#ao3 stats are one of my hobbies

[agerefandom]

Top 10: Tumblr vs. AO3

Just felt like doing some statistics with my work!! Comparing AO3 popular fics vs. tumblr popular fics and seeing what I found out: thought other people might be interested as well! Ramblings about patterns and causes are under the ‘read more’ :P 

AO3 (by kudos): 

Class Outing: BNHA, regressor!Izuku (1247 kudos) 

Only Heaven I’ll Be Sent To: Resident Evil, regressor!reader, caregiver!Lady Dimitrescu (759 kudos) 

Cold Palms, Warm Heart: Twilight, regressor!reader, caregivers!Alice and Jasper (573 kudos) 

The Doctor’s Office: Twilight, regressor!reader, caregiver!Carlisle (403 kudos) 

Kitchen Friends: Marvel, regressor!reader, caregiver!Steve and Bucky (336 kudos) 

Sound and Silence: BNHA, regressor!Aizawa, cg!Hizashi (321 kudos)

Restrained: Death Note, regressor!Light, caregiver!L (309 kudos)

A Story For Sans: regressor!Sans, caregiver!Papyrus (278 kudos) 

Home Sweet Home: caregivers!Carlisle and Esme, regressor!Cullens (273 kudos) 

To Weather The Storm: caregiver!Tamaki, regressor!Haruhi (238 kudos) 

Tumblr (fics only): 

Class Outing (167 notes) 

Cold Palms, Warm Heart (159 notes)

The Playtime Solution: Sanders Sides, regressor!Logan (159 notes)

The Doctor’s Office (150 notes) 

Sugary Sweet: Twilight, regressor!reader, cg!Jasper and Alice (150 notes) 

Kitchen Friends (125 notes) 

Only Heaven I’ll Be Sent To (116 notes)

What Family Is: Harry Potter, regressor!reader, cg!Remus and Sirius (116 notes) 

Just Plane Overwhelmed: Sanders Sides, regressor!Virgil (111 notes) 

Golden Slumbers: Harry Potter, regressor!reader and Harry, cg!Fred (110 notes) 

Overall Tumblr Top 10:

Caregiver Valerie Frizzle headcanons & moodboard (409 notes)

Writing Prompts 2019 / 2022 (290/365 notes)

Caregivers Tiana and Naveen headcanons (244 notes)

Caregiver Jack Skellington moodboard (229 notes)

Caregiver Morticia Addams moodboard (224 notes)

Regressor Wybie Moodboard (205 notes)

Caregiver Bruno Madrigal headcanons (201 notes)

Caregiver Jack Skellington headcanons (191 notes)

Caregivers Sundrop and Moondrop headcanons (189 notes)

Caregiver Belle headcanons (182 notes)

This was really interesting!! 

Re: overall tumblr top 10: I think it’s funny that my throwaway moodboards are often some of the most popular content on my blog. Things I’m just like ‘ooh I gotta make this’ are mixed in with requests, I think that’s interesting! Ms. Frizzle just blowing away the competition, that’s amazing and I love it. Nothing is even close to how popular she is, and she deserves it. Jack Skellington coming onto the list twice? Come through king, I would love to write a full fic in Halloweentown sometime. 

Generally, the more ‘alternative’ characters seem to get a lot more attention on my blog: The Pumpkin King, Morticia, Wybie, Sundrop and Moondrop... Tiana and Naveen really snuck up there though! 

Moving onto the more direct fic comparison: 

....well this made me realize that I never published my Sanders Sides fics from this blog on AO3, whoops 

Setting that aside, fics with angst and plot tend to do better on AO3, while fluffy stories do better on tumblr: Sugary Sweet doesn’t even hit my top 10 on AO3 and it’s one of the fluffiest fics I’ve ever written, coming in at #5 on the tumblr list 

On the other hand, Only Heaven I’ll Be Sent To is by far one of my best performing fics on AO3, but comes in at number 6 (tied with another fic) on tumblr, probably because it features a lot of action and gore alongside the fluffy agere elements, same for Restrained showing up on the AO3 top but not tumblr’s. 

My Harry Potter fics do way better on tumblr, which is interesting? Maybe Harry Potter fans are still reading their fics on independent forums? Or Harry Potter folks on AO3 don’t cross over much with the agere crowd. (Or maybe they’re just overloaded with /reader fics) I haven’t been actually into the HP community since around 2011 so I’m not sure what’s up there. 

Big shoutout to Class Outing for dominating the top of both lists: BNHA is such a big fandom that it makes sense, and I wrote that fic on @agere-fandom-time, which I think got more interaction than this blog: it seems like people are more comfortable interacting with a group-run blog, rather than an individual writer. Or maybe that’s a natural consequence of more writers putting out more consistent content, letting the blog get bigger. I’m not sure! Either way, even if I’m not into BNHA anymore, I feel like it’s a good piece of my writing, so I’m happy for it to be my top spot. 

#how do i tag this lol #hark i say nothing #stella babbles in statistics #ao3 stats are one of my hobbies #i love to compare years and fandoms and ships and tags #i have like over a hundred graphs on my computer for different comparisons #i've considered making a sideblog for it #but i can also just ramble to my partner #like a person with a conspiracy board #it's great #links.... so many links

[consistentsquash]

5 Meta recs for Friday!

Happy Friday!!! <3 I read some really good meta on one of my fav author's writing process yesterday. So Meta Recs Friday! :D

My Writing Process by @squibstress

My name is Squibstress, and I am an unrepentant pantser.

This post is super poignant and really funny. It really shows fandom esp writing fic can be a lonely hobby and a social hobby at the same time. Also it's a super insightful look at not just the writing process because it's also about how the author thinks about the readers/reading experience.

I love, love, love the thoughtfulness Squibstress has for making reading more accessible. This is something you really only get in fandom. This extra attention to detail because it's a community and fandom is a garden <3 Personally I use a screen reader a lot and I can really tell the difference between fics which are going the extra mile for accessibiity on that.

Also TIL one of my fav authors is a pantser :D

Snarry-a-thon Recs by @danpuff-ao3

This is an incredible rec lists effort. Danpuff is making rec lists for Snarry-a-thon one of the longest running HP slash fests ever <3 Normally I don't have rec lists for meta posts but I feel this is such a brilliant meta level list. It's an amazing look at HP slash fandom evolution and also Snarry evolution. Insane levels of genres/tropes/characterization coverage! If you want to get a big picture Snarry fandom fic history this is the rec list for you!!

About Laugh and Forget (1) by @saehaerys

I am a big sucker for meta esp for fic meta for my fav fics. Laugh and Forget is a really dirtyhotbadwrong and super intense House of the Dragon/ASOIAF darkfic. PforPheobe's writing gives me serious Master and Margarita vibes because of that combo of darkness/humor/intense emotion. I have a Big Crush on their writing. Like I am not even a het incest reader but they sold me with their super dark emotional stories.

A bit under a year ago, one day in February, I had a horrible idea that Jaehaerys had coveted Saera and in his terrible covetousness he messed it all up, sending her away for cold repentance, and she fled from his face in mischief and utter disillusionment of their bond. It became increasingly unbearable for me to regard this passage of faux history.

I love fics written by authors with 100% commitment and love with their biggest Canon Feelings/Character Feelings inside it. This fic totally has that vibe. Really raw and super emotional.

The Lightning Struck Tower: “It is My Mercy, Not Yours That Matters Now” by @ashesandhackles

I really love the canon analysis meta from AshesandHackles. Honestly I am not a big reader of HP meta because it's a pretty old fandom and I feel like I don't really see a lot of value in meta at this point. But Ashesandhackles is brilliant at analysis and I feel like I just find new things to love about my fav characters and their parallels when I am reading their meta.

Harry recognises the flaw in the ending chapters of Deathly Hallows, and wins the Elder wand with an Expelliarmus too. Interestingly, it’s a spell Harry learnt by observing Snape in Duelling Club with Lockhart.

This one has incredible, incredible analysis of Snape, Harry and their relationships with Dumbledore. This is definitely not a shipping meta but I feel it's like 10x more powerful than a shipping meta because it just uses the canon to show the similarities/difference between the characters.

Re: Metrics by eldritcher

This is a funny and poignant personal post on writing stats/fandom stats.

Participating in fandom while refusing to buy into fandom's current metrics is a difficult position to take, because it's led to edgy questions now and then re: what keeps me in fandom since my metrics are pathetic (not my wording; my cousin deems anything below five-hundred kudos pathetic). 

Artists/authors have a lot of emotional connection with stats for lots of valid reasons. I feel bad when my fav authors are worried about stats but also I totally get it. Eldritcher is pretty idgaf about stats except comments because they love being super chatty and meta on comments. But also it's totally impossible to ignore other stats sometimes. The meta has an interesting point. If you are somebody who cares a lot about your progress, then you got to measure something. But like what's the right thing to measure?

#meta #recs #squash recs #meta recs #multifandom #different types of meta

[angelosearch]

Chaos Theory has reached 500 hits on ao3!! ...which might not sound like a lot but I am pretty proud considering it's a little over a month old and written for a 25-year-old fandom.

More ao3 stats:

Chaos Theory is at 29 kudos!! So close to 30 ahhh

I've published about 70k words on my account... WHAT?! A novel is about 50k and it's been *checks calendar* less than two months!! I have about 82k words of fanfic written overall if you include the stuff I am still working on.

I am at nine total stories, eight (lol) of which are Final Fantasy VIII

My second most popular fic is a Hazbin Hotel one-shot that is a week old and has 487 hits, 68 kudos, 10 bookmarks, and three comments. Damn writing for newer fandoms is weird.

I feel so proud and accomplished but also this might be the most into a hobby I've ever been??? I love it here thank you to all my amazing readers ❤️❤️❤️

P.s. I also got an interview for grad school so yaaaay accomplishments

#ao3 #ao3 writer #ao3 stats #accomplishments

[sequencefairy]

Writing Wrap-Up 2023

It is, once again, the end of the year! I wrote a lot!

First of all, I have officially published all my original stuff written for Space Fruit Press on Amazon Kindle under my penname, so if you enjoy my fic, I would love to encourage you to check out my original stuff, too, since all those dollars help me on the journey to doing that full time instead of having a full time job that really cuts into my fangirl time.

In addition to what is available on Amazon, there is another anthology of work coming from the press, and I will have a story in it! I need to write it, but it will exist. I'm very excited about this story, as well.

From a fanfic perspective, I have published only three things this year:

And I Was Never Afraid of the Dark (Oh, the Weapon You Made of My Heart) - shyan, wip, unfinished, 9.4k, demon!shane

Shane pulls Ryan out of Hell at 3:37 on a Tuesday afternoon. He’s not looking at his watch at the time, but he infers the time later after he’s finally managed to get up off the desert floor, and has hauled them both back to the car he’d parked in the lot at the trailhead a little over a week ago. Ryan’s a deadweight in Shane’s grip, head lolling back against Shane’s shoulder and body limp and unhelpful in Shane’s arms. His eyes are closed.

My Rivers Tilt Towards You - geraskier, fae!jaskier, 29k, strangers to friends to lovers, canon-divergent au

Geralt pushes the door open one-handed. As it creaks, announcing his presence, Jaskier looks up from the long table he’s sitting at. There’s a mug of something at the bard’s elbow and his songbook is open in front of him. “Geralt,” he says in greeting, and for a moment, Geralt is sure that the bard’s eyes shine in the dark, reflective like his own. He blinks, and the moment passes. Jaskier’s mouth curves into a smile. “Is it done, then?”

Coax the Cold Right Out of Me - shyan, complete, 4.1k, vampire!shane, established relationship

“Shane,” Ryan says, insistent, eyes gleaming in the dark. Shane lets his eyes fall shut, and sighs. The little red and white cooler they usually bring on shoots got left behind at the hotel, an hour and a half away in Jackson. “I’ll be fine,” he says, not looking at Ryan, and ignoring the ache in his gums. He’s gone longer without, he can make it through one shoot and then the drive back before being sated. “You don’t have to be.”

(more rambling under the cut)

So I spent too long making this, but whatever. Let's have fun with infographics, baby!

Anyway, interesting look at the last couple of years for me! I have clearly been in a quality over quantity place regarding wordcounts + things published over the last few years.

I have, over the past couple of years, been feeling like my writing has changed quite a lot, both in terms of what I am interested in writing, and also what I am interested in publishing both to AO3 and as original work.

I think there's also probably something in here about the fall out from the pandemic, as well as something about the fact that I've been medicated for the ADHD for a year now, and I've had to learn how to write in a way that is not an unhealthy coping mechanism and instead as something I do for fun, as a hobby that I enjoy.

What I have been producing lately, in 2023, is some of my favourite writing I've ever done, and I feel like I really levelled up this year in terms of tackling themes and ideas that the me of 2021 wouldn't have even imagined was possible.

With that said, the other fun comparison across years is this one:

Clearly, when you only publish three things in a year, it skews your stats, but I do also think that My Rivers was definitely a thing I needed to finish and write in order to become the person who is currently sitting on about 70k or so of active WIP for a different fandom altogether.

I adore, always, all the love that my shyan fic gets, this fandom is demonstrative in a way that no other fandom has ever been for me, and I've made the best kind of friends in this fandom. Even if I never publish another shyan fic ever (which I am certainly not saying is the case), I still treasure every single one of these fics which allowed me to meet people who've become extremely fucking important to me.

In addition to published fic, of course, the other thing to talk about is all that stuff I'm sitting on that hasn't been published (yet).

These are the seven most active of my WIPs. I am desiring to publish Moonlight on Broken Glass before the end of December, but since I'm the porn and instead of writing it, I keep going back to refine other parts of it, I have some doubts in my ability to get a draft done in the next few days.

All together, that's about 82k of wip, in various states of done that I'm working on. So, really, this year, I've written like, well over 100k, which is always my quiet goal going into any given year.

I don't have anything else to say about this, but I had fun making these little pictures and looking at all my wips. It was, all told, a good year for writing, even if it started off kinda slow.

#things jess says #am writing #writing wrap up #i just like to look at things over the course of a year

[retrowhatever]

All the Horizon Fanfic Stats You Never Knew You Needed

So I did some data analysis. More graphs and lots of rambling below the cut.

I love graphs. And spreadsheets. And making my hobbies unnecessarily complicated. So obviously once I discovered that there's an unofficial ao3 api, I had to learn a new programming language so I could throw some math at my Horizon hyperfixation and make some graphs about fanfics. This post is the result of that rabbit hole, I hope you enjoy it!

Before we get started, I want to make one thing explicitly clear: this post is a celebration. It's a celebration of fanfic, authors, and the fandom in general. If you have something mean to say about a ship, a writer, or a fic, this ain't the place. I made these graphs and wrote this post as a love letter to a game I'm obsessed with and the incredible people who make the fan content that is my main form of sustenance these days lol, so let's keep the discussion positive.

One last thing: I generated these graphs from data that I pulled on Aug 4, 2022. Anything published after that won't be reflected here. Alright, here we go! Let's see some graphs!

Fanfic by Length

The first thing I wondered is what the average length of fic was. I did not include any fics below 100 words, assuming they were either art or placeholders, neither of which provide any useful information regarding number of words.

I defined the categories as follows:

Ficlet - less than 2000 words

Short Story - 2K-10K words

Novella - 10K-50K words

Novel - 50K-100K works

Behemoth (pun fully intended) - 100K+ words

Obviously, there's some blurriness at the category edges, but it's pretty clear most fics tend to be relatively short. I'm genuinely surprised by how many huge, sprawling works there are though - I definitely expected there to be a single-digit number of behemoth fics. Mad props to the folks writing those monstrosities for the rest of us to enjoy!

Fanfic by # of Chapters

This graph kind of underscores the point about most fics being relatively short. There are almost twice as many single chapter fics than all other fics put together.

A thing I think is relatively unique to fanfic as a medium though, is that a fair number of those single chapter fics are novella or even novel length. You're not often going to find a book at a bookstore that's tens of thousands of words and has no chapter divisions, but that's not unusual in fanfic.

Fanfic by Author

Okay, the first thing you need to understand about this graph is the following numbers:

1

2.6

Those are the median and mean fics published per author in the Horizon fandom, respectively. In case you slept through your stats class, what that means is most fanfic writers have written one or two Horizon fanfics. Now go back and look at the graph.

...yeah. We as fanfic lovers owe a lot to these folks. Most of them are on tumblr, so even if you don't have an ao3 account (same, babe, same) you have no excuse not to go show them some love!

Serie11 is @valaloy

SoupAndChaos is @soupandchaos

mythicait is @mythicaitt

DragonRose35 I couldn't find a tumblr for

Kittleskittle is @kittleskittle

VidalsQueen is @sun-and-shadow-aloy

NorthernGhost is @thatsgonnabeanogho

sunspot (unavoidedcrisis) is @sunspott

januarys I couldn't find a tumblr for

foibles_fables is @foibles-fables

unstable_grad I couldn't find a tumblr for

Pikapeppa is @pikapeppa

YoGrossDude is @yogrossdude

bioluminesce is @owlswatch

wandereringray is @wandereringray

escafiils is @chloefraazers

Fanfic by Rating

Okay, now things are getting spicy! First of all, if I'd had to guess the most popular rating, it probably wouldn't have been Teen. But, given how popular the "fluff" tag is (foreshadowing for the tag graph later in this post), I guess it shouldn't be that surprising.

Secondly, I'm clearly not the only one who struggles to understand what exactly the Mature rating is for, considering it's the least-used rating by a fair margin.

Fanfic by Ship

The most popular ships, colour-coded based on orientation. From left to right: mlm, straight, wlw, poly, machines(?????), unknown

I want to reiterate here that I made this post to celebrate the awesome Horizon fandom, so if you're thinking of using this graph to argue that one ship is better/more correct than another... just don't, k? Good.

I also combined similar tags, so if someone used all three of the tags "Aloy/Erend", "Aloy/Erend (Horizon: Zero Dawn)", and "Aloy (Horizon: Zero Dawn)/Erend (Horizon: Zero Dawn)" for the same fic, that's actually going to count as three fics in the Aloy/Erend column. I'll probably end up redoing this graph eventually with a less naive counting algorithm, but for now this is what we've got.

Now that we've got methodology out of the way, let's talk about some cool things this graph shows!

First, Kotaloy shippers obviously have a lot of things to say. Unlike the other five most popular ships, Aloy/Kotallo is the only one involving a character that wasn't in the first game. And it's the second most popular ship! Y'all are rabid and I love it.

Second, of the wlw ships, the second and third most popular ships involve a character from the DLC and a character who dies immediately after you meet her, respectively. You guys are out here making meals from crumbs and I am impressed. Also, though, why don't Petra and Vanasha get more love??? I'm unsurprised that Talanah and her favourite Thrush are the #1 ship, but I (a clueless straight, to be fair) loved both Petra and Vanasha and definitely expected to see more fic involving them.

Third, I love the variety here. This graph only includes ships with at least 10 fics, and there are so many different ships represented! There were tons more that had 5-10 fics too, and it honestly made me so happy to see that there were multiple fic options for almost any pairing in the game.

Fanfic by Tag

Y'all. Look at all the fluff. People always joke about making their blorbos go through it in their fanfic, but like. There is SO MUCH FLUFF. We all really just looked at these characters and went "well, they deserve nice things for a change", huh? I also love how popular canon divergence is - anecdotally, I usually see that tag on fics that are like "well, what if that shitty thing didn't happen?"

That's not to say it's all sunshine and rainbows. The next two most popular tropes are "angst" and "hurt/comfort", and as an enthusiastic consumer of both, I'm not surprised. But again, anecdotally I see a fair number of fics tagged with one or both of those and a "fluff" tag.

Going back to the ratings graph, where we learned that the most popular fic rating is Teen & Up, it shouldn't be surprising that both "First Kiss" and "First Time" are more popular tags than any of the more explicit sex ones. Also, given that Aloy grew up an outcast, I think the popularity of those tags speaks to how fun it is for both writers and readers to delve into what that means for her when it comes to sex and relationships.

Finally, the most-used content warning tags will surprise exactly no one, I think. Canon-typical violence (because duh), PTSD (growing up a literal outcast before finding out you're a clone made by an AI so you can save the entire world from extinction will do that to ya, not to mention all the shit Aloy's friends/lovers have been through in their own lives), and canonical character death (glares at GEMINI) are all pretty obvious choices.

Conclusion

Because I have zero impulse control, I'm already working on a part two for this post, where I will address such pressing questions as "Which ship has the most verbose authors?" and "Who's the gayest Horizon character?" as well as recklessly use the powers vested in me by the math and algorithm gods to find some hidden gem fics that you might not have read yet.

In the meantime, I would love to hear some more opinions on these graphs! I've commented on some of the things I found interesting, but there's lots more to address here, so feel free to reblog this post or snag any graph you find interesting to use in a post of your own. I only ask that you tag me if you do - because I want to read what you have to say!!

Also, if there's any stats or questions about Horizon fanfic that you're particularly curious about, let me know. I'm limited by the information available on ao3, but I will do my best to find you answers and include them in the next post.

Lastly, one final reminder that we're here to celebrate the awesomeness of Horizon fanfic, the fanfic authors, and the fandom in general. I will humbly accept all constructive criticism about my (somewhat questionable) statistical methods and data interpretation, but ask that you keep comments about ships, tags, authors, etc positive and productive. Remember these are real people creating free content for the rest of us, and don't yuck someone else's yum.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you found this half as interesting as I did!

#doing data analysis of fanfic? just really letting my nerd flag fly here #horizon #horizon zero dawn #horizon forbidden west #hzd #hfw #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction #data analysis #plotly #aloy x avad #aloy/avad #alvad #aloy x erend #aloy/erend #ereloy #aloy x kotallo #aloy/kotallo #kotaloy #aloy x nil #aloy/nil #niloy #aloy x talanah #aloy/talanah #hawk and thrush #words i said #i made this

[trytofic]

Video Games

Day 2! I'm doing pretty well with these prompts! I'm loving doing this! hehe <3 These will be crossposted on my Ao3! Thank you to @shadamytober <3

Day 2: Video Games

Ao3

Amy makes a character that looks a lot like Shadow.

Spending hours with tails will make anyone start to enjoy different hobbies. Sonic and Tails played video games and talked about repairing tech. Knuckles enjoyed talking about books with Tails. Amy always enjoyed cooking with him but one day a video game caught her eye and she played it for hours once she got home. 

It was a MMO, that at first, she was a little skeptical about until she noticed how much you could customize your characters. Your whole party was customizable and the outfits you could pick from made her want to play even more so she could unlock everything she wanted. Her party was a powerhouse, all attack and strength, less on the defense, but her character was all the speed she needed to get through any fight.

One day as she was at home finishing a quest, her front door burst open from Sonic and Tails. She got nervous as she looked at the two, immediately covering the screen. She wasn't ashamed of the game per se, but her characters specifically made her nervous. 

“Amy, are you playing that MMO I started a few weeks ago?”

“Uhh, well I..”

“I never knew you were into this kind of stuff, Ames!” Sonic inched closer to the screen and she blocked her character from his view with her hands.

“You’re such a high level! Oh and that armor, I’ve never seen it!” Tails inches closer to try and peak at the game closer. When Amy’s face turned bright red Sonic smirked and grabbed Amy holding her away from the computer.

“Tell us more Tails!” He laughed as she wiggled in his arms. 

Tails walked over to the computer and clicked on her party. Her player character was in gray armor with red and gold accents. The sword she had was named Arondight. He hovered over her stats and the speed was maxed out and the strength was almost at the max as all her other stats. 

“You got Arondight? That level is super hard and you need so many players to help get it! That's so cool Amy! It's based on the King Arthur legend and it's supposed to be super strong! Ah, see, there isn't even a durability bar! This is so cool Amy!”

“Yep, cool weapon, nothing else to see! Please let me go Sonic!” She shoved her hands on his face trying to free herself. 

“Wait, let's see the pretty face behind the helmet!” Sonic grinned. Amy jolted and she tried to get Tails to stop, but once he clicked “remove armor” she froze.

On screen showed a strong face, and black spiked hair with red streaks. His eyes were pointed, serious and stern, and very noticeably red. The two boys turned to see Amy’s face a bright red and her eyes looking anywhere but their faces. Sonic let Amy go and she simply pointed to the door. Sonic smirked and Tails shook his head no. 

“I wonder if Shadow might like this game. Maybe I should tell him to come over.”

“Sonic…” Tails reached out to his brother until Amy turned to Sonic.

“You breathe one word and I’ll make sure every town you visit never gives you chillie dogs again.” She stared into his eyes.

“You’ll have to beat me there first!” Sonic ran out of her house and Tails just watched as Amy covered her face. 

“I’ll make sure Shadow doesn't find out.” He told her.

“Thank you Tails. I just… want to make sure I don't say anything that will make our friendship awkward. I just need some time.”

“He will come around, Amy. Just take your time.” He waved running after his brother. 

Amy took in a deep breath trying to calm down. She had a crush on the darker hedgehog for a while now, but she didn't dare ruin their friendship after it took so long to get Shadow to open up in the first place. She smiled at the player character on the screen and shut the game off. She just needed a little bit of courage and some time. 

#shadamy #shadamytober #shadamytober2023 #sonic the hedgehog fanfiction

[moregraceful]

28 & 30!

Ohhh I answered 28 here and 30 here but I have more advice!!

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

imho kudos and hits are the worst thing AO3 has done for fandom as a whole. tbqh. Hits are a meaningless stat first of all, and kudos has helped turn AO3 into some kind of creator/consumer site as opposed to a community. So my advice is: a) never look at hits or kudos stats but also b) if you're sad about not getting comments or you're feeling like no one is really excited about your fic, it's okay to find one or two gross friends and just write for them until you feel confident in your skills again. Like we love to talk about writing for yourself, but writing in a silo can get lonely too, so find one or two friends who are freaks like you, and write for them. I say two instead of one, which I have seen other people say, but I think sometimes you need a committee of people galaxybraining something beautiful into existence. The yes and- game is pretty good in a group. That is how many of my oldest Avs and Pens fics were born.

For like a solid 7 months starting out in hrpf I was only writing fic for my best friend bc I was still getting my feet wet in the fandom, particularly after a long fairly fallow period without being committed to any one fandom where I hadn't had very many truly life-giving experiences as a writer. And while most of those fics I feel pretty neutral about today, her guaranteed joy reaction DID keep me going in the moment. And that was great!! imho it's nice to write for other people when you know they're going to do their best to respond with joy and love!! Like that's good feedback for writers -- FOR HUMANS -- to get. I think it's okay to want readers for your own blessed concepts, but I think it's also okay to find someone you trust and go, be my reader because I will write for you. Like I think that's fine. It's a hobby we do for fun and for free and while there are many reasons people write fic, I don't think the outcome of a hobby you do for fun and for free is to get bummed out that no one is joyful about your fic. So in my humble opinion, if you're feeling low as a writer due to lack of people reading, it's okay to find some trusted freaques and write fics for them. Eventually you get more confident and better able to navigate the slings and arrows of AO3's stupid creator/consumer culture without getting super bummed out. Like we are not content creators getting paid per hit, we are creators in fandom. It's fine to want to be loved and it's fine to manufacture situations where you know that your two weirdo friends will love what you made. Your confidence will come back (and you will probably grow as a writer too!)

Thank you for asking!!

#cage replies #croszukis

[ineedlelittlespace]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

Thank you so much for the tag @dendrochilums! I've been seeing these pop up and kept thinking they looked like so much fun! Like you, this was my first year contributing to the Murderbot fandom, and it's been delightful from start to finish! The community is so welcoming and supportive---you all make writing so much fun!

Words and Fics 21, 555 total words total from my 7 Murderbot fics!

Good News - Ratthi hanging out in the deployment center, waiting for Murderbot to come out of its cubicle at the end of ASR.

Trust Returned - Dr. Mensah's PoV of the assassination attempt.

The Tree that Owns Itself - Three and Murderbot visit a botanical garden.

Inverse Fears - Volescu reunites with the PresAux crew before Arada's survey team departs again.

Cinema Verite - Ratthi's PoV of the documentary-making process.

Traveling in Place - Three makes a friend and takes the first step out of isolation.

Enough - Gurathin's PoV of the days while Murderbot was rebuilding its memory at the end of Exit Strategy.

Top Fics by Kudos "Cinema Verite," coming in at 371 (which is a solid hundred more than anything else I've done)! I'm a little surprised that this is the one that took the prize when it's also one of the most recent things I've finished, but I'm happy with it! That particular missing scene lived rent-free in my head from the minute I finished System Collapse.

Fandom Fic Events 2023 I haven't tackled that particular facet of fandom life yet. They do look like fun, and I love a good theme, but trying to keep up with hard deadlines for what is supposed to be a relaxing hobby stresses me out a little too much. At least for right now!

Upcoming 2024 (currently all WiPs that are subject to change and/or abandonment at any time)

a couple of miscellaneous missing scene fics from System Collapse

Mensah's PoV of the conversation at the end of Network Effect

Bharadwaj's documentary and the little moments that led to it

Indah escorts Murderbot to Station Medical after the assassination attempt. It's totally not awkward for anyone or anything.

Amena and her time at PSUMNT.

Tag game rules copied below! I'm tagging @specialagentartemis , @the-grey-hunt , and @incomt65 , as well as anyone else who'd like to do it!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

#ao3 #tag games

[skysquid22]

Was checking my ao3 stats and one of my fics hit 1000 kudos for the first time!!! All the support on my writing is just flatly incredible <3 a special thank you from everyone who supported my writing, recommended it, kudos’d it, reblogged a post when I shared it on here, left a comment, left a kudos, left a message in my inbox—regardless of if you’re following me to read this message I’m thinking of y’all!!!!!!! Much love!!!!! I started this hobby back in 2017 and I remember my jaw dropping when I saw my first fic hit 100 kudos. Startling to see a fic of mine hit 10x that… hot damn.

A toast—to many more fics in the future. God I love writing.

#skyspeaks #💙💙💙

[heymrspatel]

✨ artist interview ✨

i was tagged by @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @mikhailoisbaby and @deathclassic to do this artist interview that chrissy whipped up off of the popular fic writer one! thanks for the tag even if i feel like a grand ol' imposter 😅

1. Do you post on Ao3? If so, how many works do you have on AO3? If not, where do you post? i do! i didn't before, but i was bullied by tumblr into doing so after they took down the art for "cinematic" lmao! then the pals encouraged me to upload the rest! i have 4 works: cinematic, kinktober, gallacrafts, and original art.

2. What is your total art count? 83! (including the zine stickers/tattoos)

3. What are your top 5 pieces by likes/kudos? i used the helpful stats website @suzy-queued suggested!

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? yes! i still think it's insane when people choose to leave nice comments, so i try my best to respond!

5. What is your current fandom, and what was the first fandom you drew for? shameless, hi. if we're talking about art that i've shared, then it's also shameless. but the first one just for fun was harry potter (yeaaa yeaaa 🙄)

6. Have you ever received hate on any art? yep lol

7. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t drawn for yet but want to? i guess the true answer is none. however, i get the urge to draw every time i watch something that i end up loving. recently i've wanted to draw for young royals and stranger things, but i never ended up doing anything. i would also be too shy to post 😅

8. What’s your all-time favorite ship? i've had many, but based on impact and inspiration i'd have to go with ian and mickey 💙

9. Do you draw outside of fandom? i do!! it's my favorite hobby! the only difference is that outside of this space i usually just sketch. so it's very different than what i share here.

10. What’s the an art piece you’ve drawn that came out completely differently than you expected? oh probably this one! it changed quite a bit and was originally drawn flipped around. i think it tells a different story depending on which way you look at it!

11. Do you draw smut? yes! the teasing kind. the "what's that hand doing?!" kind lmao

12. Have you ever had any of your art stolen or copied? not that i know of!

13. Have you ever collaborated on a piece? yea! i've collabed on art for fics with @whatwouldmickeydo and @metalheadmickey and on the zine and timeline with @you-are-so-much-better-than-that 🥰

14. What’s an idea you have that you have yet to draw? omg i have an entire list of ideas that just exist and may never come to life lol! they range from extreme fluff to absolute filth... my notes app: -kiss on the cheek/scrunchy face -mickey's head hanging off bed/mouth open/ian's hand wrapped around the nape of his neck -holding hands at the alibi alsdkfjlk

15. What are your drawing strengths? i would say adding details and tying the story i'm trying to convey together. and i like to think that i'm ok at giving them that tender and in love feel no matter the situation.

16. What are your drawing weaknesses? all of it? haha proportions and certain angles are really hard for me. hands and noses yikes! i am also terrible at drawing from memory. i usually draw with about 20 references pulled up on my laptop. like, i am the bozo googling "table". 17. What’s your favorite art piece you’ve drawn? it's gotta be the roadtrip one! but i also really really love this one:

18. What is one thing you’d like to tell people about your art that they might not know? i love adding/repeating little details that no one would really notice unless you're zooming all the way in or seeing a few pieces as a set. i built a color palette very early on that has stayed consistent throughout. i play a lot with blues and greens as a motif. and uh i'm still learning! everyday! with every single one!

19. What inspires or motivates you to create for fandom? i genuinely love doing it! i also love a prompt, that's why i started all of this with gallacrafts. and i just really love putting them in situations i want to see them in and drawing them stupidly in love!

but, i also hoard unhinged tags in my cheeks like a chipmunk lmao every series i've done was born from people screaming a version of "YOU'RE INSANE" at me 😂

20. And finally, can you describe your process a little? Do you have a favourite place to draw? Do you play something in the background? Do you do research or just go for it? Give us a little insight. i usually draw on the couch, hunched over like a shrimp. i’m normally up really late (i see 3am too often) and that’s when i get most of my work done. i typically watch something i've seen before so that i don't have to fully pay attention or i'll listen to music. i sketch a rough draft of what i want the final piece to end up looking like, then i do a shit ton of research and pull up a stupid amount of references. i have a really creepy pinterest board full of body parts lol! then i fight for my life and rage until the line work is fully done. after that, it’s smooth sailing with coloring and shading 😌

i'm feeling a little tag shy, but i'll tag @gallawitchxx @doodlevich @y0itsbri and @grumpymickmilk if you want to play! if not i'm just giving you some flowers 💐

#why the fuck do i talk so much? why was this so hard? #chrissy encouraged me to just ramble and that i did. i'm sorry about it. #artist interview #tag game

[optiwashere]

I just found you on ao3 and i wish i had earlier all the recommendations were fine but your writing is the perfect mix for me. All the high kudos fics in f/f don't hit the same.

No question just appreciation for my new favorite author!

Hey anon, this is all incredibly sweet of you to say! Thank you 💜 Hope you continue to enjoy the fics.

I would just say that I'm very happy with having anyone that reads my stuff. I love hearing from anyone and everyone that comments on my fics or leaves an ask here. And holy shit, some of y'all have been coming out in force lately. The reaction to Nightsongs alone is super inspiring, and very sweet! I try to ignore my stats altogether, but that's incredibly kind of all y'all.

That said, I'm also not a doofus and I've been around fandoms for a while. So I know "the game."

I rambled a lot about pointless shit, so it's all under a break. It wound up being more directed at other fic writers than about your original sentiment, anon. Just another day on this strange planet for me.

Please don't think about this stuff too hard or too much. It will never make you happy. If you're a "big name fan" it will just be awful for you for different reasons. I wasn't a BNF, but I was very recognizable in a previous fandom. It wasn't pretty for me then either lol.

But if you're curious, it's all down to how people sort, read, and how momentum in fandoms works.

You need either a big social circle or to write for the biggest ship/trope to fit into those sorts of rec lists, or have an external social media find you. Not that those rec lists are totally irrelevant to quality! Far from it sometimes. But they are a specific type of popularity that you as the reader have to be aware of. Even you mentioned that you used rec lists, but from my understanding most people sort by word count, hits, kudos, or bookmarks.

It's the reason I tend to just sort by new and go with the flow.

That does mean that sometimes you have to wade into unknowns as the reader. Sorting by those sorts of metrics tends to perpetuate momentum rather than indicate... really, anything.

Not to say anything negative about the quality of the high kudosed femslash for BG3! I just don't read a ton of fic these days, and I have very specific things I look for (usually it's characters that aren't cis). Plus, there's one ship that's the very clear fan favorite, and there's a few tropes that are the obvious favorites. So you have to orient your perspective around those realities as a writer if you plan on keeping stats visible.

So the way I see it? I don't write a popular pairing, I write trans fics which in the smut might feature things that some readers do not want, and I don't write the biggest OC trope for Shadowheart/Tav works. Therefore, I tend not to be found by a certain subset of readers. Additionally, I write one-shots linked together by a series rather than singular longfics, so I don't "gather" additional metrics to make discoverability easier on the usual fronts listed above.

All that to say: I'm really happy that a lot of people read and comment on my fics :) Love my li'l gaggle of readers so much!

And additionally, most importantly maybe, I don't want to see in my inbox the sorts of talk I've been seeing in the fandom places I've been poking my toes in lately. That is, I don't want to see others being put down to prop anyone else up. Fandom is meant to be fun, it's meant to be a hobby.

Am I annoyed by some things in the fandom? Absolutely. Without question. But I try to avoid that stuff at all costs to save my sanity and focus on the things I do enjoy instead.

My motto is love what you love. Read what you enjoy. Fuck the rest, ignore it.

#hey you can ask me things! #random rambling about writing #fanfiction #moral of the story is Stats Will Drive You Nuts #second moral: have fun and seek out others like you #third moral: build connections and friendships wherever you can because they will be the heart of your fun

[broomsticks]

today's hp fandom excavation fun: the hp_essays livejournal comm

1) When will the fandom end? posted by (ljuser)vegetasbubble on 07 December 2007

As much as we (any of us) hate to admit it, the Harry Potter fandom will one day (hopefully not one day soon) come to an end. Authors will write thier last ever fanfiction, draw thier last ever fanart, and put down the pencil and say "Thats it." Its a stage of life that no one, (I am one of those people), wants to see. The end of a generation, so to speak.

i was especially amused by this given the recent stats by destinationtoast that had HP as THE fastest growing fandom (and second largest to MCU overall) on AO3 in 2022.

anyway, virtually all the comments disagreed, pointing out the longevity of many many many other literary and movie/TV fandoms.

interestingly, though, i don't think i saw much note of how specifically groundbreaking HP was. aside from this:

Aside from the complete falsity of this claim, I'd rather pursue a new line of thought. In the past few years we seen the HP fanfiction exponentially grow being one of the hugest on general fanfiction websites, spawning huge websites in general for one specific IP and even within the fanfictiondom having different sub-sections, (such as slash, a particular ship or adult) of fanfiction having moderately large collections of works on their own. This is basically a testatment to HP being on of the biggest franchises of this generation to be able to generate such an incredible amount fandom, not to mention an almost serendipitously bring together the forces capitalism, luck, forture, marketing, publishing and talent to make it such a huge hit. The question I pose is to what degree will this fandom die down if at all? Obviously some people will hand up their brushes, mice and pens to abandon contributions to the monster than is HP fandom; but just as the longevity of slash Star Trek fics and LOTR fan art; to what extent will HP fandom survive? Does the content of being a youth fantasy or children's coming of age story have a bearing on how long it will last, when it will last and how slowly (or quickly) the fandom will die down?

this observation on the cyclical nature of fandom was fascinating too:

Hah. I used to ask myself the same question the first time that I was in a fandom. (Tolkien´s Silmarillion) People were writing everything off and exhausting all the good ideas by doing them over and over. Eventually, the people I knew grew tired, and I grew tired too, so most of us left. Years later, however, I suddenly had an impulse to go back and write some more… and guess what I found. New people had taken the place of the old, and the old fic ideas, the old controversies were coming up again as if they were new. Because for those people, they were new. They had not been there back when we wrote and discussed, and most of them had none or little knowledge of what had been done. Fandom repeats itself just like history, because new generations come, and they do not know what has been done before. And, as is the case with history, research about the past is a minoritary hobby. Do you read all the posts in a forum when you join? Or the mails in a mailing list that has been going for seven years? Well, it´s the same with the people who suddenly read Harry Potter and decide that they like it… they will start from zero, and probably read some classics that a friend reccomends to them, but they will not spend their first fannish months reading everything that has been already done, yelled, discussed, squeed and kept saved in Potter sites years before. They will spend them writing feverishly, noticing things, squeeing, yelling and discussing on their own- just as the others once did.

other Very Good essays:

2) Participatory Interpretation; Or, How Fanon Showed Me My Canon by gjules, posted 10 Sep 2004

Partly because of the size and complexity of its universe and partly because of its large and varied cast, the Harry Potter fandom has one of the widest spreads of potential interpretation… So how are we to take the author's intentions into this? As interesting as auctorial intent is in extra-textual interpretation, it still can be misleading. Authors are aware of their creation on many levels, and not all of those levels are consciously accessible. That's one of the strengths of the beta reader: they're not telling you what to do-- they're telling you what you've done.

For me, for example, rereading the books after finding HG/SS was an exercise in reinterpretation. Incorrect reinterpretation, reinterpretation informed and created by my hopeless enjoyment of Sevmione, I have no doubt, at least in light of the probability of that particular OTP occurring in future canon-- but still an interesting perspective on a given text which I might otherwise never have considered. Naturally, this leads to accusations of fanon muddying the waters of the original canon, making things confusing, blinding the fanfic reader and writer to what's really going on. I don't buy this. I would argue that instead, the reader who takes diverse perspectives from fanfic back to the original canon is instead more likely to see all of the possibilities, is less likely to be blinded by the initial assumptions anyone draws when encountering a text.

I've found that reading fanfiction often shows me the assumptions I've unconsciously held about canon. In my view of canon, Snape is more often the tormented hero, and Harry often closer to being in the wrong-- but the different views I have read of fanon Snape show me the other ways other readers see him.

This discussion eventually leads to a disturbing question, however: can all views of canon be considered equally privileged?

a response:

Short answer: no. Why? Because not all views of canon can be equally supported. If your view of canon can be demonstrably shown to contradict something like a significant point of the text, it is weakened. If you have an analysis of canon that fails to account for some major features of the text, or is contradicted by them, it is less priviledged than an analysis which is able to comphrend more things. The completeness criterion is one that I've found is applied across a lot of topics of analysis, from literature to hard-core music theory (yep, there is such a thing).

---

3) a lovely (if slightly ranty!) tonks character study meta:

The Deconstruction of a Miss Nymphadora Tonks by theregoesyamum on 09 Apr 2006:

1. She's direct. 2. She's intelligent. 3. She has a sense of humour. 4. She hasn't got a rotten bone in her body. 5. She's irreverent and unconventional. 6. She's a Black by blood, if not by name.

go read it in full! keeping in mind the fandom post-HBP was full of massive tonks-related wank (alluded to in the (mostly good! worth reading!) discussion here).

---

4) i'm sad this post (Fanfiction Writing Style and Stylistic Trends by ignipes, posted 04 September 2005) doesn't seem to exist on the internet anymore (yes, i did try wayback machine)

---

5) no shortage of peter pettigrew meta -- though a lot of these were written pre-DH, some even pre-OOTP and pre-HBP. interesting reads, but none i felt were especially notable.

#hp fandom history #hp meta #fanfiction meta #nymphadora tonks #canon compliance

[commehter]

I Was Bored Earlier This Week...

...and instead of doing anything productive, I poked at SToFLO's tags on AO3 for grins and giggles. Then I broke out the calculator because I am a dweeb. Here's some of the more interesting numbers.

The ATLA fandom on AO3 is rather large, of course, but I was impressed with how well SToFLO's stats held up. Top 4% for kudos, top 2% for hits and bookmarks, and, finally, the top 1% for comments! (The last one might actually be cheating a bit. I've had a few long conversations in the comments' section.) Now, to come back down to Earth, what that actually means is StoFLO was on pages 75 for kudos, 37 for hits, 31 for bookmarks, and 20 for comments. Heh, yeah, I don't think anyone will be finding the story without a bit more filtering.

On the other side of the spectrum, the "Ozai Dies" tag (or "Ozai is Deader than a Doornail" on SToFLO) is only 3 pages long with 57 works total at the time of my integer-based tomfoolery. And would you look at that! I managed to find a recognized tag on AO3 small enough that SToFLO is in the top 5 when sorted by bookmarks, kudos, comments, hits, and word count! I find this especially funny because I only added the tag as a clarification that the main character was not actually canon!Ozai.

Jumping back to that semi-inflated comments number, it snagged SToFLO places on page 2 of "Zuko-centric" and page 1 of both "Fire Lord Zuko" and "Fire Nation Royal Family."

Not too shabby, all things considered!

Anyway, when I was done with my nonsense calculations, I cleaned up the tags on the story and took the opportunity to add a few that were missing before. One casualty was my beloved "Updates at the Pace of my Capricious Muse" tag for an "Aiming for Monthly Updates" tag.

I've never actually held to a writing/posting schedule before, but I think it's about time I gave it a try. For a few reasons, not least of which is the sheer discrepancy of the amount I updated SToFLO in its first year compared to its second. I know monthly is a pretty slow update rate, but this is fanfic written in my spare time as a hobby; and, even as slow as monthly is, this last year I've actually been posting less than that. (I suppose if the extras in Folktales and Fables are counted, then it's roughly the same amount of chapters/content for the series as a whole as monthly posts would be, but still.)

I'm hoping to update SToFLO every 28th of the month from now on, so keep an eye out for the next chapter and I'll see you in about a week! Happy reading!

#commehtating #actual blog post #i am a dweeb #calculator #ao3 #archive of our own #tagging shenanigans #the spirit tale of fire lord ozai #fanfiction #fanfic #update schedule #my poor capricious muse

[kitkatt0430]

🎱 🪐 🔪 🌿

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats 

User Subscriptions: 177 Kudos: 39,919 Comment Threads: 2,449 Bookmarks: 8,391 Subscriptions: 1,343 Word Count: 2,191,216 Hits: 373,375

🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now

My dad has retired which means I can spend more time with him. Since I live and work near him & my mom, I can meet up with him for lunch sometimes on weekdays.

I've gotten back into reading new mangas lately now that there's a Barnes and Noble just down the street from me. Before that the closest book store was a resell shop that, though nice, doesn't have the greatest manga selection. With mangas and comic books I tend to prefer physical books over ebooks, so it's been really nice to be able to browse a large selection again without having to drive fifteen to twenty minutes.

I've been reorganizing my kitchen which probably sounds boring, but I've gotten some new dishware and glassware that's brighter and more colorful than my old stuff and so the open shelves actually look really fun now. Since I started indoor renovations last year, I've really been enjoying how having things brighter and more colorful help lift my mood, so I've been trying to extend that where I can.

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Hmmm, well... I've researched various sentencing standards for various crimes and how those crimes are classed. But that's not really weird. Nor was looking up how living wills work and power of attorney and what-not. Though it was interesting to learn that in the US if you give someone the right to make medical decisions for you when you can't, they cannot also be your doctor. So if you need a surgery and a surgeon in that field holds the right to make your medical decisions then they cannot also be the one who performs the surgery

Makes sense, but was also an interesting/relevant find for fic writing in the Flash with regards to Caitlin.

But weird... weird... I'm pretty sure looking up poisons is par for the course for a fic writer too. Average apartment rent...

I think I tend to look up more mundane stuff and make up the weird, really...

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity

So it might help to step back and see if there are any patterns in when you're feeling blocked and/or low in creative feelings. For me, in the Fall I start to feel kinda burned out. It's definitely a seasonal thing for me that brings it on and, unfortunately, sometimes trying to just push through makes it worse. The more stressful my year, the harder that Fall burnout hits me.

Knowing what the pattern is can help you break that pattern, or learn to recognize and react in more helpful ways to minimize how it makes you feel.

For me, I think looking into aides for dealing with seasonal affective disorder may help. Having alternative hobbies that I can turn to also helps to calm me down when I'm upset or even just annoyed about something. I can pick up a video game to take my frustration out in the game battles or grab a paint-by-numbers or scratch art page and concentrate on creating something pretty to look at. It helps hit that creative scratch I need without frustrating me over how my own imagination is kinda at a low point for making fanworks.

But also there's learning to accept that sometimes burnout just happens. It's not my fault and being upset with myself doesn't fix the issue. Being able to step back and say 'okay, I need to focus on something else for now and let my creativity recover' isn't easy, but it's an important part of letting my brain heal from whatever is causing the block.

#thank you ^_^ #kitkatt0430 answers #writers ask game #emoji ask meme

[dukeofdumbass]

🤠🤴 MINOADE MAY 🐄⚔️

Wahoo! It's (almost) Minoade May! If you know me, you know that I go crazy over prompt fills - they help my poor little writing-blocked brain focus and create. Since we're coming up on the M month of the year, I've provided 31 prompts to help celebrate one of my favorite pairings, and certainly the most pivotal one to my journey as a member of the Xenoblade fandom. I've had so much fun with them over the past two years. Will you join me?

The Prompts

I'm a writer by principal satisfaction, but I've chosen prompts with the aim of suiting both written and visual mediums. They are as follows:

Fantasy AU

Meeting/Bonding

Crafting/Hobbies

Favorite Items

Friends/Social

Monster AU

Attraction/Banter

Idiosyncrasies

Scars/Crystal

Weapons/Battle

Mythra Space

Modern AU

Plays/History

Food/Home

Support/Fear

Feelings Denial

Elements/Motifs

Artists AU

Hidden Talents

Pet Names

Whump Space

Hair/Armor

Legacy/Children

Fusion AU

Meta Gimmicks

Camp/Sleep

Protectiveness

Inside Jokes

Future/Aging

Roleswap AU

Free Space!

The Guidelines

Both platonic and romantic dynamics are accepted and encouraged!

You can reference or include Addam's wife, or you can ignore her! Up to you :)

Please avoid significant age gaps / grooming for the comfort of all participants.

Adult content (sexual/violent/traumatic) is fine, but do tag/warn appropriately.

Background ships/dynamics are great - just make sure minoade are the focus.

Some Notes

"Meta Gimmicks" refers to anything about gameplay (originally it was "Gameplay Gimmicks") that brushes up against the fourth wall; ex. characters' flexible knowledge of their damage/stats, skill/weapon names, calls back or forward in ~ludonarrative~ elements.

"Monster AU" includes the subgenre of "Minoth with extra features" such as horns or equine legs; in other words, the "monster" component need not exist in a wholly alternate universe evocative of halloween horror, but instead can build onto the inherent horror elements of Minoth's status as a Blade and Flesh Eater. Too, mermaid/centaur/vampire can give you some inspiration, here.

For "Fusion AU" the intent is for entries to feature a proper fandom fusion - say, Star Trek in specific, rather than space odyssey at large. A Zelda fusion would perhaps contain some elements of Fantasy, but should be adequately differentiated. Including characters from either fandom in the fusion is fair game - whatever helps you paint the setting.

I didn't include a space for death/bereavement, but that can of course fit within several of the other prompts related to such abstract endpoints of life. Please, feel free to embellish and improvise just about as much as you wish.

Sharing Work

I will not be creating a separate Tumblr for this event; however, I post sparingly enough on my main Tumblr, here @dukeofdumbass, that I intend to simply reblog entries here. On Twitter, I will be sharing the event announcement on my variously-pruned main Twitter @dukeofdumbass and retweeting entries on my former bot (I cleared my crontab before it was cool ;) @floraminoade. To keep things consistent, the event tag will be MinoadeMay, in CamelCase, on both Twitter and Tumblr. Please @ mention either/any of my accounts to make your participation clear. If the need becomes apparent, I will make an Ao3 collection as well, and of course I will be commenting on and otherwise supporting all fics written for the event.

Hanging Out

The elephant in the room: if I'm not on Twitter/Tumblr, where am I? I hang out and post daily self-improvement doodles in my minoade ship server, linked here: https://discord.gg/mbFWVsp7ad. I will be adding a channel for collation of MinoadeMay entries - I didn't necessarily understand the complaints about the discordification of the internet until I happened into doing it myself... I recently started my first career position, finally, so I'm taking the solution that works for me!

Any Questions?

Please DM me on Twitter/Tumblr (again, @dukeofdumbass) if you have any questions, or on Discord RoseOfATHeNs#8608. I don't have the wherewithal to reply to timeline tweets, and I'd prefer asks that I can reply to and tag rather than replies/reblogs with questions on this post. Any feedback is much appreciated, and updates will be made to this info post as needed.

...That's All, Folks!

#xenoblade #xenoblade chronicles 2 #torna the golden country #addam origo #addam #minoth #minoade #minoade-may #MinoadeMay

[greenhikingboots]

2022 End-of-Year Fic Review ✨

Thanks for the tag @cellsshapedlikestars. 💋 Ya’ll know the drill. Answers below the cut. 

1. What’s your AO3 account?

GreenHikingBoots. I used to write my Jonsa stories as NorthernLady and my Dramione stories as DakotaDelacour.

2. How many words did you write in total in 2022? AO3 Statistics says about 140,000. But I have 1) an incomplete Dramione multi chapter that was around 40k words before I orphaned it 2) some fics I originally wrote and published in 2021, took down, reworked, and republished in 2022 and 3) a whole lot of words in Google Docs that aren’t ready to be published yet. So, yeah, take that number with a grain of salt. I’ve seen a handful of writers I really enjoy with way higher numbers and it’s a bit tempting to compare and get down on myself. But you know what? If 140,000 words is about right, that’s like two full young adult novels in a year. As a hobby! That I do not get paid for. That’s pretty awesome. 

3. How many fics did you publish in 2022 // multi-chapter vs. one-shots?

21. Again, some of these were originally from 2021 but taken down, re-worked, and re-published. I’m not sure how to count the exact breakdown since I have a handful that are two or three parts (so technically multi-chapters) but the word counts are short enough to match some one-shots out there. Generally speaking, I have a lot more one-shots than multi-chapters. I think only one of my fics is longer than 25,000 ish words and more are under like, 6,000 ish. 4. What was your longest-fic // shortest fic? Longest: Inevitable. It’s the outline at about 72k ish words with one chapter left to go. Shortest: About Damn Time. It’s 921 words. That’s a Pretty Name is a close second with 971 words.

5. What was your most popular // least popular? Most Popular: Inevitable, which I think is to be expected because it’s the longest. A Boy in His Cups is my next most popular, the Jonsa one-shot I’ve had up the longest. Least Popular: That’s a Pretty Name

6. What fic didn't perform as well as you thought it would? So Mighty Love + Better Dreams (a two part series that’s about 25,000 words total) was originally part of one of those fic I published as NorthernLady, took down before completing, re-worked, and re-published this year. And the original version was pretty popular and considering it’s mostly the same fic (the major difference being I found a way to end it sooner), it was easy to assume it would perform similarly. But that wasn’t the case at all. I’m guessing people were turned off by the new “Ambiguous/Open Ending” tag? I’m not sure. This series isn’t one of the ones I’m super proud of since it relies heavily on the show plot and I’m more into the books these days. But!! The closing line to Better Dreams is one of the best damn things I’ve ever written and I kinda wish it wasn’t hiding in a fic most people don’t want to read. So there’s that. *shrugs*

7. What fic performed way better than you thought it would? I don’t know about *way* better, but I published Crossing the Threshold around the same time as several other one-shots, and I was surprised to see it beat out the others. I mean, it’s got a cute premise and I was excited to share it, but if I had to rank everything I posted from late September to early November, it probably wouldn’t even make the top half let alone the very top spot. Glad others like it, though.   

8. What was your favorite fic you wrote in 2022? Goodness, this is a difficult question. I recently said in another post that A Boy in His Cups is probably the fic I’m most proud of. I’ll stand by that. It’s just got all the elements I love most about Jonsa fanfiction. But Wait and See and Maiden in a Tower are also very near and dear to my heart. I’ve gone back and read those two a handful of times. I try not to care too much about stats (I still care more than I’d like), so I guess what I really like about these three is that they make not caring about stats easy. Like, I love them for the pure fun of writing and would have been pleased with how they turned out even if no one ever saw them. What’s another way of wording it? Many of my other fics are more like an idea that I need to get out of my system so I can move on. Whereas these three fics make me go, “I want to crawl inside this fic and live there!!”

9. What was your favorite fic that somebody else wrote in 2022? Oh my! I’m pretty bad at keeping track of what I’ve read and even worse at remembering titles and who wrote what. Also, I read a lot of stuff after it’s been completed which means just because I read it in 2022 doesn’t mean it was written in 2022. But here are some authors I remember being in my bookmarks at different times throughout the year: thimbleful @justadram_a_dram honey_wheeler @vivilove-jonsa @woodswit @kingsansa @estherruth-jonsatrash @ode-to-an-inkwell @amymel86 Kit_Kat21 caesia @chispas-and-broken-bindings ganymede_elegy (@cellsshapedlikestars) (I try to read and love on other writers I see on Tumblr. Is that obvious by this list?) Also ganymede’s Lounge Act and Mating Game (still in progress) are probably the WIPs I followed most closely. I also have a special place in my heart for her fic The Ghost Inside since I was a beta reader for that. 10. Tag your friends so they can play as well!

Anyone in #9 who hasn’t already been tagged and/or anyone else who wants to play with us!

-x-x-x-x-x- Short descriptions of all my fics mentioned in this post: Inevitable - Modern AU - high school, fake dating trope, best friend’s sister/brother’s best friend That’s a Pretty Name - pre-canon romantic undertones, Sansa lectures Jon about courtesies Crossing the Threshold - Modern AU - high school, drunk confession of feelings About Damn Time - Modern AU - college; Sansa gets a gift from Jon on her birthday A Boy In His Cups - Jon I GoT reimagined; he already knows the truth about his parents Wait and See - Jon struggles to regain his memories after dying and being brought back to life Maiden in a Tower - another pre-canon romantic undertones, a kissing game in the godswood Mighty Love/Better Dreams - seasons 6 and 7 of the show but make it Jonsa

#jonsa fanfiction #end of year review