god you weren’t lying about the phm ao3 stats being wild. one of these characters isn’t even in the movieeee why does he have nearly 3/4ths as many fics as one of the three main characters 😭
IT'S SO BAD. & the fact that simon ironlung has more fics than yáo & ilyukhina do COMBINED is criminal. crossovers aren't inherently bad & i respect they will always be a part of fandom, but like... some of us care about the source material... and want to read about the Actual Characters And Themes In The Text... idk. for me, if i'm in a fandom, it's BECAUSE i liked the original text & wanted to play more in that space. & maybe this makes me pretentious and a hater, but i think the majority of a fandom should also... want to interact and play with the actual source material & its themes & characters... not just make crossovers... also. fun fact! stratt may have more fics total than simon ironlung, but if you filter the phm tag by relationship for bloodymary, do you know how many of those fics have stratt tagged as a character? 157 fics. out of 1500. & inb4 "oh, well even if these people don't care about stratt, maybe at least they care about the women in the cast of iron lung! after all, we can't expect all crossovers to take place in the universe of PHM"! well let me tell you. ava ironlung is tagged in 121 of those 1500 fics. lol
