#what a time to be a stats analysis fan

[bad-traffic-smp-ideas]

Double-life style damage sharing but players share different kinds of damage with different people. You share blast damage with one player, axe damage with a different player and so on. You need to work out what damage you share with who and try to make sure they don't die to that specifically. Top strategy would probably be to immediately lava trap whoever you share fall damage with. Would be an absolute nightmare the moment there's a large fight with multiple elements at play. And a nightmare to code I'd imagine.

Fans mapping out who shares what types of damage as they're revealed throughout the series

[mecachrome]

📊 LANDOSCAR AO3 STATS (may 2025)

notes

sorry this literally took 2 weeks to write... unfortunately the data was retrieved april 28 and it is now may 12.

other work: i previously wrote a stats overview that covered landoscar's fic growth and breakout in 2023 :) i've kept some of the formatting and graphs that i showed there, while other things have been removed or refined because i felt they'd become redundant or unnecessary (aka they were basically just a reflection of fandom growth in general, and not unique or interesting to landoscar as a ship specifically).

methodology: i simply scraped the metadata for every fic in the landoscar tag (until april 28, 2025) and then imported it into google sheets to clean, with most visualizations done in tableau. again, all temporal data is by date updated (not posted) unless noted otherwise. this is because the date that appears on the parent view of the ao3 archives is the updated one, so it's the only feasible datapoint to collect for 3000+ fics.

content: this post does not mention any individual authors or concern itself with kudos, hits, comments, etc. i purely describe archive growth and overall analysis of metadata like word count and tagging metrics.

cleaning: after importing my data, i standardized ship spelling, removed extra "814" or "landoscar" tags, and merged all versions of one-sided, background, implied, past, mentioned etc. into a single "(side)" modifier. i also removed one fic entirely from the dataset because the "loscar" tag was being mistakenly wrangled as landoscar, but otherwise was not actually tagged as landoscar. i also removed extra commentary tags in the ships sets that did not pertain to any ships.

overall stats

before we get into any detailed distributions, let's first look at an overview of the archive as of 2025! in their 2-and-change years as teammates, landoscar have had over 3,409 fics written for them, good enough for 3rd overall in the f1 archives (behind lestappen and maxiel).

most landoscar fics are completed one-shots (although note that a one-shot could easily be 80k words—in fact they have about 30 single-chapter fics that are at least 50k words long), and they also benefit from a lot of first-tagged fic, which is to say 82.3% of landoscar-tagged fics have them as the first ship, implying that they aren't often used as a fleeting side pairing and artificially skewing perception of their popularity. in fact, over half of landoscar fics are PURELY tagged as landoscar (aka otp: true), with no other side pairings tagged at all.

this percentage has actually gone down a bit since 2023 (65.5%), which makes sense since more lando and oscar ships have become established and grown in popularity over the years, but it's also not a very big difference yet...

ship growth

of course, landoscar have grown at a frankly terrifying rate since 2023. remember this annotated graph i posted comparing their growth during the 2023 season to that of carlando and loscar, respectively their other biggest ship at the time? THIS IS HER NOW:

yes... that tiny squished down little rectangle... (wipes away stray tear) they grow up so fast. i also tried to annotate this graph to show other "big" landoscar moments in the timeline since, but i honestly struggled with this because they've just grown SO exponentially and consistently that i don't even feel like i can point to anything as a proper catalyst of production anymore. that is to say, i think landoscar are popular enough now that they have a large amount of dedicated fans/writers who will continuously work on certain drafts and stories regardless of what happens irl, so it's hard to point at certain events as inspiring a meaningful amount of work.

note also that this is all going by date updated, so it's not a true reflection of ~growth~ as a ficdom. thankfully ao3 does have a date_created filter that you can manually enter into the search, but because of this limitation i can't create graphs with the granularity and complexity that scraping an entire archive allows me. nevertheless, i picked a few big ships that landoscar have overtaken over the last 2 years and created this graph using actual date created metrics!!!

this is pretty self-explanatory of course but i think it's fun to look at... :) it's especially satisfying to see how many ships they casually crossed over before the end of 2024.

distributions

some quick graphs this time. rating distribution remains extremely similar to the 2023 graph, with explicit fic coming out on top at 28%:

last time i noted a skew in ratings between the overall f1 rpf tag and the landoscar tag (i.e. landoscar had a higher prevalence of e fic), but looking at it a second time i honestly believe this is more of a cultural shift in (f1? sports rpf? who knows) fandom at large and not specific to landoscar as a ship — filtering the f1 rpf tag to works updated from 2023 onward shows that explicit has since become the most popular rating in general, even when excluding landoscar-tagged fics. is it because fandom is getting more horny in general, or because the etiquette surrounding what constitutes t / m / e has changed, or because people are less afraid to post e fic publicly and no longer quarantine it to locked livejournal posts? or something else altogether? Well i don't know and this is a landoscar stats post so it doesn't matter but that could be something for another thought experiment. regardless because of that i feel like further graphs aren't really necessary 🤷‍♀️

onto word distribution:

still similar to last time, although i will note that there's a higher representation of longfic now!!! it might not seem like much, but i noted last year that 85% of landoscar fics were under 10k & 97% under 25k — these numbers are now 78% and 92% respectively, which adds up in the grand scheme of a much larger archive. you'll also notice that the prevalence of <1k fic has gone down as well.

for the fun of it here's the wc distribution but with a further rating breakdown; as previously discussed you're more likely to get G ratings in flashfic because there's less wordspace to Make The Porn Happen. of course there are nuances to this but that's just a broad overview

side ships

what other ships are landoscar shippers shipping these days??? a lot of these ships are familiar from last time, but there are two new entries in ham/ros and pia/sai overtaking nor/ric and gas/lec to enter the top 10. ships that include at least one of lando or oscar are highlighted in orange:

of course, i pulled other 814-adjacent ships, but unfortunately i've realized that a lot of them simply aren't that popular/prevalent (context: within the 814 tag specifically) so they didn't make the top 10... because of that, here's a graph with only ships that include lando or oscar and have a minimum of 10 works within the landoscar tag:

eta: other primarily includes oscar & lily and maxf & lando. lando doesn't really have that many popular pairings within landoscar shippers otherwise...

i had wanted to explore these ships further and look at their growth/do some more in depth breakdowns of their popularity, but atm they're simply not popular enough for me to really do anything here. maybe next year?!

that being said, i did make a table comparing the prevalence of side ships within the 814 tag to the global f1 archives, so as to contextualize the popularity of each ship (see 2023). as usually, maxiel is very underrepresented in the landoscar tag, with galex actually receiving quite a boost compared to before!

additional tags

so last time i only had about 400 fics to work with and i did some analysis on additional tags / essentially au tagging. however, the problem is that there are now 3000 fics in my set, and the limitations of web scraping means that i'm not privy to the tag wrangling that happens in Da Backend of ao3. basically i'm being given all the raw versions of these au tags, whereas on ao3 "a/b/o" and "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "au - alpha/beta/omega" and "alternate universe - a/b/o" are all being wrangled together. because it would take way too long for me to do all of this manually and i frankly just don't want to clean that many fics after already going through all the ship tags, i've decided to not do any au analysis because i don't think it would be an accurate reflection of the data...

that being said, i had one new little experiment! as landoscar get more and more competitive, i wanted to chart how ~angsty~ they've gotten as a ship on ao3. i wanted to make a cumulative graph that shows how the overall fluff % - angst % difference has shifted over time, but ummmm... tableau and i had a disagreement. so instead here is a graph of the MoM change in angst % (so basically what percentage of the fics updated in that month specifically were tagged angst?):

the overall number is still not very drastic at all and fluff still prevails over angst in the landoscar archive. to be clear, there are 33.2% fics tagged some variation of fluff and 21.4% fics tagged some variation of angst overall, so there's a fluff surplus of 11.8%. but there has definitely been a slight growth in angst metrics over the past few months!

—

i will leave this here for now... if there's anything specific that you're interested in lmk and i can whip it up!!! hehe ty for reading 🧡

[starreyblueberry]

Tbh I think the way the fairly odd parents fandom treats timmy on tumblr vs twitter is extremely different. On tumblr you find more of a analysis on timmy as a kid and how he was abused by the ones he loved, and thus lashed out most of the time with his wishes (aka he never actually got his basic needs met and as a result wishes for outlandish things without thinking of the consequences afterwards). While on twitter people are mainly focused on how timmy stressed out cosmo and Wanda a lot (which I have my own takes on that) and how he was a “annoying” child, especially compared to Hazel who is more level headed/emotionally mature.

I think it’s kinda dumb LMAOO, I’m not bashing the twitter side of the fandom per say but I think it’s lacking the respect and proper analysis of the original show, I see alot of viral tweets that are just kinda calling timmy a nuance with no dimension in him and it really feels like it’s lacking taste. Yea sure it’s a kid show and it’s not THAT deep but it kinda is at the same time, sure alot of the gags are neglect, but it shows how normalized it was for timmy and I feel like a lot of people kinda ignore that. How alot of his life is just normalized to him, when in reality, he needed diff parents stat. Hazel and timmy are different kids with different home lives who I think shouldn’t be compared too, they both have their pros and cons to them and I think it’s rather silly to put the other down for the sake of the show. Timmy is my favorite and I have alot of opinions on who he is and what his impact was, but demeaning that and only saying “he was a bratty kid” misses the whole entire point of his character!!

It’s kinda why I prefer tumblr more over twitter on the FOP side of stuff LOLL (tho there are a lot of Timmy fans on twitter as well which makes me happy)

[zoloteh-volossya]

BG3 Fanfiction Statistics, Part 1

I’ve seen some discussions of BG3 fandom trends floating around tumblr that spoke from experience but lacked hard data to refer to. As a fan of Baldur’s Gate 3, fanfiction, and graphs, I therefore thought it would be neat and illustrative to go through AO3 and document some of the statistics this fandom.

I did a similar exercise back in January and posted the results here. However, I was a bit unhappy with this analysis – it was missing some data that I consider to be relevant, I didn’t end up discussing the results much, and I only posted it to reddit. Most discussions for the creative side of fandom seem to happen on tumblr, so I made this account to post it here.

I will try and be as transparent as possible when discussing how I obtained and processed this data. A copy of my spreadsheet can be found here and contains all of the data I will be discussing. Most of the data I feature in this essay will be presented as graphs. Below each graph I will discuss the patterns shown in the graph and provide what I believe to be some relevant and/or interesting number values. If you want to see all the numbers, please refer to my spreadsheet. If you don’t care about the numbers and/or my thoughts about them, feel free to skim through and just look at the charts!

A note before I start – I gathered this data between July 21, 2024 and July 24, 2024. It is out of date as of my writing this and will be even more out of date by the time you read it. However, I believe the general fandom trends will hold up over time – the same patterns that I observed in January are largely still present in July.

Due to the tumblr post image limit and my preponderance of graphs, I will be breaking this behemoth of an essay into two parts:

General Fandom Statistics, the Player Character, and the Women

The Men, a Character Comparison, and a Pairing Analysis

We are currently in part 1. Part 2 can be found at this link. The rest of part 1 is below the read more because this is very long.

GENERAL FANDOM STATS

This information was found by looking at the side bar when browsing Baldur’s Gate fics. Therefore, this data set includes fics from the previous two Baldur’s Gate games. However, given that the games were released in 1998 and 2000, respectively, most of the fanfiction for them was likely posted to FF.net and the error from including what little fic for them was posted to AO3 is likely small.

At the time of my data gathering, there were 31,043 Baldur’s Gate fics on AO3.

RATINGS

To the surprise of nobody in the BG3 fandom, Explicit fic is the largest category, at 38% of all fics produced. It’s followed by Mature (24%), Teen and Up (20%), General (12%) and Not Rated (6%). Not all of the Explicit and Mature fics are necessarily horny – those warnings also apply to extreme violence (hello, Dark Urge). But let’s be real, most of them are tagged that way for sex.

WARNINGS

Speaking of extreme violence, let’s take a look at the warnings used for fics in this fandom.

Just about half (50.2%) of BG fics have no warnings at all. About 17.6% have warnings for graphic depictions of violence – lower than I would have expected, honestly, for a video game that features as much murder as this one does (at least, how I play it...). About 5.4% of fics feature a warning for rape, 4.7% feature major character death, and 0.5% feature underage sex.

CATEGORIES

AO3 allows users to select any categories from a list of possible options (F/M, M/M, F/F, Gen, Other, and Multi). F/M, M/M, and F/F are pretty self explanatory, Gen fics don’t focus on a relationship, Multi fics focus on a relationship between three or more people, and Other is a catch all for fics that don’t fit into any of the previous categories very well. For shipping with nonbinary (NB) characters, I have seen a variety of approaches. Some people select the category closest to the NB character’s presentation, some select multiple categories, and some select Other.

One very useful tool that I will be introducing here is the use of “otp:true.” When “otp:true” is entered into the “Search within results” bar while filtering tags, AO3 will only return fics that have just one pairing tagged. This filters out all fics that have background pairings or multiple focus pairings. Results with “otp:true” are typically solely focused on that particular pairing.

With all that explanation out of the way, the results:

We can clearly see that the most common category for Baldur’s Gate fics is M/F, with 43.3% of all fics featuring a M/F pairing. 36.4% of all fics feature a M/M pairing, 10.6% feature a F/F pairing, 11.7% are more General, 8.0% feature Multiple people in a pairing, and 10.9% are Other. These percentages add up to more than 100% because a fic can be tagged with multiple categories.

Things change a bit when you filter for “otp:true” and only include fics that focus on just one pairing. In this case, M/M predominates, with a whopping 46.0% of fics. M/F follows with 31.2%, F/F with 11.1%, 7.7% are General, 9.7% are Other, and 3.0% are still tagged as Multi (presumably for fics where the only pairing is a threesome or such).

CHARACTERS

As a last look at more general content before I begin a deep dive into looking at the various characters, I took a look at the 30 most popular character tags.

This was a surprise to me the first time I looked at it in January. In the previous two video game fandoms I was in that had a player character (Mass Effect and Fire Emblem: Three Houses), the player character was the most popular character tag in that fandom. In this case, though, Astarion has the most fics that feature him, and by a pretty significant margin (~5,000 more fics than Tav). He appears in 63.0% of fics. Tav is next, at 46.7% of fics. Then we have the rest of the six Origin characters: Gale (34.5% of fics), Shadowheart (23.7%), Karlach (20.5%), Wyll (18.6%), and Lae’zel (15.9%), as well as Halsin (15.8%) and the Dark Urge (15.3%). That they all are next to each other makes sense, as fics that focus on one character or pairing will often tag the entire ensemble. Lae’zel only showing up 16% of the time seems low, though, for a member of the main cast. To me, this indicates that not many fics are true ensemble fics that include all of the main cast.

After this block of main characters, we drop a bit to Gortash, who shows up in 7.4% of fics. He’s the most popular villain by far, followed by Cazador (4.7%) and Raphael (4.6%). Orin only shows up in 2.9% of fics and Ketheric is featured in only 1.1% of fics.

Jaheira shows up in 4.4% of fics, but her values may include fics from the earlier Baldur’s Gate games. Poor Minthara is the 16th most tagged character and only shows up in 2.5% of fics. Rolan (a tiefling NPC) shows up in more fics than she does.

Despite being featured in previous Baldur’s Gate game fics as well as BG3, Minsc does not seem popular – he’s #25, being tagged in 1.3% of fics.

One thing I did note was the comparative lack of focus on the overarching plot of the game in BG3 fics. I’ll use the Emperor as a barometer for this, as it’s inextricably interwoven into everything having to do with the Absolute, the mysterious artifact, and our protagonists’ immunity to it. Yet, it only appears in 535 fics of over 31,000 – approximately 1.7% of all BG fics. This tells me that there isn’t much engagement with the actual illithid plot of the game in most fics – at least not to the extent where major plot relevant characters are being tagged.

CHARACTER PAIRING STATISTICS

Most of my time for this analysis was spent collecting data for the various pairing tags. I went through the top 300 pairing tags by order of popularity (ending with Mystra/Cazador, of all things) and recorded how many fics each rating had and how many fics each category had both with and without “otp:true” applied. Coincidentally, this included all the pairings with 5 or more fics in them at the time – by sheer luck the 301st pairing tag had only 4 fics. I judged that I could ignore pairing tags with fewer than 5 fics without affecting the results of my analyses too much (also it had taken 4 days to get this far and I was tired).

However, a lot of authors tag their fics with both, say, Astarion/Tav and Astarion/F!OC. But for this exercise I’m not really looking at how authors refer to the Tav/Dark Urge/self insert character in their tagging nomenclature. I’m more interested in how many fics exist for, say, the pairing of Astarion and the player character.

To this end, I combined the numbers for Tav, Dark Urge, OC, F!OC, M!OC, NB!OC, Reader, and You for each character ship. In order to avoid double counting fics, once I had added the numbers for a particular tag I excluded that tag from all future counts.

[X]/PC = [X]/Tav + ([X]/Dark Urge with the [X]/Tav tag excluded) + ([X]/Original Character with the [X]/Tav and [X]/Dark Urge excluded) + ([X]/Reader with [X]/Tav, [X]/Dark Urge, and [X]/Original Character excluded) and so on.

This process dropped the total number of pairings from 300 to 162. However, it also introduces an error. Some fics ship characters with an OC who is not a Tav/Dark Urge/self insert. In condensing all pairings with original characters to the “PC” supercategory, I am ignoring that and counting their original character as a Tav/Dark Urge equivalent. Unfortunately, this is just something I have to live with in order to be able to make the data more manageable, as there is no way to tell which fics are using the OC tag to represent a Tav/Dark Urge and which are not on a mass data scale. I don’t think it will skew the results too much, at least.

I pulled out the top 20 ships for each major character in BG3 (Tav, Dark Urge, the PC, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, Minthara, Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin) before and after I combined the player character tags into the PC supercategory. For each character, I then determined how much of each fic category (M/F, M/M, F/F, Other, Multi) they had, both for all of their pairings and for their pairing with the PC specifically.

Let's start by looking at the player character and its two representatives.

TAV

Tav is in 71 of the top 300 ship tags in the BG3 fandom.

Astarion completely dominates Tav’s ships, with a whopping 9,235 fics (1,839 otp:true fics). In fact, in order to be able to see the tiny little boxes that represent everyone else, here’s another version of this chart, this time with Astarion excluded.

There, that’s a bit more legible. The next highest is Gale, with 2,909 fics (652 otp:true) – less than a third as many fics as Astarion. Halsin comes third with 1,304 fics (207 otp:true) and Shadowheart is the first canon woman to show up, with 806 fics (132 otp:true). Astarion has more than 11 times as many fics with Tav as Shadowheart does. Karlach comes next, with 724 fics (186 otp:true). Raphael comes sixth, with 176 more fics than #7 Wyll who has 442 fics (100 otp:true). Lae’zel is #11 with 300 fics, under Gortash, Rolan, and a threesome with Halsin and Astarion. Minthara is the least popular main character to ship with Tav. She’s #15 with 146 fics (33 otp:true), and has fewer fics with Tav than Zevlor, the Emperor or Haarlep. In a marked improvement from the state of affairs in January, however, she no longer has fewer fics than Kar’niss.

Taking a look at the fic category breakdown, we can see that M/F and M/M predominate for Tav, while there is very little F/F. Dividing the values by the total number of fics, 59.8% of all fics and 50.2% of otp:true fics are tagged M/F, 35.6% of all fics and 34.9% of otp:true fics are tagged M/M, 7.6% of all fics and 4.4% of otp:true fics are tagged F/F, and 13.2% of all fics and 14.2% of otp:true fics are tagged Other. As the proportions of M/F and F/F fics drop when otp:true is applied, I assume that it is more common for M/F and F/F pairings to have background ships or be a background ship (remember that if it is not otp:true, we have no idea if the pairing with Tav is the pairing category being counted.)

THE DARK URGE

The Dark Urge is in 38 of the top 300 ship tags of the BG3 fandom, a bit over half as many as Tav.

While Astarion once again is the most popular character to ship with the Dark Urge (2,165 fics), this time he actually has competition! Gortash/Dark Urge comes in at a very respectable second place with 1,594 fics (about three quarters of Astarion/Dark Urge’s total fic count) and actually beat Astarion by over 100 fics once you apply otp:true (562 fics for Astarion vs 691 fics for Gortash). But after Gortash we once again drop down to numbers we struggle to even see on the chart. Gale is the most visible with 402 fics total (Gale has fewer fics total with the Dark Urge than Astarion or Gortash have with otp:true applied). After that we have a group of Halsin, Shadowheart, and Karlach, all with between 120-150 fics. No other pairing has over 100 fics.

Dark Urge/Tav (99 fics) and Dark Urge/Orin (87 fics) have more fics than Dark Urge/Wyll (83 fics) or Dark Urge/Minthara (80 fics). For Wyll, this is a sign that his pairing with the Dark Urge is not very popular (he drops from #7 with Tav to #9 with the Dark Urge). For Minthara, however, this is a significant climb in the rankings – she was #15 with Tav and #10 with the Dark Urge.

But what’s really interesting to me is the fic category breakdown for the Dark Urge.

The Dark Urge has noticeably more M/M content than Tav does (47.0% vs 35.6% for all fics, 56.9% vs 34.9% for opt:true) and slightly more F/F content than Tav does (10.2% vs 7.6% for all fics, 5.2% vs 4.4% for otp:true), and correspondingly less F/M content. At 13.4% for all fics and 12.8% of otp:true fics, the proportion of Other fic stays just about the same as for Tav.

THE PLAYER CHARACTER

The PC is a combination of Tav, Dark Urge, Original Character, Reader, and You. The PC is in 64 of the top 162 pairings of the BG3 fandom (losing 5 pairings from Tav as I combined Tav/Tav, Tav/Dark Urge, Tav/Reader and so on into one PC/OC category).

The player character was involved in 76.0% of all pairings and 62.1% of otp:true pairings (that is, if you add up every fic for every pairing which the PC is in and divide it by sum of all fics for all BG3 pairings I tracked). This means that over three quarters of shipping in the BG3 fandom is with the player character. It’s not surprising, but it is notable – that’s a very large proportion.

Holy smokes, Astarion! He dominates the rankings even more than before. This time, I was curious to see how much. See below for a proportional representation of all of the PC pairings (note: because many fics have multiple pairings, this circle does not represent the total number of fics but rather the total number of times any pairing with the PC has been tagged).

Astarion composes a full 45% of all pairings with the PC, Gale is bit over 13%, Gortash is 7.3% for all fics and 11.3% of otp:true fics, while Halsin has the opposite trend with 6.3% of all fics and 4.9% of otp:true fics. Shadowheart, Karlach, Raphael, and Wyll all are between 2% and 4% (with Raphael once again beating Wyll). Lae’zel is down at #11 with 1.4% and Minthara is all the way at #16 with 0.9%.

Out of curiosity, I went through all of the PC’s pairings and sorted them by the gender of the person being shipped with the PC.

Oof.

85.7% of all PC ships are with men, 10.4% are with women, and 1.9% are nonbinary beings (Haarlep, the Emperor, and Omeluum). When you apply otp:true, 87.1% of the player character’s ships are with men, 9.9% are with women, and 1.3% are with nonbinary beings.

SHADOWHEART

Welp! Let’s take a look at that 10%, starting with Shadowheart.

If you add up all the fics for all the pairings that include Shadowheart and divide that by the sum of all fics for all 162 pairings I collected, you can see that she is present in 7.0% of pairings. Interestingly, this is true both for all fics and for otp:true fics. She is in 30 of the top 300 ship tags and 24 of the 162 pairings that remain once the player character tags are consolidated.

(I have shortened Shadowheart's name to SH and Shart in various charts to keep the labels from taking up too much room in the graph.)

Lae’zel/Shadowheart is in close competition with Shadowheart/Tav. When all the player characters are condensed into the PC, though, that gap widens.

Shadowheart has 980 fics with the PC, 694 with Lae’zel, 226 with Karlach, 111 with Gale, 61 with Astarion, 51 with Nocturne, 36 with Halsin, 26 with Minthara, and 21 with Wyll (her least popular ship with a main character, at #12). 7 of her top 20 pairings are threesomes – Aylin/Isobel/SH at #8 with 35 fics, Karlach/PC/SH at #9, Karlach/Lae’zel/SH at #10, Astarion/PC/SH at #13, Halsin/PC/SH at #14, Karlach/Wyll/SH at #17, and Gale/Lae’zel/SH at #18.

Lae’zel/Shadowheart has an unusually high number of otp:true fics – almost half of its total fic count. It seems more popular to ship Shadowheart with women than men – both her ships with Lae’zel and Karlach are more popular than Astarion, Gale, or Wyll and her threesomes with women have more fics than her threesomes with men.

The fic category breakdown for Shadowheart matches this expectation.

Boy howdy is Shadowheart fic gay! She has over twice as much F/F fic than M/F fic, just looking at raw numbers of fics. Looking at the proportions of her total fic count, F/F fic represents 71.4% of all of her fics, M/F fic is 35.2%, Other is 10.0%, and Multi is 18.8%. (These percentages add up to more than 100% because many fics tag multiple categories.) This also means that we can’t know that these numbers necessarily include Shadowheart – witness the numbers of M/M fics. All it means is that these categories were on fics in which a Shadowheart pairing was also tagged.

Looking at the otp:true numbers gives us a better picture of what fics where only Shadowheart is in a relationship are like (though this not necessarily an accurate idea of patterns for her overall, as less than a third of her total fics are otp:true). 76.4% of otp:true fics are F/F, 19.8% are M/F, 3.8% are Other, and for some reason 1.2% (9 fics) are M/M. Over three quarters of Shadowheart’s otp:true pairings are femmeslash.

Shadowheart’s fics with the PC character follow pretty much the same pattern as her ships more generally, albeit with slightly less F/F (likely from the loss of the relative behemoth that is Shadowheart/Lae’zel).

32.9% of her pairings with the PC have the M/F tag, 68.1% are tagged F/F, 11.3% are tagged Other, and 18.5% are tagged Multi. Applying otp:true, 25.7% are M/F, 62.6% are F/F, and 12.3% are Other (this likely includes a substantial portion of nonbinary PCs).

KARLACH

Karlach is present in 6.0% of all fic pairings and 5.4% of otp:true fic pairings. She has 31 ship tags in the top 300 ship tags, which condense down to 26 pairings when all player character stand ins are combined.

Her second most popular ship after Tav is with Wyll, though unlike with Shadowheart the pairing is not popular enough to give Tav a run for his/her/their money. Condensing all the player characters widens this gap significantly.

The PC is overwhelmingly Karlach’s most popular ship, with 890 fics. Wyll is second, with 327 fics – less than half as many. Shadowheart and Astarion follow with 226 and 157, respectively. Dammon is next, with 91 fics, and then Lae’zel has 65. She then has a number of threesomes, Minthara (#9 with 32 fics), and Gale (#11 with 18 fics). Halsin is her least popular pairing with a main character, coming in at #15 with 11 fics.

Surprisingly, for all that Karlach is fairly butch, her pairings with men are relatively more popular than we see with the more femme Shadowheart. The category statistics illustrate this clearly.

Compared to Shadowheart, Karlach has a lower proportion of F/F and higher proportions of M/F and Multi fics. F/F is tagged on 51.8% of her fics, M/F on 42.5%, Other on 12.3% and Multi on 27.7%. (Remember that fics can be tagged with multiple categories and that just because a category is tagged doesn’t mean that Karlach is involved in that category.) Looking at otp:true gives us a look at fics where she is the sole focus. F/F is 55.0% of her otp:true fics, M/F drops to 34.4%, Multi drops to 6.1%, and Other stays fairly high at 10.4%.

In Karlach’s pairings with the player character, things change significantly.

It immediately becomes clear that the large number of M/F fics in her general pairings were largely due to her relatively popular ships with Wyll, Astarion, and Dammon. F/F dominates Karlach’s pairings with the PC with 64.0% (67.8% with otp:true applied) of fics, which puts her at just slightly less than Shadowheart. M/F is tagged in 28.5% of her fics with the PC (14.0% with otp:true applied), Multi is tagged 19.4% but drops to 1.2% for otp:true, and Other remains high with 18.0% of fics and 20.2% of otp:true fics with the PC.

Back in January, I noted that of the main cast, Karlach had the highest proportion of ships with nonbinary OCs. I didn’t track the breakdown of OC subcategories this time, but the high numbers in the Other category bear it out.

LAE'ZEL

Counting all fics for all pairings in which Lae’zel is tagged, she is in a mere 3.8% of BG3 pairings, though it rises to 4.5% when otp:true is applied. She is in 23 of the top 300 ship tags, a number that drops down to 18 when I consolidate the player character tags together.

Shadowheart/Lae’zel has twice as many fics as Lae’zel/Tav. Looking at the situation with the PC does not change this much.

Unlike any other main character, Lae’zel’s most popular ship is not with the PC but with Shadowheart. She has 694 fics with Shadowheart, 355 with the PC, 65 with Karlach, 26 with Gale, 26 with Wyll, 25 with Astarion, 16 with Minthara, and 12 with Halsin. She is in an unusually low number of threesomes – only 4. It’s notable though how skewed her numbers are towards women – a threesome with Karlach and Shadowheart has more fics than any of her pairings with a canon man. The various whole team multiship pairings, none of which have more than 11 fics, comprise most of the tail end of her ship list.

Speaking of the tail end of her ship list, what happens when we condense the player character tags is that Lae’zel does not reach a full 20 ships – she drops to 18 pairings. She has more than this, of course, but my methodology ignores all pairings with fewer than 5 fics (which means that my friend’s Lae’zel/Astarion/Tav fic is not counted). Therefore, Lae’zel’s 19th and 20th most popular pairings have 4 fics or fewer. I have represented these missing pairings with little :( emojis, because this is a sad state of affairs.

This is a symptom of a state of affairs in which Lae’zel is just not very popular in the AO3 side of BG3 fandom. Her most popular ship is Shadowheart’s second most popular ship, and the numbers crater after that. No Lae’zel ship other than Shadowheart and the PC has more than 100 fics.

Lae’zel’s most popular ships being women is demonstrated clearly by the fic category breakdown.

Wow! At a whopping 76.3% of all of Lae’zel’s fics and 88.9% of Lae’zel’s otp:true fics, Lae’zel has a higher proportion of F/F fic than Shadowheart. Granted, they’re both sizable portions of each other’s total F/F count. 26.1% of Lae’zel’s fics have the M/F tag, though this drops to a mere 7.1% when otp:true is applied. Other is tagged in 11.6% of fics but drops to 2.0% with otp:true. 18.1% of her fics are tagged Multi but this likewise drops to 4.4% with otp:true.

The pertinent question for Lae’zel is how much of her F/F count is due to her pairing with Shadowheart? How gay are her pairings with the PC?

The answer is... still pretty gay! F/F is not quite as dominant, with 67.3% of all her fics with the PC and 80.0% of her fics where only Lae’zel/PC is tagged – but 80% is a still a really high proportion! This indicates to me that a lot of the M/F in the “All Fics” chart likely does not involve Lae’zel. M/F is tagged in 33.5% of her fics with the PC, a number which is more than halved to 12.7% when otp:true is applied. 13.2% of her fics are tagged Other, which drops to 5.5% with otp:true – much less than for Shadowheart and Karlach. It seems either Lae’zel is not as popular for nonbinary OCs or that a large proportion of the Other tag is from mind flayer Tavs/Durges and people don’t write Lae’zel with a mind flayer love interest.

One other notable fact is that Lae’zel is the only female companion without any otp:true M/M PC fic. It could be due to her low fic numbers in the first place, but I prefer to think that Lae’zel fans are simply more fastidious about correctly tagging fic. It certainly fits her character.

MINTHARA

Ah, Minthara. Unquestionably the least popular of the main romanceable characters in BG3, her pairings only comprise 1.1% of all BG3 fanfic pairings, a number that rises to a whopping(/sarcastic) 1.4% of otp:true pairings. She has only 14 ship tags in the 300 most popular ship tags for BG3, a number that drops further to a mere 9 pairings once I’ve combined all the player character tags.

What’s notable about Minthara’s ship tags is the popularity of the Dark Urge relative to Tav. Minthara has 146 fics with Tav and 80 with the Dark Urge. This is a higher proportion than other main characters have. It may be because more people write her on evil routes (which likely disproportionately feature the Dark Urge) or because she has some very good lines for the Dark Urge and their Slayer form.

Another observation is the lack of primary non-PC ships. The other characters that I look at all have a major non-PC ship – Shadowheart/Lae’zel, Karlach/Wyll, Gale/Astarion, Wyll/Astarion, Halsin/Astarion. Minthara doesn’t really have that. Her most popular non-PC ship is Orin, at #5 and with a mere 45 fics. This is illustrated clearly once all the player character tags are combined.

The PC dominates Minthara’s pairings to an extent not seen with any other character, not even Astarion. She drops from 234 fics with the PC (65 otp:true) to 45 fics with Orin (26 otp:true), 32 with Karlach (16 otp:true) and 26 with Shadowheart (11 otp:true). Every other pairing has 16 or less fics. Tying into that, Minthara has very few pairings with 5 or more fics. She does not even have enough for a top 10! I have replaced her missing pairings with the :( emoji because this is sad.

Another notable thing about this chart, though, is how few fics Minthara has just in general. Lae’zel and Wyll, the other neglected companions, both have at least 500 fics with their most popular partner. Minthara does not even break 250. In fact, none of her pairings with someone other than the PC have over 50 fics.

Another interesting fact is that Minthara is the only character in this analysis to not have any threesomes or moresomes in her pairings with over 5 fics. She doesn’t share, it seems.

For some reason, Minthara has 8 ships with Councillor Florrick of all people. And it’s not all by the same author, which is what I would expect for a somewhat out there pairing. Presumably someone out there wrote a really good fic which then inspired others to play with the idea. In a small fandom like Minthara’s, one fic like that can make quite a difference.

As can be expected, Minthara’s fic categories are pretty damn gay.

F/F is tagged in 79.0% of her fics (77.6% of otp:true fics). M/M is tagged in 21.3% of her fics (17.1% of otp:true fics), Other in 6.1% (4.6% otp:true), and Multi in 8.9% though it drops to 1.3% of her otp:true fics. With these numbers, Minthara is arguably the gayest major character in the BG3 fandom by fic count, though Lae’zel beats her when you take otp:true into effect.

This pattern holds true when looking at her ship with the player character. 77.8% of her fics with the PC are tagged F/F (73.8% of otp:true fics), 23.5% are tagged M/F (15.4% otp:true), 8.5% are tagged Other (10.8% otp:true), and 9.4% are tagged Multi (3.1% otp:true). The latter is a bit confusing given that she has no multiship pairings. It may include collections of Reader/[X] fics that include Minthara.

PART 2

Welp. I’ve run into the tumblr post image limit. For part 2 of this essay, which discusses Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin and then compares all 8 of the main characters against each other on a variety of metrics, see this link.

[degrees-of-seracchii]

this took a millennia to make cause i kept getting distracted and gathering screenshots to back my points up was incredibly time consuming

but it has been done. anon from how many days ago i hope you are happy

A little of Pure Sydney's flaws

There will be two parts to this cause on god this is long. On this part I will be exploring flaws that tend to be a bit more visible with pure Sydney

This is in no way a complete analysis, I definitely have missed many more of Sydney's flaws, and because Tumblr is a bitch and a half, I regrettably cannot jam as many screenshots from the game/its codes as much as I would like. But I hope this post could act as a good point of reference regardless for any fans of Sydney, or people looking to explore more of their character out there!

Continuing under the cut.

So.

What’s the deal with Sydney? What’s wrong with them, what are their flaws and what make the relationship between them and the PC so toxic?

Well ain’t there just so much to unpack.

In short, Sydney at their core is a spineless, directionless, malleable individual that important influences in their life can easily shape, be it their family, the Temple, or the PC.

Sydney, as they are today, was raised with beliefs upheld by the temple. Something they are deeply religious, devoted and grateful for. However, as we all know, some of those values can be extremely morally questionable.

Speaking of deeply devoted let’s start with Pure Sydney, shall we? 

Victim blaming tendencies

One of the ideals Sydney was raised with is their extremely victim-blaming mindset. Which I have shown here

2. Lust and internal conflict

Something else that fascinates me greatly is that regardless of their state, Sydney is always tempted by the PC. PC’s existence and presence alone are pushing Sydney towards the pit of sinful desires no matter if they are Pure or Corrupted. 

The first thing that comes to mind is when accepting their confession results in a decrease of Sydney’s Purity stat: 

The notion of accepting Sydney’s affections is seen as an encouragement for them to fall towards sin. 

Being in a relationship with PC means they are constantly fighting their own urges and desires. Being taught their entire life that these feelings are wrong, Sydney suffers from tremendous guilt. Even when promised and permitted by the Temple, Sydney still finds physical intimacy with the PC sinful:

These just go to show how deeply buried Sydney is in the Temple’s teachings, unable to stray from it. Which is a perfect segue into their next flaw

3. Attachment to the Temple and blind faith.

Even from the latest confessional scene added, Sydney clearly cares about PC’s wellbeing and displays great concern for them, almost breaking out of the ideals they were raised with just to defend their beloved. But they are not quite there yet. They still seek out for the Temple when they are faced with these doubts. They think that they are doing something wrong for prioritizing the PC’s best interest over the Temple’s teachings. 

Sydney is INCAPABLE of detaching themselves from the Temple. The Temple is just such a big part of Sydney’s character that no matter what, they will side with the Temple before they think about the PC when forced to make that choice. 

And in a way, Sydney’s blind faith is encouraged by the Player for choosing to keep them Pure. The PC is essentially acting as another shelter, shielding, “protecting” them. The PC never expressed that they wanted a change of mindset from Sydney, so Sydney never had a change in mindset. 

And if you played the new confessional event, you would know that you as the player never had the option to either. This might have been intentional. But I will expand on that later. 

More showings of Sydney’s blind faith can be found in littler events while praying with Sydney in the Temple, where they would turn a blind eye to fellow followers being punished:

A bit more about their attachment to the Temple I have also mentioned here.

4. Superiority/Saviour complex

Another aspect of Sydney that people talk about, but I don’t think quite enough, is how aggressive they can get, specifically towards those they deem as sinners. This is a trait shared among both states of Sydney.

For example, the beach date:

And several more.

Though, pure Sydney might be a tad worse at this. As they seem to find themselves more righteous than sinners:

If they are the one taking confessions, pure Sydney is often more judgemental compared to the more empathetic corrupt Sydney:

When PC as a member of the Temple is caught masturbating by Sydney, they take matters into their own hands:

They also display a bit of a saviour complex from their opinions about the PC at low Purity:

5. Dumb teenager

Just a small thing, but I feel like most people just brush over the fact that pure Sydney practically proposes to PC at high enough lust.

I think I don’t need to stress just how insane it is to propose to someone you haven’t known for long. Just to what? Have sex? Loser behaviour. 

I can't wait to explore their flaws when corrupted :3

When kept pure, Sydney has so many interesting flaws that make them incredibly humane and a little irritating, but that's the charm of their character! They are deeply troubled and blinded by their own devotion that they are ignorant, a bit arrogant and even self destructive. It's what makes Sydney... Sydney and I wouldn't have them any other way.

[olderthannetfic]

So, you mentioned low standards of research in podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts or watch a lot of videos about fandom analysis, but I have seen error corrections happening in the wild for what I have listened to, so I can only imagine how annoying it is when you know your shit.

Do you have any resources that come to mind as things everyone who likes fandom should be comfortable with, or specific essays on uniquely important fandoms (such as Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek) that everyone should read? Obviously the OTW resources are up there; what else?

Aside from resources, do you think there are any skills that are especially vital for getting to the bottom of fandom trends? Interview skills are probably pretty high up there.

Any pitfalls you see a lot of young fans falling into?

(I do a lot of fandom history research. It is the thing that gives me joy in fandom; other people like shipping or AUs, I like my little mini-anthropology sandbox and watching how ideas spread. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's fun!)

--

Well... it's the usual things.

For example, a lot of fans claim to love fandom stats, but the ones that get passed around come from like three people. The people doing those stats, including me, don't usually have a statistics background, which doesn't automatically make them bad, but it really seems like people are just trusting anything with a pie chart.

We've recently seen people discover that those year-end AO3 ship stats have a seriously weird methodology. They don't show the thing their fans are actually trying to find out. People were pissed. But most of the time, they don't even bother asking what the methodology is or trying to do anything themselves.

There's far too much sitting back and waiting for some BNF to spoon feed one publicly-available information.

--

The big failings aren't usually the math itself but, of course, not knowing what question to ask, so it pertains to history research, not just stats.

You'll see a lot of stuff on shipping that looks at AO3 because AO3 shipping numbers are easy to pull... But AO3 shipping numbers don't just happen to be easy to pull: that is both an effect and a cause that is directly related to AO3's content. Someone interested in meta shouldn't be asking "What do AO3's numbers show?" as their first question. They should be asking "Why is this metadata available or not available and what does that mean on a sociological level?"

--

Thing two is the eternal I Have Apparently Never Heard of Anime problem. A fuckton of people theorizing about fandom trends seem to know fucking nothing about whole massive sectors of fandom or treat them as afterthoughts. This is okay if you're writing a history of Media Fandom. It is criminally stupid if you're trying to talk about what makes a piece of media have fic when another doesn't, what kinds of websites make fandoms take off, etc. Those kinds of broad questions need a broad understanding of what's out there.

It's not anime-specific, and I'm not asking for a high degree of knowledge.

I have routinely had people tell me that best friend ships and mystery/crime as a genre aren't popular, and that's why AO3 has this or that pattern... Meanwhile, buddy cops are the bedrock of oldschool slash fandom and make up basically all of the longest-running Western m/m fandoms that aren't Star Trek. CSI slop tends to have legions of future canon het shippers, and they make plenty of fanworks. It's just that some of this is more visible on FFN or older places, not AO3.

I'm always seeing things like someone speculating about how this and that anime fandom thing or bit of mid-00s FFN community drama led to this other thing on AO3, not realizing that AO3 came out of LJ Western fandom slash culture. To them, FFN is so central that it must be the main reference point, not the bajillion and one archives AO3 founders ran or Usenet or mailing lists or LJ.

I once saw someone asking on twitter about where a prominent Ranma fic might have been posted in the mid-90s. People claiming "My professor is an authority!" came out of the woodwork in droves to blither about K/S zines and then LJ. Not only was this entirely wrong, but the right answer was blindingly obvious if you knew enough to interpret the google results. I can only assume that the person tweeting had never heard of Usenet and didn't recognize the acronym for the big anime fanfic group that literally everything like this was first posted to.

I'm talking people insisting that fandom only goes for white characters when it's very obvious that fandom goes for majority leads who are not othered. All the bawwing in the world about "People assume anime characters are white" won't get rid of The Untamed or Kpop thirsters or whatever.

I'm talking sweeping pronouncements about gender and fanfic writers where the person hasn't even heard of FIMFiction or SpaceBattles or Dark Lord Potter cheesefests.

I've been in fandom for a long time, but I wasn't in all these parts, and I wasn't around for 80s zines. You don't need deep knowledge until you pick a research topic. But it's shocking how little shallow, broad knowledge a lot of people have when they're writing their Theory Of All Of Fandom History.

--

People are stupid as shit about survivorship bias, and fandom history is no exception. They're also dumb in the opposite direction, assuming that the thing they like now has always existed in this exact form.

For example, someone got mad at Fanlore for supposedly not documenting the history of f/f zines. Others have searched and searched for the zines of their old show they got into last year and are bewildered to not find any. The reality is that Fanlore editors are attempting to document every Media Fandom zine and have combed through old adzines looking for any mention of anything. Because of the methods of distribution—because it was expensive—small fandoms often had no zines at all.

Femslash fandom doesn't seem to have gotten enough critical mass to do much until Xena. The internet has really democratized things, but even the early internet was still somewhat in that old mindset where only certain popular things have a fandom. I think Yuletide itself, which started in 2003, really helped spread the idea of rare-but-existing fandoms being a thing. FFN and perhaps some other multifandom archives like Media Miner played a huge role.

Nowadays, we think of fic as just how you respond to media, any media, even if there are only two fics for that one car commercial, but that isn't how people saw things in every era—or at least it's not how fandom infrastructure worked. A lot of the time, the big hosting spots were single-fandom archives, often with restrictive content rules. Finding somewhere to post a m/m/f OT3 fic used to be hard. Never mind early zines when photocopiers didn't even exist yet and you had to sell out your print run of 500 to make a go of it.

All good research starts with a lot of preliminary investigation to figure out what you're even trying to look for.

Actually bothering to look for fans talking about their own history or casually chatting with your interview subjects before the formal interview will put a person miles ahead of many of the cringeworthy fandom ~papers~ I've seen.

The biggest mistake people make is going "Okay, these numbers aren't perfect, but some numbers are better than no numbers".

Bullshit.

As soon as there's a pie chart of the false numbers, everyone's brain turns off and they never look at the chart subtitle, never mind the research notes.

Bad numbers are often worse than no numbers.

Look at the logic behind the methodology first. Look at the social context. Basic understanding of human nature and familiarizing oneself with the shape and hangout locations of a community will get you most of the way there before you sit down for a specific interview or try to collect any specific numbers.

--

None of this is a fandom thing. Research is research. It's just that most people think "research" means watching a tiktok that the algorithm likes and were never taught how to evaluate a source for reliability.

Evaluating sources is a skill. I had explicit lessons on it in school. Lots of people don't, and that sucks.

Honestly, watching the more thoughtful debunking content on non-fandom topics, like Miniminuteman's stuff on pseudo-archaeology or Dan Olson's... everything, is a good window into critical thinking, and that's most of what's missing from bad fandom history.

--

But more than any of that, more is more. Not the crap stats, but the narrower, more personal accounts, the interviews. The more fans who investigate their little corner that isn't the same old AO3 site-wide "Why is there so much m/m?" ship stats or the same canned "Everything comes from K/S" history, the better.

What I object to is not amateur efforts but efforts that pull from the same small pool of data or that just reblog a tiny handful of supposed authorities.

--

If people are going to read just one thing... hmm... go try to look up a history of rec.arts.anime.creative, not because I think it's the most important fandom history out there but because it's at the nexus of things a lot of current fandom history work miss.

[bondwithme-murderstyle]

Who's The Boss pt.1 aaron hotchner x fem!reader

wc: 3k

Summary: Aaron Hotchner has some time before heading to Quantico and embarking on his new position within the BAU. He decides that now would be a good time to gather some of his buddies and head off on a vacation to Miami before his life is turned on its head.

warnings: +18, mdni!! vacation setting with explicit descriptions but no physical acts (save that for pt.3), smoking because it's the '90s and this man with a cigarette is my holy grail, a tiny paragraph releasing haley from this story-line, essentially just verbal-foreplay, reader is described as having hair (???) that gets wet in the pool, definitely dom!aaron and his dirty mouth, no use of y/n, not as romantic as my dream had originally perceived him but we'll take what we can get in the moment

an: another day, another one-shot. i can feel myself warming up to doing this regularly tbqh. let me know what you think!

Aaron Hotchner was the budding agent for the FBI. His stats were always excellent and Aaron was renowned for his high-scores and over-achieving nature, shaming the agents who had been working with the FBI since the dawn of time. Departments wanted him. His academy-mates wanted to be him. A fresh-faced twenty-six year old ready to fight off the competition had already secured his placement within the Behavioural Analysis Unit that fall. The Academy had granted him five-weeks of rec-time and he thought of nothing better than taking a vacation with his academy pals and some old college buddies. Miami, Florida was the place to be. 

It was always hot and always sunny, rarely a day of rain that kept the group of five guys locked up. Today, particularly this day- there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun cast a golden glow over their hotel pool-deck. Aaron was awake first. Habitually, he would never allow himself to feel the shame that his classmates would when they tumbled out of bed just before lunch. Aaron ate his breakfast out by the pool, he brought a book to keep him occupied as the geriatric crowd of their hotel took their laps in the pool before taking their day-trip down to the beach. Slowly, other hotel-goers trickled outside, fanning to find their spots for the day. Towels were thrown over scattered loungers and his college-mates were the first to meet him outside as he finished a cup of black coffee and ear-marked the page in his Thomas Harris novel. They quickly approached, hitting him on the shoulder, the arm and mocking him for his reserved approach to the vacation. They jibed that he looked ancient for sitting with coffee and a book when he should have really been expanding his palate given the select few young women who had set up camp around him, skimpy bright bikinis that were far too alluring to ignore. Yet, somehow, he managed to do just that. Ignore them. His friends managed to convince him to at least move to a lounger of his own if he were to sit and read all day. Aaron was defiant, “I can have fun with the best of them. I’m just at the crux of the story-” “And the crux will wait. It’s not goin’ anywhere, Hotchner!” His friend took the book he had placed on his lounger and tossed it down onto the paving stones. 

When his academy-mates joined the crowd, they were more raucous. Dumping their towels on their friends loungers before throwing themselves into the pool with a large splash and yells to boot. Aaron would grimace from behind his sunglasses, their noise interrupting the peace he had long set out for. The vacation that would define the rest of his life. By lunchtime, there were swirls of rumours around the pool and even neighbouring hotels. There was to be a boys-vs-girls polo game that night two hotels down from where Aaron and his friends were staying. The owner was apparently "super-chill" with the young crowds and was renowned for his summer parties. His friends spoke across him as his nose was pushed into the third-act of Red Dragon, talking about having to find a date to take in the hopes to get her out of her swimsuit. Their callous words and deep agreeing chuckles interloped with the words he tried so hard to concentrate on processing. “Hotchner! That means you too!” A cold splash hit the bottom of his feet and caused the ashtray between the two loungers to tip and topple. Aaron looked up from the book and lifted his sunglasses slightly to find his friend in the pool looking right at him, “What means me?” “You’re going to find a date and get over this Haley bullshit once and for all. You're coming with us tonight!”

The Haley slump was real. Upon hearing of him wanting to join the FBI Academy, she feared it would be far too dangerous for him. She wanted him to remain a prosecutor and work his way up that particular ladder. It caused endless arguments in their studio apartment, disagreements over supposedly peaceful weekends and countless silent-treatments until they came to the agreement that this was his life and she wouldn’t be the one to hold him back. It had been twenty long weeks at the Academy and an even longer two weeks out of the Academy with his friends hounding him about being single again. 

“What if I go without a date? Meet someone there?” “Then you’re a chump!” His friend next to him piped up and extended his pack of cigarettes to him. Aaron took one out and lit it up, sighing the smoke across the pages of his novel before his legs sat on each side of the lounger and his book was placed facedown to keep his page. “Am I still a chump if I meet someone over there and they’re already drunk enough to forget who they came with?” Aaron reasoned and looked at his friend on his right, his friend in the pool and the other at the bar. Their suggestive gazes to each other was just enough confirmation for him that his idea was a good one. He raised his eyebrow and took a drag of his cigarette. He was always the smartest man in the room. His friend swam to the pool edge and his other buddy brought his lounger slightly closer as though to bask in his genius and they fawned over how they might just do exactly what Aaron would. He was quick to hold his hand up, cigarette in his mouth and laugh, “Don’t let me stop you from working this deck, alright? I'll stay out of your turf and take it easy on you, huh!?” 

Across the pool, you watched him. Your fair-skin hidden in the shadows for fear of burning, your sights were set. His smile was so stupefying and his floppy and glossy dark hair was exactly that in the Florida sun. He had been reading since the morning, you remained inside and ate breakfast with your girlfriend who had since disappeared back to her room with the world’s worst hangover. Since then, you nursed fruity cocktails and occasionally dipped your toe in the cool shadow-edge of the pool until the splashing and yelling and laughing had become too much and you retreated. Through it all, the stranger remained stone-faced. With each cigarette he smoked, each page that turned, you were pulled in. And then you saw his eyes. Sunglasses completely removed and cast aside much like his book as he made his way to sit on the edge of the pool where the sun beat down over him and his friends, eventually sliding in the water. His friends were fine. Your girlfriend would be all over them if she could keep her head out of the toilet bowl but him. You had to know his name. 

Waiting until he was completely in the water and within an approachable distance, you decided to stand and drop the towel that had been wrapped around yourself in order to take a dip. The ends of your hair were quick to glom together and stick to your skin as you tread through the water with miniscule steps until finding a safe place, an edge where you could perch and watch had presented itself.

The water was warmer and you enjoyed kicking your legs back and forth softly and feeling the temperature climb as the sun moved. You weren't paying much attention, eyes far too focused on the bartender refilling ice and liquor bottles clinking, when a voice approached from the water. “You look lonely, doll.” You looked away from the bartender and down to the man who had swam over to you. His loud friend. Your brows furrowed as the sun glinted on the surface of the water and you shook your head. “No, I’m fine.” A smile hoping to deter him. But he remained. “Say, we’re all going down to the Standard Surf tonight. Polo game. Could be pretty fun. You wanna join?” The man pushed his hands back through his hair and the water dropped down onto his nose and his cheeks. Somehow, the dissonant chaos had quietened. You looked away from him and towards his friends who were standing waist deep in the water and he, the reader, had his large arms crossed as they all watched closely to their friend’s weak attempt at bagging a date. “And you’re here trying to get a date from me?” You asked. The man’s hopeful smile fell and there were small, scattered mumbles and chuckles. “You guys aren’t the quietest keys on the piano, y'know? No, thank you.” “Oh, um… okay-” “But, hey,” You felt a surge of adrenaline grow from the way his arms crossed over his chest and the raised eyebrow he gave whilst monitoring the situation ignited something, “your reading-friend. Who is he?” You slipped down from the perch to stand toe-to-toe with his friend that had the courage to approach. He looked over his shoulder and turned to follow your line of sight, scoffing and shaking his head, “Mr. Serious? That’s just Aaron.” “Hm.” You hummed and kept looking at him, lifting your sunglasses to get a better look and let him know you were watching him and only him. “Him?” He asked and you ignored his words. “Aaron…” You liked it, “I’ll go with him. Not you.” You smiled and lowered your sunglasses again before making your way back towards the shadows and climbing out of the pool, knowing they were watching. All watching. You had left his friend alone and confused but that much you didn’t care about. 

For the rest of the early-afternoon, you reclined in your chair with your towel over your legs and deciding to remain in the sun as it crept slowly up from your feet, you continued to watch the group of five men at the opposite end of the deck. You didn’t care that it was obvious. You didn’t care that they would sometimes look back at you. Their views never mattered. But when Aaron looked (which wasn’t very often), your heart would stop and your breathing would deepen. You wanted to talk to him and yet somehow, you didn’t quite have the courage to approach. When he climbed out of the pool and returned to his lounger, that was when you noticed his gazes lingered. What was he thinking about as he dried off in the sun? Was he thinking about you? Could he read your mind? Was he also just too tense to approach?

His book remained on the paving stones, ashtray sitting atop and preventing the breeze from fluttering the pages open. Though his sunglasses returned to his face, every look in your direction was burning into your skin. You had captured his attention and now had no idea what to do with it. You let the heat build in your gut, your insides swirling and you even found yourself jonesing for a cigarette although you had given up to support your girlfriend and her cold-turkey attack. His friends disbanded slowly, one at a time to make their mission of grabbing some lunch. They all wanted subs, it was loud enough to hear for the whole community. But Aaron remained and when they were gone, his book returned to his hand and with one arm behind his head, he started to leaf through the pages. When his friends passed you by, they gave small looks- knowing looks that made your heart race. A part of you said that it was now-or-never. To go before his friends returned and gave him hell. But as you prepared to stand and rid yourself of the towel, you glanced over and he was no longer reading. He was back in the pool and looking at you. His brow raised slightly above his frames and he lifted one hand from the water to beckon you over with two fingers.

pt. 2

----

this will be in 3 parts because part 1 was too big to post so hang on buddies.

[thirstkanaphan]

Hello ! I'm new to Ateez, I have one question 😊 The search engine says Ateez does not have official positions apart from rap line, but I see that there are some unofficial assigned positions: Jongho being main vocalist, Sanhwa being lead vocalists, Yunwoo being main dancers, and Mingi being lead dancer. The results are a bit vague for Yeosang, what is his position ?

Hi Anon!

The unique thing about Ateez is the lack of fixed idol positions among the members. While Mingi and Hongjoong are ostensibly the main rappers, Jongho the main vocalist, and Yunho the dance leader, the emphasis on them being a performance group means that they all pretty much operate at the same high level. Almost all of them have rapped at some point (The Leaders) and all of them have sang at some point (Turbulence, Be With You). I think they've become very good at identifying who suits a certain role in a song regardless of what they've done before.

And what's interesting to me is how they've evolved over the years: San joined as a vocalist and became one of their dominant dancers/performers; Seonghwa joined as a rapper and became a vocalist (and for a time took over some of Mingi's rap parts during his hiatus). Yunho is a dancer who begins most of their songs. Wooyoung joined as a dancer but is known for having the "killing parts" in their songs and performances. Hongjoong is a rapper but his recent stint Moving Voices showed him to be an amazing vocalist. I was reminded of him doing Jongho's part in Bouncy when a few of them guested on Jonathan's show a few years ago. Jongho is the only one who seems limited to being the power vocal on the team, but his recent dance break with San during the 2024 Music Bank Global Festival confirmed that he has the chops. Mingi has used his solo projects like Tunnel and Autobahn to flex his vocal versatility.

Yeosang is often referred to as an all-rounder by the fandom: vocalist, dancer, and performer. It's well-known that he was a very popular trainee and sought-after by most companies. He chose KQ after leaving BitHit and Wooyoung followed him to Ateez. Yet since his debut in Ateez he has not received the same recognition for his talents as the other members, and there are many theories for why.

@peatbogbody has written a wonderful analysis of Yeosang's vocals and how they've been served and underserved by Ateez's discography; @storkmuffin has also shared their theories of how Yeosan'gs beauty and idol persona, and to some extent his own natural introversion and modulation to accommodate the feelings of others in his group, hindered his cultivation of the necessary competitive drive that fuels the Ateez machine. I've also written about how Yeosang has been perceived by the fandom with regards to fan service and how that's been used against him.

It's objective fact that Yeosang suffered from poor line distribution in the early years of Ateez.

@doiefy made a fantastic post about Ateez discography stats that everyone should read about how line distribution has changed over time (copied below from their post):

According to their data, "Yeosang's share of lines has increased by a net 76% since debut, while Jongho's has decreased by a net 77%"

While their data does not include GH1 and GH2, it would appear that the group has achieved a relative level of parity. The turning point appears to be 2022, about the time they released Halazia. For a song that was meant to be filler between cbs, it has become one of the most significant tracks in the Ateez discography. I don't think it's a coincidence that Yeosang was the breakout star of that era, due to the song highlighting his wonderfully low vocals.

I also love to point out what a great dancer he is and Halazia really showcases this:

I think that GH2 was also a good era for Yeosang in terms of getting better line distribution, killing moments, and dance solos. His MMA dance break is still talked about:

I recently wrote about the "re-branding" of Yeosang (and Wooyoung) after his Esquire Korea cover. To quote myself:

These two former BigHit trainees each dealt with image issues early in their careers: Yeosang's beauty dominated the external perception of him as an idol who was nothing more than a pretty face, while Wooyoung internally struggled with his physical appearance, recently exacerbated by his diagnosis of a skin condition that flares up in the heat.

In response to these pressures, Yeosang and Wooyoung took on different personas when they debuted as Ateez.

In Yeosang's case, he was "a Maltese who insists he's a Doberman." Yeosang's characterization as pure, innocent, and hapless was (and still is) reinforced by the members as part of their fan service. KQ also allegedly overruled Yeosang on his choice of a Doberman as a representative animal for their Aniteez characters and discouraged him from going to the gym, so as to preserve his slim physique.

Yeosang himself has said that he's not too bothered by the Maltese/Doberman bit; yet, at the same time, Yeosang shows his true self in his performance. He is the kind of dancer that takes up space; his movements are filled with unexpected swagger and ferocity. I noticed this during his MMA solo; again during his Sticky dance challenge, and most recently during the concert film. It was his attitude that entranced me, not (only) his visuals. Around this time, he began to bulk up, seemingly in control of his body's appearance for the first time in a while. He has solo music on the horizon and more schedules coming his way.

Whether or not you want to use the Doberman metaphor, the Esquire Korea feature feels like Yeosang reshaping his image.

Yeosang's poses draw attention to his bulging biceps, his large hands, veiny forearms, and exposed forehead. These attributes all signal traditional masculinity and almost aggressively sends the message: this is a man, not a "good boy."

My quote comes from a clip of Yeosang, San, and Wooyoung on Jaejoong's variety show. It should be noted that Jaejoong is considered the platonic ideal of a center visual. Jaejoong was allegedly blacklisted from entertainment after his lawsuit with SM led to the national elimination of the so-called idol "slave contracts" with entertainment companies, yet SM continues to use him as the visual blueprint with selecting idols. Jaejoong's compliments to Yeosang therefore feels almost double-edged: Yeosang fits the Jaejoong type, but there are certain expectations and pressures that come with this role, and consequences for stepping out of line.

Yeosang's Esquire photoshoot therefore feels transgressive and affirming, given how much he's tried to show the fandom how we've continually underestimated him.

Here's what Yeosang has said about the way fans perceive(d) him in last year's interview with GQ magazine:

He used the word "misguided" (so polite! so passive agressive!) which unfortunately still seems to be the case among certain parts of the fandom who either diminish his talents or refuse to engage with his very real and articulated desire for more dance solos, more opportunities for modeling, and the chance to sing and perform more than he already does. The latter part of the fandom, many of whom are self-professed Yeodongies, want the best for him but also seem to have a hard time accepting that this is a grown adult man with his own objectives and that keeping him confined to the "all rounder" position may do more harm than good in the long run.

If Yeosang can do everything well, then what exactly makes him stand out?

Once again, I am really optimistic about this comeback for Yeosang. I'm excited to see him further explore and define his own artistry. The Sangaissance is upon us!

[magicwhiskers29]

Alright listen. I don’t want to get into ship drama, because this isn’t really about there being a problem with people liking a ship or whatever, but I���ve been stewing on this for a while, and I feel like we have GOT to talk about how strange it is that 5 seasons in, and Spicynoodles is still wildly more popular than Dragonfruit. I said I would talk about that, so here. Think of this as more of a fandom analysis than anything.

Speaking as someone who’s been lurking in the fandom since the start of 2021, so from before the pilot or S1 had aired in the US (Or UK, in my case), I can say from experience that Spicynoodles has always been very popular. Using the way back machine to see the AO3 tag stats for Jan 14 2021, we get that it’s by far the most used relationship tag (41 of 125 works, for anyone curious) which… Yeah, that lines up with how I remember it being at that time. And considering the state of the show at that point, this makes sense!

Red Son was the primary villain of season 1 (or at least the one who acted as antagonist in most of the episodes, if you want to argue that it’s technically DBK) who treated MK like a nuisance of a rival, and as someone who gave him silly nicknames and who bounced off of banter with him quite well. Given that they’re two male characters in a rivalry, and given coming fandom shipping tropes, I don’t think it’s surprising at all that they started being shipped in the first place.

I think especially giving the other shipping content type stuff in season 1. The most we got from MK himself (or Mei, for that matter) was that he was physically disgusted by the idea of dating Mei. Cool, so they’d set up that MK didn’t want to date his best friend, so what they’d effectively done, in this case, was get the female character out of the way of the ship preemptively. And for the record, I really like that MK and Mei and two close and intimate friends who would never want to even entertain the idea of dating! I think it’s cute and refreshing, but what’s relevant here, is that there isn’t (yet) a female love interest to ‘get out of the way’ of the rivals/enemies to lovers yaoi.

Also worth noting that Shadowpeach hadn’t taken off yet due to Macaque only being in one episode, and not being in the pilot (though it was still a thing – that same way back machine page lists it as having 10 fics written. It’s just notable that it was significantly less popular than Spicynoodles) and that Freenoodles was still mostly a background thing. The two prominent (male) characters that they had to ship were MK and Red Son.

The thing is, the show wasn’t going to stay in that kind of position for long. Revenge of the Spider Queen, the season 2 special, aired about a month after this early January 2021 snapshot, and I think it fairly succinctly marked the direction the show was intending to take Red Son and Mei specifically. The special gave us a lot of interactions between Red Son and the main cast in general, and of course many that I’m sure fuelled the Spicynoodles fans, because yeah, Red Son and MK bicker and clash in silly ways this episode! But they’re not the focus pairing at any point.

When the group splits up in the Celestial Realm, Tang goes with Pigsy (Yep, that’s normal) Sandy stays back alone (also par for the course) but then… MK also goes alone, whilst Mei goes with Red Son. This means that an important section of the episode is spent with MK overcoming his demons himself, whilst Mei and Red Son bicker and clash and get closer. They even pull a classic “mistaking the male and female duo as dating” joke, which whilst I don’t expect that or anything else this episode to have necessarily radically altered the shipping scene, or even particularly make Dragonfruit a thing, I do think it’s indicative of the increased importance these two would have as a duo, and as parallels, going forward.

And then Red Son isn’t really in season 2. Perhaps it’s not surprising that as of the Wayback Machine’s snapshot of August 12 2021, about 2 months after season 2’s initial release (though still before the US release of the show) although Spicynoodles is still dominating the AO3 tag, Shadowpeach is starting to properly gain. This makes sense given that Shadow Play had aired by this point, but it is worth noting still, imo. It means that, in general, M/M is still dominating the fandom, being curiously, a good deal more popular than even the platonic relationships, such as MK and Wukong or MK and Mei.

But I think season 3 is where it all gets a little baffling to me – especially the season 3 specials. A major plot point this season, is that Mei is secretly the weirder of the Samadhi Fire, Red Son’s signature weapon that he was born with. Combining this with s3e2, the Great Grand Dragon of the East, which puts the focus on Mei’s relationship with her family legacy, and general family struggles, it becomes quite obvious that Red Son’s and Mei are being written as parallels. Red Son and MK still have scenes together this season, which surely fuelled Spicynoodles, like the iconic ‘extra blankets and warm milk’ scene, or the scene where MK shapeshifts to fly Red Son off, but note how I specified individual scenes there rather than season-wide concepts?

Now, this analysis is not the place for me to say one ship is better than the other, or that there’s any kind of problem with having a preference one way or another. My point is that the show’s focus was very clearly on Red Son and Mei’s relationship, and that by this point, they have a very solid foundation for a ship, and yet Red Son and MK are still absolutely dominating that as a pairing.

Skipping ahead to July 4 2022 in the Wayback Machine for the AO3 tag, Spicynoodles is still the most tpopular ship, with Shadowpeach as a fairly close second and… Dragonfruit nowhere to be seen. Now, I will say, I can’t check the exact ship stats for this time. There is no saved Dragonfruit page. However, I can say that Dragonfruit is nowhere to be found on the sidebar of common relationship tags in the main tag, and also that M/M is almost 5 times more common than even F/M in general. Is this distribution unusually for fandom? No, but I think it’s relevant here, because the show had finally become more accessible by this point, with all three seasons available, but Spicynoodles was still dominating.

And to save us all some time, suffice it to say, this trend continues. Mei and Red Son are the more focused on duo, but also yet the far less popular ship. To check the stats today, March 9 2025, Dragonfruit has 441 fics, compared to Spicynoodles’s 1742, and whilst this obviously isn’t the best metric for gauging ship popularity, it is both an easily accessible one, and imo, a somewhat indicative one. I’m sure anyone in the fandom could easily recount how common Spicynoodles is in general, and from personal experience, I can say that yeah! Dragonfruit is hard to come across! It’s not non-existent, but curiously, it is rare.

These days, we have Shadowpeach absolutely dominating, as by far the most popular ship, as the show has further developed Wukong and Macaque’s relationship, whereas, frankly… MK and Red Son haven’t had much screen time together as of late at all. I’d honestly wonder if to some extent, Spicynoodles has lost it’s top spot because it began sharing its trope space with Shadowpeach a little too much, and that led to the more relevant ship taking hold. But that’s not necessarily relevant here, so I digress.

So how is it that we can have the crux of the season 3 finale be Red Son cupping Mei’s face as he withstands the uncontrolled fury of the Samadhi Fire to tell her not to give up, that we can have Red Son’s main season 5 appearance be a duo episode with Mei once again focusing on the Samadhi Fire as well as their blossoming friendship, that from the fairly early days of the show, they’ve been set up as duo that parallels each other, and yet I honestly wouldn’t blame anyone for calling them a rarepair?

There’s a few wishy-washy sort of arguments that could be made. Oh, the show isn’t really about shipping, which… yes, it’s not! In a literal sense, Red Son warming up to both MK and Mei is a friendship thing! Macaque and Wukong’s big fight ended their friendship! Tang and Pigsy are technically just good friends who raised a random orphan child together! But see how inside a fandom context, that list starts to sound more and more ridiculous? And see how suddenly not interpreting Mei and Red Son as romantic because the show isn’t about romance starts to sound like an excuse?

(I should say, obviously it’s perfectly fine not to interpret them as romantic in general, but my point was that I don’t think it’s fair to cite the show’s direction as a reason for that in general)

But I’d honestly say the most likely reasons I’d expect to hear would be either that people aren’t as interested in Mei as Red Son or MK, or that they’re put off by it being an M/F ship. And… Hm…

At that point, doesn’t the issue sort of start to sound like it’s just that Mei is a woman? Doesn’t it just start to sound like despite having similar foundations, Spicynoodles is more popular than Dragonfruit because it doesn’t involve a female character? I’ve tried to make it very clear in this post that I think Spicynoodles starting more popular is for good reason, but by this point, I fundamentally can’t quite understand why there’s still such a big gap in popularity.

Because this is the reading comprehension website and because I really don’t want this post to just be an excuse for ship wars, I should say, no, I’m not calling anyone who prefers Spicynoodles a misogynist. Obviously it would be stupid to make a claim like that.

What I am saying though, is that the general fandom trends towards these ship’s popularity are very likely rooted in misogyny, and that the answer to why there is such a disparity between these ship’s popularity is because fandom doesn’t fundamentally want to engage with female characters in the same way that it does male ones. It’s quite easy to already note that Mei is fairly underrepresented in the fandom given the prevalence and importance of her character to the show, and that hardly hurts my point…

I wrote this post because I really like Mei, and it bothers me to see her overlooked in general, and I wrote this post because I came across this other post earlier, and it struck me how much I was reminded of Spicynoodles vs Dragonfruit. It makes me sad to see, so mostly, I wrote this to express my frustrations. Once more, this is not a hate post for any of the M/M ships mentioned here.

[bl-bracket]

Anyways I was going to make a post about the process of picking bracket topics and whatnot and was trying to come up with some examples of types of topics that would or wouldn't work and for whatever reason I thought of the concept of a "best murderer bracket" and I can't stop thinking about it lmao

it's just like such a funny concept? the idea of fictional murderers battling it out, especially ones from bls (which like I don't think is most people who are not super familiar with the genre as having a lot of characters who have killed people) is just funny in like an absurd way. like abstracting yourself from tumblr and tournament blogs, the idea of telling someone else that there's a tournament going for fictional murderers from east asian mlm tv shows, a genre that for several years was primarily shows about high school and uni students.

anyways that devolved into thinking about it more seriously, and then deciding a more practical way of doing it would to make some kind of directory of bl murderers. which would then lead to a lot of interesting statistical analysis, like characters with highest on screen kill counts, which countries have the highest proportion of fictional killers, etc. you can then make a separate category for characters with implied kills that aren't explicitly shown on screen or vague. and you could track how the number increases over time, which I assume exponentially goes up as more bls are exploring darker and more serious genres.

anyways back to the country stats, I started thinking about what the breakdown would look like so here's my guess based on zero research and just my general knowledge of shows

China. While having very few bls (censored or otherwise), they have a very unfair advantage and that is genre conventions. The 3 biggest Chinese bls I can think of are: The Untamed, Word of Honor, and Guardian. With The Untamed and Word of Honor, the conventions of xianxia and wuxia genres means that there are a lot of characters and almost all of them have killed before (usually nameless canon fodder but still). And then with Guardian, it's a supernatural detective mystery show with murder plots in it and a lot of characters, which again leads to a pretty high kill count. So even only counting these 3 shows, China will probably have the most killers in bl, or at the very least most kills done.

Thailand. It's a numbers game on this one. There's just so many Thai bls and an increasing number of like detective or mafia ones. A show like Kinnporsche has a lot of killers and deaths. Then there's other shows that include a few murderers (but less than Kinnporsche) like The Sign, Manner of Death, 4 Minutes, 3 Will Be Free, Never Let Me Go (Palm did shoot a couple guys dead elt's nto forget), Dead Friend Forever, etc. However the numbers also hurt Thailand in terms of proportions, since there's a lot more Thai bls that don't have murder, so it actually might be 3rd.

Japan. You're not getting much murder from your Cherry Magics and Old Fashion Cupcakes, which is what a significant portion of bl fan's primary exposure to Japanese bl is, but let's not forget that there's a lot of dark Japanese bls where murder is definitely on the table. Now I don't actually have a good gauge of what the numbers on this is, cause I haven't really delved that deep into this corner of the bl market, so I can't make a good estimation but I bet there's more than I'm aware of.

Taiwan. They've got a couple of mafia shows like HIStory 3: Trapped and Kiseki: Dear to Me, both of which have some implied and explicit murder (though less then you would expect if we're honest). That'll give them a few kills and they also have a relatively smaller pool of shows to pull from, meaning percentage wise it's a bit higher.

South Korea. Ok I am far from an expert of bls from South Korea, but unless there's like obscure short films I'm not aware of, the only drama I can think of from here with kills is Long Time No See? or I guess The Director Who Buys Me Dinner has like 1.5 murders? anyways Korea also has a not insignificant amount of bls to their name so proportionally it will be quite low.

The Philippines. Out of all the countries on this list, I am least familiar with the bls from here, but from what I've gathered during my routine mdl searches, basically all of them seem to be murder-free (unless of course there's some shocking plot twists in them)

anyways I'll probably never do this project just cause it would require a lot of time and collaborative effort and I've got a lot irl going on right now (hence why the submission period for most whipped is so long lol) and also have some other projects I'm already planning on doing so I don't really have time to do it. but I wanted to tell y'all about my thoughts on the matter.

also sorry if this is the weirdest thing I've ever posted. kinda had a major stress breakdown today but then resolved it relatively quickly cause I realized I could just reschedule the life altering appointment that was causing the breakdown lmao so I'm in a strange frame of mind lol

[destinationtoast]

I stumbled upon this... Thing by what looks like an actual journalism outfit, or at least their infographics wing. Thoughts?

https://pudding.cool/2024/10/fanfic/

Sighhhhh. Thanks for sharing this link (and then waiting three months for a reply, lol). I happened to have seen this one near to when it came out, but I am always glad to have people share such things with me!

So I have complicated, but partly "ARGH," thoughts about this article. And I ranted about it in some detail in Slack when I first read it. I initially didn't reply to this ask because I was trying to go back through the logs to find some of my specific past complaints, but they were lost to the mists of the Slack paywall. But here is my main complaint, roughly approximating the way that I probably ranted in Slack, for your enjoyment/excess punctuation needs:

There's so much data visualization here! And ship artwork, and interactivity, and more -- so much time clearly went into this!! But it's over-extrapolating!! from one data set!! of the top ships on onLY ONE FANDOM PLATFORM!!!! About which they gave no caveats or historical context when extrapolating to "what fans ship and why"!!!!!! When a bunch of fans have written about what fans ship and why, and in some cases gathered data about how platforms differ, and some other fandom journalists have cited that work!!!!!!! Why did these folks not do more research first before diving into all that data visualization, especially if they're journalists???????? ARGH.

But also...

At the same time, this is it's so close to just being really cool! There is some nifty analysis in here, including about things like canonicity and changes over time! I want more of this kind of deep dive out there, and more analysis, and more visualization! And there are some cool links to both scholarly and journalistic writing about fandom, in addition to citing/making use of Lulu's demographically detailed AO3 ship stats. So it's an interesting meaty read, if you keep in mind the limitations.

@olderthannetfic and I co-presented at GeekGirlCon 2019 about differences among some popular fandom platforms (among other things). Here is one of the most relevant graphs for caveating the Pudding article about shipping and "what fandom ships":

Franzi has also gathered a bunch of other data on differences between AO3 and FFN, and her earlier work on platform differences inspired some of my cross-platform comparisons about shipping, genres, languages. (@olderthannetfic please chime in with other relevant links if you want to, especially if you have more recent data!)

One of the things the Pudding shared that I found interesting was their comparison between the most common tags in M/M, F/M, and F/F:

[x] Nice to see more than just the top 10 tags, and interesting to see them categorized. I have gathered some related data about common AO3 tags in each of these categories, but I have to finish writing that up and sharing it. (That's one of my WIP resolutions for this year.) But I did share some data about the differences in the relative amount of use of smutty and kinky tags on AO3 between the three shipping categories:

(A commenter recently reminded me of one of my conclusions: "Everyone has butts, but only pairs of dudes seem very likely to touch or lick or fuck them." XD )

I find it interesting that F/M fic is most likely to tag Rough Sex and D/s! But of course, tagging behavior is not the same as what's being written about. And this is just AO3 data, and sometimes relatively low numbers of it, so definitely not representative of fandom at large. :)

(...this all this reminds me how much I want to get back to this work and look more at other differences between the shipping categories!)

ANYWAY. That was possibly a longer answer than you wanted, and several months later than you were probably expecting. XD But I appreciate you sharing the link and asking!

[imogenleewriter]

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson AO3 Works Stats

The other day, I was curious to see what the trajectory of uploads of Larry fanfic on Ao3 was and if it was increasing.Anyway, it was a pretty simple process, and here were the findings:

Perfect right? Done. Time to go to bed? No, because ya girl got hyper-fixated. So grab a cup of tea and enjoy this absolutely ridiculous waste of time...

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic profoundly affected various aspects of societal behaviour, including participation in online communities. The ‘Larry fan fiction community’ had a notable influx of new participants and emerging writers during this period. My antedotal observations suggested a significant number of authors have been publishing their first works as recently as this month. This study aims to quantify the trends in Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson fan fiction uploads on AO3 (Archive Of Our Own) over the past decade, with a particular focus on discerning any noticeable uptick in contributions corresponding to the pandemic’s timeline.

Method

The data collection was executed over several days, starting from the 16th of October 2023. Due to this, the 16th of October was used as a reference point for all of the 12-month periods. The following parameters were employed for filtering:

Relationship Category: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson.

Inclusivity: All pieces that included this relationship, irrespective of the presence of other pairings. The result of this means there are likely some works included where they are a side pairing.

Language: All languages were included.

Work Status: Both individual pieces and those parts of a series were included, as were completed and incomplete works.

Accessibility: Being logged in allowed access to members-only works.

During the analysis, two works were excluded due to backdating, to ensure the timeframe remained consistent. Due to the dynamic nature of the fan fiction platform, some works underwent updates or were removed during the data collection process. While these fluctuations did cause some inconsistencies, they were negligible and did not significantly impact the overall dataset.

For the 12-month periods under consideration, three main categories were analysed: total, completed, and unfinished.

Results

A comprehensive analysis of Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson fan fiction uploads spanning from 2011 to 2023 revealed the following insights:

2011: A total of sixteen works were documented, all of which were completed.

2012: The total number of uploads rose to 417. Among these, 409 were completed works, while eight remained unfinished.

2013: A significant surge was observed, with total uploads reaching 4,795. Completed works accounted for 4,251, whereas 544 were left incomplete.

2014: The growth trend continued, recording a total of 6,303 uploads. 5,296 were completed, and 1,007 were in-progress.

2015: The first decline was witnessed, although minor, with 6,105 total uploads. Completed works comprised 4,919, and unfinished ones stood at 1,186.

2016: A slight decline was noted, totalling 4,805 works. Completed pieces were 3,765, with 1,040 still in-progress.

2017: Uploads further decreased to 2,898. Of these, 2,297 were completed, and 601 remained unfinished.

2018: A modest rise was seen with 2,784 total works. Completed contributions were 2,275, while 509 were ongoing.

2019: The total dropped to 2,064. Completed pieces stood at 1,700, and 364 were still under development.

2020: A slight increment occurred, totalling 2,572 uploads. Of these, 2,071 were finished, and 501 were ongoing.

2021: The count increased to 3,195. Completed works reached 2,483, with 712 in-progress.

2022: A total of 3,767 works were uploaded. Completed works were 3,090, while 677 were yet to be finished.

2023: The most recent data showcases 4,018 total works, with 3,104 completed and 914 still ongoing.

After collating the primary data on completed and uncompleted works, I wanted to look at the distribution based on word count. The intention behind this exploration was to discern if there were patterns or preferences within the writing community regarding the length of the stories. (Please note that on diagrams representing word count, the years are now in descending order)

The categorisation of word count was structured. Works were segmented into word count brackets that started from the shortest stories, ranging from 0 to 1999 words, then progressively moved up in intervals: 2000-4999 words, 5000-9999 words, and so on due to the high prevalence in numbers in the shorter works. This structured approach allowed for a visual representation of how numerous works fell into each bracket for each year.

If you click on it, you might be able to see the distribution.

Results: Word Count Analysis

The following overview encapsulates the distribution of word counts for fan fiction uploads from 2011 to 2023:

0-10,000 Words:

2023 observed the highest concentration within this frame with 2507 works. Over half of the total published works for the 12-month period were found within this bracket.

The trend experienced notable growth from the 14 entries in 2012.

2014 saw a peak with 4994 works in this category, followed by a fluctuating pattern in subsequent years.

10,001-50,000 Words:

2023 recorded 1,031, a slight increase from 1,010 in 2022.

2015 led the chart with the most works in this range.

50,001-100,000 Words:

The count in 2023 showcased the highest number in this category, with 293 works.

2016 and 2021 were equal second, with 219 works in this category.

100,001-300,000 Words:

2023 had the most works in this segment, followed by 2022 and 2021.

Prior to this, the peak was in 2017.

300,001 Words and above:

The numbers in this range are comparatively limited, with 2023 having the most works surpassing 300,000 words.

Most years witnessed very few works in this extensive word count bracket, with numbers often remaining in single or low double digits.

I was also interested to find where most work stopped being completed. This is the percentage of completed works in each range.

Limitations of the Analysis:

AO3 Filtering System Limitations: The AO3 filtering system does not readily display the initial posting date of a fic. A fic could have been started several years prior to its completion but only shows up in the filtering system in the year it was last updated. This poses a significant limitation as the actual duration taken for the completion of a work might not be accurately represented.

Human Fallacy: There's always a potential for human error in manual data collection and analysis. Overlooked details, misinterpretations, or unintended biases can inadvertently influence the results.

Deletion and Date Modification of Works: Authors may delete their works or modify posting dates. This becomes significant for older works with a higher likelihood of deletions or date changes. Such actions can skew the numbers, offering a misrepresented view of the works available during a particular year.

Variability in Word Count Reporting: While categorising based on word count is useful, it's possible that authors might update or expand their works after the initial posting, leading to changes in word count categories over time.

Conclusion:

The data spanning from 2011 to 2023 shows that over the 13-year period, there has been a marked increase in both completed and uncompleted works, with the total number of works increasing more than 250-fold from 16 in 2011 to 4018 in 2023.

From 2011 to 2015, there was a notable surge in the number of completed works, culminating in 2014 with a total of 6307 works. This could potentially reflect an increased growing interest or a pivotal shift in the community or broader fandom dynamics during this period.

From 2016 to 2019, a noticeable decrease in the total works emerged, with 2019 seeing the steepest drop. This decline aligns with the onset of One Direction's hiatus. While causation cannot be conclusively established, it does provide a reasonable explanation.

Beginning in 2020, a revitalisation is evident, with figures steadily climbing and nearing their zenith by 2023. While this remains speculative, anecdotal accounts suggest that the pandemic, affording individuals more leisure for social media coupled with the growing popularity of TikTok, may have reignited interest in the fandom, steering them towards both reading and potentially writing fanfiction.

In summary, the AO3 community showcases dynamic growth, decline, and resurgence patterns over the examined period. While completed works have seen fluctuating trends, the spirit of initiation remains unwavering, as observed by the consistent number of uncompleted works.

Length of works

In 2011, the publication of longer stories (10,000 words and above) was almost non-existent. The numbers began to rise steadily, with a significant jump in longer stories from 2015 to 2017.

The number of stories with a word count between 10,000-14,999 went from 2 in 2011 to a peak of 458 in 2014. Similarly, the 15,000-19,999 range saw an increase from 0 stories in 2011 to its peak at 253 in 2015. As we progress through the word count brackets, there's a discernible growth trend, albeit with some fluctuations. For instance, the 80,000-89,999 bracket jumped from 0 stories in 2011 to a peak of 48 stories in 2023.

While there have been fluctuations in the numbers for some years, the overall trend does show growth in the publication of longer stories over the past decade.

The data shows that extremely long stories (those above 200,000 words) have always been a rarity. However, there's still a perceptible trend.

The 200,000-249,999 word count range sees the most action, with a peak of 27 stories in 2023. This is growth from the previous years 17, and then to 14, and so on. The numbers decrease as we progress to the right into the higher word counts, but occasional stories reach these impressive lengths.

The 250,000-299,999 word count range has peaked at 6, with numbers generally dropping with previous years. Higher word count ranges, such as 300,000-349,999 and 350,000-399,999, are sparser but maintain a presence.

Word counts of 450,000 and beyond are sparse, with very few recent entries.

In conclusion, while very lengthy stories remain uncommon, they exist and have seen publication in varying numbers. There's a trend towards fewer stories as the word count increases, which is expected given the monumental length of these works.

Upon examination of the data, there's a pronounced resurgence in the publication of longer narratives, particularly following a noticeable decline post-2016. The trajectory of this resurgence hints at an evolving literary landscape, with authors and perhaps readers veering towards more extensive works. Although the factors underpinning this shift remain speculative, the upward trend, especially in the realm of extended narratives, cannot be dismissed.

Monitoring developments in this sphere to ascertain whether this resurgence signifies a phase or a deeper, more sustained transformation in literary predilections will be interesting.

[summerlinenss]

out of curiosity, if Max doesn’t release its metrics, then what metrics are you actually using to make these statements about the show’s popularity? what does “it’s currently in the 99.7th percentile of the comedy genre, meaning it’s in higher demand than 99.7% of all comedy series in the u.s.” even mean? How are you measuring what’s “in demand” - by who? Where? It’s bold to claim that this show was wildly popular (despite the fact that I never hear about it outside of tumblr, tho that’s a personal anecdote) but cancelled just for being queer, so I would be really interested to know where you’re getting all these numbers from. Thanks!

hey anon! first of all i am so sorry for the delayed response. i started typing something up and then i got distracted with something else and totally forgot about this in my drafts.

sure, i have no problem citing sources. i probably should’ve linked some in my original post, that’s absolutely fair.

this ended up way longer than i planned so bear with me, but a quick overview of what i’ll be going over:

1) what are the stats/where did they come from?

2) how is the show so popular?

3) was it really cancelled for being queer?

(also just a disclaimer that this will contain spoilers for the show)

1) first, the numbers

you’re right that hbo doesn’t release metrics to the public. in fact, ceo casey bloys tried to justify the cancellation to the hollywood reporter by saying “the numbers weren’t there,” despite refusing to say what exactly those numbers were or where they came from.

however, there are websites dedicated to researching/analyzing the data of different media. one of those is parrot analytics, who focus on industry insights like audience demand, competitive analysis, and content valuations. they’re trusted as a reliable source by forbes, the new york times, reuters, the wall street journal, and more.

this is what we can learn from them about our flag means death from a basic google search (note that all of this data is relevant to the last 30 days as of january 26 2024):

audience demand for our flag means death is now 33.6x greater than the average tv series in the united states. as explained in the “about demand distribution” section, this means it’s one of only 0.2% of all u.s. shows to fall in the “exceptional” performance range compared to the “average” demand benchmark of 64.1%.

the change in demand for ofmd in the u.s. has increased by 7.5% compared to the average tv series.

ofmd now actually ranks at the 99.8th percentile in the comedy genre in the u.s. i’m not a math person, but in basic terms, this is like a scale of measuring and comparing performances to create an average score. essentially, ofmd is performing at the very top of all comedy series in the u.s.

ofmd has 100% home market travelability. as it says above, the market of origin is always 100%, so in fairness i included the graph of international markets for comparison. some of these aren't super high, however (as explained by parrot analytics themselves) one of the key issues with the international market is accessibility to content, which has been an ongoing struggle for international fans. many people (i guess fittingly) have resorted to pirating ofmd because they don’t have access to max or affiliate streaming services in their country.

there are more stats i could have and wanted to go more in-depth into but it would make this even longer than it already is, so i’ll just leave some links you can check out if you’re interested and move on:

• comparison of ofmd's success to shows like ted lasso, euphoria, and peacemaker

• ofmd's placement as #1 most in-demand breakout series in the u.s. for 8 weeks

• ofmd's impressive 94% critics score and 95% audience score on rotten tomatoes

• how ofmd evolved from sleeper hit to a flagship series at max

• a list of ofmd's past and present award nominations/wins

• praise and recognition from news/entertainment sites: the atlantic (2022); the new york times (2023); tv guide (2023); vulture (2023); forbes (2023); the los angeles times (2022); vanity fair (2023)

2) so why haven’t you (or others) really heard of the show outside of tumblr despite all this success? likely because max did a terrible job marketing it.

ofmd first aired on hbo max (pre-merger before it was “max”) in march 2022. the entire season aired over one month, every thursday at 12am pst. season 2 followed a similar release schedule in october 2023.

season 1’s marketing was almost non-existent, pretty much relying on taika waititi’s name being attached. there was one teaser and one full-length trailer, as well as a few clips on youtube of taika and rhys darby answering pirate-themed trivia, all painting the show as a “silly pirate workplace/buddy comedy.” but hbo max didn’t put any real effort in because they didn’t care. david zaslav and the other higher-ups had no faith in the show and expected it to fail.

most people weren’t aware it was actually a romance due to the poor marketing, and although there were many romantically charged scenes between them, many were still wary to believe it wasn’t queerbaiting until ed & stede confessed their feelings and kissed.

showrunner david jenkins has said in interviews that he had no idea how deeply queerbaiting had hurt audiences and impacted their ability to trust what’s on screen without feeling like they’re being ridiculed, despite the fact that he was calling it a love story the whole time. it wasn’t until people realized they weren’t being queerbaited and that it was a funny, sincere show with a compelling plot that word-of-mouth began to spread. by the time the season 1 finale aired, there was a decent-sized fandom that continued to grow as it received more praise.

it was a fight to even get the show renewed for season 2, and david jenkins and the cast have majorly credited that renewal to the unexpected and massive fan response to the show, which basically forced hbo’s hand.

max didn’t bother trying to properly promote the series until season 2, when they begrudgingly accepted that it was one of their most profitable and successful shows. ofmd had huge billboards in times square, downtown los angeles, and on the side of hbo headquarters. they started accurately marketing the show as not just a workplace comedy at sea, but a heartfelt romcom. max began selling long-demanded merch (which became best sellers) and spent money on an FYC campaign.

i will emphasize, whether they liked it or not, they knew ofmd was their new moneymaker (especially with the recent end of succession, which was obviously a cash cow for hbo).

photo credit: @/bookishtheo

3) now if it was that successful, was it really cancelled just for being queer?

i mean, i can’t say that definitively. no one can. there are several potential factors at play that we may never know, and there have been a lot of rumours and speculation (many of which i don’t feel comfortable discussing in case they aren’t true) since the cancellation.

but do i believe the fact that it’s a queer romcom was one of those factors, especially since max has a history of cancelling and scrapping its most diverse projects? absolutely.

first and foremost, i can’t stress enough that this isn’t just a show with a few characters thrown in for token representation. ofmd is built on a diverse, intersectional cast and narratives, including:

• lgbtq+ representation: 5 main couples are explicitly queer (including mlm, wlw, nblm, and nblw relationships). multiple characters are implied to be poly, and there’s a polycule forming in season 2 that was hinted to be developed more in season 3. beyond relationships, it’s confirmed that (similarly to the way wwdits depicts all vampires as being pansexual) all of the pirates are somewhere on the queer spectrum.

• bipoc representation: the majority of the main cast are people of colour. this includes david fane, joel fry, leslie jones, samson kayo, vico ortiz, anapela polataivao, madeleine sami, samba schutte, ruibo qian, and taika waititi, as well as many guest actors (like rachel house, simone kessell, and maaka pohatu) and extras.

• disability representation: multiple characters have physical disabilities, most notably amputated/prosthetic limbs and visual impairment. a lot (actually most) of the characters also deal with mental health issues, particularly coping with severe trauma and suicidal ideation/behaviour.

• the show has been praised for addressing difficult and serious themes like toxic masculinity, colonialism, and self-discovery, all while still managing to be a witty comedy and not come across as “preachy.”

• the diversity also extends off-screen, with a team of directors, writers, and additional crew comprised of numerous bipoc, women, queer people, and trans/non-binary people.

my point isn’t just the quantity of representation, but the quality. they take great care and respect into every marginalized group depicted on-screen. the actors would often be consulted about their characters’ costumes, hair, tattoos, and the kind of language they use. it’s not a world where discrimination magically doesn’t exist, they just have zero tolerance for it. if a character does something homophobic or racist, you can guarantee they’ll quickly (and often violently) be punished.

so okay, sure, it’s got great representation. what does that have to do max cancelling it?

because they’ve been interfering with production from the start.

i already mentioned the marketing issues so i won’t get into that. it was also revealed in interviews with david jenkins after season 2 that hbo cut their budget by 40%, which is why they had to do everything they could to save money. this included letting go of some of the original cast (and even still having episodes where some of them don’t appear at all) and moving the entire production to AoNZ. the budget cuts also meant two less episodes, so they had to rush to fit an entire season’s worth of plot into eight half-hour long episodes.

but one of the biggest frustrations is hbo’s (alleged) censorship of the show. samba schutte revealed that the entire plot of episode 2x06 was completely different in the original script. before it was rewritten as “calypso’s birthday,” the episode took place during lucius & pete’s wedding and focused on the crew getting sick of the sexual tension between ed & stede and trying to get them to hook up (this aligned with lucius & pete getting engaged and ed & stede deciding to take things slow in the previous episode).

vico ortiz and writer jes tom have also commented that many scenes between jim, oluwande, and archie establishing them as a polycule were cut, including one of the three of them emerging from a bedroom in their underwear. jes has mentioned other elements of season 2 that had to be cut out or rewritten, like the implication of other poly dynamics between the crew and more sexually explicit scenarios and jokes.

considering that ofmd is an extremely sex-positive show that isn’t afraid to be raunchy or taboo, it’s clear that either higher-ups at hbo forced them to cut these things out or they had no choice but to cut them out due to tight budget/time restraints.

in addition to this, a recent article citing an “anonymous insider” has alleged that hbo was uncomfortable with and was unsure how to market the “shock violence” in the show (the same network that aired game of thrones), which david jenkins outright called out as being bullshit. ofmd is rated TV-MA and the posters and trailers all show the audience that it contains violent content. there is literally nothing more graphic in ofmd than any other pirate show — it’s probably a lot tamer than most of them, actually.

violence on the show is most frequently used in a comedic context, in the sense that it’s not meant to be seen as scary or taken seriously. the few instances of serious graphic imagery on the show are meant to invoke a mood shift, like ed’s transformation into the kraken or ned low’s murder. it should also be noted that some of the most graphic deaths are reserved for bigots, like ed snapping the neck of a colonizer who was ridiculing stede’s love letter.

it’s also most often used in a sexual context — not sexual violence, but violence as a sexual metaphor. more specifically the act of stabbing as a metaphor for penetration, as seen with both ed & stede and anne & mary. bearing all this in mind, it seems like the real issue here isn’t executives struggling to market explicit violence to a mainstream audience, but rather explicit gay content.

as much as we joke and affectionately call it the “gay pirate show,” ofmd has always been nothing more than an opportunity for rainbow capitalism for hbo (e.g. the fact that they waited three months to announce season 2 just so they could do it on the first day of pride month). like other cancelled queer media, ofmd was a way for hbo executives to show how “inclusive” and “accepting” they are when it was convenient (aka profitable) for them, but they never actually respected the show or us as a community.

it’s impossible to be certain of what the exact reasoning for cancellation was, especially when they won’t give us a clear answer themselves. and maybe it had nothing to do with ofmd being a queer romcom at all. maybe that’s all a horrible coincidence. but for hbo/max to axe a critically acclaimed and beautifully inclusive show that’s successful by every metric, with an extremely devoted fanbase, especially after casey bloys just had the nerve to ask “gay twitter” to hype up the gilded age? it doesn’t exactly put them in the best light regardless.

in summary, i’ll leave you with this editorial, which details how the campaign to save ofmd isn’t just about one show, but a fight to save the future of all queer art.

[artficlly]

I present: "A Quick University Level Analysis of Chapter 4 (because you deserve it)"

The emotions within this chapter alone, nonetheless the WHOLE series has been raw and real. This is perhaps one of the most realistic and true to life depiction of recovery and reaction to past abuse in all forms. Seriously, I can at least speak for myself that this hits close to home in a way I never would have thought to be represented.

I can understand Steve’s protectiveness over Bucky, but at the same time, he was in the wrong for how he was treating MC. Like, I was GAGGED the whole time he interacted with her in the beginning. This also leads me to my next point-.

This entire series, but especially this chapter, capitalizes on how ignored women’s trauma can be in comparison to men’s. Especially within the MCU, I see that fans typically feel more empathy to the male characters who have had past trauma. This does not mean they don’t deserve it, but I feel this stems from almost the normalization of trauma upon women. How it’s a “canon event” so to say for women to have at least one, catastrophically horrible experience with sex.

Bucky probably has lost his mind when he finally realized he was scaring MC and more than likely bringing her back to a traumatic moment. I am here for this level of angst, just as long as there is comfort and understanding (it's like aftercare).

The difference in reaction to how two victims cope with SA. In a society that has been primarily based on purity culture, it should not come to a surprise how people typically perceive the act of sex aversion as the most “normal” way of coping with SA. This is perhaps why everyone tends to coddle Bucky more within this story. Then, there is MC, the polar opposite. How she is coping is not any better; but the whole point is that she is not perfect whatsoever. Yet, as previously shown in the story, this is not viewed as an unhealthy coping mechanism of someone in need of help; it’s perceived as her being a temptress in a sense.

It's possible that you had no intention of diving this deep, but I wished to because your story was perhaps one of the most thought provoking and well written pieces I’ve read in a while; especially with how caringly you treat the sensitive subject matters. I cannot thank you enough, and omg I get to read this for free, you’re amazing

hi lovely<3

first of all, i saw this come thru and i sent a message to my flatmates being like!! idk what it is about today but i have so many people dropping full ESSAYS into my inbox about my latest chapter haha. it's so cute i love it.

damn it always makes me so saaaaddd when people say that, like i really fucking appreciate it, you're so sweet, but it's sad seeing so many people relate. i guess because the majority of this part of the fandom are female or female presenting, and we all know the stats :( i really do wish all of you the best. i get it. i really do.

ty for that. our boy steve was just being protective and didn't stop to think. as the reader talks he kinda has this realisation that she does truly care.

yeahhh. i ahven't seen thunderbolts yet but i do hope they touch on yelena's trauma a bit more than they did nat. i feel like nat was always so like.. badass, sexy, cool token female character. the black widow movie is one of my faves. maybe I'll rewatch it again, ugh it's just too good. i said this in another reply but i really do wish marvel had been able to go a bit darker with the red room, but i guess disney wouldn't allow that. i based a lot of my headcanons around the red room for lessons in lovemaking from movies like red sparrow, atomic blonde, anna, etc. i just feel like we talk about bucky losing his autonomy as the winter solider a lot, but we don't talk about how that happened to ALL of the widows as well. ugh idk i have so many feelings.

i don't think I'll end up writing this bc i don't write from buckys perspective, but he for sure went back to his room and spiralled about it. maybe even had a panic attack thinking that the reader hated him (but it's okay he would've used her breathing instructions hehe). they'll figure it all out for sure.

i think you've hit the nail on the head there haaha

okay so i have a problem. i try to write normal nice things and it always ends up with some weird subtext about a social issue I'm currently stressed about. in the YA/romance/fanfic world as a whole i have a lot of issues around topics like sex, sexuality, and consent. if someone really wants the whole rant about it with examples, let me know because god do i get HEATED and i feel like there are so many dangerous messages being sent to young readers. i know i'm probably not blameless in contributing to some of these issues.

anyway tysm for reading and for taking the time to write and send this, holy shit??? today has been a rollercoaster fr. <3

[w1ldthoughts]

AJ’s Analysis- Week One Preview⚡️:

Raiders at Chargers

Disclaimer: I am a Chargers fan so this will obviously be biased BUT I have been a football fan for the last 12 years and absolutely love dissecting the game and making comments so I figured I would give this a try! Please feel free to make comments and let me know your thoughts in my inbox!

Players to watch:

Los Angeles

Justin Herbert QB- Oregon- Year 5🩵

Pookie. Angel. Perfect prince. Idk. He’s just my favorite player in the NFL to watch. The arm talent, the decision making, the…everything. Ok so, this is honestly his coming out year. He’s finally got a coaching staff that is competent and hopefully working in an offense that doesn’t put the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s also coming off of finger surgery and a minor foot injury so he should be healthy and ready to take over the league. Simple. I can’t wait to watch.

Stats: carried the team on his back pretty much all of last season, lost a finger nail, lost most of his sanity and then lost his season to a broken right index finger. Best game last year by far was the week 10 loss against the Lions where he threw for 323 yards and 4 touchdowns.

Cameron Dicker Kicker- Texas- Year 3

Little angel bean. Best kicker in the league. No further comments.

JK Dobbins RB- Ohio State- Year 5

Coming off of an Achilles injury and trying to shed the “injury prone” rumors, Dobbins is set to make his Chargers debut. One important thing to note, he’s only fumbled twice in his career…iykyk

Joe Alt RT- Notre Dame- Year 1

Here we go people! Fifth overall pick, mixed reviews from the audience. I’m rooting for him and the entire o-line to be much improved so I hope this first test shows that this investment in the “trenches” was worth it.

Khalil Mack EDGE/LB- Buffalo- Year 11

Recorded six sacks the first time these teams met last year. Was drafted by the Raiders in 2014 and has 100 career sacks, last season being one of his best in the last five years with 45 solo tackles and 17 sacks.

Joey Bosa DE/EDGE - Ohio State- Year 9

Also trying to shake injury prone rumors but seems to have taken on a new outlook and a new sense of excitement and motivation due to this new regime. Played in 9 games last season, starting 5 and still finished with 6.5 sacks. Honestly, looking forward to Joey making a big impact this season.

WR Room

I’ll preface this by saying I still miss Keenan Allen BUT ready to move forward. Very excited for Josh Palmer to get his time to shine hope he can stay healthy. DJ Chark excites me I’m gonna need to see some big plays from him. Quentin Johnston needs to have a breakout season. Ladd and Brenden are rookies but I need some huge contributions from them. Simi I know will show out when his number is called and if Derius the punt return king gets some targets I know he’s gonna put on a show. Nervous but excited to see how this goes!

Las Vegas

Gardner Minshew QB- Washington State- Year 6

Played in all 17 games for the Indianapolis Colts last year, made 13 starts and somehow always seems to know exactly what a team needs to get a win when his number is called. On his third team in his NFL career, looking to prove himself so he should come out looking to make a statement to keep his starting spot over AOC. Made the Pro Bowl last year with 305 completions and 3,305 passing yards, both career highs.

Davante Adams WR- Fresno State- Year 11

Your favorite wide receiver studies his film. Six Pro Bowls, three-time First team all pro, 39 games with 100+ receiving yards and has 9,637 receiving yards over the span of his career. Will get targets, will catch the ball and will probably score a touchdown (hopefully not two but who knows) this weekend.

Brock Bowers TE- Georgia- Year 1

Rookie Tight End making his NFL debut. Voted First Team All American by just about every single sports outlet in the country last season. Had 56 catches for 714 yards and six touchdowns for the Bulldogs in a 13-1 season falling short of a 3-peat not making the college football playoff but defeated Florida State 63-3 in the 2023 Capital One Orange Bowl.

Maxx Crosby DE- Eastern Michigan- Year 6

AKA Mad Maxx, neck tats can play football. Played in all 17 games last year and started. Heart and soul of the Raiders defense with 48 solo tackles and 14.5 sacks. Did get shaken out of his shoes by Justin last time and I’m sure he didn’t forget so he’ll be coming for vengeance.

Christian Wilkins DT- Clemson- Year 6

Entering his first season with the Raiders after a very successful five years in Miami. Recorded an NFL high 9 sacks for defensive tackles last season, started all 17 games and recovered two fumbles. Wilkins makes this Raiders defense a lot scarier and this will be a great first test for the often shaky Chargers o-line.

⏳FLASHBACK⌛️

Last time these two teams met, we all remember where we were…

1. Justin was injured, fresh off of surgery and Easton’s presence in the pocket is like a kid running late for curfew, very rushed and deer in the headlights

2. Defense quit and was ready to start fresh having lost faith in the entire coaching staff

3. We were all praying on the Charger downfall on this day and got what we wanted so sorry Coach Staley but…not sorry

Had to include this because baldy is gone and I couldn’t stand him. This was very embarrassing.

That’s it for week one!!!

Bolt the absolute fuck up

[olderthannetfic]

I don't know if you're aware of this but the end of year AO3 stats posts are going around and one of the largest and longest running studies is extremely flawed (for example, reporting Dean/Cas had 2348 new works when they actually had 6456). Here's a post about it: https://www.tumblr.com/5ummit/738707388904898560/

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Huh! I thought she was better at stats than this. We were on a panel together at one point, and she seems cool, but unfortunately, fandom stats are often not done all that well.

I know we all love graphs, but I want everyone to be critical of this stuff, including mine. I love Toast's work too, in addition to centreoftheselights, but I remember some old Wattpad stats where the methodology was to mark any work too incoherent to classify as gen... (LOL. Dude, have you seen Wattpad? Default gen, my ass!) There are tons of things wrong with every major fandom stats project or regular poster's work.

I haven't gotten on this soapbox lately, mostly because I've been too busy to run any of my own stats stuff heavily this year, but yeah... "Fandom stats" tend to consist of the same like... maaaaaaybe 4-5 fans, most of whom aren't statisticians.

I got invited to a con panel a few times based on... like... existing in public. And don't get me wrong: I do try to make sure shit I post is accurate and labeled as what it actually is, but I know I'm nothing hot when it comes to stats. I think I ask slightly smarter questions than usual and am willing to hand-count more things, but my actual "stats" are just "Here's the % of X. Here's the % of Y." and not a higher level analysis.

It's simply that the field is wide open with no competition. Aside from a tiny handful of repeat posters, it's just millions of randos grabbing the same few numbers from AO3 works search or filters and going "Gasp! Fandom has X% m/m!" (Ignoring that it's an AO3-only % and that everyone has access to this number and that it's a boring-ass thing to repost for the thousandth time.)

A new wrinkle is, of course, that if one uses one's personal account, one may have people muted. I suppose I'll have to get a new account if I want to be really accurate about stuff, though I think I currently only have 2 people muted and they're not prolific.

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I don't want to put my own work down or that of the other people who post stats, but as audience members, we have got to get in the habit of reading the methodology section more carefully.