It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!
Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.
I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.
Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice… but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.
Oh goodness. That’s much more inaccurate than I imagined.
And it is absolutely possible to write a script that logs into AO3. That AO3 downloader can handle archive-locked works.
I think it sets a terrible precedent to act like AO3 is primarily for the drive-by casual fan and not the perpetually logged-in one even if the former group is, of course, larger than the latter one.
ALT
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