#I've heard it's good to include both image description and alt text but I can't figure out how to add alt text to this :/

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Not to like. Get sappy about a dumb little rarepair but like. I’m gonna take a minute to be sappy about a dumb little rarepair.

In March I responded to an ask from a friend and included the tags:

[image description: Tumblr tags that read “#bonus reason: shipping riverrose makes you extra cool and I am in desperate need of more content #[In The Arms of The Angels playing] this ship averages about 2 fanfics posted to Ao3 per year but with your contribution we can change that”. End image description.]

And like. Yeah. If you look at June 2011 through the end of 2021, there were 23 works posted in the River Song/Rose Tyler tag on Ao3, with one of those being a fanart collection that hadn’t included (or been tagged as, to my knowledge) River/Rose until a few months ago. So yeah. An average of two-ish works per year.

It’s the end of December and there’s 47 works in the tag. That’s over double. And I am personally trying to push to post a few more things to get it to 50 because that sounds neat. It’s still a rarepair by most definitions (especially given how big the fandom is - Ao3 has over 11k works tagged as Ten/Rose), but that’s still like. Hello. One of these characters hasn’t been on the show in over 7 years and the other hasn’t been on the show in nearly 13 years (over 14 if you go by episodes where she's on screen for more than 2 minutes) - her actress came back as a different character and that was still 9 years ago. Wild increase.

The “The Doctor/River Song/Rose Tyler” also went from 10 works to 25. 60% of works in that tag were posted this year. And everyone who posted in that tag was soooooo right for it.

I just. Idk I have such intense and specific brainrot about this ship and I’m still struggling to articulate exactly why and here we are. This tag has existed for over a decade and half of it is from this year and nearly a fifth is from me and just yeah.

Anyway shout out to everyone who wrote riverrose. And to everyone who commented and kudosed and read (even without any comments or kudos) riverrose this year. A great big “mwah” to you all.

So. Do I maintain the goal of 100 fics in the River Song/Rose Tyler tag before May 2023? Yes. Do I think that’s in anyway realistic? Who gives a fuck. It’s gonna be fun to try to get there, if nothing else.

Also like on a more personal note I’ve posted like maybe 5 or 6 fics before this year? Like ever? Maybe 7? And that’s including middle school and that joke fic I posted like two years ago? And I posted 22 works this year? Over 22k words? And I wrote even more than that? Go me.

Tl;dr: I’m impressed with the amount of riverrose posted in 2022 and I intend to beat that number in 2023.