netgirl_y2k

A year ago there was a meme going round where you posted your top ten fics by AO3 hit count and then navel gazed about the stats, and I did that, and now some people are repeating it and talking about what has changed, and because I am nothing if not a sheep, I am going to do that too.

Also, I find AO3 stats nerdily fascinating.

1. The Care and Feeding of Tiny Humans (and slightly larger Time Lords) (Doctor Who; Eleven, wee!Amelia; 5270 hits
2.Carrying A Concealed Weapon (and other crimes to commit while being Adora Belle Dearheart) Discworld; Adora Belle Dearheart, Sybil Ramkin; 1964 hits
3.This is Tomorrow (the getaway driver remix) Doctor Who; Donna Noble, Christina de Souza; 1803 hits
4.Donna Noble, King of Camelot Doctor Who/Merlin; Donna Noble; 1390 hits
5.First Up Against the Wall (the grease and diesel oil remix) Merlin; Gwen/Morgana; 1042 hits
6.Her Heart Beat Like a Wolf ASOIAF; Sansa Stark; 980 hits
7.Walk Softly and Carry a Magic Sword Legend of the Seeker; Cara/Kahlan; 939 hits
8.Pastimes & Lifestyles Merlin; Gwen/Morgana; 924 hits
9.Those Who Favour Fire Game of Thrones; Sansa/Cersei, Sansa/Daenerys; 892 hits
10.The One Where Gwen and Morgana (and Merlin) Save Arthur From Being Eaten By Bears Merlin; OT4; 860 hits

-The top of this list (1-5) are the exact same fics as last year, in the exact same order. And, yes, this is the point where this whole thing starts to feel like an exercise in futility. But I've started so I'll finish. But the hit counts have all more or less doubled, so I think more people are reading on AO3. Either that, or one person is reading Care and Feeding a lot. Could go either way.

-Speaking of Care and Feeding, it's my most popular by fic by far. It's the only one where I've had to stop responding to comments for reasons of sanity rather than laziness. Not that I'm not grateful, because GOD I am. But I'm always surprised that it gets so many hits on AO3, because Doctor Who doesn't seem to be a fandom that has much of a presence there. I think, because DW has a stable, fairly active central archive. Although, that said, I can't actually remember the last time I went to the Teaspoon looking for new fic to read. I'm probably missing a lot of good stuff this way.

-The Yuletide effect seems to be lesser this year. You know, the thing where fics written for Yuletide and Remix Redux automatically had very high hitcounts without it really indicating anything other than they'd been written for Yuletide or Remix. A few of them have vanished from my top 10 and this year's Yuletide didn't even make the cut despite it being in quite a big fandom (GoT) and doing quite respectably at the time.

-The two remixes that are still there (This is Tomorrow & First Up Against the Wall) are ones I'm quite proud of and think would have done quite well regardless of where they were first posted. I'm perversely pleased that my Merlin/Arthur remix has vanished from the list, as I would have thought the pairing tag would have kept it quite high despite it not being as good.

-I am seriously delighted that Her Heart Beat Like a Wolf is at no. 6, because it was only posted just before Christmas, and I actually think it is the best thing I've ever written (Ha! Hardly any of you are in that fandom, you'll just have to take my word for it!) But, also, I think ASOIAF fic tends to do quite well on the AO3 because so much of the fandom is locked down on LJ, and most fic is first posted to locked comms, so when it gets reposted to AO3 and people can actually see it, it does well.

-Walk Softly is new to the list too. It was the only story I really wanted to tell in Seeker fandom, and it pleases me if people are still reading it.

-Pastimes was at no. 8 last year too, even though the hit count has doubled, and my first reaction was... Is anyone still reading this? I wonder sometimes if I overestimated the amount of people that ragequit Merlin? Or if there are a lot of people like me, who don't like what canon has become but are really nostalgic for the show they thought they were going to get, and wish there was more fic about the girls and are rereading old fic because there's not a lot being produced. Which I think is what is known as a vicious cycle.

-Those Who Favour Fire is not a fic I dislike, per se, it's just that every time I look at it I go, Why aren't you in the present tense!? But I think it benefits from GoT/ASOIAF doing well on the AO3 and from the fact that I wrote a coda for it as part of a meme which shunted it back to the top of the fandom page.

-I think the bears one is benefiting from a certain amount of Merlin S1 nostalgia, yes.

-So, you've got gen, femslash, femslashy gen & gen-ish femslash. All in all, a more representative list than last year.