#ask me about my spreadsheets

[green-socks]

2024 fic reading stats / AO3 Wrapped - Reader Edition

Last April I got the idea that I wanted to, in some form, get a better understanding of how much and how often I read fic, and some other stats as well. Obviously I knew the answer was a lot and often. But you know the urge to make lists and sort things when you're stressed? Yeah, that hit, so I started up a spreadsheet starting May 1st. In my spreadsheet I logged the date I had read the fic, the fic's title, author, fandom, ship, rating, and word count. I also added the AO3 link to the fic which has proven handy in looking up recs and stuff like that!

I just wanted to share some of those stats now that I've made lil graphs to go with them and everything lol

Starting with the totals:

Last year, from 1 May to 31 Dec, I read about 3,928,191 words of fanfic. (Now, that's the logged amount, but it's not... perfect. I won't go into detail but let's just state that that amount is still very telling!)

Total of different fics I read during the logged time was 478. (There are 479 logged entries but one of them was a reread, so.)

The most amount of entries for a single day was 8, and it happened three times lol. Two of those I know I was sick but idk what that third day was, probably a wonderfully lazy sunday.

Authors:

I logged at least 141 different AO3 authors. (Some people using several pseuds may have confused my count a little but give or take a couple!)

Here I have to shout out @fuddlewuddle because if I read 478 fics, 93 of those were hers. I don't even know what to say except that I'm glad our freaks match each other <3

A fun thing to note was that I myself made it on my top 10 list of "favorite" writers based on the amount of fics logged because I reread my own stuff frequently enough! That's kind of uplifting to think about. If sorted by word count, however, I am farrr from the top, because I tend to write shorter fics :D But I'm happy to keep it that way!

Fandom:

Showing off some percentages based on the 478 logged fics. Ahem, as you can see, Top Gun continues as the ruling fandom in my life, but there were some new smaller fandoms coming in as well! And that strange, two movie fandom fusion is, of course, courtesy of Fuddle...

If I were to sort these by word count instead, the percentages would stay pretty much the same, except Other fandoms would give a tiny bit of its slice over to Ted Lasso.

Ship:

Again, this is based on the total of 478 logged fics. Quelle surprise, I'm a hangster girl and there's a lot of that on the market, so 183 out of those 478 were hangster fics. Other ships here entails multi-ship fics (where the ships are equal instead of clear main ship & background ship type of thing), poly ships with a number of varying character combinations, and ships that had less than 5 logged fics with it as the main ship.

(The tiny red dot says roykeeleyjamie and it had 6 logs in total. The purple dot with the name not fully showing is macheresin with 10 fics.)

Rating:

This is again based on the total of 478 fics.

My own writing stats:

I posted 18,687 words' worth of fic last year (though some thousands of words haven't made it to AO3 yet, but were still written last year). As you can see, I am still very much a reader rather than a writer, but it's the best of both worlds, getting to do both!

Overall, I thought this was a fun experiment, and I'm going to keep up with my spreadsheet for the new year – because what is life without spreadsheets, really.

Guess if I realized I had forgotten to log at least one longer fic after finishing up the last of those graphs!!!! Sighhh

[syntheticdreamscapes]

this is all 100% accurate and I fucking love it

Crafting and Gathering is annoyingly weird. Like once you uncover another fucking layer of it you discover another headache. Like you could get the best script gear but after getting it you'll also wants to pick up these random certificates so you can buy a book to let you know about an endgame material you can harvest but you are better off crafting gear that will give you better chances of getting the stuff you need to craft better standard gear and then there's overmelding and expensive squid dishes to make it so you can perceive the material you'll need to even begin the process and for that you need a 12 - 15 step process program, which you can only find on the sixth tuesday of every month that ends on the 26th days under Haley's Comet. I've been leveling crafting and gathering over a year now and it still the rabbit hole goes fucking deeper.

[qoldenskies]

You mentioned something about Donnie, Leo and the chick collar at some point, something about if Leo ever put a shock collar on Donnie, should he ever take it off? Could you ever see a scenario (outside of CC) where Leo did convince Donnie to put a shock collar on post Donnie’s gifts, as a sort of ‘see how it feels????’ only to realize that Donnie thinks this kind of correction is normal?

I’m imagining Leo saying something like ‘most people don’t like being corrected by pain’ only for Donnie to be ‘but that’s how i learn???’

yeah in ME!! leo mentions an anecdote where he directly confronts donnie for this, and donnie acts shy and confused and genuinely defensive because he doesn't understand why leo WOULDN'T like it, because donnie is someone who's intense about correcting himself basing his worth around contribution etc etc etc. it was him projecting that onto leo, essentially

i really dont think it was an "i hate your jokes" it was just an attempt to "keep him focused", but OBVIOUSLY leo would take that as an attack on his person, there was really no other way to interpret that. donnie just did a social blunder

and then afterwards ME directly takes note of the ring ("collar") of bruises around donnie's throat from when raph throttled him as a physical manifestation of the same thing. (its a subtle detail nobody picked up on rip)

the note of "donnie had already been wearing one" was meant to commentate on how he EMOTIONALLY punishes himself in a way that's proportionate to how the shock collar felt to leo. i think he learns through harsh self-criticism and not physical pain, which is why he acts so upset when he thinks he did something perfectly and others dont.

i could really only see leo doing it as a joke to prove a point in a petty, harmless way and then being fucking flashbanged by the bottomless rabbit hole of donnie's issues. like he was just trying to be funny because he was a little mad. like he was actually kind of over it after they talked about it. what is this. what is happening

[took-my-breath-away]

I know that I’m a million years behind but I just watched TGM and the scene where Rooster says “talk to me dad” and Maverick “replies” sent me into the stratosphere. I cannot describe how much I love their father/son relationship. Mav & Ice & their 12 adopted kids

holy fuck - I know!!! great writing and weaving of scenes and dialogue (also welcome to the next tier of brainrot!!)

I remember my hand flew up to my heart in the cinema when I saw that and I was like. audibly: "oh..."

not many movies make me cry but that scene had me tearing up fr. you've reminded me that I need to draw more kid roo and dadmav, I just adore their dynamic so much and daydream about little domestic subplots all the time.

thinking about it right now... bradley running up to mav after a big baseball victory, slamming into him with a bear hug. mav almost topples over - he hasn't had a hug from brad in years (hugs are cringey when ur a teen, uncle mav!!). mav swears he's gonna cry any sec because he's just so damn proud!!

NOT TO GET EMO ON MAIN UMMMMM

[mqole]

i'm 70 hours into octopath 2 and this is my main takeaway atm (id in alt)

[batsplat]

i will be in permanent agony next year when marc squeezes pecco like a bug, unless it happens aragón 2021 style, where the unstoppable force (marc) meets an immovable object (passing pecco bagnaia), and marc has to really throw everything at it to come out on top. mostly because marc has a twinkle in his eyes when he looks at pecco, like he sees some sort of a challenge he’d enjoy to take on, and pecco just refuses to look at him 💀

also, martin said pecco plays the most amount of mind games, and i need to see that in 2025 before coming to a conclusion, otherwise it’s just jorge writing fanfiction about bagnaia as the ultimate bad guy of his life (i get it, jorge, next time pecco dnf’s i’ll choose to start stanning you, unlike the ducati bosses)

I think pecco does play mind games! admittedly if you're setting the standard at 'valentino', sure, he's pretty harmless, but pretty much every top level athlete will do a little of this! he does put some thought into how to manage expectations, what he's saying about his own chances and his opponents' chances going into weekends, that kind of thing. generally he might not outright attack his rivals, but he's not opposed to dropping the occasional snide remark. that being said, of course it's quite funny and revealing that jorge zeroed in on pecco as the mind games guy. pecco's very much his personal antagonist... such a good figure to externalise all those knotty feelings of being under-valued and under-appreciated and underrated... it's fairly natural that if you're fighting someone for a title, you get a bit of tunnel vision for them, so it's not that surprising a pick from martin. still fun! I absolutely buy martin's built pecco up a bit too much in his mind, is prone to reading malice into stuff where it probably wasn't intended on pecco's part. sometimes you end up playing mind games on yourself and the other guy doesn't really need to contribute

anyway, about the pecco/marc thing - yeah, look, obviously marc is the favourite in that title battle. that being said, if you look at marc's historical record, I wouldn't be all that surprised if aragon 2021 and jerez this year aren't the outliers. it's completely plausible marc wins that teammate battle quite comfortably but continues to lose in their actual one-on-one duels... because that did often happen during his prime. in 2013, sure, he won that early battle in jerez (which was just kinda building throughout to that one overtake), but he lost the rematch at silverstone. 2014 is the one where he was just kinda winning everything - so this one's kinda the exception, where he might lose some scraps like brno and misano but the extended battles in qatar, mugello, silverstone all go his way. from then on, the most memorable one-on-one duels with his big rivals are pretty often not working out in his favour. 2015 obviously a few with valentino, though he also doesn't win the title there so let's skip that, but 2016? the two duels everyone remembers from that year are mugello and catalunya - both go against him, both are defeats inflicted by his two main title rivals in jorge and valentino respectively, but it doesn't matter because afterwards the rest of the season goes his way. 2017 you've got austria and motegi where he takes on dovi and loses both times - but it doesn't change the momentum of the season and marc still wins in the end. 2018 doesn't really have a title fight, but again he's losing austria to jorge (before winning thailand so that's something). 2019, again not really a title fight, but he loses austria and silverstone before winning a couple of duels against rookie fabio at misano and thailand. in both those seasons, he's not really being challenged for the title - but if you looked just at the duels, you'd think the competition was a lot closer than the reality

none of this is to say that marc is bad at wheel-to-wheel racing, because he very obviously is not. (which by the way you can tell the moment you stop looking just at one-on-one's and include dogfights - sure, he's not won all of them, but pi '15 pi '17 assen '18 are all super memorable for a reason.) it's just an interesting pattern in his career: when he gets himself involved in extended duels with a single rival, he loses quite frequently, but it still doesn't hurt his title campaign. that's excellent mental resilience! it does, however, show that he doesn't really build his title campaigns around those big dramatic victories, around inflicting a dramatic and demoralising defeat on his rival in one-to-one combat. in this sense, he is obviously different from valentino: for instance 2004 is a title campaign that was built entirely around that trio of races early in the season (mugello, catalunya, assen) where he reclaims the championship lead and dulls sete's confidence by winning successive tight one-to-one battles. (also of course 2008/09, but those almost feel too obvious to mention.) when you look at marc's title campaigns, what they really rely on more than anything else is... well, consistency. the fact that he's basically always fast - and that generally speaking, he's finding himself in last lap duels at circuits where he shouldn't be able to contend for the victory at the last lap in the first place. (obviously qatar and austria, but also for instance honda was having a rough one at misano 2019, which is traditionally one of his strongest tracks but can be quite quirky.) (just saying, misano's a really good pecco track too... wouldn't that be fun...) it's relentless, intimidating pace that he's using to win all those titles... if you look at the races that changed the momentum in his various title winning seasons, it's not actually ever one-on-one duels, it's races where he won or was even just on the podium where all his rivals for one reason or another weren't there. maybe jorge and dani are injured, or maybe his rivals are having some horror show flag-to-flag races, or maybe ducati's having an off-weekend, or maybe everyone who isn't marc just refuses to stop crashing, or maybe jorge's decided to skittle the field

with the one-on-one battles themselves, sometimes it's kind of like... 'okay, sure, you won, but the fact I was even there probably isn't great news for you'. this is what jerez this year was about, right - of course, that was an important win for pecco, but also the fact that marc is fighting with him this early into his ducati career on a year old bike is certainly... a concern. obviously marc does want to win those duels, but he does also seem pretty capable of bouncing back after losing them. some of them have bothered him, sure - the worst was probably assen 2015, where there was obviously a lot of other stuff going on... and because it was that bit of the year where he was finding his feet again with that honda and they headed to the sachsenring next, his on-track performances didn't take a hit. you can argue that argentina 2015 did negatively affect his results... but that was also just a bit of the panic of 'I need to make up points now' in response to his first real adversity in the premier class - and anyway, everyone knows that wasn't a perfect marc season, the point is he was a lot better at managing this stuff going forwards. in 2016 and 2017 in particular, he really does do an excellent job of taking these close defeats in his stride

this is a long way of saying, look, I could easily imagine a version of 2025 where pecco wins a dramatic duel against marc at catalunya and then another one at mugello, and yet marc still wins that season pretty comfortably. that's basically the season I'm expecting... I'd quite like to have something different, because honestly I do enjoy it when the on-track battles actually affect title fights a bit more substantially! that being said, marc definitely wants to beat pecco in a one-on-one duel (though I'm sure that lovely le mans last lap pass will have gone a long way towards cheering him up) - and hey, interpersonal emotional stakes are a lot of fun too. hopefully even if there isn't much of a title fight they can still snap at each other a bit... as a treat

[daycourtofficial]

only three for fourth floor??? Make that four, I would go FERAL for that series

Should I start planning out my year of fanfiction priorities like @secret-third-thing does bc that might be the way to get me to not forget about series and leave them unupdated for half a year

[kkoct-ik]

the lesser known did symptom of not knowing anything about your life because not only do you not remember anything (and the memories you Do have are heavily fragmented so you have no idea when they occured), but you also consistently destroy all traces of yourself during dissociative episodes. rip every diary ive tried to keep and almost every social media account. i will never know what i got up to or who i was during those years

i have a spreadsheet i use for documenting memories that turn up before i can forget them again. where i also do my best to estimate what year or season or month they came from. but its all just such a mess. even 2021 onwards which are supposed to be my therapy years are very very patchy. i wish i could just know my life

[wistfulwatcher]

Hi I saw you reccing Truth and Measure and I loved that fic so much and was wondering if you could recs some other favorites? Any fandom would be awesome but I would also love some Emily Prentiss fic to read any pairing is fine if there is a good Emily. Thanks

For sure! I'll only do Emily recs for now because if we opened it up to any fandom fic recs I'd try to make it an exhaustive list and never get this answered akjfd;lakf. Here are a few that I remember having great Emily characterization. I'm slowly working my way through a massive to-read list, so maybe I'll add to this in a few weeks 😅 Most of these are adult/explicit and 10k+ because of who I am as a person:

The Boyfriend Experience by pagetfan; Emily/Derek. Fake dating trope, with a beautiful emphasis on their partner/friendship going into the fake date.

Love, Light, and Marigold Sounds by pagetbrewstersswife; Emily/Garcia. Great ride through their relationship, starting with early friendship.

Easy Love by blythechild; Emily/Hotch/Reid. This was written pre-CME, but the characterization of Emily has that CME!Emily biting vibe. Angstier overall than I usually enjoy but it was so good, and exactly the dynamic I look for in these three together.

Burning Chrysalis by Wildingflowers; Emily/Hotch. Note the warnings/tags on this one! The author writes the quiet supportive Emily/Hotch dynamic so well, and nails both of their characterization (individually and together). Incomplete, but ends at a very satisfying place so I have zero hesitation about reccing it.

Convenient People by blythechild; Emily/Reid. Emily and Reid getting to know each other by roleplaying as strangers. It works so well and is a very fun character exploration romance.

someone else's solid ground by eyesontheskyline; Emily/Hotch. A perfect post-Wheels Up fic where Hotch comes to check on Emily now that Scratch is dead. Flawless characterization of them individually and their dynamic, with such realistic romance and conversation.

A Risk Worth Taking by ShayScribbles; Emily/Hotch. WIP/series, but no cliffhangers. Beautiful dynamic between Emily and Hotch (sexy and poignant at all times!), and flawless characterization of them as individuals.

Where You Go by SequinSmile; Emily/Hotch. Fake dating trope (I'm predicatable!), with delicious mutual pining and the perfect smidge of misunderstanding. Beautiful little romance that puts emphasis on their friendship (without it seeming implausible as events happening off-screen in canon).

Falling For You by IndigoButterfly; Emily/Hotch. Episode-related scenes spanning S4-S7 (with a happy ending). I usually avoid these style fics for fear of them just reiterating canon dialogue, but I'm so glad I read this one. No unnecessary repetition, and the dialogue/characterization is spot-on from beginning to end. It's shorter but still a great slow build into getting together.

Happy reading!

[rainbowstargazerlilies]

As far as I'm aware if people are sending you asks about donations, that's usually a scam exploiting the situation

Hey anon! Thanks for your concern! I am aware of some accounts that send asks that are scams, and I do try to vet any asks with donations that come in to my account. If you see me reblog or answer any asks that you know are scams, then please let me know and I'll delete the post.

Here's a link to a spreadsheet that you can use to check fundraisers related to Gaza you see on your dash, or asks that you receive, or just to donate:

[traversety]

That was a teaser and a half good lord. You know, as someone that doesn't do Fandom stuff this level of commitment really impresses me. Love the characters. Very relatable... Thanks for answering.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS JUST FUCKING MADE ME WHEN IR READ THIS GOD BLESS YOU ANON

[codecicle]

out of curiosity, how are two of the jrwi characters not human but still white? i don't listen anymore but I saw your spreadsheet (well made, funny) also would love your thoughts on the names of the poc characters

Glad you asked! For most of the non-human characters, they were anthropomorphic animals so they didn't have any skin color for me to chart. However, Rumi and Runt aren't human, but have human qualities to them!

Rumi (left) is a shapeshifter who takes 3 separate forms over the course of the campaign. Not human by dnd standards, and could have any (humanoid/anthropomorphic) form in the entire world! She stays white for all 3 forms though.

Runt (right) is a mousegirl, who comes from an underground city filled with animal-people. One of the other members of the party in that campaign is a literal owl, so she could've been a full animal like him! For some reason though, she's white. Sad!

[ednacrabapple]

Payroll Monday is my least favorite day of the week because this one bitch from accounting sends me a million emails demanding to know why certain matters don’t have invoices but if she paid attention to literally a single email she gets each week she would know exactly why certain matters are missing invoices

[necrotic-nephilim]

do you use any site/spreadsheet/etc. to track your comic reading? i use locg right now but have been considering other options.

... yes. technically. but bc i'm an autistic bitch i just. have a google spreadsheet i'm gonna be honest. i log it all manually.

this is an example of what a random section looks like of my 2023 spreadsheet. in order it's: title, issue/volume number, page count, date i finished the comic, and my personal rating. blue and red is obviously DC and Marvel. pink means the numbering is counting single issues, yellow means it's counting volumes/trades. sometimes for the page count i guesstimate based on how long comics tend to be if i can't find an exact page count. the colors in the rating are just for fun so i can easily see what stuck out as 10/10 and what stuck out as 1/10.

then i take all of *that* data and condense it into monthly stats. all by hand bc idk how to like. properly use google sheets that well.

obviously i'm aware all of this is likely the most tedious way to do it and i'm probably making it harder for myself. however. i am just Like That. i do use the Comics Geeks app as well, which i think is a solid app? i just haven't fully logged everything i've read because i find that to be wildly tedious. but the stat breakdowns it gives about most read characters and writers and whatnot is nifty. though you can tell the app is more geared toward tracking comic collections rather than comics read.

so uh. i'm not the best person to ask about this probably lkjhghgjhkjjkjh i will always brute force my own way than just doing it the. smart way. but! i do keep track of it all and i find it very useful to do so, because i like seeing the trends of what i was reading when. also i enjoy the data of how i rated a comic when i read it vs how i feel about it now that it's sat with me. idk if this helps but!! i do like rambling about my spreadsheet!

[bonefall]

how do you manage to keep track of, and detail so many cats? Including family trees, personality, relationships, etc. I have my own fanclans I'm trying to work on, but having 80 cats spread across 4 clans is hard to work with. Esp when that's just the living ones

Weapons-grade autistic swagger.

I just like battle cats, man

[crossbackpoke-check]

about to be sooo nosy so. my apologies. but. morgan frost? girlfriend? do share (or don’t! again this is so nosy i’m sorry)

for legal purposes i can neither confirm nor deny anything about morgan and his girlfriend but afaik i think he’s single right now? at one point (within the past four years 😭) he did for sure have a girlfriend and that is the extent of my wag knowledge