#views vs kudos vs comments

[lycorogue]

1000% the comment.

100 views mean nothing. Did people even read it, or did they simply open the story and decided against it for some reason?

Also.... bots. In this day and age I always wonder how much my view count is inflated by bots.

(Alternatively, that view count might be inflated by a single person. I, personally, have added about 100 views to a single story before. This is lovely, and I would be on Cloud 9 if I ever discovered that a reader returned to my story that many times, but view-count alone can't let me know that)

As for kudos, I literally have a story on AO3 right now that gets a fair amount of kudos nearly-daily. But from guests. I have a lot of friends/family without AO3 accounts, so I leave my stories unlocked. But now I'm left to wonder if those are legit kudos or - again - if they are bots. Or, secret 3rd option, if the kudos are readers going "I read it. I'll be polite and leave a kudos to show appreciation that this author posted the story" but this fictitious reader wasn't terribly impacted by my story. To them, it wasn't terrible, but maybe it wasn't memorable either. They may forget the title or that they ever read it. The kudos has no actual weight beyond acknowledgement that a story was read all the way through.

Kudos are a nice dopamine jolt, but they last as long as it takes to read the notification. At least someone (probably) acknowledged my work. Thank you for that.

BUT THE ONE COMMENT!?!

I've moved you enough that you felt compelled to let me know? Even if it's a single heart emoji? Reader, I am kissing you on the mouth right now. I am hugging that comment tight. I am openly weeping with joy. I have proof! Proof that a human read my story and was moved by it. That I was able to connect with another human being, if only for a moment.

Comments. Are. Everything!

[lightyakami]

there are a handful of fic topics that ime rarely get kudos or comments but DO get views & i think it’s because people don’t want their names linked to them. ime it’s usually whump & fetish content but the former is way more prone to this. as an author i think it’s worth being aware of this — like i’ve been writing fic for literally twenty years across a billion different platforms with different engagement styles than ao3 so i an 100000% sure this sort of thing is well-loved and well-read but you’re rarely going to get actual confirmation of that.

[mecachrome]

landoscar ao3 stats — 2023 overview

notes

retrieved ~sometime in march 2024

methodology: scraped metadata for every fic in the landoscar tag and...... that's it. however one important constraint is that all temporal data is date updated (not posted), so the above timeline isn't exactly a true representation of fic growth but rather how many fics were last-updated at that time. of course this is still its own reflection of fandom health in a way since dead fandoms don't update old fic but well... it's just not quite the same!

this is just info about general trends, fic content, tags etc... so nothing about kudos/comments or any authors specifically

i decided to focus solely on fics last-updated in 2023 (unless otherwise mentioned) because i wanted a tidy set that i can maybe compare & contrast in a year's time, because i expect a lot of details to look different then (tho as stated above this set isn't exactly static... 🤷‍♀️)

ngl i had to re-scrape a bunch of times because i forgot about it for like 3 weeks and then there were 100 new fics 😭 so if there are some minor discrepancies across the post it's because of that halfskh.

also i wanted to include more global comparisons (aka how 814 stack up against the f1 rpf tag in general), but this is also considerably difficult in some contexts since i can't exactly scrape 31,000+ fics can i... or i didn't even want to entertain the thought of trying to do so!!!

why did i do this? who knows.

anyway here's some viz T__T

ship growth

as evidenced in the opening graph, landoscar have been a very fast-growing ship over the past year — although interestingly enough they didn't really start growing substantially until july / the ~better half~ of the 2023 season. here are two views showing their "growth" (by date updated) alongside two other ships on the fringes of the f1 rpf top 10 (sebchal & galex):

landoscar are very much on-track to surpass them and officially enter the top 10 soon, likely before mid-april ❗️ :o

ship characteristics

onto the ship content — another thing i was mildly curious about was how landoscar differs in certain areas from other f1 ships, or the f1 rpf "global" average you could say. for example, here's a breakdown of rating popularity in their ao3 tag:

seeing as explicit is their most common rating, and that i don't necessarily expect this to be true for all ships/fandoms, i compared these percentages with the general f1 rpf tag to see whether some ratings are more commonly represented in 814 fic than average, which produced interesting results:

do lando ships simply skew more HornyTM in general? is it oscar? a secret third thing??? who knows... actually i think it would be fun to do more analysis in this direction but that can wait for another time!!!

similarly i also wanted to see which ships are the most "public" on ao3, as in have the highest share of fic that isn't user-locked... i will refrain from peppering in my feelings about the 4th wall too heavy-handedly but i was curious to see whether some sort of perhaps... er, generational gap (?) of sorts between ships that are more public vs. not could be identified. however i don't pretend to have any takeaways from this LOL i conclude absolutely nothing. (for ref landoscar is currently 72% public, vs. a global avg of 63%)

note that this graph is current stats, not filtered for 2023

looking at relationship tags, i also wanted to know whether landoscar suffer noticeably from Second-Ship Syndrome, so i tallied the first-tagged ship of every fic to find out. i know this doesn't necessarily mean that it's always the "main" ship but it's a good enough approximation. the results were quite positive!

filtered to top ships with count of >1 only

i then also calculated the number of ships tagged for each fic to discern the profile of multi-shipping in 814 ficdom; i did have to do a little bit of string standardization (all instances of implied / background / hinted collapsed to hinted for simplicity's sake + removal of other redundancies), but otherwise i left everything mostly untouched.

as you can see, landoscar also have a fairly promising amount of OTP: TRUE fic:

by the time you get to the fics with 10+ ships tagged, landoscar are less likely to be the primary ship, which makes sense just on a basic statistical level... this is also a very small sample size though

i also lazily tallied the 10 most common ships that weren't NOR/PIA or NOR & PIA to diff their shares of the 814 tag vs. of the general f1 rpf tag, to see which other pairings are more represented in the 814 tag than on average (because lestappen are the most popular by pure count but this is also true of fandom in general, so it would be a misrepresentation to say that their popularity is out of the ordinary):

maxiel's gap isn't really that surprising since i think that, generationally, in terms of when both pairings were teammates there is quite a gap; with carlando—actually let me tally this again but including all instances of "implied" and "past" as being part of the same ship, since that's how ao3 tag-wrangles as well:

Aha ! obviously as a direct ship there is competition between 814 and other lando or oscar ships, but this difference is somewhat less pronounced once we include all formats. tbh none of this really means anything but i thought i'd add it anyway... (it's also very possible that there are several errors in this, in which case my b 😔)

before we move on to additional tags, there are a few more basic characteristics of 814 fic we can calculate. i realize i never offered an overview of Super Basic Stats, so here are a few:

plus, looking at word counts, here is a distribution of those in 2023-updated fic, which shows that a majority of 814 fics were under the 5k mark:

85% of landoscar fics were under 10k & nearly 97% under 25k

i don't really have any reason to believe that landoscar's wc stats differ significantly from average ? so this is kind of just Data To Have Data, and it most likely reflects normal ao3 trends in general... but i thought i'd include it anyway because i already made it lol. similarly, here are word count distributions but stratified by rating:

& same info but heat map view:

i feel like this is also probably something you'd find across fandom in general — that gen fic is likely to have a higher share of under 1k works, since Building Up to sexual content often takes... Literal & Metaphorical Foreplay ! and the longer a fic is the more opportunities an author has to include a sex scene or other explicit content (ofc, not necessarily just porn but also graphic violence & so on). but i thought this was fun to visualize haha

additional tags & aus?

back in my old f1 rpf stats post, i made a table comparing fluff/angst "ratios" (not exactly a direct ratio because of how tag wrangling works, but an approximation) of the most popular f1 ships, and now that landoscar are somewhat popular i thought i'd first do an update:

also current data, not 2023 to make things easier

just like before, simi are one of the most fluffy ships and brocedes are by far the most angsty, but it's interesting to see 814 also extremely high up on the charts, with far and away the lowest % of angst. will be exciting 2 see how that holds or changes as the seasons progress !

finally, i also wanted to do a bit of au/additional tag analysis because you can kind of see this when you use additional filters on ao3 but the previews are limited and get bogged down by the prevalence of *checks notes* Fluff, Angst, PWP, Anal Sex and what have you. which are nice stats to have and all but what of the rest !

disclaimer that the set for these tables is a biiiit outdated because by the time i'd wrangled everything i was like I Am Not Changing It Again. unfortunately i clean my data with shoddy queries and regex functions in googsheetz...

there were 48 tags with at least 10 instances from 2023 fics, shown below, with ones that are (some ~vaguely) nsfw in red just to kind of get a rough sense of which tags get commonly used in M/E fic:

getting a bit too much into small sample size / specific fic territory so if you're an author i sincerely apologize for that... do not mean 2 put u on blast... TT__TT but i also tried to tally the most popular aus people write for 814, which is a bit dubious because people tag in really different ways and i had to accommodate for a lot of string formats but ... it's close enough ! (?)

i feel like this is very little interesting info but idk what else to add so i will stop here for now... well!!! if you made it to the end i hope u learned something or even vaguely enjoyed reading T__T and most of all thank you :')

[achillesuwu]

Someone asked why people kudos or don’t fic and I had to explain it so : Your daily reminder to never sadly looks at hits and wonder why so few people kudoed your works.

Here is a fic in my history that is at 15 views. I maybe opened it 2 times and it’s hanging out in my [:D] pile of open tabs but I guess (at least that’s what I think is happening) ao3 is counting everytime my app reloads it

I definitely LOVE this fic but I sure as heck never read it 62 times, the number of chapters may add to the count (because I was there when it was updated more info later on) but I read all of them once. The fact that I comment every chapter may play a role too idk

Another extreme exemple of I fic I love but yeah. I didn’t read it 152 times.

Here is a fic I didn’t read 9 times either

It doesn’t happen everytime. There are fics that are marked as « visited once » but they are quite rare, most of the fic in my history range from 2 to 10 views.

Here is more info on specific from the FAQ :

There are definitely people that don’t kudos fic but it’s truly impossible to guess how many from the number of hit. I once had a fic marked as visited 340 times in my history.

All of this to say : consider kudos as views. Consider someone sending you a « Rereading kudos !!! » comment as a reread. Don’t over think the hit count vs the number of kudos.

[shadowgast-recs-weekly]

This week, we have six fics that feature kink negotiation or talk about sexual boundaries! Check them out beneath the cut, and as always - be sure to comment or kudos if you like them!

reaching the starlight by CherryMilkshake, eldritchmochi (86552, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: Eating disorders, past abuse and mental illness

The camming AU - Essek is a successful cammer. Caleb doesn't have the money for the same sort of equipment, but is better at speaking. They decide to team up for views

Reccer says: So much of the hotness comes from them discussing what they will and won't do in front of the camera - the somewhat clinical negotiations vs. the attraction they feel towards each other

coping skills by eldritchmochi (251061, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Don’t we all have mistakes we wish to correct? Essek has made many and, caught up in a whirlwind romance with a Dom perfect in all the ways he didn’t know he wanted, he makes many more.

Reccer says: so much kink negotiation and a thoughtful look at kink with health conditions and disabilites

I can be the subject of your dreams by lakrisrot (enheduane) (3307, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: Dubcon/Consensual Non Consent

Caleb (consensually) fucks Essek's body while he sleeps

Reccer says: I liked it!

reflections and other illusions of control by atlasarcana (15022, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Essek has silent frustrations about his bedroom life with Caleb, so he tries to summon a version of Caleb from another timeline to see if that'll help, but it ends up being a Volstrucker Bren version of Caleb. All three still negotiate sex, but it's mostly about Caleb not being able to Dom how Essek wants to be Dommed and handing the reins to Bren.

Reccer says: Bren (Scourger AU Caleb) has a very antagonistic relationship to Essek and Caleb in this fic series at first, but it's interesting watching that antagonism evolve into understanding & compassion, especially regarding sexual boundaries

Suspicions (The Empire Spy) by Im_sorry_dont_judge_me (8259, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: Dubcon/Consensual Non Consent

Caleb confesses to a more... unconventional fantasy than what him and Essek have been doing so far. Essek might have similar ideas.

Reccer says: Some great kink negotiation and communication

a body in absentia by nonwal (103601, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: under negotiated kink, feeblemind

In which Bren Aldric Ermendrud decides to seduce the Shadowhand and finds that the best way to convince someone to be vulnerable with you is to be vulnerable in turn.

Reccer says: There's a lot to love about this fic, but one of my favorite things is how the fic navigates Essek's touch aversion in a sexual relationship

Aeor is for Lovers is an 18+ Shadowgast Discord server. The above fanfic recommendations were pulled from our community for this weekly event. All fics, unless otherwise specified, will primarily feature Shadowgast. Have any questions about what this is? Check out the FAQ! Next week, we��ll be back with Older Favorites (older than two years!)

[olderthannetfic]

I think something just clicked for me about the whole Anti vs. Proship debacle.

Both sides view "media consumption" as an expression. Antis say that reading or watching or playing something is an expression of a person's innate moral compass. According to them, when you read Black Butler fanfic you are expressing your approval of child being in a romantic relationship with a demon in real life.

And proshippers rebutt that with the fact that reading, watching, and playing things is an expression of your trauma or sexuality. They get a lot more nuanced, but to them if you read Black Butler fanfic, you're expressing your own anxieties about or experiences with a type of relationshp that you know is wrong in real life, or maybe you're expressing that you think it's kinda hot in fiction (but mostly the trauma, they're *really* keen on trauma as a an excuse for liking things).

But I don't consider being a passive audience member as an expression. Writing fic or drawing fan art is an expression of what I think is hot or interesting in canon, kicking headcanons back and forth on Tumblr is an expression of how I feel and think about canon, sharing recs is an expression of what I like and what I think my friends will like, leaving comments on a fic is how I express my thoughts to the author, even a kudos or Tumblr like is an expression of the fact that I appreciated something. But simply reading fic is not how I express anything. The bare fact that I enjoyed a fic or canon is not a social interaction or an expression of any kind.

Having thoughts or feelings about what I read and watch and play is not how I express things about myself, I have to share those thoughts on Tumblr or through fanworks to express them.

And thoughts and feelings shouldn't be counted as expressions of something deeper. Your thoughts and tastes are the things you express (if you choose to), they are not themselves public expressions of deeper traumas or moralities. No one knows what you're thinking unless you tell them, and going through life as if everyone can read your mind is a pretty horrible way to live.

--

Eh. A lot of the "proship" side just thinks antis are idiots, not that anything is necessarily about your sexuality or trauma. Those are just things you say to rebut "You have no right to like this" if you don't have the balls to say "I do what I want!"

[scoops404]

Casual reminder that to know the true amount of reviews an author get on ao3 you need to !

Divide the number of comments by the number of chapters (ex : 24 reviews for a 8/8 chapters story is 3 reviews)

Divide that number by 2 for the author's answers (so 1-2 reviews by chapters)

Big numbers are often just inflated, in particular for big stories ! There are never too much comments

(I know you know as a writer but your public is the more susceptible to care about leaving reviews. Also, would anyone be interested about a guide on how to write a review bc I know it's something people get stuck on)

Hi!

There's a few things I want to talk about in this ask, and I realize that you absolutely mean well, but trying to do breakdowns of comments or even kudos vs hits or anything like that is kind of... against the spirit of fanfiction? I think that's the best way to phrase it.

Comments don't get divided up evenly between chapters. Not necessarily. As a story picks up momentum, more people discover it and comment. Sometimes an author will drop all three chapters at once and people will only comment on the last one, etc. Some authors don't respond to comments, or are perpetually behind on them, so diving by two doesn't really work there. There's many reasons this doesn't shake out entirely.

But, moreover, I really want to encourage readers (and nonwriters I guess, more accurately) to realize that it doesn't matter how many comments a fic does or doesn't have. If you liked it and you feel led, then you should leave a comment. Obviously it's not necessary (and there are days where I'm brain-dead and I don't have the mental capacity), but comments on a fic are better than gold to writers.

There's not a magic number that means you have to leave a comment, or on the flip side, this fic has *enough* comments so I don't need to leave one. The spirit of fanfiction is that it's a fan service someone takes time to craft to share with the fandom, and you can encourage them to do it more by writing some nice words about their story.

Imagine spending hours and hours of your time working on something, thinking about it in the shower, talking to your friends about how to make it better, researching things online to make it better, editing down words, and when you go to share that--silence.

Comments are the lifeblood of fanfiction writers, it's how we know we're doing something that people like. Fanfiction is what keeps fandoms going when the source material dries up or goes on hiatus.

It's so so important to let writers know you like what they're putting out, or one day they might just stop. There is a point when we as writers get little to no feedback and start thinking, "What's the point? No one is reading this anyway." (This happened to me in the Dan and Phil fandom years ago). Now, I have a healthy view of my stories and I write for myself and my close friends (which is why i have such batty stories), but if my close friends didn't even want to read what I was writing, I'd just stop.

I've been very very blessed with a comment section in my time here in the DNF fandom. I've made friends through my comments, including a new IRL friend -- hi @czargasm.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be so preachy or single you out or anything. I think a comment guide would be really really lovely and something that could help a lot of people who would be willing to leave more comments if they had an idea of what to say.

As a writer, my favorite kind of comments to get are 1) in depth analysis, but of course that's a lot so, equally loved are 2) the "i was doing X thing when I saw you dropped a chapter so I ran here" and 3) "I made myself a treat to read this update" comment - extra points if you tell me what the treat was 4) A line you particularly liked or a story it reminds you of, etc.

Thank you for giving me a vehicle to apparently preach about comments. I guess I had a lot to say. Oops.

From the bottom of my heart, writers love comments. Nothing will make us write faster or better than knowing people are into out stories.

[aces-to-apples]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

Tagged by @dead-cowboy!

1.) How many works do you have on ao3? Across three accounts and like 1......1? years, jesus, 154. (I think. Give or take a couple anonymized that I may have forgotten.)

2.) What’s your ao3 word count? 325,886. Somehow.

3.) What fandoms do you write for? Previously? Red vs. Blue, The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Musketeers (2014), Warcraft (2016), RWBY, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Umbrella Academy, The Hobbit trilogy, Supernatural, and Star Wars. Currently: Dragon Age, Jak and Daxter, Skyrim, Ted Lasso, Kingdoms of Amalur, and Star Wars.

4.) What are your top five fics by kudos? A trite, originally tumblr not!fic about OWK (anonymized), the sequel that tricked me into liking Darth Maul (anonymized), an old Cody/OWK Week fic from 2020, the first Sith!Cody fic in the tag (anonymized), and Renegade (time-traveling clones from 2018). Seven out of my top ten are anon, and eight of the top fifteen, so I figure we can just leave it there lmao.

5.) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Not really, no. Most comments I get are.....cursory? Obligatory? They aren't substantive, is what I mean to say. "Thanks for writing this", and whatnot, which not only don't necessitate a reply, but like, what reply can there possibly be? If there's a non-rhetorical question that I can answer, or the commenter had something to say, or even just has fun energy, then I try to respond in kind, but those kinds of comments are uhhhhhh. Not something my work attracts lol. Basically, I'm not going to send a thank-you card for a thank-you card, you know?

6.) What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Uhhhhh, I don't know, I don't really deliberately do angst? Maybe a Dogma/Hardcase ficlet with ghost!Hardcase, but also depending on your point of view, maybe the Sith!OWK Kenfetti fic. It's hard for me to judge, I don't think I've ever even tagged something with angst, but that definitely seems like the darkest ending I've written? Idk.

7.) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? God this is much harder than I thought it would be. Somehow I don't think these two were meant to be the hardest-hitting questions lmao? *scrolling down my fic summaries* Hmm, learning things about myself that I'm not sure I appreciate... Maybe "she wore it wonderfully well" (Mag7, Emma/Vasquez)? Trying to find something unambiguously happy that I also am less embarrassed to link is. Difficult.

8.) Do you get hate on fics? Not especially. I have guest comments turned off, my fics are locked, and I generally don't write ships with wide readerships to start with. For the most part I occasionally get something rude and entitled that I delete, but I tell you FFN readers are some of the most hostile people you'll ever meet, they're truly dedicated to being haters of anything even resembling creative writing, it's very funny.

9.) Do you write smut? If so what kind? I do, it's not very good, and honestly I think the most prevailing trend is consent issues and power dynamic fuckery. My first smut fic was anonymous mindsex, and my second was sex-pollened enemies lmaoooooo.

10.) Do you write cross overs? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Not as often as I'd like to, but yes! Allow me to introduce you to (and please ignore that it's a fusion), DRUMROLL PLEASE!, The Worst AU In The World (Game of Thrones/Winx Club)! If you want an actual crossover though, I did just write Dorian "Dragon Age" Pavus/Savage "Star Wars" Opress, so that was fun.

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge; I doubt it.

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated? Um. Yes. About eight years ago someone translated a Warcraft smutfic of mine into Chinese. That's the only one I know about.

13.) Have you ever cowritten a fic before? No, I genuinely don't even know how that would work.

14.) What’s your all time favourite ship? Hmmm. I can't say I have one. I'm a multifandom multishipper at heart, I've burnt out of several fandoms, burnt out of several ships, and I'm too AuDHD to be able to pick a favorite anything. Trent Crimm/Jamie Tartt.

15.) What’s a WIP you’d like to finish, but doubt you ever will? To be fair, most of them. But also the Dooku POV installment of the first two most-kudosed fics' series, and the Locus/Tucker roleswap RvB fic, and the Locus time-travel fic, and the Dragon Age/Star Wars crossover Maulrexsoka fic. Just off the top of my head.

16.) What are your writing strengths? I've been told my fics tend to be very high concept and I do weird things with syntax. And honestly, that's already me knowing too much.

17.) What are your writing weaknesses? Quickest answer? Plot.

18.) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I'm monolingual and don't have any cultural baggage around it, so I generally find it at least some level of fun and engaging, but it's also easy for it to become gimicky when it's a conlang (guilty) and not well-executed when it's a canonically code-switching character (also guilty). I maintain however that all of that should be forgiven in Red vs. Blue fics though; the entire point from the ground up is that all the Spanish is wrong.

19.) First fandom you wrote for? ....................................Yu-Gi-Oh!. With reader-insert. I plea Not Guilty by reason of I Was Fourteen.

20.) Favourite fic you’ve ever written? See, recency bias says "cat-scratch" (amnesiac!Sabretooth AU) but brand loyalty says "peace is a lie" (JesseMaul). Maybe I'll split the difference, end up with a net-zero, and say "memento (mori)" (Cailan Theirin/Female Surana).

-

Honestly I think our biggest takeaway here is that I can't be trusted to answer questions about my own content because I harsh the vibe by tending to not like it lol

Tagging whoever wants to play!

[sidgeno-ficrecs]

pictures of success by @dadvans

sidgeno (2018, explicit, 7.9k)

Bears are solitary creatures.

Zhenya decides what he’s really feeling toward the end of the summer isn’t loneliness, or heartbreak, or other several other intangible feelings he’s heard in passing but never known; it’s disappointment.

It’s disappointment.

god, do i ever love shifter fics. i think i've read every single one in this pairing, and i'm still absolutely greedy for more (and yes this is a hint to all you authors out there). just like a/b/o, shifter fics give us the ability to take these two people that we know in our current world and move them into a society that's just a bit to one side, just a little different, and see how things play out with those small differences.

this fic stands alone, though, with how it deals with the changes.

a lot of times, the focus is on the physical—heat cycles and hormones, pregnancies, and the social differences that arise from anatomical ones. this fic, though, gives us a close-up look at something else: the mental differences, the way a shifter might have been raised to be more like an animal in their mindset and world view, and how that might clash with the more human world they interact with.

and the results are a lovely, aching, restless fic that ends so satisfactorily that you'll feel just as full-up as sid after his BIG cheat day in italy.

the close POV we get of zhenya's off-season is perfectly melancholy, and i got a lump in my throat reading more of his solitary summer, and how it's been fine—until something changes, something's different, and suddenly it's not. it's so clear to the reader that this isn't a new change, it's something that zhenya could have wanted sooner, but he didn't let himself until he couldn't avoid it any longer. the conflict between what a proper bear shifter would be feeling and doing vs what he wants for himself and sid is excellently portrayed.

@dadvans has a real gift for writing the physical, too. the real, gritty, sometimes gross reality of human bodies and how they intersect and interlock are in full display here, and it's amazing. the description of sid during his heat, sid's body once he and zhenya are back in pittsburgh—it all feels real in a way that can be very challenging to pull off.

and the ending? oh gosh. tender and sweet and the perfect ending for zhenya, and sid, and their family. you'll want to go back and immediately re-read this fic as soon as you're done, it's that good and that satisfying of an ending.

read it here on ao3!

and don't forget to kudos and comment!

[heroesspirit]

For the writer ask, M and Y!

M. What’s the weirdest au scenario I’ve come up with? Different people’s aus HW Links meeting, some of them would be friends and others would fight in a mcdonalds ball pit. Has this been turned into a story? no.

Y. What are my thoughts on personal satisfaction with something I’ve written vs popularity of my stories. Do I tend to be satisfied with my most popular stories? Okay interesting one. I sort of go in with the expectation of my fics not being super popular or anything. 1. I write for my own au most of the time, so most are not inclined to click on something not LU. 2. I write primarily for one of the least favorite Links. Regardless, I don’t make a habit of looking at my stats. I value the type of comments I receive over number of views or kudos. Did I make someone laugh? Cry? Have a thought provoking reaction? Then that is a work I am proud of. For the second part of the question now, I am sort of unsatisfied with my most popular fic, but not in the expected way. It’s an LU fic I wrote alongside when I was creating Heroes Spirit. I’m not satisfied with it in the sense that I do wish and hope some of my HS fics will surpass it, which two of them are on their way to doing!

[sainteda]

thank u for the tag @weirwitch <3

1. How many works do you have on ao3 (or masterlist)? two :3

2. What’s your total ao3 word count? - 168,833k, ignoring an orphaned bellarke fic. yeowch

3. What fandoms do you write for? - mostly harry potter, specifically tom riddle unfortunately. the special interest cannot be stopped. i do have a hotd fic but i have doubts it'll ever be updated again lmao. i'd love to write for bg3 though but that could be the hyperfixation talking

4. Top five fics by kudos - 1. paper confines, 2. scion of the stranger, but my kudos to views ratio is so tragic 😭

5. Do you respond to comments? - YES. sometimes on wp as opposed to ao3 i'm more forgetful because there can be so many per chapter, but. yes. always

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? - no endings yet so nothing to say abt that................ but i do know

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? - ^

8. Do you get hate on fics? - i don't think so?

9. Do you write smut? - not on this account 😁

10. Craziest crossover? - back in 2018 writing it x stranger things crossover felt like something really revolutionary but it was, in fact, not. still fun though

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? - i've lost count of how many times

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? - i've gotten messages about it but i'm waiting until the fics are complete and edited first!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? - i've joined an apply fic once but co-writing seems too stressful to me 😭

14. All time favorite ship? - asking me to choose between tom and amoret vs nadya and colette is like pointing a gun at my head. but it's nadya and colette

5. What’s a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? - scion of the stranger :( so many ideas but rhaenicent is all i care about in hotd now. so sorry aemond targaryen maybe s2 will revitalize my love

16. What are your writing strengths? - hmmmmm i always get told it's my dialogue but when i get really into magic systems and descriptive lore that's what excites me the most as a writer

17. What are your writing weaknesses? - NOT WRITING

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language? - no thoughts head empty. i always just assume if i need to understand it a translation will be provided eventually

19. First fandom you wrote in? - 5sos and one direction at age 12 😭😭😭 but i do remember my elementary school introducing an english class in grade 4 and i was so hyped not to write in french that i basically rewrote harry potter. so in a way... it's been hpfic from the start. embarrassing

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? - paper confines, my magnum opus my firstborn child... also a very long oneshot on my other tumblr that shall not be named. iykyk

tagging: @skylessnights @recordplayerfics @icarusignite @omenthree

[nebulize-my-mind]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

(I don't know anybody here, so nobody tagged me, I just thought it'd be fun, sorry if I've committed Tumblr crimes lol)

How many works do you have on AO3?

8! But if you don't count my original story snippet it's 7... but if you count my one fanfiction-dot-net-only fic that I've been too lazy (and slightly embarrassed bc it's old) to transfer over... it's 8 again lol

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

With my original story snippet: 16,705 Without my original story snippet: 15,047 And for fun... Including my fanfiction-dot-net-only fic but not original story snippet: 105,467 (lmao)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Oh boy here we go. Well. The fandoms I currently have fics posted for are Danny Phantom, Natsume's Book of Friends/Natsume Yuujinchou, Batfam/DCU (and does the Teen Titans animated show count as a different fandom or nah?), Spider-Man/Marvel, and Harry Potter. However. The fandoms I have fics for including unposted WIPs are as follows: Danny Phantom, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Ben 10, My Hero Academia/Boku no Hero Academia, Batfam/DC, The Morose Mononokean/Fukigen na Mononokean, Gravity Falls, Randy Cunningham: Ninth Grade Ninja, Star vs the Forces of Evil, The Magnus Archives, Spider-Man/Marvel, How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians, Harry Potter, Natsume's Book of Friends/Natsume Yuujinchou, Sk8 the Infinity, Bungou Stray Dogs, Be More Chill (the musical), the Rick Riordan universe (Percy Jackson, etc.), and Big Hero 6.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

So I don't have a lot of fics actually posted and obviously I can't count the one that's only on fanfiction-dot-net so... 1) They Say Right, Let's Go Left (Batfam Titans Tower AU; 2,871 kudos as of 11/12/2023) 2) Skia Tou Myalou (Batfam Meta!Tim AU; 1,832 kudos as of 11/12/2023) 3) How To Summon A Halfa (Without A Ouija Board) (Danny Phantom 30-minute oneshot; 178 kudos as of 11/12/2023) 4) And Thus, I Repent (Danny Phantom/Teen Titans crossover preview posted for International Fanworks Day 2022 that still hasn't been updated; 144 kudos as of 11/12/2023) 5) What A Lovely View (Natsume's Book of Friends/The Morose Mononokean crossover oneshot for International Fanworks Day 2021; 74 kudos as of 11/12/2023)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

As much as I can! A lot of the time I'll respond to a lot of comments after I post the story but forget as time goes on lol. I appreciate them so much nonetheless! I'm always flabbergasted that someone took the time to tell me their thoughts and feelings about MY story, it's so cool. Gotta make sure they know how cool I think it is and they are!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Okay... so I haven't actually had any angsty endings per se, at least none that I've posted. Because of where the prologue chapter leaves things for Fractured (Danny Phantom/My Hero Academia) it's currently the most angsty thing I have posted, but I haven't posted anything past the prologue chapter and the story will get more lighthearted. I once accepted a request to write a major character death oneshot, but I never was satisfied or finished it. If I had, it would definitely be the most angsty. As for WIPs/unposted things... I have a "choose your ending" Tim Drake AU series in the works and the "bad ending" will be the most angsty ending I've ever written or planned once I get there.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh, most of what I write has happy endings, I'm honestly a hopeles romantic. I'd call on Skia Tou Myalou (Batfam, Meta!Tim AU) for that probably, mostly because half of They Say Right, Let's Go Left's (Batfam, Titans Tower AU) fluffy ending is in the author's note and also it's a oneshot. As for WIPs/unposted things... I have no idea lol.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

The only real hate I ever got was on my fanfiction-dot-net-only fic and I still don't know what the guy had against me other than being mad at my author's notes and that I was following a canon plotline... after I said that that's what this fic was going to do before branching out after I finished the rewrite. The positive feedback completely outweighed them though! Thanks to those folks!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

NOPE. Not my thing, totally chill if it's yours. I am too sex-repulsed asexual for that lmao.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

ABSOLUTELY! You may not believe it from what I have posted (or actually maybe you will) but my main genre is crossovers, specifically involving dimension travel. I wouldn't call any of them particularly weird combinations honestly. Maybe What A Lovely View (Natsume's Book of Friends/The Morose Mononokean) or my WIP "Nanashi" (Danny Phantom/The Morose Mononokean) because of the more obscure fandoms.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Thankfully no, and I always make sure my fics are tagged where exactly I've reposted them under my own accounts so there's no misunderstandings.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet, that'd be the dream, wouldn't it?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nah, I don't really have people I know in the fanfic community.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

That sure does change monthly! Currently I'm vibing with Reki and Langa from Sk8 the Infinity, can't wait for the next season of that show!

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a couple of unposted WIPs that I call "cancelled" WIPs because I never plan on continuing them, it's mostly a couple Danny Phantom crossovers from my early days. As for posted things, work on Fractured (Danny Phantom/My Hero Academia) is actually trudging along pretty well even though I haven't posted anything, I had to completely reorganize the notes for it into a section of their own because they outgrew my standard page formatting! And Thus, I Repent (Danny Phantom/Teen Titans) is at a wall though I plan on continuing it eventually. What's really been getting me is my fanfiction-dot-net-only fic that's been going on since before it was first posted in 2019 but at a standstill since 2020 and the pandemic. I've really been struggling to get any work done on it, which sucks because it's my longest fic but it's also from the early days and I have a love-hate relationship with it and its fandoms.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hesitantly... imagery? Scene description? I love writing a good, visceral chunk of text that makes you feel like you're there. It lands... sometimes lol

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Trying to develop relationships. Romantic, platonic, any. I have no idea how to pace these things or sometimes how to move them forward, I'm not a super social person and I don't have any experience in romantic relationships, so it's harder to pull from my own life. I'd love to get better though, and relationships are so important to writing and fun to see unfold.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I think it's fine as long as you're respectful of the language and culture. Like, the title of Skia Tou Myalou (Batfam, Meta!Tim AU) (sorry for the lack of accents, I don't have access to the right keyboard right now) is in Greek because the language is cool af, and I had a reader confirm it was correct. Some people get worked up specifically over including Japanese honorifics in anime fics sometimes, but I think it adds a lot of nuances to character relationships so as long as you do your research and apply them correctly and respectfully, I don't mind it at all. I personally prefer to do so when writing fics in anime fandoms where they're used for that extra level of attention and detail. Y'all have no idea how long I spend researching this stuff!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

This one was never posted and deleted way back when, but when I was in middle school I wrote a Percy Jackson and the Olympians OC oneshot lol

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Y'all trying to make me choose? Betrayal... and it changes every time I work on one lol. Currently I have a certain fondness for an unposted Bungou Stray Dogs Chuuya-joins-the-ADA-with-Dazai AU but my favorite posted is Skia Tou Myalou (Batfam, Meta!Tim AU). Sure it's a little eh in places but I love elemental-ish powers and Tim Drake is my favorite Batboy lol

[lightyakami]

the kind of unfortunate thing is ao3 just doesn't have any metrics that tell you anything useful about how any people are reading your work. kudos and comments are both manual, and there are lots of reasons people refrain from leaving them, especially but not exclusively on explicit works or works which tackle taboo subjects. people use bookmarks both to mark future reads and save things for re-reads. the only thing that gets counted automatically is the hits, and ao3 does not differentiate unique vs. total hits -- it filters out your own views and consecutive visits from the same IP address, but because multiple views from the same reader are counted multiple times, there's no way to tell if people are clicking in then leaving because they dislike the work or because they're returning for re-reads. (this is also why you should not worry about hit:kudo ratios.) you can kind of parse out what did or did not hit by comparing it to similar works, but it's really case by case -- like of course it's influenced by the paring & the rating, you also have to take into account the length, whether or not it's an au, the type of au, the time at which it was posted, etc. i would really encourage readers to leave kudos or comments because those are the only data points which conclusively indicate to authors that people actually like our work, and most people do use that info to decide what to write next. but as a writer it's just not really an accurate indication of people's interest because on a functional level most people just don't do either of these things & they also aren't consistent about when and why they do them. it feels bad to post something and get crickets but it's genuinely tricky to tell what that actually means.

[on-leatheredwings]

analyzing (read: briefly observing) the differences in my fics' performance on here vs. ao3 is inch resting :^D

i think my damian stuff gets more engagement on here, while they get a lot of views but less kudos/comments on ao3....

my bruce stuff is moderately received on here but it seems bruce stuff gets easily popular over there (more general batman audience on ao3)

dick is p well received on both, maybe more ao3 than here

tim.... weird findings but i also feel he's the least popular batboy so makes sense

[gatalentan]

So this is largely me thinking out loud and i don't expect anyone but me to care about this but. Ok, my thoughts in order

1. I have... maybe 18 years of Wiki editing experience and I am a good archivist. I admined one of the most popular fan wikis (3mil views per month) for ~6 years where I have 30,000+ edits. Yes that's a lot. No I don't know what grass feels like. But what I'm saying is I'm good at documenting.

2. The Abbott Elementary wiki has excellent episode pages, but very poor character pages. This is absolutely not a neg against the wiki or the contributors, far from it. The episode and transcript pages are very well done and comprehensive, and as someone who has done transcripts myself and knows how long it takes, they have so much of my respect. As a heavy-user wiki editor you tend to find your particular editing niche you enjoy and that's your thing you do, and you do it well. It's like any other type of fan creation, like finding a type of fanfic you like to write, or a particular art style you enjoy drawing in. That's what they're doing over there and they're great at it and I use those pages a lot.

3. Character pages are the ones that take a ton of time and archival, much more than I think most readers understand. For a good, solid page, probably 6-10 hours of writing minimum is required to write a chara page from scratch, not including the time spent rewatching the material. To update post episode for all charas from all charas different perspectives, at least 2-5 hours per episode (for an uncomplicated series, for high fantasy series with tons of lore... yikes). For this reason, poorly maintained chara pages is true of most wikis that aren't EXTREMELY active (the majority of wikis, believe it or not, have maybe 2-5 contributors at best, oftentimes just one guy with autism (me, i'm the guy)). People think they can do it, cause why wouldn't it be easy? so they try, then realise just how long it's gonna take and then bail and they're never seen again. It's why most wikis (except for Big series) are an unupdated ghost town. It's unpaid volunteer work for no praise or reward, so it's understandable. It's also very demoralising work. There's no kudos or comments or likes, nobody tells you good job. So it's a huge timesink just for the knowledge you contributed to the fandom, and hoping someone finds it useful, but never hearing if it was. "Anyone can edit a wiki" is true, but I can tell you point-blank that the reality is that most Good wiki pages you've ever seen were 95% written by just one person, and it's Work. The burnout is real and I've felt it, it's why I've been on effectively a wiki hiatus for nearly 2 years.

4. Because the Abbott cast is significantly smaller than the one I used to work on (52 main charas over 4 games vs a core cast of 6+1), writing good chara pages is something I could theoretically realistically do, because it's not as large as I am used to in my last experience, but it would, as I said, still be a huge time commitment.

5. I wish the pages were better, because there's so many times I've wanted to look up a fact and have been unable to do so - and making this a reality is within my means and totally within my experience. But:

6. Because the wiki hasn't had effectively useable chara pages for 2 seasons I'm not sure whether long-time active fans would think to consider the chara pages a resource after seeing them previously and knowing they're empty (I am guilty of this, I don't bother looking at them). So I'm not sure if the time commitment would be worth it. I also don't know if I would be able to commit to iterative updating once S3 rolls around, but at least there would be a stronger foundation for other people to contribute to?

7. I'm also not sure how the admins over there would feel about me blustering in out of nowhere, lol. Having been on the other side of that table I would understand the hesitation of someone coming in swinging.

I don't know. I'm considering it.

[rarijackistheshit]

stole it from @randomisedmongoose

rules: give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

As the title says. Okay!

Most hits: I have to say I was surprised. I was pretty darn sure it was annother one but... Dork Diaries - The chronicles of a (not so) succesful lesbian takes the top. 10000 views. Sweeet... Adora as Nikki. Catra as Mackenzie and its all downhill from there.

Second most kudos: Hmmm. This needs some calculations, I have a few others... Okay, I will say this is the one.

Twilight Sparkle vs. Christmas. A blatant ripoff from a moomin short story but I have no shame. Yes, I have stories on fimfiction as well. Look at it in awe, Archive of our own! THIS is how you design a website!

Third most comments: Mmmmkay... Another one where I have to get my pocket calculator... It was a close shave, but this is the one.

The coochie snorcher that could. If you catch the reference, cool. This is smut, but I am pretty satisfied with it. It's also a pretty rare pair, Fluttershy/Adagio Dazzle. This one goes out to my fellow bronies. I know you are there. We will never forget.

Fourth most bookmarks: You know what, this was a boring post. I will just put one up here that I think more people should read.

You're welcome. Me and Bagges attempt to do crackship. Castaspella/Shadow Weaver. The psychology of how their relationship would work. This one I am really damn proud of.

Fifth most words: I'm gonna cheat with this one as well, because the real fifth is unfinished and I don't think that's fair on a list.

Best Friend Squad RIDES AGAIN. A rambling tale of a middle aged Adora getting her mojo back with the help of her old friends and a few guns.

Fewest words: Another cheat. The real one is supposed to be a selection of drafts but I have only made one entry. So have yourself some nice Derpy/Rarity as a send-off!

Live long in Phosphor!