AO3 Wrapped 2021

Snagged from nubreed73 on Twitter

No need to comment with a number, here on Dreamwidth we have enough space to just answer them all at once! Consider yourself tagged, if you'd like to do the whole thing, or feel free to ask me for a number if you'd rather do just one.

1. Number of fics read

I keep a spreadsheet of my fic reading, so I can tell you exactly, or close enough: as of this post, I finished 784 fics this year, including rereads. I had an exceptionally prolific year, thanks to not one, not two, but THREE new fandoms.

The flipside is that last year I read about 40 fics (before December, when I finished watching The Untamed and more than doubled my total in about 2 weeks) but beat my Goodreads challenge goal easily, and this year I'm approaching 12 million words of fanfic but have read only one (1) actual book. Next year I should see if I can achieve some kind of balance, my TBR stack of physical books is out of control. 😆

2 and 3. One of your favorite fics this year/Another of your favorite fics this year

I'm planning an end-of-the-year round-up of my favorite reads in a couple weeks, where I'll throw far more than two favorites at you (ETA: now posted!), but meanwhile, the fic I read this year that I've probably gushed about the most to the most different people was An Elegant Solution, by giraffeter (Nie Mingjue/Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, 205k, explicit). It's well-written, it's got plot, it's got smut, it's got good characterization and happier character arcs for nearly all my favorite characters, and it's just all-around deeply satisfying. I don't often read fics longer than 100k at all, so the fact that I've read one that's more than 200k three times in one year really says something about how much I loved it!( Read more )