#and if you sort by kudos hits and bookmarks

[tiredhawks]

Almost 45,000 hits on my How To Be Human fic I'm going to die this visualization is horrifying

[thevioletcaptain]

if you as a fic reader ever become possessed by the urge to do a popularity bracket with the fics other people wrote and shared for fun and for free, consider:

don't ❤️ 

[antimony-medusa]

Okay I have a follow up question from a poll I started today, which is tied into the concept of fic discoverability.

I would be fascinated to know how you normally find fics to read, and your reasoning about it, if any. Has your behaviour changed over time? What fandom are you in?

[insanitysilver]

AO3 Tastemaker Game

You? You're an individual. You're a reader and a forager with fine tastes. You're not afraid to wade into the deep end. Browse the dustiest aisles. Get in the vents. Come, pan for gold with me in the far reaches. The game goes like this:

On AO3, navigate to your pairing/fandom of choice

Apply your standard filters

In the 'Search Within Results' field, paste this: kudos<100 comments<5 bookmarks<5 hits<500 sort:>updated

Press the 'Sort & Filter' button

Read down the line until you find something you like

Comment, bookmark, and mark it as a recommendation

For the ultimate connoisseur: Bonus Points - share your new rec off-site Hard Mode - kudos<12 comments<1 bookmarks<1 hits<395 sort:>updated

[olderthannetfic]

I accidentally killed my own desire to write, and I need some advice. To be really blunt about it, what's the point of writing? When I would spend lots of time laboring over making a good story with a plot and characters who were in-character and connecting all the dots narratively so payoffs were satisfying, my reward was dead silence and virtually no clicks. I posted some mindless smut to my side account one day and got more hits in a day than most of my other works combined got in a year. I know, I know. "Write for ~*~yourself~*~" is the common response. It's the "be yourself!" of writing. It's supposed to be a magical phrase that'll make everything okay. But... I don't like knowing that something I spend months working on won't be read by anyone while something I write in a car while bored got thousands of clicks. I don't like making something I'm proud of and then no one ever looks at it. That's not fun for me. It's not fulfilling.

For a solid decade, I've tried to ignore how the level of interactivity in fandom is falling. Fewer comments. Fewer kudos. No comments in the bookmarks. You put your tumblr and Discord in the AN and get a handful of asks and one person who adds you, talks to you twice and then ghosts you. Most of the comments are "well, actuallys", made even more annoying by them being wrong as opposed to actually correcting an error. I avoid fandom drama, wank, and infighting. I don't engage with things I know will make me unhappy. I try to be happy over in my own little corner. I comment on every single work I read. I want people to enjoy fandom. I used to.

Some dumb smut I wrote in 40 minutes gets five times the hits of the writing I'm most proud of, and it gets it in just under three months. I am not a great smut writer. I haven't stumbled onto an incredible talent I had that makes it so the issue is that I'm so amazing my smut brings all the boys to the yard. People just don't like what I write and put effort into. It's very likely that despite 20 years of writing fic, I suck at writing. And people enjoy my writing most when they don't have to put up with anything substantial and can just skip to the sex.

So for the last eight months, when I write, I just sort of give up. Close the Word doc without saving. No one will read this. No one cares about this. There is no fan eagerly awaiting every update like I await updates from my favorite authors. There's not even someone saying, "update soon!" Close the Word doc. Delete old WIPs. There's no point. I do not tell stories worth reading. I used to. In the FFN days people genuinely enjoyed my work. I'd never have had an opportunity to do the 'I won't update until I get 3 reviews' thing because getting that many on a chapter was usually something I'd do overnight. Post before bed. Wake up. Read the reviews before school. I peaked in high school, I guess.

And now I'm just sort of lost. I still have lots of ideas. Ideas for fics fall into my head all the time. That's never been a problem. What I don't have is any motivation to write them. What's the point of writing? If no one else is reading, I guess the point would be so I could go back and read my own story and have fun with it. Write for myself. But I can review the story and have fun with it in my head without writing it down. It's substantially faster and more importantly, isn't incredibly depressing.

So, at the risk of definitely being calld the second-coming of True Art Anon or a troll or validation-seeking or haha mentally ill haha... what's the point of writing?

--

Okay, so write porn in a car while you're bored.

Look, you can whine all you want about my response, but what you've written here is blatantly about depression.

Lots of people in fandom are still interacting. And no, it isn't just on fics that are objectively written to some pro fiction standard or whatever. Teenagers still breathlessly review poorly spelled cracky masterpieces about this year's big anime and so forth.

Yes, there may be reasons why you in particular are in a slump when it comes to fandom friendships or "plz update" comments. We can talk about that. But this ask is all gloom about fandom in general. That's not realism: that's you having a problem.

--

As for why a person should write: because the actual hours you spend doing the writing are fun.

If they aren't pleasurable in some way, find another hobby.

--

But if you want an answer to the age old "Why did my 5 minute fic get 1000000x more asspats", I've seen meta about this for literally decades.

The most likely reason is that the fic we write quickly and without much thought often feels fresher and more fun. The things we labor over endlessly can feel overworked. Even in cases where they don't, they're often heavier subject matter or more niche subject matter. On top of all that, we just care more, so even a high level of feedback doesn't really feel like enough for the effort and care we put in.

--

Do you really need me to tell you why you don't feel the same as in high school when things were fresh and new?

Go read up on combatting burnout or dealing with post-college anxiety or managing stress in a dead-end job in your 30s or finding meaning in your 40s or whatever is going on.

Everyone goes through fallow periods in fandom and in life.

Feeling reinvigorated has to do with internal factors and some general life circumstance stuff. It doesn't have that much to do with number of kudos. That's just the surface trigger for a mood that was already there.

[dontwantthenextcommanderiwantyou]

March 3, 2016... 8 years later

Clexa had less than 4 hours of total screentime. Clexakru still created more than 12,715 fanfics... 78 new fics posted so far in 2024...

Just between the top 10 fics sorted by each category, Clexa has...

7,812,004 words

4,556,263 hits

165,234 kudos

45,258 comments

28,486 bookmarks

THANK YOU to all Clexakru fanfic writers, yall have helped keep this ship and fandom alive. There's no doubt Clexa will continue to live on for many more years because LEGENDS NEVER DIE.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

📚 10 f1 fics i've loved lately 🏎️

been thinking a lot about how to organise fic recs into some sort of sensible post, 'cus there are so many (great!) pairings and (delicious!) driver combinations, not to mention so many varying styles of fic and SUPER TALENTED WRITERS!!111!!

just gonna list a bunch in no particular order, with accompanying pics, so you can get a sense of the vibes.

'cus what is f1 rpf but all about the ✨ vibes?! 🏁

p.s. people are in this community making amazing stuff for freeee!! if you liked these please leave a kudos or a comment, it makes a writer's day 🫡 

let's gooooo--

objects in the mirror by linearity (@drivestraight) charles/max. 87k words (series), rated t then e

listen. LISTEN! charles to rbr is one of the best premises ever and i will read it in like a thousand iterations. but this fic. this fic series in particular cleared my skin, made me want to cut my hair into a bob out of sheer emotion. i would be remiss not to start with this one because its impact on my f1 rpf trajectory should be studied by science. you know when a story just jumps off the page and it's so real that it becomes your canon. a kind of meteoric inevitability. plus, i almost never cry at fics. but by the time the third act of this one hit, i just went -- damn, am i rly about to tear up at a f1 rpf fanfiction rn? (yes.)

-----------------------

sawtooth by nottonyharrison (@nottonyharrison) charles/max. 40k words, rated e

max as a f1 engineer? for CARLOS at FERRARI? sign me the fuckkk up. first off, awesome premise. there's always going to be something so heartwrenching about "what ifs", especially in any universe where max isn't a racer. despite the change of circumstances, just... the sheer poetry of two characters who just inexplicably find their way to each other in any universe... 🤧 also this story nails racing scenes in a way that's so visceral, i feel like a fly on the damn halo with them. and, aside from the gourmet lestappen, carlos's whole thing in this fic is joyous! spicy! he's so unapologetic and vaguely annoying! hilarious! + the swimming pool scene lives rent-free in my head.

-----------------------

salt skin by peachbellini (@strawberry-daiquiris) oscar/lando. 12k words, rated e

this fic is magic. literally and figuratively. (MERMAID LANDO???? MERMAID LANDO.) the kind of story that makes you gasp and melt a little bit. and made me want to throw my phone at the writer, 'cause it's really that good. the yearning, the metaphor for all that's monstrous, a boy who is lost (and the boy who he finds, is equally so). this is just beautifully written and a little quirky and so well executed. i think i put it in my bookmarks as "what if lando was a mermaid and it was filmed by a24" or something. pearl of a story.

-----------------------

hockey!! shrimp colors :) by leafmeal0ne (@ocontraire) oscar/lando. 13k words, rated t

leaf meal one. i have only known you a week but if anything were to happen to you i would wreck everyone in the room including myself. in all seriousness, anything that leaf writes is brilliant. they're one of these writers who could do a throwaway line on the label of a ketchup bottle and i will probably scream about it. the precision, the way they switch up sentence structures, the freaking darcy-level regency yearning transposed onto a contemporary sports setting. i'd rec all of leaf's sports AUs and i'll probably talk about more in a future fic rec post. BUT. the hockeyyy one my GOD. the barely restrained violence, their mutual desire, the theme of finding your place... *wails uncontrollably*

-----------------------

you almost unearthly thing by anonymous max/daniel, 3.7k words, rated g

max is a governess(govern..lad?) and daniel is the mystery man at the manor. this was a response to a request i made in the kinkmeme! (if you haven't read those fics go check 'em out, there are so many great ones, and not necessarily all rated e). this is a criminally underrated little story that has my favourite repressed feelings + people dancing around each other + gothic vibes + "what the hell is wrong with y'all in this tale" combo that i really adore. it's really well written and captures the atmosphere so well.

-----------------------

the so-called narrative by antimonyandthyme (@antimonyandthyme) oscar/carlos, 10k words, rated e

i'm once again asking why there are only 7 carlos/oscar works in the tag. I'M ONCE AGAIN ASKING-- *is sedated*. *jolts awake* okay but for real this is a great story. hot, fake-friendship-to-situationship which so happens is one of my favourite places to be. also hello miscommunication/they're so weird about it/they both want each other but can't express themselves for shit/insane racer boys energy.

-----------------------

and silver, and samarium by pink_mink (@on-softs) george/toto, 5.2k words, rated e

i profess i am not usually the biggest fan of A/B/O (altho!! this fandom has made me go BUT ACTUALLY HM at least a few times). and this fic freaking nails it, along with the twisted power dynamics between TPs and drivers, as seen through the lens of omegaverse. this story rattles around my head like a stubborn ghoul just from the style and prose and sheer audacity alone. george kneeling at toto's knees while he's working..... ohhhhhhhhh i was this close to calling my lawyers.

-----------------------

algorithm by anney (@badboy-george) charles/max, 16k words, rated e

i LOVE, LOOOOVE a sci fi concept alright. love that shit, will inhale it like moon dust with zero regrets. and what a fantastic one this one is!! the premise is that the FIA can now statistically show the compatibility of drivers on the grid and it's very pacific rim-y drift compatible, mixed with the surreal vibes of eternal sunshine or HER or some such. it should be outrageous, but it really works. that's the beauty of a great fic right there.

-----------------------

trajectory of trojan asteroids by redpaint (@redpaint) nico/lewis, 3.3k words, rated g

also one of the fics i first read when i hopped on board the f1 rpf train. the pain and poignancy just gets worse the more i learn about brocedes. you know when you're like "there's no way this was reallll" and then you're like "fuck, it was so real". then you get a fic like this that just encapsulates all that rage and loss and grief and upset, set against the starry vista of endless space. *clutches tablecloth* god.

-----------------------

p.s please bear in mind that these recs are entirely subjective! i enjoy loads of f1 stories but these are the ones that have especially stuck with me for some inexplicable reason.

p.p.s if your fic is on here and you want it taken off for whatever reason, i'm happy to, no questions asked 💛

BYE for now / until part 2. (i also love talking to ppl about fics so pls feel free to send an ask or hit me up in DMs or whatever.)

xoxo, -- wizz

[cooking-with-hailstones]

The Legend of Zelda: stats of the kingdom

A Statistical Analysis of Popular Fanfiction in the Legend of Zelda Fandom on AO3

I like numbers and stats and for some unfathomable reason I find it calming. So over the past couple weeks, I’ve been making this spreadsheet!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a judgement of the quality, value, or merits of any of the fics on this list. It's just me being curious about what's popular with the Legend of Zelda fandom on AO3.

Feel free to go explore the spreadsheet. My own observations and analysis under the cut.

TL:DR, Link has a lot of kinky sex. Sidlink and Zelink are vying for who’s the most popular ship. Also, this fandom has a shit ton of sub categories that are truly islands unto themselves and have their own conventions.

Methodology: I'm including all fics from the first page of AO3 results (20 fics per page) sorted by:

Hits

Kudos

Comments

Bookmarks

Anything tagged under the Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms tag that was in the top 20 most hits, kudos, comments, or bookmarks made it into the spreadsheet. This ended up including 51 fics in total.

I put all the fics into one single spreadsheet in order to compare the differences between fics that are really high on the kudos count but not the hit count, or what has a lot of comments but fewer hits. Basically, I'm throwing a lot of things together to observe what gets engagement and looking at patterns that emerge!

Popular fandom subcategories:

Botw (41 fics tagged as such)

Linked Universe (9, including one mostly set in the world of BOTW)

OoT (2)

(I do wonder what it would be like to run these numbers on other fanfic sites, given the popularity boom of ao3 over the last 15 years or so. But also, Botw was an insanely popular game even by Zelda standards, so… who knows?)

Tags:

Character tags: Obviously, Link was by far the most popular character, but here are the characters that had a minimum of 3 appearances per category. Yay champions!

Zelda

Sidon

Mipha

Urbosa

Revali

Daruk

Story tags: Again, just going by sheer numbers, here are the story tags that appeared at least 3 times in every category:

Slowburn

AU – canon divergence

With honorable mentions to fluff, angst, double penetration, anal sex, amnesia/memory loss, and mute or selectively mute Link, who all cracked above 3 instances in 2 separate categories.

Relationships:

This was a tight race, but shoutout to Sidlink for eking out the win for the most highly rated ship in the Zelda fandom with 13 fics qualifying in my ranking. Zelink is close behind at 10 fics. (That being said, Zelink takes it by volume: 7,797 fics tagged as Zelink vs Sidlink’s 2,193)

Other popular ships:

Revalink (8) (this one surprised me! I didn’t realize my beloved birb was so popular)

Miphlink (3)

Link/Monsters (2)

Sidon/Reader (2)

Ganzelink, Ganlink, Malink, Miphzelink, and Miphzel all made single appearances.

(Pls don’t start ship war discourse in the notes kthanx)

All right, let’s deep dive into the numbers!

Fics in all 4 categories:

Interim - starkraving

Sands of time -tirsynni

Congrats you are officially the most popular Loz fics across all of ao3! at least according to my particular scope of analysis.

Fics in 3 categories:

Displaced - socksock

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

Popular authors (people who show up more than once in multiple categories sorry comments georg)

MarquesGillette

MaryDragon

SilvermistAnimeLover

ObakeAri

Hits:

Top 5 most popular fics by hit count:

Displaced - socksock

Interim - starkraving

To Save Hyrule - orphan_account

Sands of time - tirsynni

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

First page by hits:

Min: 117,917 – Sidon’s Epic Pining Adventure (ObakeAri)  

Max:  189,622 – Displaced (socksock)

Average: 145,385

Average wordcount for fics with the most hits:

140,909

Kudos:

Top 5 most popular fics by kudos count:

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Interim - starkraving

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

26 Minutes and 42 Seconds - T_5Seconds

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

First page by kudos:

Min: 4917 – Finding Link (Umbreonix)

Max:  10321 – Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (Icka M Chif)

Average: 6981

Average wordcount for fics with the most kudos:

41,136

Comments:

Top 5 most popular fics by comment count:

Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes - KR5

This is an Adjuration - notfreyja

My Art - KR5

Sidon's Epic Pining Adventure - ObakeAri

Priestess of War - KR5

Woohoo! You all get to meet KR5 aka Comments Georg. Comments Georg has long conversations and RPs in the comments of their ao3 posts, which are usually fanart. TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS TOTALLY FINE AND COOL! I think it’s quite delightful! However, it does completely bork my ranking system because outside of comments, these posts do not have a lot of engagement (like, less than 100 hits and less than 20 kudos) and I don’t think they count towards my analysis of “what is popular in the Zelda fandom writ large”. But they qualified based on my criteria. Which I think speaks to the weakness of my criteria more than anything else tbh…

Anyways, shoutout to Comments Georg for truly showing off what it means to be a statistical outlier.

First page by comments:

Min: 1568 – The Quiet River Rages (MaryDragon)

Max:  43808 - Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes (KR5)

Average: 4131 (which goes down to 2042 if we exclude KR5’s impressive max, which is a full order of magnitude more than notfreyja in second place with 3470 comments. Very much demonstrating the power of a statistical outlier!)

Average wordcount for fics with the most comments:

275,593

Bookmarks:

Top 5 most popular fics by bookmarks count:

Interim - starkraving

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Sands of time - tirsynni

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

First page by bookmarks:

Min: 973 – Expatriate (thehoyden)

Max:  2984 – Interim (starkraving)

Average: 1468

Average wordcount for fics with the most bookmarks:

70,027

Fic Ratings:

G: 3 (literally all fanart from KR5)

T: 22

M: 8

E: 17

Unrated: 1

Observations:

I ran this twice. Once including crossovers, and once excluding crossovers. This filtered out a lot of large drabbles and things like “flash fiction fuckings” which, no judgment, you do you, they just weren’t super relevant for what I was looking for. If you wanna see these stats including all the multifandom stuff that shows up, here’s the link for that:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DXDKXutIzVC-Iac93fFSDohAkphrn67yV-DmRt9xXmU/edit?usp=sharing

(I’m going to break academic professional analysis here and get on my soapbox for a sec – please don’t post big multifandom one shots where you tag like 20 different fandoms and every single kink that gets written about across 103 different chapters. This is literally what series are for. These kinds of things just clog up the tags, and it also makes it harder for people to find the things you’ve written that they want to read! I know this was a convention on ff.net, but this is not ff.net! We can make authors' lives and readers' lives easier!)

There were 38,427 fics in the tag “Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms” (including crossovers, that goes up to 41,634). I manually added one back in though because it was entirely a botw story, just loosely inspired by another game.

Linked Universe fans comment a LOT. Strong correlation between high comment and Linked Universe fandom subsection. Y’all are very involved and active, and you show support to your authors. I salute you!

Sidlinkers, y'all are horny and I respect it.

Zelinkers, dear god we do love a slowburn.

All the most highly kudos’d fics are very low in the comment count. It’s almost an inverse correlation.

Excluding crossovers increased the correlation between hits and kudos quite dramatically.

There were not very many au’s other than canon divergence. Only one modern au as far as I could tell from a cursory examination of tags.

Lots more clustering, far less disparity between min and max numbers than when I ran this with A:TLA numbers.

Far less consensus on a vibe. Way fewer big writers, but lots of little writers doing their own thing.

Truly a lot of E fics. We are horny bastards.

We need more stuff written for games other than BOTW!!

There aren’t as many fics that are like “oh everyone in the fandom has read these fics”. There are probably those fics in each subcategory of the fandom, or within the specific ships, but there aren’t as many general fics that have entire fandom-wide appeal.

Thank you for reading! This was a lot of fun, and I hope you found it interesting. Shoutout to the Hateno Hangout discord for helping me refine this mess :P

Further shoutout to my partner who helped with writing some SQL to help with tag analysis. Truly partner of the year.

If you want more of this kind of egregious nerdiness, I did this with the top fics in the A:TLA fandom a couple weeks ago: https://www.tumblr.com/cooking-with-hailstones/751749202663669760/statistical-analysis-of-the-most-popular-atla

[mylittleredgirl]

while we’re having the endless debate about sorting by kudos or not on ao3, i have to stump for my personal favorite way to find fics:

i basically always go straight to the “bookmarks” page for whatever pairing/tag i’m reading rather than the “works” page, and i literally just realized why: it lights up the same parts of my tumblr gremin brain as my dash does.

content hand-selected by people who are bookmarking shit for their own reasons entirely unknowable to me, so it’s a mix of quality peer review and user xyz’s to-read list

if you keep going back to it there’s a repetition over time as new people bookmark old fics. as a tumblr girlie my brain enjoys seeing Thing I Recognize

brand new fics often show up there if they’re good!! (equivalent: new posts tagged “investing at 5 notes”)

a lot of the top kudos fics keep showing up too because so many people sort the works page that way (equivalent: heritage post)

but so much random stuff shows up too that i would otherwise never find, thanks to the hardworking folks out there sobbing into the bottom of the tag at 4 am (equivalent: those posts with 56 notes from 2011 that somehow?? end up on your dash like bestie how did you even find that)

sometimes there are 30 bookmarks in a row by the same person who has a new hyperfixation and you get to think “good for them”

sometimes you get to recognize a username as someone having good or seriously bad taste

sometimes i see my own fics in the mix!! and get that little hit of positive attention (or neutral attention i guess, when people add a bookmarker tag like “it’s about [my fave character] but it’s ok”)

yeah! people can add bookmarker tags and their own notes! so sometimes people rec fics or add marginalia and their own sortable tags (but most people don’t)

there’s always that one fucking harry potter crossover fic with 194 tags in the mix (equivalent: manscaped ads you can’t escape). not saying this is a plus, but scrolling past the same long post you hate for the dozenth time is also an essential part of the tumblr experience.

re: that last bullet point, the one downside of the bookmarks page is that the filtering isn’t quite as robust as on the works page. you do have all the usual include/exclude filter options, but the very last section of filtering (crossovers, WIPs, word count, date range) is not available. (@ ao3 coders please i’m begging 🥺🙏)

anyway i’m sure the bookmarking economy is different across fandoms, but this will give you a semi-randomized feed of the tag, weighted toward new and popular fics (and, for better or worse, unfinished multi-chapter works and megafandom crossovers). it’s probably a good place to start for people who long for an algorithm, but unlike the usual user-targeted panopticon experience it’s more like the chance to rummage through strangers’ junk drawers for fic. tumblr vibes. you get me.

[exuberantoctopus]

Take 2 now that ao3’s up and I can give all the options!

[handwrittenhello]

there was another poll like this going around but it only lasted one day. no "other" option; this is for when you're browsing through a large amount of works, not getting recommendations from somewhere or anything else!

[saynomorefic]

Wilmon hits 5k comment-athon CHALLENGE!!

TAG! YOU'RE IT!! We challenge you to comment on 5 or more fics from the choices below, then tag 5 or more other people to spread the love! Be sure to BOLD the numbers that you do when you reblog this post(and share the fics / comments if you'd like!) You don't have to be tagged to complete the challenge!

1. The very first wilmon fic you read 2. The 5th fic you bookmarked 3. The 50th fic you bookmarked 4. Find a fic with no comments and write something you liked 5. Write a comment that's 50(+) words long on a fic of your choice 7. Sort and filter by 'Title.' Leave a comment on a fic with a title that starts with the first letter of your first name. 8. Sort fic by 'Author'. Leave a comment on a fic by an author that starts with the first letter of your last name. 9. The very last wilmon fic you read 10. Go to a number generator. Set the upper limit as 250. Sort any way you like and go to the 'works' page with that number. Leave a comment on a fic of your choice. 11. Find a fic with 5 or fewer comments and write something you liked about it 12. Find a WIP with 10k or fewer words and leave an encouraging comment 13. Find a WIP that was last updated over a year ago and leave an encouraging comment 14. Find a fic with less than 5 kudos and write something you liked 15. RANDOM!! Leave a random comment and share what you chose!

Happy commenting, and don't forget to spread the love!

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

My Work on Archive Of Our Own

Please ignore if me gushing about the reception of my fics is irritating. I understand there are some people who genuinely hate when fanfic writers do this, so I'm putting it under the cut so you don't have to see it!

(And fair warning; if this irritates you and you still decide to click 'keep reading' and you then decide that I am obviously up myself so I deserve a hate anon or several, I need to preemptively remind you that I gave you the choice not to engage. You will be blocked and I shall call you a silly little guy if you do this.)

I also would like to make this an invitation to anyone who wants to share their proudest stats, or a nice comment they got, or even just something they are really really happy about in having written their fic. (No need to click read more, just go for it and use this as your excuse to show some pride.) On any platform!

Gonna tag the following: @lya-dustin @ewanmitchellcrumbs @the-common-cowgirl @the-wonderland-madnesss @marthawrites

@vampire-exgirlfriend @exitpursuedbyavulcan @emilykaldwen @ripdragonbeans @aegonx

Feel free to turn this into a pass-on game, if you like! We should celebrate the things that make us happy, too. ❤️

I've not ever really posted about this because, IDK, I worry about being considered a conceited asshole. I figure, though, that this is my blog and my safe space and if I want to celebrate something I'm proud of then I should be able to do so. Nor am I implying that I believe this is any sort of metric of popularity or superiority, OR that I write for the sole purpose of validation through clicks and numbers. I have very little interest in engaging with any of that rhetoric. NO. It's just a convenient bonus, kinda like how I love my job and the fact I get paid is awesome but not my primary reason for doing it.

Okay, I think I've got the disclaimers out the way? (Can never be too sure with fandom.)

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reads my stuff. Not only on here, but on Archive Of Our Own, which is more or less a place I consider the Ultimate Fanfiction Site (TM). It used to be fanfiction.net for me, but then their ads got annoying and their content ban gross, so AO3 it is! I've read fanfiction on AO3 since I was like 13, and I still find it crazy beyond belief that my work is not only on there, but that it gets any sort of traction at all.

As a little acknowledgement of something I'm proud of, I wanted to document my stats on my big series, terms of endearment, as of June 2024. It is by and large the biggest project I have ever done, and I've poured countless hours of researching, writing and editing into it.

darilaros (princess)

Words: 48,843 Comments: 254 Kudos: 801 Bookmarks: 111 Hits: 21,971

gevivys (beauty)

Words: 52,147  Comments: 578  Kudos: 2,965  Bookmarks: 490  Hits: 106,019

dōnus riñus (sweet girl)

Words: 58,775 Comments: 660 Kudos: 3,414 Bookmarks: 635 Hits: 141,339

ilībītsos (little slut)

Words: 62,725 Comments: 556 Kudos: 1,880 Bookmarks: 289 Hits: 99,939

ñuhus prūmȳs (my heart)

Words: 104,063 Comments: 1,188 Kudos: 2,274 Bookmarks: 368 Hits: 110,356

jorrāeliarzus (beloved) (ongoing)

Words: 38,451 Comments: 234 Kudos: 454 Bookmarks: 86 Hits: 16,208

That makes for a total of 365,004 words; 3,470 comments; 11,788 kudos; 1979 bookmarks; and 495,832 hits. Jesus Christ.

To everyone who kudos'ed, commented, bookmarked, subscribed or even just clicked on the link to the fic, thank you very much. This series has grown and grown, not just in my head but also in audience. It's given me so much encouragement and support in my writing, and a feeling like maybe I am decent at this? I don't know. I used to write when I was a kid, but I stopped during high school. Rediscovering the joy of it hasn't just been rewarding in terms of having fun with it, but also in discovering that there are people who genuinely want to read what I'm putting out. I've spent a lot of my life feeling powerless and silenced, so this really means so much to me.

I am going to keep on writing for as long as I possibly can, because I genuinely haven't found a hobby as long-lived and fulfilling as this.

Thank you. I'm so very lucky. I'm so grateful. I love you all!

[dinitride-art]

Au fics that i think are neat and that i want to compile into a list because im trying to figure out how to comment on a chapter of a fic but i need time to sort out my thoughts (usually for fic recs i try to rec fics with less kudos/engagement because reasons but im just gonna throw everything in this list. probably multiple fics by the same author in the same universe because thats the one im trying to sort out my thoughts on.)

the strawberries are dying by eggowlss - historical fiction and very interesting character relationships and also character exploration within the time period. I really like this one because the pacing and tone are very gentle. There’s a srt of ebb and flow to the story that makes both the time period and the characters really fit into it. idk how to describe it i just like it a lot.

in the quiet of the night (acswy ao3 series) - they’re putting those characters in situations. It’s a very good time. 10/10 do recommend. If you haven't heard of this one though, it’s basically a modern au where everyone works at a summer camp and Mike and Will cause problems for themselves, each other, and usually everyone else around them. 

si vis amari, ama by perexcri - demons and angels and heaven and hell and its honestly just one hell of a story. like ive got vivid images in my head of scenes i imagined when reading this. 

you start to kiss (and the record skips) by eclipseadventure - this is a band au with a side of a secret relationship and im a sucker for secret relationships. a bit of drama/high stakes in here too which is always pretty fun. 

End Racism on the OTW! - you and me and the horrible teenaged ghost who keeps eviscerating himself in our apartment makes three by TheWrongKindOfPC - i am also a sucker for buzzfeed unsolved aus. buzzfeed unsolved, hauntings, ghosts, yknow the fun stuff. 

into the daylight by andiwriteordie - THIS IS NOT THE FIRST ONE, it’s just the first one that came up in my bookmarks. anyways, this is the second fic in a fantasy au series. The worldbuilding is really cool and there’s magic and history and politics and i like it a lot. the most recent chapter is spinning around in my mind.

the heartbreak prince by andiwriteordie - THIS IS THE FIRST ONE. 

beneath these boughs, my devotion blooms by perexcri - this is the fic that nearly killed me. i literally cant summarize it because im still recovering from what happened to me when i read it. Did i read it in april? Maybe. Listen, it had me asking questions about things i had never considered before. its 11k but im pretty sure it took me a good few hours to read because it made me think about it so much. again, ive got a bunch of visuals running through my head. its just... so much.

sweetheart, you're so cruel by perexcri - Mike’s in a band, Will’s a music snob, they’re both contemplating their life choices. very fun, very interesting, also made me think about some things. 

keep it hush by wiseatom - theres an amusement park and the horrors of customer service. and some other stuff but basically its pretty bright (the visuals of the fic in my head are bright- like sun glinting off metal- and idk how else to describe it)

the start of an age by delusionaltogether (Whyyyyy) - this ones funny and serious at times and its got Max in it. fantasy au with prince will and knight mike and a secret relationship and a small scheme between three parties that involves a fake (ish) marriage. 

superhero therapy by silverluminoqity - spiderman au with a side of trauma and healing? it’s complicated theres stuff happening, i had a good time reading it. 

you've got this spell on me by andiwriteordie - this one was really fun. basically its a fantasy au theres magic and mike gets himself hit with a spell that makes him fall in love with will and will freaks out about it for a while.

Daydream by disaster_energy - i really really liked this fic. its a fantasy au and its got gods and stuff and will gets chosen by the moon goddess because hes Will and everyone is like... woah.

takes one to know one by andiwriteordie - i also liked this one a lot, its a superhero au and its got ironic (like... dramatic irony- i think is what im talking about? maybe? but like fun irony) secret identities. 

Love goes 'round by evil_ontheinside - conversations in a laundry mat. mikes flopping (as in, flopping around like a fish) around a bit and this was pretty cute. 

my promise could be your fiend (could be the smallest of signs) by s0ld_it - spider man au, theres a bookstore involved and a lot of stuff. ive read this fic twice and greatly enjoyed it both times. 

Tip-toeing on Lily-pads by cherryisgone - very very fun, fantasy au and... mike gets cursed to be a frog. can only be un-cursed with a kiss. 

filling in the blanks as we go by delusionaltogether (Whyyyyy) - bookstore meetcute

there’s more but i spent all day painting my room and i am tired. Ive also got way too many bookmarks to go through and i have decided to stop here. still haven't figured out how to write that comment (but i am working on it because i love the fi(s) and ive been thinking about one specific thing that came up in a new chapter for so long). anyways, i hope someone enjoys this list of au fics from my bookmarks. 

[theladyofshalott1989]

On Representation (in Fandom Spaces)

I finished reading an incredible novel last week (Wellness by Nathan Hill) and there's a passage fairly early on that hit me hard. So much so that it made me cry. At the time, I didn't quite understand why it affected me so much, but it finally dawned on me this morning. My analysis will be after the cut. Here's the passage (from pages 208-209): "It's a lecture Jack gives to his Intro to Art class, during the chapter on American landscapes, how painters educated in the European tradition saw the endless tallgrass prairie of the Midwest and literally did not know what to do with it. They had no training that might have prepared them to depict something so monolithic. They were accustomed to scenes with easy scope and dimension: trees in the middle distance for perspective, rivers and valleys that made for convenient vanishing points, mountains on the horizon as an anchoring weight, all of it evocatively defined in light and shadow. But what do you do with a tallgrass prairie, where the middle distance and the far distance and the near distance are all flat and featureless and identical? What these artists did, mostly, was ignore it. They kept traveling west until they reached the Rockies and were rewarded with landscapes that matched their schooling, which is why, in the canon of American landscape art, the prairie is so underrepresented. It's not because the prairie wasn't beautiful—most of the painters acknowledged, in letters and diaries, that it was very pretty indeed—but rather that the prairie did not accord with the traditional standards of what was specifically beautiful in landscape art. These painters came looking for the things they knew how to depict—forests and mountains and beaches—and when they found none of these, they declared the landscape 'empty.' They did not see what was there. Instead, they saw what wasn't.

Jack means it to be a lesson on the difference between reality and the representation of reality. Beauty, he tells his students, is a constructed, not intrinsic, condition. The things we think are beautiful are only the things that have been depicted beautifully. And if it's not depicted, it's not seen. It never enters the imagination. It becomes a nothing.

Which is why the west got Yellowstone, and the prairie got destroyed."

I like to remain a positive space in this fandom for everyone, but I am human and I have my down days. Today is one of those days, so I thought I would (respectfully) wax on about this passage in the context of LGBTQIA+ representation in fandom spaces like Hogwarts: Legacy.

Despite a growing number of creators depicting diverse, queer narratives, there is often a noticeable lack of engagement with these works on platforms like AO3. I sometimes come across comments from users—which I don't think are made with ill intent—about only reading works by popular creators. While I understand this to some extent, as both a writer and a dedicated reader in this fandom, when I come across this sentiment in the wild, it's like a punch to the gut. I know and support many beautiful works that, if you were to sort by hits, kudos, or bookmarks, wouldn’t be considered “popular,” but are spectacularly written with wonderfully fleshed-out characters, and these stories deserve just as much recognition.

Suffice it to say, these stories—more often than not—do not center on heterosexual relationships or cisgender perspectives.

When queer stories are not engaged with, they risk being rendered "invisible" in fandom culture. This doesn’t mean they lack value or beauty, but simply that they fall outside the established norms, just as the prairie did in the eyes of the artists in the shared passage. This lack of visibility isn’t due to an absence of effort or talent but reflects a broader issue where what is unfamiliar or different struggles to be recognized and celebrated.

In this context, it's disheartening to see the potential for LGBTQIA+ stories to expand the landscape of fandom, only for them to often be overlooked. We deserve to see a fandom where all perspectives—like all landscapes—are equally appreciated and supported.

To those of you who do write LGBTQIA+ stories, you are seen and appreciated. Please do not stop writing. I know it can be very difficult to seemingly write into the void. Don't give up. You are doing the world a service. To those of you who are willing to expand your worldview, go out there and read outside of your comfort zone. You may find a new appreciation for an underrated pairing or genre.

Ultimately, I know this uncomfy feeling of mine will pass. It always does. But if you made it all the way to the end of this, thank you, and perhaps do me a favor. Think of a pairing (or even a story that doesn't have a pairing!) that you haven't explored yet in this fandom. Don't sort by hits, kudos, or bookmarks, as it's likely there aren't many stories yet to shuffle through. Browse the summaries. Does one stand out to you? Give it a try! If you enjoy it, give that author a kudo, maybe even a comment. You'll make their month, I guarantee it.

I suppose that's all besides I love y'all. Yes, all of y'all. <3

[antimony-medusa]

Finding Stories

Okay so I started a conversation/poll the other week about anon fics, which clearly made it clear that I had the wrong impression about anon fics. I thought that people avoided them, whereas it turns out most people don't even notice if a story is anon.

However, it started me thinking about how people find stories in general. Because this would imply that anon stories get found because people are reading new in a fandom, are they actually doing that? And do people find published books the same way, just reading in the bookstore or free-scrolling on a site? So. I ran two new polls. Fandom. Published books.

And I gotta say that this was clearly something fired off while I was avoiding my communications class, and I have never taken stats. This is in no way formal. But I was really interested in the things that are similar and the things that were different. Do patterns change when you're actually spending money for things? What happens when people click boxes?

First off, in both cases, the thing that won the poll was "browsing new", either in the fandom or in the bookstore. But the percentages were quite different.

I figured that knowing "I want to go to the paranormal shifter romance section of the bookstore" is approximately equivalent to "I know I want to read Stucky Omegaverse" so I compared those two percentages. 49.3% of fic readers were out here just scrolling new, whereas only 28.4% of people would just rock up to a bookstore and start looking around. (or IS this true? A lot of people in the "several of these" (24.2%) said they did a lot of these, but they did not regularly specify if that meant they just browsed in a bookstore.)

I figured that sorting by kudos or hits would give you a similar impression as being on a book social media, where the popular books rise to the top. 24.8% of people were looking for what was popular in fandom, whereas 11.2% of book people were looking for buzz books. On the fandom side people said frequently that when they were new to a fandom they would read by kudos to get a sense of what the fandom was like, whereas there wasn't really an equivalent experience reported on the book side of discovering a sub-genre and reading popular in it. People just didn't mention it? Possibly. It's noteworthy that on the fandom side being able to target your search specifically by tag or ship was wildly popular and came up again and again in the notes, whereas on the book side I saw less people saying things like "when I know I want a cozy mystery"��� possibly the poll didn't hit cozy mystery or paranormal romance readers.

Getting personal recs: this was a Very big one on the book side and less on the fandom side. 18.2% of people on the book side would go to librarians or friends, whereas only 12.4% of people on the fandom side would look in bookmarks or get recs from people. Possibly that is because a book club is thing and in many circles reading books is a social activity, whereas while being in fandom is a social activity, the specific fics you are reading is not as much the same thing. I know a lot of people mentioned in the fandom side that matters of taste would come up, and that they'd be aware that what other people would rec wouldn't be of interest to them. One big thing on the fandom side though, people mentioned very frequently going through the bookmarks of authors they trusted, so if you are an author, people are begging you to leave your bookmarks public.

Sticking with authors you trust: this is something that I expected to be much bigger on the fandom side than it was, and part of that may come down to how I phrased the poll, as I had people saying that their subscriptions aren't "new fics", they already found them. However, the result that I got was 2% of people read from their subscriptions for fic, and 4% of people stick with trusted authors for published books. Clearly more people will get auto-buy authors in the published world, but it's still a comparatively small percentage.

And then closing it up: 0.9% of people read for specific themes or events on the fandom side, and 2.2% of people read things like best of genres or horror recs on goodreads, 0.2% of people read ARCs, and 0.2% of people read email blasts like book funnel and their "best regency paranormals" emails. Is this a perfect comparison? No. Mostly I was impressed that any people still selected that they read for specific events on the fandom side, though I think some of that was people meaning that they read In The Gore Tag, and not reading like, Goreswap 2024 Exchange.

Do I have any conclusions? Not really, other than going oh man, people do legitimately just find the stories they want to read by browsing. A good summary/cover copy+cover legitimately can help people find your story. And please please please make at least some of your bookmarks public people are crying.