my Most-Bookmarked-in-the-Last-3-Weeks-bookmark & me

[cimorene]

Browsing friends' bookmarks on Delicious, and the Popular in Fandom aggregate page in the early days of Pinboard when it was more fandom-active¹, used to be my favorite fandom activity. Even when I wasn't reading the stories other people rec, I've always been interested in seeing what we (fandom) were reading, trend-wise and culture-wise, and what we were saying about that.

Since the death of Delicious and the slow dying-off of Pinboard, I've had a habit of browsing the Recent Bookmarks page on AO3 from time to time, but for many years now the volume of new bookmarks there has been way too high to keep up with. I'm embarrassed to admit that for years I would repeatedly go to the Search Works page and do a new search for complete English-language works finished in < (some amount of time like 2 to 6 weeks) and then check it out and leave and do the whole search again the next time: it only occurred to me like... a few weeks ago to remember that you can bookmark a search.

So. I recently made myself a bookmarked AO3 search result at last, which, indeed, facilitates the whole process. It shows complete works in English that are

• over 2000 words and


• last edited within the last 3 weeks


• in descending order of bookmarks

.

In practice, one of the most popular reasons people bookmark things is to finish reading them later, so things that were posted as WIPs have more bookmarks as well as more kudos than they would have if posted in one piece, which skews the results away from results purely representative of what people are bookmarking right now. I can't figure out how to compensate for that though, so... whatever.

It's fun to see: sometimes there are trends there that I can only attribute to some kind of concentrated fandom events or activities, like ... for most of the year, Harry/Draco makes up almost all of the Harry Potter things I see in a search like this, but every now and then all of the top bookmarks will be Harry/Voldemort. (A pairing fest?)

MCU has been represented in the first few pages pretty consistently for ... as long as I remember, though, in one form or another.

But sometime last week, and then again today, I was baffled to discover 4/5 top MCU bookmarks are explicitly labelled Anti-Team-Cap works: those partisan axe-grinding fics about someone's least favorite characters Experiencing Consequences in that special inverted-wish-fulfillment style of fanfic that one occasionally encounters.

I've read quite a few of these Anti fics in my time, and they're usually pretty entertaining, if only because they tend to unintentionally come across a bit like a Mirror Universe-riff episode (Star Wars prequel ones where people explain how bad the Jedi Order philosophy about love is are a favorite, but I'll never forget the one where Harry Potter ditches Hermione and Ron and becomes bffs with Draco and Snape over Christmas break). But I've never encountered them as a trend before. Can someone have held a Team Iron Man fest that entirely took the form of Anti fics (but didn't make it into the fic headers or tags at all)? Or maybe just an influential reccer or bookmarker recently posted a list of them somewhere? (Okay, tbf it was probably that one...)

 

1. Nowadays the Popular in Fandom page mostly shows political and hacker links, and it often only takes 2 bookmarkers to make the page. It's less informative and diverse than my own Network page was in the heyday of Delicious. I sit around fantasizing that sometime in my lifetime AO3's bookmark functionality will achieve the functionality that Delicious used to have.

Comments

[lobelia321]

Ooh,
what’s that Harry Potter anti fic? Also, Harry/Voldemort? Hahah. Sigh: Delicious.

[cimorene]

I'm sorry to report that I don't remember the name or author and I almost never bookmark badfic, even if I enjoy hatereading it, so... no clue. I think it would be fun to read it again actually, and I've definitely come across it more than once... but I can't even remember if it's Harry/Draco or Harry/Snape. Maybe 55% chance of Harry/Snape?

[meimi]

LMAO LMAO LMAO The "Civil War Team Iron Man" tag is 99.99% Anti-Team Cap fics and it is huge. XDDDDDD Honestly, the Civil War movie basically kinda was a "civil war" for the fandom. So many people got so ticked off by it. I mostly read the Team Iron Man fics because, uh, I really didn't like the movie. ^^;;;;; But yeah, the spite in so many of the fics is ridiculously hilarious. I'm gonna guess that somebody new fell into the tag and has been bookmarking the hell out of them recently. XD;

[meimi]

Oh, a thought. A trailer for Avengers Infinity War dropped recently. Maybe that encouraged some fans to go on a spite fic reading spree?

[cimorene]

Hahahah! That's another good guess. But why more of then than of the people who are Team Cap, when usually I spend half the time skimming past Steve/Bucky...?

Maybe those people just aren't as motivated by spite. Or feel more satisfied with where canon has left them or something. Or maybe the Team Iron stuff has more bookmarks largely because of having been posted in more chapters and hence more people bookmarking it like "chapter 9" "ch. 12" etc.

[meimi]

Probably a combination of all of the above? XD Civil War was pretty damn good for the Stucky shippers. So much more content for them to work with. Team Iron Man is super prolific, but I feel they probably wouldn't be as much if the movie had gone differently, so it kinda makes sense that the Team Cap people aren't anywhere near that. XD; Not as far as spite is concerned anyway. Getting him in bed with Bucky is a far more important goal. =x

[cimorene]

That's true. They had no need for that sort of fixits, just stuff about Steve falling into bed with Bucky or whoever, and they've had a couple years to do that and have simply slowed down a bit at this point, I think. Conserving energy for another big push after the new movie, no doubt.