2023 Fic Tracking Stats
Jan. 1st, 2024 06:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestsofpineI use a spreadsheet to track my fanfic reading, and here are my 2023 stats!
Stats from previous years:
2022: Mid-year | Year-end
2021: Year-end
I recorded reading a total of 366 fics in 2023, compared to 406 in 2022. This includes everything I liked enough to finish reading, plus a few WIPs and most longer full rereads, but not partial rereads or fics I started reading but DNF'd. You can check out some of my most-reread fics of the year here.
After a pretty slow spring and summer and a dismal September, I'm pleased that my reading picked up again a little bit towards the end of the year. At the beginning of October, I set the goal for myself of reading at least 365 fics in 2023 so I could average one per day, and I succeeded, but just barely, squeaking past that target somewhere around 4PM on New Year's Eve. 😅
Words Read in 2023
January: 347,320 (best month)
February: 148,627
March: 315,826
April: 186,578
May: 170,219
June: 164,219
July: 133,407
August: 135,265
September: 65,124 (worst month)
October: 186,231
November: 154,344
December: 205,803
Total: 2,212,963 words
Top Fandoms
I read for a total of 63 fandoms this year, compared to 43 last year. Here is a list of every fandom where I read five fics or more. Asterisks mark fandoms that are new to the >5 list this year.
Re: the K-pop RPF stats, I tracked K-pop RPF both as an umbrella fandom and by individual groups, so, for example, the 38 SHINee fics are part of the 98 K-pop RPF fics, and not in addition to. There's also some overlap between groups thanks to the supergroup SuperM, which includes members of SHINee, EXO, and NCT. I tagged the main group for each member plus SuperM and the general K-pop RPF tag in my spreadsheet for any fics with pairings between SuperM members (mostly Taemin/Kai).
The number of fandoms I read increased for the second year in a row, which I suppose is a side effect of still being stuck mostly in small fandom hell. Some of the fandoms listed above only add a handful of new fics to the tag per month, or even less, in the case of Mr. Queen. 🥲
K-pop RPF is admittedly a huge fandom (currently more than 600k works on AO3), and the groups that made my top fandoms list above are even large subfandoms within the K-pop RPF umbrella, but I'm unfortunately very picky about RPF and have trouble finding fics that I'm both interested in reading and that don’t set off any of the various RPF-specific squicks I have that I can’t seem to overcome, so it didn't boost my numbers as much as getting more into a fandom that size normally would. In fact, I noticed that I read only about 10 more K-pop fics this year than I read Word of Honor fics in 2021, a fandom with fewer than 7500 fics today and even fewer back then.
I don't want to seem like I'm knocking RPF in any way, because that's 100% not my intention at all. My pickiness about RPF is my own personal cross to bear any time I get into an RPF fandom, and not anyone else's problem.
But I do confess that I hope 2024 will bring me another large and active fiction-based fandom.
Top Ships
With a boost from their new drama Between Us, which ended near the start of the year, Win/Team dethroned Wangxian after two years of dominance
I read a total of 130 ships in 2023, compared to 120 last year. This includes slash, het, femslash, and polyamorous ships, but not gen ships, since I don't track those as consistently. Here is a list of every ship with >5 fics read this year. Asterisks mark ships that are new to the >5 list this year.
The number of ships I read increased this year compared to last year just like the number of fandoms, and probably for the same reason. No one ship dominated my reading the way Wangxian did in 2021. A couple of the ships listed above don't have enough fics to dominate anything to that extent even if I read every fic in the tag. 🥲 So it was a multi-shipping sort of year again.
This year, I read the greatest number of different ships in the K-pop RPF fandom at 41 ships, spread out across several sub-fandoms for different groups, including 16 Seventeen ships, 10 BTS ships, 6 SHINee ships, 5 ATEEZ ships, and 4 Stray Kids ships.
32 of these ships were between members of the same group, and 9 involved members of different groups. Kim Mingyu and Boo Seungkwan of Seventeen tied with the greatest number of individual ships at 8 apiece, including with each other and as a trio with Vernon. I was 0% surprised to discover this while looking at my stats - Mingyu and Seungkwan are two of the most physically and verbally demonstrative members of Seventeen and they're affectionate with everyone, so they're easy to multiship. They're definitely my fandom bicycles of the group!
Mingyu and Seungkwan of Seventeen being cuties
Runner up was Jimin from BTS with 5 ships, and Jin, Suga, and Jungkook of BTS with 4 each were third. I don't have especially strong feelings - positive or negative - about any BTS ships so far, so I pick BTS fics to read mostly from recs and don't pay much attention to the pairing if the summary sounds interesting. (The weekly rec posts on![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
recthething have been an excellent source for BTS recs, as well as MDZS recs and many other fandoms.) I'm sure that's why so many of the Tannies have so many different ships. For the other groups I read, I'm technically a multishipper, but more interested in one or two specific ships, i.e. Minkey for SHINee, WooSan for ATEEZ, and Chanlix for Stray Kids, at least so far.
The fandoms with the next highest number of different ships I read were Kinnporsche (14 ships), MDZS (11 ships), and Only Friends (5 ships), plus 4 ships each for Moonlight Chicken, UWMA, and Yuri on Ice. I didn't read more than 4 different ships in any other fandom.
The characters with the greatest number of individual ships I read this year from non-K-pop fandoms included Lan Xichen from MDZS with 7, Jin Guangyao from MDZS with 6, and Kinn Theerapanyakul, Vegas Theerapanyakul, and Porsche Kittisawat from Kinnporsche with 5 apiece. Xichen and Guangyao are two of the most multi-shippable characters in MDZS, imo, and a bunch of the Kinnporsche ships were just different combinations of Porsche, Kinn, and Vegas with each other and/or Pete, who was close behind the other three with 4 ships.
Top 25 Tags
I don't track tags in my spreadsheet, but I did a little messing around with search filters in my Calibre library to see if I could get an idea what my top tags might have been for the year, and, excluding category tags like m/m and gen, the top 25 appear to have been:
Omegaverse is a bit higher than I expected - I’m not surprised that it’s top 25, but top 5 does surprise me a little - but everything on this list is something I like and read often, so no surprises beyond that. Maybe this year I'll try to do a few more themed rec lists based around tags like these. 🤔
So that was my 2023 in fanfiction! Happy New Year, and best wishes to all for an excellent fannish 2024!
Stats from previous years:
2022: Mid-year | Year-end
2021: Year-end
I recorded reading a total of 366 fics in 2023, compared to 406 in 2022. This includes everything I liked enough to finish reading, plus a few WIPs and most longer full rereads, but not partial rereads or fics I started reading but DNF'd. You can check out some of my most-reread fics of the year here.
After a pretty slow spring and summer and a dismal September, I'm pleased that my reading picked up again a little bit towards the end of the year. At the beginning of October, I set the goal for myself of reading at least 365 fics in 2023 so I could average one per day, and I succeeded, but just barely, squeaking past that target somewhere around 4PM on New Year's Eve. 😅
Words Read in 2023
January: 347,320 (best month)
February: 148,627
March: 315,826
April: 186,578
May: 170,219
June: 164,219
July: 133,407
August: 135,265
September: 65,124 (worst month)
October: 186,231
November: 154,344
December: 205,803
Total: 2,212,963 words
Top Fandoms
I read for a total of 63 fandoms this year, compared to 43 last year. Here is a list of every fandom where I read five fics or more. Asterisks mark fandoms that are new to the >5 list this year.
- K-pop RPF - 98
- SHINee* - 38
- Seventeen - 36
- MDZS/CQL - 35
- UWMA/Between Us - 32
- Kinnporsche - 27
- A Tale of Thousand Stars* - 21
- Beyond Evil - 16
- Moonlight Chicken* - 15
- Supernatural* - 15
- EXO* - 15
- SuperM* - 15
- Bad Buddy - 13
- ATEEZ* - 12
- BTS* - 11
- Only Friends* - 7
- Yuri on Ice - 7
- Marvel - 6
- Thai Actor RPF* - 6
- Mr. Queen - 5
Quick note on how I tracked K-pop RPF stats
Re: the K-pop RPF stats, I tracked K-pop RPF both as an umbrella fandom and by individual groups, so, for example, the 38 SHINee fics are part of the 98 K-pop RPF fics, and not in addition to. There's also some overlap between groups thanks to the supergroup SuperM, which includes members of SHINee, EXO, and NCT. I tagged the main group for each member plus SuperM and the general K-pop RPF tag in my spreadsheet for any fics with pairings between SuperM members (mostly Taemin/Kai).
The number of fandoms I read increased for the second year in a row, which I suppose is a side effect of still being stuck mostly in small fandom hell. Some of the fandoms listed above only add a handful of new fics to the tag per month, or even less, in the case of Mr. Queen. 🥲
K-pop RPF is admittedly a huge fandom (currently more than 600k works on AO3), and the groups that made my top fandoms list above are even large subfandoms within the K-pop RPF umbrella, but I'm unfortunately very picky about RPF and have trouble finding fics that I'm both interested in reading and that don’t set off any of the various RPF-specific squicks I have that I can’t seem to overcome, so it didn't boost my numbers as much as getting more into a fandom that size normally would. In fact, I noticed that I read only about 10 more K-pop fics this year than I read Word of Honor fics in 2021, a fandom with fewer than 7500 fics today and even fewer back then.
I don't want to seem like I'm knocking RPF in any way, because that's 100% not my intention at all. My pickiness about RPF is my own personal cross to bear any time I get into an RPF fandom, and not anyone else's problem.
But I do confess that I hope 2024 will bring me another large and active fiction-based fandom.
Top Ships
With a boost from their new drama Between Us, which ended near the start of the year, Win/Team dethroned Wangxian after two years of dominance
I read a total of 130 ships in 2023, compared to 120 last year. This includes slash, het, femslash, and polyamorous ships, but not gen ships, since I don't track those as consistently. Here is a list of every ship with >5 fics read this year. Asterisks mark ships that are new to the >5 list this year.
- Win/Team (UWMA/Between US) - 31
- Key/Minho (K-pop RPF | SHINee)* - 22
- Phupha/Tian (A Tale of Thousand Stars)* - 20
- Lee Dongsik/Han Juwon (Beyond Evil) - 15
- Taemin/Kai (K-pop RPF | SHINee/EXO/SuperM)* - 15
- Pat/Pran (Bad Buddy) - 13
- Seungkwan/Vernon (K-pop RPF | Seventeen) - 13
- Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian (MDZS/CQL) - 12
- Vegas/Pete (Kinnporsche) - 12
- Jim/Wen (Moonlight Chicken)* - 8
- Choi San/Jung Wooyoung (K-pop RPF | ATEEZ)* - 8
- Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (Supernatural)* - 7
- Nie Mingjue/Jin Guangyao (MDZS/CQL) - 6
- Yoon Jeonghan/Kim Mingyu (K-pop RPF | Seventeen)* - 6
- Cheoljong/Bonghwan (Mr. Queen) - 5
- S.Coups/Jeonghan (K-pop RPF | Seventeen)* - 5
- Lan Xichen/Jin Guangyao (MDZS/CQL) - 5
The number of ships I read increased this year compared to last year just like the number of fandoms, and probably for the same reason. No one ship dominated my reading the way Wangxian did in 2021. A couple of the ships listed above don't have enough fics to dominate anything to that extent even if I read every fic in the tag. 🥲 So it was a multi-shipping sort of year again.
This year, I read the greatest number of different ships in the K-pop RPF fandom at 41 ships, spread out across several sub-fandoms for different groups, including 16 Seventeen ships, 10 BTS ships, 6 SHINee ships, 5 ATEEZ ships, and 4 Stray Kids ships.
32 of these ships were between members of the same group, and 9 involved members of different groups. Kim Mingyu and Boo Seungkwan of Seventeen tied with the greatest number of individual ships at 8 apiece, including with each other and as a trio with Vernon. I was 0% surprised to discover this while looking at my stats - Mingyu and Seungkwan are two of the most physically and verbally demonstrative members of Seventeen and they're affectionate with everyone, so they're easy to multiship. They're definitely my fandom bicycles of the group!
Mingyu and Seungkwan of Seventeen being cuties
Runner up was Jimin from BTS with 5 ships, and Jin, Suga, and Jungkook of BTS with 4 each were third. I don't have especially strong feelings - positive or negative - about any BTS ships so far, so I pick BTS fics to read mostly from recs and don't pay much attention to the pairing if the summary sounds interesting. (The weekly rec posts on
recthething have been an excellent source for BTS recs, as well as MDZS recs and many other fandoms.) I'm sure that's why so many of the Tannies have so many different ships. For the other groups I read, I'm technically a multishipper, but more interested in one or two specific ships, i.e. Minkey for SHINee, WooSan for ATEEZ, and Chanlix for Stray Kids, at least so far.The fandoms with the next highest number of different ships I read were Kinnporsche (14 ships), MDZS (11 ships), and Only Friends (5 ships), plus 4 ships each for Moonlight Chicken, UWMA, and Yuri on Ice. I didn't read more than 4 different ships in any other fandom.
The characters with the greatest number of individual ships I read this year from non-K-pop fandoms included Lan Xichen from MDZS with 7, Jin Guangyao from MDZS with 6, and Kinn Theerapanyakul, Vegas Theerapanyakul, and Porsche Kittisawat from Kinnporsche with 5 apiece. Xichen and Guangyao are two of the most multi-shippable characters in MDZS, imo, and a bunch of the Kinnporsche ships were just different combinations of Porsche, Kinn, and Vegas with each other and/or Pete, who was close behind the other three with 4 ships.
Top 25 Tags
I don't track tags in my spreadsheet, but I did a little messing around with search filters in my Calibre library to see if I could get an idea what my top tags might have been for the year, and, excluding category tags like m/m and gen, the top 25 appear to have been:
- Established Relationship
- Post-Canon
- Canon Compliant
- Anal Sex
- Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
- Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
- Getting Together
- Fluff
- Blow Jobs
- Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
- Dirty Talk
- Humor
- Explicit Sexual Content
- First Time
- Hand Jobs
- Pining
- Praise Kink
- Character Study
- Friends To Lovers
- Mutual Pining
- First Kiss
- Porn With Feelings
- Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
- Angst With a Happy Ending
- Domestic Fluff
Omegaverse is a bit higher than I expected - I’m not surprised that it’s top 25, but top 5 does surprise me a little - but everything on this list is something I like and read often, so no surprises beyond that. Maybe this year I'll try to do a few more themed rec lists based around tags like these. 🤔
So that was my 2023 in fanfiction! Happy New Year, and best wishes to all for an excellent fannish 2024!
