I've heard from a friend that apparently the Twilight section of fanfiction.net was at one point just the original romance section. Supposedly fans were isolated from other fandoms and lost interest in Twilight itself, which helped lead to the pipeline of filing serial numbers off of fanfics. Sounds so different from my experience of fandom around that time.
Also had a class that talked about After so the moment Wattpad came up I knew where it was going. That self insert statistic is kind of shocking to me. In my fanfic circles Wattpad is generally looked down upon, and I know self insert tends to be too, maybe those are connected.
I can definitely see that--it's my understanding that a lot of Twilight fic was the "fix it" type since the official resolution was dissatisfying. That's what a lot of HQ seems to miss--oftentimes fic flourishes because it's making up for something canon is lacking, not because it's oh-so-brilliant.
I was shocked at the stats too. I personally think Wattpad has one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen, which I think is why much "old" fandom doesn't like it. It's not built for us.
"Fun" fact about After, the writer Anna Todd is not only incredibly dismissive of fandom in general (because she was never actually a participant, it's pretty clear) she also has been very cosy with Sony/Styles HQ, which is really telling, I think. I have to write a whole separate thing about the way fandom has been spoonfed content like this for over a decade at this point.
I've heard from a friend that apparently the Twilight section of fanfiction.net was at one point just the original romance section. Supposedly fans were isolated from other fandoms and lost interest in Twilight itself, which helped lead to the pipeline of filing serial numbers off of fanfics. Sounds so different from my experience of fandom around that time.
Also had a class that talked about After so the moment Wattpad came up I knew where it was going. That self insert statistic is kind of shocking to me. In my fanfic circles Wattpad is generally looked down upon, and I know self insert tends to be too, maybe those are connected.
I can definitely see that--it's my understanding that a lot of Twilight fic was the "fix it" type since the official resolution was dissatisfying. That's what a lot of HQ seems to miss--oftentimes fic flourishes because it's making up for something canon is lacking, not because it's oh-so-brilliant.
I was shocked at the stats too. I personally think Wattpad has one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen, which I think is why much "old" fandom doesn't like it. It's not built for us.
"Fun" fact about After, the writer Anna Todd is not only incredibly dismissive of fandom in general (because she was never actually a participant, it's pretty clear) she also has been very cosy with Sony/Styles HQ, which is really telling, I think. I have to write a whole separate thing about the way fandom has been spoonfed content like this for over a decade at this point.