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The positive effects of popular fan art
Feb. 27th, 2015 04:18 pmAs I'm sure is obvious, I'm totally in love with Alekina's recent Drarry art. But I think is important to point out that popular art (and fic) is good for the fandom. In this case, I even have the evidence to prove it.
My LJ blog is relatively new, and in general doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. According to Google analytics, most days I'm lucky to get more than 15 pageviews. (When I post my "Best of the Year" lists, the traffic bumps up maybe as high as 120 pageviews for a day, but that's about it.) But when I recently posted a list of "Dark Mark Removal fics" to appease the demand that came from the art, Alekina reblogged the link to tumblr. And Holy Cow. I got nearly 400 pageviews on that post in a day and a half. And it's still by far the most popular thing I ever posted.
And the point is, I recced four fics in that post, and I'm pretty sure they all benefited from it.
Only one of the four fics I recced is on AO3 (Becoming Us), so that's the only one I can easily track. It had been posted to AO3 for about 4 months (129 days) before my rec went up. In that time it had earned 87 kudos, which is an average of 0.67 kudos a day. My rec (and Alekina's tumblr boost) went up Feb 16. In the 11 days since then "Becoming Us" has earned an additional 20 kudos, for an average of 1.8 kudos per day. Basically its kudo rate tripled.
Now, maybe it would have earned those kudos anyway--it's a good story after all--but I think the timing makes it pretty clear that the boost from Alekina had something to do with it. And I like to think that the three other fics I recced also got more love and readership as well.
So maybe that's just an effect on a handful of fics, but I don't think it's limited to that. Alekina has posted to their personal blog many examples of fans writing to say that that artwork caused them to search for more Drarry fics, or get back into the fandom, or create newly inspired Drarry art, and even people who don't normally ship Drarry are into it.
So when a piece of art gets super popular it's good for everyone in the fandom. It creates new fans, jumpstarts interest in overlooked fics, inspires authors to write, and inspires artists to draw. I don't think that celebrating that means we're putting other artists down. I think it means that we're excited about our invigorated fandom and are eager for artists and writers to keep creating new works.
My LJ blog is relatively new, and in general doesn't get a whole lot of traffic. According to Google analytics, most days I'm lucky to get more than 15 pageviews. (When I post my "Best of the Year" lists, the traffic bumps up maybe as high as 120 pageviews for a day, but that's about it.) But when I recently posted a list of "Dark Mark Removal fics" to appease the demand that came from the art, Alekina reblogged the link to tumblr. And Holy Cow. I got nearly 400 pageviews on that post in a day and a half. And it's still by far the most popular thing I ever posted.
And the point is, I recced four fics in that post, and I'm pretty sure they all benefited from it.
Only one of the four fics I recced is on AO3 (Becoming Us), so that's the only one I can easily track. It had been posted to AO3 for about 4 months (129 days) before my rec went up. In that time it had earned 87 kudos, which is an average of 0.67 kudos a day. My rec (and Alekina's tumblr boost) went up Feb 16. In the 11 days since then "Becoming Us" has earned an additional 20 kudos, for an average of 1.8 kudos per day. Basically its kudo rate tripled.
Now, maybe it would have earned those kudos anyway--it's a good story after all--but I think the timing makes it pretty clear that the boost from Alekina had something to do with it. And I like to think that the three other fics I recced also got more love and readership as well.
So maybe that's just an effect on a handful of fics, but I don't think it's limited to that. Alekina has posted to their personal blog many examples of fans writing to say that that artwork caused them to search for more Drarry fics, or get back into the fandom, or create newly inspired Drarry art, and even people who don't normally ship Drarry are into it.
So when a piece of art gets super popular it's good for everyone in the fandom. It creates new fans, jumpstarts interest in overlooked fics, inspires authors to write, and inspires artists to draw. I don't think that celebrating that means we're putting other artists down. I think it means that we're excited about our invigorated fandom and are eager for artists and writers to keep creating new works.
