#ao3 has an all fandoms page that shows the top 5 of each category

[bakanokiwami]

THIS PROJECT IS SUPER COOL!!!!

I don’t care how many people have said it. You deserve to hear it again.

Thank you so much!🥰It's been fun to research, so I'm glad people are seeing the bar charts and enjoying them!

[ao3feed-destiel-02]

Aint it funny Rumors fly

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/pbguI1B by Tossukka Singer and songwriter Dean Winchester has come out of the closet more times than he can count. After the release of his new album, he had hoped that queer audiences would find him relatable and accept him as one of them. There’s only one problem: all his relationships with other men have taken place before he was a household name, which makes some people question his identity. Luckily, he has an easy solution in his mind. He just needs to find a guy to date him for a while and get some photos of them on the front pages. From the celebrity news, Dean learns that Castiel Novak is newly single and sets his eyes on him. Castiel already is in the public eye and clearly doesn’t mind short liaisons, so what could go wrong? At the same time, actor Castiel Novak is tired of the magazines blasting all of his real or imagined relationships in public. He just wants to find real love and happiness without turning his love life into cheap entertainment for the masses. When they meet each other, there’s instant chemistry, but neither of them is prepared for what is yet to come. Words: 20627, Chapters: 5/5, Language: English Fandoms: Supernatural (TV 2005) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester, Meg Masters, Charlie Bradbury, Gabriel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester Additional Tags: Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Actor Castiel (Supernatural), Musician Dean Winchester, Singer Dean Winchester, Songwriter Dean Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Pansexual Castiel (Supernatural), Vacation, Paradise Island, Amusement Parks, bungee jumping, Drinking, Angst and Romance, Humor, Smut, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, DCBTV | DeanCas Bang (Taylor's Version) 2023, Talk Shows, Gossip, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, First Meetings, Rumors, Openly Queer Characters, Paparazzi read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/pbguI1B

[laurabenanti]

top 5 general danvers fics (your recommendations list is too big)

... i split this into categories to make it easier it wasn't easier i just want to sob and i think i just need to have their own page at this point because... yeah there's a lot of gd fics in there compared to everything else.

fave of all time: anatomy of a stoic by nashur

look - if you're not going to read anything here except for one thing - please read this. it's legit one of my top 3 fics of all time - regardless of ship or fandom or anything along those lines. i have only been able to convince one other person to read it, and they agreed it was fantastic. it's under 12k words, is a one-shot, and i really don't think you even need to know anything prior to going into this to enjoy it [it's au so knowledge of general fandom things is unneeded]. seriously - i do not shut up about this fic if stuff ever gets brought up to me. i reread it a lot because i like it that much. TL;DR please read this fic

ask me my top 5/10 anything

The other 4 are below the cut because i babbled and put small descriptions [from ao3] to assist~ [let's see if the read more behaves...]

fave canon divergence: sword of damocles by uisceB

Canon divergent from 1x13: When Hank shows up on the rooftop to stop Astra from activating Myriad, Astra manages to outmaneuver him, taking Alex hostage as a means of escape. Now, Alex finds herself a prisoner at the hostile Fort Rozz base, but as time goes by, she and Astra begin to form an unexpected bond, challenging each of their beliefs, and loyalties.

fave under 5k words: but gravity, love strangely may defy by mzhlf

In which Astra tries her absolute hardest not to care about people. It doesn't go well.

fave fic that's trope based: (soulmates au) a remedy for old injuries

Astra gets a second chance at life, when it is discovered that she’s being held captive by Cadmus, instead of dead at Alex’s hands as thought, and Alex brings her out. When a chance event reveals that the two of them are soulmates, Alex isn’t so sure that it will work out, for the two of them have many demons to get past. But, with Astra committed to a change of path, and Alex committed to keeping an open mind about her, both of them realize that they have more to offer each other than they had ever dreamed. A story about how Alex and Astra find their way to each other, and to happiness.

fave by a friend: engagements by theonlyspl

"Do you ever think we should just stop this?" her voice is almost alien in its huskiness, and considering the warm body next to her, somehow it seems appropriate. An Anon responded to a meme on tumblr asking for “Do you ever think we should just stop this?” + Alex/Astra and here's the result.

THIS IS CHEATING BUT I PUT A 6TH & 7th BECAUSE - idk

fave with an additional featured pairing: (has supercorp) a proper kryptonian proposal

Astra comes up with a brilliant plan to get Kara to propose to Lena, and ropes Alex in to help her. Along the way, though, she just might find herself ambushed by her own feelings for Alex.

fave crack / humor fic: some tough alien you are... by anonymississippi

Astra blows out her powers during a freak desert thunderstorm and wakes up the next morning feeling feverish and achy. Thankfully, her not-so-useless human roommate is there to look after her.

a couple honorable mentions because i just can't not put them you feel

(holiday cuteness) i saw mommy kissing astra by nashur

(domestic fluff) rainy mornings and black coffee by anonymississippi

(social media au - something i never knew i wanted) swipe right by anonymississippi

[writerdragonfly]

AO3 Ask Meme

Rules:  Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! how fun! (This has been answered in my drafts since 6/29/2016 lmao I’m including both the answer then and now.)

1. What’s your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?   Mature (39) || Mature (61) Teen (37) || Teen (60) Not really surprising, though I'm pretty sure I was overly cautious tagging most of those M rated ones. || Still probably true, tbh.

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer? No Archive Warnings Apply (63) is the most common. || Same! It’s at 107 now though. Underage (2) is least common. || Still there, lol Eh, not really.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences? M/M (60) || (104) F/M (21) || (34) Gen (16) || (43) F/F (3) || (5) Multi (1) || (4) I lean toward slash as of late, which isn't deliberate but I'm not upset about it either. There are some FANTASTIC writers out there, which inspire me to write slash more often than I expected. || This is still skewed that way. 

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot? The Flash (TV 2014) (36) || The Flash (TV 2014) (38) Teen Wolf (TV) (28) || Teen Wolf (TV) (34) Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (8) || Stargate Atlantis (27) Hawaii Five-0 (2010) (6) || Harry Potter (11)

Technically speaking. I'm still active in all of them. Even though I was like... 100% positive I was out of Teen Wolf a few months ago, I just posted a new fic there. I write a LOT (even if it doesn’t end up on AO3 very fast) so yeah, there’s migration. || Look, I’m STILL in a lot of fandoms, so even this doesn’t tell you the whole story. I think I’ve essentially left Teen Wolf a couple times a year since this.

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled? Barry Allen/Leonard Snart (31) ||  Barry Allen/Leonard Snart (33) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (26) || Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (31) Captain Cold/The Flash (25) || Rodney McKay/John Sheppard (27) Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams (6) || Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams (11) Eddie Thawne/Iris West (3) I actually included my 5th most popular one too because my #1 and #3 are actually THE SAME PAIRING  || lol, my current #5 is Draco/Ginny (5)

  I'm not at all puzzled actually, except I'm pretty sure that Draco/Ginny should be in there somewhere higher than it is because I used to be really really bad at tagging apparently.  || LOL. Now, if I put all my fanfiction.net fic on ao3...

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two: Angst (17)  || Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (36) Coldflash Week 2015 (6)  || Angst (19) Kid Fic (6)  || This was here because of a tie, My current #3 is Angst with a Happy Ending (16). Kid Fic is #4 (10)

Bottom Two: Parent Leonard Snart (3)  || Retrospectively, I realize it only shows the top ten tags, so this is only the bottom two three of my current top ten. Established Relationship (6) Pre-Relationship (3)  ||  Canonical Character Death (6) and Original Character Death (6)

Actually, that sounds like fun. ANGSTY KID FIC WITH PAPA LEN AND PRE-RELATIONSHIP FEELS? Yes, please.  Also, I'm STILL bad at tagging apparently.  || Okay, still bad at tagging. But, Canon Divergent angst with a happy ending kid fic, with an established relationship and canon and original character death sounds painful and up my alley. 

7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing? Uh, eighteen? That doesn't sound right... Erm. Okay, some of those are tumblr one sentence fic collections, so not technically WIPs. Just, you know, like 14 of them are.  || LMAO 49. Eight are one sentence fic collections, short prompt responses, or art.

At the moment, the only one actually in danger of not being finished is In Crystal Cages, Our Memories Burn because it's hard to want to finish a fic that doesn't have much for readers. It's also super involved and not as fun. OTHERWISE, all my WIPs should be continued at some point, even the one crossover I haven't updated in over two years.  || I still noodle around with most of these on occasion. I want to finish them all! I am easily distracted though. Someone prod me with a stick. I want to start updating a fic or posting a oneshot every day starting August 1st. 

8. Tag 8 people!

@areyoucoldflash​  || Lol, I bet this was waiting because I had only one person tagged. I’m tagging the first people I either remember or recognize when I type letters. I don’t even remember whether some of you write tbh lmao  @rainingskyguy @yetanotherobsessivereader @popkin16 @idreamofdraco @crimsondomingo @aerodaltonimperial @aerdnanocte

[httprosetico]

MCU Shipping Statistical Analysis

Okay, so, I wanted to analyze the amount of fanworks created about characters relative to their importance in the MCU, with a focus on race. In particular, I wanted to look at how many works on ao3 focus (meaning it is the first tagged relationship) on a relationship (/ or &) that includes that particular character and compare that to their amount of screentime, which I am using as a proxy for “importance.” I wanted to specifically look at the first tagged relationship because often (at least in my fandom circles) it feels like that’s why people are reading fics. Therefore, I’m not particularly interested in background ships or relationships, which sometimes feel like they’re just there to fill out the world.

I wanted to do this analysis after listening to the Fansplaining ( @fansplaining​ ) episodes about race and fandom, in which a lot of very smart people talked about the lack of POCs in fanfic. One argument I’ve heard is that the lack of shipping in fic is because of the lack of media representation. I wanted to see if this was true, and I thought that normalizing shipping by screentime would allow for more direct comparison between characters.

Methodology

To do this, I first scraped the top 50,000 kudos-ed fics in the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom on ao3 for their top relationship tag. 

After collecting this data, the number of total fics was added up for each character (e.g., Steve Rogers total number would equal the total number of Steve/Tony + Steve/Bucky + Steve/Peggy... etc). This number was then normalized by the maximum number (e.g., if the character with the highest number of fics including them was Steve Rogers, I would divide every number in the dataset by his). The amount of screentime was also normalized by the maximum amount of screentime (everyone’s screentime was divided by Tony Stark’s amount of screentime). Therefore, if a character’s amount of fic or shipping was perfectly proportional to their amount of screentime, when I divided shipping by screentime, I would get 1.

To calculate the character’s screentime, I used this list to add up the total screentime from different MCU movies. This list does not include Deadpool, X-men, or JARVIS.

Results

Figure 1. Normalized Shipping divided by Normalized Screentime using AO3 data

This chart is pretty impossible to read, so I’m going to break it down, 25 characters at a time, left to right. However, this chart gives a good feel for the relative scale we’re looking at here.

Figure 2. Normalized Shipping divided by Normalized Screentime for Top 25 Characters in AO3 Data

Figure 3. Normalized Shipping divided by Normalized Screentime for Top 25-50 Characters in AO3 Data

Figure 4. Normalized Shipping divided by Normalized Screentime for Top 50-75 Characters in AO3 Data

Figure 5. Normalized Shipping divided by Normalized Screentime for Top 75-102 Characters in AO3 Data

Figure 6. Normalized Time and Normalized Shipping for the characters with ratios above or equal to 1

Discussion

In this analysis, I looked at every named character that has more than 15 seconds of screentime. The chart in Figure 1, however, shows 102 characters. These are only the characters that show up at least once in the top 50,000 AO3 fics (again, only looking at the top tagged relationship). For reference, there were 242 total characters in my list, so less than half appeared in the data I analyzed. Some characters who did not show up in the main relationship tag of any of the fics, to my surprise, include Okoye, Talos, Ava Starr, Aldrich Killian, Hank Pym, Kaecilius, and Mar-vell. These are all characters with significant screentime and importance who I thought would show up in fic more prominently (Okoye is right below Darcy Lewis and right above Ultron in screentime, for example).

The AO3 results may be biased due to sorting by kudos, which may lead to overrepresentation of older, more established characters. Also, I am assuming that most fics use the tagging convention of most important ship first, which I generally see to be true. I am also assuming that the fics did not change in their kudos ranking significantly during the time in which I was scraping the data (took about 9hrs), which might lead to a couple double counts or missing fics if a fic moved up or down a page.

To analyze the differences correlated to race, I sorted the characters into six categories: white, black, asian, hispanic, alien races, and animals/trees. There is some room for interpretation here, especially with alien characters who have Earthly-racial signifiers. When in doubt of a human character’s race, I looked to their actor’s race. I am using American racial categories. 

There were 125 white characters, with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.187 with a standard deviation of 0.671.

There were 39 black characters, with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.0406 with a standard deviation of 0.0885.

There were 34 alien characters, with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.0138 with a standard deviation of 0.0359.

There were 6 hispanic characters (I may be missing some because this number is ridiculous), with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.0201 with a standard deviation of 0.0413.

There were 19 asian characters, with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.00860 with a standard deviation of 0.0238.

There were 4 animals/trees (Goose, Rocket, Groot, Fenris), with an average normalized shipping/normalized screentime ratio of 0.0212 with a standard deviation of 0.0178.

Here is that data visualized:

The standard deviation we see in this data are relatively large, but this is because more than half of the characters have ratios of 0. Or, in the case of the white characters, it is because a couple of them have ridiculously large numbers. I don’t think that this invalidates the data: if we want to compare how shipping is treated across different races, those outliers, like the Bucky Barneses and the Darcy Lewises, need to be acknowledged. If we were seeing mega-ships come out of nowhere for characters of every race, the average ratios would be much more balanced.

Tl;dr

An argument that is repeated often, whether strawman or not, is that there are not enough characters of color represented in the media, and that’s why they show up so much less in shipping and fic. This data arguably shows that even when characters of color are represented, specifically in the MCU, they get disproportionately less attention in fanfic than their white counterparts might.

[muggle-writes]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! What are some ways you organize your notes/writing thoughts?

thanks for asking! Sorry I'm answering late, I had a rough headache and tried to sleep it off for most of Saturday so it's like 2am Sunday now (3am when I finished because I'm tired enough to have very little filter which means it's ramble time) but I'm awake so I'm answering.

to be honest, it depends on where I am and whether I have free time where there's nothing else I "should" be doing.

if I'm out and about, or if I "should" be doing something else I'll be writing on my phone. usually with a program called Quip, occasionally with a program called Bookstack. I'm out at my QP's right now, and she and my wife are talking video games, and I don't have my laptop handy so I'm writing in Quip. it's kind of a dropbox/google docs alternative, and it has a not-terrible app. I sort everything into a personal writing folder (i used to use quip for other things too, which I kept in other folders since it has a decent checklist ability) and if I expect something to be a long story I'll create a folder for it and put different scenes in different documents in that folder. if I expect it to be short, I'll just create a document straight in the writing folder and hopefully remember to give it a descriptive name. If I'm intending to write something especially short and post it immediately, like this, I won't usually give it a title. sometimes this bites me in the butt but mostly it's fine. I write things in quip rather than directly in the tumblr editor for two related reasons: tumblr mobile has a really annoying habit of eating my longer posts instead of posting them. i haven't figured out if this is more related to the length of the text added, or the length of time I have the draft open. on top of that, if I type it in tumblr mobile and try to make a backup copy, the largest unit I can copy at a time is a paragraph, not the whole document, so it would be a hassle to copy out. often, for posts this long, I wind up copying in three or four paragraphs at a time, saving the draft again, and waiting for tomorrow to display my changes before I click edit draft and add another few. it's easier to copy text into tumblr than out of it

if I'm on bookstack (a mediocre Google docs/scrivener alternative but it's open source and my wife runs an instance so I've tried it out. among other problems, it doesn't have an app so I have to write through my mobile browser and I have to have internet. quip stores locally regardless and syncs with the internet when possible so I tend to use quip instead) When I'm using bookstack, I'm forced to use its organization system. broadest to narrowest categories: shelves books, chapters, pages. you can put pages directly into books, or into chapters. I usually use pages as scenes, and keep them sorted into chapters. in theory I like bookstack but it needs some major improvements (options for variable theme, offline mode, general mobile UI, etc) before I would actually recommend it.

If I have my laptop I occasionally write in bookstack but more often Microsoft Word (I got a free student copy when I was in college and whenever my current laptop dies I'm going to get Open Office or Libre Office instead rather than pay for Microsoft.)

I sort my writing into fanfiction and original works. there's very little in the original works side, sadly. Within fanfiction, since I generally publish to ao3 as I go, I separate it into folders incomplete and completed. within each, I sort it into fandoms, within incomplete, I then have a folder for each fic, and then documents titled "published" and "unpublished" within each. within completed, there's individual documents for each fic (equivalent to "published" within incomplete) I cut and paste things between documents, or move documents around as necessary

for editing, it's a different story:

in Word, if I'm writing a variant of a scene I've already written, and I want to keep the old one and decide later which one I like better, I'll strikethrough the old paragraph and write another. If I get several of these I'll color code the old scenes so I can tell which one's which (sometimes I reuse parts of sentences in like. 3/5 variants so they're usually intertwined. my drafts get colorful) If I'm going in a really drastically different direction, sometimes I'll create a new document and in the title describe what the difference is.

In Quip (actually, in bookstack too, when I'm on mobile, so probably it's just my phone keyboard not playing nice with long documents. somehow I never have the same issue when I'm writing directly in the tumblr app) if I try to select large sections and replace or delete them, it deletes significantly more than I want it to, probably twice as many characters? twice as many minus one? idk. if I'm not happy with something in quip, it's a little glitchy about strikethrough so I'll just put a few blank lines, a line of squiggles (~) and/or an all caps "ALTERNATELY" and another line break and then the replacement.

anyway. that's all for when I'm composing prose (or publishable poetry)

when I'm scribbling down notes to keep them because I'm plotting a longer story or because I want to write but don't have time, I'll open up one of the above programs (usually quip or word) and create a bullet point list of sentence fragments and notes. I put major points at the top level of bullet points, indent for the next level of detail under each one. the top level bullets are usually vaguely in chronologial (or storytelling) order, but flashbacks/"this sets up for..." often show up in the nested bullets.

If I have a really thorough outline, with a full sentence for every scene, in word I'll make a copy of the outline with a page break between each outline point, and then I'll skip around between scenes based on my inspiration and write the scenes in their corresponding place in the draft so that the end result is pretty effortlessly in order. (in bookstack, I'll create "pages" for each scene. in quip I put three or four line breaks between the scene prompts or occasionally split them into separate documents.)

[memorydragon]

AO3 meme

(stole this from Nar)

Rules: Go to your AO3 works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! FANFIC - 105 fics What’re your first and second most common work ratings? Teen and up, with 49.  Then General audiences with 45. What’s your most common archive warning? No Archive Warnings Apply 99 Least common? Rape/Non-Con, with one. Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer? I like trying new things and am willing to push whatever’s outside of my comfort zone into my comfort zone.  I also keep trying aus, and we all know how that goes.  But really, I’ll try anything once.  I’ve written characters I’ve hated, so like, I’m generally willing to give most things a go. How many stories have you made in each pairing category? Gen - 61 M/M - 58 M/F -11 F/F - 1.  I apparently need to write more lesbians.  I should rectify this. Multi - 1

Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences? I need to write more femslash, apparently.  But really, all of the gen is unsurprising. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Classic Who - 40 New Who - 22 (which is a bit misleading, because a lot of those were crossovers with classic who) The Avengers - 22 And a multi-way tie I have no desire to type it all out.  XD Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot? I migrate, but I do sometimes go back as well.   What are your top 5 relationship tags? The Doctor/The Master - 33 Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - 24 And the rest are some variation of Doctor/Master or &s.  ^^;;;; Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled? I wrote a lot for DW, ngl.  I don’t write it any more though.  I’ve got some DC stuff I haven’t put up yet, but those are various relationships, because I go ship loose and fancy free in that fandom, though expect some Trinity stuff since I joined the server.  XD What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2?

Angst - 45 Humor - 36 and an honorable mention to Hurt/Comfort at 33

Bottom 2 are: The Master has Issues -10 Tony Feels - 9 though I imagine there are more they aren’t showing me.

What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into an fic? You’d probably get my one crazy plot dream of the Master disguising himself as Tony Stark while Tony has been sent to Gallifrey.  Here is the dream itself: “I did have a fairly odd dream that seems like it would be a good fanfic. Tony Stark was taken out of time by the Time Lords on Gallifrey because he would apparently cause the Earth to be the center of a giant rip in the universe that would disrupt everything. Tony is not best pleased by this, torments the Time Lords who are deciding what to do with him (Death sentences for lesser creatures are against the law or something) by trying to sleep with half of the High Council and completely scandalize the rest (Oh, God. Tony Stark would enjoy that far too much).

“Meanwhile, back on Earth, no one has noticed Tony's gone missing. Mainly because he hasn't. Well, he has, but the Master has slipped on a disguise so that he can create a massive rip in the universe and being Tony Stark apparently helps that goal some how. The Avengers are fairly suspicious, but they can't figure out what's wrong with Tony.

“Then the Doctor comes in and all hell breaks loose.”

Honestly, that seems like it would cover all of those.   How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

None!  I never post unfinished fic.  Even my chapter fics have been written entirely before I start posting.  I do have a series that could have continued, but I just decided writing sex was not worth it.  Amy-verse also had two more fics (one written but unposted, the other planned but unwritten) but that was about the time I fell out of fandom.  Also, I entertained a Mr. Pond and the Doctor short of Rory getting stuck with the Fifth Doctor, but it’s probably a good thing I never tried that.  Five hated working with me.  

[thelaithlyworm]

Borrowed this AO3 meme off potentiality_26. Rules: Go to your AO3 works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! I have 121 works posted on AO3. What’re your first and second most common work ratings? Teen (59) General Audiences (56) What’s your most common archive warning? No Archive Warnings Apply (111) Least common? Major Character Death (1) Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer? Reasonably. I'll play around with form fairly often, and sometimes write a rarepair out of curiosity as to how it would play out.   How many stories have you made in each pairing category? Gen (98) F/M (23) M/M (13) F/F (9) Multi (4) Other (2) Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences? Hmm. Somewhat accidental. I'm big on writing intense friendships, and I guess that plays out in the tags. I need to up my F/F game, I think. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? 1. The Musketeers (2014) (82) (The fandom has been good to me) 2. xxxHolic (8) 3. Marvel Cinematic Universe (7) 4. CLAMP - Works (6) Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot? I'm still big on Musketeers. While I still read in the others sometimes, I haven't felt much pull to write anything new. What are your top 4 relationship tags? 1. Aramis & Milady de Winter (21) (I was writing a series with a lot of itty bitty entries, so it disproportionately weighs in the tags. Still think they'd have an amazing friendship, though.) 2. Aramis & Athos & Porthos (8) 3. Aramis & Porthos (8) 4. A tie between Aramis/OC (5), Aramis/Athos (5), Aramis/Porthos (5), and Aramis/Queen Anne (5) Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled? Well, gee, you might have picked out my favourite character *cough*. I'm surprised there's not more Aramis/Athos tbh. Should get on that...       What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? Top Two: Hurt/Comfort (12) Humour (8) Bottom Two: Slice of Life (6) Prequel (6) (though, they're still common enough to *show up* so I use them a fair bit.) What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic? Something funny and bittersweet about Aramis, Athos, and Porthos, probably. They're all hurting in their way, so the H/C is easy to work in, and there's plenty of comedy to build on. If I could work in Constance somehow, that would be nifty. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing? Six. Two of them are basically series of short stories on a common theme, two have plot (and I should really get on that). One I was cross-posting over from fanfiction.net and got distracted before I was done (*blush*). One is an original novel that is languishing out of lack of interest. From myself, and other readers. That was fun! Time to do some more writing and shift those tags... Tagging (if they want): @iamanathemadevice @jadedbirch @donnaimmaculata @r0b0tb0y

[featherquillpen]

AO3 Meme

Picking up this meme from @convenientalias. Pick it up from me if you like, it’s fun!

Rules: Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! (Note that sometimes AO3 filters lie.)

1. What are your first and second most common work ratings?

General Audiences: 90

Teen and Up Audiences: 46

I have spent a lot of my fandom energy writing worldbuilding- and plot-driven gen stories – not that I don’t write more explicit sex and violence sometimes.

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

Most common: Graphic Depictions of Violence: 17

Least Common: Rape/Non-Con: 0

I’m an adventurous writer for sure, though I don’t think that has anything to do with the archive warnings I use. Almost the violence-tagged works are for Animorphs fics, and Animorphs is canonically very gory and violent, so I’m mostly just matching the source material.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

Gen: 92

Multi: 37

M/M: 25

F/M: 14

F/F: 10

I’m definitely largely a gen writer because I love to write about familial love and about big thinky thoughts and worldbuilding. But when it comes to shipping, I go wild for polyships. I imprinted on triad relationships with Doctor/Jack/Rose in Doctor Who fandom and haven’t stopped since. Looking at this I really need to write more femslash though.

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

Doctor Who: 61

Animorphs: 60

Leverage: 18

Torchwood: 15

Doctor Who and Torchwood were my first fandoms, and I wrote prolifically in them, but I haven’t been active in them for years, and I don’t think anyone here on Tumblr follows me for that content – Doctor Who and Torchwood were from back in my Livejournal days. I’ve been active in Animorphs fandom for a long time now and don’t really see myself stopping, as it’s a lifelong passion of mine. Any day now my Animorphs fic total will surpass my Doctor Who total. I was more active in Leverage fandom when I was watching the show a couple years ago, but I’d still consider myself an active fan of the show today.

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Jack Harkness: 42

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill: 37

Tobias (Animorphs): 29

Rachel (Animorphs): 25

Captain Jack Harkness was the biggest reason I loved Doctor Who and Torchwood, really. He was the first canonical LGBT character I ever saw on television, and he was so, so important to me. All I wanted to do was write endless fic about him. My feelings about Doctor Who have never really been the same since he was permanently written out of the Whoniverse.

I’m honestly not sure why I’ve written so much more fic about Ax than the other Animorphs? I love Ax with all my heart, but I love all the Animorphs with all my heart, so.... *shrug*

Bonus, the top 4 relationships tagged:

Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer: 17

The Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler: 17

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill & Tobias: 9

Rachel/Tobias: 8

Yes, hello there, my two favorite triad relationships that own my soul. And then hello there, my favorite platonic soulmate/found family relationship that owns my soul. And then Rachel/Tobias, which... I don’t even ship all that much? How did that happen?

What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two:

Angst

Canon-Compliant

Bottom Two

There’s a lot of tags I’ve used only once, so I’m going to pick two at random.

Awkward Flirting

Teenage Drama

If I combined all four of these into a fic I’d just get.... an angsty Jake/Cassie fic in Animorphs, probably?

How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

My only current WIP is Destroyer of Worlds, which I will post a new chapter of every Wednesday until it is complete, rest assured.

[kedavranox]

AO3 Filter Meme!

Tagged by @gracerene09 and @magpiefngrl. Thank you! 

Since I’m procrastinating writing rn, I thought I’d do a meme. 

Rules: Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions! @gracerene09 I stole your formatting because I’m lazy af.

1. What are your first and second most common work ratings?

Explicit (21)

Mature (14)

I also like smut. I very rarely write teen fics. Maybe a teen/gen drabble or two. But I’m mostly here for the smut. 

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

Most common: No Archive Warnings Apply (31)

Least Common: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (6)

I think I used to use the ‘No Archive Warnings Apply’ before the ‘Chose not to use warnings’ tag ever existed. I have...issues with tagging and they way fandom tries to force creators to use them, but I’m saving that for another post. 

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

M/M (39)

F/M (2)

Multi (2)

Gen (1)

I have never written femmeslash?! Lol. That’s interesting af. 

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (43)

I don’t plan on ever writing for any other fandoms under this pseud. I have a Voltron fic coming up, but that’s be under my Voltron pseud, neurada. I have to have it separate, just like my blogs. My brain has strange needs, okay? 

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Harry Potter (13)

Draco Malfoy (12)

Ron Weasley (8)

Hermione Granger (5)

Yes it does. Harry is me my Soulmate. Draco is his soulmate. And Ron is my Harry’s best mate so. Yeah. Pretty spot on.

Although this also shows how terrible I am at tagging. I’ve written 43 fics but Harry is only tagged 13 times? LMAO

Bonus, the top 4 3 relationships I have tagged:

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (29)

Ron Weasley/Blaise Zabini (2)

Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini (2)

Harry Potter/Original Male Character(s) (2)

I mean. Everything you need to know about me is in those tags tbh.

What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two:

Angst (10)

Anal Sex (8)

Yep. Pretty much. Standard nox. LMAO. I am so predictable. 

Bottom Two :

Drabble (3)

Established Relationship (3)

Makes sense. Drabbles exhaust me, and I used to think established relationship fics were lazy. (That pov has definitely changed LOL!)

How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

One. I’m sorry. So very sorry. That’s all I’ll say. This interview is closed. 

(lol)

8. Tag people!

If you want to do this and no one has tagged you pls do it and tag me! I’d love to read it. ❤❤

[ao3feed-destiel-02]

Aint it funny Rumors fly

Ain’t it funny, Rumors fly https://ift.tt/3Scb0dA by Tossukka Singer and songwriter Dean Winchester has come out of the closet more times than he can count. After the release of his new album, he had hoped that queer audiences would find him relatable and accept him as one of them. There’s only one problem: all his relationships with other men have taken place before he was a household name, which makes some people question his identity. Luckily, he has an easy solution in his mind. He just needs to find a guy to date him for a while and get some photos of them on the front pages. From the celebrity news, Dean learns that Castiel Novak is newly single and sets his eyes on him. Castiel already is in the public eye and clearly doesn’t mind short liaisons, so what could go wrong? At the same time, actor Castiel Novak is tired of the magazines blasting all of his real or imagined relationships in public. He just wants to find real love and happiness without turning his love life into cheap entertainment for the masses. When they meet each other, there’s instant chemistry, but neither of them is prepared for what is yet to come. Words: 20627, Chapters: 5/5, Language: English Fandoms: Supernatural (TV 2005) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester, Meg Masters, Charlie Bradbury, Gabriel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester Additional Tags: Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Actor Castiel (Supernatural), Musician Dean Winchester, Singer Dean Winchester, Songwriter Dean Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Pansexual Castiel (Supernatural), Vacation, Paradise Island, Amusement Parks, bungee jumping, Drinking, Angst and Romance, Humor, Smut, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, DCBTV | DeanCas Bang (Taylor's Version) 2023, Talk Shows, Gossip, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, First Meetings, Rumors, Openly Queer Characters, Paparazzi via AO3 works tagged 'Castiel/Dean Winchester' https://ift.tt/muZ87g2 September 20, 2023 at 02:47AM

[habibialkaysani]

ao3 filters meme

I was tagged by @crollalanzaa​ - thank youuuu.

Rules: Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!

1. What’s your first and second most common work ratings?

general audiences (54)

explicit (50)

lmaoooooo. so uh both ends of the scale, then. that’s just. I find that hilarious, personally. esp the fact that in total I have more sfw fics than nsfw.

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

Most common: no archive warnings apply (159)

Least Common: creator chose not to use archive warnings (3) - they’re just with iffy issues that could potentially fall into the warnings in certain jurisdictions but that I felt would be spoilery, or else it was canon-typical so I didn’t want to scare people away with it.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

f/m (115)

gen (34)

f/f (30)

multi (1)

it’s... surprising that the vast majority of my fic is f/m but then it’s not, because some of my favourite pairings that I write for are f/m like dutchjohnny and westallen. I’m kinda shocked that gen ranks higher than f/f tbh.

so I mean to an extent it’s accidental (read: every single oliver/felicity and oliver/laurel fic on there, lol) but if you look at my more recent fic it’s clear that my preference is definitely f/f in the last year or so.

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

arrow (125)

the flash (30)

legends of tomorrow (10)

killjoys (6)

good god. it is... so sad that I have so many arrow fics when I’m so disillusioned with the fandom and show, lol. I haven’t written anything lot in a while but I do have a tomance idea that I just gotta put down on paper. same with the flash. and killjoys I tend to migrate to at a certain time of year and then when dctv comes back I return to that.

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

oliver queen (77)

felicity smoak (65)

laurel lance (60)

nyssa al ghul (32)

alksgnasklgnaklgnsaklgnaslkgnaslkgnlk that’s such a fucking travesty I actually can’t even and idk whether to laugh or cry

Bonus, the top 4 relationships tagged:

oliver queen/felicity smoak (57)

nyssa al ghul/laurel lance (26)

barry allen/iris west (22)

laurel lance/oliver queen (14)

again. idk what to say. HOW are my lauryssa and westallen counts so low??? what a fucking travesty that is. a mess. dia-fucking-bolical. 

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two:

missing scene (61)

smut (48)

Bottom Two:

hurt/comfort (10)

first time (10)

none of those surprise me. like not even a little. and I bet there’s a lauriver fic with that combo. I’m gonna check.

ah. interesting. I didn’t find any. maybe I need to get better at tagging my fic then lol.

7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

rn I’ve just got my earth-7 lauryssa fic the chase but idk if I’ll ever finish it because the spark has kinda fizzled out?

8. Tag people!

@absentlyabbie @zaritomaz @freaoscanlin @yesokayiknow @sappholady @artemisodinson @moonlightcanary @sophiainspace

[prince-simon]

AO3 Filter Meme

Thank you for tagging me @brooklynbabybucky <333 this is gonna be funnn

Rules: Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!

1. What are your first and second most common work ratings?

General Audiences (34)

Teen and Up Audiences (11)

I guess most of my stuff is just a lot of sfw fluff haha

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

Most common: No Archive Warnings Apply (29)

Least Common: Graphic Depictions of Violence (2)

Idk if I’m an adventurous writer lmao but those two works of Graphic Depictions of Violence were definitely a challenge and I loved writing them. I’m not sure I could ever write Major Character Death- well, actually, that’s a lie, because I have one of those in my drafts oops but yeah, most readers tend to avoid that tag so I guess I want the validation so I stay clear of it

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?

M/M (47)

F/F (7)

F/M (3)

Gen (2)

Most of my fics are Evak so this is not surprising at all. I am quite proud of the fact that for when I first started posting on ao3, for SKAM Fic Week 2017, I had a different pairing for each day. I wish the fandom was more interested in F/F too so it would be more inspiring to write those but I think 7 works in that category isn’t bad at all.

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

SKAM (Norway) (48)

DRUCK | SKAM (Germany) (3)

All for the Game - Nora Sakavic (2)

SKAM (Italy) (1)

These are also the only four fandoms I’m writing for. You can see, I’m pretty much obsessed with SKAM and its remakes and I think I’m definitely gonna write more for each of these in the future. As for the All for the Game series, it was super fun to write for that, especially because it was in a time where I was super uninspired to write anything so I’m quite proud of finishing those. I definitely want to write for that again.

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

Isak Valtersen (46)

Even Bech Næsheim (42)

Jonas Noah Vasquez (8)

Eskild Tryggvason, Vilde Lien Hellerud, Eva Kviig Mohn, Sana Bakkoush, Sonja (SKAM) (6)

I’m actually surprised that Jonas has two more tags than the others. Magnus Fossbakken and Noora Amalie Sætre are tagged with (5) each so I guess I’m very balanced with my characters... except, well, Evak. Really nothing surprising about that

Bonus, the top 4 relationships I have tagged:

Even Bech Næsheim/Isak Valtersen (41)

Magnus Fossbakken/Vilde Lien Hellerud, Jonas Augustin/Matteo Florenzi, Jonas Augustin/Hanna Jung (2)

Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Eva Kviig Mohn/Vilde Lien Hellerud, Eva Kvigg Mohn/Jonas Noah Vasquez, Noora Amalie Sætre/Jonas Noah Vasquez, Sana Bakkoush & Isak Valtersen (1)

I am pretty sure some relationships are missing here because I wrote an Eliskild fic but oh well. Again, my relationships are pretty balanced and then there’s Evak with 41 tags lmao

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Top Two:

Fluff (20)

SKAM Fic Week (14)

I’m so happy about the fic week tag because it shows that I participated for all seven days in both fic weeks, which was especially hard in this year’s because I was in the middle of a writer’s block

Bottom Two :

Established Relationship, First Kiss (5)

Cabin Fic, Falling in Love (4)

I think it’s funny how I wrote the same amount of Established Relationship and First Kiss and I’m honestly surprised I wrote 4 Cabin Fics??? I honestly don’t remember lmao. But yeah, combining all of them would be the softest thing ever probably

7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

I only have one, my fic for the SKAM Reverse Bang. Usually, when I have a WIP on ao3, I can finish it pretty quickly because I get super inspired by the comments I get but I am in such a writing slump right now, that I just can’t seem to finish this one. I want to, because I have plans for it, but it just doesn’t flow right now. For everyone reading it: please be patient, I’ll finish it eventually <3

8. Tag people!

I’m gonna skip this one oops. If any of my writer followers wants to do it, go ahead though <3

[honeyby]

In regards to "where is the m/m at?" question, its actually an interesting reversal in fandom to see the f/f ships on top. Most fandoms you find have m/m ships as the runaway leaders. Its a more recent trend to see f/f ships actually compete and occasionally be the top dog. If you go to the main AO3 page and just click through each of the top 5 listings for each category, you'll find that more often than not the m/m ships reign supreme, and its super interesting that RWBY subverts this.

It really is such a fascinating reversal, especially the sheer dominance of the top two f/f ships. What really helps is that RWBY’s main characters are all female and that the show has a large female cast in general. You’ll also notice that the most popular m/m ships (other than Se/amonkeys, which gets a boost by being a “solution” for getting Sun away from Blake) involve the adults, of which we have more guys than girls. If you look at media where the biggest ships were or are m/m (Supernatural, Voltron, or Kingdom Hearts just to name a few), there tend to be significantly more male characters than female ones.

 Of our initial main cast (RWBY and JNPR) we have only two guys, both of whom have been linked with women since their introduction. By contrast, most of team RWBY’s interactions are with each other and the closest thing any of them have to a male love interest is Blake and Sun, and Sun doesn’t get introduced to the end of volume 1 and it’s easy to read a lot of their interactions (especially in volumes 4 and 5) as platonic. Not to mention we have characters like Weiss and Yang, with Yang especially never having a significant moment with any guys her age (Mercury comes the closest in their singles match but they’re pretty soundly on different sides so it’s not exactly romantic).

Personally it’s refreshing to be a part of a fandom with such a large f/f shipping community; hell, it’s refreshing to have a show with such a large and strong female cast in general.

[notwhelmedyet]

TF Fanfic Census 2017 (pt. 4) : IDW Reader Response

Ever wonder what the ‘average’ reader response to fanfic in this fandom was? ...Well, that turns out to be hard to quantify, but I’ve got a lot of graphs and I’m gonna try.

Then we’ll look at the most popular IDW fics and see if they’ve got anything in common.

So, first off! If you have trouble reading the graphs, they’re also available in an image post here and here.

Now let’s look at IDW compared to some other Transformers shows. Shows that have aired on television recently have higher hits, which I’m taking to mean a larger readership. (The size of each bubble indicates the number of stories published) However, maybe readers reread those series more often.

IDW has a smaller median hits than any of the major sub-fandoms except Gen 1, but has the highest median kudos. Cool! That seems to indicate that IDW readers are really invested and active readers. (Or, possibly that all of the readers are also writers and they know how much their fellow writers appreciate kudos.)

I’m going to usually neglect comments and bookmarks for this analysis because they’re usually equal and somewhere between 2 and 5. Pretty boring.

Also, I should note that there are some things I can’t measure here. Presumably a lot of popular works are well written, by well-regarded writers, about characters or subjects people wanted to read about etc. I can only quantify data that is tagged and easily searchable.

Anyway, let’s look at Transformers compared to some other random fanfiction communities.

Yeah, I randomly picked a bunch of things I’ve read fanfic from + Harry Potter cause it’s big. Sue me.

Anyway, I’d say the interesting trend here is the lack of a trend. There’s no correlation between number of stories published and hits or kudos. There’s a general trend line: the more hits you get, the more readers are around to give kudos, which is what’s throwing the Marvel cinematic stuff up so high. IDW Transformers is a bit of an outlier for median kudos compared to median hits. 👍

Breaking It Down

Let’s get interesting - Does the rating of a fic (G, T, M, or E) impact its reader response? What about one-shots versus multichapter stories?

Looking at hits, we can see that readership is strongly stratified. If you want more hits, write multi-chapter works and write explicit fic. (There may be a wordcount bias here, we’ll explore that later)

But then, if we look at Kudos, we see that gap narrow. One-shots, G, and T fics get fewer many fewer hits, but only somewhat fewer kudos. This is borne out by my sample data, where we can examine median Kudos/Hits directly:

6% for explicit works, 7% for mature and teen works, and 9% for gen works

So if you’re writing explicit fic and have a low kudos to hits ratio, don’t worry - that’s apparently normal.

Comments is...weird. Overall, the readership here is doing a healthy amount of commenting, obviously most of it on works with lots of chapters and lots of hits. The other fandoms I looked at had between 1 and 7 as their median number of comments, while AO3 as a whole has a median of 3.

Overall, good work readers! Keep commenting! Us authors love comments, it literally makes my night when I get a comment. 😍

Bookmarks are less weird. They’re basically hits, scaled down by a factor of ten. No big surprises here. The AO3 median here is 2, so once again we’ve got some invested readers compared to the average. 👍

Now, I mentioned above that length and reader response are generally proportional. @toastystats has done some general analysis on this if you wanna check that out. I also pulled from our sample data to generate the median values for different wordcount ranges (we top out at 5000 because there were so few >10,000 word fics in the sample).

Here we can see response climbs with wordcount but that the increase from fics 2500-5000 words to >5000 words is fairly insignificant.This could just be due to the small sample size, however.

So is the link between response to M and E works just because they’re more likely to be longer? Remember that the median wordcount by rating broke down as such:

G: 857, T: 1509, M: 2600, E: 2626

Let’s graph it and see.

Not so much - M and E are nearly identical median lengths but have very different median responses. Meanwhile G and T have fairly different median lengths but have very similar median responses.

We see a similar trend in bookmarks and comments, though the G to T gap widens somewhat.

What does this mean? Well, presumably, readers come in knowing what sort of fanfiction they want to read and readers of different genres/ratings respond to fanfiction in different ways. *shrugs* You could probably do a whole post on trying to quantify this one trend.

Update Year

Well, that was interesting. I don’t know if we learned anything, but charts are pretty. Let’s look at another dataset that might not tell us anything - the year works were last updated. I’ve looked as far back as 2012 because before then there are a vanishingly small number of IDW fics.

Okay, so there’s a clear trend here. Newer works have fewer hits. Which makes a lot of sense; 2013 works have had years of readers tag searching and browsing to increase their readership.

This chart doesn’t necessarily mean that there are fewer readers now than in the past, though I can’t disprove that either.

Interestingly, while kudos holds with the general decline in hits when viewed by update years, comments and bookmarks hold steady. Either the vast majority of comments and bookmarks happen when a work is first published or...I haven’t come up with a second theory yet. Ideas?

‘Top 20‘ - What Defines the Most Popular Works?

To answer this question, I collected data on all works that fell in the top 20 / first page of works ranked by kudos, hits, bookmarks and comments. There was a lot of overlap: only 44 works occupy these 80 spaces. Let’s see what they have in common.

Well, the first thing we can see is that a top 20 fic is far more likely to be explicit and far less likely to be mature or gen rated. Surprise, surprise.

I had figured the majority of top 20 fics would be about the cast of MTMTE/LL, since that seems to be the most popular series. Ah...nope. This is partly due to crossovers - most of the works in that vague ‘other’ category are about Optimus Prime and other bots that were main characters in Gen 1.

If we look at common traits...there are a lot of crossovers (anything with multiple series tagged or where the author said they were combining IDW with G1) and there’s a lot of alternate universes.

Short story and/or drabble collections are much more common in the top 20 than in general - 18% here vs. 4% of all IDW fics.

This is a lovely chart that Tumblr has mangled. With a tiny sample set I was able to assess what the primary pairing was in fics with a singular focal relaionship. The frequency of these relationships is shown here: Megatron/Optimus Prime (7), Drift/Ratchet (5), Optimus Prime/Starscream (2) and Cyclonus/Tailgate (2) were the only focal couples to appear more than once.

Color indicates faction - red for Autobot/Autobot, purple for Con/Con and grey for cross-faction or other.

So, so far we’ve learned that to Top 20 are disproportionately explicit, featuring lots of crossovers and AUs. Also, they’re big into MegOp. When were they posted (and for how many years?)

This chart is showing us the start and most recent update for all the fics in the ‘Top 20′. Bubble size indicates number of fics matching those years, color indicates number of years the fics were in-progress (red=1, orange=2, green=3 etc.) We can see that the vast majority of ‘Top 20′ fics began in 2015 or earlier. A lot of them are still in progress or ended recently (36% updated in 2017).

General Stats

What else defines the most popular works? Well, length, for one thing. The median IDW fic is 1 chapter long, while the median ‘Top 20′ fic is 21 chapters. The median IDW fic is about 1743 words long, while the median ‘Top 20′ fic is 59,500 words long. While 86% of all IDW fics are currently complete, only 62% of ‘Top 20′ fics are already complete.

Just for fun, there are 24 writers represented in the 44 most popular fics. 24 fics showed up on only 1 ‘Top 20′ list, while 8 appeared on 2 or 3 lists.

4 fics showed up on every single ‘Top 20′ list: Turn of a Switch by spaceliquid, The Chemicals Between Us by SlimReaper, Domestic Electronics by Bibliotecaria_D and Locks to Fit the Keys by TF_Pratchet and Im_The_Doctor.

So congrats to those four authors (and everyone else on the ‘Top 20′ list)!

What’s Next?

Pt. 1 - Quantifying TF Fanfiction between Adaptations

Pt. 2 - Relationship Scoreboard (All Series) - A Quick Look at the Most Popular Pairings

Pt. 3 - Quantifying Properties of IDW TF Fanfiction

pt 4 - this post!

pt 5 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (½)

pt 6 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (2/2)

[lightrises]

ao3 works tag meme

got tagged for this by @feralphoenix​! i have a grand total of.... 18 works on ao3, and a number of these are collabs. so i’m not sure how revealing this will be? 8′)a but we’ll give it a go

Go to your Works page, expand all the filters, and let us know the following:

1. What are your 1st and 2nd most common ratings? Any surprises?

general audiences (12), then teen and up audiences (6). and nope, that sounds about right for me!

2. What’s your most common warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

no archive warnings apply (14) for most, graphic depictions of violence (1) for least

wrt that last question: ehhhhhh i mean. i guess by my own vague reckoning of “adventurous” i’m not? i tend to stick to my wheelhouse of low-stakes genfic and occasional excursions into romance when i’m just making my own stuff. ntm most of my homestuck stuff was either collabs or sprung from prompts (whereas my undertale works are running at an inverse to that, so: Progress??? shrugs)

i don’t think there’s a right answer here though. if, like, you shift the question from one of content type to “hey i made stuff At All” it’s a different story. writing’s been pretty hard for me over the past few years, so any time i’m able and willing to get stuff done and put it out there, that’s... well, its own version of “adventurous” perhaps! and that doesn’t touch on how personal some of that work has been, maybe not always in obvious ways (as loud as you can make it is one of the more Clearly personal ones imo, aha)

3. How many works have you done in each relationship category? Is this more accidental or do you have preferences?

gen (15), f/m (8), f/f (2), other (2)

“gen” is kinda funny here because i do in fact love genfic A Lot, but a good chunk of mine overlap with the other categories lol.... but that’s what i tend to like best anyway when it comes to shipfic, i.e. with a lot of genfic trappings woven in. if i were more prolific you’d probably see more other and f/f works from me these days, though i’m still very much down for The Good Het too

as for the other relationships category.... haha, man. okay i’ll just, c/p this instead of typing it out:

John Egbert/Rose Lalonde (6)

John Egbert & Rose Lalonde (5)

Chara & Frisk (Undertale) (4)

Chara & Asriel Dreemurr (3)

John Egbert & Jade Harley (2)

Jade Harley & Rose Lalonde (2)

Dad Egbert/Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde (1)

Dad Egbert & John Egbert (1)

Poppop Crocker | Alpha John Egbert & Grandma English | Alpha Jade Harley (1)

Grandma English | Alpha Jade Harley/Roxy's Mom | Alpha Rose Lalonde (1)

the only comment i’ll add is that i wish there was more “john & jade” up there!!! but That’s How It Is alas

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in all of them or do you tend to migrate a lot?

homestuck (12), undertale (6)

undertale’s the only one i’m active in right now, and i’m very much a “choose one (1) fandom and fix most of your attention on it for a few years” type of fan. i do think if i wrote for homestuck again i’d want it to be jaderose. The Witch’s Gambit [image heavy] pops into mind first - it’s a setting i’m still drawn to, so who knows! i’d be nice to revisit it eventually

5. What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters or are you puzzled? 

john egbert (10), rose lalonde (9), chara (5), frisk (4)

this is largely VERY fair lmao, though on the homestuck end of things i wish i’d done more with jade (ao3 says it’s 4 works - 5 if you include her cameo in I Can Barely Sleep[...] - and that’s excluding two alpha!jade fics). another note is that for some reason ao3 doesn’t rank asriel, even though he’s in 3 works and it shows both alpha!jade and alpha!john (with 2 apiece)???? Excuse Me

the chara and frisk tags might Possibly meet(exceed??) the john and rose tags in the future, but that depends on how many works i end up making! we’ll have to see how that goes in the long run

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 into a fic?

autistic frisk (4), illustrated (4), implied/referenced character death (2), additional warnings in author’s note (2)

God...... i guess that would either be frisk on one of the neutral routes or a prequel/follow-up to and if you court this disaster, possibly in comic form?? though tbh any work that features frisk prominently and mentions what happened to chara and/or asriel pre-game would count too

7. How many WIPs do you currently have on ao3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

3 are listed! one of them - Tripping Toward The Light - has been complete for awhile now, at its original tumblr home; the ao3 mirror is just something we haven’t gotten around to finishing yet. 8′) “and i can’t remember the man, the panhandler or his melody” is Super old at this point and likely won’t be picked up again (rip....). what the right hand does has seemed dormant for a while, but i’ve been hacking away at the next chapter on and off and a) i finally see the light at the end of the editing tunnel for chapter 2, and b) unless something drastic happens it’s gonna be 4 times as long as the first chapter, so!!! Def Not Dead, thankfully

8. Tag 5 people!

ummm ok let’s see.. @threeley, @tehstripe, @ruination-fangs, @longroadstonowhere aaaand.... whoever else is down for it??? if you wanna go for it feel free, basically