You know Lily, if you're such a "damn good writer" then how come The Sith Resurgence doesn't even break into the top 500 of most like stories when searching for "Star Wars" at Archive of Our Own?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=✓&work_search[query]=Star+Wars&work_search[title]=&work_search[creators]=&work_search[revised_at]=&work_search[complete]=&work_search[crossover]=&work_search[single_chapter]=0&work_search[word_count]=&work_search[language_id]=&work_search[fandom_names]=&work_search[rating_ids]=&work_search[character_names]=&work_search[relationship_names]=&work_search[freeform_names]=&work_search[hits]=&work_search[kudos_count]=&work_search[comments_count]=&work_search[bookmarks_count]=&work_search[sort_column]=kudos_count&work_search[sort_direction]=desc&commit=Search
Hell, even if you specifically search for stories focusing on the Sequel Trilogy The Sith Resurgence doesn't even break into the top 200, it doesn't even come close, losing out to even freaking cross-over fic's. Granted, it doesn't seem like Archive of our Own is the place to go for high literature, but what does it say about Lily that she has to practically scream at her fans to give her story attention just for it to have the tiniest bit of relevancy what so ever?
That's not really a fair assessment. For one, Star Wars is one of the largest fandoms out there and it's absolutely glutted with stories-- by that search string, over 132,000. To expect any random person to be in the top 500 out of that many stories is pretty absurd.
For two, likes (or kudos or favorites or comments or whatever) aren't a metric of quality. A bajillion people bought the
Twilight books and millions legitimately love them. In no way does that make them good books, and in no way does that make Stephanie Meyer a good writer. This is a phenomenon that's even easier to see in fandom circles, where you can find
extremely well-written fanfiction that is absolutely buried under thousands of other stories because Good Author stuck to their intentions and wrote a great action-adventure story with a lot of complex characterization, fun interactions, and cool concepts, while Everybody Else wrote a shipfic about an extremely popular pairing.
(On the other hand, the number one return on that string --
'a reylo fic' -- is basically a perfected version of The Sith Resurgence, so maybe argumentum ad populum is legitimate.)
Absolutely
none of which is to say that Lily is just a diamond in the rough. Just looking at her work is proof enough of that. Her language is basic, her prose anywhere from serviceable to stupid. In her self-assessment answering that other Ask, I think it's fair to say that her dialogue
is the strongest aspect of her writing... but that says more about her overall quality of her writing than it does about her phenomenal dialogue skills.
I also don't want to dismiss your general point, either, because Lily is pretty purposefully choosing fandoms with huge fanbases. I don't think she's under any delusion that she'll become a big-name fan, but the thing is, if you write a Star Wars fic and attract a fraction of a percentage of the audience, that's still a
ton of people. Same with Pokemon, or World of Warcraft, or MLP. The audiences are so massive that even if you don't strike gold and get lucky, you're still going to be riding high. This is also why she deleted her WoW-fic-- she failed to court the crowd, therefore it wasn't worth it. She needs a baseline level of outside validation or else there's no point to the project. She's admitted as much herself.
Isn't that what the My Immortal writer would tell you before every chapter?
"im nut updating umtil i get five good revoiws!"
Yep. I'm personally of the belief that My Immortal is a trollfic, so I'm going to say that tendency was based off the
real tendency for arrogant, assholish fanfiction writers who would get upset that their story wasn't attracting as many comments as it should be and would leave A/Ns saying "I got fewer reviews last chapter than normal so unless you guys review ten times and prove you're still reading I'm just gonna stop writing!"
Lily hasn't said this
as such, but she's definitely left some Tumblr posts bemoaning how little attention her work is getting and that it just isn't worth it to keep going,
HINT HINT.
