#misty says things

[bewareofthenewphannie]

sigh....please don't kill me for this

AO3 Phandom Stats - Top or Bottom?

As many of you may have noticed there has been a shift in the depiction of Dan and Phil in fanfiction over the past few months from previously predominantly Dan being written as the bottom to now largely Phil bottoming. This post aims to put that trend into numbers and visualise it in a few overly convoluted diagrams below the cut.

Does any of this matter? Absolutely not.

Is it interesting? Oh boy, it sure is!

Disclaimer: This is an analysis of the fanfiction writing and tagging trends within the Phandom. It's at most tangentially related to the Real People Dan and Phil and is not meant to spark any type of discourse. I am doing this as an avid fanfic reader and with the utmost respect and appreciation for the authors of these fics, so I don't want to see any negativity directed towards them. Above all this is meant to be fun and interesting.

And as always - don't like it, don't read it <3

Note on accessibility: linked here is a doc with all the numbers shown in the screenshots of this post. Inspired by emma's stats I will be putting the cell range in the ID - if there's a better way to do this, please lmk!!

Methodology

To get the numbers shown here I filtered the works in the Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF) AO3 tag by "date updated" from the Jan 1st to Dec 31st of each year and by the following tags:

Bottom Dan Howell

Bottom Phil Lester

Top Dan Howell

Top Phil Lester

Short excurse on AO3 tags for those unaware:

The tags I chose are canonical tags, which means other tags that mean the same thing but are for example spelled differently are linked to this tag by tag wranglers and appear when you search for the canonical tag (see example below).

Additionally, the "bottom x" tags are metatags for the power bottom tags, which means fics tagged with "power bottom x" also appear when you filter works for these tags.

It's important to note that not every fic where one of them tops or bottoms is tagged as such. That means these stats very specifically look at the author's choice to tag fics with these tags and not the overall amount of fics where one of them tops or bottoms. However, I would argue it's fair to assume that it's at least somewhat reflective of the general writing trends within the Phandom.

For simplicity's sake I will refer to these tags as e.g. "Bottom!Phil" (b!p) going forward.

Stats 2013 - 2024

Here you can see how many fics were tagged with each tag in the respective year and the amount of bottom!dan and bottom!phil fics relative to the total amount of fanfic written in the same time span.

As expected, up until 2023 the split was about 2 b!d to 1 b!p fic (precise numbers: 71% to 29%; see pie chart above).

In 2018 we can see a peak in both in the number of phanfics written and the relative amount of fics tagged as bottom!dan.

Starting in 2023 (more on that below!) this flips and in 2024 the ratio of b!d to b!p fics was 1 to 4 (precise numbers: 81% to 19%; see pie chart above).

Furthermore, making up 4,62% of the total amount of phanfics written in 2024, the bottom!phil tag is relatively speaking twice as popular now as the bottom!dan tag ever was.

Sidenote: You can see that generally the amount of fics tagged with b!d and t!p, as well as b!p and t!d correspond to each other for obvious reasons (they're usually fucking each other). This year however there's 16 fics more tagged with bottom!phil than top!dan, which shows that there's been a very specific interest in writing and tagging bottom!phil in the last year.

Here you can see the total amount of phanfics written by year because I already collected the data, so I might as well put it here:

Stats 11/2023 - 12/2024

Now I want to take a closer look at the past few months post hiatus.

You can see that there's been a steady increase in the total amount of fics written per month!

That's incredibly cool!! (Love to all the wonderful writers out there <33)

Before we get into the actual stats, it's important to note that we're working with very low numbers here, so don't be fooled by overinterpreting percentages in the first few months depicted and look at the actual numbers! In the diagram below I excluded September and October 2023 because there simply wasn't enough data to produce useable results.

Contrary to what I expected, the increase in fics tagged with bottom!phil does not coincide with gamingmas 2023 (pour bot hem and top bunk kind of guy), nor phil's birthday live stream (topped by kakuna) but only really starts in June 24 and spikes in August for reasons I'm not fully sure about.

If I had to pin it on one thing it'd be the precious baby angel picture, which was posted in mid August.

Much more likely is though that this was simply a dynamic that built over months and had a wide array of reasons mentioned above and could very well be a self-reinforcing dynamic of more and more people looking for that tag and also writing for it.

If anyone has more insight on this, please share your thoughts :]

On that note, I'm finally done yapping, I hope this was at least mildly interesting!

[omnicom]

Pokeshipping Week 2024

Day 6: Video Call

... Or we can just jump straight into a phonecall mid-vacation to give our response. Why not? 🤪 If it's one thing he's known for, it's Ash's neverending patience and forethought, amirite?

One thing I know, though, is that their families are NOT going to let them live this down. Especially Misty's sisters. 'Cause what're siblings for? Hoo boy. 😅

Daisy was actually pretty fun to draw, especially her hair (if you can't tell). I didn't think too much and just did what I wanted. Maybe it came out too much like fur, but eh who cares (not me). 🤷‍♀️

Art © Crumpled-Hakui

Like what you see? Want art like this of your own? Check out my art commission post here and send me an email or private message! Thanks for stopping by!

[novelconcepts]

Fucked-up shit??? In MY fucked-up-shit show?!! It’s more likely than you think, and I am so fucking ready, bring on the fucked! up! shiiiiit!!

[wistfulwatcher]

I asked him that, Nat.

[soniana252]

Curly & wavy hair brush set for Sai2/Photoshop!🖌️🪮

Available for free on my ko-fi (donations are highly appreciated tho)

And here's a video showing how I use them

[boimgfrog]

flat cat ftuesday

[angelmush]

tis the season !

[yantao-enthusiast]

oh she's unforgiveable? *cracks knuckles* lemme at her

[moodymisty]

Your Guilliman fic wormed its way into my brain. So i drew this :)

(Reader insert is wearing clothes that resemble the italian renaissance cause thats what i headcanon modern day Macraggian fashion to look like)

ART?

ART?

ART OF SOMETHING I WROTE?

LOVE LOVE FOR FRIEND FOR 1000 YEARS

but joking aside i like when people add historical fashion into 40k worlds, like i know half the worlds are fucking Greek but i always enjoy it anyways.

[nightmun]

Here's a few more goofy Connectifia related sketches! Also introduction to Kit since I've barely talked about it in general. Basically Kit is Haniel's version of Connectifia (Haniel gets to join the sentient virus gang YIPPEE). Kit takes the form of a little spicy kitten in Haniel's head who is responsible for their poor reaction to other forms of the virus. Kit is very scared of and hateful towards other Connectifias, and in the process of being angry ends up inadvertently hurting Haniel, causing their sick-like symptoms. Haniel isn't aware of Kit at first, only learning about it after seeing it in dreams several times after an event where they nearly die messing with Connectifia. At first they think Kit is some kind of monster but they eventually learn that it's just a scared little kitten of a creature. Kit has the ability to affect technology around Haniel, so once Haniel befriends their little brain cat they're able to use Kit's powers and control technology from afar.

Hope you enjoy this little intro to Kit though! Also small cameo from @pokeblog123's Connie!

One more drawing below cut (spoiler for mild eye strain):

[bewareofthenewphannie]

okay....WHY did i search for that? excuse me?

[taiturner]

Is Shauna in the shed again? It's freezing outside. Well, then maybe one of you should go out and get her.

[heedra]

i must confess im the bitch that cries at bluey

[wistfulwatcher]

YELLOWJACKETS | 2.06 "Qui"

[babisawyer]

Jackie realizing she’s gonna have to take care of shauna and jeff’s ghost baby

[boimgfrog]

Love taking pics where my cat looks like an anime villain