A fanworks tag game

[enchantedsleeper]

kitarella_imagines came up with a fun game that involves looking at your most-used fanwork tags of certain types (this works best on a site like AO3 or SquidgeWorld that provide tags in a handy sorting menu, but you can probably do it on any site with tagging, or adapt it to your preferred fanwork hosting site).

I decided to give it a go, so here are my answers to the prompts:

1. What rating do you write most fics under?

General Audiences by a long way! (82 out of 111 works currently on AO3). Most of my fanworks don't have much by the way of higher-rated content. Next highest is Teen and Up with 26; for Mature I only have 2, and Explicit, a lone 1.

2. What are your top 3 fandoms?

1. The Strange Case of Starship Iris (25 works)


2. Yu Yu Hakusho (11 works)


3. A tie between Harry Potter (8 works) and SK8 the Infinity (8 works)

For a long time, Yu Yu Hakusho was my top fandom, after I separated out my Dabbling in Drabbling series into separate works (as opposed to a multichapter fic, which was a hold-over from Fanfiction.net). This used to bother me, because I didn't feel like I'd done "enough" in the fandom to justify YYH being at the top. (Actually, though, I have more works for the fandom that could be archived there and currently aren't).

However, I came around to enjoying the fact that an anime fandom was near the top, since it's reflective of my fandom origins - my early fics aren't generally archived on AO3, so most of my early anime fandoms don't appear, but I was still into Yu Yu Hakusho when I discovered AO3 in 2011, so, those fics got cross-posted. xD SK8's number is also high thanks to drabbles, and that drabble series was directly inspired by my YYH one. Long live drabbles!

3. What is your top character you write about?

According to my tag numbers, it's Arkady Patel (The Strange Case of Starship Iris): 18 fics, although Sana Tripathi is close behind with 17, and then Violet Liu with 16. This has a lot to do with the fact that I started out writing mostly Vikady (Violet/Arkady) in TSCOSI fandom, and Sana is a key supporting character in a lot of those fics, plus I also wrote some Sana-centric and Sana/Campbell fics.

Most of my TSCOSI fics feature the whole crew (Krejjh and Brian are only just behind on 14 and 13, respectively) and I tag anyone who has a significant enough role in a given fanwork, but I think these three have a few ficlets that aren't long enough to feature other characters, which puts them over the top.

However, if you want to talk about characters who are a significant focus of the most works, I think RJ McCabe (9 works) would come out on top. In the fandom, I poke fun at my own tendency to make everything about McCabe, because I really relate to them and enjoy writing from their perspective. I've written a lot more words that focus on McCabe, they just don't have the sheer numbers due to being absent from some of the early fics.

4. What are the 3 top pairings?

Violet Liu/Arkady Patel (9 works) - as I said xD Then it's Arkady Patel & Sana Tripathi (6 works): a top tier best-friendship.

Third place is a three-way tie between Aziraphale/Crowley, Ignatius Campbell/Sana Tripathi, and RJ McCabe & Jin-Seon Park, all with 5 fics. Huh, I wouldn't have expected Aziraphale and Crowley to make it into the top three, but they are the focus of most of my fanvids to date, and all of my works about them are shippy, whereas I've written more gen stuff for other fandoms.

I am surprised that I don't have a ship (platonic or romantic) with more than 9 works, but even with those fandoms I've written a lot for, I like to vary my subject matter.

(If I'd archived all of my Yu Yu Hakusho fics, I think Hiei/Kurama would be in the top 3 with 6 works).

5. What are the top 3 additional tags?

Fluff (21 works) - no surprise there! And then drabble (15 works) - which reflects how much I enjoy writing these ^^ Third is post-canon (9 works), which is fair, I like to write things that pick up where canon left off, or take place in between what we see of canon.

6. Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag.

Starship Iris really dominates, which is obviously going to be the case given the amount I've written for that fandom, but then it makes the results less about what I write generally and more about what I write for Starship Iris. But I think the additional tags offer a nice reflection of my general tastes.

I was a little surprised by the relationship tags list, as I mentioned, and I wouldn't have predicted that Arkady would be my top-ranked character, though I do have a few ficlets that centre on her. I tag characters more generously than I tag relationships (so, if X character shows up in one scene, I'll tag them, but I wouldn't bother tagging a friendship that's just sort of part of the canon, unless it gets narrative focus), so that puts my character tag numbers a bit higher and maybe skews the ranking towards those characters who are just in a lot of fic. But it's fair to say that I've written a lot about Arkady, Violet and Sana, so it's also not wrong!

Thanks kitarella for a fun and creative game; I enjoyed doing this! :D (I was going to finish up writing this post tomorrow, and then I found my groove and kept writing ;3)