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graycardinalInherited from astrogirl and thisbluespirit :
Somewhat to my surprise, I don't seem to have ever posted a version of this meme before, despite having pored through the stats themselves from time to time. And my fic-writing range is wide enough that even my tiny readership may be surprised by some of what turns up, so let's see what AO3 has to say about me:
HITS
The Most Difficult Four Months (Castle, ~5600 words)
Why Maine Is Such A Good Idea (Castle, ~1000 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
All I Want For Christmas (Castle, ~3500 words)
Player Status: Offline (Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, ~2400 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
A Very Long Summer (Castle, ~1500 words)
Random Plot Twists (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/various, ~1100 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, 5400 words)
That five out of ten of these are from Castle is not surprising. I came early and often to that fandom, there was an active LiveJournal fic comm at the time, and I still have notes for several unfinished and never-started fics in that universe. It does slightly boggle my mind that whereas three of these are in the same series, the second story in the series has more hits than the first. [And one of these days, I swear, I *will* finish that third story.]
Random Plot Twists requires a bit of explanation: that one is a compilation of a number of drabbles written for LJ's challenge community![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
twistingthehellmouth, overseen in its heyday by jedibuttercup, who is some fifty times more of a crossover fiend than I am and really, really good at it. The comm's ongoing mandate was Buffyverse crossovers in drabble form, and I discovered that I quite liked trying to fit two universes into 100 words (no waiting).
KUDOS
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
Three Places Kim Merrill Lived, & One Where She Lived Happily Ever After
(Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, ~1400 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, 5400 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
Let's Find Out (Doctor Who/MCU/Sarah Jane Adventures, ~2400 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
The Other Scottish Play (Agent Carter (TV)/MCU, ~4700 words)
Player Status: Offline (Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, ~2400 words)
Only five of ten here carry over from the "hits" list, only one Castle story among those, and some fairly dramatic reordering -- although that last isn't as dramatic in real life as it may look on the list, because there are two fairly tightly bunched clusters represented (roughly the top four and bottom four). Part of the difference in ranking is also, I think, that most of my Castle work dates from before the usage of kudos became really prevalent.
The thing about kudos, though, is that least for me they are extraordinarily steady feedback. I don't think I've ever had less than three messages a week from AO3 with the "you've got kudos" notice, and some weeks the emails come almost every day. The absolute numbers are tiny -- most often one kudo a day, and more often a guest than a named reader, but sometimes three or four will show up all at once. And the range is remarkably wide -- most weeks it will be different people reading different works, though once in awhile there's a streak (It Takes Two to Kipple has been popular lately), and once in a much longer while I'll pick up someone who spends a week cutting a swath through my backlist.
COMMENT THREADS
The Solitary Sorceress of Oz (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~3800 words)
The Story of the Djinni and the Professor (Arabian Nights, ~1500 words)
Four Views of General Jinjur (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~2100 words)
Inspirations (Dark Is Rising series - Susan Cooper, ~900 words)
The Kincardine File: Notes from an Untold Case
(Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, ~1300 words)
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
A Candle in the Fog (Candleshoe [1977], ~10,200 words)
Random Plot Twists (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/various, ~1100 words)
The Tale of Marian's Wedding (Robin Hood - traditional, ~7000 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
No less than seven of these are Yuletide stories, five of those date from rounds prior to Yuletide's move to AO3, and two of the remaining three are also exchange stories -- one for Holmestice, one for Not Prime Time. This list therefore skews a great deal earlier than its predecessors, and benefits from the fact that AO3's coders managed to preserve the comments from the original Yuletide site when they imported that archive.
A couple of these benefit significantly from the list being based on comment threads rather than number of comments (A Candle in the Fog and Marian's Wedding are both multi-chaptered, and drew comments from internal chapters); Five College Careers..., ranked 11th, has more comments but deeper threads.
BOOKMARKS
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
Red is the Color (Power Rangers Time Force, ~2000 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
Three Places Kim Merrill Lived, & One Where She Lived Happily Ever After
(Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, ~1400 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, ~5400 words)
The Solitary Sorceress of Oz (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~3800 words)
You Were About to Say "Homicide", Weren't You? (The Non-Alcoholic Remix) (Castle/Murder She Wrote, ~950 words)
Just two works here that we haven't seen on the other lists (the Time Force story and the Castle-and-Jessica remix); I will say, though, that here we finally get to the statistic that really warms the cockles of my writerly heart. Getting kudos is pleasant but transitory; getting a bookmark says (to me, at least) that the reader wants to be able to find and reread a story, and that's the best of all possible messages one can send. Ironically, of course, it's also one of the things AO3 doesn't actually message you about when it happens, so I am periodically delighted when I poke at the stats page to see what the bookmark numbers look like and find them higher than I remember.
Also, in the rare instances that the bookmarker has added a comment, the comments added tend to be memorable. Two that stand out for me:
@aris_tgd on And I Do Mean Yours:
Anti-Stratfordians! The Illuminati! Shakespeare fraud! Theater!
IronicMyth on Hunting the Lion:
Probably the best characterization of Luna I've ever read.
That last always makes me pause, not just because the Potterverse is so darned big but because that story is almost purely relationship-driven -- and femslash at that, which is especially rare territory for me.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Cards in the Air (Castle/NCIS/Murder She Wrote, ~1000 words)
A Woman is Entitled... (Galavant, ~3500 words)
A Rhetorical Question (Castle/Gargoyles, ~500 words)
Professional Relationships (Castle/MCU, 100 words)
The Possibility of the Improbable (Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, ~3900 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
We are going with six here rather than ten because there is no other rational way to break the numbers -- below these, AO3 reports fourteen (14) works of mine with one subscriber apiece, and I really can't justify a "top 20" list on that tally.
Also, in all of the above cases, there are actually rational (if perhaps unreasonably optimistic, given my track record and attention span) reasons for someone to click "subscribe". Cards in the Air is explicitly a WIP that's been hanging fire for much, much too long, at least three of the others present clear opportunities for follow-up stories, and the remaining two are sufficiently open-ended that I can understand the desire for more, whether prequel or sequel.
And that's, as a certain Cronkite used to say, the way it is.
astrogirl and thisbluespirit :Somewhat to my surprise, I don't seem to have ever posted a version of this meme before, despite having pored through the stats themselves from time to time. And my fic-writing range is wide enough that even my tiny readership may be surprised by some of what turns up, so let's see what AO3 has to say about me:
HITS
The Most Difficult Four Months (Castle, ~5600 words)
Why Maine Is Such A Good Idea (Castle, ~1000 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
All I Want For Christmas (Castle, ~3500 words)
Player Status: Offline (Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, ~2400 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
A Very Long Summer (Castle, ~1500 words)
Random Plot Twists (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/various, ~1100 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, 5400 words)
That five out of ten of these are from Castle is not surprising. I came early and often to that fandom, there was an active LiveJournal fic comm at the time, and I still have notes for several unfinished and never-started fics in that universe. It does slightly boggle my mind that whereas three of these are in the same series, the second story in the series has more hits than the first. [And one of these days, I swear, I *will* finish that third story.]
Random Plot Twists requires a bit of explanation: that one is a compilation of a number of drabbles written for LJ's challenge community
twistingthehellmouth, overseen in its heyday by jedibuttercup, who is some fifty times more of a crossover fiend than I am and really, really good at it. The comm's ongoing mandate was Buffyverse crossovers in drabble form, and I discovered that I quite liked trying to fit two universes into 100 words (no waiting).KUDOS
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
Three Places Kim Merrill Lived, & One Where She Lived Happily Ever After
(Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, ~1400 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, 5400 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
Let's Find Out (Doctor Who/MCU/Sarah Jane Adventures, ~2400 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
The Other Scottish Play (Agent Carter (TV)/MCU, ~4700 words)
Player Status: Offline (Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?, ~2400 words)
Only five of ten here carry over from the "hits" list, only one Castle story among those, and some fairly dramatic reordering -- although that last isn't as dramatic in real life as it may look on the list, because there are two fairly tightly bunched clusters represented (roughly the top four and bottom four). Part of the difference in ranking is also, I think, that most of my Castle work dates from before the usage of kudos became really prevalent.
The thing about kudos, though, is that least for me they are extraordinarily steady feedback. I don't think I've ever had less than three messages a week from AO3 with the "you've got kudos" notice, and some weeks the emails come almost every day. The absolute numbers are tiny -- most often one kudo a day, and more often a guest than a named reader, but sometimes three or four will show up all at once. And the range is remarkably wide -- most weeks it will be different people reading different works, though once in awhile there's a streak (It Takes Two to Kipple has been popular lately), and once in a much longer while I'll pick up someone who spends a week cutting a swath through my backlist.
COMMENT THREADS
The Solitary Sorceress of Oz (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~3800 words)
The Story of the Djinni and the Professor (Arabian Nights, ~1500 words)
Four Views of General Jinjur (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~2100 words)
Inspirations (Dark Is Rising series - Susan Cooper, ~900 words)
The Kincardine File: Notes from an Untold Case
(Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, ~1300 words)
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
A Candle in the Fog (Candleshoe [1977], ~10,200 words)
Random Plot Twists (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/various, ~1100 words)
The Tale of Marian's Wedding (Robin Hood - traditional, ~7000 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
No less than seven of these are Yuletide stories, five of those date from rounds prior to Yuletide's move to AO3, and two of the remaining three are also exchange stories -- one for Holmestice, one for Not Prime Time. This list therefore skews a great deal earlier than its predecessors, and benefits from the fact that AO3's coders managed to preserve the comments from the original Yuletide site when they imported that archive.
A couple of these benefit significantly from the list being based on comment threads rather than number of comments (A Candle in the Fog and Marian's Wedding are both multi-chaptered, and drew comments from internal chapters); Five College Careers..., ranked 11th, has more comments but deeper threads.
BOOKMARKS
And I Do Mean Yours (Gargoyles, ~2000 words)
An Oblique Approach (Iron Man Movies/MCU, ~5300 words)
Red is the Color (Power Rangers Time Force, ~2000 words)
It Takes Two to Kipple (NCIS, ~700 words)
Three Places Kim Merrill Lived, & One Where She Lived Happily Ever After
(Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, ~1400 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
Five College Careers Alexis Castle Might Consider (and the Consequences Thereof)
(Castle/NCIS/NCIS: Los Angeles/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ~2600 words)
Hunting the Lion (The "Truth in Fiction is Strange" Remix) (Harry Potter, ~5400 words)
The Solitary Sorceress of Oz (Oz series - L. Frank Baum, ~3800 words)
You Were About to Say "Homicide", Weren't You? (The Non-Alcoholic Remix) (Castle/Murder She Wrote, ~950 words)
Just two works here that we haven't seen on the other lists (the Time Force story and the Castle-and-Jessica remix); I will say, though, that here we finally get to the statistic that really warms the cockles of my writerly heart. Getting kudos is pleasant but transitory; getting a bookmark says (to me, at least) that the reader wants to be able to find and reread a story, and that's the best of all possible messages one can send. Ironically, of course, it's also one of the things AO3 doesn't actually message you about when it happens, so I am periodically delighted when I poke at the stats page to see what the bookmark numbers look like and find them higher than I remember.
Also, in the rare instances that the bookmarker has added a comment, the comments added tend to be memorable. Two that stand out for me:
@aris_tgd on And I Do Mean Yours:
Anti-Stratfordians! The Illuminati! Shakespeare fraud! Theater!
IronicMyth on Hunting the Lion:
Probably the best characterization of Luna I've ever read.
That last always makes me pause, not just because the Potterverse is so darned big but because that story is almost purely relationship-driven -- and femslash at that, which is especially rare territory for me.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Cards in the Air (Castle/NCIS/Murder She Wrote, ~1000 words)
A Woman is Entitled... (Galavant, ~3500 words)
A Rhetorical Question (Castle/Gargoyles, ~500 words)
Professional Relationships (Castle/MCU, 100 words)
The Possibility of the Improbable (Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, ~3900 words)
By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)
We are going with six here rather than ten because there is no other rational way to break the numbers -- below these, AO3 reports fourteen (14) works of mine with one subscriber apiece, and I really can't justify a "top 20" list on that tally.
Also, in all of the above cases, there are actually rational (if perhaps unreasonably optimistic, given my track record and attention span) reasons for someone to click "subscribe". Cards in the Air is explicitly a WIP that's been hanging fire for much, much too long, at least three of the others present clear opportunities for follow-up stories, and the remaining two are sufficiently open-ended that I can understand the desire for more, whether prequel or sequel.
And that's, as a certain Cronkite used to say, the way it is.
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Date: May 4th, 2020 04:41 pm (UTC)