AO3, data, and changes in fandom

April 2, 2025 9:30 PM

Article by Allegra Rosenberg about AO3 statistics and what they show about changes on the site: "The data collected by statistically minded fans is hugely helpful in visualizing the shifts brought about by successive fan generations". Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
posted by paduasoy (8 comments total)

...of course the first sentence is Destiel.

The log-in-only walls that individual authors started putting up on their works when AI became a thing were what got me into the invite queue at AO3 in the first place (I'd largely been active on ff.n and lurking AO3 before that - ff.n is older and clunkier but crucially for me, it prioritizes character tagging over ship tagging - if Destiel is an aircraft carrier, I'm in a dinghy somewhere just off-shore). One of my favourite ships in my usual fandom is a) explicit, albeit third-tier, canon, actually, and b) perfect, move over Obitine, and c) how the fuck is this still a rarepair?

Getting people to tag their AI works is the next battle - I'm disappointed that they exist at all, but other people are disappointed that some of my crackfics exist, so the AO3 position, as on everything, seems to be live and let live - because the alternative is that they get posted stealth.

Data can’t fully solve the whole conversation, but I think it he can enrich it, <- ftfy, given that the context was Star Trek.

This was a really neat article and I'm pleased to see it, thank you!
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:32 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]

Anyone who can cite the Ray Wars has the deep knowledge.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:43 AM on April 3 [10 favorites]

F/F has gone up by five percent of total fics! That is wild (and the fact that it started at 4% is just depressing.)

Also it's fucking fascinating that the #2 fandom for F/F in this chart is Original Work. That really suggests that there's even more appetite for F/F fiction than the pro market is serving.

I read a bunch of completely random stuff on AO3 - there are some authors I follow, a couple of longform series I read, and then sometimes I just search for whatever porn I'm in the mood for, and the tagging system works very well for that. I do very often end up in original works, so it's doubly interesting to see the stats on that.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:34 AM on April 3 [2 favorites]

When it first aired, I actually missed seeing the pre-titles cold open where RayV phones Fraser and that made the episode way more confusing and weird because it really did feel like the show had just swapped actors and Fraser was maybe breaking the fourth wall with his constant attempts to prove RayK was not the same person as RayV. That bit where he hands RayK the sandwich containing dental putty to get impressions to compare against RayV's records was hilarious and disturbing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:43 AM on April 3 [3 favorites]

Ah, the Ray wars. *takes a long drag on a cigarette *. I remember that time. I fought in those armies.

I risked the ire of both armies by writing Ray/Ray.
posted by Darkivel at 7:01 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]

I'm starting to post a novel I wrote a couple of decades ago as Original Work because it includes (barely) underage M/F and F/F, neither of which would fly on Amazon KDP or a lot of other places. It's a least inspired by a small fandom.
posted by lhauser at 12:46 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

Interesting article and interesting stats. Thanks!
posted by rmd1023 at 6:47 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

F/F has gone up by five percent of total fics! That is wild (and the fact that it started at 4% is just depressing.)

yay for lesbians! (assuming it is ok to call them such?) :)
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:34 AM on April 5