AO3 Meme

[wallwalker]

Feeling somewhat better now. Eating out seems to have restored some of my strength, especially since it was relatively healthy food for restaurant fare.

Anyway, let me try this again.

*ahem* Okay. These are the eleven stories that have the most hits on my AO3 account (Wallwalker) - it was supposed to be the top ten, but I had a tie for number ten.

None of these are above a T rating, so I'm not going to worry about posting ratings.

---

1. Acclimation (7061 words)
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Bernard, Helmholtz
YT 2009
358 hits

2. In The Beginning (619 words)
LOLcats
Basement Cat, Ceiling Cat
YTM 2009
346 hits

3. Making The Most Of It (1220 words)
Final Fantasy VIII
Julia/Caraway
FFEX: Chocobo Down '09
194 hits

4. Envy (2947 words)
Final Fantasy IV
Rosa, Rydia
FFEX 2010
192 hits

5. Innocent (1,405 words)
Chrono Trigger
Glenn, Magus, Marle
YT 2009
188 hits

6. Pruning (1328 words)
V for Vendetta (2005)
Valerie/Ruth
YT 2009
185 hits

7. Merciful (1027)
Good Omens
Aziraphale, Crowley
No collection
117 hits

8. Devil (1156 words)
Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VIII
Kain, Seifer
No collection
102 hits

9. Worthless Servant (1104 words)
Final Fantasy IV
Kain, Golbez, Cecil, Rosa
No collection
101 hits

10. (tie) The Most Important Thing (3421 words)
Final Fantasy VI
Setzer, Celes, Locke
FFEX: Chocobo Down 2009
99 hits

10. (tie) Mountains (1120 words)
Final Fantasy IV
Kain, Valvalis, Rosa, Cecil
No collection
99 hits

So seven out of eleven of these are either in one of the 2009 YT collections, or one of the FFEX collections. Not a big surprise. If anything, I'm surprised that nothing from YT 2010 or NYR 2011 is even coming close to anything I did in the previous year.. The things that aren't in collections... well, I'm honestly not sure what differentiates them from the others, since most of them didn't get many comments to tell me what people like about them. Especially Devil - that one really surprised me. (They all seem to have the fic_on_demand tag in common - maybe that's it?)

Anyway. I don't know. Maybe AO3 is too slow for most of my fandoms to really be a great archive at this point, but frankly? I can't even go to the main page of ff.net anymore without having the browser window hijacked by an ad that tries to force me to take a survey before I can even get back to the site. I can't handle that BS anymore.

(Besides, let's be honest, here. Getting upset about most of my small-fandom fics not getting lots of hits is a bit like getting upset that the sun is hot. I'll never get as many hits as someone who's writing in a big, popular fandom. That's just how things have always been, and I didn't expect this archive to be any different.)

Comments

[vilkacis]

Damn, that's a lot of fanfic. :o

I like the concept of AO3 and all, but every time I go there and see most fics, even in larger fandoms like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, having hit counts in the single or low double-digits and only one or two reviews, I just feel like it'd be a waste of time to sign up. (Even if I had anything new to post, which, uh...) I know it'll get more attention if more people use it, but I never feel an urge to be one of those people.
/old and jaded

As for ffnet, I still don't see a single ad there - it actually looks very clean and simple. Ad- and flashblock are the bee's knees and no mistake. The internet would be a very messy place without them.

(On an unrelated note, I just read "Devil" and it was pretty cool. It has a kind of "small part of an epic space/time-spanning adventure" feel to it, which is neat, and pretty rare.)

(Also "Predator" because Aria is the best asari. Really liked that "not sending you into a deliberate trap" line. :D Also, amused that you killed Ashley. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't hate either of them. Rather liked the social aspect to wearing armour, too.)

[wallwalker]

Damn, that's a lot of fanfic. :o

It has a way of accumulating after 10+ years. :p

From what I've seen you have to be either be participating in YT or in a few select fandoms to get a lot of hits on AO3 (Homestuck, for instance.) Which, y'know, I'd love to do something about, and if I ever do find someone to do that review-a-thon community I'm going to pimp out some awesome things. But I can see where it's frustrating. I just happen to like its user interface enough to make up for the frustration (because if it was just the not-having of ads that I liked, I could just as easily get that here on DW.)

Once I have my own laptop that I have exclusive use of, I'll have to see what I can do about ff.net being stupid. As it is, I'm pretty sure he had adblocking on it, but the ads still show. Drives me nuts. -_-;

(On an unrelated note, I just read "Devil" and it was pretty cool. It has a kind of "small part of an epic space/time-spanning adventure" feel to it, which is neat, and pretty rare.)

Oh, thanks. :) I keep wanting to write the epic FFIV/FFVIII crossover, or failing that get someone else to write it for me. I don't know why. I just keep thinking it would work.

Also, amused that you killed Ashley. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't hate either of them.

Oh, you're not. I liked them both and am totally trying to write sad doomed Ashley/Kaiden fic. To be honest, though, I did like Ashley better (and so did the particular Shepard in that fic, actually. ;p) That Shepard is the one that I played through my first ME2 game with, which wasn't imported, which for a female Shepard translates to "Ashley and Wrex died by default." Among other things.

[vilkacis]

That default ME2 Shep. >:( A Mass Effect universe without Wrex in it just isn't worth saving, you know? I completely understand how they'd make that the default since having him alive is a reward for not fucking up in ME1 but still.

The review-a-thon thing sounds interesting. I'm not entirely sure how it'd work, but I wish you the best of luck with it. <_<

[wallwalker]

I hadn't played ME1 at the time, so I didn't know. -_-' But yes, Wrex pretty much wins everything.

Yeah, I had an idea but it more or less required me to know how to make banners. I wanted to do something modeled after the old fic_on_demand's fic a day contest, in which the people who wrote a fic per day got a banner at the end of the month. I will have to think about this more.

[lassarina]

For male!Shep without import, it's Kaidan and Wrex dying. SADDEST CAT FOREVER.

....also I have been planning that FF4/FF8 crossover for a long time. *sneaks it a few places up the list*

[renay]

I think it's useful to note that fanfiction.net was opened in late 1998. AO3 only opened for Open Beta (it's still in Open Beta, actually) in 2009, over ten years later. In internet time, ten years is like a century. It is a extremely young for an archive, still invitation only and still, well, growing up. For example, it only just added user subscriptions because we had to wait for better servers, ha ha. PROGRESS!

Also, the fandoms you cited are gaming related. In my experience in Final Fantasy fandom and with anime/manga/gaming outreach, those communities tend to be spread around lots of different sites and platforms, which makes reaching out to invite them in harder. And then it comes down to the whole waste of time issue -- if no one is reading there, why upload? It's an awful Catch 22, I spent a lot of 2010 throwing myself on that particular grenade. I think of AO3 as not a "home" for fanwork, but an archive that will keep my fanwork safe. :) I consider my DW journal my fanfic home and probably always will, but it's a complicated message to get out.

I also suspect a culture issue. I can mention fanfiction.net to nonfanfic reading friends and they know what I'm talking about, but have no clue about AO3. Fanfiction.net was an entry point for a lot of fans, and AO3 lacks that and maybe always will. If we're inside the gate of fannish knowledge and people establish elsewhere, it becomes an issue. I don't necessarily think it's only about people uploading, but that unlike fanfiction.net it hasn't yet established itself as a place to read? You have to have a balance between both reading and writing for an archive to reach critical mass. I think the next five years are going to be really interesting to watch as AO3 establishes itself and begins to enter into popular fannish culture (it will take longer for it to reach FFN in terms of recognition outside fandom). I think the hit counts / review counts will change, especially with the introduction of Kudos, which are a neat way to interact with fanwork and something few other archives have. I think it's a wait and see game. POPCORN.GIF, basically.

Ugh, I am sorry about being a creepershark and vomiting words at you, but commentary like this fascinates me from a fannish sociological standpoint. ;lzkd;lkds JUST IGNORE ME IF YOU WANT.

[vilkacis]

Heh, "creepershark".

I'm actually not entirely sure about "kudos". I get a feeling people will take the easy way out and just click "like" rather than leave a comment, even some of those who would have commented if the kudos option hadn't been there. Sure, a "+1" is better than nothing, but very barely so. A personal comment is something I can go back to and look at in a year or two and it'll make me smile - I'd rather have one of those than a dozen "likes".

But yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens with AO3, and it probably will get more attention as time passes; it's just that I'll be watching it happen, not participating.

[cypher]

There are actually some early stats on the effects of kudos in this news posts: http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/129

The short version: people leave more kudos than comments, but comments are still increasing after the introduction of kudos, not decreasing.

A lot of people shared your worry about them, but it looks so far like it's turned out better than that.

[vilkacis]

Hm. That does look surprisingly promising.

[renay]

Thanks for that! I wandered around looking for it but couldn't find it. This is why we don't leave comments at 3am. XD

[wallwalker]

That IS promising. Thanks for the link, somehow I never see those news posts.

[renay]

I kind of wonder (looking at the stats on your Doink! stories) if people were maybe a little confused at browsing the collection last year. I am really interested to see what the totals are going to be like this year, as we're always going to be a small enough exchange that doing round up posts will be possible. We didn't do one last year and I think a lot of good work might have gotten lost. :/ The highest hit count on any work from last year was 458. I feel like we could have done more to guide people along to finding the stories, so we'll work on this for end-of-round time.

[lassarina]

Adblock, maybe? For the Pit of Voles, I mean.

....I do not think I have read this Kain and Seifer thing. It is, however, Highly Relevant To My Interests. *opens*