#i love to compare years and fandoms and ships and tags

[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

[maaxverstappen]

bit fandom meta but my favourite thing is how there are like groups of people who comment on fics. like each pairing has a dedicated cheerleader squad who will hype up like all works for that pairing and i love it

(most noticeable for piarles and maxiel i feel like!!)

#every single time i read piarles (which is not too often so when i do its noticeable) i see the same people commenting i love it #maxiel has a similar like core group of people that enjoy it #especially now when that ship is less popular compared to other years #f1 fandom meta #will tag this as both ships bc they deserve some love and recognition in the tags #piarles #maxiel #m talks

[lecliss]

Been rewatching Blea©h and ep 14 kinda made me realize why I enjoy the enemies to lovers(and enemies to friends/enemies to friends to lover) dynamic so much. The whole thing with Ichigo and Ur¥u starting off as enemies and Ichigo trying to team up with Ur¥u once he thinks he learns what Ur¥u's problem is, then them both getting along through an agreement to survive so they can have a rival to beat up later, and that eventually leading to a friendship where they trust and believe in each other's skills and capabilities(and way later turns into Ichigo refusing to believe Ur¥u betrayed them and trying to bring Ur¥u back), like. Bro. Like, Ichigo and 0rihime are super cute together, its for real adorable. But just, something about a hatred for each other turning into its own special bond that turns into real companionship. Holy fuckin shit, I eat it up every single goddamn time. Thats why Im always gonna favor the enemies/rivals to friends/lovers dynamic waaaay more. Its about that extra step that such a relationship was originally born from hatred and any kinda drama that comes along with it. Fuckin obliterates me emotionally.

#excuse my major censorship of words here. i just REALLY wanna avoid this topic being in tags since the fandom is so toxic about ships #interesting to note tho that on the flip side i do favor n@ruh1na over s@sun@ru after years of originally favoring the other. #i think thats just cuz i dont like the sauce man and after years more of him. doing the things hes done. its like. i dunno bout this #anymore man. #but ichig0 and ur¥u are how you do it RIGHT. how you go from rivals to trusted companions BABEY #tho theyre not 100% comparable actually. theres a lot of different things going on between those duos #and also. king and helbram made me realize that i go wild for the reverse too. friends becoming enemies? have to mercy kill friend??? #ohohohohhohohohhhh yessssss. ITS ABOUT THE DRAMA AND THE EMOTIONAL TURMOIL!!!! #WHERES THE DRAMA IN 1CHIH1ME AND N@RUH1NA OUTSIDE OF LIKE. TOO SHY TO SAY CONFESS AND GETTING KIDNAPPED??? #at the end of all of this. all it really says is that i love drama. and its true. im obsessed with hate based drama #personal

[heavens-aesthetic-kitchen]

Why the TF2 Defense Trio deserve more recognition

The people have spoken, I have decided to create an essay disguised as a post on this godforsaken website because it's a free country goddammit! (I would have done it either way lmaooo, I have a lot of shit to say about these maniacs) To start this formal essay glorified very serious shitpost, why should you as a tf2 fan care about these 3 men? They're so "boring" and there's not much going on with them. If ya took a second, let's pause with what was being said. YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND to think such thoughts, we must shake you out of cuckoo land by giving you an in-depth look into these three so that you understand where I'm coming from. Let's start in order:

Demoman:

After being in the fandom since 2019, there's always one character I always thought wasn't given much anything in the fandom at all. Even taking ships out of the equation, there's barely any fics I've that focus on Tavish Finneagan Degroot specifically that I've seen that isn't a compilation fic (I read a lot of x readers, don't judge me). Believe me, I checked ao3. I went through Demoman's tags and I tried very hard to filter a lot of the crossover and relationship tags, yet there's less of Demoman himself, than there's him just existing as a side character of a story. Which is honestly sad, I honestly think Demo is one of the more kinder mercs compared to a lot of the team. This man made friends with the BLU soldier, despite knowing that they were supposed to be killing each other. Sure, it's unclear whether or not Demo did actually go through with it and it's just a ruse, because the voicelines in WAR! don't have a set timeline. But I do think that Demo would have tried to keep his friendship with BLU soldier. He's very chill. I've never actually seen him get violent against his friends and family, despite being a drunkard. I honestly think he's one of the sweetest people in TF2, he takes good care of his mom and haunted sword lmaoooo. Jokes aside, he seems like a genuinely good man and I barely see anything that suggests he's sadistic. He's a chaotic and loud, but not bad. Not bad at all. The fact he can still do his job well, even after drinking so much that his body created a whole distillery, is even more impressive. He is damn good at what he does and works very hard. He's had multiple jobs, even as wee little lad. Despite what people think of him, the fact he's getting paid 5 million dollars a year, is proof he knows what he's doing. He loves his job and couldn't bear the thought of not working. I feel like his backstory isn't talked about enough in the fandom either. When you think about it, it's kinda fucked up that he was put in an orphanage by his biological parents until he was in the right age to be blowing people up. Not only that, his eye socket was haunted by the Bombinomicon so that every halloween a giant eye would manifest, attacking him and his friends. Even Medic couldn't help him and instead resorting to scooping the part of Demo's brain where he remembered so he would stop asking. He most likely has a lot of stories for you, I see him as the type that has a lot to say. His past is the most fleshed out and complete out of all the mercs, which I really appreciate, you can do a lot more with him. Also another thing, during Unhappy Returns, he took the time to reassure Soldier that he wouldn't think he's a civilian. He didn't brush Soldier's worries aside and instead comforted him. I wish I had a lot more to say about Demo because I am baffled that he isn't being gushed about as a potential partner. He has the excitement and like zero baggage. A thing I also wanna point out is that he seems to be insecure of the fact he's a black scottish man with only one eye during Meet The Demoman. I may be reading into things a bit too much, but it makes me wanna be like "NOOOO don't talk about yourself like that, bro. You're so cute UGHHH" Also also he's handsome. Sure looks can be subjective, but I still think Demo has a face I would kiss hehe. He looks great with his beard and his cheeky ass smile. GOD I could gush about him all day, but I have to move on rip.

Heavy:

Honestly, I'm having a hard time just finding the words to describe this amazing man without giving him the respect he deserves. But I'll sure try. Heavy has had a difficult life and I've always admired how strong he was. Not just of his muscles, but he endured one of the toughest situations and still kept moving forward with his life even though it was traumatizing. You see why I'm even having a hard time talking about him? I can't really get down into the weeds, without getting serious for a min. I feel like the fandom doesn't give him much credit for being able to deal with so much. He's the rock for his family after his father disappeared (atp I think he's dead, which is the cherry on top this depressing sundae) and I wouldn't doubt that he would be the same for his team. He's a man of few words, but that makes him all the more intriguing. Just because this man has a lot of brawn does not mean he's dumb at all. Despite how he acts in the battlefield, Heavy is observant and clever. Although, it's implied that Spy being Scout's dad is an open secret between the mercs and Miss Pauling, the fact he figured it out without saying it directly must mean he has a lot more going on. He's also educated, getting a phD in Russian Literature. It's not a STEM program, but he actually got a doctorate and went to college, that's a lot more than half of what the mercs did lmaooo. Also he has a bit of a softie side, not just for his mom and sisters, but also other creatures as well. I respect him so much for avoiding violence against those dogs during the Showdown comic. Not only shows what an absolute sweetheart he is, but also how much he's able to think quickly on his feet. Heavy is very direct and blunt, I don't see him as the type to lie about his feelings. I appreciate that he doesn't feel the need to sugarcoat anything, he'll get the job done and he ain't playing. There's no fluff, he knows what he wants and that's to rev up Sasha and ram through sons of bitches without any worries.

I feel like I wanna point out, his story seems the most unexplored in the fandom, even though it has a lot of potential for ANGST factor. I already broke down how sad it is, but I just feel like it isn't said enough. Can I just say how cuddly he looks?! GAH, I feel like he would give the warmest hugs! The way he smiled in Unhappy Returns when he finds out his family doesn't need to live in fear anymore, just melts my heart! He's so protective over his family and friends! I wish I had a lot more to say about this guy because I just can't stop finding more things about him that go unappreciated. I had to literally edit this part so many times before moving on, he just has those little details you don't notice until you take a second and have that OH MY GOD moment

Engineer:

I was getting so hyped, when it was finally our resident southern nerd's time to shine. GOD I have so much to say about this man. It's been over 5 fucking years and I have never stopped simping for this man since 2019, I think I'm gonna go insane from how much I've been repressing, I go feral when he's around. Anyways enough stalling. I don't ever think a fictional character has ever made me swoon quite like Engineer, I really mean that. I have ask and pleaded to whatever god was listening to give me a man like Engie. To me, he is everything I ever wanted and more.

First, I wanna talk about what makes him attractive to me. His accent. His southern charm, UGH he's killing me with that smooth voice and chivalry! I swear this man could make me faint just from existing. The way he smiles is so warm, his insults are so corny I love them. That five o clock shadow GAHH! I'm getting butterflies all over again. I swear I love all three of the defense bois, but Dell Conagher has my heart wrapped around his gunslinger metal finger. All those personal reasons aside, I've always thought Dell Conagher was a very interesting character in the world of TF2. He might not have much screen time or goofy shenanigans like the other mercs, but that doesn't mean you can ignore him oh no no no. This man is important within the whole story of Mann Co and TF industries, his grandfather being the catalyst of the game's events and the comics going forward. The Conaghers are the SOLE REASON why Team Fortress 2's story exists. I find it strange that the fandom hasn't done much with this fact because you can do a lot with this idea. Engineer knows a lot of shit and would be the biggest threat to Helen, if not for the fact that his family has been helping her for years.

Like his backstory, he's not seen much in the battlefield, but he has a lot more going on behind the scenes. Imagine the possibilities. He is damn intelligent and he knows it. While Dell is very sweet and has a southern charm, this is a facade to hide his God complex and sadistic tendencies. If you think this man is just your boring gentle engineer, you've got a big storm coming. It's heavily implied that he sawed off his own arm so that he could use the gunslinger. This man works on projects with Medic and doesn't question the moral implications of putting a human brain in a pumpkin. Hell, he threatened his own employer, even if he was an old man (Granted, Blutarch dug up his grandpa's grave, so he probably should have gotten something a lot worse than just Dell telling him to fuck off). Engineer is more than the texan egghead sweetie pie, he is a mercenary for a reason and I would argue that he might be as insane, if not more than, the rest of the team. No sane man would willingly work with a bunch of war criminals if he wasn't also crazy. That's the thing I really like about him. I love playing as him in the game because it represents his character very well. He technically serves a supportive role to the team with his buildings, but he is a killer with a lot of tools in his disposal, With the right amount of training, he can absolutely dominate in the battlefield.

I feel like he's one of the people that underestimate and assume that he's an easy target, but he's a lot more than that. He has a lot of layers that makes me want to learn more about him and what he has to offer.

In Conclusion:

These guys are cool. Lmaooo okay I won't just end it there. I genuinely believe that they're not getting the recognition that they deserve, they've got a lot more going for them if you pay attention. Sure they might not always be the loudest or most prominant character in the story, but what they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality TEN FOLD. They don't have to be your favourite, but you should at least give them a chance. You never know, they may surprise you.

Okay so thats enough of that, I couldn't find a divider above this message, so you're getting this grainy ass gif. Honestly, I put way too much effort on this shitpost lmaooo, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out in a more concise manner. If you want to add more stuff about these three that I didn't mention, feel free to do so. Anyways thanks for reading

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 demoman #tf2 engineer #tf2 heavy #tf2 engie #tf2 demo #tf2 mikhail #tf2 defense #i spent way too long on this post than I should have bruh #enjoy the ramblings of a thirsty idiot #defense nation rise up

[39oa]

(nonsensical hrpf data exercise) degree centrality graphing & other archive insights

intro/prior work

hello 🙇‍♀️ i'm not sure this post will make any kind of sense at all, but i love analyzing ao3 data and i especially find it fascinating in the realm of sports/hrpf because of the amount of player- and team-related attributes that offer dimensionality to fandom analysis when examined in parallel with archive metrics. i've already kind of done hrpf overviews on two separate occasions over the past year or so, but my method of collection differed in each instance and also always gave me new things to chew on and potentially explore, such as expanding on the link between player talent and shippability and whether high-draft picks have more fic written for them on average.

i most recently examined player data based on aggregated relationship counts since 2022, but this was a limited snapshot meant to piece together recent ficdom trends (see top ships since 01/01/22) and not be representative of fandom overall. basically, things i want to visualize/talk about now are:

hockey is so widespread as a sports fandom because there are 32 teams in the league, which when compared to a community like f1 makes it difficult to succinctly summarize primary relationships for. there is no self-contained grid of 20 drivers that remains generally fixed within a season, where every move in/out of that "roster" is highly reported upon and instrumental to fandom makeup, but instead a more amorphous network of malleable rosters featuring high-variance cascading orders of character visibility; in short, the difference between the most and least popular driver in f1 fandom is not the same as the difference between sidney crosby and that one ahl lifer who was called up to your 4th line two months ago because your team is utterly decimated and gunning for bedard.

Still: because rosters are so malleable and trades happen with some amount of frequency, and because hockey is still an "insular" ecosystem in terms of geographic accessibility and junior-age development (for better or worse; mostly for worse, but that's neither here nor there), players intrinsically have a low degree of separation between one another, whether it be as teammates now or as friends growing up in the ohl, ntdp, etc. i therefore wanted to take that a step further and look at it through fic metrics especially: can we use a summary of ficdom's real, tangible output and visualize it through a similar network? (+ where and how does that network differ from player connections in practice?)

back to the impact of draft pick # and assessments of talent relative to popularity, i also wanted to look at the most "successful" ships in ficdom from this network and evaluate the different distributions and impacts of their respective attributes. are certain player positions more popular? which nationalities are the most commonly shipped?

etc. But let's just get into it.

process

getting any kind of information from a 60%-locked fandom on ao3 is a nightmare and introduces a myriad of data-collecting limitations, so i do feel it important to disclaim that what i present in this post functions more in the realm of Approximate Interpretation and Potential Correlation than any actual 100% objective representation of fandom metrics.

a perceived limitation i have with character tagging metrics on ao3 is that they don't exactly reflect shippability; that is, if q.hughes is tagged as a character in a n.hischier/j.hughes fic, it gets attributed to his character tag but doesn't actually say anything about how many Relationship Fics exist for him on a whole. my best solution for this was essentially uncovering most of a player's relationships and summing their individual fic counts to create an approximate # of "relationship fics" for each player. so any kind of shippability graph going forward will use that metric.

i used ao3's relationship tag search and filtered by canonical in the men's hockey rpf fandom and only pulled relationship* fics ("/" instead of "&") with a min. of 20 works. ao3's counts are... Not the most accurate, so my filtering may have fudged some things around or missed a few pairings on the cusp, which again is why all the visuals here are not meant to show Everything in the most exact manner but function more so as a "general overview" of ficdom. although i did doublecheck the ship counts so the numbers themselves are accurate as of time of collection.

(*i excluded wag ships, reader ships, threesomes to make my life easier although i know this affects numbers for certain players, hc/gm ships, and any otherwise non-NHL Player ship. for ex., this eliminated anna kasterova/evgeni malkin, tyler brown/tyler seguin, and kyle dubas/william nylander, just to name a few)

all ship data was collected march 16, 2023.

PART 1. SC87 ship networking

when i first began this exercise i tried graphing ships for all the first-overall picks from 2003-2022 because i wanted to get an overarching sense of their connections. however, doing so made me realize that sidney crosby was by and far the most-connected node in the graph (and basically all hrpf in general) with a degree of 11, and that he was centering one huge component to which only two ships failed to connect (op/kj and slaf/xhekaj). basically:

so then i was like, right! let me instead use sidney crosby as my sole starting node, map out all ships with 20+ works from him specifically, take the players he connects to and map out their corresponding ships (excluding sid) and just keep iterating until i basically reach a final child node. through this, i yielded 112 ships and 98 unique players, with my final connecting node coming 9 degrees of separation away through brady tkachuk ↔ tim stützle/quinn hughes. unfortunately i can't actually host this little code snippet anywhere lol but i also wrote an input to check the pathways between any two players which was kind of fun:

here is the actual network graph with colors from automatically generated clustering, which doesn't really mean much but i thought was one nice way of presenting it. the edge width refers to the sum of fics for each ship and the node size refers to the degree, or number of ships, for each player.

i then also joined my player set with a dataset that included draft year, drafted team, position, etc... and through that color-coded the graph with the team each player was originally drafted to (i always struggle between using current team and draft team because which one matters more is super contextual, but... using draft team made my life easier this time so i hope it's still interesting.) here i only included colors for 13 teams that had 3+ players each:

→ [full-size graph]

we can do a bit more analysis based on this specific sidcros network, like which players are the "most-shipped" or overviewing cross-team shipping tendencies:

but! of course, not ALL big hrpf ships lead back to sc87. using him as a central node essentially just helped me filter out excess "noise" when searching for relationship tags on ao3, because now i could exclude anyone connected to him at all (note: the relationship fics from my set equaled upward of 19,000 works, accounting for 60.4% of the entire men's hockey rpf archive) and hit other significant tags more efficiently.

through this method, i singled out a new set of 76 ships and 134 unique players (notice the significant decrease in overlap), which i then combined with my sid ships to create one massive set of Hockey Ships With Over 20+ Works On Ao3 that i could analyze holistically. no idea if this makes any sense but bear with me:

PART 2. general ship insights

i won't bore people with endlessly listing out ship rankings but here's the previous top chart with the new ships slotted in:

now for some overall player analysis!

first i wanted to look at how attributes like draft round, nationality, and position (F/D/G) are represented in the player set.

the nationality distribution is pretty close to all active nhl players this season, so there aren't major disparities there. however, the vast majority of players 1) were drafted in the first round and 2) are mostly forwards, with the forwards also seemingly reflecting the general philosophy of faster development/higher recent-round representation. we can take this overview a step further and actually examine the fic averages for each characteristic as a proxy for measuring shippability/ficdom popularity.

first, i scatterplotted all players by their draft pick and number of fic to (try and) show the heavy skew toward top picks (inspired by the gar draft pick value curve and other similar plots). this is... well, limited in many ways, and if i had an actually adequately large dataset i could specifically plot averages per distinct pick number and try to present something there, but the problem is that a lot of these later pick numbers only have like one player so there's way too much variance LOL.

but just for the sake of this exercise i excluded j.benn as an outlier and grouped fic averages by round (left below). again, noting the sample sizes, let's just say that first rounders on average seem to have the most fic written about them, even if it's not a particularly shocking insight. we can also try creating a histogram for "shippability" by draft year, binning here for every 2 years, to see which draft years appear to have had the most success (right below). note the peaks around 2005 and 2015, aka the sc87 and cm97 ~Generational Years~ 🤔

i've also been interested in figuring out which positions are commonly preferred—since centers are so often the faces of a franchise and are essentially the most sought-after position, and since goalies occupy a positionally static role/are less oriented toward contact (and the presumed homoeroticness thereof) in the way skaters are, is that reflected in the fic metrics as well? turns out: yes.

some ship analysis

learning more about player data in a vacuum is fun, but we also have all of this relationship data that lets us examine how different characteristics interact with each other, which is meaningful as well! for example, we know that forwards are heavily represented in the dataset, but is center4center the most common combination? or is there love for a franchise center and his beloved winger or the team's dependable 1d?

(fought for my life trying to figure out how to map this properly so please accept a horrible bar chart instead) as it turns out, the most common combination is centers/wingers, followed afterward by centers/centers. i don't know whether this really means much to me because i'd like to dissect the combos even further (is C/C more often 1C 2C or cross-team rivalry 1C shipping? are C/W usually linemates? etc.) but 🤷‍♀️ here's a graph.

i also distributed ships by their nationality combination, displaying to the surprise of no one a heavy preference (a whopping 66.4%!) for north american-exclusive shipping. i also thought stacking by "draft year" (= averaging the draft year between both players for each ship) offered some interesting insight into usa4usa shipping having slightly younger representation. also i do think usa/germany being singlehandedly driven up this chart by one family is remarkable and hilarious LOL.

also in the realm of draft year analysis, i wanted to look at draft year differences and whether fandom preferences seem to lie by way of same-age-ish pairings and In-Class Bicycling so to speak. graphing ships by these differences spanned a range of 20 years, with the oldest "age" (draft) difference being 20 years between zdeno chara and charlie mcavoy. overall, of 175 ships with a drafted player, 60.5% were drafted within 2 years of each other (18.2% in the same draft), and only 5% had a draft difference of 10 or more years.

then, of those 32 ships drafted within the same year, i distributed their counts by year to see which draft classes featured the biggest in-class clusters, leading us again to the Famed Class of 2015:

closing thoughts

i'll stop here :saluting_face: something else i had on the agenda that i don't really know how to adequately explore with this dataset is basically stanley cup champion stuff, e.g. looking at players and ships and fic counts from winning teams and how/whether a sort of "winning bias" has been trending down as of late (see the relative success of ships from teams like phi/ana compared to tbl/stl)—temporal data is so particular and difficult to wrangle with ao3 though so i'll have to let this one percolate a little bit.

finally, another thing (!) that i love examining is captaincy and how it often helps inform shippability; C/A/guyswithletters shipping obviously generously overlaps with being drafted early, high-impact players, some positional stuff like Young Star Center having the role foisted onto him, etc. and many of these aspects are immediately identifiable in top ships like 8771, 1634, 1386... just to name a few obvious ones. unfortch i don't really have the time or space to look at that here but it's something i'm still interested in maybe expanding on, and i also never ended up collecting actual skater *performance* data which would be super fun to eventually get to, e.g. mapping ficdom output to not just background identifiers like draft year/pick but also 1) actual tangible evaluations of player goals/points/(salary?!?)/etc. and 2) some dimension of draft outperformance/underperformance, which is pertinent for scenarios like late-round picks who have defied career expectations (see outlier jbenn having a shit ton of lifetime fic) AND early-round picks whose trajectories have not panned out as expected for whatever reason; often the ~tragic~ frustration of being a bust actually invites more narrative focus and scrutiny, but at the same time ficdom trends have pointed themselves to being attracted to many historic, talented, generational, and so on players, who more often than not are also winners, which potentially posits a need for some sustained line of access/visibility to high-expectation players significantly before they're regarded as "busts" in order to organically grow and generate initial interest that can survive the renewed reality of their situation. but who knows

again, i don't know whether any of this even makes sense or is interesting to literally anyone at all, but i personally enjoyed just dicking around graphing shit and getting to join a ton of tables together for absolutely no reason lol. that's all!

#(extremely long post warning) #*m #stats #>guy who needs to reflect

[suemooon]

Origins of the Oncest ship: the history

Travelling in The Once-ler's fandom history | by suemooon

Welcome Oncelings!

to one of my most serious researchers I have ever done before, now, here’s a little explanation:

I wanted to make a fandom analysis using old posts, the way back machine, and other stuff to try to compare the once-ler fandom in its golden age and now, trying to suppose how it was and trying to see what happened there, but it would be later. Because I got a really interesting capture that I got while I was checking the Oncest tag in the wayback machine, and I got this:

IT QUICKLY GOT MY ATTENTION

Someone saying that they were the first ones to show the Oncest ship term.

I wanted to see if it was real and not a joke or something like that, so I copied the url of the tumblr and desired that the blog is still up, and I got it!!!

I explored their tumblr for a little while, and I noticed another thing, there’s a bunch of photos of the once-ler BEFORE the movie of the Lorax came out, this of course means that ye, there was some people who found the once-ler attractive and begun to share his pictures in tumblr (without any tag, if it wasn’t the help of this blog and some other ones, I probably couldn’t got them).

This makes a lot more sense than saying that the once-ler fandom was born after the came out of the movie I can say.

Those pictures belongs to all the Lorax trailers, in which ONLY appears the gray once-ler, not greedler. So we can say that the people who find him attractive in the beginning, the greedler was like a kind of “plot twist”

But the topic of the whole fandom will be for my another analysis, now let’s try to focus on Oncest.

2. Possible date of apparition

In my research, it seems that Oncest was born between 19th March, 2012, but where did I took this supposition?

Checking the dates between their first Oncest mentions (and also checking other old inactive once-ler’s blogs), there’s some important dates to make a highlight.

link to post: https://theambernerd.tumblr.com/post/19771248254/thank-you-all-you-lovely-people-for-following-me

In this screenshot, someone responds that this pairing has a name, this is from March 22, 2012, so the ship already existed and had a name too, so let’s check out the other blogs and their archives.

temporarilycheating

squidmama

Suddenly we see Oncest fanart.

The dates are between 19th and later, is this the origin of the ship?

Of course this is just a supposition, I had to see it at that time to prove it, but it’s not the case. All I can do is make suppositions.

You can take it as something true or fake, that’s your opinion.

3. Who was the original person who brought up with the Oncest idea?

This one was one of the most complicated things that you can try to research, we are talking about something that is 11 years old, so some pretty amount of information got lost with the time.

In words of temporarilycheating.

IT’S CALLED ONCEST BECAUSE I SAID SO! Lol but really…actually, I’m kinda the one who came up with the name in the first place… The pairing existed, but I think it was originally called twincest or something… But anyhow, in month one of the fandom, back when Sirsteeve made some of the first oncest fanart the fandom went CRAZY over the idea…and so did i. So I was sitting in my living room having a feels moment over this new OTP…but since the fandom didn’t really have a name for it, it made me think… It came to my mind that the fandom was somewhat dividing the once-ler into two seperate people of the same relation-oncie and greed-ler. To me, it sounded like incest. So I played around with that idea a bit in my head. And after saying incest repeatedly in my head I noticed the ‘ce’ in the word. I came to the conclusion to 'once’ in addition to the 'est’. thus 'oncest’. I had a fangasm and posted my idea to tumblr ASAP. Apparantly, it caught on cuz it’s still called oncest today and is widely known C: That has to be one of my greatest achievements in this fandom.

link to post: https://temporarilycheating.tumblr.com/post/25857778616/why-is-it-called-oncest

There's a small mention to someone named "Sirsteeve" who explains that were one of the firsts ones to draw Oncest.

I searched and their oldest Oncest post I found is this one.

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: sirsteeve ( hour - 5:22 PM )

So we have in our eyes one of the first Oncest post ever.

Is that the original Oncest post? I don’t know, it only says that is ONE of the first persons in the fandom who brought up the idea. Is it made by one person or a group of people? I don’t know.

Other very first posts about Oncest:

Date: March 19th, 2012 by: cartoonjunkie ( hour - 10:39 PM, 5 hours later after sirsteeve )

Date: March 20th, 2012 by: owlapin

Date: March 21st, 2012 by: rutella

4. Who gave the name of "Oncest"?

GUYS!!!! I KNOW WHAT TO CALL THE PAIRING!!!!! Y'know, once-ler/green suit once-ler!???? IT SHOULD BE CALLED ONCEST!!!! GET IT!? Its like incest, but with himself! :D WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK!? If you like the idea, reblog this to spread the word! :D

Date: March 20th, 2012

It seems it’s true, temporarilycheating was the one who created the Oncest term, we should give her more recognition for it!

link to post: https://www.tumblr.com/temporarilycheating/19650360910/guys

Conclusion

Second part? who knows. But the only thing I can say is… this one was one of my most complicated things to find, but now I got some important information. I'm here for you to share my knowledge!

I must say, I’m very proud of me for this, you guys have no idea how excited I got when I found these photos and data, maybe is not too much but I think they’re really important yet; this information forms part of our fandom history, and I think we should keep that information up and don’t lose it.

As a reminder too, as I already said once…

Oncest is like an icon for our dear Once-ler Fandom, whether we like it or not.

We can’t deny its existence, we can’t blame it, we can’t try to delete it, it always will exist as always the fandom will exist and some people like it.

And… My opinion about Oncest?

Well, I don’t hate it, I don’t love it thou, but I can like some posts about it, I can appreciate art from this ship, and it’s idea too.

Any reblog, like, and comment it's appreciated!

#oncest #selfcest #onceler #once ler #the once ler #onceler fandom #the onceler fandom #the lorax fandom #lorax fandom #how bad can i be #how bad could i possibly be? #thelorax #the lorax #oncelings #shipcest #the lorax 2012 #lorax 2012 #lorax 2023 #ship #research #lorax analysis #suemooon research

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Yona

She’s the fiancé of prince Sidon, (arranged marriage) and since Sidon is almost always shipped with link, people went feral the second they saw her. She’s genuinely very kind and cares about her people and wants Sidon to be happy! She is NOT jealous, she wants him to hang out with his Best Friend. I have seen firsthand in real-time, people being SO misogynistic and cruel, and saying she’s ugly. She’s good in a crisis, very friendly, has a great design, and she doesn’t deserve the hate in the slightest!

I'M DESPERATELY TRYING TO FIND CUTE ART OF HER AND SIDON AND QUITE LITERALLY EVERYTHING REGARDING HER IS JUST STRAIGHT UP BLATANT HATE AND DENOUNCING HER AS SOME LAST MINUTE ADDITION TO THE STORY AS ORCHESTRATED BY JOHN NINTENDO TO STOP SIDLINK FROM BEING CANON LIKE THIS IS THE THE JOHNLOCK CONSPIRACY OR SOME MESS... i just want to see cute art of a green shark woman with a lovely smile :((((

so the breath of the wild fandom is pretty well known for REALLY liking prince sidon aka that one really tall fish guy. and they're also really well known for shipping him with link because every fandom needs a gay ship right. so then the sequel (totk) comes around and it's revealed that sidon has a fiance now and it's not link it's some zora girl from another domain. the game hasn't even been out for a month but i've seen people act so vile towards her like yona get behind me!!!!

Zelda

She spent 100 years in a metaphysical wrestling match with an ancient and primal evil after seeing it destroy almost everyone and everything she held dear in the hopes of saving the few that remained and Link's main goal after HIYAHing his way out of a amnesia-inducing coma was to come in and tag team said evil in order to save her and like 90% of the memories he can regain focus on their relationship with each other and its gradual improvement up to the point where Link fucking dies protecting her and it's the push she needs to awaken the power to push back the blight and PEOPLE ARE STILL OUT THERE IN THEIR POST-CANON FANWORKS TRYING TO TELL ME THAT LINK FUCKS OFF AND LEAVES HER ALONE TO GO SMOOCH THE HOT FISH PRINCE BECAUSE ZELDA WAS BEING TOO OVERBEARING OR WHATEVER AND HE COULDN'T DEAL WITH THE EXPECTATION??? LIKE ZELDA'S WHOLE FUCKING ARC WASNT ALSO ABOUT HER STRUGGLING WITH EXPECTATION AND FAILING TO LIVE UP TO IT AND YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE THIS WUALITY THEY BOTH OSTENSIBLY HAVE IN COMMON WOULD DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN THEM?? WHERE'S ZELDA YOU COWARDS?? I DON'T EVEN CARE IF YOU DON'T WANT HER AND LINK TO BE TOGETHER, JUST STOP DIMINISHING THE GRAVITY OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND MAKING ZELDA SUCK FOR NO REASON. SHE'S A BIG NERD! SHE GETS TOO IN HER OWN HEAD! SHE'D DO ANYTHING TO HELP THE PEOPLE SHE CARES ABOUT! SHE UNASHAMEDLY AND EXCITEDLY TRIED TO FEED HER PERSONAL KNIGHT A LIVE FROG IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE! HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE HER 

Im specifically saying botw Zelda here because oh my gOSH this poor girl can get made out to be like a horrible bitch when people. want link to get that shark dick. on average she doesnt get thattttt badly treated compared to some others but goddamn.

title character but people hate her because they want link to get w sidon. so she gets fridged or entirely forgotten even though shes literally his canonical soulmate and they have been reincarnated together hundreds of times (w ganon but whether u make em poly or make him the long suffering third wheel is up to you). people will be like oh but zelda was mean to him that one time (??). be serious w me rn. she just got removed from fandom entirely and if that isnt the epitome of victim of yaoi idk what is.

#poll #round 1 #princess yona #totk yona #princess zelda #botw zelda #totk zelda #botw tears of the kingdom #botw #totk #legend of zelda

[sotwk]

Writers Truth or Dare Ask Game - SotWK Answers

Link to game is HERE,

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

I was in 4th grade and my friends and I really wanted to date the Backstreet Boys. We discovered fanfiction was the most fun way to do it. We would write our lil’ self-insert love stories in notebooks that we would pass around and share. 

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

Pumped Up Pop. I’m a 90s kid and Pop runs deep in me. 

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

I don’t think anything can be considered weird for a writer doing research anymore. But one thing I remember working extra hard on was researching how to pilot a jet for a Marvel action fic. That’s why I admire and commiserate with @scyllas-revenge for her helicopter piloting scene in BLCI. 

🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both? 

Mix of both. Reader Inserts to make others happy, OC fics to make myself happy. 

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

I would write an entire essay explaining this one, but in the SotWK AU, Elvenking Thranduil and Elvenqueen Maereth are metaphorical avatars for the Valar couple Oromë and Vána, and were destined to be such (as they were destined for each other). The qualities they each possess which make them similar to these Valar--Thranduil's strength and skill as a protector/warrior and Maereth's gifts for nurturing and fertility--are what safeguard and sustain Eryn Galen for thousands of years, holding their people fast even against Sauron.

🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis 

@talesfuzzy is constantly on my notifs since she likes so many of my posts on a daily basis. She also reblogs some of the best Tolkien content, which I often put into my own queue. We don't really talk, but she's like that friendly person you see on your daily commute whose name you might not know but you smile and nod to each other till they've become a comfortingly reliable part of daily life.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

I would LOVE a thrilling action fic where Thranduil and all five Thranduilion Princes march into battle at the same time and completely crush the enemy because there is possibly no greater or more fearsome fighting team left in Middle-earth. However, such a plot would violate my own AU’s headcanon, because in Thranduil’s family, there is a hard rule that the Thranduilions can never all be fighting in the same battle at once; Thranduil simply refuses to risk his family that way. 

I would hire/nominate/beg @ass-deep-in-demons to write it. If you’ve read her fic, “Under Our Darkening Skies”, you’ll know she’s the top pick for incredible and cinematic battle scenes. 

🍅 ⇢ give yourself some constructive criticism on your own writing

I find myself reusing a lot of the same lines and expressions, especially when describing character emotions and actions. Sometimes I feel my writing is pedestrian and boring, especially compared to many other writers in the Tolkien fandom who have such eloquent, sophisticated styles and brilliant, creative word choices. I'm quite soppy and sentimental too, but that's just my thing. 

🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them

Sadly, I have not had a pet since my early 20s. I had plenty of them growing up, though, including my beloved yellow Lab. Once my kids are old enough to share in pet care duties, we are definitely getting a dog. 

🧸 ⇢ what's the fastest way to become your mutual?

Talk to me about my Thranduilion Princes, pretty please! (There are many easy ways to be Moots with me, but this is a guarantee and the fastest way!)

🐝 ⇢ tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them

I am lucky and grateful to have a solid band of supporters, but I want to grab this chance to send a special shout out to @achromaticerebus. She has been a big supporter of my Thranduilion Princes since she discovered them early on, she comments on ALL my Thranduil/Thranduilion stories, she gushes about them to me and with me, and her enthusiasm just keeps me motivated. She is not herself a writer, and it's so rare to find a friend so willing to just be a reader and supporter, when there's really no way to “pay back” her kindness.

🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Point out even just one specific detail or line of dialogue and tell me how it made you feel, your thoughts about it, or even ask a follow up question! I am most impressed when a Reader points out an Easter egg or interesting tidbit/headcanon/lore I included. I am over the moon when their comments show they are familiar with my other fics or my SotWK AU as a whole… it means they've really invested in my stuff.

🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises?

I enjoy being wholly surprised (good surprises, of course), but I don't like being told “a surprise is coming” and having to then think about it or stress out until its arrival. 

📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app? 

A work-related reminder, which is boring. So I'm gonna answer this question by sharing something I wrote in my “Scratch Dump” document that I use for my headcanon drafting: Inscribed on the blade of the sword was Mirion’s personal oath to his people, written in Silvan: “Until my last breath, I will serve.”

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 

It’s probably because I’m fairly new to it (and because I enjoy the song/video), but the concept of internet friends Rickrolling each other as a prank seems so funny and wholesome to me.  

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

I made a separate post answering this HERE.

Thank you to all my awesome friends who jumped in to send me these Asks! This was fun and made me feel good about myself as a writer. Love you guys! 

@lady-of-imladris @erathene @unethicallypleistocene @fishing4stars @Hobbitwrangler @quillofspirit @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @niennawept @malzenn @melpomaenofimladris and that one Anon friend!

#sotwk answers #ask game #get to know me #writer asks #Writers Truth or Dare Ask Game #i have the best mutuals #writer stuff

[pholiabanna]

Sure, the byler tag having 33(6?)k followers is amazing, specially compared to the milkyway tag. But the wiews on TikTok are what's really CRAZY to me and I feel like we don't talk about it enough.

Some time ago I saw one account post the most followed ships on TikTok, and byler was like 3rd overall. That's insane actually, being third on the most used platform in the whole world. And also, it is proof that byler is also well liked even outside of fandom spaces. Why? Because #byler TikTok wiews astronomically ascended between may-september 2022. During the months the stranger things hype was going on, the months where everyone, even general audience, talked about it, posted about it and got videos about in in their fyp. During that period, the most out of those people spent more time on the byler tag than on any other ship tag. Even on the Melvin tag. Melvins claim that the general audience loves malooban, but nowadays you measure what the general audience likes precisely by how it does on TikTok (the most popular shows of the last few years, like Squid Game, Euphoria, Wednesday, TLOA... all of them blew up there). And byler blew up on TikTok, even among the ga. More than Melvin. Let that sink in.

#byler #byler tumblr

[the--highlanders]

can I just say thank you for writing ace twojamie fic!! I'm aroace and I genuinely thought this ship would be too obscure for that to exist but I'm so thankful I was wrong and it was amazing fic btw -you're a great writer!!

oh man thank you!! I know I say this every time someone says something remotely nice about unsorted but I really am always taken aback by how well it was received and how many people seem to like it <3

but I totally get what you mean about aro/ace fic being hard to find in fandom. like, I don't think I've ever had a major ship where I haven't read them as ace in some way, and yet even in far bigger fandoms I've struggled to find fic where the characters are ace. (to the point that I have opened fics in a haze of excitement only to realise I missed the red flags in the tags and it's actually just an aphobic joke :///) & I imagine the romance-heavy focus of fandom makes looking for aro fic even worse.

two and jamie have just always seemed to me like a ship that is. not very allo in any respect, tho. I definitely remember seeing a post interpreting them as queerplatonic soon after I first watched two's era (would link it, but this was like 2015 and I have no idea where I saw it or if it's even still kicking around). at the time I was kinda on the fence about shipping them and I was like, yeah, that makes total sense to me actually. even tho I obviously eventually shifted into reading them as romantic personally, I would still happily vibe with interpreting them as queerplatonic, bc the most important thing with them as characters is that they're together in a partnership, whatever form that takes. & over the last couple of years I've also really started to toy with two not exactly experiencing romantic attraction like humans do (which I'll admit is kinda influenced by my own inability to distinguish/define romantic attraction), so maybe re-injecting some arospec vibes? idk. & I've been hcing them as ace for so long that I don't even really have a reason or justification for it, that's just. how they are, in my head.

despite the size of the fandom and the ship tho I do know there's a handful of people who DO read them as ace. which probably says something about classic who fandom demographics gjkd. but also is such a refreshing vibe for me compared to other fandoms I've been in or read for. peace & love on planet earth etc etc

#replies #randomhumanbeing2311

[throughtrialbyfire]

20 Questions for Writers

thank you so much to @wispstalk and @dirty-bosmer for tagging me!! <3

gonna tag @mareenavee @changelingsandothernonsense @thequeenofthewinter @skyrim-forever @trickstarbrave @oblivions-dawn @orfeoarte @gilgamish @totally-not-deacon @archangelsunited !! no pressure as always, and if i havent tagged you and you wanna do this, go ahead and say that i did, i'm tagging you in my mind <33

answering under the read more!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

five atm! but i'm planning on splitting my one-shot-as-chapters fic into individual fics. i think i'll have around 11, then, if i don't take out some.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

99,173

3. What fandoms do you write for?

TES and CoD Zombies! though i don't write a lot for CoD Zombies, just when i get in a certain mood for it here and there. old special interest wont grant me a moments peace lmao

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

i only have five uploaded, but i'll put them here!

1. An Inner Sanctity - 41 2. If By Sun and Moon I Swore - 38 3. Cycle of the Serpent - 23 4. The Mark You Left - 15 5. Portraits Under Forgotten Suns - 2 (this is the one i'm gonna split up into their own fics :3)

5. Do you respond to comments?

yes!! i even carry on convos in the comments sometimes for the hell of it, i love interacting with ppl <33333333

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

i think the one-shot for the prompts "forgotten/devotion" for tesfest '23 about the shipwreck of the brinehammer, since the main character dies lmao

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

the one for the prompt "in bloom" from tesfest '23!! it was just a little fluff fic for my ocs athenath and ja'dato <3

8. Do you get hate on fics?

luckily no, the spaces i've found myself in these days are really positive :3 especially compared to when i wrote on FF.net in like 2009

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

none of it is published, but i do sometimes! it's a good way to flex my muscles (haha) in blending thought and action, balancing descriptors (how vivid is Too Much), and seeing how certain characters interact with each other in a vulnerable state. maybe i'll post some someday, idk. mostly i just do it for funsies, so idk what kind you'd classify any of mine.

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

i havent in many years, so no, but that could chance if the mood strikes me

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

nope, but when i was writing for a different fandom in high school, my writing for a particular character wound up on ppls RP accounts as their versions backstory, as well.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no, but if anyone wants to translate my fics, feel free!! just give me a heads-up!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

yep, on my old ao3, a good friend and i turned an RP into a fic! i enjoyed it immensely bc we wrote really well together!

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

idk, i just groove where the dynamics take me <3

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

i hate to say it, but An Inner Sanctity needs a major overhaul that i don't have the energy for right now. when i started writing that fic, i didn't have a solid grasp on athenath's personality. now that i do, i'm gonna need to rewrite all the chapters i've had ready for it, and pivot the direction of the fic to get it where i wanted it to wind up eventually. i really do want to finish it, though.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i get a lot of compliments on my imagery/descriptions/atmosphere! i love describing shit, so i'm glad ppl enjoy reading those bits of my work <3 oh!! and character/narrative details. i wrote a ~180k word fic in my senior year of high school solely off my mental notes for it, and it still wasnt finished when i dropped it a year or so later due to Circumstances

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

biting off WAAAAAAAY more than i can chew!! i have so, so many things planned for CotS and who knows if those things will get picked up on by folks or even work later down the line. GAHH

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

if you can realistically do it, go for it. if i could fluently speak all the languages i've tried to teach myself, i'd probably include them in fics where they would fit!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

naruto, i was writing naruto fics on a defunct dress-up site when i was a kid AHAH.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Cycle of the Serpent. theres seldom a time i'm not thinking about those elves. yes, i will admit with my whole chest that i'm a tad desperate for people to read it and interact with it, but i think if i could explain everything (without spoiling it obviously) i have planned for this fic and just how much is going on in the background of the details i throw in, the reasons certain characters behave the way they do, and the amount of time i've spent working on it (the doc for it is at roughly ~96k and we're not even at the Real beginning of the solitude arc) and the sheer amount of hours i've spent making sure details line up, you'd understand why i'm losing all my sanity daniel-amnesia-the-dark-descent style over this story. i started writing it as a for fun "no one's ever gonna see this" exercise that also helped me greatly in recovering from long covid brainfog, and i think even if one day i look back and think of it as "not the best thing i've ever written", it'll still be one of the most passion-driven things i've ever written, and i'm happy about that. <3

woof, what a ramble. if you made it to the end of this, thank you, and i hope you're having a good day!!

#bishop.txt #tag games

[sessakag]

Fanfic Game!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

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

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

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

8. Do you get hate on fics?

9. Do you wrote smut?

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

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

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

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

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

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

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

My answers!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

18

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,595,711

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

(1,132 Kudos) Secrets of the Hidden Leaf, (801 Kudos) Monster, (610 Kudos) NaruHina Month Collection 2022, (538 Kudos) Prey, and (292 Kudos) Butterfly 💕

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

Yes I do 💕There's a lot of reasons, but the two most important are 1) They keep me writing and make me really happy and I can't not reply. I love connecting with others through my stories, and that's really my biggest draw to posting publicly, the human connection and fun conversations that spawn from engaging💕2) very few people, compared to how many actually read your fic, leave comments, which can be really disappointing and discouraging for a writer, even for me and I've been writing for years. So for the people that do take the time out to say something, I have to let them know how much I appreciate them making that effort 💖

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think it's a tie between A Night of Firsts and Flipping the Script? Maybe Eternal should be in here too? Fuck Around And Find Out-Literally ends pretty angsty too🤔 I've written a lot of stories, and it's hard to pick which one 😅

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

This is another hard one to pick, I have so many that end happy (though technically they all have a happy ending) ummm, another tie I think? Surprise! and Spellbound, ummm, maybe A Day In The Life of the Uzumaki Family too.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yep, not a lot thankfully, but it pops up.

9. Do you write smut?

I rarely write anything but smut 🤭I'm a proud smut writer!

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

No, never.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes, twice.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes. Butterfly translated into Português brasileiro by the amazing kilandra327! You can find it here Borboleta 🦋

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

Yep!

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

Naruto/Hinata! NaruHina forever!💕

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

None! I will finish them all, they are all my babies. Idc how long it takes! Leave a laptop by my grave and watch me finish em'! 😤

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

I'm fine with it, especially if it helps immersion!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Inuyasha 🥰

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Ummmmmmm, I literally can't make a choice, lol. They are all my favorite in different ways. Top 5 though? Prey, Monster, Butterfly, A Cure For Love and Ravenous.

Those are all my answers! Thanks for the ask!

Gonna tag some folks @mrs-messy @bunny-hoodlum @dayseternal-blog @wickermayne @powerful-niya

#ask #answer #fanfic game

[popsicle86]

Went on AO3 for some fic to read at bedtime. Had a browse through the blakbonnet/gentlebeard tag. Now generally I prefer my fics with an E rating so that's what I was searching through. There are 282 pages of e rated fic for just that main ship of Our Flag Means Death on AO3, which seemed pretty impressive for a show that's only been going for 2 years. Out of curiosity I thought I'd compare it to Ineffable Husbands, seeing as it was that ship that pulled me into OFMD. Again, just E ratings. That one has 580 pages of E rated stuff, some of it dating back as far as 2005.

So basically in 2 years the OFMD fandom is written 50% as much e rated fic (for the main ship) as a fandom that's 20 odd years old. Mate you guys are feral and I LOVE it. Only wandered into this fandom like 5 days before the season finale and binged watched it all in like a day so I'm completely new here. And I know there's some division amongst long standing fans at the moment. But from a newbies perspective you guys are impressive!!!

#our flag means death #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #ineffable husbands #yes I am autistic and enjoy a good statistic #thank you very much for asking #fucking love finding more and more queer corners of the internet #especially now I'm closer to 40

[waytooinvested]

fanfic writer questions

Thanks for the tag @sssammich! I haven't done one of these in years, I'm excited :D

1- How many works do you have on AO3?

Only 11, but a couple are long ones (100,000+ words)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

406,700 and counting - one of those is a WIP that will have a lot more to add so I MAY make it to 500,000 in the coming months, if I write another couple of short ones on top.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now I'm just writing for Supergirl (and supercorp specifically). In the past I wrote a lot for Call the Midwife (Patsy x Delia, my beloveds), and I have written one small one for Strange the Dreamer, just because I had an idea that wouldn't leave me alone until I got it out.

I tend to be a bit all or nothing with fandom, so I am usually only in one at a time.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Hands I Used to Touch (Patsy/Delia - Call the Midwife) by a landslide. It also (briefly) had the most comments of any fic in the fandom which was very cool (it was the one I was writing for longest during the peak engagement era for the pairing, but still it is my crowning achievement as a fic writer haha)

After that Vengeance, Victory and Undying Love (Supercorp), Little Things Mean A Lot tied with A Paper Bag of Pick n Mix (both Patsy/Delia), and Storybooks and Siren Suits (also Patsy & Delia, but as children so not a romantic pairing)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Definitely! I try to respond to every comment, because they mean so much to get and I want the people taking the time to write them to know they are extremely appreciated. Also I have made some wonderful friends that way!

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

I am allergic to angsty endings! Angsty beginnings? Almost inevitable. Angsty middles, sure. Angsty ENDINGS? Never. So angstiest: maybe "The Static of Distance" from my Paper Bag of Pick n Mix, because they are still half a world away from each other during a threat of nuclear war. But even so it's only an angsty ending if you squint really hard.

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

They all have pretty unambiguously happy endings honestly, I'm not sure I could pick between them!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I've ever had hate as such. Some maybe less than whole heartedly positive responses, though most of that was when I was teasing an apparently dark character arc before a twist and making people worried about what I was up to. But see above re: all of my fics having absolutely unambiguously happy endings, so we got there eventually.

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

Not so far - I think the closest I have come was my wife and I writing a silly crack fic together that involved smut, but it was not at all meant to be actually sexy and we never posted it anywhere, sooo...

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

Not typically, but there was A Misplaced Midwife, in which Barbara from Call the Midwife (a fairly sheltered young 1960s midwife played by Charlotte Ritchie) traded places with Hannah from Siblings (a modern day selfish, chaotic disaster human also played by Charlotte Ritchie) and how they got along in each other's lives. It was silly and crack-y but a lot of fun to write.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, thankfully!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Alas, no

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

The aforementioned crack fic with @cynicalrainbows but that was just for our own entertainment. She also contributed several lines/ideas to A Misplaced Midwife. I don't think I have apart from that.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

I only really have two that I've been invested enough to fic about it, and while my current all consuming obsession is Supercorp, I have only been in it for a couple of months compared to the years long love affair with Patsy/Delia that also led to me meeting my wife and many good friends. So for now, Patsy/Delia still reign supreme. We'll see if that is still the case in a few more months!

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

I try to always finish my fics, but I do have one unfinished wip on my conscience, and that's Storybooks and Siren Suits. I still open it and do battle with progress now and again just in the hopes that I will manage to drag it across the finish line and put it to bed once and for all, but so far nothing doing. It remains stuck on the same chapter it has been stuck on since 2021.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh no don't make me pay myself compliments... Angst with happy endings? That is not really so much a writing strength as just a description of the type of story I write, but shh. I guess I got a lot of compliments on characterization back in my Call the Midwife days. Whether that follows through to Supercorp remains to be seen. I like how I'm writing them, at least!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

My dialogue transitions tend to be clunky, at least so I'm finding lately. Also I am a total feast or famine writer, so any kind of sensible process or schedule discipline is completely non existent.

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

I avoid it for the most part because I would certainly make a mess of it, though I have one or two very very brief bits here and there. I think the longest piece was a character recalling their own long distant school french, which contained deliberate mistakes the character was making that acted as excellent cover for the genuine mistakes I no doubt also made.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'm trying to recall if I ever wrote anything as a young teenager for Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Willow/Tara, naturally), but I don't think I did, and if so it definitely stayed as tucked away in an old notebook never to see the light of day. The first proper/definite one was Call the Midwife, just after they decided it would be a good idea to hit Delia with a car and give her amnesia right at the moment she and Patsy were about to move in together.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Well right now it's Forgotten Not Forgiven for sure, because that's where my obsession is currently living.

Of all time though? Probably still The Hands I Used to Touch, because I poured everything into it at the time and it played such a big part in me finding my feet in the fandom world. No pressure to do this at all of course but tagging @cynicalrainbows @fabulousglitch, @shut-up-heather-d and @fazedlight as people I know write fic and may enjoy this if you haven't done it already. Anyone else interested feel free to claim me as your tagger, I would love to see your responses!

#writer questions game

[babybubastis]

Ok. We need to talk about this.

⚠️ (Spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever below!)⚠️

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It’s incredibly disheartening (and somewhat alarming) that there seems to be no room in fandom for any kind of nuance. I’m going to talk specifically about the Black Panther fandom and what I’m seeing/experiencing occur between Shuri x Namor shippers and some other users in the fandom. There are users on here who are, unprovoked, actively tagging and seeking out and harassing other fans for shipping the pairing. Real quick, a little personal context: for those of you who don’t know, I’m black. It has been especially demoralizing to see this type of activity occurring between black women in the fandom. I’ve seen the blackness of some fans who ship Shuri x Namor be called into question. I’ve seen fans be called clowns, and anti-black, and sick, and all manner of things. And I guess my question is: Why?

Why, as a black woman in fandom, am I not allowed to love a particular black female character, and also ship her with another character without facing harassment? Those two concepts — 1) caring for Shuri as a character and 2) wanting to see her courted and desired by the attractive (admittedly toxic) male antagonist — don’t have to be mutually exclusive. IT CAN BE BOTH. And that, contrary to some people’s beliefs, does not make me a bad person.

Wakanda Forever is a complex and beautiful masterpiece, teeming with commentary about colonialism, anti-blackness, white supremacy, grief, anger, vengeance, religion, mother-child relationships, and so much more. Why is it impossible for me, as a complex person who has complex interests, to want to talk about those more serious topics AND gush about Shuri’s interactions with the charismatic antagonist who treats her as an equal? There is clear romantic subtext in Namor’s early interactions with Shuri. The entire sequence where Shuri is in Talokan reeks of Hades/Persephone, as well as other classic romantic tropes and gestures:

Namor allowing Shuri to be brought to his hidden underwater civilization,

Him commissioning a beautifully ornate custom dress for her to wear,

Him telling her about his history and giving her his dead mother’s bracelet,

Him happily showing her around his hidden kingdom

It was all very calculated on his part, I’m sure, in an attempt to win her over to his side. But there was also obvious chemistry between he and Shuri. Hell, Riri even spells it out for us, comparing the entire gesture of giving her the custom dress to Beauty and the Beast! So it is not nearly as far-fetched as some people want to claim to ship these two, to be intrigued by their dynamic. And it is entirely possible to be just as intrigued by that as it is to be moved by the bigger, deeper, more serious concepts explored in the movie. Again, those things aren’t — and shouldn’t— be mutually exclusive. To claim otherwise is doing a disservice to the entire film as a whole, and it’s doing a disservice to Shuri as a character. She is a grown woman, complex and broken and messy. This entire movie, while being a gorgeous and poignant tribute to Chadwick Boseman, was also very much Shuri’s story. Letitia herself said in a recent interview (that she did with Tenoch Huerta) that she loved this film because the audience is really getting to see Shuri explore her womanhood and maturity.

Shuri is no longer the precocious, quippy 18-year-old that we saw in the first Black Panther. Her character arc is extremely dark in this film. She loses, again and again. We see her express rage. We see her be stubborn, we see her grieve, we see her break, we see her hopeful, we see her stepping out of her comfort zone to save Riri and to save her people. We see her succumb to vengeance and then turn around and choose mercy. There is a wealth of complexity there just bubbling under the surface, and, like the audience, Namor is clearly drawn to her. He sees something in her that mirrors something in him. It is no coincidence that they both see their mothers in that final fight scene before Shuri commands him to yield. And it is no coincidence that, when Shuri’s mind is flitting through the recent sequence of events that led up to that final battle, she sees her mother’s drowning reversed, and right after that she remembers Namor smiling as he told her about his history and his people. She remembers that, underneath the terrible things he has done, he is a human being who does everything he does for the love of his people. I have no doubt that Namor was being calculating and manipulative in regards to Shuri. He saw the chance for an alliance with her and wanted to make it work. But he also clearly connected with her on a personal level. If that weren’t true, he would have either killed her or imprisoned her the second she rejected his proposal in that cave to join him in destroying the surface world. Instead, when Shuri stated that they needed to find a peaceful way to resolve their issues, he sat and was prepared to listen (until they were interrupted by Namora alerting him to Ramonda’s summons).

It’s so clear that Namor was drawn to not only Shuri’s intelligence and strength and wit and compassion, but also to her beauty and charm and passion. Namor is the first person we see treat Shuri as a true equal — as a fully-capable, formidable counterpart. Is it so wrong to be intrigued by that? To want to see Shuri come into her own in every way and to also want to see her desired as a potential love interest? Are black women not allowed to be intelligent and complicated and powerful and desirable?

I could go on and on about Shuri and Namor’s interactions. But I will say this: were these any two other characters in any other movie, there would be no debate. The fandom at large would be salivating over the subtext and symbolism and tension and chemistry.

There are so many reasons why this ship has so many people excited. It’s the first time we’ve seen a dark-skinned black woman as THE MAIN CHARACTER in this franchise have any interaction that even hints at something remotely romantic. It’s a ship between a black woman and a Mexican man. And the most glaringly obvious reason: it’s a toxic mess. It’s unhinged, it’s chaotic, it’s explosive, it’s dynamic, it’s dark. It’s complicated and messy in a way we’ve never seen Shuri get to be. The tension and conflict and messiness of it all is what makes it so compelling. We haven’t gotten these types of multi-dimensional, complex character explorations in this franchise for a black woman before, not on this scale, not in this context, to this magnitude. OF COURSE in real life the dynamic would appalling, at best. But THIS ISN’T REAL LIFE. What so many fans seem to forget ( or ignore) is that fandom, and more specifically shipping, is supposed to be a safe space to explore all manner of complex concepts — good, bad, morally grey, relentlessly fluffy, despicably toxic, etc. — in a fictional construct where NO REAL PEOPLE GET HARMED.

Increasingly in fandom, I’m seeing this very black and white thinking, that you can only ship one thing or the other, think one thing or the other, feel one thing or the other. All nuance is thrown out the window. But the thing is, life isn’t that simple, and neither are human beings. People fall in love with people they aren’t supposed to all the time. People are messy and imperfect and toxic and complicated. People can experience emotions and hold ideas that are often in direct conflict with each other. So why do we ignore this, in fiction, of all places? Why do we demand that all fiction be sanitized and only portrayed in one way? The new, unwritten rule in fandom seems to be, if you’re going to ship, it had BETTER be the morally upright, fandom-approved ship, or else you MUST face the wrath of the fandom gatekeepers.

That is wrong, and even dangerous, on so many levels.

Let me be clear: you have every right to not like a ship. You have every right to be upset or appalled or triggered or disgusted or angered by a ship. But those emotions and reactions are YOUR responsibility and no one else’s. It is very easy on this website to curate your own experience. See a ship you don’t like? Block the user, the tag, blacklist it, whatever you need to do. Because that is the rational thing to do. Going into a ship’s tags in order to seek out users and posts that upset you in order to unleash your childish rage because you can’t be bothered to learn how to take responsibility for regulating your own emotions is infinitely worse than whatever icky ships you don’t like.

No one in this fandom is shoving this ship down your throat. We are in the tags, minding our business. We’re gushing about our favorite pairing, having silly discussions about headcanons and AUs, while also having deep and nuanced discussions about Shuri and her character growth, and about the deep themes explored in the movie and how it all interconnects. The sad thing is that I’ve seen really excellent takes about Wakanda Forever from certain users that I agree wholeheartedly with, only to then, several posts later, see them unleashing all kinds of unwarranted harassment and vitriol toward other fans simply for shipping Shuri with Namor.

At the end of the day, I can’t change people’s minds. I don’t care if you like or don’t like the ship. I DO care if you bully and harass and dehumanize me and other people because you don’t like the ship. Again: THIS IS FICTION. A lot of things that people explore and enjoy in fiction are not things we would ever condone in reality. There’s a certain catharsis in seeing characters go through toxic and even dark scenarios in a controlled environment such as fanfiction. But we understand very clearly that that is not okay in real life. I would urge those of you who are harassing shippers to please develop some critical thinking skills and learn to differentiate fiction from reality.

Fandom is supposed to be fun. Shipping is supposed to be fun. Shipping is not activism, it is not politics. And it is not supposed to be a vehicle for your own personal hatred, harassment and bullying (although it too often is).

If you’ve made it this far through my incoherent ramblings, I appreciate you. This may have no impact at all, and maybe no one gives a shit about my experience or my opinion. And that’s fine. I just felt the need to say my piece so that I can go back to shipping and writing in peace.

#black panther spoilers #black panther 2 spoilers #wakanda forever spoilers #black panther wakanda forever spoilers #black panther: wakanda forever spoilers #bpwf spoilers #black panther 2 #wakanda forever #black panther wakanda forever #black panther: wakanda forever #shuri #namor #shipping discourse #black panther

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda under the cut

Mipha

Honestly she's not just a victim of yaoi, tbh. Basically: she canonically had a massive crush on the protagonist, Link, which consistently gets swept under the rug or ignored entirely in favor of shipping Link with her brother Sidon, their fellow champion Revali, or Zelda herself. She deserves nice things and so many people just... completely overlook her??

She has a crush on Link, but so does her younger brother Sidon, who is much more affable and outgoing. Link/Sidon is the more popular ship. Mipha gets a lot of flak for being a weak female character who's only defined by her romantic relationship to the protagonist. That's not really fair; she has her own storyline about being the golden girl from her town who everyone looks up to, and the hole that's left in the town after her death. It is unfortunate that she is better remembered as the less compelling corner of a love triangle.

The princess of the Zora, sweetheart of the Zora's Domain. Champion pilot of the Divine Beast Vah Ruta. Master healer, cut down in her prime by an ancient evil. But you wouldn't know it, because she's reduced to someone who was in love with Link (the game's protagonist), and therefore has to be sidelined and villainized to ship Link with her younger brother Sidon or her fellow Champion Revali.

Zelda

She spent 100 years in a metaphysical wrestling match with an ancient and primal evil after seeing it destroy almost everyone and everything she held dear in the hopes of saving the few that remained and Link's main goal after HIYAHing his way out of a amnesia-inducing coma was to come in and tag team said evil in order to save her and like 90% of the memories he can regain focus on their relationship with each other and its gradual improvement up to the point where Link fucking dies protecting her and it's the push she needs to awaken the power to push back the blight and PEOPLE ARE STILL OUT THERE IN THEIR POST-CANON FANWORKS TRYING TO TELL ME THAT LINK FUCKS OFF AND LEAVES HER ALONE TO GO SMOOCH THE HOT FISH PRINCE BECAUSE ZELDA WAS BEING TOO OVERBEARING OR WHATEVER AND HE COULDN'T DEAL WITH THE EXPECTATION??? LIKE ZELDA'S WHOLE FUCKING ARC WASNT ALSO ABOUT HER STRUGGLING WITH EXPECTATION AND FAILING TO LIVE UP TO IT AND YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE THIS WUALITY THEY BOTH OSTENSIBLY HAVE IN COMMON WOULD DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN THEM?? WHERE'S ZELDA YOU COWARDS?? I DON'T EVEN CARE IF YOU DON'T WANT HER AND LINK TO BE TOGETHER, JUST STOP DIMINISHING THE GRAVITY OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND MAKING ZELDA SUCK FOR NO REASON. SHE'S A BIG NERD! SHE GETS TOO IN HER OWN HEAD! SHE'D DO ANYTHING TO HELP THE PEOPLE SHE CARES ABOUT! SHE UNASHAMEDLY AND EXCITEDLY TRIED TO FEED HER PERSONAL KNIGHT A LIVE FROG IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE! HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE HER 

Im specifically saying botw Zelda here because oh my gOSH this poor girl can get made out to be like a horrible bitch when people. want link to get that shark dick. on average she doesnt get thattttt badly treated compared to some others but goddamn.

title character but people hate her because they want link to get w sidon. so she gets fridged or entirely forgotten even though shes literally his canonical soulmate and they have been reincarnated together hundreds of times (w ganon but whether u make em poly or make him the long suffering third wheel is up to you). people will be like oh but zelda was mean to him that one time (??). be serious w me rn. she just got removed from fandom entirely and if that isnt the epitome of victim of yaoi idk what is.

#round 1 #poll #mipha #botw mipha #totk zelda #botw zelda #legend of zelda #totk #botw