More AO3 stats! Yay!

[melannen]

I have been what the trendy longreads are now calling "languishing". Or possibly hitting a very slightly early midlife crisis? Or maybe I'm still just slowly outgassing from the last four years, like magma decompressing in a volcanic fissure (...I am also still watching lots of Iceland volcano videos. It is less little and cute than it was, but still pretty!) So I did not, for the first time ever, submit any panel ideas for con.txt this year. I was even kind of considering not going? Because what's the point of anything, right? And I've gone every two years since the first one, but this one is an off-year so it doesn't count?

But then they post the panel poll and they are all SO GOOD and reminded me of everything I love in fandom, so I guess I'm going after all. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to a con.txt free of me for once!

Anyway that got me thinking happily about fandom stuff again, and I pulled out those AO3 history spreadsheets. I now have a list of all the fandoms I read more than 25 fics on AO3 from in last 16 months (It's a bit rough because of reading logged-out and wrangling, so I'm not giving the numbers, but it feels right for a list of my biggest fandoms in the past year.) I'm kind of surprised there aren't more of the old pre-AO3 standard slash fandoms on there, but I guess I tend to read them one at a time as I look up old favorites, not dozens in one go, plus I don't always find those fics on AO3.

Some of these I was also surprised how few fics I'd read because it felt like they were a big part of my reading last year - but I guess 25 fics is still one every two weeks! That's as many episodes as you'd get in an old-style American TV show in a year. That's a lot! It's just the ones where I averaged three a day that are blowing the curve.

So here is the list, and while I was at it I wrote bullet points of why I read in these fandoms - what I'm looking for when I look up the tag - though that implies much more self-awareness than I have, most of this was retrospective from looking down this list.

I am also writing out what I know of canon because it's entertaining how varied that is.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (I read mostly canon-setting gen. I watched the first two seasons (the library didn't have Fire) and read most of the Gene Luen Yang comics when they were coming out.)

• People who are Good
• Redemption of all sorts
• Stories about things like nationalism and imperialism and polyculturalism only it's a kids show so things still get to be okay
• Toph

DC Comics (I mostly read stuff that is canon-agnostic, in the sense of "I concede the theoretical possibility that a canon exists, but have seen no compelling evidence". Mostly Batfamily and Supers but I will branch out when it comes up. I have read widely but not deeply (or recently) in the comics, watched most of the Dini cartoons, and seen some of the old TV shows and movies, though not the most recent movie or TV-verses.)

• Hypercompetence
• Identity porn
• Thoughtful stories and/or brooding on rooftops about responsibility, power, repairing the world, and the limits thereof
• Every found family is found in its own way

DC TV-verse (I basically just read stuff with Leonard Snart in; I tried to read LoT fic after S1 but canon happened so much. I have no canon knowledge beyond general DCU.)

• Superhero/Antihero (Also just plain antihero, but not the grimdark kind)
• Clever capers
• People with access to powers having fun with them instead of brooding on rooftops
• Leonard Snart

Good Omens (Know book, radio and TV-verse. Will read it all. First fandom I ever read online fic for!)

• Enthusiasm about humanity as an ideal and a reality
• People who aren't very good at being human but are very good at being people anyway
• Really weird yet extremely sweet porn
• A worldview that believes that when you get right to it deep down it's all very silly

Guardian (I watched about the first 20 episodes of the show, which is a lot for me these days. What I read is mostly just what turns up on the reading list these days)

• Bad boys who are secretly marshmallows
• Marshmallows who are secretly bad boys
• The King of the Cats
• UST turned all the way up to 11

Hannibal (I, uh, read Silence of the Lambs a very long time ago? I read mostly dark!Will stories because I still can't get over the stress of never knowing if the food is supposed to be secretly people in the less outwardly dark stories.)

• Reminder that it isn't just fanfic that's super fucked up
• Super fucked up fanfic
• #aesthetic
• Stories set in my home stomping ground (...theoretically)

The Locked Tomb (Read all of canon. Will read basically any fanfic.)

• Lesbian necromancers with swords and banter; the banter is deadlier
• Gothic Goths (in all possible senses, up to and including possibly sacking the pseudo-Roman empire...)
• Small groups of very intense people trapped in confined spaces together under pressure
• Loyalty kink

Lord Peter Wimsey (Have read all the books and seen the Edward Petherbridge TV series. Will read anything unless it writes out Harriet - this started as me re-reading all of the Hilary/Jerry on AO3.)

• Feudal Lord (and Magistra) and Valet
• Healing from trauma on a very human scale and on very human timeline
• People being very thoughtful and careful about relationships and what they mean practically (and loving recklessly anyway)
• Forgiving people and caring about people and trying to be good and it still never quite being enough (and it still being enough anyway)

Machineries of Empire (Have read all of official canon, I think. This is mostly here because I reread the whole tag pre-yuletide, but if there was more I would read it.)

• Whump
• Everybody is very queer but in very different ways
• That balancing act where the world is grimdark and everybody has done unspeakable things but they're still idealists
• Identity confusion

Marvel (I have read some of the comics, widely but not deeply. I have listened to all of JaMX-PtX-M. I have watched most of the MCU movies and some of the other movies and some of the older TV and cartoons.)

• Look, this is mostly just that it's there
• If I split it it probably wouldn't make the list but I don't know how to split it fairly
• Cable/Deadpool is fun but you have to separate it out from all the boring spideypool, unless it's Into the Spiderverse, which is always good of course no matter who it's about
• Venom movieverse is this perfect combination of "monsterfucking" and "millennials having midlife crises" and I think that's very sexy of it
• Sometimes you just have to read Daredevil fic? Especially if it's Spider-Gwen verse tho
• I have read all of the Jimmy Woo/Scott Lang but that's because there's tragically little of it
• Obviously Captain Marvel fic is worth it, ditto Black Panther
• Sometimes there is even comics fic? Sometimes it's even about people other than Steve/Tony?
• Sometimes there is X-Men fic that isn't about Michael Fassbender too
• And then there's so very very many old comfort reads to go back to, all of which are easy to find on AO3, unlike older comfort read fandoms.

Modao Zushi (Have read the novel in translation. I will read basically whatever, though I am least likely to read Songxiao or Meng Yao centric-stuff mostly because they're most likely to go off-canon in ways I find uninteresting)

• It's the first real megafandom to hit my circles in over half a decade, there's just so much of it, you can find anything (No penguin!fic. Yet. But I have read swans and peacocks.)
• A woobie who everyone thinks is evil but actually has never done anything wrong, ever (More than one of them, actually)
• People growing up, learning, growing into themselves
• Siblings sible-ing

Murderbot (Read all of canon repeatedly, except FT which is sitting next to me as I write this. Needs more fanfic!)

• #relatable
• Being good at your job and not even exactly hating it
• Surviving capitalist hell
• Assholes who love each other very much

The Old Guard (Zilch canon, thought about trying the comics but ugh, the art. This is mostly on here via recs from people I followed from other fandoms.)

• Really Old Guys
• Super cute established relationships
• Meticulously crafted historical settings
• The things that aren't the canon m/m ship that even turn up in fic occasionally

Star Trek (Watched TOS, most of TNG, some of DS9 and Voy, some of the movies, read most of the classic-era books. Lately I have been reading mostly DS9 and book-flavored TOS but I sometimes branch out.)

• Fully automated queer space communism
• People helping each other and their systems, more or less, working to help them help
• Exploring new worlds and meeting new kinds of people, having sex with them
• Crews that love their ships and each other (even if sometimes it's the ship of state)

Star Wars (Watched all of the live-action movies, read all of the pre-prequels books and some other EU stuff from that era, read the Mandalorian junior novelization. Lately reading mostly sequel trilogy OT3 and post-S2 Mandalorian, a scattering of original trilogy and other stuff)

• Found families (subset OT(everyone), also subset Hot Dads)
• Pilots, in space
• People with more power than they ever expected or wanted to have, figuring out what to do with it
• Blowing up space Nazis

Transformers (Canon: I have read some of the IDW comics. Also I think I had one as a kid? It was a matchbox-scaled car that turned into a white robot. Maybe it was a knockoff. I mostly remember being annoyed that the robot form didn't articulate much so it mostly stayed a car. Fandom reading: Mostly G1? I think? Mostly involving Prime and/or Megatron. But I will branch out.)

• Giant ancient robots and tiny mayfly humans figuring out ways to co-exist
• Enemyshipping
• Really thoughtful explorations of what it means to be enemies, of how to live with endless war and how to survive endless peace, what redemption means when nobody is untouched by the pragmatics of war and survival or by the stain of history, etc.
• People who turn into fighter jets

Watcher Entertainment (Watched: all of Buzzfeed Unsolved, some Watcher stuff. Reading: mostly Buzzfeed Unsolved, some of the related stuff.)

• Relationships that cross Bro/Nerd lines
• Navigating that line between being sort of celebrities but not really
• Inappropriate Elf (actually he's a demon not an elf, usually, but it's the trope)
• Interrogating the nature of skepticism and belief

Witcher (Fanfic: Some TV-verse, some game-verse. Canon: I have read a couple of the books but that seems mostly irrelevant to the fanfic)

• Familiar European fantasy tropes
• People learning how to be human together
• Poly Comet relationships
• Found families, subset "well I guess you're just stuck with us now, too bad"