It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!
Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.
I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.
Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.
Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:
Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.
The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:
Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?
Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?
Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!
If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.
At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.
The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).
Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works
Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works
Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works
Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works
This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.
How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.
With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):
The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.
Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.
To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.
Has centreoftheselights learned the error of their ways and tried to actually collect their data properly this year so as to not misrepresent the popularity of every fandom on AO3? Nope! They're doing everything exactly the same, and as expected, the counts are WAY off (Castiel/Dean didn't even make it on the list this year despite having 6000 new works in 2024, which should've put it in the Top 10).
Do NOT trust this data.
Fortunately, Randomist1031 has done the hard work for us and compiled a 2024 dataset that includes privated fics AND gathers the counts correctly. They've even gone the extra mile and added separate public vs locked counts, percent locked calculations, and common ship names. I can't vouch for the accuracy of every data point but the handful I checked were very close (another benefit of using the "created by" filter method is that it's fairly replicable, unlike certain people's methodology).
Please share this list and use it for fandom analysis instead.
Look at him sitting there with his raised little eyebrows like he isn't planning on committing double homicide in the next twenty seconds. He's so great
Ok, it's taken me SIX YEARS to make this. But I did it! It's done! Please watch it!
It's my first animation project, which is why it took so long. I had to learn to animate to make it. It's only a bit over 2 minutes, but I made it the best I possibly could. Please please please watch it. I am so proud of it.
It's a trailer for my first novel- a late YA scifi/superhero book.
Is it absurd to make a fully animated book "trailer" for a book that's been out for 6 years, with voice acting and commissioned music (by the fantastic @plottwiststudios) ? I mean yes. Of course. I'm not even doing this for real marketing purposes because this is a ridiculous thing to do. I don't even really think it'll sell books but the process of making it made me really really happy.
But I love my fictional disaster queers, and I love my book, and when I was a kid I thought I'd grow up to be an animator. I've always loved animation, and I was really, really happy to make something animated myself. I'm really proud of how it turned out.
No AI used.
Please watch it. Please share it.
If it does make you actually want to read the story, you can see all the buying options for ebook, paperback, and audiobook.
I start my next animation project- a fake anime opening credits for book 3 in this series, starting next month.
I did a write up of the show I VJed at VidUKon this year over on DW, and I wanted to share the playlist here as well! The theme was Costume Party, and I was interested in taking that in every direction I could — not just vids that celebrated pretty clothes, but vids that really played with identity. What does it mean to put on a costume? What do we learn or reveal about ourselves as we play with outward expression? But, also, I did want this vidshow to feel a bit like a party, fun and energetic.
Here was my final playlist:
Sharp-Dressed Man by alpheratz (The Untamed)
Fashion is Danger by valoise (Star Trek: TOS)
Freakum Dress by sweetestdrain (Batman)
Mambo Italiano by Charmax (Alias)
Working for a Living by thingswithwings (Leverage / Hustle)
I Wish I Was James Bond by Kuwdora (Star Trek: DS9)
The Cartographer by seekingferret (Jumanji)
The Stranger by Periru3 & Tafadhali (Very Important People)
Anymore by bingeling (Face/Off)
Cure for Me by ultraviolet_catastrophe (Everything Everywhere All At Once)
Liquid Smooth by suzanne_f (RuPaul's Drag Race RPF)
Each Feather and Each Spangle by dogstar (Community)
Vintage Clothes by JinkyO (Black Girl in a Big Dress)
When Can I See You Again by sandalwoodbox (My Dress Up Darling) **PREMIERE**
As ever, I had far too many possible vids to include in one 45-minute show, so here is a longer rec list of other vids I considered (including several more by me and @periru3, because we love this theme):
Grace Kelly by Periru3 (Catch Me If You Can)
Celebrity Skin by Periru3 and Tafadhali (Chucky)
We Can Be Anything by BlueshiftofDeath (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
7 Rings by Rhea (The King: Eternal Monarch)
Queen by eruthros (Lil Nas X RPF)
Under My Skin by nicasio_silang (The Long Kiss Goodnight)
the perfect crime by stardust_rain (Lupin)
Stress by findmeinthealps (MCU)
My Strongest Suit by Periru3 and Tafadhali (MASH)
All This Useless Beauty by FairestCat (My Fair Lady)
Golden Boy by Tafadhali (Our Flag Means Death)
Crazy Classic Life by metatxt (Pose)
American Music by gianduja_kiss (Quantum Leap)
The Baddest by Katherine Perrin (Sailor Moon)
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by FairestCat (Some Like It Hot)
Thrift Shop by First Officer Nims (Star Trek: TOS)
Birds of a Feather by evewithanapple (Twelfth Night)
man by inimitablereel (Victor/Victoria) (there were several great Victor/Victoria vids to consider!)
It's rare to read a fantasy novel that's both GOOD and FUN, but Robert Jackson Bennett manages it handily with The Tainted Cup. Clearly inspired by Sherlock Homes, our investigative duo consists of Din, a small-town sad wet bisexual stick of a boy struggling with his dyslexia & trying to send money home, and Ana Dolabra, a mad genius of a woman who does not believe in manners or leaving her house, who has been recently exiled to the outer provinces. They are called in to investigate Din's first murder scene: an engineer with a whole forest of augmented plants bursting out of his chest, found in the country house of one of the wealthiest families in the empire. From there the mystery leads to the heart of the empire itself, a land under constant threat from leviathans breaking through the sea walls and wreaking havoc—but whose magic is also derived from their blood. Genuinely original worldbuilding, a 'Knives Out'-style mystery where the whole can only be deciphered in bits & pieces, and fantastic characters. Two books are out with another coming this summer, but it is intended to be an ongoing series, not a trilogy. For my part, I will happily read two dozen Ana & Din adventures.
Music: Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne, from the album Blizzard of Oz
Download links, full source list, and subtitles available on AO3
Ok so this one takes some explaining. The themed premiere for @vidukon this year was 'Unfinished Business'. The con itself was held in Birmingham, which is the terminus (now) of the High Speed Rail 2 project. Well. It will be. There has been so much slippage the new station is a massive hole in the ground. Birmingham also happens to be my home town, and I can't remember a time when parts of it weren't been dug up, knocked down, built, and the knocked down again. The whole city is unfinished business, and HS2 is a big part of that.
I joked that I should make an HS2 vid for the premiere, and then got encouraged to actually do it. The song suggestion was from Janecdotes and was perfect, as of course, Ozzy was also from Birmingham.
I wasn't really sure how to go about vidding something that doesn't have the same narrative as a TV show. With a show, you sort of already have that structure of a story you're working in, even if you are breaking the story in some why. I wasn't even really sure what footage existed for me to use.
I ended up writing a storyboard with what I wanted to happen, the narrative I wanted to show, then went looking for footage. I watched a LOT of engineering and drone footage, technical explainers, and parliamentary questions. I also incorporated static images, such as headlines and search queries.
I think I was definitely inspired by the way @beatriceeagle uses static panels in They Give it Away, and the approach to vidding an infrastructure project was inspired by absternr's amazing can-opener bridge vid Hard Knock Life.
Crazy Train is a long song, so I chopped out about a minute or so of it- including some of Randy's legendary guitar work, which I'm sure is metal blasphemy.
One thing that I didn't expect to happen was developing very fond feelings, almost pride, about HS2 itself. It gets a lot of stick in the media, and it's decades behind schedule, and billions over budget. But we do still need it (ideally all the way up to Leeds) and seeing the engineering feats, the miles of tunnel, the viaducts. the stunning bridges, everyone is working so hard and it's going to be amazing. Gosh I love railways.
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
