#write fic is also a statistical outlier

[justaninjageek]

"Average small fandom has 2,000 fics on Ao3" is actually a statistical error. Ninjagos Georg, which posts 10,000 fics per day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

I really feel like people do not appreciate enough that ninjago’s ao3 tag has more than eight thousand fics. like that is genuinely insane.

[openphrase123]

i realize this may not be the best time to ask because of the last post you made, but how do you find the motivation to keep up with so many projects at once? the fact that you can is both inspiring and also very scary and i'm jealous. "average person writes 1 fic in their lifetime" WRONG. ficwriter openphrase123 who writes 3276453287 fics in their lifetime all at once is a statistical outlier and should not be c

oh this answer got long here's a readmore

well first of all. i have a boring dayjob that lets me marinate big ideas on the backburner. i can turn my thinking brain off for 90% of my projects at work. i've been working there for seven years, i can plot fanfiction in my head without taking a single performance hit LOL

second. um. i'm thirty in like four months. that is in NO WAY old, but i have been on this earth long enough to know when i, specifically, cannot execute or follow through an idea. i only pursue projects i know i can reasonably finish without going crazy. i just kind of. know how my brain chemistry works? i have reasonable expectations for myself?? i'm friends with my brain even if it likes to overthink or be anxious or have seizures or go down weird ocd-adjacent thought paths

third, which feeds a lot into the above point. but when you are in your teens and twenties it's going to take you some time to figure out the rhythm of how you work. i like to take a lot of mini breaks in between what i'm doing. this does not work for my girlfriend, who has ADHD and is like "if i take a break i will never recover" so she doesn't do that. brains are all different and you gotta find what works for you

fourth. well. this one might just be me. but the reason i have like 8 concurrent projects is because when i get tired of one, my brain is VERY happy to latch onto another one. no matter what i'm doing, something is getting done?? that's why i was writing 3 fics at once trying to decide which one to do next. and why i couldn't figure it out and had to leave it to a tumblr poll

and, fifth. idk. i don't write fanfiction when i don't want to? if you look at my ao3 account i haven't done it since. like. 2021? and before that the last time i wrote any fanfiction was in like 2013. of which i cannot track down that old accout but i swear it probably exists?

s.sixth??? and this one is going to sound the braggiest. and maybe it is a little bit. i'm good at this? not like. naturally. i wasn't born writing 100k fanfics. but i've been writing fiction for like. most of my life. i wrote a lot of awful stupid shit before i started writing good shit. i'm not falling asleep at the wheel or anything but after you're making art for enough time, it more easily falls into place. after doing it for so long you develop an intuition for the kinds of projects you will be sufficiently motivated for. i don't know how to describe this without sounding like a pretentious asshole. maybe i can allow myself to be for like five minutes. i've earned it

i hope that helped??? my brain kind of just. does stuff. i've trained it over the years to do stuff in the direction that makes me happy!! i wish my brain would let me go clean my bathroom instead but eh. tradeoffs?

[ladyluscinia]

OFMD Fic Statistics, Revisited

I made this statistics analysis post about Izzy’s popularity on AO3 back in January 2023, and I’ve been wondering for a while how the numbers have shifted. (More thoughts.) Seeing as S2 is about to ramp up fic writing again and upend current trends, I figure this is about my last chance to look only at S1 / hiatus popularity. So. New numbers.

The original post was made at 12,072 fics. Today we are at 23,187. Almost doubled.

“Israel Hands” is character tagged in 11,271, so 48.6% of all fics. Lucius Spriggs is tagged in 6153 (26.5%), Jim Jimenez in 3732 (16%), and Oluwande Boodhari in 3201 (13.8%). Our mains still unquestionably take the top spots, with Blackbeard / Edward Teach at 17,773 (76.7%) and Stede Bonnet at 16,355 (70.5%). Also if I exclude all the character tags of the Revenge crew I get 1441 fics (6.2%) that mostly don't use character tags, around 60% of which appear to be BlackBonnet. Did see one Doug/Mary though. Get some, girl!

Compared to 9 months ago, Izzy is up about +3.9% and everyone else is down less than -4%. Lucius at -3% and Edward at -3.6% appear to be the biggest hits. But, again, these percentages are still nearly twice as many fics total (ex: Lucius added +2593 to his January total of 3560). This looks like the fandom has been pretty consistent about which characters they write about? (I'll muse on trends later.)

Re: Shipping... Let's get BlackBonnet out of the way. This ship is tagged on 15,111 OFMD fics, making it 65.2% of the fandom. Now 906 of those are also tagged SteddyHands, making it a whole 6% of all BlackBonnet, and reducing BlackBonnet to 14,205 fics and 61.3% of the fandom if we exclude them.

Running the otp:true search says that now 10,016 fics and 43.2% of all OFMD content is BlackBonnet with no side pairings at all.

The fandom is getting a little more varied and willing to write about more than their OTP. It's down -6.9% which is a good thing if you like basically any side characters. All these numbers are still definitely on the high end, though, even for a canon pairing. Like the main thing making them seem less skewed to me is Good Omens (TV) that has AzCrow at 83.7% of 57,524 fics. And that's a huge outlier with less side character attention than a true ensemble cast.

Izzy Hands compared to shipping tags is still probably a better idea of how much positive attention he's getting, so we'll break those down next. See if that slight character tag gain reflects in ships.

BlackBonnet is still the biggest tag under "Israel Hands" with 5499 fics - that's 48.8% of all "Israel Hands" fics. It also means 23.7% of OFMD fics are tagged with BlackBonnet + "Israel Hands". SteddyHands is also tagged on 840 of those, so we can exclude that many and say 41.3% of "Israel Hands" fics / 20% of OFMD fics are tagged with BlackBonnet + "Israel Hands" and NOT SteddyHands.

The actual Izzy ships go:

Edward/Izzy at 2816 under "Israel Hands", 3029 (13%) total. Excluding SteddyHands becomes 1997 under "Israel Hands", 2139 (9.2%) total

Edward/Stede/Izzy at 1819 under "Israel Hands", 1994 (8.6%) total

Stede/Izzy at 1290 under "Israel Hands", 1385 (6%) total. Excluding SteddyHands becomes 532 under "Israel Hands", 567 (2.4%) total

Izzy/Lucius at 1015 under "Israel Hands", 1116 (4.8%) total. Black Pete/Lucius still outranks it even inside Izzy's tag, btw

For comparison Black Pete/Lucius is sitting at 1845 (8%) of fics. 75.7% of those are also tagged BlackBonnet, and excluding it leaves you with 448 (1.9%) of fics. I didn't want to run otp:true since there's so much poly!Lucius.

Oluwande/Jim is at 1662 (7.2%) of fics. 72.1% of those are also tagged BlackBonnet, and running otp:true leaves you with 302 (1.3%) fics that are purely TealOranges.

Very, very modest gains in the Izzy shipping sphere, mostly via SteddyHands and its +1.9% raising several boats if we're being real. Still... take Stede out and not even BlackHands breaks double digits. Izzy/Lucius went up by +0.5%. Comparatively Black Pete/Lucius is down -1.8% from January, and Oluwande/Jim down -1.3%. Again, we're seeing a pretty consistent fandom here. Remember these drops aren't all going to SteddyHands (obviously)... there's a lot of negligible ships that are fluctuating too and hopefully benefiting from having a slightly larger slice of the pie to share (and twice as many fics in that slice)!

Trend-wise, I'm actually surprised it's still so consistent? BlackBonnet going down is easily the largest change here, and it's not exactly huge. Also inevitable and a good thing, based on patterns from other fandoms. I mean, you might be disappointed if you are literally only here for them, but very little sucks like watching an ensemble show and then finding out the fandom gives zero fucks about any of the characters outside the huge main ship... even when you like the ship!

I do wonder if the very small boosts in Izzy content have anything to do with Izzy fans retreating into the canyon to keep their fandom enthusiasm alive? I know all the aggression from the Izcourse has cut off a lot of Izzy fans from the general fandom and all the side character and minor ship content therein, and creative communities around minor ships are small enough without being subdivided further. If you have a whole community who will talk to you about Izzy, and then you can only talk about TealOranges with your Izzy friends because half the TealOranges people have you blocked, you might just write more Izzy???

Anyway hope people find this as interesting as the last one.

[versegm]

Ok actually after a discussion with a friend I decided to run some more statistics re: fanfics and engagement, so here (statistics taken off my own fanfics):

General results:

I did both the median and the average to try to smooth out any statistical outlier, but the results were roughly the same lmao

Roughly, 11,20% of readers drops a kudo after clicking on a fic (which I assume to be a good baseline for "amount of readers who clicked here on purpose and didn't quit midway through")

On average, 2,8% of readers bookmark a fic after reading it (would be curious to know if that's a general thing? Because don't really write shippy fics or the "popular" stuff so that might incurs statistical bias. If anyone else is willing to run some numbers I'd love to know.)

On average, 0,88% of readers drop a comment after the fact.

Hypotheses:

I included the release date (or something close to) of each fandom to see if there was a correlation between ratio of comments vs age of the fanbase. There was none.

There are some fandoms where I actively linked my fics everywhere and got involved with people ect ect. I included that as well to see if there was a correlation between ratio of comments vs how much it was promoted. There was not. (It is possible that people directly dmed me their impressions instead of leaving a comment, in which case sorry guys I hold your compliments close to my heart but they were unfortunately lost to time.)

I wanted to add whether or not the fandom was currently active, but that's... actually really hard to gauge (what metric to use? Amount of fics uploaded on ao3 daily? Amount of new tweets under a given hashtag?) so I didn't.

Conclusion: I couldn't find any specific reasons for these numbers so uh I guess "10% of people bother finishing your fic/3% will like it enough to bookmark it/1% will go the extra step to tell you about it" is the default, and any deviation from that norm is fandom specific.

Fandom-specific observations:

Biggest ratio of comments/hits goes to all my Fate/Stay Night & Fate/Grand Order crossover fics, weirdly enough. Either 1) the fsn fandom is really generous in comments, or 2) the fact that it's a crossover means that it attracts two very different crowds which leads to twice the usual amount of comments.

The dubious award of having the worst ratio of comments/hits goes to the Amphibia fandom with a whooping 0,41%, half as much as any other fandom. Jesus Christ. That being said it is a fandom mostly populated by kids (I think?) which is probably (?) not the case for these other fandoms.

This is a fate blog so I do have to point out that the second worst ratio of comments/hits goes to the Fate/Grand Order fandom, so I can only encourage you guys to actually comment on the fics you like.

AI: The Somnium Files has a nearly 20% of kudos per hit. Though the ao3 tag is also not very active (last I checked it could go weeks without any update) so it might be a case of "we're so starved for new fics we'll read anything at this point."

TL;DR:

It seems like on average, 10% of people drop a kudo, 3% will like it enough to bookmark it, and 1% will go the extra step of leaving a comment. If you're a fic writer and you are despairing over the amount of attention your fic gets, worry not- that is normal.

[klcthebookworm]

2023 My Year In Fic

2023 Fiction Word Count:

285333 / 478128 words. 60% done!

Insights To Not Forget:

Dealing with what I can write in an hour: I established 600 words as my daily word count back in 2017, but didn't start tracking how long I wrote during a day until 2018. So I focused my math on 2018 - 2023. 2018 was the only year in which I had reached an hour of writing on average until this year 2023 so far when my average time is an hour and thirty minutes. But I only had 185 days of reaching or exceeding 600 words, so that spreadsheet broke down my average words per hour at 581.

For 2019 - 2021, my time writing per day dropped significantly: 47 minutes, 36 minutes, and 50 minutes. The days of reaching or exceeding 600 words also dropped (49, 48, 85) and average words per hour dropped too (451, 390, 584). I haven't gone back to look at what I was working during those years, but just from the statistic summaries I'm looking at it is clear that I either didn't write most days of the year or if I did it was way under an hour. 2022 is an outlier from the earlier years. The total days of reaching or exceeding was 113, but my average words per day was 1309 and the average writing time went up to 58 minutes per day. So the average words per hour calculated to 1363 that year.

Now to glance back at My Year in Fic posts to see what was going on.

2022: The new words that were not Library updating words only equaled 132,008. I wrote or editing 311 out of 365 days. Also in making new words easier, this was the first year I said I was going to work on one project a month and that was a success. My three void babies joined my house and life at the end of July. 2021: Ah, the fun with getting Scrivener 3 up and running and the laptop not having enough space. That was no fun. Continuing Covid not-fun times. Hurricane Ida made landfall. And Trigun outlines took over my brain. 2020: Covid plague! I spent all of August and September editing and just editing. 2019: Actually list of accomplishements is pretty good. We had my parents' anniversary cruise in October before Mom's surgery. And then she spent the entire month of Novemember in two hospitals and a rehab facility. 2018: I increased the number of days reaching or exceeding 600 words to 105 days out of 365. Looks like I overwhelmed myself with "WRITE ALL THE THINGS" on original fiction and barely did anything on the two projects I had going then to work on fanfics instead.

So can I write 600 words in an hour? No. My time so far this year is an average of writing for an hour and thirty minutes and the words per hours are 581. And another thing 600 words is my daily goal that my brain weasels twisted over to only take an hour. I have all day to get to it, but I shouldn't look at changing it until I have 365 days of reaching 600.

Stories I Posted at Ao3 Finally:

Tin Man / Medical Investigation: Alchemy: Word count = 30,166. A mysterious illness suddenly puts DG in charge and she seeks help where no one in the O.Z. expected her to. Written for TM Challenge 4th Annual Big Damn Challenge. Cross-posted on LiveJournal, FanFiction.Net, and the BookWorm's Library on June 29, 2011. The character Maggie Connor was created by ErinM_4600 for her story You Ever Wonder Why?, and used with permission. The character Margo Whitney was created for my Biker Mice From Mars: Evil Jack series of fanfics.

Nonestic Tales: What Memories Can Bring: Word count = 3237. Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling around and snow in your hair. Now you're smiling out the window of that crummy hotel over Washington Square. Our breath comes out white clouds, mingles and hangs in the air. Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there. This story was finished on June 4, 2009, cross-posted at FanFiction.net on July 13, 2009, and the BookWorm's Library on March 20, 2010, and is the first of the Nonestic Tales series. “Diamonds and Rust” by Blackmore’s Night was an inspiration song.

Nonestic Tales: Pirates of the Nonestic: Word count = 112,914. Away from the familiar O.Z., the runaway Princess and the Tin Man join Captain "Blood-rage" Betsy Bobbins' quest and cross swords with sullen pirates, the navy out to stop Bobbins, and a legendary evil lurking in the Nonestic Ocean. This story was finished on May 17, 2009, cross-posted at FanFiction.net and the BookWorm's Library on March 30, 2010, and is the second of the Nonestic Tales series.

Nonestic Tales: Making Whole: Word count = 6,835. Lovers at odds seem to end up in Wonderland, but does this realm have a way to give Azkadellia what she wants no matter how hard Ambrose objects?

Stories I Posted:

Sororal Lineality: Miha: Word count = 3,129. Biggs Darklighter arrives back at the Fleet and finds out what happened to Luke Skywalker from a new defector, Mara Jade.

Stories I Finished:

A lot of writing this year, but haven't finished a first draft of anything.

Stories Caught Up in Editing:

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 61,146. I have finished sending it through the ProWriting Aid program, but I found out I didn't create the Honoghran words one scene needed. So I got started on that and didn't get it finished.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Trigun: Three of a Kind: Word count = 203,308 (20,838 written in 2022 + 182,470 written in 2023). This story has so many words! I really would like to reach the end.

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 75,604 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in 2020 + 15,328 written in 2021 + 5416 written in 2022 + 23,714 written in 2023). I only worked on it for National Novel Writing Month in November, but I joined Rachael Herron's NaNo accountability group and with permission to just flood the narrative with all the stupid thoughts in my head, and I got the highest word count on this narrative in five years! It's still not done, but I'm in the third act setting up for the climax fight.

Sherok (Martian language): Word count = 8258. I think I'm done with creating this language. What I have left is defining the words I have created.

Honoghran: Word count = 604. I finally have a question should I ever meet Timothy Zahn. "Did you have any rules for the apostrophe usage in Honoghran or did you decide every other word needed one to look pretty?" We have them in titles, in proper names, in clan names, in at least one verb that we know is a verb, and then these three words in the two sentences in Dark Force Rising that I don't know what they are. In serious conlanging though, I think the ones in titles are substituting for "of the."

ush = clan/clans

Ary'ush = Savior of the Clans

Mal'ary'ush = Daughter of the Savior of the Clans

For the clan names, I'm thinking that what is behind the apostrophe is a directional marker of where the clan was from before the destruction of Honoghr. For proper names, maybe part of the name is named after someone famous or in honor of. Since the firstchild, secondchild, thirdchild is actually child, grandchild, and great-grandchild, I don't think they have a bunch of numbered Juniors running around. With this thought, I believe in a generation or two after the events in the Last Command, the Noghri will have a bunch of "word'rukh" or "Rukh'word" kids running around. And that's as far as my conlanging got with this one.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Trigun: Three of a Kind has been so much fun, I have sneaked writing it into months that I haven't supposed to be working on it.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I don't really feel any of the stories fit this one. Especially when I have posted such little new material.

Most fun story: Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: I really didn't think I need to conlang an already created language, but here I am with the amusing idea to do that and confuse a nasty Imperial. And people say fanfic doesn't challenge a writer as much as original fiction does.

Hardest story to write: Less a story and more sticking to the plan for the year. I generally kept to my month-per-project goal, but loss what I was supposed to be working on with the computer problems and when I was supposed to switch.

Biggest disappointment: My paying job's firewall messed up Ao3 displaying, so I had to stop uploading stories to Ao3 unless I was at home. And for some reason when July rolled around to finish uploading, I forgot to finish them. Also my desktop computer's hard drive died and I ended up not doing more updates to the BookWorm's Library in August.

Biggest surprise: Strix: Forget the Sun during National Novel Writing Month in November. I MADE WORDS! on everyday but one in November. Here is what I shared on Rachael Herron's Slack channel:

31,855/50,000 is where I'm calling it now The total added to the messy, messy narrative is 23,714 getting me to setting up all the characters for the big battle of the climax. And I just checked my records, this is the most words I have added to it in FOUR YEARS! The only day I didn't do any writing was the 25th and that day was spent driving back home from the Thanksgiving celebration over 4.5 hours away. Even with the trip, I kept plugging away at this and didn't put it aside for a different WIP. That is all thanks to the support here. I've been keeping metrics posts for that kind of analysis later. One thing I noticed was having permission to jump around. Not that I needed permission, but I'm a very linear writer. So previously when I'd bog down in a scene and words would freeze, I'd keep throwing myself at with less and less results. This year and Rachael's writing messy mantra finally took hold, and instead of dropping the whole novel when I hit a block, I moved to a new scene and words gushed. Don't know what this means for the character who always gave me the blockages yet. :laughing:

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? Both come from this part of Trigun: Three of a Kind:

“Quiet, Punisher. I’m tired of balancing your divided loyalties.”

Wolfwood spun the cross off his back and the cloth unwrapped from around it. His right hand tucked into a hole in the center of it as he shifted his left leg back and pointed the long end at the Gung-Ho Guns. The metal split apart, showing a gun barrel in the center. It spit out bullets with sparks and smoke, and Wolfwood used them to draw a line of bullet holes at the Gung-Ho Guns’ feet. They all danced back, including Bluesummers.

“Mamajamming! That’s bigger than Uncle Vinnie’s bazooka!”

Everyone ignored Chuck to stare at Wolfwood. He smirked back at them. “I’ve picked a side, but you’re still going to have to deal with me.”

Bluesummers narrowed his eye and twitched his outstretched fingers.

Wolfwood dropped the muzzle of his cross gun to the floor as his body bent back like Milly-ma’am.

Bluesummers smirked briefly. “And you actually thought you’d be a deterrent. Gray the Ninelives, punish the traitor.”

The huge guy in brown gladiator armor lurched forward, reaching for the man in the black suit. This fit Hannah’s rule close enough. Chuck pulled out the blaster, aimed up at the big guy, and pulled the trigger. “Eat blaster, dome head!”

The blaster bolt hit Gray the Ninelives right on the brown collar that started right under the eyes of the dome and ended at the pecs as the armor went around those muscles. And the collar and the flesh-colored dome popped off Gray’s shoulders like a bottle cap when Uncle Modo opened a root beer bottle. The face underneath was made of brown metal but no mouth, just twelve slits around the bottom for escaping heat. The blue eyes were reflectors, not eyeballs. The brown metal didn’t make a full skull and green metal circuit boards looked like a brain out of the forehead.

Chuck blinked. “More like chrome head. You’re a robot!”

“You are the most troublesome child,” Bluesummers said with a weary growl.

“Every day all day long!” Chuck guessed he was too old for ‘troublesome tot’ that Limburger called him a lot.

Gray the Ninelives recovered from losing his disguise and reached for Wolfwood again.

Chuck grinned and leaped onto the massive arm. He ran up to Gray’s shoulder as the robot straightened and tried to grab him instead. Chuck ducked behind the head, grabbing hold of the edge of brown metal at the boundary of the computer brain. “Aooow! Hannah’s gonna be so jelly. She thinks she’s the only one who can rage against machines!”

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? Honestly, less than I thought I would. I didn't anticipate getting caught up in conlanging and I didn't anticipate the computer issues that made me go "whelp, work on what has been working last month" and usually keep on writing Trigun: Three of a Kind. I'm not begrudging my words, I just thought I'd touch more projects.

Number of Days I Wrote or Edited: 333 days.

Number of Days Meeting or Exceeding the daily 600 word count: 185 days.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I made myself accountable to more people for original fiction and having people I didn't want to disappoint and letting myself throw utter crap on the page where it would count did unlock progress there. I also didn't stick with linear writing when a scene locked up on me but jumped to a different scene and got words.

Did you meet last year's goals? Let's find out. The goals from my 2023 one-page business plan are:

Writing Strix series

November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = still not finished but pleased with progress this year

November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft

November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft

November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor

Writing Star Wars fanfics

March, September: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft = still not finished

March, September: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader

March, September: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft

March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft = finished

March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft

March, September: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader

March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft

March, September: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft

March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft

March, September: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story

Writing Trigun fanfics

January, June, July, December: Finish Trigun: Three of a Kind first draft = still not finished

January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to second draft

January, June, July, December: Send Trigun: Three of a Kind to beta

January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to third draft

Writing Zackverse

April: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul

Writing Biker Mice From Mars fanfics

May, October: Find Wars Are Won series notes and see if stories can be consolidated

May, October: Finish next Wars Are Won story to first draft

May, October: Finish Evil Jack: Till Death Do We Part to first draft

Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a month

BookWorm's Library website maintenance

February, August: Make sure the software is up to date

February, August: Add any files that need adding

Add more fanfics to AO3

January, July: Upload twelve already published stories = this number is now at seven already published stories and twelve fanmixes for already published stories

January, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft

January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft next = finished

January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft after Mission on Mimban

Other publishing

February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library = finished

February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library = finished

February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library = finished

February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library = finished

February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to the Library

February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban to the Library

Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. The yearly goal is 478,128. = I ended up writing 285,333 for the year, and had 185 days of or exceeding 600 words.

Write and edit every day. = Wrote 333 days this year.

Work in meditation time with Brain FM.

Figure out how to keep the house clean.

Figure out the house remodel.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? The goals from my 2024 one-page business plan are:

Writing Strix series:

April, September: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun first draft

April, September: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun

April, September: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor

Writing Star Wars stories:

May, October: Conlanging Honoghran

May, October: Edit Mission on Mimban to second draft

May, October: Send Mission on Mimban to beta

May, October: Edit Mission on Mimban to third draft

May, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft

May, October: Send SL: Plans and High Command to beta

May, October: Edit SL: Plans and High Command to third draft

May, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extriction first draft

May, October: Finish SL: Kyber first draft

May, October: Outline Everbody Lives But Maul story

Writing Biker Mice From Mars stories

March, August: Finish Wars Are Won: Sacrifice of Happiness first draft

March, August: Finish Evil Jack: 'Til Death Do We Part first draft

BookWorm's Library maintenance

July, December: Make sure software is up-to-date

July, December: Add Sororal Lineality: Miha

July, December: Add any other files that need adding

July, December: Add recipes to Cookbook

Ao3

February: Upload already published stories

February: Upload Mission on Mimban third draft

February: Upload SL: Plans and High Command after Mission on Mimban

February: Upload thirteen fanmixes

I'm aiming for 600 words everyday which will be 219,600 for the year.

Here's to 2024. We'll get through all this together.

[beautyofsorrow]

4, 7, 11, 18 :)

4. Longest period of time it's taken you to write one fic?

HILARIOUS. i still have not finished longing/love. i started it last fall. i would like to finish it before 2023 is over but turns out it's really hard to write shipfic for a ship you don't ship anymore. or at least do not ship in such a way that it vibes with the way you shipped them in the opening chapters. ANYWAY.

mermaids georg, who has twenty-five years of lore and multiple chapters, is a statistical outlier and should not be counted.

um oneshot-wise i'd say the most amount of typing time i've spent on a thing is....a week? two including rest time + revisions? it gets to be bloodshed (/adhd) if i work on something longer than that. which is another reason why i don't do longfic. i will often rotate a fic in my head for months before actually writing it though, which is a crucial part of the revision process. i go through probably 3-7 drafts in my head before i ever type a word, and it's very efficient. thank u ann patchett for affirming this practice.

7. Is there a character or ship you'd love to write for, but haven't yet?

look. i have built a truly embarrassing amount of una/neera lore. snw 2x02 changed me ok? my ao3 subscribers are not ready for the day i drop that obscenely long oneshot. unfortunately i don't have the energy to write it right now so it just lives in my head rent-free, making noise.

would also love to write the b7 locked tomb au of my dreams but that's never gonna happen because HAHAHAHAHA imagine trying to hold a candle to tamsyn. could not be me.

some day i might go off the self-indulgent rarepair deep end and write jadzia/b'elanna/seven, or REALLY go off and write olivia dunham/seven, but like no one in the world would read a fringe/picard crossover except me so it will probably remain an unwritten mental-stims-only type thing, which is fine because so often those fics are better

11. Share a favourite comment a reader has left you.

"anyway, thank you for the pain. it was very good pain" at the end of a stupendously long comment on my hurt-no-comfort seven/jay fic has got to be the high point of my career. i also laugh daily at the one-liner "i want to put this fic in a blender and watch it dance like a rock." i have no idea what it means but i understand it perfectly. peak comment culture

18. What's your most-used additional tag?

"femslash," closely followed by "friendship," which is how you know i'm an aromantic allosexual dyke

[setaripendragon]

More fun stuff in the tags!

#daemons#hdm#his dark materials#would there be aquatic witches?#because I remember witches had bird daemons and they didn't have to be as close to them as regular people#so you could have witches with daemons like squid and octopi and dolphins and sharks#who could go ashore as easily as anyone else via @westbrookwestbooks

Headcanon accepted!!!

#me literally screaming bc I’ve been wrestling with a star wars daemon au like OH GOD DONT MAKE ME LEARN GEORGE LUCAS’ STUPID ANIMALS#but also yeah I was thinking about restricting it to certain species#like a characteristic limited to bipeds - wookies and Mandalorians are both commonly believed to have no force sensitives despite I think#there being canonical statistical outliers#alternately there are other species/classes who aren’t just force null but force RESISTANT so I think it would be totally normal for some#species - even ones from the same planet or system - that don’t have them when others do#similarly elodieunderglass is doing the lords work and writing a dungeon meshi daemon au that brings up the specific question of perception#between daemon and non daemon having races - the races classified as ‘human’ (elves dwarves gnomes tall men and halffoot) have them#but the ones labeled ‘demi-human’ in canon (orcs goblins (and kobolds iirc)) do not#but it’s observed in the fic that it’s not that that the demi humans don’t HAVE souls or daemons they’re just internal#daemons#daemon au#Anyway. the concept and culture of daemons spirals the FUCK out of control the second you poke at it lightly or expand it past the microcosm#of lyra’s world#and I love that for it#HEY BACK TO THE STAR WARS QUESTION WHAT DOES THE JEDI CODE SAY ABT DAEMONS#I’d say they’re pretty fucking attached but given that you’re born with one and die when it’s killed I think it would be more like#a biological function#on the other hand. you have the witches in HDM. do jedi with daemons undergo that trial of separation witches do??? how far is far.#could a jedi leave their daemon on one planet and leave for another?#<insane questions probably asked during the old republic era via @hound-of-heaven

Ohh! This is very juicy. Do you mind if I weigh in?

Because while I definitely agree with you that Jedi would likely view daemons as less of a separate entity and therefore subject to the rules about attachment and more as an extension-of-self. But, then, the Jedi do have a very esoteric view of 'self', and their entire relationship with the Force does rather ring of an attempt to distance themselves from the self in order to achieve an enlightened collective, and therefore, a trial of separation would fit.

If Lyra can go to the land of the dead and leave her separated daemon in an entirely different dimension/plane of existence, I'd say that a Jedi with a separated daemon could absolutely leave them on one planet and go hang out on another.

And oh, I am having some thoughts about Mandalorians, because... it's near-as-damnit canon (afaik) that a mandalorian's armour is at least culturally considered to be their soul, which would be a beautiful match-up with the Armoured Bears of HDM!canon, except...

Mandalorian is a culture, not a species. So, what if you have a daemon-having species that wants to be mandalorian? Do they forge themselves a second soul? Do they forge their daemon into their soul? Is beskar actually made of or infused with Dust? Did the original species forge Armour-Souls, but as the culture expanded, did the the-armour-is-my-soul thing become more philosophical than literal? If armour is melted down for the next generation, does that become a literal sort of reincarnation or does it fit more along the lines of... inheriting parts of the people you came from (like a strong nose or a bad temper)?

(Speaking of, how're you handing the Dust/Force mash-up? Are they the same thing from different perspectives? Does the Force create Dust? Is the Force just the static charge of a universe's worth of Dust all rubbing up against the other particles?)

Honestly, the idea of actually coming up with a daemon AU for Star Wars, as in... picking specific daemons for people, is... I take my hat off to you, because while you absolutely could have an earth-standard-human-has-earth-standard-animal-as-a-daemon rule, the sheer... open-ended creative void you're stepping into is... yeah. You don't need to learn the weird animals, they're making up new weird animals every time you blink! There are countless inhabited planets all with their own ecosystems that, honestly, aren't very well fleshed out, so you can just go absolutely hogwild with this. Just the thought of it makes me feel dizzy XD

So I'm still on this daemon AU kick, and I can't stop thinking.

What are the limits?

It's generally accepted that a daemon is an animal representation of the soul, right? So, you know, we've got birds and mammals and reptiles and insects.

But what about fish?

Obviously there's an issue here of, you know, environment, and if your soul literally can't survive in the air while you literally can't survive in the water, there's a problem.

But, hey, if it's small enough, you could have a little fishbowl for your daemon to live in. Hamster ball, but filled with water, rolling along at your heels. Fishtank on wheels that get tricked out like dudebros soup up their car. And maybe, if you're from a particularly sea-faring culture/lifestyle a water-bound mammal like a dolphin or an orca could make sense. And then there's things like sharks, which have so much symbolism attached to them that it seems a real shame to have to rule them out. (Someone who's particularly driven or ambitious having a daemon that would literally die if it stopped moving is a bit of symbolism I'm going a bit feral for, tbh.)

I think we have to rule out the deep sea creatures, unfortunately. Fishbowls and/or living on a boat wouldn't really solve the problem of pressure, and someone with a blobfish daemon would, uh... be in trouble.

And if we're talking about things that can't survive in the same atmosphere as humans, what about internal parasites? Like flatworms. I think it's safe to say that having your daemon parasitizing your intestine kind of defeats the purpose of having an external manifestation of your soul, but... There are species of flatworm that aren't parasites, so... do we just rule out all flatworms, or are the non-parasitic ones okay?

And speaking of flatworms, what about size? I've read some fun stories that deal with the issues that might come from having, say, an elephant daemon. It's not quite as dramatic as the issues of having an aquatic daemon, but actually, similar adjustments would have to be made to your living situation to cope. But, of course, it could be done and I don't think anyone's trying to rule out animals on account of how big they are, but I think it's safe to say that microscopic daemons are out for the same reason that internal parasites have to be.

There's a nice solid rule I can settle on; a daemon has to be a visible animal.

And, in point of fact, I think it's safe to say it has to be an animal. We can rule out trees and plants and even fungi.

So what about coral?

It's an animal, and if we are allowing for some aquatic daemons, then should coral be an option? Or are its vibes too plant-like to qualify? Do we rule out sessile animals like we ruled out microscopic ones? As much as I find the idea of a coral daemon absolutely hilarious, I am going to come down on the side of animals that are too much like plants are a no.

So a daemon has to be a visible, mobile animal.

But what about the ones that only move very slowly? I don't think we're ruling out sloths, but in the continuing vein of torturing myself considering various aquatic daemons, there's starfish and sea urchins and hell, even most bivalves can move at least a little, right? (Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't done that research yet.) And there's a lot of fun symbolsim to be had, there, I think.

And what about extinct creatures?

I think it's safe to say that mythical creatures are a no-go, unless this is a 'verse where those animals are real, (oh, boy wouldn't that confuse people in a world like HP where most people think dragons and unicorns aren't real, but people still wander around with dragon and unicorn daemons) so we can ammend our rule to visible, mobile, real animals, but could we go so far as extant?

If yes, that would have interesting world-building implications. Where's the cut-off point? Can we rule out dinosaurs because we don't/didn't have enough information for a daemon to settle into a form that wouldn't be technically mythical? But then, what about animals that go extinct within human history? What about all the people who had mammoth daemons or dodo daemons as those animals were dying out.

Would conservationists study daemon statistics to see if an animal has really gone extinct? Would an animal's extinct status get over-turned when a kid's daemon settled into that form? Honestly, I like this enough that I've convinced myself that, at least barring some very unique circumstances, extinct animals are not allowed.

So, it has to be a visible, mobile, extant animal. That can exist in proximity to humans.

Oh, and should probably add; visible, mobile, extant, and non-sapient.

You can't have a human daemon, or an elf or a dwarf or a fairy daemon even if they exist in that world, and if this is a 'verse with dragons who're more than just exotic magical animals, you can't have a dragon daemon. (Obviously, if your fairies are more like magical bugs than tiny people, then fairies would be a valid daemon.)

...I'm still on the fence about whether a daemon should have to be air-breathing or not. That kind of rule would still leave marine mammals available for the fun world-building of how people adapt to that kind of handicap. (...Do you think people with aquatic daemons would be considered disabled? Oooh, what about people with really big daemons? I mean, presuming such a thing is comparatively rare, people probably wouldn't be building schools with a mind to allowing elephants or giraffes to wander the corridors.)

Disclaimer! This is for my own creative process, and not intended to limit anyone else's creative flair. And, honestly, I'd love to hear other people's takes on what does and doesn't qualify for a daemon.

[phantom-does-a-thing]

I’ve written like 15 jrwi fics not including the ones that live in my notes app which isn’t that much more -> sorry to say I think you are a statistical outlier but also i think it’s really cool how much you can write :]

Everyone thinks I am a statistical outlier 😔 I am just a silly guy writing fics like a normal and completely rational person

[veliseraptor]

FFN-to-AO3 Fic Transfer Project Stats

I told you this was going to happen!

So for the past...several weeks-ish I’ve been working on transferring the previously uncrossposted works on my old fanfiction.net account and my old livejournal onto AO3, for archival purposes, which came out to include, in all, moving 403 works (366 from FFN, 37 from Livejournal) from between roughly 2006-2012. Me being the person that I am, I went “oooh statistics” and decided to do some fun with numbers about it.

One caveat that this still does not as yet represent a complete record of my fic writing posted online from 2006-present - there is still a substantial gap of fic that’s only on Tumblr right now and thus unaccounted for in this analysis.

But with that set aside, here is Lise’s Fanfiction Output By Some Numbers:

Total Works Archived on AO3: 924

Total Words Archived on AO3: 4,360,945

Number of Distinct Fandoms Represented: 48 (counting the MCU, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Doctor Who/Torchwood each as one)

The first thing I was curious about was trends of how much I was posting year by year, which I decided to look at both in terms of word count and in terms of number of individual fics. Taking the first first:

It is important to note that AO3 only counts words in a multichapter fic posted over time in the year that it is completed; this is most noticeable in 2018, when Life in Reverse was finished and which therefore gets all 200,000+ words tallied to that year alone despite the fic itself actually being written over the course of six years. There’s no real way to compensate here but that is the most significant outlier; Tear My Castle Down and Steve Rogers’ Halfway House for Notorious Supervillains are also skewing 2020′s data higher.

However, even with that there’s been a clear overall increase in the words I’ve posted over the years since I started, particularly beginning in 2011. Tracking by life events, it’s sort of funny to me that I can track “college-first starting full-time work-pandemic in terms of spikes and dips.

Then, when it comes to the number of individual fics posted year over year:

This mapped onto the first graph tracked with what I expected, more or less, which was to say “early on the trend was a lot of shorter fics, later on fewer but longer.” Notice the 152 posted in 2009 still totaling less than 20,000 words over the year. I think those 2008-2009 years in particular also marked me doing a couple different fic challenges, most notably 50_darkfics but also a lot of short writing for the westerosorting Livejournal community. The sudden drop after 2012 to a level that’s stayed pretty consistent since I would guess marked the end, more or less, of me doing that kind of numbers-based work (where I was trying to write a lot of short things in a brief period of time, or trying to fulfill a challenge, rather than adhering more to my own schedule).

I tried - I am still trying - to work out a good way of visualizing the word count distribution by fic by year (i.e. in 2009 how many of those 152 fics were between 100-1000 words, etc.), but have been struggling, most likely because there is (a) a lot of data points that I’m trying to map and (b) a very wide range. What I currently have looks like:

which is not exactly a very coherent looking/readable graph, though it gives you a sense of how front-loaded the distribution really is (mostly between 144-7800). Out of curiosity I tried cutting out some of the earlier years to see how that might change the shape:

Overall, basically the same, but it does become more visible how the larger buckets only appear for the later years - there is 1 2012 fic above the 221-10133 word bracket. Underlining, then, the shift in my writing trends from “many short oneshots” to “fewer longer works,” which I knew but now I have numbers and also (roughly) a timeline.

Finally (at least for now) the other curiosity I had was about what I think of as “fandom-cycles” - the rate at which I’ve moved through fandoms over the years, producing works for them and then moving on. I was curious about if and how much they overlapped, and what was a “typical” runtime for a period of high production in a single fandom. 

I cut this graph down to what I think of as my “major” fandoms.

This one looks a little crazed and is therefore harder to read, at least up until 2011-ish when I really started to become a “one fandom at a time” kind of gal - prior to that point there was a lot of overlap/simultaneity. One more than others, but multiple fandoms in activity at the same time (witness in 2009 the peaks for both A Song of Ice and Fire, The Silm, and Doctrine of Labyrinths). Black Jewels Trilogy had a shorter duration than I thought it would given the psychological influence it’s had on me; Wheel of Time shorter still, though it stuck around for a solid four years (compared to Death Note, which lasted about three).

My favorite thing about this graph is the way you can see the overlap of one fandom tapering as another takes off - most obviously, of course, with the MCU/Untamed overlap there in 2019, but it’s there with Supernatural and the MCU, and with A Song of Ice and Fire and Supernatural. It’s a visual representation of me moving out of one fandom and into another. 

(Also love seeing that little spike of Doctrine of Labyrinths coming back as the MCU wanes in 2019. There’s the reread! And also me trying to get everyone else I know into it.)

In general my fandom lifetime heyday, historically, seems to have been about three years, prior to the MCU, which lasted far and away longer than anything other than the Silm, which, while I wasn’t writing a lot for it or consistently, has been a presence from 2009 to, irregularly, at least 2020. Interesting way of seeing a fandom that is, if not a main squeeze these days, a relatively consistent presence in my fanfiction life, even if just barely. The only other fandoms to show this kind of longevity (disappearing and then popping up again years later) are Doctrine of Labyrinths (disappears 2014, pops up again in 2018) and Wheel of Time (disappears in 2012, pops up again in 2017 and 2018). This kind of makes me wonder if, at least for me, book fandoms have a longer “shelf life” than their more visual counterparts. This would make a certain amount of sense, as I have more of a historical habit of rereading than I do of rewatching (The Untamed has been a major exception), but could also be an artifact of bias from the fact that for most of, I’d say, the front half of my fandom career, my fandoms were primarily book-based over movies or tv shows.

So that’s what I have so far when it comes to Fun With Numbers: Lise’s Hobbies Edition. I might poke around more (the most insane idea I’ve thought of is looking at word count distributions within fandoms, i.e. where have I been writing the longest/shortest fics, but that is...probably not something I need to spend the time manually gathering the data for) but at least on a preliminary basis...voila.

I don’t expect the Tumblr crossposting to make a huge difference in terms of overall trends, except perhaps in terms of the number of fics per year - I wonder if that number has been in any way artificially deflated for later years when I transitioned in posting methods - it used to be I always would have posted the short things I’ve put on here to FFN or Livejournal, and now I’m less likely to. So it may be that those latter year numbers are only actually lower because they are no longer accounting for the short works that used to be getting posted by default.

Perhaps will revisit once that stage of the project is completed! That sounds like something I will probably do.

[my-mt-heart]

All right, I'm a weirdo who reads fic reviews and I've made some observations that nobody asked me to share.

A writer's "fame" is only one factor to how much feedback they get. You know an established writer will finish the fic and they won't gimple the ending, but I think the kind of story it is matters too.

Some people are all about babyfic and others will review the angst monster, so there's a built-in feedback pool if your fic falls into some category. The writers who keep getting mentioned have their niche, so we know what's on offer going in.

The preference among Caryl readers seems to be long fics with some sort of active plot, so fix-its, vignettes and other more introspective one-shots get less attention. On the other hand, people will read all kinds of plot premises, as long as Caryl has some sort of obstacle they're trying to overcome.

Think that's part and parcel of both the ZA setting and the ship itself with the characters having had to face adversity both before and after the world went to hell. If you're drawn to the pairing, you want both the tension of the plot dilemma and the hope Caryl represent to each other.

Anyway...

People also want to read about Caryl getting naked and having orgasms, so if you have some kind of sex scene, you're more likely to get feedback.

Readers are less enthusiastic about reading fic with Connie and Ezekiel as supporting characters, probably because there's enough ship-baiting as it is. Ed and Leah are antagonists, never viable romantic interests and also canonically dead, so there's more room to include them.

Right now, people are more receptive to AUs because the show is ruining its own universe. Inspiration for latter season ZA fics also seems at an all-time low, but that will change if we get canon Caryl.

Obviously, there are some statistical outliers where a complete unknown pops up and writes something that isn't easily categorized, set in the canon universe and without smut, yet still gets decent engagement and a good number of hits.

That's the exception, though. The fic equivalent of the 6-figure advance, maybe?

I work for a publisher, so I find these things interesting, but it's probably weird to normal people.

No, not weird at all. Some things I already figured, for example, if you can make your synopsis sound as close to porn as possible, you’re pretty much golden. But I’ve been scratching my head at other things like all the interest in AU’s lately, so this was such an interesting read. Thanks for doing the research. Maybe people who are trying to write more will find this helpful. 

[yarpell]

I'm deeply in love with Visvar, have been ever since I saw your first art of him. May I pick your brains for more about him? Background? What sort of person he is? Have you ever written a fic for him? Any crumbs you feed me and I'll be like

Omg thank you so much I'm happy you like him 🥺 I love that you made a meme for this 😭

Background is, uh, a wip, I'm truly abysmal at creating backstories. I'm sure majority of it wouldn't even be something extraordinary; he was taken to the order at a young age and has grown up on Tython and probably was a total brat to many a frustrated master... I can talk some about what he is like though!

I like calling him a himbo, but that is not entirely true, since himbos are known for being nice. While Visvar is not unkind, he can be quite rash, ridiculously stubborn and blunt, and often comes across as a rude person.

He's also quite ruthless, in a sense that he sees a clear path to a goal and is able to make sacrifaces and be merciless if that’s what it takes. But such a goal is always some greater good and he considers protecting innocent people his most important and probably only duty and calling.

He can pretend he got rid of emotions around other jedi well but the truth is he is quite passionate, quick to anger or laugh, considers all emotions a natural part of life and same goes for desires. He’s just deeply at peace with being a living being with all the flaws that come with it and he is able to draw strength from that inner peace, whereas other jedi could fall if not seeking peace in rejecting passion. He has “rip to those mentally weaker jedi but I’m different” vibes 😭

All in all, he isn't a very good representant of the order. Really, with his passion and pride he’s very very far from a perfect embodiment of the code (and he sure is quick to disagree with some of the code's points).

Yet he would never fall to the dark side due to his natural empathy, desire to protect, incredible mental strength and stubborness. Like, he can't become a sith because he is literally that stubborn to not fall and hates those dramatic bitches 😂  His mental strength surely is partly a result of being quite dumb, like, literally. He doesn't overthink, philosophize, and is annoyingly sure of himself and his path. He doesn’t weep at sacrifaces made on the way to “greater good”, always looks forward. Do you know the theory that dumb people are always happier? "Ignorance is bliss"? Well, yeah, he's an example lol.

Even though he doesn’t reject his feelings, when he fights, there is no passion in that and he never draws power from emotions like a sith would do. During a battle there is literally only the force in his mind and he is at complete harmony with it, it’s almost like a weird state of meditation. Being a miraluka the force was his guide all his life and he is deeply attuned to it.

Couple completely random facts: drives speeders like a maniac, loves listening to music, is 179cm/5′9″, has a weakness for sith purebloods (or just intense and passionate people) 🍅, can’t cook and would live on ready-made meals if left alone, isn’t very good at math (an understatement)

As for fics I only wrote a very small piece with him and Scourge once 👉👈 Real spur of the moment thing from me, I can’t fucking write. have this older sketch to distract you from that fact

"average jedi has sex once a year" factoid is actually just statistical error. average jedi has sex 0 times a year. Jedi Master Visvar, who has sex 400 times a year, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[quaranmine]

Oh big agree about the Watchers! I also don't see them as purely evil (they're probably like, lawful neutral-evil for me most of the time?) but the characters who know them are Very biased against them so the audience reads them through this filter.

Tldr average Watcher is extremely evil is a statistical error. Average Watcher is lawful neutral. Watchers Evolutionists, who hate them with every fiber of their being, are statistical outliers and should not have been counted.

AFKSJFLS YEAH

it's an interesting challenge, for sure. i think if i were writing a different fic i'd be able to show that better, but with my incredibly biased cast there's no easy way to do it. i also think with my headcanons for grian's backstory i'm using for this fic, they screwed up with him massively--so he has reasonably got an exceptionally bad view of them, but it might reflect more on those Watchers specifically rather than on average for all of them.

[princeescaluswords]

For all their talk of "fandom gives us what canon didn't" which ignores that canon has an intended specific message so it's not it deliberately deprived people of something out of malice but GAVE them something with a message.... Fandom will do all these "Alive Hale Family/No Hale Fire" fics where the pack is saved. But despite their endless criticism of "not doing enough" they never make Alan Deaton a major figure in these retellings. I thought you were disappointed he didn't live up to his role? So why not have Deaton foreseeing averting tragedy? Why not make him the badass sleuth and powerful druid? Why not show his relationship with Talia? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

Why is it *always* Stiles they center in these stories? If you people are so damn upset he didn't set up proper "wards" why not have Deaton make better defenses? It's just suspicious. He's the emissary, and the way they portray emissaries and druids in fanon, I'd think they shower him with power and focus.

Let's check the numbers. In the 2302 stories on AO3 which bear the tag "The Hale Family Lives," there are 208 stories which also include the tag "Alan Deaton." That's significantly less than many characters that literally would have had no connection to the Hale family if it weren't for the fire. Especially notable are the 225 stories that feature Claudia Stilinski, whose connection to the Hale Family is entirely fanon in origin.

I always enjoy it when I can reinforce my point with some form of statistics because anecdotal evidence is highly unreliable. You can always find an outlier that makes the situation look worse or better than it is. However, numbers like the one above can not only be verified, they can also point out underlying trends.

The most persuasive reason for me is the same reason for the plethora of Evil Deaton theories and their continued casting of Deaton as Peter's or Stiles's archnemesis. The character didn't play by their rules. The character wasn't where he was supposed to be. They expected Teen Wolf to use the offensive Magical Negro trope, where a wise black man helps the nearest white man to grow, either to reclaim his family legacy or just to be generally helpful yet vanish into the background when he was no longer needed.

If the Hale Family is alive and healthy, then Deaton's not needed, so why would they write about him? Come on, you know how this works!

Parts of the fandom's insistence that Alan Deaton must be a sinister man with sinister intentions comes from him doing things that he's not supposed to do. He's not supposed to pass judgement on white male characters . He's not supposed to choose his primary focus to be on helping Scott. He's not supposed to admit that he doesn't know everything and that he can't be sure about certain solutions he proposes.

If, in their fix-its, Deaton does what they feel he's supposed to, there's little reason to have him on the screen. He's an object, a tool, a Deus Ex Machina in a lab coat. He doesn't need elaboration or exploration. It's the same role that Boyd plays in stories where Derek stays as alpha or Mason plays in the puppy-pack Thiam. The relationships of people who aren't hot white men are simply not important. If they do show up, they're present to do their business and then vanish, like Noshiko in Ghosted.

But don't believe me, simply read the stories for yourself. There's plenty of them.

[binniesthighs]

eehee here it is the long awaited results of my chaotic ass survey about our hornies it’s so long holy heck, but I have seperated it into a couple sections to make sense of it all (omg if you read all of it lemme give you a kith teehee) ahhhh lol its SO nerdy haha but i hope that ya enjoy nonetheless! ✨

In this essay, I will....(hahah jk jk this is just all for fun) 

1. Demographics Analysis 

2. Polls on Fic Content 

3. Member Specific Analysis 

4. Deep Dive into the Juicy Questions (Confessions) 

5. General Thoughts and Conclusion  

6.  Cute shit that ya’ll said that made me giggle

*Unpopular opinions will be made into their own post to give them ample space and analysis!

Other Notes: 

Out of 100 individuals surveyed, 44 were readers, 2 were only writers, and 54 were both readers and writers. 

Statistical significance can be effected by sampling, selection, and response bias (yeah i took a stats class teehee) and personal biases 

All the the opinions and other analysis presented by me (Ro/binniesthighs) are purely my own oponion and are not factual. you are entitled to interpret all of this information however you like! Anything that i analyze is not definitive! 

while this survey is mostly about stay smutblr, i hope that it can also maybe serve as a template for other fandoms as well with the more general questions! this is a survey for everyone! 

i’d love to hear about what you think about anything presented in this analysis! feel free to send me an ask or comment! reposting is permitted within tumblr or on other platforms if proper credit is given! ❤️ (uwu hehe if you could please help me spread this i would appreciate it so much! i worked really hard on her 🥺) 

1. Demographics Analysis:

Gender Identities of those Surveyed 

~My thoughts: this really came as no surprise to me considering how the majority of kpop fans (especially boy group fans) identify as female! Seeing as I am a Stray Kids/Seventeen blog (both of them boy groups) it makes sense to me that my readers would mostly identify as female! 

Another important thing to note (from a writer standpoint at least) is the wide array of identities that we still have present within the general audience of stay smut blur (SSB)! I’ll get into this later when i discuss favorite pairings to read, however i think that this gives us one more reason to write for a diverse audience of readers who can identify with different types of self-insert fics! 

Top Five: 

Female (81%) 

Non-binary/gender non-conforming (13%) 

Changes by the day (6%) 

Male (4%) 

Demiboy/Demigirl (3%) 

Sexual Orientation of those Surveyed 

Other identities mentioned: 

????, unlabeled, aromatic bisexual, bicurious, demisexual, “just liking who i like”, experimenting, heteroflexible, sapiosexual, depends day by day, “i just like anyone” 

~My thoughts: okkkkk i see us gays of SSB 😏 these demographics were really exciting for me to see! i think that it’s super cool that we have such representation across the board when it comes to sexual orientations present in our community! As someone who personally identifies as pan, this was super comforting to see that there are so many others like me in this little space of the internet! I think it’s safe to say at least from my lil survey that all the bi cuties out here own SSB 💗💜💙

From a literal standpoint, it also makes sense to me that heterosexuality is strongly present as well considering that often the pairs that we read are male idol x female reader so this is the perfect niche! 

Top Five: 

Bisexual (40.8%) 

Heterosexual (26.5) 

Pansexual (17.3%) 

Queer (7.1%) 

Asexual (4.1%) 

Stay Creators!! 

~My thoughts: this one i was THRILLED at seeing oml hahaha and i was so interested to see that this was nearly an even split! 

I think that there’s something to be said about how sometimes we can take our hobbies: (movies, videogames, books, kpop, anime etc)--all things which we really like in totally normal and healthy ways but also kinda like....get hornies about them too? if that makes sense? for example, i have a friend who really likes certain video games/characters from these games as a fan and he’s shared with me that he also doesn’t mind watching porn containing those same characters! (ahahah ya all know what i mean don’t even lie haha) 

what this question proved to me as that there are stays out there who practice “being a stay/being a stay creator” who also are interested in the more...horny side of this hobby/interest 😂

what is even more interesting to me is who i wonder if i’ve  have consumed any of ya’ll’s content while you have consumed mine??? this i am DYING to know aha but it think its best for all of us to stay anonymous teehee ;) 

either way, good on ya for doing what ya do!! you are so so treasured in this community too!! <3 

2. Polls on Fic Content (a long section lol) 

Favorite Pairing to Read 

*other options selected were rankings of favorite pairings so i just added each of them as an entry to the respective category mentioned. 

Top Five: 

Idol x female reader (69%) 

Idol x gender neutral reader (19%) 

Idol x reader x Idol (poly r/ship) (14%) 

Idol x reader, Idol x reader (threesome, not much interaction between the two idols) (8%) 

~My thoughts: once again, this category was pretty self explanatory to me considering that the majority of readers are female identifying, so it would make sense that they would prefer to read smut that aligns with their identity! This is also super present anyway of SSB as i do feel like the majority of writing pieces that I do come along are idol x female reader, and most authors too often disclaim that they are the most comfortable writing this type of pairing as well. 

What’s signficant as well is the interest in reading fics with gender neutral reader self inserts as well! this is my personal philosophy when it comes to writing (specifically with requests) but i think that writing gn!reader is always the safest bet to go as to not make assumptions about readers! for writers i think that seeing this 19% is something important to take into consideration! 

An outlier to me with this demographic was the “poly r-ship” poll garnering a notable 14% in comparison to the idol x idol option which got 10 less votes (4%). what is a little confusing to me about this is how poly r/ships often (but not always) contain idol x idol content, however there is discrepancy with the amount of readers outright saying that they enjoy reading it alone. I’ll get into poly fics later with the unpopular opinions section--however i wanted to plant the seed here hehe. One other caveat to this is the fact that on SSB i feel like idol x idol content is really in the minority and is much more present on a platform like AO3 so this could be another explaination! 

What is kinda cute to me is the fact that readers do really like poly r-ship dynamics more than a threesome (as i defined it, “with less interaction”) so this makes me feel like we are all saps for the fluff that comes with poly r-ship fics ;) 

Favorite Kind of Smut to Read 

male idol smut (67%) 

i read both! (female and male idol smut) (25%) 

depends on my mood (7%) 

female idol smut (1%) 

~My thoughts: Again, this is super expected to me as well considering the above statistics. Since i am a skz blog (a boy group) --as are my moots-- it really makes sense that those who filled out this survey would be into male idol smut! 

what was cool for me to see as well was the number of readers who also read female idol smut as well as male idol smut! personally, i more predominately a fan of boy groups compared to the amount of girl group content that I consume (note: i do also consume gg content). because of this, i think that its really up to personal preferences and the content that you consume that can be reflective of the smut content that you consume as well and ya know, whoever gets your hornies going ;) 

Favorite Genres...Ranked! 

*so this was my fault lol i totally formatted this question poorly in google forms so i’ll try to summarize the most popular rankings with my words haha 

*bc of the way that i miffed it (lol) i wasn’t able to get exact measurements, but rough ones! 

Top Five: 

Smut, fluff, angst 

smut n’ fluff (with specific emphasis angst is not desired)  

smut, angst, fluff, 

fluff, smut, angst, 

angst, fluff, smut 

~My thoughts: by far, the most popular ranking that i saw was as follows: smut, fluff, angst. i saw this sososos many times haha also...ya’ll got really creative with your rankings and it made me giggle hehe. So! seeing as this is stay smutblr haha makes total sense that the three most popular rankings that we have were lead by smut! since we’re here for the hornies, i totally get this. 

as for the “smut n’ fluff” or “fluffy smut” category, there was a decent amount of readers that expressed that this mixture is their fave! i’m kinda looping this with the “mixture” option that i also provided for this question since this was the most popular mixture that i was able to observe along with angst + smut. interestingly, i saw a couple mentions of “hurt/comfort” fics with this question too so this went well with this preference. as for number three on this list, we dip into that smut + angst category that I just mentioned as well. there were several individuals who said that they really really enjoy reading smut with angst! 

lastly we get to the four and five on the list: four being fluff, smut and angst. i think this category can also properly represent the folx who tend to like more fluffy fics over the smutty ones, but that can also have suggestive themes too! in five, we have angst, fluff and smut which also is representative of another theme that i saw: as far as plot goes, several people mentioned that they liked fics that start with angst, get fluffier, and then end up in smut, so i think that this could be easily compared! 

*there were also several readers who simply said “all of them” or opted not to rank, (lol me) so this really shows the variability in results! 

Cute stuff ya’ll said (kind of out of context too LOL) 

“... hehE I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE.” 

“...I KNOW IT [my ranking] LOOKS TERRIBLY SPECIFIC AND IM SO SORRY and I guess the better way to describe that was one that has all 3 with a happy ending lol my b my b.” 

“ ...it just depends on the mood my dude.” 

“... (the smut doesn’t have to be soft i just want the relationship to be soft and i want aftercare and general affection).” 

“(but almost no angst oops)” 

“angst honestly makes me so sad.” 

“... but long fics with angst and slow burn smut/fluff is just WOW.” 

“ my favourite thing is when it's fluffy smut tbh with a little bit of angsty backstory. that is *chefs kiss*” 

“(I'm a sucker for good angsty fics but I cant seem to find them???)” 

“Smut, Fluff, Angst (I tend to be a bit of a purist so no mixture here).” 

“(i can't read pure angst lol) “ 

“(I love how much plot there is in angsty fics but I personally can't read anything without a happy ending, i just can't take it)” 

“ i literally couldn't rank them bc my mood is always changing lmaooo.” 

“ smut, fluff, angst. i know what i’m about.” 

Favorite Length of Fics 

Top Five: 

5k-8k words (27%) 

2k-4k words (25%) 

1k-2k words (20%) 

10k-20k words (15%) 

20k words (12%) 

~My thoughts: this one was super helpful for me to see!! and writers i hope that this is helpful for you too! as someone who tends to rambles (lol) it was very comforting for me to see that long-ish fics are actually preferred! what is really cool about this data too is that it is all super well balanced for the most part and nearly edqual in some parts! how i see this, i think that when it comes to preferences of length, its really reader specific so anyone could like anything! this goes into a little bit the slow burn question that i asked as well too, but it’s really cool to see that when readers do read, they kinda like something to sink their teeth into! 

i wanted to look into how long it takes you to read these words, and it appears that on average, a 5-8k fic can take someone 30 mins to read whereas a 2-4k fic takes about 15mins! idk if this says something about attention spans, but as a writer it warms my heart to know that you’re willing to spend 30 minutes of your time reading something that i wrote! 🥺

another thing i wanted to bring up is the “hard and fast” smut readers--those who like to get straight to the point, get right to business and to the juice! they are also a decently large group too! as for readers who like a nice long fic or a chaptered fic, they are super close in numbers! from this, it’s safe for me to assume that maybe those who like reading longer fics are more inclined to strap in for the long haul with chaptered fics too! 

Favorite AUs to Read 

*the top category that got cut off (thank you google forms lol) is friends to lovers! the one that says “...love” at 48% is enemies to lovers, and the one that has a blanked out title at 35% is strangers to lovers! 

Top Five: 

friends to lovers (65%) 

enemies to lovers (48%) 

high school/college au (40%) 

roommates/neighbors to lovers (38%) 

strangers to lovers (35%) 

Other AUs mentioned by you! 

office au, royal au, vampire au, fake date, idol au, slice of life, boarding school au, childhood friends, soulmate au 

~My thoughts: ok ok so this was RAD to see! i often wonder myself the kinds of aus that my readers would like to see so this was really helpful! circling back on how readers tend to favor fluff n’ smut (friends to lovers) and angst n’ smut (enemies to lovers) i think that we’re seeing some more themes here teehee. 

i like to think that since most of us are of the college age, the college au is super relatable therefore we really like to read it! not to mention that college and high school au’s are super duper cute as well! this is also relatable to the roommates/neighbors to lovers category which is also relatable to us who may or may not have experienced having a roommate or crush on the cutie next door ;) as a couple readers mentioned, they liked more “slice of life” au’s--which both of these categories fall into! i think we as readers like scenarios that feel the most real to us, bc they are the easiest to insert ourselves into :) 

fantasy and thriller, action, more “fiction” tropes are in the minority, however i think that this can be for the exact same reason as i mentioned above where readers like more relatable scenarios. 

Opinions on Slow Burn Fics 

~My thoughts: during polling of this category, this pie cart stayed basically the same the whole time!! that was pretty cute to see! the important take aways from this survey for me is the fact that slow burn fics are generally really loved! again, lol as someone who writes big ol’ long slow burn fics this made me feel a lot better hahaha basically, the general consensus is that slow burn fics are welcome most of the time, however some readers might need to invest a little more time into them! this is also very easily comparable to the above statistics on the length of fics preferred (longer ones being the ones more popular) so here’s a lil more supporting evidence! 

3. Member Specific Analysis 

Bias Survey 

Top Five: 

Chan (19%) 

Changbin (18%) 

Hyunjin (16%) 

Jisung (15%) 

Minho (14%) 

~My thoughts: ok ok ok so this is where it starts getting JUICY hehe (also i apologize once more for making you pick LOL) 

the reason why i asked this question was because i wanted to see if there was a correlation with biases and if there was a probability that members who had more people biasing them (or popularity I guess) were more likely to be read more in smut fics! AND I WAS RIGHT haha isn’t this so fkn cool??? (see more in the next section!) 

for comparison, i went to kprofiles to see their little survey on bias popularity and their top five. 

Kprofiles Top Five: 

Hyunjin (15%) 

Felix (14%) 

Chan (12%) 

Minho (11%) 

Jisung (11%) 

SO oh my god my nerd brain is loosing it over this REE so, what i should note that is those who took this survey on my blog are likely generally different based off of the fact that they are here to read smut specifically, rather than the general holistic popularity survey. It is for this reason that we see Felix much higher on this list and Changbin much lower too (as we know Felix is really well known generally and globally and there are *generally* fewer Bin biased fans). What was really interesting to see what that with Hyunjin, Chan, Jisung and Minho, they still all stayed within the top five! Soooo what i’m saying is.... all of you Hyunjin, Chan, Jisung and Minho fans really must like your smut 😏 and I think that it’s safe to assume that the majority of hard stans come from these four members too ooP (and of course our Binnie too! ;) i see all of ya’ll 👀) 

Members That Get Our Hornies Going 

~My thoughts: AHH DOESN’T THIS LOOK SO SATISFYING? I’M SO PROUD OF HER!!! 

First off, i would like to acknowledge the all mighty power of Bang Christopher Chan for pooling this most hornies god DAMN while i kind of expected this, it is also evidenced in the fics that i write! recently i’ve been tracking the number of notes that my Chan hard thoughts get in comparison to other members and the differences are usually ASTRONOMICAL. He is most def the most popular member for smut for several different reasons, lowkey bc i think that it’s kind of part of his brand?? hahaha if ya know what i mean? 

As for preference from Minho on, we can see a super obvious trend that as age order decreases, we get less and less interest for reading for the member. I’m fairly inclined to believe that this has to do with the fact that most often fans (especially fans older than skz) have a harder time seeing the younger members in a sexual way, so the lack of interest totally makes sense here! As referenced above too, we found that the oldest five members (Chan --> Jisung) are the favorites for smut reading which we can see here as well when the numbers really drop after Felix (Felix coming in at 6th place on my “popularity” survey). 

Bc of these statistics, i do really feel like as a reader, i tend to see much, much more fics involving our top five! As for Seungmin and Jeongin, I’ve also seen people state that they do not read or write content for these two members bc they do not feel as comfortable, so this can also explain the lack of content. Also as we have heard many times, Jeongin is a bit of a hot topic lol within the SSB community, so this makes sense that his readership would be low as well. 

4. Deep Dive into the Juicy Questions (aka confessions) 

Is the fact that you read smut a seggsy secret? 

~My thoughts: JUICE TIME JUICE TIME 

Before I say anything, i wanted to tell you all how all of the juicy questions were totally optional, but i got 100% participation for every single one of them which if find HILARIOUS i guess you all are just as curious as i am?? ;) 

So! for this question, we have an overwhelming amount of readers who said that only their closest friends know which is so cute to me! i love how we can trust our friends with this hehe. i also fall into this category bc like, it’s lowkey kinda fun to talk about? maybe also the fact that i run a smut acct makes me care a little less about it all hahah 

secondly, we have the rather large group of people who said that they wouldn’t dare to tell anyone which is also sooo cute haha idk how to explain it but this was the category that i started out in too until i found the right people! But i totally get ya, reading smut--especially-- kpop smut-- can be embarrassing or cringey to share (not to mention that it is somewhat morally grey LOL) so this is really understandable! 

also my fkn hats off to all of you who said that you didn’t care about who knows that you read smut. here, you dropped this: 👑 you’re much braver than i could ever be. 

When you read smut, do you really feel the hornies? 

~My thoughts: ok, so this one to me was also very interesting for me to see as well! (also if you get uncomfy reading about personal masturbation habits you can skip this one lol) 

the reason why i asked this question was because i wanted to see if people “get off” by reading smut (whether reading it turns you on, or if you choose to use it for “material” to get off on however this might look, might be more of a mental simulation without any real like, physical getting off) candidly, I use smut to get myself off every once and a while, so i wanted to see who else might be in the same group! since becoming a writer however, i read much less and reading it doesn’t hit the same when i was just a reader bc i have a different perspective of being the one writing the smut so i look at it more analytically--i digress. 

it was exciting (teehee get the pun?) for me to see that others also “get off” on smut too--and that they are the majority! teehee it is an honor for me to provide you with the hornies LOL. at the same time, we still have a large group in the “don’t take to seriously” category which was interesting to me too! i can’t speak for these readers, but i interpreted these kind of readers to be the kind who read smut to imagine the scenes and are like “hm, that’s hot, i like thinking about this.” but it doesn’t extend much outside of these thoughts. 

What is the most popular position pairing we like to read? 

*smaller slices of the pie represent multiple favorites which i also seperated back into the categories corresponding to get the best count into what was the most preferred. 

Actual Breakdown: 

dom!idol // sub!reader (51 votes) 

switch!idol // switch!reader (32 votes) 

subidol! // dom!reader (11 votes) 

all of the above (5 votes) 

depends on my mood (2 votes) 

~My thoughts: i feel as if there is a bit of a conflict between which position really is “the best” and while we really can’t know the answer to this question since everyone has different preferences, we can at least find out which one is the most popular to be consumed! 

again, going off of the content that I also see as a reader, i see TONS of dom!idol fics, like, left and right. also, if i may come for all of our necks, 👀 but...there’s really something to be said about the fact that the majority of readers are female and historically and socially, women are typically socialized to be submissive, so i can see why this would be why we would favor this among fics--this is even further evidenced by the fact that male idol smut is also preferred, thus further perpetuating the fact that women have been socialized to be submissive to men specifically. i’m not saying that this is the end all be all reason that this trend is present, but i merely offer it as a possible explaination. this is a much larger sociological conversation, but i think that this trend also showed itself in the types of smut that readers seek out as well--according to demographics. 

sub!idol fics are few and far in-between, and i think that this can also be for the exact same reason as i talked about above! 

When you read smut, do you pick faves to read for? 

~My thoughts: what’s cool about this question is the fact that the “half and half” nature of it also resembles what we saw in the section for favorite members to read! As we see in that chart, 41 out of 100 people said that they read everyone, similar to this question where 48 out of 100 people said that they read for everyone. What this proves to me once more is that when it comes for reading fics, there's a 50/50 chance that the reader will look at, and read it based off of who it is about alone. This is a really powerful statistic, meaning that the members who that a writer might write for really dictates their readership! At the same time, it’s super comforting to know that regardless of what you as a writer might write, there’s always someone out there who is willing to read it! (as evidenced by the 52% of people who read for anyone! this is still a large number) 

Readers: Do you only use Tumblr for smut? 

~My thoughts: when i first started out reading smut, i was in the “i just look up skz smut” group LOL so i wanted to see again if there was anyone like me--which there is! This was more of my interest in seeing if some people view tumblr as “their smut dealer” AHA so that my initial motivation. I was surprised to see that this is not the case! out of 100 readers, 39 of them have their own non-smut blogs and the second largest group of 26 people use tumblr for smut exclusively. 

idk why, but when thinking of this question, it really got me thinking back to the question where i asked if reading smut is a seggsy secret, and there was the group of people who said that it is for them--i’m assuming that these people might be part of the group have non-smut blogs and read on the side teehee. 

at the same time, there is a combined 40 people who said that they use tumblr for smut purposes only which makes sense to me, as those who filled out my survey are readers of my smut blog if you catch my drift haha  

Writers: Do you read smut, or just write it? 

*56 responses correlate with those polled who identified as writers/both as mentioned above 

~My thoughts: this survey is really really cute for me to see bc it means that there is a whole support network or writers out there reading, supporting and here to hype other writers work!! if anything, as a writer because it takes so much time to write, it can become hard to find time to read, hence the “when i have time option lollll (*cough cough* me LOL) thank you all for your honesty with this question! 

5. General Thoughts and Conclusion 

Survey on Exposure 

~My thoughts: i kinda wanna close off this survey by getting on my soapbox for a sec lol. At least for me, the most common ways that readers found my blog were: looking up a tag, and from a repost. i think that this really goes to show the power of exposure and certain tactics that you can use to increate readership of your account! new readers, if you’re reading this and you’re just starting out, tagging your stuff is so so important! 

also, as i have said and so so, many other content creators have said countless times before, reposting is so crucial and it takes little to no effort to repost a creators work so that it might reach others! as a writers, we spend hours, and i mean hours creating content, editing, drafting, creating headers all out own time to publish something that we are proud of and for you to enjoy! it means the world to authors when you reblog their work and even more when you give feedback too because this is our passion! we write for free in the middle of our busy lives so the validation makes it all worth it!! 

Conclusion 

~phew! so that’s it! once again, i wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart from participating in this lil study! i really hope that it is helpful to writers and readers alike! i wanna give ya all the biiiiiigest Ro huggies!! 💕💕

as i mentioned above, the answers for the unpopular opinions will be made into their own post bc there is a ton of them and i didn’t want to clutter up this doc lol 

don’t ya ever forget that you are important, loved, and special! happy hornies my cuties ;) 

~R 🌹

6. Cute shit that ya’ll said that made me giggle (and hopefully makes you giggle too)

~you all are the light of my life!! each of these comments brought me so much happiness and i love you all so fkn much for that!! also, to those of you who said, “Ro date me” PLZ haha i will date you too!!! too all of the super sweet comments about my writing, thank you so so very much and thank you for reading! it means so much to me!! to all of the i love yous, ahhhh i love you toooooo  💕

“I DUNNO IM BAD AT FUNNY STUFF BUT KNOCK KNOCK I GUESS? -whos there 

RO 

-ro who 

Me, in chan voice: RObber ducky you're the one 

yeah... 

yeah 

bYE” 

“ I didn’t know changbin’s thighs were of such importance until I saw your username but now?? 👀 I am looking respectfully.” 

“ every time chan doesn’t reply to my bubble message i hold my breath and try to die💆‍♀️” 

“ here are my favorite emoji combos: 😐☝️ 😫🖐️ 😂🤏 (i use that one when i get a dick pick and it's rlly small but the person thinks its big-) “ 

“ you are EVIL for making me choose just ONE bias OT8 EXISTS OK!?” 

“ I hope this survey provides you with a lot of useful feedback! -sincerely a big tiddie committee member (you know the one)” [hehe yes i do hai M ;)] 

“ chan’s tiddies... that’s it.” 

“jeogiyo noona hokshi namjachingu isseoyo?“

“ Jeongin is appropriately baby bread because his face is puffy in the morning so it's kinda like yeast rising 👉👉 “ 

“ someone needs to tell hyunjin to put some vaseline or something on his cuticles like I love him a lot but his recent live made me scream sir your cuticles are hanging on for dear life please I'm literally begging you “ 

“ I squeal whenever I get a notification from you and my family think I’m secretly dating someone. It’s nice knowing that they think I can get someone during a pandemic 😁 “ [this one had me SENT] 

“i hope ur dreams are blessed with skz thighs.” 

“ HS Bin supremacy!!” 

“Sta” 

“Ro(ses) are red, violets are blue - DaVinci painted Mona, cause he couldn't find you :') “ 

“✨ dInG dOnG ✨ “ 

“You're doing God's work as a changbin stan xD “ [thank you so much aHA] 

“damn gorl, are you a wifi signal? cause i’m tryna connect 🤔🥴✌🏾 “ 

“Good luck with your survey! I hope you get a big response! You know what else is big..? 

 Chan's feet. (I'm sorry, that was my attempt to make you giggle but I'm clearly not a comedian)” 

“What's the internal temperature of a taun taun? Luke warm! (Haha sorry star wars joke) “ 

“egg“

“just because you’re garbage, doesn’t mean you can’t do great things. It’s called garbage can, not garbage cannot <3 “ 

“Soft-Dom Minho Agenda is the best agenda. I have spoken. Sincerely yours, Javi (@itsapapisongo) “ [this is the way javi] 

“Bang chan daddy supremacy” 

“ro, ro, ro your boat gently down skz’ dick hell yea.” [this also had me SENT] 

“stay smut writers should take “maknae on top” literally“

“idk man i’m just vibing. hope ur day is going well. (changbin voice) da DA da” 

Fin. 

~🌹~ 

Bunch of (Ro)ses! 

@minaamhh @dazzlehoseok @synnocence @jjewibeans @hyunsluvv @unexceptional-h @bobawithchaitea @lechanters @sailorhyunjinz @silencefavarchive @lunarskzzz  @yourdaddychan @bubblelixie @spnobsessedmemes @chaangbin​ @lmhmins @eunaeiekim

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Happy New Year!

I started writing fic for The Untamed back in the fall of 2020, but I didn't start cross-posting it to my AO3 until February of 2021, so I'm going to go ahead and say that all of my fanfic that I've written for both The Untamed and Word of Honor has been written in 2021. I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a retrospective post based on my AO3 statistics since I don't currently have as much time as I'd like to work on my ongoing projects. I'm back in the States to visit family for the holidays and surprisingly enough I'm having a hard time finding the time to just sit down at my computer for hours banging out 6k oneshots 😂

Anyway, here are some of my statistics from 2021!

2021 Total Word Count : 489,483

2021 Total Works : 36 (4 for Word of Honor, 32 for The Untamed)

~

#1 Hits : All Dreams Were Worth Keeping (15,633 hits)

[2nd Place: After Each Midnight Begins A New Day (10,655 hits)]

.

#1 Kudos : Unexpected Solutions (1,355 kudos)

[2nd Place: You Need Tending (1,269 kudos)]

.

#1 Word Count : All Dreams Were Worth Keeping (157,842 words)

[2nd Place: Main Objective : Destroy Yiling Laozu (84,074 words)]

.

Honorable Mentions : Plans To Make (#1 Subscriptions and Bookmarks) and New Seductions (#1 hits for my Word of Honor fics)

~

And now for the underdogs at the other end of the spectrum:

#36 Hits : Promises You Give (296 hits)

[2nd to last: The Shadow's Call (310 hits)]

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#36 Kudos : Bite The Hands That Feed (39 kudos)

[2nd to last: Promises You Give (51 kudos)]

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#36 Word Count : You Waited For Me (901 words)

[2nd to last: Promises You Give (1580 words)]

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Honorable Mentions : Opportunities to Practice and No Such Thing As Too Good for being my only het fics (706 hits and 702, respectively) and A Figure, A Mouth as my #4 Word of Honor fic pretty much across the board.

I know I'll likely never make it too far beyond the top range of my numbers - most of my fics sit very comfortably in the 500-3000 hit range and these are all the outliers, of course - but that's alright with me! I have a lot of fun writing what I do, and I'm so grateful for everyone who reads and leaves kudos and comments on my stuff, even if I don't always (or ever) have the time to respond to individual comments like I used to.

I'm going to continue on with my ongoing WIPs this year for sure, and maybe I'll find the inspiration to write a new multi-chapter fic or two in the year ahead, who knows! But I posted 3 massive (to me) stories this year along with extras for 2 of them to expand on their universes (and I'm currently writing extras for the BOTW fic that just got posted in December), and I'm really proud of that. Posting just shy of 500,000 words in a year while also working full time in the summer and going to school full time in the spring and fall is no small achievement, in my humble opinion.

I know I'm just one small fish in a big pond but I really appreciate those of y'all who have been hanging around since I started posting After Each Midnight here on tumblr, and of course I also appreciate everyone who's found me and stuck around any time since then, no matter how y'all found me! Hopefully here's to another good year 😊

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One thing that I don’t like about AO3 is their statistics page.

I like the things that they do have there; it’s wonderful to have one convenient place to go to check the stats for all of my fics. I can see kudos, comment threads, subscriptions, etc. That’s great.

What I don’t like is that I can only see these things at the time I’m looking at the page. I can’t go back in time and see what these numbers looked like yesterday. Or last week. Or two months ago. And that bothers me. I find it very satisfying to watch how data changes over time, but AO3 doesn’t let me do that.

Luckily, I’m a statistician, so I decided to do it myself.

We’re under the cut now because probably nobody cares about this, but I’m just really excited about some graphs and I wanted to ramble excitedly and post them.

Alright so at first I decided I would just start recording my fic stats in an Excel spreadsheet. It was a bit tedious at first, but really not all that bad. I set up a nice Excel sheet, divided it into sections for each of my fics, and then made several columns in each section to record kudos, comment threads, etc.

Like I said, it was a bit tedious, but not awful. But then I kept posting more fics. And then I started posting podfics. And I was trying to record these numbers every day, so it just got to the point where it was too time consuming and kind of a pain (and also, prone to errors because I was typing all these numbers manually). On top of all that, it wasn’t all that easy to make the graphs I wanted in Excel, so I ended up just not making the graphs, which kind of defeated the purpose of tracking everything in the first place. I want to look at pretty graphs.

So I decided I needed to try something else. I needed a faster way to save all this data, since I wanted to save it every day, and I also needed an easier way to actually make graphs of my data.

Being the statistician that I am, I decided to write some R scripts.

The first issue to tackle was parsing the data that I already had recorded in the Excel spreadsheet. It’s pretty easy to read Excel files into R, so this wasn’t much of a problem. This script only needed to be run once, because once I’d run it I could save the data frame it produced and load that when I needed it, instead of parsing the whole Excel file again (which is a bit time consuming on my old laptop).

The second issue was figuring out how I should move forward with tracking new data. Ideally I’d love to have some way to automatically save the data from my AO3 stats page, and there probably is a way to do that (maybe I’ll figure it out some time in the future if I get sick of my current method), but I didn’t want to spend too much time figuring that out. Instead what I settled on is simply copy/pasting the stats from my AO3 Statistics page into a text file and saving that text file with the day’s date, in YYYY-MM-DD format. This lets me have one data point for each metric of each fic per day, which is plenty.If I wanted, I could look into getting more specific with time of day, but I don’t really think it’s necessary to get that specific, and especially not when I’m manually saving this data; maybe something to look into if I ever try to automate the data collection step.

Next I needed a way to parse this data. This was a bit more complicated than parsing the Excel spreadsheet, because I needed to account for the addition of new fics to the list, and also the fact that some metrics (eg, subscriptions) don’t actually show up on the statistics page unless they have non-zero values. All that being said, there is still a predictable pattern to how all this data appears, so it wasn’t too difficult to write a script to parse each of these text files and assign them a date based on their file name.

Once all of the parsing scripts were done, it was just a matter of combining all of the data into a single data set, and then the fun graphing could begin!

I wanted a lot of flexibility in the graphs I was making. I wanted to be able to look at my overall stats, or look at the stats for once fic individually, or look at the stats for a specific subset of my fics (eg, all of my podfics). So I wrote a function that would take any data set that I gave it and make me a set of graphs; one graph for each metric (ie, kudos, comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, wordcount, and hits).

So now all I need to do is filter my data set according to the fics I want plotted, and this function just... spits them out for me. Like magic. Except it’s not magic, it’s math, which is even better.

Now that we’re through all of my technical rambling, let’s look at some pretty graphs!

Kudos over time across all of my fics

Very cool! Looks like it goes up pretty consistenly, until this month where the slope is a bit steeper, which makes sense because I’ve been posting a lot for Christmas.

Kudos over time by fic

I filtered out the Christmas fics and podfics for this, but look! How cool it that! Also this makes it incredibly clear that IWOAK is much more popular than all of my other fics. But that’s okay, I can filter that out too!

Kudos over time by fic (without IWOAK)

And now that I’ve gotten rid of that outlier, it’s much easier to actually see the data for the other fics. Why don’t we take a look at a specific one!

Kudos over time for IWOAK

Now we can get a bit of a closer look at this outlier. I find it interesting that you can sort of tell when I posted a new chapter based on when the plots of the points increases. But it’s actually even more evident when we look at the comment thread graph!

Comment Threads over time for IWOAK

In this graph, there’s a pretty prominent increase in comment threads when a new chapter is posted, and it’s even more clear than the trend you can see in the kudos graphs. This makes sense to me, because I have a few readers who tend to comment right away every time I post a new chapter, and I don’t get many comments outside of those.

You can see a similar trend in bookmarks and hits:

Bookmarks over time for IWOAK

Hits over time for IWOAK

I’m going to cut myself off now, because I think that’s plenty of graphs and plenty of words. If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the graphs! If you’d like to chat about any of this with me, feel free to reply to the post, pop into my ask box, or slide into my DMs. I promise I don’t bite. :)