12345 Writer Tag Game!
@ukcalico tagged me! I took ages to respond because I only read tumblr on mobile these days and the stats page on ao3 is fubared for me, lol. Go read Cal's, it was most interesting and hilarious!
1. Most hits - Corridors of Power, a political romp set in 2005 with beloved characters not yet tarnished by JKR's hate and a British political scene not yet subject to all the despair of the 2010s onwards. One has to read it through heavy disclaimers, an increasingly distant grasp of the politics of the time, and a tolerant fondness for yr author's progressive optimism. Blaise Zabini clearly saw it all coming though.
2. Second-most kudos - Ever so slightly longer but not quite as thick: Toward a quantitative literary sexology of Harry Potter fanfiction. Look, jokes aside, this is a proper piece of research, prescient of trends in fandom studies and corpus linguistics way before its time. The literature cited was a bit dodgy but Circe and I were in it for the lolz and the stats. Now? People teach this in their college courses. I am proud of it.
3. Third-most comments - Currency. Another HP co-production with Circe (<3), this one in my favourite genre of "alternate careers for wizards" and of a career pairing which I don't believe ever caught on BUT SHOULD HAVE: merchant banker/wandmaker. Seen a few wandmaker Dracos, but it was vanishingly rare to read Harry as math-smart and ambitious in the first wave of HP fandom. I am sometimes tempted to revisit him as a jaded finance bro, but let's face it if he was as good as we wrote him then he has long retired. Circe having Harry call Draco a "stick fiddler" still makes me laugh.
4. Fourth-most bookmarks - Corridors of Power, again.
5. Fifth-most words - Adjournment, at 15k ish, technically part of Corridors of Power (it's the "sequel", but really it's just the porn chapter. By "just" I mean 12k words of buildup and Harry meant "four years of crazy flirting").
So then let's cheat and do this to talk about other stories!
4. Fourth-most words - Stone Circle-y Times. A small and standalone prequel to Planning Permission, a Good Omens novel that Circe and I excavated copious amounts of our souls into the writing thereof. SCT was just me and my massive adoration of human prehistory playing dolls with Crowley & Aziraphale.
5. Fifth-most bookmarks - Draco, Merrily on High. Aw you guys, every December there's a handful of people who add it to bookmarks, or re-read, or I see it on festive holiday lists and it makes me super happy because I wrote it one quite lonely/turbulent Christmas and I hope it gives people the cosy tipsy hit they're looking for, makes them laugh at the font jokes, and puts Mambo Number 5 in their heads.
6. Least words - Technically this is DB9 Coupe, 2004, in dark grey which is a tiiiiiny car porn coda (156 words) to Corridors of Power. I fear that nowadays the Viscount Northallerton might drive a Tesla. But in terms of standalone stories it would be Hotpants, which is just 245 words of Batverse costume kink pure and simple.
@sheldrakus you should do this!
