As the Cardinal Flies

The primary takeaway is that for the most part, this year's rankings are very, very similar to last year's (because there hasn't been all that much new verbiage since last May). As a result, rather than giving you all the lists all over again, the first thing I'm going to do is point you at last year's lists:

AO3 Stats Meme, 2020 Edition

That said, there has been one notable development:

• By Any Other Name (Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, ~1600 words)

I wrote this Enola Holmes story in summer 2018, for Holmestice, and it's seen a sizeable boost in traffic since the 2020 lists went up. This is clearly, of course, an artifact of the Netflix movie adaptation having been a roaring success.  "By Any Other Name" went from below the top ten to #4 in number of hits, outdrawing everything save my most popular early Castle work. It also jumped from #6 to #1 in both number of kudos and number of bookmarks, and from #6 to #2 in number of subscriptions. (With respect to comment threads, the story didn't make the top ten either last year or this.)

Beyond this, there's not a lot to report. The drabble series collected in "Random Plot Twists" dropped off the bottom of a couple of categories, and a handful of works shifted one slot up or down, this last largely triggered by Enola's rise.  One older story, Player Status: Offline, jumped from the bottom to the middle of the Kudos list - not entirely surprising, as it's a Carmen Sandiego story and the recent Netflix series has evidently led some readers to seek out fic from the '90s cartoon. Nor did any of my 2020 works break into a top ten rank in any category, though that's largely an artifact of the fandoms in question being mostly small to start with.

The one mildly curious non-change is that my other Enola Holmes story - The Women in the Case, which partners Enola with Mary Russell and a female character from Philip José Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer - didn't get anything like the bump its predecessor did. It did get quite a lot of hits by Holmestice standards, but to date it's gotten only about a third as many hits as the prior story, even though I've put them both under a series umbrella.

Ah, well. This year I have some hope of better productivity - speaking of which, my Unsent Letters deadline is creeping up....

Inherited 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:

( Lists and commentary within: )

And that's, as a certain Cronkite used to say, the way it is.

Via senmut , who assigned me D:

Something I hate: Deviled eggs.  Actually, this is cheating slightly; what I have is an aversion (not an actual allergy, thank goodness) to eggs-as-eggs that manifested when I was very, very small, but deviled eggs are a particularly vivid squick-memory.  This did not prevent me from eating well-done French toast, pumpkin pie, or any number of other things into which eggs are beaten/mixed/what have you (quiche would set it off, though), but it made it a Very Bad Idea for anyone to attempt to feed me scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, fried eggs, deviled eggs, et cetera.   My parents learned very quickly not to push the issue; it took my Scoutmaster two separate incidents before he granted the point and found me other things to have for breakfast.  I am not sure of the degree to which the physical aversion reflex may persist nowadays, as it's been decades since I myself consciously pushed the issue, but it's not something I feel inclined to test, and I don't feel as if I'm missing much -- except occasionally when having breakfast in restaurants, where many menus completely fail to accommodate my eccentricity. :-/

Something I love: Diane Duane books ... all of them. 

Somewhere I've been: the Deschutes River in central/eastern Oregon.  This was one of the Scouting trips from my youth (taking place after the Scoutmaster had learned to accommodate my dietary issues); we went rafting/inner-tubing down the river, which I enjoyed a lot...until I got back to camp and realized that I had totally failed to consider the concept of sunscreen, and had -- per the old Cheetos commercial -- quick-fried to a crackly crunch.  Ow.  Just, ow.  Still a fun trip, however.

Somewhere I'd like to go: Disneyland (any of them); I am among the benighted souls who've never been -- we were never the right kind of tourist travelers when I was growing up.  (OTOH, we did do the Universal Studios tour once....)  Amusingly, my mother eventually got to the original Disneyland by virtue of a professional conference, but I don't think my father has ever been either.  My younger brother's family, who live in greater LA, have of course all gone...although lately I think it's mostly to see my nephew play in his school's marching band, which gets invited to play there from time to time.

Someone I know: D--, the above-mentioned younger brother, who is one of those unflappably multi-competent people you want around in an emergency.  He also has two minor superpowers, at least one of which my nephew may have inherited.  He can get from Point A to Point B without appearing to traverse the space in between (this is essentially ninja skill rather than teleportation -- we think), and he has the uncanny ability to find a parking place right near the front entrance of anywhere he goes.

A film I like: Dr. Syn, the Disney adaptation of the literary character (not the Bat-villain) the Scarecrow.

A book I like: Dark Angel by L. J. Smith; possibly the funniest of her "Night World" series, and the least constrained by the overall series continuity.  (In particular: best execution of a Jedi-mind-trick joke I think I've ever seen....)

Comment if you want a letter to answer, OR, comment here with a letter you want me to answer.

Lifted (and slightly modified) from eleanorjane, because I'm feeling opinionated this morning:

Who is your Doctor?
Five, aka Peter Davison.  I came into Who fandom during Tom Baker's tenure (and the era in which US public television stations were airing the series), but I didn't fully bond with the series till Davison took over.  I think for me, it's the balance between the Whoniverse's innate weirdness and Five's relative calm in the face of it all that really makes his tenure memorable for me.  [In this respect, I really wish Eight had gotten a proper series of his own, and I suspect I would be very fond of a lot of the audio material in which he features.]

Who is your Doctor's companion?
Nyssa of Traken.  Yes, this is partly because I was young enough at the time to have a crush, but I also liked her for being one of the Doctor's most sensible and well-rounded Companions.  In strong second place: Anthony Ainley's Master, who -- while not a proper Companion -- remains one of my very favorite Whovian characters and one of my all-time favorite archvillains.

Who is your Batman?
Easily Kevin Conroy of Batman: The Animated Series -- although I will always have a lingering soft spot for Adam West, who was my first screen Batman (I am also old enough to have grown up with first-generation reruns of the Adam West series on weekday afternoon television).

Who is your Catwoman?
Julie Newmar, from the Adam West Bat-series.  This is not entirely consistent of me, but I tend to think that B:TAS pushed just a little too hard on the Batman/Catwoman chemistry, and none of the other live-action iterations of the character have struck me as anything approaching definitive.

Who is your Sherlock Holmes?
This is hard -- and it's none of the obvious ones.  I am...allergic to Jeremy Brett's version, I'm invested too much in the Doyle canon to quite bond with Rathbone, and none of the major modern iterations -- Downey Jr., Cumberbatch, Miller -- feel quite right either.  For visual media, let me give you three relatively obscure picks: Christopher Plummer, in Murder by Decree, Michael Pennington, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (a made-for-TV film from 1987 that put Holmes in the modern day), and Jason Gray-Stanford (from the animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century).  And here are three from the world of post-Doyle literary pastiche: Holmes from Richard Boyer's The Giant Rat of Sumatra (my favorite, by a wide margin, of anyone's take on that "untold" tale), Holmes from Laurie R. King's "Mary Russell" series, and Holmes from Larry Millett's series of Minnesota-centric yarns beginning with Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon.  And one sideways entry: here's a recommendation for August Derleth's classic Solar Pons series, which is almost-but-not-quite Holmes in a totally charming way.

[ADDITION] Who is your Moriarty?
This one, by contrast, is easy: it's the Professor Moriarty from Michael Kurland's eccentric but utterly ingenious series beginning with The Infernal Device.  If you have not read these, you should, though be prepared to make a sharp sideways turn from strict canonical interpretations.  Above all else, Kurland is having fun with these stories even as he remains reasonably faithful to the essence of the original material.

Who is your James Bond?
For good or ill, I am a child of the Roger Moore Bond era; I saw Moore first and most often, and imprinted strongly on the template established during Moore's tenure -- which is to say, I greatly prefer Suave Yet Dangerous Bond to Gritty Angsty Thug Bond.  As a result, my second favorite Bond is Pierce Brosnan, though I do like and respect Sean Connery in the part. By contrast, I really disliked Timothy Dalton's turn in the role, and -- though I know I should -- I have resisted seeing the Daniel Craig Bond films.

Who is your captain of the Enterprise?
This is a tie.  I grew up on Captain Kirk, again in weekday afternoon reruns, and imprinted very strongly on the Trek franchise as a result.  But I watched TNG beginning-to-end with increasing fascination, and TNG holds up way, way better than TOS to sustained rewatching.  So I am a Kirk groupie and a Picard groupie in more or less equal measure.

Who is your fictional female assassin?
Insufficient data. I haven't absorbed a large enough sample to have a definitive answer to this one, but I retain the category so that anyone who picks this up from me will have the chance to weigh in.

Who is your fictional female Federal government agent?
Two answers here.  For strict values of "Federal", my vote goes to Agent Jordan Shaw, played by Dana Delany on the Castle episodes "Tick Tick Tick" and "Boom".  (I really, really wish that had turned into a recurring gig, but Delany landed Body of Evidence shortly after doing these guest shots.) 

However, if we recast the question slightly, we dodge the implied US/American limitation on the question, and that lets me pick the inimitable Emma Peel, as played by the equally inimitable Diana Rigg.  For whom there really is no equal....

Not that I actually have time to do this just now (I hear Yule-bears coming closer...) but at the same time, it seems a good moment for a retrospective, and the meme is showing up all over my f-lists.  So, herewith my Yuletide catalogue, as we sneak up on this year's deadline:

( Yuletide 2006-2011 )

All right, time to finally deal with the (short but deeply amusing) collection of scenarios I left hanging some while back in the latest round of the "15 characters" meme.

First, here's the list of those characters chosen in the present round.  Note that #5 was not selected at all (so we'll save him for next time), and that #11 only appears indirectly.

1. Barnabas Collins (Dark Shadows)
2. Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl aka Oracle (DC Universe)
3. Laura Holt (Remington Steele)
4. Tom Swift Jr. (Tom Swift series)
5.
6. Demona aka Dominique Destine (Gargoyles)
7. Loki (The Avengers -- Marvel movieverse)
8. Alexis Castle (Castle)
9. Tony DiNozzo (NCIS)
10. Vala Mal Doran (Stargate SG-1)
11. The Master (Doctor Who)
12. Wesley Wyndham-Price (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
13. Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who)
14. Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote)
15. Tony Stark (The Avengers -- Marvel movieverse)

( And now, the answers: )

Starting with this round of the "15 characters" meme, I'm adopting astrogirl2's practice of presenting the answers in a separate post -- this way, the Dreamwidth and LiveJournal readerships get to see both sets of Qs and As.

First, this round's list:

#1 -- Alfred Pennyworth (Batman)
#2 -- Detective Elisa Maza (Gargoyles)
#3 -- Artemus Gordon (Wild Wild West [the original version, not the theatrical film])
#4 -- Mrs. Emily Pollifax (the "Mrs. Pollifax" novels by Dorothy Gilman)
#5 -- Dairine Callahan (the "Young Wizards" novels by Diane Duane)
#6 -- Jack O'Neill (Stargate SG-1)
#7 -- Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter)
#8 -- Indiana Jones (you have to ask?)
#9 -- Q (Star Trek: TNG)
#10 -- Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean)
#11 -- Carmen Sandiego (Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?)
#12 -- Martha Rodgers (Castle)
#13 -- Xander Harris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
#14 -- Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who)
#15 -- Balthazar Blake (Sorcerer's Apprentice)

( And now, we present Wacky Crossover Theater! )

To Jack Sparrow, Martha, and Sarah Jane: better luck next time.  (Meanwhile, I encourage the gallery to go over and pester twilight2000 with some more questions as she takes her turn at the meme.)

By way of icepixie, slightly modified to accommodate my particular playlist:

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line (or first and second line if it's completely impossible) from the first 30 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike out the songs when someone guesses the song, performer, and/or source correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own!

A couple of notes first:

My musical range is odd and eclectic even by fannish standards.  I will be extremely surprised if more than about a third of these are actually guessed.  I'll also note that my actual first 30 entries would have been stacked very heavily with about three performers, which would have made the game either very easy (for a select few) or completely impossible (for a wide audience).  I've therefore limited the selections, with one partial exception, to one song from any given performer or source.

As an additional aid, some statistics and trivia: 13 of the 30 can be classified as television theme songs (this probably won't help as much as you think!), although in at least two cases related feature films can be cited.  Three each are from theatrical films and from stage musicals, although one of these six actually has both a film and a stage version.  Of the remaining eleven songs, only three were released by major commercial labels; one of these three was subsequently adapted into a movie.  The other eight have all been recorded and released independently (see, I told you they were obscure!).   
( Read more... )

For all seventeen readers of this journal (heh!), a pointer:

icepixie (in her LJ incarnation) is hosting a Promote-a-Thon designed to highlight fics written in Really Tiny Fandoms and promote stories about characters and pairings featured in vanishingly few stories.  The main Post of Promotion is over here.  I've supplied a post, and I encourage all similarly minded folk with relevant material to participate.