Forgot another subject line!

[lar_laughs]

First and foremost -



Okay, now that I've gotten that up there (so that I will remember to go to it some time soon, I present the real reason that I opened this window.

You. Must. Read. This. Story - So No One Told You by Kari_Kurofai

You like the Avengers? You like Friends? This is the fic for you! The official summary: Between them there're three apartments, a disgruntled downstairs neighbor, and a coffee shop with a barista who threatens them with tasers. Which, as a whole, that description sounds way more simple than it actually is.

Why you should read it? Because it's funny and endearing and spot on in both Friends and TA voice. It's lovely to read and remember through the day. It's the first time I truly found that I loved Loki (although he's fandom!Loki but that's good enough for the time being) and I clinched my love of Clint/Natasha/Bruce (although they are very silly in this, which is fine by me because it's a silly sort of story).

I'm sort of amazed where the story has gone in 19 chapters and I can't wait to see what happens next!

So, on to my next topic.

I've never been in on the very beginning of a fandom before. I came to Harry Potter in 2003, well after everyone had separated into camps. I came late to SGA. All the rest of my fandoms are very small or I don't ship them enough to write in them.

I have two fandoms that I came to the party on time... Leverage and now the Avengers. They are also two fandoms that are highly visible on AO3. It's like all these people with separate fandoms are on AO3 but they finally get a fandom in common and it BLOWS UP! The above story has 19 chapters and over THIRTY THOUSAND hits. I know there are stories that have that many hits but WOW! It's not that old.

jendavis posted a story there (A Good Idea (Clint/Phil) - check it out!) this morning and it already has over 1700 hits.

I posted a little story that I did for the HugFest. 500 words. First story in the fandom, more or less. In three days, it has OVER 600 hits! Now, that's AMAZING for my stories. I don't normally write in pairings that have large audiences and I don't do a lot of promotion. Slowly and steadily, over the past year, I've gained what I think might be called a "following" but I still only get a modest amount of hits. I'm good with that! I love that I can track a story on AO3 and even see how many people have opened the document. It makes my little heart jump with glee when I get over a hundred. The first of my stories to do that was in SGA and I jumped around the room for a good two minutes after I saw those stats. When I got my first 500 hit story, I refreshed the screen four or five times to make sure it wasn't playing a joke on me.

I can't get over it! It makes me want to write stories in those fandoms, that's for sure. It's fun to be in at the beginning!

Comments

[gottalovev.livejournal.com]

I like that Friends AU too, I need to go back and read the last couple of chapters, I got behind. :)

It's widely read, I'll give you that, but the way AO3 works, every time a new chapter is added, the hits go up from the people going back to it. so comparatively, jendavis' story at over 2000 hits now is IMHO more read than the story with 30 000 hits. which doesn't lower it's merit at all!

I did the experiment with my last Clint story, in 6 chapters, and every one of them brought about the same amout of hits. Now that it's been there for a bit, I guess the hits are people reading it from beguinning to end. I personally love to see the kuddos! (though anon kuddos can be repeats, too). It now has about 8000 hits for 6 chapters, while my steve/tony has 2900 hits for just the one chapter, but it's a more read pairing, it's only normal. The Clint story has over twice as much kuddos and lots of comments, though. so who knows?

I agree seeing the hits go up helps with motivation! for others authors counters just stresses them out, though. heh. well let's enjoy it for them ;)