I noticed something really crippling here that I think is pretty prevalent throughout most of these top artists and their OCs, and that's the concept of "barriers of entry," specifically for the casual user. Almost all of these OCs, especially the stories written about them, expect the people that frequent the site to already have domain knowledge and desire for them. I don't know what the hell I gain from trying to piece things together. I am not part of the HF inner-communities, won't be for a long time, and I definitely don't know anything about the universes that compliments their creations. So how can you promote something when there are plenty of people who don't know anything about it? And even if I did, they make almost no effort to demonstrate what's so valuable or appealing about their OCs that I can't replicate myself in my own mind with characters from already established mainline franchises.