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destinationtoast · 1 year

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Toastystats preview: F/F vs. M/M tagging

I discovered something unexpected while doing stats comparing F/F and M/M on AO3. One thing I was initially looking for was whether M/M fanworks were more likely than F/F fanworks to tag dark themes or explicit sex acts. It seemed like yes, they were -- but then I found out that, more generally, M/M fanworks use more tags on average than F/F fanworks. And given that, it's not too surprising that M/M is more likely to use most of the common AO3 tags than F/F is (whether the tag is dark, fluffy, or otherwise).

Still, I found a few AO3 tags that F/F was more likely to use than M/M. And I sorted a bunch of common AO3 tags from "Most likely to be used by M/M" to "Most likely to be used by F/F", shown above. The middle line indicates that a tag is equally likely to be used by M/M and F/F. Some of the darker and more explicit tags do indeed seem to be further toward the mostly-M/M end of the spectrum, but some of the ordering surprised me. (E.g., F/F is more likely to use "Smut," while M/M is more likely to use "Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot." And F/F and M/M are nearly equally likely to use "Trauma" and "Coercion.")

I have a whole lot more F/F vs. M/M data to share soon, but I have questions for y'all first about this data:

does the above visualization makes sense? I'm worried it might be hard to interpret, so if you're confused, can you share anything about why?

are you are surprised by anything about the data?

any thoughts/theories/questions this data raises for you?

Below the cut -- additional explanations that might be useful when theorizing (e.g., about possible factors like background ships), along with raw data for the above graph.

A couple notes on interpretation: we shouldn't have to worry about the fact that F/F is often tagged when F/F is actually a background ship -- I tried to weed out all cases where the F/F or M/M tag of interest could possibly have referred to a background ship. Also, all of the above tags are used at least 1000 times on F/F works and at least 17K times on F/F and M/M combined... so these numbers shouldn't be *too* prone to the noise of really small numbers.

Data used to make the chart

Header: tag name | % F/F using tag | % M/M using tag | A/A is X times more likely to use tag as B/B (A/A uses it more than B/B)

Whump | 0.16% | 0.39% | 2.4

Protectiveness | 0.85% | 1.81% | 2.1

Hurt | 0.93% | 1.94% | 2.1

Kinks | 1.12% | 2.30% | 2.1

Crack | 0.87% | 1.67% | 1.9

Torture | 0.46% | 0.84% | 1.8

Children | 0.56% | 0.99% | 1.8

Gore | 0.23% | 0.40% | 1.7

Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot | 2.25% | 3.72% | 1.7

Not Beta Read | 1.76% | 2.63% | 1.5

Falling in Love | 1.12% | 1.62% | 1.4

Self-Harm | 0.63% | 0.90% | 1.4

Abuse | 1.82% | 2.57% | 1.4

Incest | 0.93% | 1.31% | 1.4

Cuddling & Snuggling | 1.56% | 2.15% | 1.4

Humor | 3.63% | 4.99% | 1.4

Birthday | 0.38% | 0.51% | 1.4

Supernatural Elements | 2.16% | 2.93% | 1.4

Badass | 0.37% | 0.50% | 1.4

BDSM | 3.94% | 5.32% | 1.4

Awkwardness | 0.65% | 0.86% | 1.3

Dark | 0.44% | 0.58% | 1.3

Marriage | 1.78% | 2.36% | 1.3

Light-Hearted | 3.13% | 4.12% | 1.3

Hatred | 0.51% | 0.66% | 1.3

Mythical Beings & Creatures | 2.01% | 2.58% | 1.3

Love | 5.95% | 6.74% | 1.1

Friendship | 5.01% | 5.64% | 1.1

Alternate Universe | 19.27% | 21.27% | 1.1

Holidays | 1.90% | 2.09% | 1.1

Trauma | 1.43% | 1.56% | 1.1

Coercion | 0.37% | 0.39% | 1.1

Horror | 0.45% | 0.47% | 1.0

Comfort | 0.95% | 0.97% | 1.0

Fluff | 23.98% | 24.17% | 1.0

Flirting | 1.20% | 1.20% | 1.0

Hugs | 0.38% | 0.37% | 1.0

Crossovers & Fandom Fusions | 1.56% | 1.52% | 1.0

Alternate Canon | 4.89% | 4.71% | 1.0

Polyamory | 0.71% | 0.67% | 1.1

Smut | 7.04% | 6.48% | 1.1

Slow Burn | 2.54% | 2.26% | 1.1

Post-Canon | 2.32% | 2.03% | 1.1

Romance | 6.42% | 5.49% | 1.2

Drabble | 2.59% | 2.21% | 1.2

Prompt Fill | 0.70% | 0.59% | 1.2

Pre-Canon | 0.77% | 0.59% | 1.3

One Shot | 3.85% | 2.66% | 1.4

LGBTQ Themes | 7.77% | 4.44% | 1.7

Gender Related | 3.52% | 1.45% | 2.4

#fandom stats #femslash #wlw #mlm #F/F vs. M/M #ao3 #toastystats #questions for the tumblmind #op #50 #100

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educatedinyellow · 1 year

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My 2022 Fanworks Round-Up

Hello! I’m rachelindeed on AO3 and educatedinyellow on YouTube and here on tumblr. I’m happy to say I created a handful of eclectic stuff this year, as usual :)

1. [vid] from eden (Duncan/Methos, Highlander: The Series) ‘Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword.’

2. [vid] One More Time With Feeling (Queen of Mystery) ‘Say it in your mind until you know that the words are right. This is why we fight.’

3. [fic] moderate raptures (Discworld, Vimes/Vetinari, WIP) In some timelines, Vimes and Vetinari find their way to each other. This is one of them.

4. [fic] Spider stories (221B Baker Towers, Sherlock/John) The spider at the centre of this web is not the one you’re expecting.

5. [vid] Spider stories (221B Baker Towers, Sherlock/John) I made a vid to match my fic that tells the same story in its own way. It’s included with the fic in the same AO3 post, or you can watch it separately on YouTube.

6. [vid] in case you don’t live forever [Supernatural, Dean/Cas] ‘I’m a man ’cause you taught me to be one.’

7. [vid] Crayola Doesn’t Make a Color [multiverse, Holmes/Watson] Sherlock Holmes, there is no way that we could possibly describe you!

Total number of completed works: Seven! Five vids, one completed fic, and one chapter of a WIP. *does the dance of joy*

Total word count: Approximately 14.5K words. That’s quite good for me!

Fandoms created for: Highlander, Queen of Mystery, Discworld, 221B Baker Towers, Supernatural, and the Holmesian multiverse.

Looking back, did you create more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? Maybe a few more words than I expected, maybe slightly fewer vids than I expected. But no big surprises.

What’s your own favorite creation of the year? Spider stories. It’s the one I worked hardest on, and I’m glad it turned out all right!

Did you take any creative risks this year? Yes, I made a full-length vid out of stock footage for a fandom that has no canon source material, and I learned a lot of vidding tricks along the way, from how to use proxies to how to film my own desktop and incorporate it into the vid. I had a lovely time working on it. Honestly, I was more intimidated to write for the Baker Towers universe than I was to vid for it, but I did my best to research and write with respect. <3

Do you have any goals for the new year? None! I am a blank slate, LOL! Well, I suppose I should revise that to say: having started to post my Discworld WIP, I would like to carry on and get new chapters added in the New Year.

Most popular creation of the year? It was the Highlander vid by a wide margin. So many Methos lovers still out there, rock on!! I love you!!!

Creation of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: They’ve all been very kindly received. But I will take this opportunity to plug the Queen of Mystery TV series, it’s a South Korean genderswapped Sherlock Holmes adaptation that won my heart and that I wish more Holmes fans would discover! Unfortunately they’ve taken it off of Rakuten Viki (the streaming platform where I watched it), but if you have a Roku Channel subscription it’s apparently available over there. Or, you know, there are bootleg DVDs on eBay, not that I would know anything about that ...

Most fun thing to make: The Highlander vid. It was super fun to revisit those episodes and discover how much of the snarky banter I actually remembered word for word despite not having rewatched a lot of those episodes since, like, 1996. I loved that ridiculous show. My best friend and I had SUPER ELABORATE headcanons for Methos, too, and it turns out we still do :)

Most unintentionally telling thing: Can’t think of anything? Except maybe the aforementioned Highlander vid tells you I was a teenager in the ’90s?

Biggest disappointment: Just what so many of us have been feeling, I suppose -- it hasn’t been an easy year, and I haven’t had as much time or energy for creativity.

Biggest surprise: So many kind, encouraging comments on my little Vimes/Vetinari chapter from total strangers! Discworld is a generous fandom, and I hope I can write more soon for them :)

That’s it for me! I’d love to hear about your creative works this year, if you’d like to share!

#year-end meme #masterlist #my fic #my vids #thanks 2022 it's been ... tiring #best wishes to you all and happy new year!

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sunnydaleherald · 1 year

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The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Saturday, April 15th

GILES: There's a Watchers' retreat every year in the Cotswolds. (walks to the other end of the table) It's a lovely spot. It's very s-serene. (everyone listens) There's horse riding and hiking and punting (smiles) and lectures and discussions. It-i-it's... it's a great honor to be invited. (a tad bitter) Or so I'm told.

~~Faith, Hope, & Trick~~

The Sunnydale Herald is looking for at least one new editor. Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here.

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Backstage 47: “the Price of Lace” by aadler (G)

Shipwreck by apachefirecat (Buffy/Faith, PG/K+)

Purge by SomeKindOfADeviant (Spike/Drusilla, T)

A misogynist faces the Demon Wolf by Bl4ckHunter (Warren, Teen Wolf crossover, T)

Who Am I? by AJ Fields (myfanfiction) (Anya, G)

Bring Me Back To Life by ialwayscomewhenyoucall (poetry, Buffy/Spike)

Hysteria...A Woman's Disease by Desicat (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion, Chapter 383 by madimpossibledreamer (Ensemble, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, T)

Vamp Fashion, Chapter 3 (complete!) by adella_green (Spike/Proinsias Cassidy, Spike/Dracula, Preacher and What We Do In the Shadows crossover, T)

Lost and Found, Chapter 3 by BlakeStorm (Buffy & Sam Winchester, Supernatural crossover, T)

A Coalition of Heroes, Chapter 11 by Aragorn_II_Elessar (Ensemble, Supernatural and Charmed, T)

William „Der Blutige“ Shakespeare, Chapter 3 by Lilith464 (Ensemble, E, German language)

Mostly Harmless, Chapter 14 by Lady Emma (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Mostly Harmless, Chapter 15 by Lady Emma (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Key Saves Spuffy, Chapters 14-15 by Dynamite (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

42, Chapters 14-15 by Dynamite (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Back Through The Woods, Chapter 7 by Desicat (Buffy/Spike, R)

Trying, Chapter 19 by Pet35 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

So One of Us is Living, Chapter 5 by violettathepiratequeen (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Belonging, Chapters 11-15 by honeygirl51885 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Those 2 again, Chapter 3 by Julikobold (Buffy/Spike, G)

Origin Story of Shanna Brown, Chapter 36 by Cristina (Buffy, Merlin and other crossovers, FR18)

The Butcher, Chapter 16 by Grief Counseling (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Postcards and Snapshots, Chapters 5-6 by TheSunnySlayer (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Those 2 again, Chapter 3 by Julikobold (Buffy/Spike, G)

The Home Invasions, Chapter 3 by VeroNyxK84 (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Here we go again, the two of us, Chapter 1 by LJ94 (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Harmony by emmatheslayer (worksafe)

Artwork: Buffy/Spike by feyspeaker (worksafe)

Artwork: spuffy wip based on my fav picture of billy idol by snoozieart (worksafe)

Artwork: Spike by vampywillz (worksafe)

Artwork: Buffy by marveletplus (worksafe)

Artwork: Angel sketch by kingbuffy (worksafe)

Headers: Buffy Summers + BtVS Season 5 headers by onegirlinallthewrld (worksafe)

Bar chart race: Top 10 cartoons/comics/graphic novel fandoms on AO3 based on number of fanworks (2009-2022) by bakanokiwami

Fanvid: Buffy/Angel ''Sweet Dreams'' college project by Wearer of the cheese

Fanvid: buffy & angel | all of the girls by a.

Fanvid: Buffy and Angel are doomed love by Driad (slideshow)

Music: Close Your Eyes - Buffy and Angel Love Theme (Piano Cover) by Gishin' Around

[Reviews & Recaps]

The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by staringdownabarrel

Buffy yearbook by kingbuffy

Found a Buffy book I haven’t read [Blood and Fog] by btvs_historian

Podcast: 7.16 – "Storyteller" by If the Apocalypse Comes, Beep Me

[Recs]

Late Night Talk, Buffy/Joyce by badly_knitted recced by petzipellepingo

[Community Announcements]

The SAD Transcript Library

[Fandom Discussions]

the way buffy the vampire slayer uses guns is really interesting by fallingtowers

[Angel/Angelus] the split-divide identities/personalities thing by Girl4Music

Did Faith sign Buffy's yearbook? by kingbuffy

There’s something very funny about Faith’s plan to unleash Angelus in Enemies by nevergonnabemuchmorethanweather

touch starved cangel is just soooooo good and interesting by someonefantastic

Cordelia and Angel by therulerofallpotatos

Angel by wolfstrong

My bold take is I think Spike should’ve eaten Parker by disco-tea

Explain to me how Willow and Tara are just living in Buffy’s house spending all of her money by levelzerohermit

When even the demon bar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is chill with gender neutral bathrooms by levelzerohermit

cordelia and caroline vs. lydia by mimi-dracula

Do you like Kennedy? continued by multiple posters

What did you guys think when you saw Dawn for the first time? by Sinmerina

Why do so many people dislike Tara? continued by multiple posters

Fred all alone by MoreGull

For all of the “I’ve finished Buffy but didn’t like Angel. Should I watch Angel?” by Dry-Dragonfruit5216

Do you think Sunnydale will be rebuilt? by aeryn1227

Buffy season 7 is a misunderstood masterpiece! by D_B_4986

Buffy Billboards by btvs_historian

Do you think Giles fished out all the scoobies diplomas from the rubble? by SmurfSmeg

Sunnydale high shouldn’t be allowed to continue to function with how many people are being murdered by NotCharAznable

Do you feel bad for [Robin Wood and Billy Ford]? by Opening_Knowledge868

I'm feeling quite a quality drop in season 5 compared to 3 and 4 by Thestickleman

Angel season 5 worth it? by Hot-Face2471

Giles as a father figure by _lilith_and_eve_

Prophesy Girl, all the fuss about the prom dress by Inoutngone

Foreshadowing with Snyder by Eagles56

How in the world was this scene from Double Meat Allowed to Air? by aeryn1227

The Gay Buffy Video: Once More With Queering by Lily Simpson

Video: How Tara Became the Best Character by Better with Bob?

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Script Sides by Christopher Burdett

Angel: The Casefiles Volume 2 by Christopher Burdett

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #angel the series #ats

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solosvejs · 2 years

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Our Flag Means Data

As we all know, Our Flag Means Death has exploded onto fandom in a very short amount of time, and we still don’t have any news about a season 2 so one day at like 3 am I decided that it would be a great idea to see if I can do some data about it. More specifically, I wanted to see if there was any relationship between the stuff that was happening in the show and people writing (or not writing) fic about it. We all remember SPN Finale-pocalypse, when you had to go 50 pages back in the ao3 results to find anything written before that episode - was something similar happening here?

Quick numbers:

We have produced 2131 fanworks in 34 days!!!

The total wordcount was 6,497,681 (yes that’s almost 6.5 million words about gay pirates) - y’all are SO PRODUCTIVE.

Average wordcount: 3042

Est. words per day: 191108

The first fic on Ao3 was posted on March 9 - six days after the initial batch of episodes dropped (e01-e03). OFMD has a very weird release schedule where they didn’t do the standard one-episode-per-week model OR the Netflix release-everything-at-once model.

By April 3rd, there were over 1000 works - meaning that less than a month after the first fanfic appeared, the fandom was already ineligible for Yuletide.

So far, the day with the highest activity was April 4 - 211 works were posted that day.

The graph above shows very quick growth, but a running total will always look kind of inflated, so lets look at it in more detail:

(full-view for all the data-y goodness)

Here we have the number of works posted per day, and some more interesting patterns. I’ve also plotted the wordcount as the dashed line, and added annotations for when each batch of episodes came out.

We start to see fandom activity start out fairly slow - It wasn’t until after episodes 7-8 (”This is Happening” and “We Gull Way Back”) were released that you get more than 1-2 posts each day. Is this the point at which we all clued into the premise of the show and realized it wasn’t just queer-baiting?

March 26 and 27 saw another spike when the last two episodes came out - you had more fics than the previous day (and it helped that this was a weekend, so people had time to write as many fix-its as they wanted). This is also when the ship was DEFINITELY confirmed, we had an actual kiss, everyone lost their collective shit. The increase after this was a bit slower, but still steady - even if there are falling-off periods like on March 28th, it never does back to the previous level.

I’m really curious about the two REALLY big spikes that we see on April 2nd and 10th.

This graph uses the same daily fic count as the one above, but now we are plotting only the difference from the previous day:

So we are seeing some ebbs and flows in the activity. It’s difficult to make a real comparison to SPN Finale because, well... Supernatural had 15 years’ worth of fic before that, as well as its own fandom migrations, wank, and controversies.

In conclusion...

This whole thing started because I saw someone in the OFMD tag say that people only started watching the show once they knew that Blackbonnet was canon -- I thought, huh I wonder if that’s true, maybe I can do a chart or something. And, well, a couple of weeks later, I don’t know if I have a definitive answer to that question? It’s likely that a canon ship got people talking more and drew some folks in who may not have otherwise been interested -- the “oh it’s queer? Yeah I’m in” argument works on me very often.

Do we see an increase in fanfic production after The Kiss happened? Yes. But because episodes 9 and 10 were released at the same time, it’s hard to untangle which works were written in response to what without looking at the tags. As I was writing this I realized something as well, which I didn’t consider at first: When do we we consider Ed/Stede to have been made “canon” ?

The episode when they kiss is an easy choice, but probably an equally large number of people would say it’s episode 7, “This Is Happening”. I’m sure for some people it was their adorable moonlight exchange in episode 5. Maybe for others it was another moment when they knew it was canon. If you’re David Jenkins, it was probably canon from the very first episode, we the audience just didn’t know about it yet.

Ultimately, I’m not sure it matters. People find different fandoms in all sorts of different ways -- through larger fandom spaces, recs from friends and popular blogs, or even just out in the wild. And people some people did only decide to watch the show once they knew they wouldn’t be queer-baited, which is absolutely their right! Consume your blorbos as you will :)

Caveats and assumptions

I only looked at what was posted on Ao3 because that’s what I have the most access to and am most familiar with in terms of stats and how the data is structured. It’s possible there are other folks who’ve already tracked the growth on Twitter/Tumblr or other social medias.

Data was taken from the main fandom tag: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Our%20Flag%20Means%20Death%20(TV)/works; Out of the 2131 works, only 55 were marked as crossovers.

“Date posted” and “date updated” a bit tricky to distinguish if you’re just looking at the work results and not going into each individual work/chapter/series. I don’t think it’ll skew the data very much personally, since we’re looking at such a short timescale, but I might look at this in more detail later.

The fandom is VERY NEW. We only have data for a little over a month, so it’s hard to draw any sort of conclusions about whether the trend will keep going or not.

Currently, OFMD is only available through legitimate means on HBO Max - this will limit the reach of the fandom somewhat; yes, there are people who will consume the show through gifs and memes and fanart, or those who don’t mind reading fic if they’re not familiar with the source material, but it still seems like the relative exclusivity of the show is a factor.

As an addendum to that, I have no idea what/when/how aggressively this show was marketed. I personally only became aware of it through Tumblr, but I’m probably a poor barometer since I don’t have TV outside of streaming and don’t really pay attention to HBO. If someone wants to look at promotional efforts as they relate to fanwork production, I’d be really interested to see that! (Happy to share my dataset but it might be out of date by the time I post this with how fast y’all are writing)

Boring tech info & How to get in touch!

Data was scraped from Archive of Our Own using Python and the BeautifulSoup library. To structure and analyze the data, I used pandas, csv, and collections. Charts (and one pivot table because I am still baby at programming) were made in Google Sheets. If you want a copy of any of my code, or the dataset, please DM me and I’d be happy to walk you through it :) If you’re curious about fandom stats in General, check out DestinationToast, who has been doing this for a lot longer than I have and has a ton of resources!

#fandom stats #our flag means death #ofmd #ao3 #baby's first stats project!!!#(it's me I'm the baby)#fanfiction #solo does stuff #meta #ofmd meta

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analyzen · 3 years

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Italian Fandom Meta | Most Popular Types of Pairings on EFP vs. AO3

EFP (2001–, Fanlore) is the most popular writing archive in Italy, and it hosts both fanfic and original fiction. Under the cut you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular types of pairings on EFP in comparison to the most popular types of pairings in the Italian section of AO3.

The Italian version of this analysis can be found here.

TL;DR:

53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted

49% of the registered users on EFP have deleted their accounts

M/F works amount to 60% of the whole website

EFP’s three most popular fandoms (Harry Potter, One Direction, Original Fiction – Romantic) all have a majority of M/F works

On AO3, most Italian works are M/M (56%)

F/F doesn’t have much content on either site (4-5%)

Methodology

I’ve followed @olderthannetfic’s methodology from this earlier Fanfiction.net analysis. Basically, I picked a sample size of 666 chapters and organized them in four categories (M/M, M/F, F/F, Not tagged; more on this later).

Why I chose chapters instead of stories

On EFP you don’t have specific links for every single story. Instead, every chapter you post gets a unique id, which can be seen in the link itself. For example, at the time of writing this the last updated chapter on EFP was this one:

viewstory.php?sid=3974099

Which means that this was the 3'974'009th chapter ever posted on EFP.

Ids follow the usual numerical order, so if a link reads id=3, then there have to be id=1 and id=2, and the next link will have id=4.

So I’ve used a randomizer to select ~1200 unique ids to analyse.

Weren’t 666 chapters enough?

I started out with 700 chapters, but half of them weren’t working. That’s because 53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted from the website.

Thanks to the link of the last updated chapter, we know that almost 4 millions chapters have been posted on the EFP. But EFP's homepage shows different stats:

Registered users: 602395, 205974 of which are authors Last registered user: [blacked out] Total of stories: 517083 Total of chapters: 1869573 chapters Total of reviews: 6222695 Online users: 17 logged in and 53 visitors

While we should have almost 4 million chapters, the stats show ~2 million chapters. Why? Because the stats only show the stories, chapters and users that are still on the website, and they don’t show the stories, chapters and users that have been deleted.

(Sorry, I forgot to translate this one. It reads: Total of chapters posted on EFP between 2001 and today. Orange: deleted chapters. Blue: chapters that are still online.)

Thanks to the stats on the homepage we also have a link to the last registered user. User ids follow the same numerical order as chapter ids, so once again we know that 49% of the users ever registered on EFP have deleted their accounts. That's a lot of deleted accounts.

Categorization

After selecting 666 (accessible) chapters, I organized them into 4 categories:

M/M: contains all stories tagged as “yaoi”, shounen ai” and “slash”

M/F: contains all stories tagged as “het”

F/F: contains all stories tagged as “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash”

Not tagged: which contains a) poetry, b) stories tagged as “no pairing”, and c) untagged het stories.

As for the untagged het stories, there are two issues:

Many M/F fics simply aren’t tagged

Many gen fics include untagged M/F ships

If the description made it clear that the story included a heterosexual relationship, I added the story under the M/F tag. Otherwise I left it under not tagged.

Also, on EFP “yaoi”, “shounen ai” and “slash”, and “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash” actually mean different things.

This screenshot here is from the posting page on EFP. It reads:

Pairings * You must select at least one tag from the list, and you can choose up to three tags. Het: for heterosexual relationships Shonen-ai: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Shojo-ai: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Yaoi: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Yuri: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Slash: for male/male relationships from TV shows/movies/books FemSlash: for female/female relationships from TV shows/movies/books

The thing is. People either respect the rules and use different tags for different kinds of stories, or they use these tags interchangeably to maximise the chance to appear in other users' searches. Which means that you’ll find RPF tagged with “shoujo ai”, and Attack on Titan fics tagged as “slash”. (More info on this later.)

Findings

On EFP, the majority of the stories are M/F.

To confirm this, I checked some specific fandoms:

Some notes:

Because EFP doesn't have metatags like AO3, what I did was: 1) go to a specific fandom, 2) filter through every single tag, and 3) jot down the number of pages per search. Every page contains up to 15 stories, so for example searching for het in Original Fiction – Romantic gives you 846 pages, which amounts to around ~12690 stories.

The tag in red, “Nessuna”, means “no pairing”. It is used for gen fics but also for untagged M/F fics. This is especially true in some fandoms, ie. Original Fiction – Romantic, and Harry Potter.

EFP’s filtering system sucks. You can only filter through stories with specific relationship tags, but you can’t filter out relationships tag. So what you see in the graph is how often a tag is used... which brings us to some issues. For example, Harry Potter is the biggest fandom on EFP, so much that Harry Potter stories amount to 11% (!) of the whole website. But in the graph it looks like the One Direction fandom has more stories—wrong. Actually, One Direction has many stories tagged as both slash and het, while Harry Potter stories tend to be either one or the other.

EFP’s filtering system sucks, part 2. Because “shounen ai”, “yaoi” and “slash” are often used at the same time, you can't really smash together all three of the tags to get a total amount of stories. I'd say that around 50% of the stories tagged as shounen ai and yaoi probably overlap, but there is no easy way to find out because, again, EFP’s filtering system sucks. The same goes for “shoujo ai”, “yuri” and “femslash”.

Fandoms with a majority of M/M stories

While there are some fandoms with more M/M stories (ie. Death Note, Hetalia, Glee, Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf), these fandoms are simply extremely small in comparison to other bigger fandoms full of M/F fics. Which obviously skews the numbers in favor of M/F fics.

What about femslash?

EFP suffers from the same lack of femslash as AO3 as a whole. In the fandoms I've analysed, only two have a big enough number of F/F. The fandoms are Glee (which has more F/F stories than M/F stories) and Grey's Anatomy (which has as much F/F as M/F stories, with little M/M).

Original Fiction

I thought it might be interesting to explore the original sections too, especially because Original Fiction – Romantic is the third biggest fandom on EFP after Harry Potter and One Direction. These Big 3 all have a disproportionate amount of M/F stories.

By logic, this would mean the the majority of the userbase on EFP prefers M/F stories. But then, aren't fans always complaining about “too much slash”? If “Any Two Guys” were enough to find slash appealing, wouldn't it be easier to simply write original M/M?

I think that looking at original stories might help us understand why people might prefer slash over het in some fandoms. For example, the amount of M/F stories in Original Fiction – Romantic implies that, when authors have to chance to choose what types of stories to create from scratch, they might prefer M/F stories.

This would support the theory that many people might prefer slash because of the lack of (well written/primary) canonical female characters + how well M/M relationships, both platonic and romantic, are written in canon texts in comparison to M/F or F/F relationships.

Obviously, we have to keep in mind that not all fanfic writers write original fiction and viceversa, so I'm not trying to find a universal explanation here. Also because not every website has a majority of M/F stories.

Which brings us to...

AO3 vs. EFP

As per today 20/04/21, the Italian section of AO3 contains “only” 24777 stories, divided between many different fandoms. To make a comparison, the Italian stories on AO3 amount to 5% of all the stories available on EFP. To make another comparison, the whole Naruto fandom on EFP has 20129 stories in total.

EFP has also been active for 20 years, while the boom of Italian fics on AO3 only started around 2018. We can't really make a 1:1 comparison between the two archives, but we can still try to understand the preferences of their users.

M/M and M/F stories on EFP vs. AO3

EFP: 60% M/F, 25% M/M

AO3: 56% M/M, 23% M/F

The percentages are almost swapped.

This might be because of the archives themselves. EFP has always been the general website for any Italian fandom (and actually at first it mostly hosted M/F content), while AO3 has always had a big M/M userbase. I'm basing this statement on this AO3 analysis from 2013, in comparison to this FFN analysis from 2018 which showed a majority of M/F fanworks, and finally this AO3 vs. FFN vs. Wattpad analysis from 2019, which showed that AO3 has always been the outlier for its majority of M/M content.

Then again, M/M stories on EFP have always been subject to the “usual” type of borderline-to-direct harassment that M/M fans are used to, which is something that still happens to this day especially in certain writing groups on Facebook, where the Italian writing community is pretty active. It wouldn't be weird for slashers to move to AO3, where they know they'll find more like-minded people and less headaches. (Also, the Italian section of AO3 has a lot of M/M RPF that's banned on EFP.)

The “Multi” tag on EFP

The only thing that barely resembles a multi tag on EFP is threesome, which for some reason is often used as a synonym for love triangle. So from the tags it isn't easy to understand if a fic includes an actual threesome (as in, a sex scene), a polyamorous relationship, or a simple love triangle.

This doesn't mean that there aren't poly stories on EFP—it simply means that they're impossible to find using the search system.

And that's all, I think!

#italian fandom meta #efp analysis #ao3 analysis #fandom meta

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astermacguffin · 3 years

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The semantic logic of AMVs

I finally finished the post I promised to @katebushstandean , so here's my contribution to the blossoming field of spn amv studies.

In this post I made about fanworks and intertextuality, I argued that AMVs can be referred to as a "discourse between discourses." What I meant by that (and I elaborated on this in the post) can be summarized in this argument structure:

(1) AMVs are typically a dialogue/discourse between a song and a show/film.

(2) A song is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between music and lyrics).

(2) A show/film is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between the visual and auditory elements of the show/film).

I want to push this argument even further and argue for a more generalized theory of meaning that should (ideally) be applicable to any piece of media.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

Let's start by analyzing at least just one medium at a time. Take music, for example. Without lyrics, how does music convey meaning at all? Now, I won't go too much into either music theory or the psychology/sociology of music (since I don't think I'll be able to give these subjects any justice anyway), but I want us to look at music more structurally/linguistically. (I am certainly not a linguist, but I am a training logician and I think it would be interesting to extract the logical/semantic relations that occur in music if we treat it as a "text".)

If we want to break down music into its smallest possible units of meaning (the same way we break down language into morphemes in morphology), then we would probably end up with notes, beats, and chords as our basic units (among other stuff, like timbre). Obviously, we cannot subject music to the same reductionist approach we do with either natural or formal languages (e.g. breaking down language into morphemes/propositions/subject-predicate relations/functions).

This is due to the fact that music doesn't really agree that much with the principle of compositionality—that "the meaning of the whole is a function of the meanings of its parts and their mode of syntactic combination." (If you disagree with Montague semantics, you might even argue that the same is true for natural languages and that only formal languages are truly compositional, but I digress). Generally, there is "more than the sum of its parts" when it comes to music; the meanings of a chord don't solely depend on the meanings of the individual notes that make up the chord.

Anyway, back to music and meaning-making.

Yip Harburg has this interesting quote on songwriting, which Adam Neely references here at this mark (15:29–16:10), a quote he originally got from Ben Levin. The quote says: "Music makes you feel feelings, lyrics make you think thoughts, songs make you feel thoughts." I think this quote best encompasses what I mean when I argue that songs are "discourses" of their own.

But even without the lyrics, music on its own is already "discursive." A single note played once doesn't really "mean" much, in the sense that we can't really gather as much meaning out of it alone. The note's relationships with other musical elements is what opens up the realms of meanings that we can attribute to it. (This concept is explored much better in here.)

The same thing is true with natural languages. Morphemes and words have meanings on their own, sure, but they don't really say that much on their own until you place them in a specific order with other morphemes/words. A single sentence is already a discourse between the units of meaning that compose the sentence.

I have been using the term "discourse" a lot, but what do I mean when I use the term? Without spending too much time explaining my own theory of discourse, let's define a discourse as a "series of discursive units." A discursive unit consists of two parts: a prompt and a response. What's important to know about responses in a discourse is that you won't really be able to fully grasp what they mean without knowing what the prompts are (i.e. what they are responding to).

When I describe song and lyrics as "discourses", what I think I really mean is that they are "discourse-like" (hence the description, "discursive"). The words of a sentence treat each other as their own prompts/responses; they're not as meaningful alone, but when taken together, meaning emerges. The same goes with music.

Taking this to a more macro scale, we can treat each episode of a show as their own discourses, and each episode "responds" to the others in some way. The harmonies, tensions, and contradictions that emerge from the "conversations" between these episodes are what we often respond to when we make fanworks (fanart, fanfics, meta, and the likes).

Generally, there are two kinds of "conversations" that happens within and among pieces of media:

The intra-discursive (the conversations that happen within a single text, like how a show's episodes converse with each other), and;

The inter-discursive (also called the intertextual, or the conversations that happen between different texts).

Now that we have established these terms and concepts, we're FINALLY talking about AMVs.

THE DEAL WITH AMVS

I've already touched upon this in my intertextuality post, but it's worth repeating. What I believe AMVs do is reveal the intra-discursive using the inter-discursive. What this means is that by making the subject text converse with other texts (e.g. by making clips from Supernatural "dialogue" with a song of your choice), you are somehow extracting the implicit discourses present in the original text.

When we talk about fanworks (and transformative works in general), we often talk about it in terms of recontextualization, as well as adding something new that wasn't there in the original text (e.g. fix-its). But a neglected aspect of fanworks that I believe AMVs bring to light is the revelatory power of fanworks, like the way it makes the people (may it be the audience or the original creators) confront the implications and implicit meanings already present in the text.

(Learn more about the semantic logic of AMVs below the cut)

Another interesting thing that AMVs do is that it often makes the subject text subservient to the song. More often than not, it's the show that has to adjust to the song; it's the show that has to be sliced and diced in order to fit the song. This is simultaneously a form of violence and a form of liberation—violent in the sense that goes against authorial intent (with "author" here used loosely to refer to the forces that brought the piece to life, may it be a single person or an entire production team) and liberating in the sense that the latent or supressed narratives are brought to light.

Even before the AMV is done, this discursive process is already made explicit by the act of editing. In most editing softwares, you get to see the timeline of your material and an explicit divide between the audio and the visual elements. The audio stream is already a discourse of its own, and the same goes with the video stream.

When you vertically slice these juxtaposed streams and cut out a portion of it, you now have what I call a "semantic moment" locked in time. We can imagine the audio being divided into these little semantic moments (e.g. the chords, a key change, a shift in dynamics or tempo, etc.) and something similar can be said with the video (e.g. vital scenes in the show). Now, a semantic moment doesn't have to be special or eventful; in fact, most of them aren't. In fact, all of experience is nothing but a series of semantic moments (i.e. moments of extractable meaning).

Now, imagine an AMV playing in front of you right now. Let's represent the audio as a series of semantic moments from A1 to An and do something similar to the video, from V1 to Vn. If we represent the flow of time from left to right, then we can talk abstractly about experiencing an AMV like this:

A1-A2-A3-A4-A5...-An

V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...-An

Every moment of our experience of the AMV can be divided into a series like this. AMVs are art objects that unfold over time: they are temporal, and therefore we cannot immediately access all parts of the semantic "discourse" of the text all at once—we have to wait for them to happen.

Let's say I want to analyze Semantic Moment number 6 because something interesting happens there: the chord suddenly shifts into a minor key while at the same time, the video shows a character turning their back to the camera. Now, there are three possible ways to handle this (none of which are mutually exclusive; we usually perform these modes of analysis simultaneously):

Vertical analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V6. What meanings are brought up when we take these two elements in conjunction? What associations do we have with minor keys, with people turning around, and how these associations influence the other?

Horizontal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and its earlier counterparts, A1-A5, or between V6 and V1-V5. Earlier, we have discussed that a single chord or a single word on its own doesn't mean that much; it's their relationships with other elements that bring out their "meaning space." What "narratives" or "metaphorical gestures" are brought upon when you consider these semantic moments as discourses/texts as a whole?

Diagonal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V1-V5, or between V6 and A1-A5. Here, you make the semantic moment converse with the "history" of its counterpart. What are the events that happened in the earlier parts? For example, knowing that the earlier parts of the song were in major key before the turn-around scene might influence our reading of it. Similarly, knowing that the earlier scenes depict a happy relationship might influence how we read the minor shift.

Again, we often do these analytic slices as quick as possible (and often simultaneously); it's not something that we often do consciously (unless the subject text is actually that dense and difficult). It's instinctual to us to bring up these comparisons and engage with the explicit and implicit discourses of meaning happening with any kind of text we interact with.

Now, here's where it gets more complicated. Unless the AMV in question is just a scene lifted from the show and overlaid with a song, it would usually involve a bunch of cutting and joining between different scenes/episodes. What this means is that you're taking an already temporal object and reassembling it into a new order in time. This means that we might've initially thought of as V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...Vn might actually be V3-V1-V6-V19-V8...Vn or some other permutation.

Again, this process is simultaneously violent and liberating—violent because you are destroying its intended order, and liberating because you are negating the tyranny of linearity and contiguity. What I mean by this is that people tend to focus on the discourse of the semantic moments depending on how close they are in space and time. For example, we might focus on how V1 is in dialogue with V2 and how V2 is in dialogue with V3, but the farther the semantic moments are, the less likely we are to notice their discourse.

What AMV editors do is rebel against the tyranny of this habit and bring into light the connections that might have gone unnoticed without the intervention. We often talk about how certain fanworks are more analytical than transformative (e.g. fanfics that function more as character studies and meta analyses of the source text), and there certainly is a spectrum of this among different genres of fanworks. I believe that AMVs, no matter how transformative they are, cannot help but invoke a certain analyticity in their production and reception.

And that concludes my AMV essay. I'll probably add more to this when I gather more thoughts (like how these three posts are related in some way).

Lemme know if y'all wanna hear more about my theory of discourse or something else related. Support your content creators and reblog!

#spn #spn amv studies #long post #aster writes

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venhedish · 3 years

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Tagged by @alienfuckeronmain. thanks so much beb you know i love to talk about myself. <3 nickname: pretty much just Ven. there was an embarrassing period in my freshman year of high school when i insisted people refer to me as Sora because i was obsessed with Kingdom Hearts.

zodiac: scorpio sun, cancer moon, capricorn rising. i don't particularly believe in astrology, but fuck if that combo doesn't perfectly describe me.

height: 100% average thank you very much. i am *not* short. (5'4").

last movie I saw: i tried to rewatch spiderman: homecoming a few days ago and learned it's not actually on any streaming services. i watched like half of the second kung fu panda movie a couple nights ago, but i put it on literally to fall asleep, so. i guess the last movie i actually watched with the intention to watch was the old guard, which was like a month ago.

last thing I googled: lmao. "blood lick scream," apparently. i was looking for this gif:

favourite musician: that's an impossible question. let's go with the musicians that have influenced my taste overall the most? Placebo; Hozier; The Frights; Arctic Monkeys; Kishi Bashi; Beats Antique; Fiona Apple.

song stuck in my head: i woke up with Closing Time bouncing around in my brain for some reason?

other blogs: @necro-nomnomnom is my sex and horror sideblog. @digital-scrivening is my multi-fandom/random whatever sideblog, and @spn-trope-round-robin is the Supernatural fanwork challenge I run.

blogs following: creepin' up on 400. actually, i'm not sure if this is asking how many i follow or how many follow me, but the answer is the same either way. amount of sleep: ehehehheheheheh. normally? anywhere from 3-12 hours; i have chronic insomnia. i also currently have some kinda tooth infection, though, so i slept from 3am on sunday to 12am on monday. and then again from 9am this morning to about 1pm. time has lost all meaning to me. you did read that right: i slept for 21 hours straight and was still tired. :(

lucky number: 8 what am I wearing: biker shorts and a shirt with a very sad ghost on it. dream job: sugar baby. not even joking. pay me to be sexy so i can do my hobbies for free in my spare time. as soon as i get paid for doing something i love, i don't love it anymore. there's a reason the only paid writing gigs i take at this point in my life are for kinks that i am totally uninterested in. languages: English. i can get my point across in French, but it won't be pretty.

play an instrument: i've been playing the ukulele for a whole year as of a couple weeks ago! it was my quarantine project and i managed to stick with it to my utter surprise. i think i'm firmly an intermediate player now. currently working to master arpeggios and full barres.

favourite song: my fave song changes multiple times a week. right now it's probably South by Hippo Campus:

random fact: my favorite comfort foods are shepherd's pie and american chop suey. Tagging @lovetheirloves @hotgirlsummersam @fandom-hoarder @digitalmeowmix @queergoblin @margaryes and @samsvisions (and you, if you want to do it. i never know who to tag so i tend to just smash my keyboard until names i recognize come up)

#tag games #about me

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randomingoftherandomness · 3 years

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Fic: This Youth

Fandom: The Old Guard (2020), Supernatural

Pairing: Booker & Dean Winchester

Tags: Crossover AU, Supernatural AU, Inspired by tags

A/N: kinda related to this fic but can be read without

For @private-library-of-fanworks who said in the tags that this would be a fic they’d like to read 😂 it sunk its claws in me what can I say. I am completely disregarding the majority of Supernatural canon. Because I can. I honestly believe that this concept would work better with more world build and stuff but like. Y’know. Attention spans and all that. Lol. Enjoy!

—

There’s nothing but the glow of the car’s headlights over the midnight dark stretch of asphalt, nothing else but the soft hum of the car and the air-conditioning filling the silence between them.

Booker grips the steering wheel tighter.

Dean didn’t know what he had expected to find when he called the number on the creased slip of paper he had been carrying around for years, but he hadn’t expected... This. A stranger with the saddest eyes who barely looked a day older than the last time they’d met when Dean was a kid. Someone he’d only known for a short weekend at Bobby’s, but had treated him with patience and kindness; who had helped Sam with his homework and talked to him about books that were’t grimoires or some obscure text on demonology.

Same stranger who was apparently driving a stolen car - because there was no way that stack of Italian love songs, nor the Muslim prayer beads strung over the mirror belonged to this man - and who had picked him up from the hospital in the middle of the night just because he’d called.

“Thanks for coming for me,” Dean eventually offers up. Carefully adjusting himself in his seat, he spies a double-bladed axe in the back seat. A labrys, comes that tinny voice in the back of his painkiller fogged brain that sounded way too much like Sam for his comfort.

He swallows down the tightness in his throat.

It doesn’t go unnoticed because Booker’s casting worried looks his way. “Do you need me to pull over?”

That startles Dean for a second. “Pull over? No, why?”

“In case you need to vomit or something?” Booker pauses, squinting at a passing road sign. “If the pain is too much and you need to sleep the rest of the way until we get to your motel, just go right ahead.”

The calm cadence of his voice wraps itself around Dean for a minute. “Why’d you come?” He asks eventually, the words an almost whisper in the hum of the car.

Booker glances at him for a moment, before turning back to the road. The lights of the dashboard illuminates his face and for a beat, Dean could swear that he looked ancient.

“Because I remembered telling this kid I met at Bobby’s years ago that he could always call me if he needed anything. When he needed anything,” Booker says with a huff. “I remembered giving you my number telling you to keep it close and to call.”

His mind must be more fuzzed out than he thought it was because all he can slur back to that was a soft, “Why?”

When Booker turns his gaze back to him, Dean blinks slowly, watching an unnatural blue glow in his eyes. “Because I was a father once and I didn’t do enough for my sons. And I thought I could do right by you at least.”

Dean frowns, eyes falling close, lulled by the way the car slowly takes a turn off the main road. “’M not your son...”

A warm hand settles over the crown of his head and he nuzzles into it. “I know, Dean. Just rest now. I’ll wake you when we’re there.”

#the old guard #the old guard netflix #the old guard fic #supernatural #booker #sebastien le livre #dean winchester #booker & dean #gab writes stuff

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paradiselostbythedashboardlight · 3 years

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Quarantine, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Wrote 430,943 Words of Prose in a Year

As we are coming up terrifyingly fast on a full year of quarantine with no end to the pandemic yet in sight for most people, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the last year of my existence in a state that most people now refer to as quarantine. Since March of 2020, I, like most other sane people in my country, have stopped traveling, going to stores, seeing all but a limited group of other humans, and begun having recurring nightmares about being in crowds without a piece of cloth over my nose and mouth.

Suffice to say, it has been a bit stressful.

The other thing that I have done since COVID-19 began rapidly spreading across the globe last year is write over 430,943 words of fiction.

The number seems insane to me still. That is (approximately) one Gone With The Wind, one entire Lord of the Rings series, or the first four Harry Potter books. That is still sadly not yet War and Peace (but who knows… the pandemic isn’t over yet).

So now that I am looking back, I find myself with one question: how did this happen? Why did I do this? What does this mean about my life this year?

Since apparently I answer best by writing a lot, let’s begin at the beginning. Let me tell you a story. I’ll keep it short, I swear.

Part 1: Blast From the Past

In March of 2020, I was still in the midst of an academic semester. There was a long academic document to write and a class to teach. However, as quarantine abruptly robbed me of most of my usual commitments, I was suddenly thrust into the position of having more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. Consequently, I decided to break out the Nintendo Switch I’d gotten for Christmas and revive a childhood interest in video games.

And boy did I. I played the games I owned for all they were worth. I played them during the evenings when I had no social engagements to attend. I played them during the Zoom meetings I was already struggling to pay attention to. By the end of March, I had finished one game, and it had set the wheels turning in my brain.

Here’s a fact about me: I don’t usually tend to write or read a lot of fanfiction about things that I consider really really good. Basically, fanfiction for me has always been an impulse born from incompletion or imperfection. I see no need to add to a perfect story (although I happily consume and create fanart). But for something enjoyable and yet slightly unsatisfying? That’s fanfic territory, bud.

So by April, I had developed a sort of epic fanfiction for this video game I was playing. It was one of those magnum opus kind of ideas, a grand retelling of the story with a huge sprawling plot and Themes (™).

At first, it was merely a thought experiment that lived only in my head, a sort of entertainment to ponder in the hours before falling asleep. What changed? Well, a friend of mine decided to also write a fanfiction on the same video game and she kindly consented to let me read it.

Suddenly, I was ravenously hungry to read and to write and to share and to consume. I wrote a hundred thousand words of this fanfic in April and into early May, sending each chapter to my friend and being spurred onward by her kind comments.

The fic became a gargantuan endeavor full of strange little challenges I set for myself. It was a canon-divergence, requiring plotting, worldbuilding, a darker and grimer tone. For some reason, I decided to write each chapter from a different character’s perspective, making the final product into a series of essentially short story character studies which together formed a plot.

By the end of May, the story was published for the world to see. It was well-received, although not particularly popular by fandom standards. And that was the end. I had gotten out my pandemic crazies, the semester was over and now I could move on. I had made my peace with the source material, plumbing all of the little details that I wanted to examine and creating a narrative that I found satisfying.

It was over.

Part 2: Summer Lovin?

Except that it wasn’t.

Confession: as I had been posting my giant fanfiction, I had also begun to explore the fan community itself, mostly curious to see some nice art and gather a bit of demographic info about what was popular within the community. As a result, I found a fanfic recommendations page. Among the recommendations was one author who kept popping up and i finally decided to give the fic a read.

Woah. It was good. Like, really good. Like, professional quality writing and themes that seemed designed to appeal to me. I devoured everything that the creator had posted in a week and then subscribed to eagerly wait for more.

As June rolled around, I realized that I had a problem on my hands. My great big gen masterpiece was finished, but this author had gotten me hooked on something else, something with a nefarious reputation online: shipping.

The term du jour for this seems to be “brain worms” so let’s just say that reading other fanworks had given me some brain worms. Inspired this time not just by the source material of the game, but now the fan community itself, my mind began to develop another idea.

I wrote the fic, about 11k, in a single afternoon of frantic writing. When I finished it, I knew it was one of my strongest pieces. It had just come together, a combination of all the thought that I’d been brewing up and a stylistic execution that just worked with the story I wanted to tell.

I posted it on a new account. Shipping seemed vaguely shameful to me still and my mom reads the other account.

To my surprise, the fic blew up. It got so much more attention than my long fic ever had. Even more significantly, a fan artist actually drew a gorgeous comic of the pivotal scene, completely out of the blue! I was essentially thunderstruck. Honestly, it was probably the first time in my life that I’d ever received so much positive reinforcement from a piece of writing.

While I’d written short stories for undergrad workshops, they’d never been particularly good and I’d never gotten particularly great feedback on them. I’d applied and been rejected by more MFAs and literary magazines than I could count. I’d pretty much resigned myself to writing for an audience of me and me alone (which I don’t mean to sound tragic about, writing for you is great and fun!)

But receiving so much support and praise and feeling like I’d made other people happy or sad or moved? There’s nothing better.

This makes my decision to write another fic for the ship sound vaguely cynical, the action of a person driven by an addiction to praise. I mean, no lie, aren’t we all a little addicted to approval?

But my next fic was another long one, an 80k passion project modern AU that I dreamed up while spending a slow summer alone with my books and only able to leave the house for long rambling walks in the woods. The premise was essentially about characters attending a five year college reunion, something that I myself had missed due to COVID in May of the same year. The fic quickly became a way for me to process thoughts on a lot of topics in my life ranging from relationships to politics to mental health to classical literature.

This fic was also received with far more attention than I was used to and, as a result, I finally joined the notorious Twitter dot com where I found people talking about my fic unprompted, eager to follow me and like my every random thought.

I can’t say that this process was not without its ups and downs. Fandom has changed, in many ways for the better, since my last engagement with it during the 2013 Supernatural days on Tumblr. While fan friendships are often idealized or demonized, they are pretty much like any other human friendship (okay, maybe a little bit more horny on main). There is potential for amazing connection as well as pettiness. But in a year where many people suddenly had no social spaces that were safe anymore, I’m glad that I found a new line of communication with the world.

So I kept writing fics for the ship, producing a lot of work that I am genuinely proud of and making connections with other people who enjoyed it enough to leave a comment.

To conclude this section, I was in fandom again. While I had not seriously engaged with a fan community since around 2014, I was back with a vengeance. And I had discovered an important truth about what unlocked my ability to write more than I ever had before: community support.

Not simply the kudos and the views. It was the comments. The discourse. The discussion. To add and contribute my thoughts and ideas to a greater network of thoughts and ideas that fed off of one another.

Often I had seen people complain about there not being enough fanworks for particular media or characters. Now I knew the secret. The comments and the community created the works. If I commented on other people’s fics, the more likely they were to write more. I made a resolution I have tried to keep, to comment on any story that I legitimately enjoyed reading, even if I had no particularly intelligent thing to say about it.

Part 3: A Novel Idea

By late October, I had produced a considering oeuvre for my ship of choice and was enjoying slowing my pace as I planned a few future projects.

Remember, though, how I mentioned not having engaged with fandom for the past 5 years? Well, that didn’t mean I hadn’t been writing.

For the past 4 years, I have won NaNoWriMo and completed 4 novels of over 100k each in length. These projects have been massively fun and improved my confidence with executing stories at the scope that I desire.

And so in November 2020, I settled down to write another novel. November is always a sort of terrible time write a novel if you work in academia, but this year, I had more time than usual. I set out to write a comedy fantasy novel, something mostly lighthearted and full of hijinks in order to pretend away some of the quarantine blues (which by this point were well established in my psyche).

This year in particular, I was reminded that writing a novel is… harder than fanfic. That seems like a very obvious point, but I’d written novels before. Suddenly, though, I was realizing how much a novel requires you to set up the world and the characters, while fanfic can be pretty much all payoff all the time.

While the fanfic flowed in wild creative bursts of energy, the novel required diligence of another sort. I wrote 2,000 words every day for two months. It was a grind. Sometimes, it was a slog.

And sometimes it just wasn't good. The thing about writing your own novels is that the first draft is way more likely to be not good. You’re balancing a lot and it’s easy to let a few balls that you have in the air drop for a chapter or two, with no recourse but to go back and edit later.

I finished the novel by writing a final speedrun of 6k on new years eve, ending my 2020 with another project under my belt. No one has read it. Not even I have reread it.

I’m still glad that I wrote it. I’ll write another one next year. No one will read that one either.

Sometimes, we write for ourselves and no external validation is necessary.

Part 4: Where are they now?

January of 2021 is somehow now behind me, which is terrifying. I’m still writing. Mostly fanfic, although occasionally I go doodle around with some original ideas that are more conceptual sketches for the next novel.

As for the fanfic, I think I still have a few more good ideas left in me, but I will probably leave it behind before the year is out. That feels a little bittersweet, a sort of temporary burst of fun and friendship that I wonder if I’ll ever experience again.

Coming to the end of this reflection, I suppose I should make a summative statement about what it all means.

In the end, it might not mean a lot. There are some small takeaways.

It turns out that encouragement makes you write more! Who knew? Also, more free time makes you write more! Wow!!!!

The point that I think this reflection exercise has shown me, the point that I think matters more than any other, is that writing is a way to process my thoughts. Even if it is through the lens of ridiculous video game fanfic or novels about sad wizards, my writing is my way to make sense of my own mind.

And sharing that is special. If you share it with online strangers, with your family on Christmas Eve, with your close friend who has become even closer and dearer to you since she let you read her work, or just with your mom (the one personal legally required to read your damn novel if you want to share it). To share writing is to give someone a little peek at your beliefs about the world.

And right now? When we’re still isolated and bored and scared and in desperate need of distraction? Binge some TV, play Nintendo, read a book. Take in other people’s thoughts.

But put down your own somewhere as well. It’s a conversation.

And for once, it’s a conversation that doesn’t have to take place on fucking Zoom.

#writing #personal rambling #fanfiction

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fandomtrumpshate · 2 years

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FTH2022 - by the numbers

Signups for FTH2022 have been open for almost exactly 3 days. In that time 296 creators have signed up to offer 379 auctions in 175 fandoms. (To put those numbers in context, last year in the first FIVE days of signups, we had 256 creators sign up to offer 325 auctions. This year is looking to be BIG!)

At present:

2 auctions are offering to create videos

4 are offering 'Other' fanworks, including powerpoint presentations and filk

25 are offering podfics

34 folks have signed up to offer various beta services (look for a post with more info about what folks are offering sometime in the next week).

52 are offering fanart

and 262 are offering written fanworks (fanfiction, original work, meta, remixes, poetry, etc)

Creators are overwhelmingly choosing to let bidders decide on which of our supported orgs they will make their donations. The orgs most often chosen by those creators who wished to direct donations to a particular nonprofit are -

Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund

Navajo Water Project

Any/All abortion funds

The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights

National Network to End Domestic Violence

The three least often chosen are -

Spread the Vote

Unsilence

Votebeat

And below the cut you'll find the list of all the listed fandoms ranked by how many signups they have. In a few minutes we'll have another post for you, bringing back the Unlisted Fandom Challenge and info about which fandoms are being written in, in what numbers.

34 Sherlock Holmes *

33 MCU *

31 Harry Potter *

30 Good Omens

30 K-Pop *

28 Teen Wolf

25 The Witcher

23 Star Wars *

18 Fullmetal Alchemist

17 Supernatural

16 Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed

13 Boku no Hiro Akademia (My Hero Academia)

13 Hockey RPF

13 Shadowhunters

13 Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing)

12 Merlin

12 The Old Guard

11 Star Trek *

10 Check Please!

9 All for the Game

9 Dragon Age *

9 Raven Cycle

9 Tolkien *

8 Final Fantasy

8 Original Work

8 The Magnus Archives

7 9–1–1

7 Gundam Wing

7 Marvel Comics

6 Avatar The Last Airbender *

6 Doctor Who *

6 Hades (video game)

6 Haikyuu!!!

5 DC Comics

5 Naruto

4 Arcane

4 Captive Prince

4 Critical Role

4 Hunger Games

4 James Bond

4 Leverage

4 Steven Universe

3 DC Extended Universe *

3 Dishonored

3 Hetalia

3 Locked Tomb Trilogy

3 Six of Crows Duology

3 Stranger Things

3 The Green Knight

3 The Magicians

3 Tian Ya Ke / Word of Honor

3 Wheel of Time

2 A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones

2 Carry On

2 Danny Phantom

2 Dungeons & Dragons

2 Encanto

2 Fire Emblem Three Houses

2 Firefly

2 Genshin Impact

2 Hannibal

2 It (2017/2019)

2 Juiie and the Phantoms

2 Mass Effect

2 RWBY

2 The Good Place

2 Venom

2 Voltron

2 Yuri!!! On Ice

1 Arrowverse *

1 Bungou Stray Dogs

1 Criminal Minds

1 Diamond no Ace

1 Gravity Falls

1 Guardian

1 Hacks

1 Homestuck

1 Iron Widow

1 Kingsman

1 Legend of Zelda

1 Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

1 Nirvana in Fire

1 No. 6 - All Media Types

1 Shameless (US)

1 She-Ra

1 Stargate

1 The 100

1 The Adventure Zone

#fth2022 #by the numbers #signup data #signups are OPEN #fanworks charity auction #fandom trumps hate

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educatedinyellow · 2 years

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2021 Fanworks Masterlist

I’m rachelindeed on AO3, and educatedinyellow here on tumblr. Here’s a round-up of my fan creations this year :)

(vid) Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane: You Matter to Me. A tribute to Peter and Harriet's evolving romance, from the 1987 BBC series starring Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter.

(vid) Destiel: Fighting the Narrative. The forces of heaven, hell, and the narrative constantly put Dean and Cas into unwinnable, tragic situations, but they always fought to defy fate. Ultimately when the story ends, they break free and can write their own future together.

(fic) best things dwell out of Sight (Holmes/Watson, 9.5K, Ritchie Holmes) In a society where telepathic ability is too often equated with worth, Miss Mary Sutherland is short-Sighted. But that didn't stop her from smelling a rat in Mr. Hosmer Angel's courtship, and her case gives Holmes and Watson the chance to prove that the marriage of true minds requires no magic at all.

(vid) Holmes/Watson multiverse: Just Dance! It's a Holmesian dance party and everyone's invited!

(vid) Emma: Judge of your own happiness Emma learns the workings of her heart. A tribute to the lovely 2009 adaptation of Austen's "Emma."

(vid) Dean Winchester: My Kind of Man Dean's father taught him to be a certain kind of man, but throughout his life his loved ones try to help him figure out what kind of man he truly wants to be.

(vid) Destiel: Scarborough Fair Remember me to one who lives there; he once was a true love of mine.

Total number of completed things: 6 vids, 1 fic, plus 2 pencil sketches

Total word count: 9,600 words

Fandoms created for: Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries, Supernatural, Ritchie Holmes, Emma 2009 miniseries, plus a whole lot of Holmesian adaptations for my multiverse vid

Looking back, did you create more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? A little less, I think. This wordcount is pretty average for me, I usually bow out at around 10K words a year. But in recent years I've tended to make a few more fanvids than I did this year. In the last quarter of the year real life concerns took precedence, and that's fine.

What’s your own favorite creation of the year? I can honestly say I like them all, but my favorite vid is Scarborough Fair -- I've always thought the song was beautiful, and I think the match of lyrics and images turned out quite lovely. And I'm always pleased whenever I get a story written, because that's a good deal harder for me than any of my other creative endeavors. I loved taking the opportunity to add a little magical realism to a Victorian Holmes verse, I adore that kind of thing.

Did you take any creative risks this year? Not…really? Mostly I just did My Usual Sorts of Things :) I did see some progress this year though. I'm proud of the Diana Rigg portrait, it's a definite improvement for me in my sketching.

Do you have any goals for the new year? I have one fanvid already made that I'll be posting in the new year, but otherwise I have no idea what I'll be working on next. I tend to play things very much by ear.

Most popular creation of the year? Ahaha, this one is hilarious! So, the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, yes? Well, apparently YouTube's algorithms took that as a sign to start promoting the hell out of anything whatsoever with a nautical theme…As a result, a Master and Commander fanvid that I made in 2019 for a small Festivids exchange suddenly and completely unexpectedly took off. This thing had less than 10 likes on tumblr, but purely thanks to mysterious algorithm magic it's currently clocking in at 33,000+ views on YouTube. Truly the funniest and most random thing I could ever have achieved popularity with, LOL!

Creation of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I'm glad whenever anyone looks at anything of mine! I do regret a little bit, though, that there is no online place within the large Destiel fandom devoted to sharing fanvids. I think Destiel fans might enjoy some of mine, but there's really nowhere in particular I can put them where they will be seen. I mean, I put them on AO3, obviously, but in my experience most people on AO3 are there looking for fic, not vids. And YouTube is not well organized for fandoms, there's too much else going on over there so these things tend to vanish quickly into the ether. *shrug* C'est la vie.

Most fun thing to make: Just Dance!! So many Holmeses, so many Watsons, even so many Moriartys! It finally introduced me to Sherlock Hound, which was a delight. Also, Lady Gaga's song is a bop and it was very cheering listening to it endlessly as I worked.

Most unintentionally telling thing: This was intentional, actually, but best things dwell out of Sight was the first fic in which I have been conscious of incorporating some of my feelings as an asexual person into my writing (not in a literal sense, the characters in the fic are not ace, but I'm personally aware of that element influencing some parts of the story).

Biggest disappointment: I've left Vimes/Vetinari languishing too long! Let's get those wheels moving again!!

Biggest surprise: I was so happy to hear that one of my tumblr friends enjoyed my Peter/Harriet vid and was prompted to check out the 1980s miniseries as a result, which they enjoyed very much! What a pleasure, to have gotten to introduce them to something they wound up falling in love with the same way I did!

Wishing you all the best for 2022, creatively and in all other ways, too!

#end of year round-up #masterlist #writing meme #my fanworks

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bluescluelessly · 4 years

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Y'all know what's crazy to me??

I've said it before but star wars fans are so supportive of fanworks and fanartists/authors and it's such a nice change of pace.

But like, in case anyone thinks that comments and things don't actually make a difference... like, let me break this down in numbers I guess, because I was just looking at my word counts last night and this is insane to me.

So I was in the supernatural fandom for about 5 years. In that time I wrote 32 fics, which totaled up to around 350k words.

Today marks month 3 of being in the Star Wars fandom and producing fan content. So far I've written 17 fics, totalling to around 120k words.

Like, if that doesn't speak for the whole "supporting your fancontent creators gets you more content" I don't know what does. Even in Quarantine, I’ve still had work and school keeping me busy, so the difference definitely isn’t only ‘I have more free time’. The main thing that has changed? Star Wars fans rock, and leave awesome comments and inspire more fanfic <3

Comments and such really make a difference y'all.

They don’t even have to be like, detailed comments! I love emoji spams and keysmashes too! It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as there is a reaction <3

and that doesn't even count fanart, which I think I've already done more for star wars than I ever did for spn

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mattzerella-sticks · 3 years

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I'm kind of in awe of the fact that people think there are still going to be huge conventions after that shit show of an ending. There are FOURTEEN spn cons scheduled for 2021! And I'm like.. uh.. my dudes... I don't think thas gonna happen. I mean A/ COVID. But also B/ ...did you watch that ending? Remember how the world essentially went from "GAME OF THRONES OMG! MUST WATCH!" to "eh that sucked. fuck it." and it just dropped off the cultural radar within like a week? THAT. So much that.

I mean, yes the 14 conventions are a bit excessive... and I doubt there’ll be that many next year given the cast will be busy with other things/moving on; however, I feel people will be coming with their opinions - and I feel bad for the cast in a way. You’ll have people looking for insight on the finale and asking them if they liked it and won’t be satisfied because a) contracts and b) jared cannot speak ill of the CW since he still works there. Also, it sucks for J2M because this finale is gonna give the bronlies, tinhatters, and wincest shippers so much confidence they’re gonna be worse then they already are - which, considering Jensen and Jared’s families had to put stuff out about the abuse they take online just by existing, is just one last slap in the face to these two actors all for profit.

That being said, I do think Supernatural has a bit more staying power than GoT. Do I think they’ll make as much money as they think they’re gonna by catering to a select group? No. Do I think Supernatural will go the way of GoT? Also no. GoT was very one-sided in terms of fandom interaction, from my understanding. Supernatural is the premiere fandom television show. While I think the number of fanworks won’t reach levels like we’re used to I don’t see this losing steam for years, and could even undergo a renaissance like Glee or ATLA, especially if they do revisit the characters (and retcon this finale lol 🤞)

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haberdashing · 4 years

Text

Another Archive

The Magnus Archives fic. Jon gains an unexpected wealth of information while at the safehouse with Martin. Written for International Fanworks Day 2020.

on AO3

It was a nice enough morning in Scotland, given that the world had ended a few days beforehand.

Jon and Martin were together at the safehouse still, trying to piece together what had happened and what could be done about it. It was dangerous out there, that much was clear, and they were staying put for the time being while they developed a plan, or at least figured out what they’d need in order to develop a proper plan that wouldn’t just get them both killed.

Jon blamed himself for it, Martin knew he did, and none of Martin’s reassurances to the contrary, reassurances that the only one responsible for the hellscape that surrounded them was Jonah Magnus himself, seemed to make a difference.

Perhaps that was because Martin himself didn’t entirely believe his own words. He didn’t blame Jon, that much was true, but... but he blamed himself.

He hadn’t been there when it had happened, sure, but that was the problem. Perhaps if he had stayed there and listened to Jon record his first statement of the pile, he would have noticed that something was amiss. Perhaps Martin could have taken the action that Jon couldn’t--Jon had explained that bit, over and over again, how he couldn’t stop reading the statement even once its true nature was clear. If Martin had grabbed that piece of paper and burned it before Jon could read it to the end... well, he wasn’t sure what exactly would have happened, but it had to be better than this.

He should have been there. He should have tried.

But it was far too late for that now, of course...

But it might have been those memories, and those regrets of things left untried, that made a half-awake Martin spring into action when he woke up to see Jon frantically scribbling God-knows-what onto various pieces of paper.

“Jon?”

Jon didn’t react to Martin calling his name, or to Martin scrambling out of bed and over to near where Jon was seated at the kitchen table. Dozens of pieces of paper surrounded him, most with at least some markings on them already. Martin picked one up at random and saw that while some of it was written in regular English--and mentioned Martin’s own name, a fact that made his stomach lurch--some was in what seemed to be a shorthand Martin didn’t know how to decode, and even more was in what looked to be multiple distinct languages aside from English.

How long had Jon been doing this? How long had Martin been asleep while Jon had been up doing... whatever this was?

“Jon, what are you doing?”

Martin wasn’t terribly surprised to find that Jon didn’t respond to that question, either. Jon’s eyes had an unnatural gleam to them, one Martin knew the meaning of well enough by now, and as he started to write something more in--was that Chinese?--Martin decided that he would put an end to it.

There was no clear source for Jon’s writing, no paper to throw into the fire like he had dreamed of doing a number of times now, but Martin snatched the pen out of Jon’s hand and snapped it in two, trying not to let the plastic bits jabbing his skin or the black ink now covering his hands bother him unduly. There were more important things at hand.

Jon extended one hand towards the next nearest writing utensil, a pencil that was halfway across the table from him, but Martin pushed the pencil out of arm’s reach, making sure his face was in Jon’s line of sight as he did so.

“Jon!”

Martin’s voice was distinctly louder than before--not quite a yell, not yet, though he would get there if need be.

Further escalation proved unnecessary, though, as Jon blinked a few times in rapid succession, and that unnatural gleam faded from his eyes, leaving... well, leaving just Jon.

“Martin?”

“What is all of this?” Martin gestured towards the kitchen table, cluttered with paper, on which Jon had clearly written something.

“Right. That.” Jon let out a dark laugh without much humor in it. “It’s, uh, a bit of a long story-”

Martin sighed softly as he asked, trying to keep his voice filled more with concern than with frustration, “And is any of that long story going to get us all killed?”

“No! No, it can’t, none of it’s real...” Jon laughed again as he added, “Though I’m not sure any of this is real now, either...”

Jon made a vague, sweeping hand gesture as he finished that last statement, and Martin tried to fill in the blanks. Clearly Jon Knew something that he hadn’t before this morning, that much was clear, but... how could you Know something that wasn’t real in the first place? And while it was possible that his newfound knowledge was what was leading him to question the state of reality, there were also a number of other potential causes for such questioning, both natural and supernatural in origin...

Martin tried to sound more upbeat and confident than he felt as he said, “How about you go over what it is you’ve been writing down, and we figure out the state of reality from there, hmm?”

“Alright. Though when I said it was a long story--really it’s a lot of stories, and some of them are quite long indeed-”

“Start from the beginning, then?”

“I’m not sure there’s a beginning to start from...” Jon sighed and pressed one hand against his temple, but as Martin internally debated the pros and cons of pushing him further, Jon kept speaking.

“I’m being literal, when I call them stories, that’s the thing. Stories about us, about the Institute, the Archives... I woke up this morning with... hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all fresh in my mind, all practically begging to be written down.”

“And so you did?” Martin said, gesturing to the pile of papers.

“...and so I did, yes. But the strangest part is, some of them--most of them, really--they... they aren’t true, they aren’t real, they never happened. Office parties the Institute never held, New Years’ parties the archive staff never actually attended... and you never had a Lord of the Rings movie marathon with Tim, now, did you?”

It took Martin a moment to realize the question was being directed towards him. “Er, no. No, I didn’t.”

Martin wondered what that story was like, if he should have watched Lord of the Rings with Tim back when he had the chance, how things might have been different if he had made that one small move.

A hint of a smile appeared on Jon’s face as he asked, “I’m curious, now, do you actually know Elvish?”

Martin could feel his face heat up. “Well, Elvish isn’t actually the technical term for--yes. Yes, I taught myself Elvish.” A thought occurred to Martin, and when he next spoke, he spoke not in English but in Sindarin. (It was probably slightly rusty, but years of teaching yourself a language, fictional or not, don’t just wear off overnight.) “What about you?”

Jon blinked twice in a row, and Martin thought he spied a hint of that gleam in his eyes as he replied, also in Sindarin, “Apparently so.”

The gleam faded from Jon’s eyes once more as he looked over the papers, though not focusing on any one in particular, his voice in English once more when next he spoke.

“So perhaps there are snippets of truth in these stories, at least. Alternate universes, perhaps, worlds in which things went differently... I don’t know.”

Jon cleared his throat, clearly more to make a point than because anything was actually lodged within it.

“But what I do know is that I’ve never... been with...” Jon’s tone of voice and facial expression grew more and more uncomfortable as he kept listing off names. “Tim, Gerry, Daisy, Michael, Nikola, Peter Lukas, Elias, or... or Mr. Spider.”

Martin laughed a little before seeing the somber and disturbed expression on Jon’s face, his laughter dying in an instant.

“Is there really-”

“Yes.” Jon took a deep breath before speaking further, and Martin could see that he was shaking slightly. “Maybe it’s not alternate universes, because I refuse to believe that- that in any universe, I would-”

“What about us?”

Jon blinked with surprise, and his shaking settled down a bit. “What?”

Martin gently set his hand, still ink-stained, atop Jon’s, glad to see that Jon didn’t draw away from the contact. “Are any of these stories about the two of us being together?”

“Oh. Yes, quite a few of them.” Jon’s hand squeezed Martin’s softly as he added, “I just figured that went without saying.”

Martin shot Jon a weak smile. “It’s good to hear just the same, though.”

“Some of these stories even take place in the future--perhaps our future, but probably not, given the evidence. There’s tales of us going to London and killing Elias, or- or traveling back in time using Helen’s hallways--can she even do that?”

Martin sheepishly smiled as he said softly, “You’re asking the wrong person there.”

“But the thing is...” Jon took another deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. “...all these stories, no matter how wrong, how far-fetched... they all feel real to me, somehow. They seem as real as... as this moment right here.”

Martin’s weak smile faded away as he processed the implications of Jon’s statement. “I... I see.”

“So does that mean none of this is real, then? Are we just a-an overwrought work of fiction? Is this just another story?”

Martin felt something wet touch his hand. He looked down to see that it was a single teardrop, its fall smudging the ink stain covering his hand, and looked up to see that Jon was quietly crying.

“And if so... then what does that make us?”

Martin wiped the tears from Jon’s eyes, stifling a snort as he saw the black mark his hand left in its wake.

“We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”

Jon’s tears slowed, though they didn’t quite stop, as he made eye contact with Martin.

“Where’s that from?”

“What, you think I couldn’t come up with that all by myself?”

“I- I didn’t mean-”

“It’s from Doctor Who, Jon.” Martin laughed a little, both at his own joke and at the look on Jon’s face when he realized Martin had been messing with him.

“Say, in all those stories, are there any where we get to meet the Doctor? Go off in the TARDIS, explore all of space and time?”

The trickle of tears down Jon’s cheek finally slowed to a stop as he considered Martin’s question.

“I’m not sure off-hand, actually. Let me think...”

#ifdrabble #international fanworks day 2020 #tma fic #tma fanfic #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #ao3 #personal #my writing #the specifics referenced here do reference specific actual fics #if you think you recognize a fic you probably do #and that list? all of those are actual slash tags on ao3 #yes including the last one #i didn't make that a relationship tag on ao3 don't blame ME

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