Kudos-to-Hitcounts Ratio

[cest_what]

There was yet another round of "Oh god AO3 is going to the dogs or the teenie badficcers whatever" complaints in my corner of tumblr just recently. (Which is always sort of equal parts sad and hilarious, partly because it's the tumblrfication of tagging at AO3 that most gets to me anyway.) And basically what came out of it was a bunch of conversations about the kudos/hits ratio being the best marker of quality.

If you could sort by the kudos/hits ratio that would obviously be the best (although I guess it would create a skew against multi-chapter WIPs in the same way sorting by hits skews in favour of them), but it's still pretty invaluable, imprecise as it is.

Anyway, it made me really curious about how different my most popular fics list would be on this criteria rather than the hitcount one. So I spreadsheeted. 85% of my fic at AO3 was uploaded before the kudos system was introduced, so it's not hugely meaningful, but still, here are my top 10 most popular fics by kudos/hitcount ratio, with chatter:

1. A Fine and Public Place (Vorkosigan, Ivan/Byerly)

This was my Yuletide last year, and Yuletide stories are always more likely to get feedback, which I assume applies to kudos as well, so this one's not mysterious.

2. Tell Me True (Homestuck, Jane/Roxy, high school truth-or-dare)

This one's more interesting! It's my second-least popular Homestuck fic by hits (probably because Jane/Roxy is still a smaller ship than John/Karkat and Rose/Kanaya?), and it's pretty much exactly what the summary makes it look like - I don't think anybody's reading it and going "Wow, this is unexpectedly deep and ingenious!" But I guess it's happy-making? Neato.

3. Things That Come in Threes (Homestuck, ashen Vriska/Aranea/Meenah, hospital AU)

This one's my least read Homestuck fic, but there's so little ashen fic on the archive, and so little of what there is is happy or light, that I'm not surprised the handful of people like me who are pining for non-depressing ashen romance are giving it a nod.

4. No Quiet Sleeper (Homestuck, John/Karkat, trans-timeline memo shenanigans)

This is my most-read Homestuck fic by a lot, but second-least popular by the ratios. Which is a neat mirror image with the Jane/Roxy one above.

5. New Ways to Fall Apart (Homestuck, Rose/Kanaya, scrappy overwrought hurt/comfort)

Aaaaaaaaaand the last Homestuck fic.

6. This Way Out (HP, Black sisters gen)

There seems to be a bias towards most-recently-posted stories, even allowing for the difference between pre- and post-kudos introduction. I'd like to think that this is because I get better with every story, but probably that's a stretch. Maybe it's due to the rise in people reading fic on AO3 first; you're much more likely to leave some kind of feedback on a story you're reading for the first time than you are for a reread.

7. Apple Vines (Chrestomanci Chronicles, Cat & Chrestomanci)

This is kind of startling. It was also a Yuletide story, but it was originally posted at the Yuletide archive back when, so it's not getting yuletide fever points. And it was uploaded before the kudos system. And it's a sweet story, but it's not ... amazing?

8. Look to the Future (Avengers, Thor/Loki, arranged marriage kidfic)

My most-read story at AO3.

9. Five Steps for Acquiring a Sidekick (Bandom, Z/Ryan, superheroes)

Also uploaded before the kudos system, and with a really low hitcount. Curious!

10. Precision Speaking (HP, Percy/Oliver, plotless UST)

I ... have no idea. What is this doing here.

__________

I'm increasingly glad for the kudos system. As a reader for the quality gauge and as a writer for the little parcel of reassurance every day that I'm not throwing words into a void. Fandom is so lonely and lacking in social engagement for me now, compared to what it was. I have a few excellent fannish friends, but I don't feel like I'm part of a community. Tumblr is so terrible as a fannish platform, the only way to talk to people you don't know is to reblog or comment in a way that requires them to make a whole new post to acknowledge you, or to use the Ask Box, which is all Please expand on your important opinions and not at all This is interesting and here are my thoughts - which is a dynamic that makes me way too uncomfortable to ever use Ask Boxes. And even with fic, even with well-received stories, you deal in handfuls of AO3 comments from strangers compared to piles of LJ comments from your extended friends list.

And I think the HSO is especially driving home the loss of a sense of actual community that I have going from Bandom to Homestuck? The HSO is the most vibrant, ridiculously active fanworks fest I have ever been involved in. And it's still. so. lonely. There's still so little conversation and feedback, it's just this whirlwind of creation. Which is awesome. But I miss knowing a whole crowd of other creators and having them know who I am, and having long comment thread discussions, and feeling like part of something.

But hey, every day I get a kudos email and I don't know till I open it if it's one person letting me know they appreciated that one fic I never liked very much, or if it's a super-popular day and there are a whole bunch. It's nice.

(This post brought to you by PMS and the fact that it's winter. You're welcome.)

Comments

[gloss]

HS is really lonely, isn't it? I love the buzz of activity, but the real connections I've made in it (all, uh, two of them, and you're one) have come via DW. Your point about Ask Boxes, especially, is so right on.

[cest_what]

For a while I kept waiting for it to sort of shake out and make sense, but it just ... seems to be built wrong for social fannish engagement. Blargh.

[tamsin]

I'm sorry you're feeling isolated, that sucks.

I'm not into Homestuck myself, but I have people on my reading list who are squeeing about it. Want me to link you?

[cest_what]

Hey, that would be cool, thanks :) If there's more HS community on DW than I know about, I'd love to find it!

[tamsin]

torachan, sholio and alias_sqbr

And on livejournal there's xparrot.

Hope this helps!

[cest_what]

Thank you :D

[blottingtheink]

I FOUND MY DW READING LIST, WOW. Also, <3, forever, and all that.

[cest_what]

OH HI <3

[blottingtheink]

this is making me wonder, though, what it would take to make a HS community? like, obviously I would be interested in meeting the people mentioned (WOOO CREEPIN), but would it mean more posting of fic back on DW? a comm?

how do you fandom?

(ok, confession, one of the things I enjoy--really, really, really enjoy--about tumblr is the way punctuation has been recontextualized, and i would miss it. what do you mean, i have to sentence? sentence is for losers.)

[blottingtheink]

PS I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING YOUR WEEKEND?

[cest_what]

I don't even know. If it has to stay on tumblr, maybe more comm-like tumblr blogs would help, centre-points that aren't BNF blogs? More things like the fuckyeahs, I guess, but for gathering in meta and discussion and recs. (I'm excited for the possibilities of that vulturer & lantadyme reader-submit rec blog!)

But yeah, no, I think we would really need a social networking platform that is less fucking broken than tumblr.

Ooooon the other hand, I much prefer reading fic at AO3 than on LJ/DW, mostly because I can download the epub files, but also because the formatting is consistent, with no vagaries along the lines of the author thinking that 8-point bookman is a totally classy font and ooh hey let's make it grey. Sweet. So yeah, I don't think moving actual fic posting back to journals is going to fly, even though it was a much more social way to do it.

BUT SOPHIE YOU SHOULD TOTALLY START POSTING TO DREAMWIDTH. A tiny sub-community is massively better than none.

what do you mean, i have to sentence? sentence is for losers.

All the losers sentencing away. Gog. What tools.

Ahaha, yeah, DW is so scathing about tumblr grammatical norms. Even more so than LJ was, in my experience? Maybe that's an artificial distinction that I am in fact making up, though. WHO KNOWS. No wait let's do that like tumblr do:

who knows???

who

knows

[blottingtheink]

OH MAN I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THAT REC TUMBLR TOO. I THINK I WILL ACTUALLY SUBMIT STUFF????

BUT SOPHIE YOU SHOULD TOTALLY START POSTING TO DREAMWIDTH. A tiny sub-community is massively better than none.

WHAT DO YOU POST ABOUT???? Like, I don't know what I would post that I don't email to you. Do you post about your life? Seriously. How do you fandom.

Ahaha, yeah, DW is so scathing about tumblr grammatical norms.

ARGHHHHHHHH -- Ok, so serious face on, I fucking love that stuff. I think it is linguistically and artistically exciting. It's like--space and emphasis and syntactical changes becoming a new form or type of language, and......UGHHHHHHHHH yes, please. I can't help it. I'M PROGRAMMED TO THINK FORM AND SYNTACTICAL EXPERIMENTATION IS EXCITING I JUST LIKE POEMS OK.

like, these? "s c r e a m i n g" and "scrEAM" and "scre eches" make me SO HAPPY I WANT TO DIE

Jarrah, THEY ARE TALKING IN POETRY

IT'S SO GOOD FOR ME

so good

(you see the problem. to be fair, you have always seen the problem, I think.)

[cest_what]

It is really interesting. I don't notice or think about syntax the way you do, but fandom has always developed its own linguistic norms, and that's always been cool. Like the full stops in the middle of sentences thing, which I used to be hyper-aware of when I first got into fic:

I just. can't. stand it.

That's not an OK construction in any other kind of narrative fiction! But it expresses something that none of the grammatically acceptable alternatives does. And it is completely mainstream in fandom. And probably a lot of the things tumblrites are doing will be mainstreamed the same way, while a lot of them will morph and change and disappear?

But okay full disclosure, if lmao and uwu could go out of fashion sometime soon that would be awesome for me.

[blottingtheink]

Oh man, I kind of really hope the tumblrite speech never makes it into narrative? It's about recording thought and sound, and in doing that, it's really interruptive, which is why it's annoying, I think, until one's brain adjusts. It's also exactly why I love it, but it's a form of language meant to convey something that would severely detract from the form and flow of immersive story that narrative (traditionally) tells. Although, to be fair, I think that one Feferi/Sollux fic of AMAZING, kind of does it? And we do see stuff more like this in the dream fic or poetry fic around. Hmmm.

I would conversely, like to see it mainstreamed in the for-real mainstream, and I want people talking about it, and I want people thinking about punctuation not just critically and grammatically, but about effect and tone, and how to manipulate it to make it EVEN MORE EXPRESSIVE. I want people to have FUN with it, and I want everyone to write poems and for them to be FUN and silly and about FEELINGS. Until then, I will just live in my happy little alternate world where I've decided that tumblr-speech is a form of poetry and sighing to myself. (E. E. Cummings would have a FIT, I think. It's so great.)

ON THE OTHER HAND, COMPLETELY AGREED. I uwu as ooowuhooo every. time. I can't get it to make a face. Why is the mouth doing that. What happened to the top of the eyes. Why are the mouth and eyes on the same plane. Why. lmao is just annoying.

[cest_what]

I think, yeah, things like that Feferi♠Sollux fic are a lot more likely to surface in a fandom like HS that has that tumblr-speech culture. You do see that particular construction fairly often - there's the

let's

be

tanglebuddies!

horrorfic too, and, yeah, others?

I want people thinking about punctuation not just critically and grammatically, but about effect and tone, and how to manipulate it to make it EVEN MORE EXPRESSIVE.

Being an editor is this weird position. Because on the one hand, it's a crowd of people who are intrinsically fascinated by grammar and puntuation and syntax. But on the other hand, you're basically the language police, politely shoving your foot in the door of change. Excuse me, but I think you'll find that "teh interwebs" should according to house style be "the Internet". Etcetera. I'm constantly pinwheeling between "language is a living thing let it go free!" opinions and "wait, no, that's wrong, do it right" opinions.

With lmao honestly I just want people to stop dropping it onto the end of completely factual sentences that nobody would ever laugh at. This took a long time to draw lmao. wtf is that. oowhoo

[blottingtheink]

OMG, first, you need to know I literally collapsed laughing at that "oowhoo". And I hadn't noticed that trend, but damn, when you're right, you're right. No one would laugh their ass off at that. No one. What, you think hard work is a GAME?

Being an editor is this weird position.

Oh man, YES. I'm obviously way more conditioned to like and embrace syntactical experimentation, but there's the flip side in poem world too, where people are like ENOUGH STOP ALREADY IS EVERYTHING A GIMMICK WITH YOU PEOPLE CAN'T YOU WRITE WITHOUT RESORTING TO CRAZY SHIT, and I find myself pinwheeling--to steal your phrase--between them both, as well. I'm currently way more interested in the way that tumblr-speech sprung up as a valid, poetic method of communication, than I am in some poetic works that break syntactical rules just to do it....but where is the line, Jarrah? WHERE???

[cest_what]

What, you think hard work is a GAME?

Teenagers, goddamn *g*

[alias_sqbr]

HELLO FELLOW SOPHIE

Butting in to say that it's mostly dead but there used to be sporadic interesting discussion at pose_as_a_comm. Plus there's the update comms, the conversation is by it's nature shortlived but can be interesting.

[blottingtheink]

WHY HI THERE SOPHIE. NICE TO MEET YOU. wow. there sure are a lot of sophies on the internet. this seems inexplicable, and highly suspicious.

OK I'M GOING TO GO JOIN THAT, and uh, maybe...we'll have discussions. over there. ????? THAT SURE WOULD BE COOL

[inshadowsandlight]

Admittedly, I don't actually know how the hit count feature works, but I know that I can only leave kudos once, so I think that some older fic might have lower ratios simply because it is a favorite and people go back to reread, possibly increasing the hits without increasing the number of kudos.

What I really want is a way to find a list of all the fics that have received kudos from a particular user, so I can follow someone around and read all the fics they liked. (Make my internet stalking easier.)

On another note, I can't get into Homestuck, but following along on your posts has made it possible for me to know, at least in general, what my 13 year old cousin is talking about. I thank you for that.

[cest_what]

Oh, that's a good point. It would be nice if there was a way to sort by both measures, so you could see the fandom classics that are always going to clog up the first page of results, and then change the sort to see the newer fics that the kudos/hits ratio is working in favour of.

What I really want is a way to find a list of all the fics that have received kudos from a particular user

Ahaha, yeah, that would be cool. There are bookmarks? But only a small segment of the AO3 community uses the bookmark function.

HS is hard enough to follow along with from inside the fandom, it must be beyond confusing from the outside :)