#it's in the same category to me as sherlock/spn/voltron and that is the category of “oh I bet that is NOT good but it's addictive huh

data-monkey · 6 years ago

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AO3 stats project: tags

In this post, we'll discuss tags on the Archive of Our Own! Please note: because the works on the Archive include explicit material, some of the tags discussed in this post may not be appropriate for your workplace.

The Archive of Our Own has one of the best tagging systems around. You can read more about it here, here, here, or here. For our purposes, the important part is that users can tag their works however they want, and then a group of people called "tag wranglers" sort those tags, either adding them as synonyms of existing tags or creating new canonical versions for them. What I'll be showing here is the "canonical" version of the tags. For example, a work tagged "flufffffff" or "so fluffy!" would have those two tags assigned to the canonical tag "Fluff", so I will consider both of those tags as being "Fluff" to get the most accurate count.

The other important thing about AO3 tags is that they come in four flavors. The first one is "warnings", the content warnings required by the Archive (plus the default tag indicating you're abstaining from the warnings system). The second flavor is "Characters", tags describing the characters in the work. The third is "Relationships", tags describing the platonic or romantic relationships depicted in the work--typically, "X/Y" indicates a romantic and/or sexual relationship between characters X and Y, while "X&Y" means a platonic relationship, although this usage isn't universal and isn't enforced. The final category is "freeform", aka everything else.

Again, the tagging system is freeform and optional. In particular, I'll note that "character" tags and "relationship" tags don't necessarily imply each other: you can have a work tagged "Sherlock Holmes/John Watson" that only features Mycroft Holmes, or that features John and Sherlock but doesn't tag them as characters, only as the relationship. So remember that--while it's pretty good on average, because people tag their works so readers/viewers can find them--the number of uses of a character tag isn't the same as the number of works that feature that character, for example.

Okay! So what are the most popular freeform tags on the Archive? If you read a lot of fanfiction, I doubt you will be surprised by anything on this list. Left column is the top 15 tags by number of uses, while right column is the top 15 tags by the cumulative hit count on every work tagged with that tag.

Are these tags consistently popular over time? For reasons of space, I’ll just plot the top 10 by number of works:

If you look back at the works vs time plot in the second post, you'll see that yes, the shape of these trends is similar to the total number of works, so trends in fannish tastes haven’t changed much over the time the AO3 has been in existence. (These show a little more bumpiness because there are fewer works in each plot.) Some of these have gained a little more recent popularity vs earlier works--smut, fluff, and the two specific alternate universes are a little more weighted towards later times, while humor and general AUs are falling a little behind--but the differences aren’t as large as we saw for fandom trends in the previous post.

I'm sure you're curious about characters and relationships. Here are the top character tags, omitting the catchall character tags of “Original Character(s)”, “Original Male Character(s)”, “Original Female Character(s)”, and “Reader” (all of which would otherwise appear in the top 15). Also, remember this is missing some of the data from 2018 and 2019, as described in the first post, so BTS characters should probably be higher:

And here are the top relationship tags (again, excluding the catchall “Minor or Background Relationship(s)”):

And in particular, here are the top characters of color (excluding works with fictionalized race/ethnicity power systems--um, more than modern-day Western society’s power systems are made up--and characters from Voltron Legendary Defender, since I wasn’t able to find enough information on them):

Park Jimin (BTS)

Min Yoongi | Suga

Jeon Jungkook

Kim Taehyung | V

Kim Namjoon | Rm

Jung Hoseok | J-Hope

Kim Seokjin | Jin

Zayn Malik

Katsuki Yuuri

Sam Wilson (Marvel)

Magnus Bane

Nick Fury

Midoriya Izuku

Bakugou Katsuki

Erica Reyes

And here are the top relationships that are not M/M:

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin

Clarke Griffin/Lexa

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan

Kylo Ren/Rey

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor

Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper

Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold

Allison Argent/Scott McCall

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy

Here are the top ten freeform tags for the top ten fandoms. Different fandoms seem to produce different kinds of fanworks--which you'd expect, based on the variety in the source material.

AU = alternate universe, AU - CD = Alternate universe - canon divergence, AU - C/U = alternate universe - college/university, AU - HS = alternate universe - high school, BJs = blow jobs, ER = established relationship, H/C = hurt/comfort, PWP = plot what plot/porn without plot, RPF = real person fiction, SPN = supernatural.

Finally, for fun, here's the top 200 tags of all kinds, sorted against each other. You can find a lot of fun things on this list. Some of my favorites:

Supernatural is so big, and so focused on so few characters, that Dean Winchester is the sixth most popular tag on the entire AO3.

Clint Barton is way higher than I would have expected.

Sherlock Holmes is slightly less popular than anal sex.

Original female characters are more popular than anal sex.

Similarly, cuddling is more popular than A/B/O.

Harry Styles is less popular than 3/7ths of BTS (at least as of sometime in 2018); Louis Tomlinson barely tops Draco Malfoy.

Alcohol comes between Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov.

Leonard McCoy is below songfic. Please join me in picturing how pissed off he’d be.

The one-two punch of “Spanking” and “I’m Sorry” is pretty amusing.

If I had put up the top 201 tags, 200 and 201 would have been “Flirting” and “Murder”, so Hannibal is almost on this list.

Fluff

Angst

Alternate Universe

Romance

Hurt/Comfort

Dean Winchester

Humor

Established Relationship

Smut

Sam Winchester

Steve Rogers

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

Tony Stark

Friendship

Original Female Character(s)

Anal Sex

Drabble

Original Characters

Sherlock Holmes

Fluff And Angst

Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Castiel/Dean Winchester

One Shot

John Watson

Stiles Stilinski

Castiel

Harry Potter

Oral Sex

James "Bucky" Barnes

Natasha Romanov

Blow Jobs

Clint Barton

Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Drama

Derek Hale

Reader

Slow Burn

Original Male Character(s)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

First Time

Alternate Universe - College/University

Kissing

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski

First Kiss

Angst With A Happy Ending

Light Angst

Violence

Family

Park Jimin (BTS)

Min Yoongi | Suga

Jeon Jungkook

Crossover

Harry Styles

Crack

Friends To Lovers

Love

Fluff And Smut

Kim Taehyung | V

Louis Tomlinson

Other Additional Tags To Be Added

Draco Malfoy

Alternate Universe - High School

Explicit Sexual Content

Masturbation

Hermione Granger

Pining

Bruce Banner

Anal Fingering

Kim Namjoon | RM

Canon Compliant

Thor (Marvel)

Domestic Fluff

Jung Hoseok | J-Hope

Keith (Voltron)

Kim Seokjin | Jin

Depression

Character Death

Sexual Content

Happy Ending

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Canon-Typical Violence

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

Lance (Voltron)

Cuddling & Snuggling

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics

Dirty Talk

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD

Post-Canon

Loki (Marvel)

Christmas

Hand Jobs

Scott Mccall

Niall Horan

Sex

Mycroft Holmes

Blood

Shiro (Voltron)

Liam Payne

Rimming

Rough Sex

Zayn Malik

Cute

Original Character(s)

Original Character

Castiel (Supernatural)

Dubious Consent

Phil Coulson

Severus Snape

Ron Weasley

Character Study

Mpreg

Lydia Martin

Explicit Language

Slash

Grief/Mourning

Polyamory

Future Fic

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

Minor Character Death

Greg Lestrade

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Peter Parker

Mutual Pining

Swearing

Eventual Smut

Sirius Black

Dom/Sub

Pre-Slash

Sad

Love Confessions

Unrequited Love

Alternate Universe - Soulmates

Remus Lupin

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester

Falling In Love

Jealousy

Spanking

I'm Sorry

Pepper Potts

Death

Keith/Lance (Voltron)

Spoilers

James T. Kirk

Hunk (Voltron)

Sans (Undertale)

Emma Swan

Gabriel (Supernatural)

Fluff And Humor

Magic

Torture

Alternate Universe - Human

Bruce Wayne

Isaac Lahey

Levi (Shingeki No Kyojin)

Eren Yeager

Clarke Griffin

Self-Harm

Slow Build

Victor Nikiforov

Alcohol

Katsuki Yuuri

Suicidal Thoughts

Implied Sexual Content

BDSM

Nightmares

Canonical Character Death

Action/Adventure

Sam Wilson (Marvel)

Developing Relationship

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug

Bondage

Friendship/Love

Tooth-Rotting Fluff

Dark

Sheriff Stilinski

Mental Health Issues

Allison Argent

Reader-Insert

Slice Of Life

Allura (Voltron)

Kurt Hummel

Getting Together

Kidnapping

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov

Dick Grayson

Merlin (Merlin)

Panic Attacks

Heavy Angst

Comfort

Alec Lightwood

Pre-Canon

Ficlet

Kid Fic

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir

Implied/Referenced Character Death

Songfic

Leonard Mccoy

First Meetings

Flirting

#fan stats #ao3 #fanstats

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