#there are now 90 fics in the engage ao3 category

[house-vestra]

fe17 thoughts (part 2)

similar spoiler warning as last time; i’ve now beaten chapter 18 but this post is about the brodia gang in this post so mainly spoilers for mid-game

first up in the brodia gang is yunaka. she’s fine. her personality is cute, just not my type of chara, and her design doesn’t work for me so she’s just mid-tier. covert units are good but i prefer zelkov

i unexpectedly like alcryst. i don’t care that much for bernadetta so i wasn’t expecting to like him, but his portrayal balances the serious and comedic elements of his personality better imo. i like that he threatened my life and i also do find extreme apologizing funny (it must have been a direct reference, right????) i think this type of character is very interesting against the backdrop of brodia, and despite his self esteem, he still has a backbone of steel on him, which is all. very. interesting.

i also like his evil-looking eyes. i don’t think diamante has them

(get his pandreo c-support if you can. awoo!! awoo...)

i was worried lapis looked super generic in the character previews but she’s grown on me. actually my first in-game impression of her was very positive because she and citrinne were totally ready to shank us from the front even after they knew who we were, which was refreshing after firene. but then she became nice and i was worried again. now i’ve decided i like her; i need to get more supports with her but i felt the signs that she grew up in extreme poverty were well done, things like being grateful for any type of thing you give her and, obviously, the milk convo. i’ve only gotten the c-support and it’s definitely funny but you can see lapis piecing it together at the same time you’re realizing what she’s talking about (i think the clip circulated on twitter/tumblr on release or near release, and seemed the idea online was that it was a joke about a white person thinking milk needs to be watered down, but the real context is much more interesting). ANYWAY i need to get more lapis supports but also unexpectedly ended up liking her.

citrinne is a hot rich lady. i uncomplicatedly like her. also need to get more supports with her. 

diamante... he’s fine. his thing with his dad was neat; that whole family’s dynamic is fun. otherwise, he’s very... there. i do like giving him lyn for the same reason ppl use sylvain to kill felix. i just got a diamante/jade support where diamante fully guffaws out loud for like 2 whole lines and that decimated my grasp of what his character is.

i didn’t notice it for a while, but i think diamante has 2-color hair too? he has a bright red streak at his temple that kind of looks like light glare but it doesn’t move even when he turns around, so i think he has like... idk just one patch of hair that grows differently...

amber. alpaca. he definitely comes the closest to the hisame/pickle situation just bc... alpacas are such a specific animal lol and very like 2011-brand “i love alpacas and sloths bc i’m so random” but from an adult man. his alpaca sweater is cute. his support with vander is funny.

i have no thoughts on jade except that her c support with bunet was funny.

i mentioned i needed master seals last time but actually after ch. 17 you get finally get unlimited seals in the shop so i’ve been rescued. everyone is now promoted except for clanne... i may go back to him but he’s only level 9; we’ll see if he can net any arena exp.

i appreciate that everyone’s default outfit changes with their base advanced class! i haven’t used a second seal so don’t know whether there are reskins for different classes but it’s reminiscent of the RD promotion outfit changes. i imagine if this game had had sprites, we might not have gotten this? i would have liked to see sprites by mika pikazo though; possibly some character designs might have clicked better visually.

supports are annoyingly hard to get?? i feel like after most battles i’ve only gotten 2 or 3 supports unlocked, and even after unlocking gifts to give people (which are SO EXPENSIVE), it feel like gifts and meals had more of an effect in 3h (altho u did get to eat a lot more meals in that game lol)

misc. but i wonder how many people entered the series with fe17? ig we’ll get more of an idea over time because those people probably wouldn’t get it on release. 3h was a huge entry game but i feel like everyone who is talking about engage is just like.... a series veteran lol i was on reddit and people are like “you couldn’t do that map?? unless this is ur first FE, you should know the optimal way is to do this” which struck me as an incredibly weird thing to say if any other game was in discussion?

[armoricaroyalty]

the 90-9-1 rule, or A Partial Answer to the Eternal Question of 'Why Don't My Posts Get More Notes?'

In the small amount of time I’ve been on Al Gore’s internet, I have acquired a small amount of wisdom, which I now share with you: 90% of people don’t engage.

This theory of internet engagement has been floating around online since at least 2006, and as such, it goes by a lot of different names: participation inequality, the 1% rule, the 90-9-1 principle. Whatever name you encounter it under, the principle is the same: on any given website, most of the content is generated by only 1% of the user base.

This theory divides internet users into three camps:

Heavy Contributors are people who use the website every day and generate the vast majority of its content. In earlier eras of the internet, these were people posting in forums, maintaining their own geocity or angelfire pages, and setting up webrings to link related content and form communities of like-minded people. In the current age, the category of ‘heavy contributors’ includes influencers and content creators on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, but it also includes the people who remember to like, subscribe, and smash that bell icon. On websites like Tumblr, a heavy contributor is more likely to be a person who likes and reblogs without generating original content or adding commentary to others’ posts. But heavy contributors are also the big-time posters, the ones making gifsets, fic, viral shitposts, and other kinds of content. For these people, the internet is a social, creative place, and they go online to socialize and create. They generate the vast majority of the content everyone consumes and enjoys. And according to the 90-9-1 principle, these users represent only 1% of the people who use the internet.

Intermittent Contributors are people who use the website frequently and occasionally post. In modern times, this might be someone who mostly engages through likes and the occasional reblog. In fan communities and on websites like AO3, they might be an avid consumer of content, reading every fic with their OTP, but that passion doesn’t usually motivate them to leave comments, write fic of their own, or share recommendations. The intermittent contributors might be just as active as the heavy contributors, but their online presence is smaller. They make less of a splash than their noisier counterparts in the 1%. According to the theory, these users represent 9% of the people who use the internet.

Infrequent Contributors (lurkers) are everyone else. Because they don’t generate much (or any) content, it’s difficult to track their presence and behavior. Some sign on every day and read everything that’s posted without ever adding to the conversation. They might check Tumblr on their phones during breaks at work and never think about it otherwise. They might have an account they use once every three months when they remember it exists. They might never create an account, and just browse the front pages of sites like Reddit. According to the theory, these users represent 90% of the people who use the internet.

To people in the 1%, the behavior of the lurkers and intermittent contributors feels absolutely outlandish. Why bother signing on if you’re not going to make anything or contribute to the conversation? Why follow an account if you’re never going to like or reblog? Human beings have a tendency to see their behavior as “normal” and assume everyone else is doing the same, and that tendency toward generalization can be really blinding for people who exist in tiny, exceptional categories like the 1% of ‘active’ users.

The assumption that everyone uses the internet like they do can often make the people in the 1% feel very, very lonely, especially the creatives. You work for hours on a story or an illustration, hit ‘post,’ and get only a few comments and likes. You’ve got followers, you’ve got an audience, why is your work being met with crickets? If you’re posting in the hopes that other people will engage with your content, it can be very disheartening to create something and be met with silence by the vast majority of your followers.

The truth is that 90% of your followers just won’t engage. That doesn’t mean they’re not reading your stuff. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy your stories. That doesn’t mean they’re not looking forward to your next update or they’re not turning your story over in their heads while they wait for the bus. It just means that they’re not engaging with it in a way that is visible to you.

Think about it. You might be very active on one platform and quiet on another. You have read many books in your life, but how many letters have you written to authors? When you see a movie in theaters, is your first instinct to get online and tweet at the actors and directors? When you watch YouTube videos and TikToks, do you feel the urge to make your own, or do you just think “cool video!” and move on with your life?

I’ve been afflicted with Chats-Too-Much since birth, so I am inordinately active on talky platforms like Tumblr and Discord. But on YouTube, I’m an internet ghost. I have a few creators whose videos I watch avidly (and often multiple times). I follow them, I have the bell dinged, I even support a few on patreon. But I don’t comment on videos and rarely ever like them because that’s just not how I engage on that platform.

The 90-9-1 rule isn’t an absolute. Actual studies have found that the real percentages of different types of users varies from site-to-site. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, online participation required a much greater degree of expertise and technical know-how. In the modern era, with the almost-universal implementation of like buttons, voting systems, and internal bookmarking features like AO3’s, more users fall into that middle category of intermittent contributors. Social media completely changed the way we use the internet to communicate, and the social distancing and isolation of the pandemic further reshaped our ways of engagement. I’m not even going to get into the subject of engagement as currency and the monetization of everything, because those are a) immensely depressing to me and b) outside of the scope of this essay, but the idea that anyone can become a celebrity online has also radically altered the way we exist on the internet.

This essay is only meant to say: on hobby sites and in fandom spaces, try to divorce your self-worth and desire to create from the amount of engagement your content gets. Each and every one of us loves to see the numbers go up, but the numbers can’t be why you’re engaging in social spaces and sharing your work. It’s not easy, but if your only drive to create is to get attention, you will never be satisfied. You’ll get 50 followers and wish you had 100. You’ll get 1,000 followers and wish you had 10,000. You’ll always be chasing more, and you’ll never be able to enjoy the followers you do have and the engagement you do get -- you’ll always be stuck staring at your analytics page, resenting the silent 90% for not doing more to boost your content and validate your worth in the eyes of the immortal algorithm.

It’s not easy to decouple your desire to create from your desire for attention. But it’s ultimately necessary for the good of your mental wellbeing and the good of your art. Enjoy your hobbies and enjoy your posting. If neither are bringing you any joy, ask yourself why and be willing to accept that you might need to let go of something or else shift your mode of engagement. You might even be happier as a lurker, creating only for yourself.

[olderthannetfic]

Re: the ace discourse, as a sex-neutral aro-ace ... I feel like there's sort of three segments of fanwork, the first two much bigger. 1. AO3-style shipping fic that presumes physical and emotional attraction scaling together at the point of Meet Cute (there's plenty of allo people who probably don't work like that either - I'd be interested in the take of a writerly allo cisdude on transformative fandom if I tripped across one actually comfortable with sex geekery who didn't have alienating [1/?

--

levels of misogynistic brainworms or the impulse to grovel about his own gender and allosexuality for political brownie points), 2. Plotty or angsty genfic, 3. Fluffy shipping fic meant for ace-spec readers. I only really like to read the first two. One, asexuality is an incredibly broad category. There's asexuals like myself who /do/ engage with eroticism, but for whom more things about real sex are a turnoff then there are turn-ons to make it worthwhile. (I read somewhere once that arousal[2/?

dampens the disgust response, and since then I've wondered if I just didn't get that feature). I value my porn more than a value Representation (tm), because having porn makes my life better than some asshole I don't know not understanding that I could be ace makes my life worse, also partly because I sincerely think that a lot of acephobia is recycled ableism and the former is never going to go away without more progress on the latter. There's a lot of jokes about aces being into the [3/?

weirder genres of monsterfucking and I have to wholeheartedly agree. Now, that's already sort of a different genre than 1-2-3, but as an ace, if I have a character that I like because I relate to them I still want them to be fair game for monsterfucking fic, yanno?While I think that ace sex-repulsed people have a political point, they're not really in my community in the sense of us needing the same accommodations, despite us both being ace. Hell, I've met allo people more skeeved by [4/?

skeeved by fictional sex than I am; and in my case that's probably /because/ I'm a could-take-it-or-leave-it ace. - I actually like plotty genfic quite a lot, and probably should go trawl FF for it. The main problem there is tagging conventions. I do happen to have a small handful of triggers relevant to my main fandom, and I've been able to, with familiarity, figure out what AO3-style tags and tropes are likely red flags for them, even if they're not tagged for. I don't have that same [5/?

I don't have that same familiarity with FF and I don't think its tagging structure would support it even if I did. There's also the matter of reverse-harem tropes. I read quite a bit of 80-90s romantic fantasy growing up. It had some Tropes (tm) about queer men, despite being a progressive genre, that I was sick of before I found fanfic and I still see some of them pop up in reverse harem fanfic. My main fandoms (Western RPGs) have a lot of female OCs / protagonists shipped with a lot [6/?

lot of eligible men and while I don't think het is gross they do sometimes write the canonically queer characters (of which there are a lot, which is why I got into the canon) in alienating ways - /if/ they don't just deftly but conspicuously avoid mentioning their canonical queerness to the level canon does. (Pettily, I shall play the world's smallest violin for people complaining about fandom erasing queer/coded/ characters by depicting them as a non-canonical orientation). AO3 m/m Does [7/?

Not Do This, even if I will sometimes mournfully look at that tasty tasy looking worldbuilding-rich 100k+ non-explicit fic which Might Just tie my bisexual male favorites' bisexuality to his trauma in a "just needs a good woman to fix him" way waiting for me over on FF. Not that this trope is worse morally than the shit AO3-centric fandom can pull, but I was sick of it /before/ I figured out how the internet worked.3. Because I'm also on the aromantic spectrum, fluffy fic about an [8/?

fluffy fic about an asexual character getting just the right person to accept them as they are as a romantic option doesn't do it for me. I'm glad the genre exists - it's just not for me. I'm also not really that much a fan of fluff alone. For me, when I'm not feeling attraction, I'm not feeling attraction, so I'm not pining or feeling lonely. I do feel alienated from allosexist allonormative society, but more on the level of "why the goddamn hell is it so expensive to live alone" and "so [9/?

and "so where is my retirement fund if I don't wanna spawn a clone to work into their sixties after me, huh, society?" than the question of if anyone really loves me. Now, those more ""universal"" themes would be exactly a good fit for genfic ... if I knew how to navigate it to avoid triggers worth a damn. - Ace-centric, relationship-centric explicitly queer fic is something I want to see myself reflected in ... but my anxieties have nothing to do about the ability to attract a romantic [10/?

Whatever was after 10 never came through.

And yes, Meet Cute leads to natural perfect compatibility is super unrealistic. I know so many couples with mismatched libidos for whom it is a problem without anyone being ace. All those schlocky romance novels with simultaneous orgasms are also not documentaries, shockingly. LOL.

[panharmonium]

more rambling re: that last post (+ the merlin/will fic survey overview)

because i generally refrain from reading fic while i’m actively writing for a fandom, the only real ao3 reading i have done for merlin is my survey of the merlin/will ship tag.  and the only reason i undertook that survey in the first place is because while i was doing an introductory cruise of the various merlin tags during my first exploration of the fandom (after i finally finished S5 and was able to start looking into fandom dynamics without fearing spoilers), i noticed that a LOT of the fic tagged with this ship was also tagged merlin/arthur, and despite the fact that i personally am more interested in gen stuff, i started to get both suspicious and annoyed about what i was seeing.  but i also wanted to have the data to back up my annoyed feelings, so i made a little spreadsheet for myself and then just filled it in whenever i had time to kill and wanted something to do. 

the data, when i eventually finished, backed up my annoyance pretty much as well as i expected, which was disappointing, but not surprising.

to clarify - i’m not annoyed by the fact that will and merlin don’t have a whole lot of material in their ship tag.  will only showed up directly in one episode; i don’t expect him to be a popular subject.  what i AM annoyed by is the fact that there are actually more merlin/arthur fics in the merlin/will tag than there are fics that actually focus on...merlin/will.  by, like - an extreme margin.

(the rest of this is just me griping about fandom trends.  popping it under a cut so folks can just move on with their days if this isn’t relevant to their interests.)

The Numbers

two quick notes before i get into the nitty-gritty:

1) i originally did this survey a few months ago, but i updated it this week with fics that have been added since then, so the numbers are current.  

2) some of the data below would probably vary slightly depending on who was conducting the survey, so there’s a bit of wiggle room in either direction.  the criteria i had to use [aka what counts as just a ship ‘mention’ vs actual content] would be subject to reader interpretation, obviously, but even with that, i do feel that most stories fell into pretty clear categories.)

so, without further ado -

total # of fics in the ship tag: 145

number of fics that are inappropriately tagged (meaning either will himself or merlin/will as a ship does not actually appear [which is kind of bizarre, but which i saw happen surprisingly frequently], OR where there is only a brief reference to will or past!merlin/will and that’s the extent of their inclusion: 50

number of fics that are duplicates of works already in the tag (ie podfic), or (in one case) a meta podcast about the show: 5

so, that brings down our total number of fics with some sort of actual merlin/will content to 90.

of these 90 works, only 17 of them are actually focused on merlin/will.  

everything else in will’s ship tag, including the 54 works from the previously discussed "incorrectly tagged” category, is either a) fic where will is dumped, broken up with, or otherwise passed over in favor of arthur (and very occasionally gwaine, at least once mordred, once percival, once arthur and gwaine in a threesome, and once CENRED, which i’m sure will would be especially thrilled about), or b) fic where will is only included as a previous/ex relationship (again, almost always in lieu of arthur).  

moreover - of the 17 actual merlin/will fics, 7 still end with will dying or the relationship ending for reasons other than him being passed over for arthur.  an additional 4 are <1000 word PWP snippets, generally written for old LJ summer pornathons, one of which still somehow manages to be...you guessed it - all about arthur. 

in terms of actual one-shots/full fics where merlin/will is the endgame/non-dead pairing, there are only 6 stories.  

i repeat: will gets six earnest stories, IN HIS OWN SHIP TAG.  

i repeat once again: will, in a non-dead, endgame form, gets 4% of his own ship tag.

The Content

the in-fic trends are frustrating, if you actually like this character.

the asshole.  will is an abusive boyfriend.  he is a jealous ex. he’s a shitty friend.  he’s a stalker.  he’s manipulative.  he’s emotionally abusive.  he’s physically abusive.  he dumps merlin for someone else.  he cheats.  in one fic he’s so mad at merlin that he outs merlin’s magic to arthur.  in multiple fics, i watched him literally go off the rails and try to murder somebody.

the fuckbuddy. they’re just messing around, guys!  no, of course it’s not serious!  they just do this for fun!  of course there’s nothing to get in the way of arthur’s inevitable arrival!  no sirree!

the unrequited.  will is actually in it deep for merlin, but merlin doesn’t feel the same.  this does not, however, prevent merlin from using will for sex, companionship, comfort, distraction, etc - until arthur shows up, when will either steps aside in deference to merlin’s all-consuming passion for arthur or is dropped like a hot potato.

“not even will.”  that sentence.  over and over again.  merlin had never felt like this before, not even with will.  nobody had ever understood merlin like this, not even will.   even in fic when they were like.  married.  or engaged.  fanon arthur pendragon must be truly mind-blowing, y’all.

dead long-term relationship.  will was merlin’s husband/fiancé/long-term partner.  now he is Dead.  merlin getting together with arthur is what allows merlin to Heal.  (these stories sometimes contain some variation of “not even will,” as discussed above.)

lastly, in a related phenomenon:

who are you and what have you done with arthur pendragon???   i suppose in a way it’s nice to know that will isn’t the only one who gets the OOC treatment, but it is still really...something, to read fic where will is twisted into an unpleasant, abusive, canon non-compliant version of himself, and then to see arthur, on the very same page, transformed into a gentle, solicitous, kind, caring, equally canon non-compliant angel.  fanon!arthur is more worried about merlin’s well-being than literally anyone i have ever seen.  he is so invested in merlin’s emotional health.  he is so concerned about merlin’s boundaries.  he says things to merlin that no version of arthur pendragon has ever - EVER - in any universe, thought about saying to anybody.  he wants to hear all about merlin’s problems, and he’s all about taking it slow and making sure merlin feels comfortable and loved and worthy and safe (from all that horrible stuff done by that horrible other guy; that must’ve been so hard, merlin; ‘it’s okay, i’ve got you now’) - the man is utterly unrecognizable.  and you know what?  it’s okay!  it is fine to make your characters as OOC as you want.  it is fine to make them better/nicer than they were in the canon.  sometimes we all want that, right?  it’s fanfic!  have a ball.  i will never tell anyone to stop writing what they like, and i will NEVER interact negatively with a fic i don’t care for.  EVER.  do not do this, people - click the back button and move on with your life.   but i reserve the right to be annoyed, in my own space, about a persistent trend of will and arthur’s canon functions being flat-out reversed, in service of merlin/arthur.  not in the sense that canon!will is particularly gentle or sweet, because that’s not the case - but in the sense that will, in canon, is the one who actually cares about merlin’s best interests, whereas arthur is, quite frankly, the ass. a lovable ass (sometimes).  but an ass nonetheless, and one whose relationship with merlin is, from start to finish, an unhealthy, oppressive mess.

The Point

the point of me typing this up is not to say that what people choose to write is bad or wrong.  this is fanfic!  you can write whatever you want.  you can make characters as OOC as you want.  you can create as many AUs as you want.  i don’t mind fic authors writing stuff i don’t personally care for; someone else probably loves those stories!  and i am never going to interact negatively with anything i don’t personally enjoy - i am going to let people continue to have fun in their own ways, and i am going to grumble about my frustrations in my own space, and then i’m going to direct my energy into writing stuff i would personally like to read.

the point is just that i needed a brief second to complain, on my own blog, about my most familiar bbc merlin nemesis (otherwise known as ‘single-ship ubiquity’).  and what i mean by this is that it is REALLY FRUSTRATING that other little relationships are not even granted the tiniest concession of owning their own ship tags, in a fandom that is already so SATURATED with merlin/arthur content.  like - even if i’m generous and use the number 17 for the number of actual merlin/will fics in the tag, that still means 88% of will’s ship tag is actually fic about merlin falling in love with people who aren’t will (*cougharthur*).  eighty-eight percent!  of his own ship tag!  

(to put it another way - the ship tag isn’t supposed to be where you go to watch your character get repeatedly dumped or left behind for someone else, okay?  it’s supposed to be literally the opposite of that.)

will’s ship tag is already tiny.  and almost all of it belongs to arthur.  moreover, a significant chunk of it uses will as a convenient villain (completely contradicting every canon aspect of his characterization), when in the actual story will dies to protect arthur (who he doesn’t even like) and then lies to save merlin (at the expense of his own reputation, and despite the fact that he personally thinks merlin returning to camelot is a bad idea).  his behavior in canon is selfless, and wholly committed to merlin’s welfare, and yet in his ship tag he gets treated like trash.  

the kid can’t catch a break.  and it’s such a pervasive thing that even though i personally am primarily interested in merlin and will as friends (i am pretty romance-averse in general when it comes to media, and i have never written anything that isn’t gen, for any fandom, ever, in my life), i am also so indignant on will’s behalf that i’ve basically become invested in the well-being of this ship as a matter of principle.  it’s not my main thing, and it’s not necessarily how i view the canon-verse, but i am SO IRRITATED about how virtually all of will’s shipfic has been taken over by merthur (and about how maligned will is in his own tag) that i have actively committed myself to supporting merlin and will together in as many AUs as possible.  

(this is basically like when i trained myself to love allison argent after teen wolf killed her off.  i did that out of spite, y’all.  it’s the principle of the thing.)

so, y’know.  all i am saying is that i think will deserves his share of happy endings, and i think it would be nice to see fics where he is not just a stepping stone on the road to merthur or an unrecognizable parody of himself.

more importantly - EVERY merlin ship deserves to have a tag that isn’t completely swallowed by the local fandom behemoth.  merlin/arthur already owns three quarters of the archive.  a gargantuan oil tanker like that can afford to let the little rarepair canoes float down their own streams in peace.

[olliya]

Readers‘ engagement on AO3

This time it will be less scientific, and more like me writing down my stream of consciousness. But the methodology was really straight-forward, so I think I can spare us the details, and I wanted to show you a detour I made trying to untangle the reasons behind certain fandom reactions. Join me for a trip?

AO3 is rather infamous for its lack of readers engagement (see all the initiatives supporting the commenting: @ao3commentoftheday​, @longlivefeedback​), at least among the fics and writers I am in contact with (and I do pay attention to the stats, you can believe me 😉 ). Nevertheless, some people feel very comfortable on this platform and for quite some time already I wondered what leads to such diametrically different writers’ experiences.

I started with analyzing Comments for Sakura’s ships. Since I did the same analysis for four Sakura’s ships: SasuSaku, NaruSaku, KakaSaku and MadaSaku on ff.net, we can have a direct comparison, especially as the time scope of existence Pairing Option and AO3 as a platform are very similar, and fic numbers are also comparable.

Very briefly: I sorted the fics into the following bins: >500 Comments, 201-500 Comments, 101-200 Comments, 51-100 Comments, 21-50 Comments, 11-20 Comments, 6-10 Comments, 2-5 Comments, 1 Comment, 0 Comments. All data are presented in percentage to allow for comparisons between the ships.

So let’s dive in:

On the first glance the graphs look peculiar: there is always sort of a double maximum for “0 Comments” and “2-5 Comments” divided by a minimum for “1 Comment”. But once we remember that the Comments on AO3 include also author’s responses the situation becomes clear: the majority of fics have 2 comments: namely 1 real Comment from a reader and one answer from the author.

To put this hypothesis into a test I checked how many fics have 2 Comments, and it is 316 out of 839 of SasuSaku fics in “2-5 Comments” bin, 84 out of 204 fics for NaruSaku and 104 out of 315 fic for KakaSaku – which gives always ca. one third of comments in the “2-5 Comments” bin.

At that point I deliberated for a while whether I should modify my bins to include “2 Comments” as a separate category, but I opted out of it for the sake of (future) comparisons with ff.net (and because I think by bins are very good, thank you).

As a side note: on the first 4 graphs we can also see that MadaSaku has a different distribution than all the other ships, but it is worth mentioning that it was also an outlier on ff.net. We will come to this later.

Peculiarity of distribution aside – the feedback on 3 main Sakura’s ships is consistently miserable. But, I reasoned, AO3 is famously M/M oriented so maybe the F/M audience is simply not there. Therefore, I set off to check all the Naruto ships in the order of their popularity, which btw is the following:

So, working down the list we get this:

And, WTF Naruto fandom? Most of the fics for hugely popular, established ships have no comments??!! Or one comment and an answer from the writer??!!

That was a really disappointing exercise…

Until I found that:

MadaTobi was the first ship that displayed a different pattern of readers interactions! It has a maximum in “21-50 Comments” per fic which is perfectly decent and corresponds well with the values for the ships I examined before on ff.net.

Encouraged by this discovery I dug further: (And tbh for a moment I thought I have here a “Madara-effect”, since both MadaTobi and MadaSaku displayed encouraging results 😉 )

But Madara-effect was not the case (HashiMada displays the same distribution as all the other ships) and further data were even more disappointing. (Let me repeat myself: WTF, Naruto fandom?!)

Until I found another instance of good readers’ participation:

KakaGai! So, at that point we had three ships that were behaving differently than the norm: MadaTobi, KakaGai and MadaSaku.

I looked further to see if I can find more examples of fandom positivity, but, spoiler alert – No. For the sake of appearances lets look at the data though. GaaLee is sort of a borderline case, so let’s flag it as “tentative” for now.

So, what could be the reason for such a drastically different behavior of distinctive pockets of the fandom? Over the course of last year, I was observing how MadaTobi was rapidly gaining popularity, so that hinted me to follow this line of reasoning.

For each ship, I broke down the fics numbers into years when they were published. I ignored all the fics published in 2020 (because the year has only started and including those data would skew the image). To be able to compare the ships (which vary widely in term of fic numbers) I calculated the percentages of fics published in each year. I.e if a ship had 100 fics published until December 2019 and 30 of them were published in 2019, then 2019 had 30% of all published fics. It was at that point irrelevant how many fics were published in 2020, they weren’t counted either the way. I included only data from 2011 on, because earlier ones are very fuzzy due to back-dating customs that were in fashion at that time (for explanations see here).

Let’s look at the data. Tadaaa!!!

Isn’t it absolutely beautiful?! (yes, I know!) Does it look like a tangle of knitting yarn? (yes, I know that as well!)

So, let me break it down for you:

See that, that general trend? This is the growth curve that most of the ships follow – pretty linear, with maybe a bit of acceleration in 2019.

Now let’s focus on outliers: (3 most popular ships: SasuNaru, KakaIru and SasuSaku are included for reference – they illustrate the general trend pretty well).

The ships that grew more than 30% in 2019 are: SasuHina, MadaTobi, GaaLee, KakaObi, HashiMada, KakaGai, MadaSaku and InoSaku. So, among those eight, 4 (3 obvious, and 1 tentative) are the ones which showed outstanding readers’ engagement!

 So, are newer, more energetic parts of fandom also the ones with best readers’ engagement? That would be a very optimistic message… But what about four ships that grew tremendously, but still show very poor readers behavior?

SasuHina is an easy case. If there exist a ship that has a captain, then it is this one. And the captain is @365daysofsasuhina​ who contributed staggering 438 fics (out of total of 966) to SasuHina! (Seriously, a round of standing ovation, because this is amount of dedication, work and talent that we can all only dream about. Talking about being a change you want to see!). And 90% of that contribution was done exactly in 2019, which explains the growth spurt of the ship. Sadly though, the audience response didn't keep up with the supply of new fics, therefore great many of them remain with very few comments.

So what about the remaining ones: KakaObi, HashiMadara and InoSaku?

Scrolling through the fic lists I noticed that great many of KakaObi fics are written in Chinese, so I decided to look into it deeper.

I analyzed the percentages of Chinese fics for all the examined ships (and percentages of English ones, just in case there was a ship with overrepresentation of some other language):

And we can see that both KakaObi and HashiMada have a very strong presence of the Chinese fics!

At that point I thought I have it, and proceeded to look at the distribution of Comments for Chinese KakaObi and HashiMada fics. And indeed, the reader’s engagement is sadly, almost nonexistent (165 out of 182 HashiMada fics and 478 out of 630 KakaObi fics have no comments at all). The reasons for that may be multiple; one that come to my mind is that the Chinese readers are still to follow their writers to AO3, or that the fics published recently are in reality not new (which for sure they are not, given the sheer amount of them) and received already their share of feedback on other platforms.

But, even if one subtracts the Chinese fics from the overall fics, the distribution remains the same! ☹ KakaObi and HashiMada still display the standard Comment distribution, despite having grown 45% and 41% in the last year!

It looks a bit better, but still follows standard, not very flattering trend of most of other ships.

So, then I thought that maybe if I subtract the Chinese fics the sudden growth in 2019 will disappear?

The answer is unfortunately, no. The growth spurt is still there, language independent.

So, at this point I don’t know... I am convinced that there is some effect coming from the influx of Chinese fics, but I cannot put my finger on it. (It is also a beautiful example of how correlation does not equal causation.) I also have no explanation for InoSaku behavior…

  Nevertheless, I think it is possible to draw some conclusions, and those conclusions are of vital importance for the health of fandom as it is currently on the move from ff.net to AO3. And I would hate to see the good habits that are in place among ff.net readers getting lost during this move!

It seems that the readers response is better in the pockets of fandom that experience rapid growth, which in itself is very positive news. But one would think that the entirety of Naruto fandom is experiencing such growth (as the fandom is moving to AO3, remember…?). Unfortunately, it isn’t the case.

There can be yet another factor in play: namely the question if the ship is well represented on ff.net, and most of the ships are. Let’s take a final look at our three outliers: MadaTobi, KakaGai and MadaSaku.

Quick look into ff.net (by quick look I mean: sum of two main Ship Names plus Pairing Option minus fics that were double-tagged) shows that there are 174 KakaGai fics, 132 MadaTobi fics and 230 MadaSaku fics (my carefully calculated MadaSaku fic number was 232 in December 2019, so now I believe this number will be slightly higher).

MadaTobi and KakaGai are definitely underrepresented on ff.net (though MadaSaku is not). Therefore, new fics are not being published on ff.net in parallel to AO3, but rather on AO3 exclusively. It is a speculation only, but maybe if readers are given a choice between commenting on ff.net and on AO3, they are choosing the older platform.  That would imply that the authors who make a complete move can still count on feedback, as with absence of ff.net-uploaded fics the readers would have only one place to comment on. At least that’s my hope…

And finally, dear Naruto fandom – step it up. Those numbers are a shame, and I know that people can do better than this.

[ao3feed-goodomens]

Road Trip Games and Love

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Nd53OF

by rgfalso

One week after the Armaggedidn't, Crowley and Aziraphale go out for a picnic out of London. Unfortunatelly for them, they get caught on a really nasty traffic jam. With nothing to do to pass the time, they engage in some of the most classical road trip games. However, what was initially inteded to be just innocent games starts to delve into the Thing™️ between them, the thing that both of them are very aware of, but neither dares to speak of it. Cue absurd ammounts of flirting, pining and dancing around the issue.

Who knows, maybe it will lead them to actually talk about the elephant in the room (who's actually tired of being ignored for millenia now).

Words: 4431, Chapters: 1/5, Language: English

Fandoms: Good Omens

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)

Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Additional Tags: Mutual Pining, Flirting, Music as a Plot Device, road trip games, The Bentley Ships It, Queen - Freeform, rated teen for cursing and vague mentions of sex, but there's no actual smut, Car Fic - as in 90 percent of it takes place in the car, no beta we saunter vaguely downwards like Crowley

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Nd53OF

[muggle-writes]

WIP Week Day 5: Your Canonverse or AU WIP

Returning again to my WIP with a sleep deprived Ginny Weasley that I mentioned on Tuesday, which is absolutely canon-compliant. For some reason Molly Weasley’s voice is really hard for me to internalize enough to write, so it’s slow going.

Bonus question: What is your most used AO3 tag?

I’m going based on the suggested tags to filter on when looking at my Works page on AO3, but I haven’t counted manually. in each category:

Ratings: General Audiences (11)

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply (19)

Categories: Gen (17)

Fandoms: Detective Conan (8)

Characters: Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan (7)

Additional Tags: Canon Compliant (5)

Curiously, all five of these were from this year’s PurimGifts exchange, which says more about my mindset while tagging that batch than about my overall writing habits imo. If I leave out the PurimGifts batch, then my most used “other” tags are Fluff, Angst, Light Angst, and Happy Ending, at three each - although given that Light Angst is a subtag of Angst, when you filter on “Angst (3)” you get all six of the fics with an angst related tag, which I guess makes it truly my most used “additional” tag lol (also I’m sure several of these were synned because I’m not sure I’m even that reliable about tagging with matching phrases)

And because I missed yesterday, but I liked the prompts (even though it’s nigh-impossible to pick favorite anythings...

Day 4: Your Favorite WIP

That’s a fun question but a tricky one. I guess at the moment my favorite WIP is my mildly-crackfic three-way crossover that I put together mainly so my two favorite characters could become friends. It doesn’t have a plot yet though, so I’m a little stuck. (but I submitted it to the upcoming WIP Blind Date event, so hopefully getting a little feedback will inspire me to take it a little further, and then I can capitalize on my momentum once I have it again)

Bonus Question: What is your favorite fanwork in any of your fandoms created by someone else?

Another tricky question. One per fandom I think, I can’t narrow it down further.

Harry Potter: I absolutely adore Face Death In The Hope @fdith by lullabyknell. (but also just. 90% of LK’s Harry Potter fics are contenders here because she does phenomenal worldbuilding.) I’m already a sucker for a good time travel fix-it, and then Regulus and Harry have such a believable and Good developing friendship/trust/maybe eventual relationship? Like I’m so invested in Regulus Black now, and it’s certainly not because of the original books in which he was barely a footnote compared to other deaths, and harder-to-find horcruxes. And Harry gets to know his parents finally, and there’s the whole unavoidable horcrux subplot but like, optimistically... And all of this without character bashing (which I will read in stories with other tropes I like, but I do get tired of it. Too many of the time travel fix its have at least Dumbledore bashing. LK gives Harry inner conflict about Dumbledore, which is absolutely justified, but doesn’t reduce him to a one-dimensional caricature in the process). Also there may or may not be Master of Death shenanigans implied, but if so, it’s subtle and without making Harry automatically OP because of it, which is super fun. (although power fantasies are fun sometimes)

Detective Conan (arguably DCMK): The Case of the Missing Detective by Utukki - although the author hasn’t updated (this fic) in over five years, I still think about this regularly. This and Fallout are incomplete fics that are both so compelling that I regularly forget why I never finished them, and then I try again, and remember that I didn’t get interrupted, the author just hasn’t updated further. The Case of the Missing Detective edges out Fallout for the status of “favorite” though, because of all the little details. Like Ran figures out who Conan is, and then Ai crumbling and telling her everything. And when they realize Conan has been kidnapped and Yuusaku goes to literal government contacts (like we know he’s well connected, but the anime never really shows it besides being friends with the police) and Yukiko goes straight to Vermouth... And the criminals are so horribly competent that if the over-competent and astoundingly well-connected Kudou family successfully retrieves their son, it will be by the skin of their teeth. Which is amazing. DC is the type of anime where the main characters are all protected by plot armor, so there’s rarely much tension even in “high stakes” moments. And having all the teens working together to find Conan (including Kaito) and being suspicious of each other... And the teaser about Heiji’s prophetic dream that apparently was planned for chapter 12 and might give them more clues... Plus Jodie recognizing that Yukiko was in disguise and suspecting Vermouth (which is closer to the truth than anyone will realize once they figure out that she’s not Vermouth)... Agh. Utukki does a phenomenal job with details and with cliffhangers and if/when this ever updates again I will be thrilled, and then also immediately go spinning in circles about how the next cliffhanger is going to resolve, and it’ll be great.

And I can’t go into a list of favorite fics while leaving out Love is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies, by @davetheshady but it’s a bit of an odd case because I’m not particularly in either fandom. I enjoy WTNV of course, but I’m so far behind it’s hard to engage, and although I let Love is All You Need convince me to try the Dresden Files books, by the end of the third book I was just sick of the main character, and without caring about the books (or the protagonist) it’s even harder to engage in the fandom. Still, this is one of my favorite fics, and is almost more-canon to me than the original WTNV podcast is. I can’t leave it out. (....Also this is the fic my “favorite wip”, above, is spun off from and why it’s a three-way crossover for two characters.)

[professortennant]

Sam/Jack Rec List, Pt. 1

This is mostly for me in case my bookmarks are lost but yeah! I’ve gone through like 90% of AO3, a good chunk of ff.net, and I just dived into LJ. But since I have 103 fics already bookmarked, I’m just gonna put this list up first and then add to it later. 

Plz read the tags of each fic to avoid stuff you don’t wanna read. If you read something and love it, GO TELL THE AUTHOR SO THEY WRITE MORE.

Absolute Fucking Favorites (aka I have read these more times than I feel comfortable admitting)

We Made It Series: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.

Taking Christmas Off: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.

The Dreams We Left Behind: The day Sam Carter marries Pete Shanahan is not the worst day of Jack’s life; he’s already lived that day. But that doesn't make it easy.

Like Kissing a Stranger: There is not one day he spends on this planet, or any other, that his mouth doesn't get him into trouble.(An episode tag for Point Of View.)

Retrospective: Sam doesn’t give it a name, this feeling. She doesn’t even think about it much, preferring to glimpse it obliquely from the corner of her eye. It’s a secret delight that she shares with no one, scarcely even herself.One story in eight parts charting Sam and Jack’s relationship from the start of S1 to the end of S8.

The Short Straw: She hadn't set out to cheat, certainly, but had thought that she'd at least be able to interpret her own work in a way that would lead to victory. (Tag for Shades of Grey)

Post-Eps/Episode Tags (except for Threads, which is its own category)

The Price of Edora: Sam suffers the consequences of pushing herself too hard in order to bring Jack back from Edora. 

For Just One Taste of This: After that, though, things got tricky and dangerous because they pushed a little more and went a little (a lot) further off that deep end, and soon it was the two of them alone in the empty barracks and this wasn’t wrong, was it, just sitting side by side in the darkness? (Post Divide and Conquer)

Let Your Demons Run: (here can't be that many eyes in the building that haven't noticed her. Post-ep for Entity.

Midnight at the Oasis: What if Abydos wasn't destroyed, and Jack and Sam really did go to Skaara's wedding? A short AU based on the wonderful (!) exchange among the three at the beginning of Full Circle.

Thyself, Unknown: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging. Beneath the Surface 

Unlearn your Stars: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars. (Beneath the Surface)

Transcendental: Alternate Sam and Jack who got stranded in the alternate timeline in Moebius. 

The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn’t. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini.

The Rainy Season: Tag for The Light. Their arguing was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Icarus Ascending: What if Jack and Sam didn't keep it in the room after all? A/U tag to Divide and Conquer. 

The Space Between: There's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be. (tag for Death Knell.)

Mimesis: Jack tries to help Carter deal with her time spent with Fifth and the Replicators.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: "You volunteering to come with me, Carter?" Sam and Jack deal (or don't) with the creation of mini!Jack.

The Breaking Point: Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.

Window on a Room: The first time around, Sam had found that face the Colonel was making to be endearing, in the increasingly problematic way she found pretty much everything he did to be endearing. The second time, she had found it alarming - not the Colonel specifically, of course, just the fact that she’d already experienced that exact moment not ten hours earlier. She went from being alarmed on the second loop to being frustrated, baffled and discouraged in subsequent loops as their attempts to stop the looping had all failed. And now that they had settled into this routine, with Sam and Teal’c, loop after loop, learning to translate the altar text themselves, well now she was just tired. Not even the Colonel’s problematically endearing face was helping.Another loop, she thought to herself. Here we go again.

black holes and revelations: It’s late and dark and as far as she’s concerned, the world has stopped for them (they’d done the Earth a few favors, it's time one was returned).

Lifelines: Everyone expects her to be so resilient--but beneath her calm exterior seethe emotions beyond her control and understanding. Months post "Beneath the Surface", Sam finally has to face it all, and find a way to accept the way things have to be.

Reflections on a Broken Surface: Episode tag to Beneath the Surface. How Sam and Jack became a couple in the ep. 

Tilting at Windmills: Jack's struggling to deal with the events of Euronda and Alar's people. Angry, depressed, and alone, he needs Sam's help to find his way home, literally, and figuratively.

untitled: Sam/Jack, word prompt- 'never' Episode tag to Death Knell

the art of reincarnation: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.

Cracks in the Glass: Doctor Carter has stepped through the mirror-seeking refuge from her ravaged world. Her presence forces Sam and Jack to question their own decisions. Sam and Jack focused episode enhancement to "Point of View".

Before the Invitation: A chance meeting in the commissary leads to some unintended revelations. (Set just prior to 'Nemesis')

Threads

Full Disclosure: She looks at him with that complex expression that’s punctuated their relationship ever since Pete barged onto the scene. The one that looks like a question, or a plea – the one he’s never really understood and has never dared pursue.

Down to the Bone: She knows now, what’s essential.

Sooner: Some bonus scenes for "Threads," because a lot went on in and around that episode that we just didn't get to see.

an angel came down: The first Christmas after her father dies is rough. The second Christmas after her father dies is better.

Breathe In: It wasn’t an immediate thing, despite what people thought. They didn’t jump each other the second SG1 was on vacation, with her emotionally vulnerable after her father’s death and no longer engaged, or him now free of SG Command and DC-bound.

Sam or Jack are Tortured/Abused (but it ends happily)

Primary Emotion: After seventeen weeks of torture in a Goa'uld prison, Samantha Carter is rescued by SG-1. In the time that follows she must relearn how to relate to her team, reassess her relationships with both herself and others, and decide whether or not she'll continue to step through the Stargate. Luckily she's got the benefit of a good psychologist and the love of a great man.

Character: SG1 is kidnapped by an alien king who needs Sam to perpetuate his bloodline & will do anything to possess her. The team must find a way to escape before she pays the ultimate price for her defiance. 

Compos Mentis: After Colonel O'Neill is stranded on a seemingly friendly planet, it's up to his team to rescue him. Who they find, though, isn't the man they left behind.

Crawl from the Chasm: After Jack's experiences in Ba'al's Abyss, he struggles to find peace. Angsty Jack/Sam Ship.

After All: They’d been trapped for a month. He’d been tortured within an inch of her life. And then their roles had been reversed.

All We Need of Hell: Jack is captured and tortured and when he returns, he just doesn’t see the point in following the regs anymore--Sam is essential. And he convinces her to forget the regs, too. (Dark fic). (chap 2)

Aliens Made Them Do It

Auctions and Consequences: Slavery has been abolished for good reason, but apparently not everyone got the memo… landing Sam and Jack in hot water.

Auction and Reaction (sequel to the above): Jack manages to get himself captured and Sam is sent to negotiate for his freedom. Unfortunately, the matriarch in charge of the male slaves is unconvinced of her claim and threatens to keep Jack as her personal slave.

Relief: How they'd managed to gate to a planet right in the middle of their annual fertility festival was beyond him.

in doorways and dreams i run to you: They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.Light.There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her.

Beautiful Far Away: While on a routine exploratory mission, Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Samantha Carter get caught up in a children's game that turns out to be the beginning of Rorilian marriage rites. When seismic activity starts to rock the village, the local leaders demand the ritual be seen through to its natural conclusion to avoid further angering their gods. Sam's equipment suggests the tremors are caused by an unidentifiable metal, but her science seems to be a point of contention amongst the leaders. She's convinced she needs just a little more time to figure out what is happening on the planet. Unfortunately, that means she's jumping into a ritual marriage with her new commanding officer. What could possibly go wrong?

Xanadu: The team travels offworld to take care of some mining negotiations, only to meet with an unanticipated challenge on P3X-427.

5 Times Fic

Five Times Jack Sees Sam Out of Uniform

The Nature We Leave Behind Us: 5 Times Daniel (and Teal’c) find out or suspect about Sam and Jack

Five Times Jack Came Close to Breaking the Frat Regs with Sam

Desperation: 5 times Jack kisses Sam

Ambient: 3 morning-afters that they miss and 1 they don’t.

5 missing ship scenes from s9/s10

5 times jack asked sam out and 1 time he didn’t have to

Stranded/Retired/Moved Off-World

My Scars Healed (aka the Cottage AU): Abandoned off-world, living is about more than just survival.

In Media Res: When Sam and Jack are taken captive and put to work in a mining camp, that turns out to be the least of their troubles. Forced by circumstance to live in close proximity, their time as captives has consequences neither one foresees.

Compliance: The end comes fast. One moment it’s a normal day with paperwork and bad coffee and the next it’s a scramble for the event horizon as the Mountain comes down around them. The base empties out with surprising efficiency, and by the time Jack hangs up the red phone on the last conversation he’ll ever have with the President, only Carter and Daniel and a couple techs are still in the gate room, the last of the supplies being sent through to their fall back site.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Dear Airline, I was marooned on an alien planet…

And then I dreamt of yes: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word. 

The Final Straw: Sam's injured and trapped off-world. 

Twilight: General O'Neill gets ansty to do some Gate travel, but a natural phenomenon on another world causes problems and changes things

Bird Stealing Bread: Jack had actually imagined being stranded off-world quite a few times. But he really, really, really hadn't counted on being stranded off-world with Sam. And Pete.

Under the Sun: ABANDONED FIC BUT IT’S SO GOOD. When lightning strikes the DHD and strands Sam and Jack alone on a planet, they must rely on one another to get through until help can arrive. Soon, though, they discover they're not alone on the planet and things change. Suddenly they're thrust into local politics and Sam is drafted to help save the locals' lives. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, all of it can help them get home.

Total AU

String Theory: Dr. Samantha Carter joins the SGC and discovers a life she never expected.

Imprimatura: Even in a completely different reality, where a strictly enforced color-based caste system stands between them, some things remain the same.

How to Start a Fire: She denies it's physical attraction. He denies it's anything but. Sam/Jack. Changeling Universe.

Convergence Series: Jack O’Neill is a man waiting to die, and she’s the only one brave enough not to look away.

Right as rain: Jack never went on the Abydos mission. Charlie never died. But when Jack accidentally activates a device that Kawalsky brings by the Academy, he catches the interest of a certain Major Carter. Soon he finds himself in for one hell of a ride, and if aliens and space travel and weird DNA weren't crazy enough, he might actually be falling in love with a theoretical astrophysicist...

The Dating Game: Catherine Langford had been instrumental in getting AU Sam/Jack together in There But For The Grace of God

Defining Family: Set after "Ripple Effect". What happens to Janet and the rest of the alternate SG-1 team after the episode? How does it affect our reality?

Worlds Apart: An Ancient device sends Jack and Sam to a world where everything is just a little bit... wrong. Why? Can they cope with the differences? And, most importantly, can they find their way back?

I don’t know what to categorize these as but they’re amazing

Deep City Lights: He picks her up in a blue convertible. (Road trip fic where they say ‘fuck the regs’ and then remember the regs)

we build then we break (and build up again): Sam’s last mission on SG-1, and the life that follows.

the slow revelation of self: In the beginning there was sex. And it was good.

untitled: on a mission, sam and jack are painting their mark on a wall.

things not dreamed: Daniel doesn't understand their need to fly. 

Cultural Drift: Six days before the shit hit the fan and nothing was ever the same again, Daniel fell over a tablet on P3X-324. That was two years ago.

Concentric Unto Thee: Her attempts at normality have never worked before, and Jack won't stand for any attempts to apply the logic of command to their relationship.

the lesson: Jack and Sam haven’t wasted the three years they’ve been cut off from Earth…and though the price is high, they manage to teach that lesson to another couple who badly needed to learn it. 

Escape Pod: "I just need," shift, "to move," shift, "a little." (Accidental Stimulation fic) Tonight: It's been too many years of it, the death, the resurrection, the sheer and aching loneliness, the hurt that comes from walking away.

Rocket Fuel: Sam and Jack get together after Heroes but also AU + Christmas.

Home Economics:  He would never have imagined that the biggest problem Sam Carter would have with his house would be his toaster.

Atlantis/Continuum

Gravity Always Wins in the End: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.

Backlit:  Carter turns 43 years old on day 6 of a 14-day run to P98-007 aboard the General Hammond. The only events that mark the occasion are the little note Daniel must have stuffed into her pack before she left, a cheerful "Happy Birthday, Ma'am" from her second over a morning cup of coffee, and a long stare at herself in the mirror after she washes her face before bed. It's not like she expected more.

Yesterday’s Life: She feels frayed and faded, like a scrap of fabric accidentally discarded and forced to weather the elements. S/J, spoilers for Stargate: Continuum.

Distance: Sam contemplates the difficulties of a long distance relationship with Jack on Valentine's Day...

Post-Series

Look Again Into Your Heart: It's not that cold, not by the standard of some of the places she's been in the last decade or so of her life, but then again, she's not used to braving the weather in heels and an evening dress.

Follow the Star of the North: When Jack talked about losing himself in Minnesota, Sam never really understood the appeal.

Radio Silence: “It’s Mitchell.”He grabbed the phone out of her hand, smiling at the horrified expression on her face when he flicked it open and held it to his ear.“This is General O’Neill. Is the world ending?”

Rainy Days: Sam and Jack spend a rainy day at the cabin

The Lies You Feed Yourself: They simply aren’t part of each other’s worlds anymore. They haven’t been for years. Jack and Sam three years after they leave the SGC.

Bygones: He's a man of few words. Sam, however, wants to hear a couple of specific ones - at least once. It takes another woman to help her understand just how her husband communicates. 

Twelve Years Two Weeks: She had finally 'switched off'. It had taken her a few days to rid herself of the itch that she was neglecting a to-do list the size of her arm.

DC Series: SG-1 is moving on, but Sam is standing still.

Interlude: Jack turns up unexpectedly, and he and Sam make an important decision.

fly me to the moon: Jack is baffled. What do you do for a woman's 40th birthday when she routinely explores alien planets, has blown up a sun, and raced in the Loop of Kon Garat? Give her the moon of course. 

Folding a Map: Distance makes Jack an unhappy camper.

Taur’i Whispers: "He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her." - Sam/Jack, romance and a bit of angst and hurt/comfort

Blue Dark: The sun’s barely peeking above the horizon and already she’s up, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, her index finger circling the rim of her coffee cup.“And we have to go to this?” she asks, taking a sip of the hot beverage.

Un-fish: “Caught any un-fish?” she asked softly.Their lives would never be normal because of little things like fish that were or were not there and sometimes he wondered who had done what exactly to his pond to drive the fish away. He knew better than to ask, unwilling to listen to her explain to him the various possibilities of… whatever.

Real Life: This was what she'd been waiting for, held out for all those years. Someone -- him -- to come home with every night, to sink into after saving the world or spending three days dug in on an alien planet with fifty-odd Jaffa between her team and the 'gate, someone who knew just how she liked to be touched... She rolled onto her back, offering sleepy kisses when his lips crossed hers, sighing when his wandering hands brushed across her belly... 

[elrhiarhodan]

2016 - A Year in Fanworks

By the Numbers (2015 numbers in parentheses) Stories: 82 (49) Words: 466,385 (288,525) Monthly Average: 38,865 (24,044) Daily Average: 1,278 (790) Longest: 162,000 for a story that I don't want to announce here (more about that below) Shortest: A variety of Tumblr prompt fills at 100 to 300 words each To compare, my 2015 Review | 2014 Review | 2013 Review | 2012 Review | 2011 Review | 2010 Review Total number of words since 2010: 2,554,295 The rest of this exercise in navel-gazing is under the cuts. 

The List of 2016 Stories January – 7 The Slow Hand of Time The Slow Burn of Anger Beneath the Words The Slow Dance of Madness First Time, Forever Like a Line in the Sand A Knotted Cord Untying February – 6 A transparent house that you and I built Recompense A Sticky Situation Bitter Hearts Well, This Could Have Gone Better You Are Not Alone In This March – 2 The New S.T.A.R. Labs Harrison Wells Eats Snacks April – 5 Early Days of a Better Nation Message From the Dead The Scent of Speed The Silence Between the Birdsong So On We Go May – 34 A Smile in the Darkness Windows To the Soul A Dark and Unwilling Desire Mine In His Pants The Act of Creation Running to a Standstill Sweeter Than Candy on a Stick A Most Improbable Miracle As Brothers We Will Stand It's a Thin Line (Between Love and Hate) Crazy from the Heat In the Winter Newton's Second Law Time On My Hands Still Alive The Braille of a Blind Affection (memories pursue me) And The Storm Watch Brews (a concert of kings) When it Comes to the Bennett Family Legacy, Size Matters The Value of Experimentation Sons of the Silent Age Blood-Stained Hands, Blood-Stained Heroes Whatever You Desire Hour Follows Hour (like water follows water) A Stolen Gift Hour of the Slack and Escape Interlude, With Adults Eternity's Sunrise The Edge of the Coin Join the Club Her Barry, His Barry I Like You, Too Love's As Short as Summer Nights The Race of Their Lives June – 4 In the Silence of the Night (innocence is here) The Best Laid Plans We Stumble, We Falter (but we're no different from anyone) In the Kingdom of the Blind July - 2 Allsorts Ani L'Dodi, v'Dodi Li August – 4 I Never Dreamed That I'd Love Somebody Like You (The Wicked Game Remix) Pleasure and Prerogative A Well-Earned Punishment The Central City Examiner - Society Pages (The Marriage Bargain) September – 3 Show Me What You're Good At (and you're good at everything) Tugging at the Darkness We Two Are One October – 3 You Only Kiss Twice You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies Dreamers With Empty Hands November – 4 New Tricks Birdsong Before the Dawn I'll Come Running You'll Find Magic Wherever You Look December – 7 We Followed an Unlikely Star Call Out My Name Whatever May Come, Whatever May Go (don't give up) Cast Your Fate To the Wind Don't Let it Bring You Down What's in a Name The Slow Bite of Desire Overview As usual, for 2016, I have included stories published on my journal and AO3 from January 1, 2016 until December 31, 2016. It includes stories that were works in progress/unpublished in 2015 (or earlier) and published in 2016, and doesn’t include any comment fic or other works that were not published as stand-alones on my journal or AO3, or any unpublished works in progress, or any completed but unpublished works. Ruminations 2015 was a low point for word count (my lowest full-year total) and there were a lot of contributing factors. When I did my analysis last year, I attributed much of it to my workload and big writing projects. In retrospect, there was another factor I was not willing to consider. I was, to be honest, burning out on White Collar. Six years, two million words of fan fiction spread over nearly 700 stories - it's not surprising I felt like the story well was running dry. (And yes, I know that 288k is still a very respectable number of words, but it was a low point for me and kind of felt like a failure.) So, what was different for 2016? Well - a bright and shiny new fandom! Last year, during the time I took off for the winter holidays, I discovered The Flash. I'd tried watching The Arrow on Netflix a few times, but couldn't really get into it. The Flash was a completely different kettle of fish and it had something that was like catnip for me: a curious relationship between the young hero and a very shady older mentor. In describing it to my White Collar friends, I said it pulled me in the way the Neal/Alder grabbed me. I got hit by the plot bunnies in early January and started writing. The words poured out of me like water and the faucet still hasn't turned off. Of the eighty-two stories, sixty-five were for The Flash, eleven were for White Collar and five were Flash RPS. And for the first time in three years, I did the full complement of MMOM – 31 stories in 31 days, and unlike prior years, I deliberately didn't try to limit myself to 300-word ficlets. Some of those stories were quite meaty (please pardon the pun!), and my efforts for the Merry Month of Masturbation contributed significantly to my total word-count for the year. Although I only wrote eleven White Collar stories and did not participate in this year's Big Bang, that isn't to say that I'm not writing White Collar anymore - far from it. I'm just a lot more selective about my stories. I'm continuing established 'verses like Wonder(ful) Years and Dragon'verse, and I hope to get bunnied for Gloriana, too. It's a heady thing - having a new fandom. If there's one regret - it's that there's no real presence for The Flash on LJ - it's pretty much all on that shiny shithole known as Tumblr. I don't think I'll ever quite get used to that. The Year End Meme Questions… And now to answer the questions that everyone asks themselves… 1. Favorite. Oh, that's really kind of hard. I recently did an Ask the Author meme, and I'd picked The Slow Dance of Madness as the favorite, but in retrospect, I have to reconsider. I think I'm going to have to say A transparent house that you and I built, which I wrote for the poetry_fiction challenge. But that's not quite right either. I really do want to tout the massive story I wrote and published (in sorta-secret) and I discuss more in a bit, but that's not fair. Maybe the whole Dominance Hierarchy series, which started out as a bit of tumblr prompt fun and became something far too lyrical? 2. Best. Since I can't really keep signal boosting a story that no one can yet read, I'm going to have to say that As Brothers We Will Stand is my best story of the year. It was a long and plotty epic that started out from a simple premise – what if Barry hadn't been able to rescue Harry from Zoom at the end of S2.14 – Escape From Earth-2. It was supposed to be short and smutty but got legs and lots and lots of moving pieces. I'm proud of how everything tied together and nothing was left hanging to explain in a sequel or timestamp. I'm particularly proud of the sex scenes – which is not something I ordinarily tout about my fic. This was (believe it or not), the first time I wrote three men in a bed, and I'm seriously pleased with how it all worked out. 3. Most Fun. Easy to pick - Harrison Wells Eats Snacks. I'd been binge-listening to the M.A.T.E.S. podcast (Mike and Tom Eat Snacks) and that infected my brain. And I should make honorable mention to both The New S.T.A.R. Labs (Harry needs to make some money and decides to invent over-engineered sex toys) and You'll Find Magic Wherever You Look (Cisco invents a new gun, Harry is transfigured, and much angsty cuteness ensues). 4. Most Under-appreciated. One of my early Flash stories got very little love, and I can understand why. A Knotted Cord Untying was a fusion between The Flash and Ed (the light romantic comedy from the late '90s that made Tom Cavanagh a star). I resurrected the original Harrison Wells and his wife, Tess Morgan, and set them in Stuckeyville. I thought I'd done a clever job of integrating the two worlds, but the fandom voted with their silence (and someone I respected made an off-hand comment about not really liking these types of fusions, that they 'never really work anyway' and so my writer's soul kind of died a little at that). 5. Sexiest. Like I said above, I wrote all thirty-one days of MMOM, and that's a lot of smut. And almost all of my Flash fic is shippy and sexy (looking at the list of stories, out of the sixty-two, I think that maybe three are purely gen). So picking the sexiest will be hard. But I think I'm going to have to say that it's a tie between The Slow Dance of Madness, which has the most creative sex scene I've ever written, I Never Dreamed That I'd Love Somebody Like You (the Wicked Game remix), which is a sex pollen story, and the entirety of the Dominance Hierarchy series, which is really all about smut (until you get to the third story, then it's smut and heartbreak). 6. Holy Crap, That’s Wrong Even for You. The past few years, this category has been filled by something in my Transformations genre, something usually unbelievably cracky. But not this year, because this year, I wrote some seriously smutty smut, including a story that involves daddy-kink and fantasy incest. Yeah, VERY VERY wrong. Hour Follows Hour (like water follows water). Read at your own peril. And it's het. 7. Hardest to Write. I don't know if any story was particularly difficult to write this year. Words flowed like water. I was stymied a bit when I was writing my White Collar Pairings story The Best Laid Plans – I couldn't seem to find a focus for it, but when I did – it simply exploded out of me (pun NOT intended). I also had some trouble getting started on one of my Fic-Can-Ukah stories, the long anticipated wedding story for The Wonder(ful) Years - We Followed an Unlikely Star, if just because I'd written the engagement and the honeymoon, as well as so many references to the actual wedding that I struggled to find something fresh to say. 8. Biggest Disappointment. I can't think of a single story I'd want to rewrite. 9. Biggest Surprise. Okay, now I get to talk a little about the epic story that was published in a place that no one will find it. It's called Truth out of a Lie and it wasn't supposed to be 162k words. It wasn't even supposed to be half that length. Or a third. It was, at its inception, supposed to be about 40k and when I started writing it, I wondered if I was overestimating myself. I had one square left on my Gen Bingo card to make a blackout and instead of taking the easy way out, a conversation with my enabler in chief made me flip the script and take an unexpected path. Another surprise was just how easy it was to write – the story simply poured out of me. I started writing on June 22 and finished the story in chief on October 28 – about 154k. There were two scenes I needed to write and in the writing, I realized I wanted to make some significant character changes, which entailed another whole chunk of words. That was also something I've never done – gone back and shifted a major plot point. And so, what's it about? It's the origin story for a series I created during MMOM - EoBarry Revealed - where Eobard and Barry are happily married, immortal speedsters. It's a close canon A/U – which means it tracks with canon events through seasons One and Two, but some important things are different. Basically, Eobard is about eight-five percent less murderous. So, when is this really going to get published in my space (it's already published in a comm not to be named, but is available if you're diligent, but please don't – it's not beta'd and likely full of mistakes and gaping plotholes)? Soon. My beta-reader is faced with a rather Herculean task of editing this monster and that takes time. I'm also very strict about not publishing a story until it's done and if my beta reader has to go back and make recommendations in the early part of the story after reading the end, I'll be screwed if I've already started publishing. When it is ready, it will get two chapters a week and there are 36 or 40 chapters (I really don't remember at this point). But they will come without fail. 10. Riskiest. I am going to have to say my first Flash fanfic, The Slow Hand of Time. It was a big risk because I was writing for a brand new fandom and I hadn't consumed all of the available canon. I just got smacked in the face with EoBarry feels and had to write it. Looking Forward… Any Story You’d Like to Rewrite: Nope. I'm pretty satisfied with my writing in 2016. How Will New Canon Change Your Writing: No more new canon for White Collar, which still makes me very sad. But new canon for The Flash starts arriving at the end of the month. I'm definitely looking forward to it, but I don't know if it will affect my writing. I'm basically EoBarry trash right now, and unless EoWells makes another appearance, I'll be writing A/Us until the end of time. Goals for 2017: None. Just write what I enjoy writing. Avoid challenges that make me anxious. And that’s the 2016 Year in Review. Acknowledgements, most heartfelt As always, I must thank my dearest sinfulslasher, who keeps enabling me in the hopes that someday I'll write that Neal/Satchmo story for her. And also, my bestie, theatregirl7299 who picks me up and dusts me off when I fall down. And I must acknowledge my delightful new friend – @timeforalongstory, who rolls around with me in the EoBarry trashcan like no one else, who enables me to write the wildest headcanon and keeps me going with the most amazing feedback. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! And to everyone who reads my stories, thank you, thank you and thank you again – my appreciation for you is boundless. I haven't been so good at responding to feedback as I want to be, but please know that I cherish every kind thought and word you leave for me.

[ao3feed-crowley]

Road Trip Games and Love

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Nd53OF

by rgfalso

One week after the Armaggedidn't, Crowley and Aziraphale go out for a picnic out of London. Unfortunatelly for them, they get caught on a really nasty traffic jam. With nothing to do to pass the time, they engage in some of the most classical road trip games. However, what was initially inteded to be just innocent games starts to delve into the Thing™️ between them, the thing that both of them are very aware of, but neither dares to speak of it. Cue absurd ammounts of flirting, pining and dancing around the issue.

Who knows, maybe it will lead them to actually talk about the elephant in the room (who's actually tired of being ignored for millenia now).

Words: 4431, Chapters: 1/5, Language: English

Fandoms: Good Omens

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)

Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Additional Tags: Mutual Pining, Flirting, Music as a Plot Device, road trip games, The Bentley Ships It, Queen - Freeform, rated teen for cursing and vague mentions of sex, but there's no actual smut, Car Fic - as in 90 percent of it takes place in the car, no beta we saunter vaguely downwards like Crowley

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Nd53OF