapters you published in August (I know that some are your own, that's fine!), and all chapters published in 2022 have a likes/views ratio of over 2%, with the latest chapters going much higher than that. Any objective measure you use is going to have issues and caveats, but I agree with Dissonant that your story seems to be doing very well.

And if you try to forget the views and the likes and the comments and your audience for jus a moment... how do you feel about the story? If you read an old chapter and a new one, is there anything that jumps out at you, either in positive or negative sense? Self-delusion is a real thing, again either in positive sense (I am literally Jane Austen reborn!) or negative sense (everything I write is garbage and I'm garbage and everything is terrible), but comparing two pieces of your own writing avoids most of the obvious emotional pitfalls.
 
Dissonant Soundtrack said:
I admit I have not read your stuff but I can take a look at your newer threads with fresh eyes and see if anything stands out.
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I would really appreciate it. I don’t know if there’s been a drop In quality or what? If you’re willing to put a fresh set of eyes on it I would be appreciative.
 
Ok so I've read through your Centaur branch since that's the newest one you've put up. Keeping in mind that I'm just one reader, my thought is that there's room for improvement if the chapters show more and tell less. You have a good eye for detail and I want more of it. A couple examples:

In six days she would be homeless. This though consumed her focus as she trudged back to her precarious home through the cold rain, wearing a jacket meant for a crisp day and not the deluge she found herself in. She wrapped her arms tighter around her torso and hunched herself against the cold. Long golden hair, much darker in the wet, plastered itself to her scalp. Thunder cracked over the city.
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A good powerful image to open the story, a soaked woman/centaur walking home in a driving rain. But it leaves questions: Where is she coming from? Did she literally get fired that day? Did she just lose her last rent check gambling? Why is she wearing an inappropriate coat - was the weather unexpectedly worse/is she the kind of character who never checks the weather/is this the only jacket she owns because she's dead-ass broke? I'm assuming she wasn't out looking for a job because that opens the next chapter but it would help to know more of how she's reacting to her imminent eviction.

Further, it would help to have more physical description. She's a centaur and her human half is female with long blonde hair is what I got. Is she pretty? Does she consider herself pretty? Is she young or old (by whatever centaur standards are)?

she carefully settled herself on the thick woven mats, a gift, from when she had first set out to the big city. They were bright and colorful and scratchy. She loved them, her fingers traced patterns over the surface.
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This is a great detail - it shows that at some point someone cared for her to want her to be comfortable when she was away from home. Why'd she leave home and who did she leave behind? Does she still have a place there if things go south in the city?

Now it seemed she lived in a world meant less and less for her, with its glass spires and cramped offices and desks she couldn’t use and stairs. Did anyone realize how hard it was for a centaur to go up and down stairs?!?
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Pull this thread. She's a quadruped in a world for bipeds. This has to be a major issue for her all the time, not just in terms of work. Is she treated like a nuisance, a burden? How have other centaurs handled it, and if they haven't - if they've chosen to return to the plains, then why has she chosen to stay?

“You know… I recognize a soul down on their luck. How fares thee?” She jumped. Hooves made sharp clops on the pavement. She looked around wildly. Before seeing him. He had been caught on the chain link fence surrounding some kind of empty lot. He hung upside down, suspended from his snagged pant leg. He was dressed nicely wearing what looked to be wool trousers and a button up shirt that was slightly torn, likely from his escapade coming over the fence.
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I love this image, the guy is stuck hanging by his pants and *she's* the one down on her luck. Great intro. I like this character and want to know him more, but he disappears by the end of the chapter. Also, I think he could stand to be described more too, because I'm getting a leprechaun vibe off him but I have no real evidence to back that up. He'd have to be pretty small to hang by a pant leg without tearing it out.

He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pushed them into her hands. “You need a place to stay and I can’t exist there anymore.” She started to protest again. “No, no, no.” He pointed. “Go take a look around before you say no. “Deeds in the desk when your ready.” He pointed at a padlocked gate. She looked, and when she looked back for him he was gone.
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Given this situation, the obvious question is "Why were you padlocked inside?" and she should really ask herself that before she enters. The guy has the key and still needed to escape over the fence.

She looked at the cabinet. The figurine stood on top of it, hands on his hips tapping his foot impatiently.
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Her glancing over the figurine on first pass is justifiable, since she doesn't think it's that important. But once he starts talking and making demands, then I want to know what he looks like. How big is this small figurine - she is a large animal so her frame of reference is not the same as my human perceptions. The guy who gave her the key to this place was fleeing over the fence, and said "I can't exist there anymore" which would make this scene intimidating, and so her reaction would reveal a lot about her as a character.

You don't need to necessarily answer all these questions immediately, but you can allude to them to indicate that they have answers that will come in time.
 
Dissonant Soundtrack said:
I love this image, the guy is stuck hanging by his pants and *she's* the one down on her luck. Great intro. I like this character and want to know him more, but he disappears by the end of the chapter. Also, I think he could stand to be described more too, because I'm getting a leprechaun vibe off him but I have no real evidence to back that up. He'd have to be pretty small to hang by a pant leg without tearing it out.
Given this situation, the obvious question is "Why were you padlocked inside?" and she should really ask herself that before she enters. The guy has the key and still needed to escape over the fence.
The guy who gave her the key to this place was fleeing over the fence, and said "I can't exist there anymore" which would make this scene intimidating, and so her reaction would reveal a lot about her as a character.
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The gate was being watched.

But the reason you’re probably getting a leprechaun vibe is because I called her lass.
 
I read the last 5 chapters, and other than the normal confusion you get from, you know, jumping into a story mid-way, it reads well. The scene looks promising as well, you've got an ample (ample! :P) supply of weirdness to do cool stuff with.

I think you're asking for ideas?

How sensitive are those eye stalks to touch? (Not the eyes themselves, unless you really want to squick out your readers.) How does she subdue her victims? What would happen if she looked into her own eyes, Medusa-style, while she was trying to subdue, say, a conveniently nearby goblin? A temporarily self-paralyzed beholderkin with really sensitive eye stalks, there's got to be a scene in it somewhere.
 
I hadn’t thought that eye stalks would be sexy, but my basic idea for the next chapter would be to use her like a floating platform. with sex looking like this:

A
R
T
H MATA
E SOKS
R

sorry for the crude word illustration.

But then he just kinda swaps back and forth every few thrusts.
 
I’m adding a new arc in a fancy restaurant if anyone has any thoughts?

also I added Oz the kobold recently if anyone had any ideas about where to take them.
 
I've been meaning to do a Masochist Mode review, but I've been trying to catch up on LLNO first. Will try to get to it this weekend, if not sooner.
 
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