hi. i think we all noticed the out-of-nowhere revival of the jack/oswald pair that happened this year... here are some stats to highlight how insane that was:
a total of 61 Jack/Oswald fics were written and shared last year, which represents 31,8% of the Pandora Hearts fanfics of 2025 (35% if we exclude crossovers)
that is a HUGE number: it means that 35,6% of the Jack/Oswald fanfics alviable on AO3 were posted through 2025.
so. what the fuck caused this to happen????
a year of jack-and-walding
a total of 866 664 words over 61 fics, by 17 different authors as well as 2 anons.
that is so much!!!! those 61 fics occupied over 30% of the AO3 tag when, previously, that pair only once went above 10% of the fanfics' posted over a year.
(btw most of that 2025 wordcount is due to the work of NeahCampbell54. if you see this, hi: you're a beast)
here were the most used additionnal tags over 2025:
what was jackwald 2025 about, if not canon compliant angst in which they mournfully take it up the ass...
the timeline of this mess
as often, it all starts with a bit: "jackwald january". except, said bit is not shared anywhere outside of my private circle dfgdj it just so happens that other AO3 users have been posting jackwald fics in january as well. dumb luck, really.
but then, the bit continues: "jackwald june" followed immediately by "jackwald july". this is when shit starts to pick up and gets really out of my hands, as you can see, leading to that one "osjack october" you've perhaps heard about.
i couldn't tell you why this worked as well as it did. genuinely. i'm as confused as you are. where did all of you people come from. i love you all.
taking responsibility (it's not actually my fault)
what happened at first, basically, was that i got very very insane.
what i never expected, however, was that so many others would join in the fun. some did because i rambled about this ship until their eardrums exploded and they were kind enough to humour me but, to my surprise, most of did out of totally unrelated reasons. i got to meet so many great people, artists and writers thanks to this shared enthusiasm, and i'm so grateful for it!!
(still, if you hated seeing your dash and AO3 tag getting flooded with jackwald, i'd really want to apologise. i'm only one jackwald poster out of many, and many would have been jackwald posting had i existed or not, but i guess i still threw a big ass brick into the pond with uh. this. yea... that one did some damage, didn't it)
okay, but why are you making a fuss about it?
that much would be because i think it's super exciting to see that by being annoying enough and posting about what you love, just putting it out there, not only you can see it grow and form communities, but you can also just have the time of your life seeing others get reminded of their own love for it.
basically: if we managed to get a random jackwald invasion in 2025, why couldn't be 2026 the time for your own underappreciated pair to shine?
> love things, make art unapologetically, and stay annoying about it forever.
