I am your host mythmerth, and these are my merthur ao3 fic reading stats. when I say stats, I mean lists of numbers and histograms and pie charts and all that. like im so serious its a bunch of oddly color coded numbers that also happen to mean I read a shit ton of gay fan fiction. if that’s fun for you you’re in the right place!
Before we begin with the numbers there’s some things I want to clarify:
This is not going to be my favorite merthur fic reads of 2024 because god this is loaded enough as is. if you’re looking for my 2024 recs, go HERE !! (I will link when I have the post made!)
These stats are wholly collected and compiled by me. Whenever I read or reread a merthur fic this year, I added the word count number to my list as soon as I was finished reading. I’ve seen some ao3 wrapped generators hanging around and I’m here to say that that is NOT what I used, and in fact from what I can tell would’ve been wildly inaccurate for me; this is the sweet sweet old fashioned data collection and thus has all the pros and cons involved in that.
For my data, all numbers are rounded to the nearest whole and written in the thousands unless specified otherwise. If you see a ‘26’ in my data images, assume that means roughly 26,000. For fics at a 25,501 word count, I rounded up to 26. For fics at a 25,499 word count, I rounded down to 25. the hope is that these even out at the end!
I am so excited and I have 0 regrets. 100% of these fics are merthur fics (including a very occasional poly fic) and I have never felt more off my rocker in my life.
all that being said…
it’s time for stats.
let’s begin with the complete 2024 tally before we get into the nitty gritty.
Between January and December of 2024, I read a total of 14,489,000 words. Yes, that is 14.5 million words of merthur fan fiction.
Of those 14.5 million, ~4.6 million were from fics I reread and ~9.9 million were from novel fics (aka I’d never read them before).
I read a total of 239 fics this year (N is NOT in the thousands). Of those 239 fics, 52 were rereads and 187 were novel.
Half (~119) of the 239 fics I read were above 44k and half of them were under 44k.
The average fic length id pick up was about 60k, and the specific word count I happened to read the most often was 39k.
Funnily, the average length of the fics I reread was 88k, and the average length of all the novel fics I read was 53k, so I guess I’m inclined to reread long fics more ???
The highest <completed> word count I read this year was Sorcerer’s Bane by BeautifulFiction, clocking in at a very scrumptious 265k words.
Not depicted in the image, but the longest series I read was Footloose’s ever infamous Loaded March, giving a hearty 1.26 million words to my count this year.
Now for the fun part…. monthly specifics…
behold, the gay merthur donut
did someone say pie chart?? too bad, you get a donut. also hello to my pfp.
From my monthly counts, May was my lowest at 732k words read and August was my highest with a very normal and regular 1.8 million words. read. in August. 1.8 million.
(once I saw those stats i wondered if I’d really gone berserk cause… what the hell was I on. is this normal? I don’t know what’s normal anymore)
I read an average of 1.2 million words per month, so I hover right around there with some exceptions (looking at you July and August. and May.)
This is a look into how I break down the months
Each novel read is noted with the right skew within the cell, and each reread is noted with a left skew. So for January, I had 7 rereads. Then I add them up and do general stats when the month is over: I read 20 fics in January that averaged at 65k each, for a total count of 1.3 million words.
Sometimes I’d mark fics in other ways to keep track of them, I did this with certain series and also to denote if a fic was unfinished. In August, I’d picked up Loaded March again and you can see those in blue. I also read Accidentally my Companion which is an unfinished work by Nakyrah, shown in green in the image (this is also the longest fic I read this year if you count ongoing, it’s at 276k as of now so check it out tehe)
I messed around with some histograms too~
While this is set up as a ‘histogram’, this is actually all 239 fics I recorded one by one laid out as a chaotic strip of lines. Each line is a fic, the height denotes word count. I have a pretty typical rhythm; read short fics between the super long ones, nothing too insane other than that diabolical spree of reading long fics I went on at the beginning of the year. I was about to get my bachelors alright? I was doing anything. my average word count in February was 114k okay I couldn’t be trusted. clearly, cause the first thing I did with my degree was make a fan fiction stat chart
Now this is a proper histogram: each bar represents a word count category and the height is how many in the category I read. As you can see, I’m very inclined to read the 23k-63k category. There’s also a spike at ~115k and I think that’s a bit funny. like why that set specifically? they Speak To Me
Speaking of fics I’m drawn to. You’re probably thinking, ‘the numbers are cool and all, but of those 14 million words of godforsaken merthur fics, what ratings did you read the most?’ I’m so glad you asked!
I read the MOST godforsaken ones.
I have no charts for this because I painstakingly went through all of my bookmarked fics from 2024 and tallied their ratings on paper to the best of my ability.
Out of the 187 novel fics I read (I don’t re-bookmark rereads so if I’d thought of this category sooner I would’ve been MUCH better off but I didn’t and now we’re here)
131 of them were Explicit (70%)
39 of them were Mature (21%)
13 of them were Teen (7%)
4 of them were General (2%)
And I guarantee the rereads look almost identical to this, if not more explicit. something about merlin and arthur and their explicit antics heal me; it’s always the filthiest I start reading when I’m feeling my lowest. I eat that shit UP. So if you’ve come to my page looking for Teen rated fics I fear this may Not Be The Place For You. I’ve read quite a number of very good T and G fics!!! I just. the mature ratings. they call me.
and lastly, I’d like to post my scrappy 2023 stats cause the year difference is. kinda funny
they consumed me body and soul and I haven’t looked back once.
and that does it for this years mythmerth merthur ao3 wrapped!
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown as much as I enjoyed all the reading and data collection I did this year!!
Again, if you’re looking for my 2024 recs I’ll have them linked here as soon as I create the post <3
If you have any inquiries or questions or comments on what my merthur 2025 wrapped should include pls let me know I’m just having a good time with this, what did you think? what should I do next?
I saw someone say (generally) that they really hate seeing the “idiots to lovers” tag used on ao3 because it usually was “just ooc reasons to drag the plot out with infuriating stupidity” and also that it was “an annoying tag because of its insult to the characters” and I immediately went ah. This person is 100%, completely and absolutely, without question, not within a light year’s range of merthur fics with this complaint
Honestly, it bothers me a little whenever someone says that Merlin betrayed "his people" because of Arthur/Camelot.
Merlin grew up in a small village where he wasn't very loved, with only his mother and Will, taught that he had to lie or someone else would hurt him because of something he was born with and had no choice about.
"His people" were Hunith and Will, no one else.
Let's jump to the canon: he was only there to become Gaius's apprentice. His first encounter with another magical being is an execution and a woman who utters a threat, zero extra context. Let's jump to his encounter with Kilgarrah, a dragon who tells him he must protect Arthur, an obligation he didn't sign up for, among all of this, the only one who said kind words to him was Gwen. At the banquet, the magical woman uses her magic to affect everyone, not just the one responsible for her son's death. He saves Arthur and gets another job.
"His people" are now Gaius, Gwen, Arthur and Morgana.
And Uther ends up in a border zone of "his people" only because he is important to Arthur, someone Merlin has grown fond of and doesn't want to see hurt.
The next magical people he meets are always trying to hurt or manipulate Arthur because of Uther's actions. He felt happy when he met that man who made Morgana sick, only for him to later take Gaius's job and try to commit murder.
The only good magical people he know end up dying in his arms, and in the end he only stay with the people of Camelot.
Lancelot, Gwaine, Lyon, Elyan, Percival end up being "his people", who now live in Camelot, a place they swore to protect.
It's like the great-great-grandson of your grandmother's second cousin suddenly appeared and demanded that you put him above all those you love.
Sharing one thing in their lives means nothing, when everyone's lives are filled with a thousand and one things they share with the people they love.
I always say he betrayed himself, and, to me, that’s far more accurate. He certainly neglected the group of people being systemically killed who were relying on his power to save them. They were people he didn’t find continual solace in, but still felt some camaraderie with nonetheless. Betrayal, however, demands some form of kinship or closeness to the victim of it, and that doesn’t apply to Merlin with, say, the whole of the druids. No, instead, he betrayed the very foundation of his own existence.
he betrayed Magic. He IS Magic. Merlin lost himself, betrayed himself, for Arthur, and he did it multiple times. You can’t betray what you didn’t have kinship with, but Magic? Merlin loved Magic, yet nothing came close to what he felt for Arthur.
I just could not have been a villain in the BBC Merlin universe like you make one light threat to the kingdom and now here comes Arthur and his loyal dog Merlin, and Merlin’s loyal dog Gwaine, his other loyal dog Lancelot, Lancelot and Gwaine’s loyal dog Percival, and Arthur’s other two loyal dogs Leon and Elyan. I tried telling them that I’d stop if someone sacrificed themselves and there was like 4 volunteers I’m clocking out
also can we talk about the way you can see Merlin's heart breaking when Arthur asks him if he should allow magic in Camelot or let Mordred die? It's only there for a second, just a tiny moment where his brows go up and he looks so helpless because its an impossible choice. Its insane and unfair and just cruel to make him choose. I get choked up when I think about it. He loves Arthur so much whether you see it as romantic or platonic love makes no difference, he loves that man and that's the moment he confesses to the audience. It's not about magic, it's about Arthur.
