Discussion question for fun and profit

[sholio]

Throwing a question out there to the room: What do you think are some of the qualities that results in some piece of media, any piece of media, picking up a let's say small to medium-sized fandom? (Not necessarily juggernaut-sized, which I think is The Claw as much as anything.)

I'm asking partly just because I haven't been talking on here much lately and this is something to talk about, but also because I was thinking tonight that it might be fun to craft some future project with the intention in mind of seeing if I could pick up a little bit of a fic fandom for it, in the same way that the Zoe Chant books are intentionally crafted to appeal to romance readers - so this would be a project that was dangling a lure in front of transformative fic fandom, not necessarily what people's wish lists are (I have my own wish list, which would almost certainly feature heavily), but what people tend to write fic about.

I realize it's a broad question and varies hugely based on individual preferences and what part of fandom you're in (e.g. slashers want one thing, gen people want another, everybody has their own personal preferences, etc), but I do think there are some broad trends: e.g. ensemble canons typically do better than canons focused on just one or two characters; canons with multiple open-ended installments typically do better than those with one self-contained installment.

What do you think some of the qualities of such a canon might be? Would it be different for books vs. a visual medium like TV/movies, do you think?

Comments

[ellenmillion]

I am falling into bed, so only the briefest of thoughts: a broad cast of hooky characters joined by something seems key. Like, they have to specifically hook to each other, with disparate backgrounds but a common goal.

[yhlee]

Alternately, a concept that enables characters to hook to each other, e.g. Mercedes Lackey & Companions, Dragonriders of Pern and telepathic bonds to dragons, Pacific Rim and "drift compatible," His Dark Materials & daemons - in some of these cases people may borrow the concept for crossovers or OCs.

[sholio]

Oooh, I think this is actually a really good Grand Unified Fandom Theory. I hadn't really thought about the individual character hooky-ness + common goal, but I think you're right.

[aroberuka]

this, + the characters should have very distinct, easily summarized personalities.

i also think anything that can create some kind of recognizable status quo within the work (ie. a home base, a recurring cast of secondary/supporting characters, an episodic/formulaic structure, even smaller things like running gags) would help-- most of the medium sized fandoms i’ve been a part of have had a ‘default’ setting that could be used as a starting point for fanon adventures

also i'm realizing i've never really been in any medium-sized book fandom? they're either massive or next-to-nonexistent, *or* most of the fic is based on tv/movie adaptations instead. really curious to see if people with more book fandoms would have different answers.

[lilacsigil]

At least main characters who have a close relationship plus a varied (race, sex, age, orientation, appearance) ensemble cast.

Real-world plus [special thing] setting.

At least two prominent white male characters and usually one prominent white female character.

Ongoing or at least big and baggy canon with lots of space in it around the main plot.

A solid and repetitive structure (e.g. school year, monster hunting, investigating cases) that the canon may not always follow but is well-established.

[sholio]

These are all excellent points, especially:

Real-world plus [special thing] setting. / A solid and repetitive structure (e.g. school year, monster hunting, investigating cases) that the canon may not always follow but is well-established.

Yeah, I think one of the things that makes a lot of canons blow up into fandoms is the relatability aspect - in fact, I've hit this with my romance writing, where there is a big discrepancy between how the shifters-in-the-real-world books are selling, vs. the shifters-in-space ones: there's definitely an audience for the latter (and part of the problem is that it's just not the same audience) but I think there's less of one, because people really want that "I could walk into this canon" feeling.

At least two prominent white male characters and usually one prominent white female character.

This is true, I mean you're absolutely not wrong, but I'm also going on the assumption that this is one of those very common but negotiable aspects.

... I mean obviously to an extent it's all negotiable, but in trying to figure out how to do genre fiction but do it ~~ 🎶my way 🎶~~ I've been sifting through for what is a must-have, what is helpful but not necessary, and what I actively don't want.

For example, happy endings are completely non-negotiable in romance: you have to have them in order for it to be a romance. But rapey alphaholes, while they are everywhere and some readers definitely kink on it, aren't absolutely necessary; we made the decision early on with Zoe Chant not to write about them, and it really doesn't seem to have hurt us - in fact "no rapey assholes" is kind of our brand.

Similarly, there's a restoring-the-status-quo quality to most mysteries and thrillers that I think is part of the core appeal; they're books about seeing justice done and peace restored. But in a lot of cases this also goes along with a generally conservative set of principles that bleeds into the book in other ways (conformity, rejection of people who are different, all het casts, etc) that I think you could easily reject and write a perfectly genre-acceptable thriller without, as long as you kept the core principle of restoration of order.

ANYWAY THIS ENDED UP VERY TL;DR and basically I do want people to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks; I think this one's worth mentioning, and I do think having at least one slashable pairing and one het-able pairing that the fandom finds both shippable and hot are things that you need for a fandom-ready canon, but I don't think they have to be white. It might be easier-mode (as far as attracting a fandom) if they are, but on the other hand, it might be like the Zoe-alphahole thing - the people you lose if you ditch that aspect are offset by the people you pick up who are actively looking for the opposite.

[rionaleonhart]

My first thought: make it shippable! Hint at unresolved sexual tension in many different combinations of characters, both allies and enemies, M/M and M/F and F/F, but don't actually make anything canon. That way you'll appeal to both het and slash shippers of varying tastes, but they'll need to write fanfiction if they want to actually see the characters get together, rather than being satisfied on that front by canon.

[sholio]

Ooooh. I like this one a lot, and I think you're right - shippability, and having a variety of ship options without canon closing off too many of the possible angles, is one of the big ones. (And is probably part of why romance novels and romcom movies don't tend to usually have much of a fic fandom, though that's probably also a function of different audiences, as well ...)

[scioscribe]

The wild shippability across all the character dynamics in Community was definitely one of the things I liked about it, especially when it left those unresolved. It let a bunch of characters have significant, charged dynamics with each other, opening up all kinds of possibilities, and I really loved that. I get that not everyone is a multishipper, but I think a lot of the big ensemble fandoms I've loved have had a happy element of "ooh, what about these two/three/etc?" whether platonically or romantically.

[indywind]

Yeah, I'd second this, but slightly modified: have some unresolved emotional tension between characters in the main ensemble, for sure; essential. But it doesn't have to be sexual/romantic -- it doesn't even have to be clearly in any one vein. In fact, it's probably more hook-y if it's canonically ambiguous what kind of tension is between the characters, or if it has elements of more than one.
Like, it could be sexual but could be also a a longing for surrogate family or professional respect. It could be romantic, but it could also be trauma bonding or moral nemeses or intellectual opponents or feeling like one belongs/is accepted. It could be the tension of characters challenging each other's worldviews or affirming each other's identities (or the opposite of that) in a way that's emotionally significant.

The more possibilities for the tension between characters, the more room for a variety of fan interpretations, for more different fans to project their own interests into the characters' relationships.

[thawrecka]

From what I can tell from my last few fandoms, sad things happening to likeable characters that fans want to write fix-its for (even if the sad things are satisfying in text).

[sholio]

Haha, yes, that - I have definitely seen a lot more fic springboarded from unsatisfactory endings/unhappy character fates than fic springboarded from characters being happy and content, all things considered.

[sovay]

What do you think some of the qualities of such a canon might be?

I come at this question mostly from the outside, but room to play or room for improvement have always looked like major factors to me. Regarding the latter, however, I am not sure how much fun it would be to write something that may be idtastic but also slightly rubbish.

[sholio]

I am not sure how much fun it would be to write something that may be idtastic but also slightly rubbish.

This made me laugh but is also true, and I think you're absolutely right that this is the killer combination that makes a lot of fandoms what they are - iddy bits embedded in a matrix of relatively poor writing, which obviously is not something I want to write, at least not as such. (Though now I'm wondering if it's possible to catch the feeling without the actual rubbish aspect - a lot of manga fandoms are a) single-creator, and also b) huge, with that iddy-rubbish feeling while not actually being rubbishy as such.)

[naye]

I am just answering for fun and not because I think I actually know anything but my main three points would be: character chemistry, tropes, and non-mundane elements.

Character chemistry: because people fan on such different things this could mean anything from the characters being a ragtag bunch of found family to having the one perfect ship. So maybe the ideal is a mix - you have strong found family vibes going (which will lead to shipping), and then you also have a canon ship either in-group or with one of the team and someone somehow outside of it. Enemies to lovers would work great in that case!

Which leads me to tropes: I think to hook a fandom you need to have enough things in your original story that fandom recognizes. Slow burn, pining, hurt/comfort, there was only one bed - something in the story that those of a fannish inclination can latch on to and expand on.

Finally the setting and concept: fandom in general seems to happen more around sources that have something more than the mundane world going for them. A dash of magic is important! Something that can bend and stretch reality, that can make the impossible possible.

[sholio]

Oooh, I like these! :D Also, I really like the idea of building in different shipping dynamics so people have both the found-family vibe to work with, but also more contentious dynamics with characters outside the group. Not incidentally because this is my jam also. Built in tropiness is also an excellent idea!

[lea_hazel]

I'm late to the party, so I'll try to summarize my thoughts as briefly as possible.

In my experience, the things that prevent media from picking up a fic fandom are 1) being HTG irredeemably bad with no points of grace or if-onlies to hook onto, or 2) being too good, too fulfilling, answering all the questions and being airtight in plot, world and relationships.

Fic writers write in gaps. Gaps can take a character shape ("this pairing is perfect except er, technically they never hook up"), a world shape ("but it doesn't make sense unless we extrapolate a lot of worldbuilding from this one-off line" -- this is me, guilty as charged), or plot ("something happened between point A and point B, but canon won't show it so I will").

Fanfic needs to answer a need. If the canon fulfills all your needs, then the fanfic fandom won't crop up. That's part of why fantasy books make better fic fandoms than any other book genre. The promise of epic fantasy worldbuilding is one that by definition cannot be fulfilled.

[sholio]

These are excellent comments and are helpful! I totally agree that the in-betweens are where fanfic flourishes: between point A and point D, between the too-bad and the too-good. So that's also a good thing for me to keep in mind.

[leesa_perrie]

Characteristics that attract me to a character (varies a little, but generally speaking): someone a little geeky, someone who's an ordinary type person thrown into extraordinary situations, a 'coward' who can be brave when needed, or someone on a redemption theme (like Neal from White Collar - who I am stubbornly believing did not return to crime - la, la, la, not listening)!!

But I also like this character contrasted with someone strong or capable (eg Rodney with John, Ronon, Teyla, Ford is a good combination for me). Family feels, but a dysfunctional family. Thrown together by circumstance or common goals or special abilities. People learning to care about others, but not necessarily being open about it (ie actions speak louder than words - someone does something that shows s/he cares, whilst denying that s/he cares).

Needs to be humour, fun, banter (not the horrible type, the family type), but also action, angst and adventure.

This is just me, but I know there are a lot of others who are pulled in by some of the above (including you). So probably an ensemble is better than just two main characters, and a good mix of personalities. Though I have been pulled in by shows that have two main characters (eg Man from UNCLE from the 60s, The Sentinel), the ensemble often works better for me (Blake's 7, The A Team, SGA, arguably White Collar, as it wasn't all about Neal and Peter all the time). Hope this is helpful!

EDIT: I've never fallen for a book fandom, so can't help with that, sorry.

EDIT 2: Having read a few comments above, I agree that the bigger fandoms I've been in are the sci-fi ones. They also seem to last longer, certainly with the die hard fans. Even Blake's 7 still has a fandom following, and that finished in the early 80s!! Magic isn't my thing, but I suspect it's the same.

[sartorias]

It sometimes surprises me to discover what inspires fic (even tons of fic) and what scarcely has any. Both works can appear (to me) to be equally engaging emotionally. Could be the hard-to-pin-down id qualities in bewitching combo with the emotional engagement, could be use of tropes that really work right now. Maybe it's also a sense that one could do more with the characters? How does chemistry work, anyway? Like the absolute firestorm of Harry/Draco fic, when Draco Malfoy in the books is about as one-dimensional a villain as you can get, buuuuut, he'sbeautiful. The filmmakers knew that, and gave the shippers a Malfoy that could spawn a billion fics plus serial-numbers-barely-filed-off published spinoffs. Most of which spinoffs of Draco are far better written than the original.

[sheron]

H/D was huge even before the movies existed though, it was more of the movie creators picking up on how popular his character was in fandom.

[recessional]

Gonna be slightly cynical, but it's honestly been my strong experience: mediocre enough that lots of people feel, consciously or subconsciously, that they're "good enough" to fuck around with this story or even Do It Better/Fix It. That enough people feel that whatever they write/create will at least be ADEQUATE compared to canon.

This is more complex than just "gaps in the story", because I think it contributes also to cross-medium issues - like for instance if you're in Tolkien (book) fandom the artists are WAY more active than the writers . . . . because there's a hard dearth of art, but it's a textual format. On the other hand visual media often inspire a significant amount MORE writing than anything else, because the written portion offers things (perspectives, ways to tell stories, etc) that are totally lacking in canon.

This is also something (I feel) that contributes to which sections of the fandom are most transformatively active (because things can have huge curative fandom without having a transformative fandom of similar size) - the side of, say, Tolkien (non-movie) fandom that is queering the hell out of things is much more active transformatively than the het side largely (I think) because it's pretty inadequate on that scale - if you're here looking for queer Silm stuff, canon isn't even bothering about you. So there's a much bigger sense that whatever you do will Add To It.

People don't create when they're intimidated by the idea of it, for the most part.

[sholio]

Ehhhhh ... I disagree, actually. Or rather, I think that there are several different urges that make people write fanfic, and sometimes they run in parallel and sometimes pull against each other. I guess I'd say it boils down to these:

- Let me fix that for you. (Not necessarily a measure of objective quality/mediocrity, although sometimes, but more of the source canon being unsatisfying in some way, from "killed my fave/broke up my favorite couple" to "not enough queer rep" to "THIS EPISODE WAS BADLY WRITTEN.")

- I want more of that. (Canon shipping, case fic, tropey hurt/comforty fic for tropey hurt/comforty canons, most canon-compliant gen; also, arguably, pretty much all of the daemon AUs/sorting hats/PacRim AUs/etc that were mentioned in a comment above, to an extent.)

- I want that, but MY WAY. (Often paralleling/overlapping the above categories. All non-canon pairings, OCs, AUs, etc. I mean, arguably all fanfic is this to an extent - canon but MY WAY - but I think there is often less of a fixit urge, and less of an urge to play with the canon toys as delivered, and more just wanting to take the canon ideas or characters and do your own stuff with it.)

I mean, yes, the canon making you want to fuck around with it is a big part of all of these - tightly woven canons that satisfy emotionally don't offer much of a toehold for fic, and "I couldn't do better than that if I tried" is part of that. But I agree with the person above who suggested that the issue isn't mediocrity so much as messiness - you need to have places to get your imagination into the story, and sometimes that's wanting to fix things, or explore gaps, or just take a brilliant idea from the story and, squirrellike, go off and do your own thing with it.

[sheron]

I would say, based on my personal experience, it's what Ellen says above (common goal) for characters who have some opposing traits. For example soldier vs scientist comes up a lot. Jock vs nerd. Something character A needs is something character B has (whether that's knowlege, courage or whatever). And together they fight crime. :D

[kore]

Yeah, that goes along with yhlee's point way up there about certain tropey ideas that get turned into kind of templates? (These are fusions, right?) Like "X goes to Hogwarts" or "X joins the X-Men" or the Leverage or Inception or Pacific Rim or other team "AUs," where there are set roles and certain characters fill them. (Like, in an Avengers version of Leverage, Natasha winds up inevitably being the grifter.) Or "Regency AUs," which can be as general as a kind of costume-drama setting, or as tied to canon as "Pride and Prejudice AU with Tony as Elizabeth and Steve as Mr Darcy." There's often an Odd Couple setup (opposites attract!) or a team with very specific jobs....and at the other end of the spectrum there's "mundane AUs" or AUs set in US high school or college settings, with nearly everything canonical about the characters stripped away; which can be a fascinating exercise in seeing what makes us say "Yes that's him" about a character, or just fizzle out if the author doesn't seem to latch onto that elusive inner core in a satisfying way.

[rachelmanija]

1. A genre other than romance. There's a lot of popular genre romance novels/series that have every element that otherwise attracts fic, like the large ensemble casts of archetypal characters (etc), but the genre itself seems to not attract fic. Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooters or some of the Zoe Chant series have all the elements for fic except genre, and the former has almost no fic and the latter has none.

You even don't get fic with M/M or F/F genre romance, which you'd think would attract it.

2. The best genre is fantasy or SF. Urban fantasy or very handwavey SF or space opera is better than hard SF. Next best is historical, but not very accurate historical, or contemporary action/adventure/mystery.

Contemporary drama or comedy without fantasy or action/mystery elements doesn't usually get significant fandom. For instance, soap operas don't get much fic and neither does stuff like This is Us.

3. A bunch of appealing/vivid/angsty characters interacting, all or most of whom are single.

5. A hook. "There's a Rift that aliens come through." "We ride dragons." "We have superpowers."

6. The sense of a larger world and that there's tons of other stories going on that we don't see.

Everything else is negotiable. Hamilton has a massive fandom (largely dumpster fire, alas) despite only one white character, because it fits other categories.

[indywind]

I feel like 6 is essential,
5 explains 2 (the real world is too boring for most people to want to take their mental vacation there; the canons set in the ordinary world that have fandoms all focus on a tropey special subset of the real world like law enforcement or espionage or entertainment)

and 3 explains why not 1 (because romance mighthave a bunch of appealing and available characters, but not much interacting, and not the visible angst or questions or unresolved tension that a fan can hook into; that'd be off-topic of developing the main pair relationship. Plus probably fans know the appealing and available secondary characters are going to get their own books shortly to keep the series going; why bother creating your own when the canon creator will handle it satisfactorily?)

[kore]

I had a whole big developing thing about What If? comics, which I ADORE and are fascinating because they set up that liminal space in an official way (What if Karen Page hadn't died, what if Jessica Jones had joined the Avengers, what if Civil War hadn't happened, &c &c). But then Opera crashed and there have been far too many tl;dr comments from me anyway! And CYOA books exist in that kind of liminal space too, don't they? albeit a kind of limited one.

....and oh yeah, speaking of iddy trashy fun stuff, Xena was practically postmodern in how often the writers did little episode-long AUs or had bodyswaps or afterlife adventures or musical numbers and all kinds of tropey stuff. And Xena was a spinoff of a deliberately campy kind of mythical AU version of Hercules, and she came complete with her own fic writer, the bard Gabriella. (BRB, writing a paper on "Lemon-ality in The Bitter Suite: Canon as Fanfiction in Xena the Warrior Princess" which will make my name and fortune) A lot of other shows played around with meta narratives or other tropes, like the X-Files and Buffy and other late 90's-early 00's shows, but Xena LEANED WAY INTO IT, as you say, gleefully and whole-heartedly. I don't think I saw another show that managed that kind of serious crackiness until Farscape (and for me anyway, later Farscape seasons just kind of descended into a pit of misery and angst over romance, and I became a lot less invested. Later Xena seasons weren't that great, either).

[goodbyebird]

(late comment is late)
I'm very interested in seeing what kind of fanworks the upcoming What If series on Disney+ will produce! I remember very much enjoying those comics growing up.

As for Xena, I've still only seen s1 (stubbornly depriving myself until I finish my damn vid), but boy ave I heard stuff. Can't wait to experience every wacky experiment the show is willing to throw at me.

Btw if you want some fun crackiness I recommend checking out Vagrant Queen. Sadly SyFy canceled it after the first season, but it was great fun while it lasted, and there's an episodic take on Clue that's to die for.

[bemused_writer]

Hmm, this is a good question. I think for a lot of genres, having an epic duo can really get the show to take off for fandom. The X-Files, Xena: Warrior Princess, Good Omens, and Doctor Who are all shows I can think of that have done just that. While there are definitely other characters, the relationship between these two characters (platonic or otherwise) is at the center, and fandom seems to gravitate toward that kind of interaction.

Of course, there are shows that have lots of characters without a strict duo anywhere in the vicinity (such as Star Trek: TNG), but I think in that case fans are looking for something a little different. They absolutely want character interaction and they will focus on it, but they also want to see unusual ideas explored.

If I look at video games specifically, then games that have a lot of characters you can interact with and influence tend to be popular, especially if there are multiple endings. That tends to get the fic flowing. :D

[kore]

I was trying to think of what might be early examples of the Odd Couple or soldier/geek kind of pairing? Maybe the original soldier/geek pair is Holmes and Watson, LOL. Except Watson is pretty analytical himself and Holmes is often not that geeky. ("Earth goes around the sun, WHO CARES.") There have to be earlier examples than that, though....

[slhuang]

I have, unfortunately, had really, really bad luck with ever finding any quantity of fic/fannishness for the book fandoms that scratched my id in the way where I end up wanting more of that...unless they also had movie/TV adaptations.

I know there *are* book fandoms, so maybe my taste along those axes is just different and doesn't map properly to be able to understand what the answer is. But I've basically resigned myself to not finding a fandom unless there's a media adaptation. Even a small media adaptation, or one that largely fails, seems to help goose fannish activity (anecdotally)? (ETA: Or possibly it's just that a media adaptation means there are a critical mass of fans so the two are correlated!) I suppose that doesn't help with writing with that goal though, since if we knew the formula for getting picked up as a media adaptation we'd all be doing it. :-/ But I wonder if someone with your skills could aim at something cross-media with comics, or something like that... I do feel like I see fandoms develop way more easily with comics than with novels -- maybe because comics have that sequential, many-stories nature to them? Or maybe it's having a visual element? You do have the skills for making your own comics adaptations if you wanted... :)

Reflecting on the reasons I don't find solely-book-fandoms though, I think in my observation the more substantive book fandoms I've seen have largely been YA, and I largely interact with adult. So maybe that's something else, idk. I also don't tend to fall for the sexy properties or look to fic for sex/shipping reasons so I may be a very bad sample across the board.

I don't know if I'm right about any of this btw! This is just idle thoughts...

[mific]

Space toasters, to use a term coined by thefourthvine. i.e characters who are divergent in some way, like with crap social skills (Rodney) or emotionally repressed (John Sheppard) - as long as they also have strengths. That's especially to appeal to shippers, though, maybe not so much gen fans. I guess the art is to hint at that messed-upness but allow space for fans to explore it and write character development, and maybe for fans to stick the characters together by their quirky bits.

[muccamukk]

If it's at all useful, these are the top 20 book fandoms on AO3:

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (270683)
Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms (132695)
Star Wars - All Media Types (131441)
TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms (70667)
Dragon Age - All Media Types (67235)
Doctor Who (63164)
A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms (55776)
Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms (43940)
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin (39901)
The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types (37103)
The Hobbit - All Media Types (33840)
PRATCHETT Terry - Works (30729)
GAIMAN Neil - Works (28881)
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (27869)
The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types (27605)
Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types (27430)
魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù (27354)
Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types (26073)
Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types (25669)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types (24378)

If "get a major motion picture/tv adaptation" or "be a thousand year old myth" isn't the answer you want, here's my eyeballed list of top twenty ao3 fandoms for books in written in English written in the last 50 years, excluding stuff with media adaptations that I know of:

All For The Game - Nora Sakavic (7260)
Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater (7154)
Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell (5323)
A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas (3168)
Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold (2890)
Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat (2790)
Tortall - Tamora Pierce (2485)
Warriors - Erin Hunter (2368)
Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas (1556)
Parahumans Series - Wildbow (1400)
Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo (1287)
Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey (993)
Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch (975)
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller (970)
Temeraire - Naomi Novik (891)
The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo (869)
Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy (831)
Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson (735)
Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux (677)
Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer (662)

[sholio]

Ooh, thank you, I did want this! - and also, how did you get this? I looked it up on ff.net, where you can sort by size pretty easily, but I didn't know you could do this on AO3 except by looking at everything.