humanist + humorist

The guide to AO3 tagging that I wrote in 2013, and last updated in 2017 was wildly out-of-date! Who could’ve guessed?

Just finished giving it a significant rewrite. Fixed a bunch of links. Updated some technical and policy references. Should hold us steady for a while.

(I put it in a series with the new AO3 upload of the Metatag Survey results, that’s what prompted the revisit.)

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Speaking of revisiting older works…

A few weeks ago, I got through a reread of the two main fics of Republic of Heaven Community Radio. When I was posting the last of it in 2015, it was right around the time I dropped the canon, for being deeply upsetting in ways that I finally realized weren’t going to get better. Spent a lot of time not revisiting even my own fic, because the reminders were too unpleasant. So…this is the first time in 10 years that I’ve actually reread it.

Book 1 holds up really well!

Book 2 has so many pacing issues. There are elements I introduced but never did anything interesting with, that should’ve either been expanded or dropped. Scenes that should’ve been explicit foreshadowing/buildup for other scenes later on. At least one conversation that happens after a fight, that I wish had written happening before the fight. A few moments that would’ve felt solidly, thematically linked if they all happened in the same chapter, but they’re spread out in a way that feels scattershot and disjointed instead.

If canon hadn’t been such a kick in the teeth, I would’ve done a rewrite of this years ago. I can see the outline of a better version, the way all the parts would’ve been reshaped into a stronger whole.

…Which still doesn’t mean I have the interest or motivation to actually do that whole rewriting project. Just feeling wistful about the alternate universe where I still had the drive to do it in 2017.

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In happier news, I just recently started a reread of The Dark Lords of Nerima. (Or rather, I’m having a TTS app read it to me. At work, mostly. Needed a change of pace from podcasts.)

It’s the first of 3 parts in a long, involved crossover, in which the Ranma 1/2 crew get involved in the Sailor-Senshi-versus-Dark-Kingdom conflict when they take in a fugitive youma, get mistaken for a powerful new enemy by both sides, and realize their safest move is to just…play along. Shenanigans ensue.

The writing of Rumiko-Takahashi-style comedy is sublime. I remembered it was good, but not how good it was, or that it was on-point from the start. At the same time, it puts so much thought and detail into making the Dark Kingdom an ancient, terrifying threat that everyone takes seriously. The plot-inciting youma is a well-drawn OC, who starts off just playing both sides and looking out for herself…but then, wouldn’t you know it, the Power of Friendship starts to get her.

So that’s going much better!

Highly recommended, even if you don’t know both series. It does a lovely job of (re)introducing all the characters and helping you keep track of them, even the massive Ranma ensemble, plus it fills out the ranks of the Dark Kingdom with other original youma who fit right in.

…also, hey, Netflix has the 2024 Ranma anime remake? This might be what pushes me to check it out.

As seen on my flist, most recently from genarti .

I was going to start this with a link to the last time I did a meme about the stats on my AO3 account…but apparently I have straight-up never done one!

Welp, no time like the present.

Most hits: He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian (114,570). First installment of the “retelling Welcome to Night Vale with daemons, also filling in gaps in the character development” AU, which spent a long time as my most-popular series overall…and wow, it turns 10 years old this November.

The runner-up is Cover of Knight (94,025), first installment in my current most-popular series. The overall series is still ongoing, so it’s racking up the hits more quickly; it’s not a question of if it overtakes Experimental Theologian, but when.

Most kudos: Cover of Knight (4,835). First installment of the “Team Moon Knight interacts with other Marvel Cinematic Universe characters, with increasing shenanigans to cover up the fact that they’re a plural system” series. Started in late June 2022, had already taken the crown by late November. Has the advantage of being episodic, so even if you’re mainly a fan of just one MCU sub-franchise, you can read those specific chapter(s), find them satisfying, and maybe get hooked into reading the rest.

I expected Experimental Theologian (2,546) to be the runner-up, but no, Persephone’s Waltz (2,559) has just-barely overtaken it! My longest and most popular Madoka Magica fic, the “what if Homura just locked Madoka in a basement for a month” timeline. These two are both enduringly popular, so I can see them continuing to trade off second place for a while.

Most comment threads: A Blinking Light Up On The Clouded Mountain (1,313), the second major installment of the WTNV-with-daemons AU. It has dramatically fewer hits (65,194) than Experimental Theologian; seems like the more casual readers dropped off, but the ones who were invested enough to comment stuck around, and commented more as the drama and mystery leveled up.

Cover of Knight (1,291) is a close runner-up. Reveals by Knight (224), the major follow-up to CoK, is still way down the list — I’m just noting it here because it gets more comments per chapter than CoK did, and I plan on making it at least as many chapters. Check back in a year.

Most bookmarks: Cover of Knight (1,233). Probably recently surpassed the runner-up, Experimental Theologian (1,058).

Most words: Clouded Mountain (313,788). Dramatically outstripping the runner-up, Experimental Theologian (182,093). Cover of Knight (56,605) is all the way down in 8th place.

The #3 place is taken by State of Grace (108,448), the Colbert Report “what if character!Stephen was plural” fic — which doesn’t even come close to any of the other stat records! It was written before I got an AO3 account and then crossposted, so the bulk of the interaction was back on the Livejournal/Dreamwidth version.

Fewest words: A four-way tie between a series of “exactly 100 words” fics. Three for WTNV: On Schedule (boy, this one turned out way too optimistic), Serenity Prayer (creepy and unsettling by design), and the way you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed (just fluff). One for Jeeves & Wooster: Lemon (a pun on its use to mean “NSFW”).

I know I’ve also done a bunch of “exactly 100 words” fics for the Colbert Report — but these were also pre-AO3, and only got crossposted as part of bigger TCR fic compilations, so you can’t just find them in the stats.

Final observation: Only have to post 10 more Moon Knight fics before it becomes my 2nd-most-written fandom! (By number of works, not by word count. I’m not going to sit around and manually add up word counts.)

It would need 59 works on top of that to take 1st place. Which seems like a less-reachable goal, if only because the energy I would usually put into “standalone one-shots” is mostly going into “mostly-standalone episodic chapters in the Cover of Knight universe.” But 2nd place? Yeah, that’s on the horizon.