I am so proud of myself.
So I write this House of the Dragon fanfic on Archive of Our Own, and I haven't updated in probably three or four weeks because I had no inspiration and no motivation, especially since Liam died. I don't know. I love HotD, but One Direction is still my priority, and especially with Liam now dead, I needed to pick my battles.
Anyway, I finally updated because I'm now on Penana and it looks really good there. And it's my most read fanfic on AO3, so I'm really proud of myself. Over 7,000 readers and over 300 hearts is just crazy in terms of AO3. I'm so happy and so grateful.
It's something I've been wanting for a long time: for one of my fanfics to be popular. It's all I've wanted for nearly two years, and now finally it's paying off on at least one site. AO3 has a major House of the Dragon fan population, and apparently my writing style is pretty good, so people eat it all up. It just wouldn't be the same on Quotev.
Not that Quotev is bad, but it's a hub for Harry Potter and One Direction fanfics, for me. And some Percy Jackson fanfics are really good too. But my point is, it's not an enormously famous fanfiction website, and HotD is a bit more recent. Let's be real: Quotev is practically dead, especially after that stupid update where they removed messages and groups. It's just not the same.
I think peak Quotev was around 2012-2015, around the time when 1D was still a big thing, so of course I read a whole bunch of 1D fanfics on here. But Penana is more reliable for the future, because it's starting to get a bit more popular. And AO3 is one of the staples of fanfiction writing with Wattpad, but Wattpad has never liked my emails and anyway, I don't really like it.
Don't get me wrong, Wattpad is nice, but it's just so varied in terms of quality. AO3 has a more advanced population of writers, in my opinion. The people who write there tend to be more talented than the people who write on Wattpad, and are a lot more supportive. AO3 is big, but Wattpad is too famous.
And AO3 is non-profit and a really great organisation. Wattpad has some pretty toxic people on there, and has so many paying functions that I'm over it. It's annoying, it really is. I don't want to spend money on fanfic websites, and AO3 and Quotev reflect that. Wattpad just isn't my crowd. I tried, I really did. But I never really liked it or enjoyed it.
It always felt like a chore. AO3 feels much more real, in my opinion.
To all aspiring or actual publishers that are reading this: if you're going on Wattpad to find new talents to recruit to your publishing house, don't. It's just too varied and people tend to focus more on graphics and layouts than the actual writing itself, like some people do on Quotev. Heck, I was even briefly converted to the graphic world before coming back from it. On AO3, that crowd is a minority and most people just go there to write. No fancy stuff that might make someone like a book just because it looks nice.
It's real and it's nice.
AO3 forever!
Signing out,
Alex <3
ns 15.158.61.8da2
