AO3 hitcount meme

[sophinisba]

Here is a fun meme that I saw on torachan's journal and since then on a few others'. My top-ten fics by AO3 hitcounts:

1. Too Marvelous for Words, Merlin: Arthur/Merlin, 660 hits
2. Talking Books and Burning Sticks (The Excellent Adventure Remix), Merlin: Gwen/Merlin and Arthur/Gwen/Merlin, 577 hits
3. Slipped the Dragon's Mind (The Sekrit OTP Remix), Merlin: Gwen/Morgana, 440 hits
4. Sick, Children of Men: Kee gen, 400 hits
5. Be So Bold, Merlin: Gwen/Morgana, 398 hits
6. I'll Be Yr Bird (Remix under the Dirt), Merlin: gennish Arthur/Merlin, 349
7. Keep Your Head Down, Merlin: Merlin/Uther, 338
8. We'll Slide Down the Surface of Things, Merlin: Arthur/Gwen and Arthur/Gwen/Merlin, 310
9. Lady in Waiting, Merlin: Gwen/Morgana and Gwen/knights, 308
10. The Second Wedding, Merlin: Arthur/Gwen and Arthur/Gwen/Merlin, 276

Thoughts:
-1 is the only explicit Arthur/Merlin fic I've written; it's been sort of amusing to watch it steadily gaining on and surpassing all the others over the last couple months, like an inexorable force. That said, I'm pretty happy with the spread of genres on this list: three het/threesome, three femslash(y), two boyslash, and two gen(ish).
-2, 3, and 4 were for fests hosted on the AO3: RemixRedux 2010, camelotremix, and Yuletide 2009
-I've written four fics for the Merlin kink meme, and in each case when I went back to de-anon I gave links for LJ, DW, and the AO3. Three of those four stories are here (1, 8, and 9) and the other's in my top 20. Lots of people read at that comm!
-All except 4 are in Merlin fandom and all except 7 were written in the last two years. Well, I haven't written much else in the last two years.

It's been nice having a fandom (and a friendly niche within the fandom) where I feel fairly settled again, after I lost most of my interest in hobbit fandom and spent a few years of wandering around in the wilds of multifannishness. I always liked doing small fandom stuff but trying to write Doctor Who or Harry Potter was sort of scary, when there was so much out there but nobody knew me.

I do miss hobbit fandom and reading hobbit fic, where the characters are so affectionate and there's SO MUCH good genfic. I was looking at some old stuff today and thinking it's a shame that Amplificathon points are weighted toward multiple rare pairings but not so much toward gen, though of course I could still do some and get points. And even though a lot of the meanness and narrow-mindedness have stuck with me, there was always really a lot of fun and porn and variety and cool challenges, and people were so great about welcoming me to the community even though I came late to the scene.

It's coming up this month on 6 years since I wrote my first fanfic, the Frodo interspecies MPREG and I emailed to lilybaggins. She posted it anonymously on her journal because at the time I was planning to have a very respectable career as a serious Frodo/Sam fan. :D I never did end up writing any F/S! And as it turns out (Claudia and I have discussed this a bit), the interspecies MPREG that was so much decried back in the day seems to do pretty well on the AO3! Lots of hits anyway, if not a ton of comments. And of course those lovely canon-compliant genfics that we worked so hard on are languishing in obscurity. Ah, fandom!

Comments

[trascendenza]

It's so interesting to read people's results on this meme. It's funny, because I know Merlin is your primary fandom, but somehow seeing it laid out like this it's even more apparent how much you've found your niche. Even though I had a brief and intense fling with Psych I was surprised that more than one Psych fic made it onto my list. I think I broke my monofannishness awhile back and kinda doubt it will ever come back, n'awww.

Interspecies mpreg ftw! I always tell myself I want to write more interspecies porn and then never get around to it. I think it's one of those things where I love the idea so much that nothing I write will ever be as amazing.

[sophinisba]

I got into LotR fandom at a time when a lot of other people were already starting to lose interest and move on to the new shiny Harry Potter. I swore I'd never be unfaithful like that! I had no concept of being in fandom before hobbits and I couldn't imagine ever caring about other characters the same way I did about Frodo then. And, you know, I never did exactly, because there can never be anybody quite like Frodo, but yeah, my perspective is completely different now.

I do still think of myself as multifannish in that I watch lots of different shows, do podfics for different fandoms, and occasionally write other stuff. And my niche has fallen apart a bit in that half the people I met through Merlin have since stopped participating in the fandom, but I still really like hanging out with them, so it's cool.