SecondhandQuills

Prompt 1 – Tent

“I hate you.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Evans. We both signed up for this, as you well know.”

“And what exactly possessed you to take this class in the first place?”

“You’re asking this halfway through the year?”

“Typically, I try to minimise our interactions, Potter. And yet three times a week I’ve been forced to endure the disturbing sight of you without your entourage.”

“Oh Evans, you don’t know how hard it’s been for me! Why, if it wasn’t for your half-dead expressions greeting me each lesson, bolstering my spirits, I’d have lost the will to live by November.”

“I’d have skived off if I’d known.”

“And disappoint all the poor forest critters and dear Professor Kettleburn?”

“They’d understand. In fact, I’m highly considering disappointing them again now. Two whole weeks in your company?”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t sound so cheerful about it!”

“Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to hide the fact that I’m happy to spend time with you?”

“…”

“Evans?”

“…There must be something I can do about this. I refuse to spend my Easter holidays alone in a tent with you of all people. Do you think it’s too late to cancel?”

“…But you were so excited about this trip a few weeks ago. Camping and actually getting to do the finding of those fantastic beasts.”

“That was before I learned they were sorting us by House for some accursed reason and you just so happened to be the only other Gryffindor taking the Care of Magical Creatures NEWT!”

“And you just assume I’m going to make it terrible for you?”

“Yes, I know you, Potter.”

“No you don’t. You think I’m some demon who exists purely to ruin your day-”

”You are-”

“When I’m actually a fellow magical creatures enthusiast who’s just thrilled to go on an adventure now that we can both legally use magic.”

“Oh? So you’d be happy if we weren’t paired together?”

“I’m committed to having a great time, yes, and I won’t let you ruin it with your constant sulkiness and inability to have fun.”

“Wow Potter. Such a gentleman as always, aren’t you? I can’t stand another second with that fat head of yours.”

“Wait Evans! Seriously, lighten up, won’t you? Hey, wait a minute!”

“Get out of my way.”

“Just, wait a minute. Seriously.”

“I don’t want to infect you with my constant sulkiness.”

“Oh, that broom has long since flown away. I’m way past infected.”

“…”

“Not the time? Heh, nevermind. Please Evans. Just… let me show you the tent, okay? It’s a wizarding tent. We’re not exactly going to be sharing a sleeping bag.”

“I suppose I must at least examine our equipment.”

“We’re well stocked for an adventure. There’s a little a tower for stargazing over here, and see this mast? It comes out and allows us to go sailing if we get very, very lost.”

“The tent comes with a tower?”

“Yeah! See those steps there? It’s actually an endless staircase. It keep going up and up until you’re at least above a short tree. Though I hear newer models allow you to customise the height.”

“Potter, I hope you know this is against the very spirit of camping.”

“It’s just a little tower - I think it gives the tent some character.”

“Tents shouldn’t have towers! It’s meant to be living in nature, with minimal comforts.”

“Why?”

“Because its not supposed to be easy! It’s meant to be rough, without being pampered. Not that you’d ever know what that was like.”

“Things aren’t meant to be rough just for the sake of it! We are going to be living in nature. There won’t be any running water or like a kitchen or anything, so what’s the problem with having nice rooms?”

“It’s not preparing you for the real world. If you’re ever in danger, or travelling, you won’t have access to all these comforts.”

“Yes I will! I’m a wizard. I can transfigure any of the furniture in this room if I wanted to. I know lightening charms and warming charms and all that. And so do you. Are you really so determined to be miserable?”

“Don’t make it all sound so simple Potter. But fine, the tent isn’t terrible.”

“I mean, the tower is kind of underwhelming from the outside. I think we might be settling for not terrible.”

“I was thinking it was kind of cute, once you get over its general existence.”

“Hmm Evans, maybe you’re right. It reminds me of me.”

“Crooked and unnecessary?”

“Here we are! It begins. With only the broom on my back and my wand in my pocket, Potter and Evans take their first steps into the vast unknown.”

“Potter please! We’re thirty seconds from our portkey. Must you brag about the incredible feat of walking past a tree?”

“A tree we surpassed with grace and flair, like we do everything. Oh calm down, I’m just breaking the ice!”

“This is going to be a disaster, I can feel it.”

“As, we descend deeper into the woods, Evans feels a sense of foreboding. What could this mean for the journey ahead?”

“Stop the running commentary, I beg you.”

“Evans makes a request-“

“Potter.”

“I’m stopping! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’re so easy to wind up.”

“Let’s just focus. The portkey dropped us here for a reason, right?”

“Indeed it did. And by chance, did you notice that tree we so effortlessly walked past was a Waltzing Walnut?”

“Wait really?”

“’Course. It was spinning. And you know of course, that Waltzing Walnuts always come in pairs.”

“Then this means the forest is home to some Laughing Larrikins too!”

“Hopefully. Oh, I can’t wait to get some pictures of them dancing. The Professor will be dead impressed. You’ve got the camera right?”

“I lost it actually.”

“…?”

“Cheese! That means smile for the camera, Potter.”

“Don’t catch me by surprise like that, Evans!”

“I’m just trying to capture an image of the creature in front of me.”

“Oh shut it. You know if you wanted pictures of me, all you had to do was ask.”

“Stop trying to mess up your hair. Though maybe a Larrikin will mistake it for their nest.”

“You know you like it. Anyway, let’s hide out in this undergrowth. With any luck the trees will feel safe enough to waltz and then the Larrikins should join in. That clearing ahead is littered with walnuts so they must like to dance around here.”

“I’ll go over here - I’ll need the space to take a few photos. You can hide under there being useless.”

“Useless?! I’ll have you know I’ll be journalling our day. But fine, I’ll make myself cozy in these vines.”

“Good.”

“…”

“…So Potter, how long do you reckon we’ll be waiting?”

“I don’t- know. An hour- or-or so?”

“Potter?”

“C-can’t breathe!”

“Get out of there!”

“’m trying.”

“Lumos! Oh- oh that’s Devil’s Snare!”

“Urg- Can’t -m’wand.”

“J-Just hold still Potter! Don’t panic!”

“Nn.”

“Let’s see- Devil’s snare, devil’s snare. I need- I need-“

“-Fire!”

“Yes! That’s it! Incendio!”

“Aaahh!”

“Potter! I just -I just set you on fire!”

“Ahhh! Put it out! Put it out!”

“A-aguamenti! Aguamenti!”

“Urgh. It burns. You… you set me on fire.”

“And then I put it out again. Are you alright? I’m so sorry! I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. You were getting all tied up. Here, let me help you out?”

“Mmm thanks. Everything feels like its burning. Aguamenti! Glaciate!”

“I didn't mean to panic. I just forgot. I should’ve done a sunlight spell to scare it off. And now you’re covered in burns. But don’t worry, I can make a burn salve in no time!”

“Heh, no worries Evans. I’m fine. It’s okay.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m always mad about you. But uh seriously, it’s cool. Honestly, it’s pretty amusing, right?”

“Damn… your good spirit is truly irrepressible Potter.”

“I can’t believe you set me on fire! And then felt bad about it. You have to admit, it’s a little funny, isn’t it?

“It’s nothing of the sort! You take nothing seriously. Does nothing phase you?. Still… glad you’re not upset.”

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.