[Meme] AO3 Fic Filters
I was tagged by 
klaineharmony:
Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!
I currently have 445 works on AO3. This tally is therefore missing some stuff I haven't yet crossposted (most notably all my Angel Sanctuary fic) and some things (mostly fragments) that will never exist away from my journal. Additionally, AO3 does not scrape one's entire catalogue once it gets past a certain size -- the sidebar is built from only the first X number of pages (ten? twenty? I don't know the details) -- so these meme results are not completely accurate (most easily demonstrable when it comes to the number of fics in certain categories). That said...
What are your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?
General Audiences (335)
Teen And Up Audiences (83)
This does not surprise me. I don't write a lot of porn, and I don't see much point in the Teen And Up rating -- probably because I don't see much point in fic ratings in general. Relatively specific content notes are useful, but ratings are as far from specific as you can get. Seriously, what does an estimated 'appropriate audience' even MEAN? And how do you know whether any given reader will agree with your decision?
I'm also reluctant to issue judgments on who should be reading what content at what age, since I am quite sure that various things I read as a child -- and by 'child' I mean 8-12 years old -- would make moral guardians scream in horror, yet I sailed through unharmed. So I default toward 'whatever, just read it' and only occasionally slap a 'hey, this might be a little heavier' note onto something when my understanding of the public consensus on various issues suggests people might get ticked off at seeing them in the 'General Audiences' category.
(I am even less likely to use 'Mature' or 'Explicit,' because see above in re: not writing much porn. I do occasionally go with 'Not Rated' because there are a few things where I have no clue what the public consensus rating would be and figure it's better to let individual readers decide for themselves.)
What's your most common archive warning? Least common?
This is such a short list that I'll just copypaste them all:
No Archive Warnings Apply (273)
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (173)
Graphic Depictions Of Violence (12)
Major Character Death (8)
Rape/Non-Con (4)
Underage (2)
As you can see, I don't write much that falls into the archive's specific warning categories. However, while saying 'No Archive Warnings Apply,' technically only means that you are (supposedly) guaranteed not to run into those four specific things, in practice I think that that label can convey the (false) implication that a fic is safe in all ways. That's why I use 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings' so often -- it's a signal that readers should be cautious and read the rest of the tags for more details.
My two 'Underage' fics include one wherein an abusive father attempts to rape his teenage daughter, and one wherein a young teen indulges in some cheerful solo exploration of her own sexuality. I think the radical tone difference between those two stories is evidence that precision in content notes is more useful than overly broad catch-all categories. :)
Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?
Not particularly? I mean, I write a lot of prompt!fic and I enjoy fic exchanges, which can sometimes push me well out of my comfort zone. And I will try writing most things at least once just to see if I can. (Except porn; porn ideas have to hit me exactly right or you're not getting anything.) But when left to my own devices, I have a pretty stable groove that can be summed up as 'let's talk about people in relationship to each other and to their culture, and also worldbuilding and ethics, and probably end on an up-note even if we've gone through some bad shit to get there.' I even manage to fit a lot of my prompt responses into that basic pattern, so. *shrug*
How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
Gen (372)
F/M (90)
F/F (32)
Multi (30)
M/M (15)
Other (3)
This is an accurate reflection of my preferences! Friendship and families (both blood relations and families of choice) are my jam, so the predominance of gen makes perfect sense. I enjoy writing female characters, so having F/M and F/F both outweigh M/M is not surprising. I confess I am a little surprised there isn't more poly, but then again, this tally only separates out subtypes of romantic/sexual relationships. All friendships get lumped together under 'Gen' regardless of how many people and/or which genders they involve.
You may note that these categories add up to more than my total number of fics. That is partly because a lot of my attempts to write romantic relationships come off very unromantic and more like ambiguous gen, so I slap both category labels onto those fics, and also because I will often label for the sub-ships within a poly relationship.
(The three 'Other' fics include the attempted parental rape mentioned above (because it's a would-be sexual relationship but holy shit I would not call that a 'ship' in the usual sense), one genderswap (thus turning an M/M couple into an F/F couple, and how do you even categorize that?), and one character of canonically ambiguous gender.)
What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?
Homestuck (100)
Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis (100)
Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (68)
Naruto (61)
I'm still active in all of them, for some definition of active. In the case of HP and Naruto, that mostly means I'm open for prompts in those fandoms and I have a small backlog of fics I intend to finish someday. I'm moving in that direction with Homestuck and Narnia, but am not as far down the road.
I am cheerfully multifannish, and have been since my first year in fandom. (For reading, anyway. It took me a little longer to diversify my writing.)
What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?
Dave Strider (40)
Jade Harley (33)
Susan Pevensie (30)
Harry Potter (29)
This does not particularly surprise me. Harry's there because my HP fic tends to center around him and/or people who consider him a major part of their lives. Dave and Jade are there because they're among my favorite Homestuck characters and I find them both easy to write. I'm a little more surprised about Susan, because she is not my favorite Pevensie (that would be Edmund), but she is also easy for me to write. Additionally, these are all relatively popular characters and therefore more likely than minor characters to be included in fic prompts, and since I write a lot of prompt!fic... you do the math. :)
What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?
Prompt Fic (160)
Fifteen Minute Fic (101)
3 Sentence Ficathon (31)
Worldbuilding (28)
Technical note: these are not actually my two least-used additional tags! They are merely numbers 9 and 10 of my top-ten list, which is all that AO3 lists in the sidebar. The actual least-used would be one-off conversational things like, 'also this is an AU of an AU'.
Anyway, you will note that three of those four tags tell you that you're going to be reading a fic based on somebody else's prompt rather than a story I came up with purely on my own. (Like I said, I write a lot of prompt!fic.) If we remove those on the theory that they're structural notes rather than content notes, the tags I'm left with are:
Friendship (86)
Backstory (62)
Fluff (47)
Family (44)
Slice of Life (43)
Character Study (42)
Worldbuilding (28)
Which tells you quite a lot (and accurately so) about my areas of storytelling interest. :)
If I combine the first list, I will apparently be attempting to fill multiple types of prompt all in a single fic. This is not impossible, but that particular combo is somewhat unlikely. Combining friendship, backstory, character study, and world-building on the other hand? Much more doable. (Oddly, I seem not to have done it yet. Perhaps I will take that as a challenge!)
How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don't plan on finishing?
Apparently only five on AO3! Let's see, those must be... "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," "The Courting Dance," "Four by Four," "Trollstuck: Make Her Pay," and "Weregild." Yeah, that seems right. (I have others, of course, but they are not currently crossposted to that site.)
I do intend to finish all my WIPs someday, but 'someday' may be many years away. *sigh*
Tag 5 people!
I am terrible at tagging. Play if you want to!
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
klaineharmony:
Go to your works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!
I currently have 445 works on AO3. This tally is therefore missing some stuff I haven't yet crossposted (most notably all my Angel Sanctuary fic) and some things (mostly fragments) that will never exist away from my journal. Additionally, AO3 does not scrape one's entire catalogue once it gets past a certain size -- the sidebar is built from only the first X number of pages (ten? twenty? I don't know the details) -- so these meme results are not completely accurate (most easily demonstrable when it comes to the number of fics in certain categories). That said...
What are your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?
General Audiences (335)
Teen And Up Audiences (83)
This does not surprise me. I don't write a lot of porn, and I don't see much point in the Teen And Up rating -- probably because I don't see much point in fic ratings in general. Relatively specific content notes are useful, but ratings are as far from specific as you can get. Seriously, what does an estimated 'appropriate audience' even MEAN? And how do you know whether any given reader will agree with your decision?
I'm also reluctant to issue judgments on who should be reading what content at what age, since I am quite sure that various things I read as a child -- and by 'child' I mean 8-12 years old -- would make moral guardians scream in horror, yet I sailed through unharmed. So I default toward 'whatever, just read it' and only occasionally slap a 'hey, this might be a little heavier' note onto something when my understanding of the public consensus on various issues suggests people might get ticked off at seeing them in the 'General Audiences' category.
(I am even less likely to use 'Mature' or 'Explicit,' because see above in re: not writing much porn. I do occasionally go with 'Not Rated' because there are a few things where I have no clue what the public consensus rating would be and figure it's better to let individual readers decide for themselves.)
What's your most common archive warning? Least common?
This is such a short list that I'll just copypaste them all:
No Archive Warnings Apply (273)
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (173)
Graphic Depictions Of Violence (12)
Major Character Death (8)
Rape/Non-Con (4)
Underage (2)
As you can see, I don't write much that falls into the archive's specific warning categories. However, while saying 'No Archive Warnings Apply,' technically only means that you are (supposedly) guaranteed not to run into those four specific things, in practice I think that that label can convey the (false) implication that a fic is safe in all ways. That's why I use 'Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings' so often -- it's a signal that readers should be cautious and read the rest of the tags for more details.
My two 'Underage' fics include one wherein an abusive father attempts to rape his teenage daughter, and one wherein a young teen indulges in some cheerful solo exploration of her own sexuality. I think the radical tone difference between those two stories is evidence that precision in content notes is more useful than overly broad catch-all categories. :)
Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?
Not particularly? I mean, I write a lot of prompt!fic and I enjoy fic exchanges, which can sometimes push me well out of my comfort zone. And I will try writing most things at least once just to see if I can. (Except porn; porn ideas have to hit me exactly right or you're not getting anything.) But when left to my own devices, I have a pretty stable groove that can be summed up as 'let's talk about people in relationship to each other and to their culture, and also worldbuilding and ethics, and probably end on an up-note even if we've gone through some bad shit to get there.' I even manage to fit a lot of my prompt responses into that basic pattern, so. *shrug*
How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
Gen (372)
F/M (90)
F/F (32)
Multi (30)
M/M (15)
Other (3)
This is an accurate reflection of my preferences! Friendship and families (both blood relations and families of choice) are my jam, so the predominance of gen makes perfect sense. I enjoy writing female characters, so having F/M and F/F both outweigh M/M is not surprising. I confess I am a little surprised there isn't more poly, but then again, this tally only separates out subtypes of romantic/sexual relationships. All friendships get lumped together under 'Gen' regardless of how many people and/or which genders they involve.
You may note that these categories add up to more than my total number of fics. That is partly because a lot of my attempts to write romantic relationships come off very unromantic and more like ambiguous gen, so I slap both category labels onto those fics, and also because I will often label for the sub-ships within a poly relationship.
(The three 'Other' fics include the attempted parental rape mentioned above (because it's a would-be sexual relationship but holy shit I would not call that a 'ship' in the usual sense), one genderswap (thus turning an M/M couple into an F/F couple, and how do you even categorize that?), and one character of canonically ambiguous gender.)
What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?
Homestuck (100)
Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis (100)
Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (68)
Naruto (61)
I'm still active in all of them, for some definition of active. In the case of HP and Naruto, that mostly means I'm open for prompts in those fandoms and I have a small backlog of fics I intend to finish someday. I'm moving in that direction with Homestuck and Narnia, but am not as far down the road.
I am cheerfully multifannish, and have been since my first year in fandom. (For reading, anyway. It took me a little longer to diversify my writing.)
What are your top 4 character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?
Dave Strider (40)
Jade Harley (33)
Susan Pevensie (30)
Harry Potter (29)
This does not particularly surprise me. Harry's there because my HP fic tends to center around him and/or people who consider him a major part of their lives. Dave and Jade are there because they're among my favorite Homestuck characters and I find them both easy to write. I'm a little more surprised about Susan, because she is not my favorite Pevensie (that would be Edmund), but she is also easy for me to write. Additionally, these are all relatively popular characters and therefore more likely than minor characters to be included in fic prompts, and since I write a lot of prompt!fic... you do the math. :)
What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?
Prompt Fic (160)
Fifteen Minute Fic (101)
3 Sentence Ficathon (31)
Worldbuilding (28)
Technical note: these are not actually my two least-used additional tags! They are merely numbers 9 and 10 of my top-ten list, which is all that AO3 lists in the sidebar. The actual least-used would be one-off conversational things like, 'also this is an AU of an AU'.
Anyway, you will note that three of those four tags tell you that you're going to be reading a fic based on somebody else's prompt rather than a story I came up with purely on my own. (Like I said, I write a lot of prompt!fic.) If we remove those on the theory that they're structural notes rather than content notes, the tags I'm left with are:
Friendship (86)
Backstory (62)
Fluff (47)
Family (44)
Slice of Life (43)
Character Study (42)
Worldbuilding (28)
Which tells you quite a lot (and accurately so) about my areas of storytelling interest. :)
If I combine the first list, I will apparently be attempting to fill multiple types of prompt all in a single fic. This is not impossible, but that particular combo is somewhat unlikely. Combining friendship, backstory, character study, and world-building on the other hand? Much more doable. (Oddly, I seem not to have done it yet. Perhaps I will take that as a challenge!)
How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don't plan on finishing?
Apparently only five on AO3! Let's see, those must be... "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," "The Courting Dance," "Four by Four," "Trollstuck: Make Her Pay," and "Weregild." Yeah, that seems right. (I have others, of course, but they are not currently crossposted to that site.)
I do intend to finish all my WIPs someday, but 'someday' may be many years away. *sigh*
Tag 5 people!
I am terrible at tagging. Play if you want to!
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)