AO3 Wrapped 2025: Detailed Breakdown
For 2024's AO3 Wrapped, I kept everything to one long post. This was the obvious choice, because I didn't have that much to say.
This year, I have a lot to say!
Greater experience with the AO3 Wrapped program (originally made by soupbanana on github, improved by my friend @minimum-underdrive) meant that my friend and I had the chance to not only run more statistics, but create entire new ones. We wanted to consider factors like number of chapters, to see if a person had read more oneshots than anything else; when fics were posted, to see how diverse in publishing year a person's reading was; and popularity via kudos, hits, and comments. Not all of these got used in my analysis for 2025, nor have updated graphics, but stay tuned for 2026!
In the meantime, it's time for my...
Longest fic
The first category, and the first one I knew I could improve (see: make perhaps unnecessarily complex lmao). My longest fic according to my AO3 Wrapped graphic is Rage Against the Calamity by AmberDamselfly (@amber-dragonfly), at 968,627 words. However, I have been subscribed to this fic since 2022, reading one chapter every week for all this time! I knew going in that this fic likely would not be the one I actually read the most words for in 2025. And I was right! After manually adding up all of the chapters posted in 2025 alone, this fic tallies 423,515 words—a massive endeavor to be sure, but not my longest of the year! In fact, I have calculated that I have two potential winners of sorts:
A Voice from the Desert by @the-twilight-duchess
Mark of a Hero by @amelias-calamity-quintet
If one considers only individual fics in this ranking, AVftD wins by a landslide, with 551,689 words posted in 2025. However, MoaH is a single story split between multiple Parts; "Part 2 - Farona" finished in 2025, and "Part 3 - Rahaal" is currently ongoing. If you aggregate their word counts, given that they arguably are the same fic, they combine to 572,275 words in 2025, thus winning first place!
Top Authors
nocturne-of-forest / angrymudcrab (20)
ZeldaElmo (19)
hiya_master_sword / hiya_girlie (18)
abbygrace77 (17)
GrapieBee (16)
Improbable Science (15)
MidnightBunnyy (15)
louwhose (13)
nocturnalfandomwriter (13)
bloobluebloo (12)
Who here is familiar with AO3's alias function? The one that goes "Author (Alias)", and usually is a handy way for authors to separate their works by fandom? Well, unfortunately for me, the Wrapped program interprets the alias format as two separate authors, and thus showed an incorrect top 5 in my visual graphic!
In my adjusted top 10, there are seven authors who primarily write zelink (@zeldaelmo, @hylaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, @abbyz-elda, @spoiledspine, @improbablescience, @louwhose, and @nocturnalfandomartist), one midlink author (@nocturne-of-forest), one author that is primarily general (@three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat), and one author that is primarily zelgan and Ganondorf-focused (@bloobluebloo). Overall, they represent a fairly accurate spread of what I read, as you'll learn a little further down!
Notably, I'm only subscribed to 5 of these authors, meaning that the other 5 simply wrote a lot of fics that I was organically interested in. :))
Top Ratings
General Audiences (582) 44.6%
Teen (447) 34.2%
Mature (126) 9.6%
Explicit (99) 7.5%
Not Rated (50) 3.8%
I was surprised to see G as my top rating, but I shouldn't have been! Last year my top rating was G as well and I simply forgot, lol. Mature and Explicit are quite low, resulting from my general lack of interest in reading smut as entertainment outside of a longer fic, and unsurprisingly, NR is the lowest, since few authors neglect to tag the rating of their works!
Top Fandoms
The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms (773)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom (685)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (149)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (115)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (76)
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (56)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (43)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (35)
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game) (24)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (16)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (16)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (9)
The AO3 Wrapped graphic tells you your top 3 fandoms. I'm sure this is fun and interesting to people who read fic for multiple different fandoms, but for me, I wanna know what Zelda games I read for most! Luckily, you can run extra stats for that.
Of my specific games, a few observations:
The top 3 games don't surprise me at all! Of course BotW/TotK are so high, being the most popular games in the franchise which continue to inspire the most fics. Twilight Princess (my personal favorite game) and Ocarina of Time are both 3D games, which always get more traffic than the 2D or more cartoony titles.
Skyward Sword at #4 instead of #3 surprised me a bit, given that its remake is more recent and more accessible than OoT's, but in my years of LoZ fandom, I do believe that writers simply write less for SkSw for whatever reason.
Echoes of Wisdom likely falls as high as it does because after completing the game in February 2025, I read many many fics that had been posted between then and the game's release in September 2024; without that backlog, the count would be much lower due to EoW's lack of popularity.
I am amused that Age of Calamity falls as high as it does, given that I have never played the game or even watched the cutscenes! Guess that's the power of zelink and Champion friendship fics for you, lol.
(A word to the wise: when you run your own AO3 Wrapped, if you happen to read a good amount of OoT fic, it will get separated into two fandom names depending on how the author spelled it: "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", or "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time"! I had to add mine together manually and re-sort.)
Top Characters
Link (1060) 81.2%
Zelda (917) 70.3%
Impa (166) 12.7%
Ganondorf (163) 12.5%
Purah (108) 8.2%
Mipha (89)
Urbosa (87)
Revali (80)
Midna (73)
King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule (69)
Sidon (69)
Daruk (62)
Original Legend of Zelda Character(s) (61)
Riju (59)
Sheik (55)
Yunobo (42)
Aryll (38)
Tulin (37)
Paya (36)
Malon (35)
Raise your hand if you're shocked that all but five of the characters in this list canonically appear in BotW/TotK! [waits, crickets chirp] That's what I thought, lol. I find it especially funny that just under half of the Aryll appearances are an Aryll character created for BotW/TotK (I checked).
The difference between Link and Zelda and everyone else kills me. Of course, they're the main characters of the entire franchise, and only they, Impa, and Ganondorf have multiple incarnations and are the most likely to appear in many works, but let's be honest... For me, it's the zelink effect.
Top Relationships
Link/Zelda (638)
Link & Zelda (281)
Ganondorf/Zelda (62)
Link/Midna (34)
Impa & Zelda (26)
Link/Tetra (21)
Link/Sheik (21)
Link & Midna (16)
Link/Mipha (15)
King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule & Zelda (14)
Ganondorf/Sheik (13)
Aryll & Link (13)
Impa & Link (12)
Midna & Zelda (12)
Urbosa & Zelda (12)
Ganondorf & Zelda (11)
Link & Purah (11)
Mipha & Zelda (11)
Link/Malon (11)
Link & Navi (10)
Midna/Zelda (10)
Ganondorf/Link (9)
Link/Marin (8)
Dohna/Zelda (8)
Chad Danforth/Ryan Evans (8)
Link/Revali (7)
Ganondorf/Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda) 6
Hylia/Link (Legend of Zelda) 6
Urbosa/Zelda's Mother (Legend of Zelda) 5
On the subject of zelink! When aggregating the different forms Zelda can take, we can also add Link/Tetra (21), Link/Sheik (21), and Hylia/Link (6) to Link/Zelda (638) for a total of 686 fics!
For the sake of not including literally 50 ships in this list, I decided to only include romantic ships I intentionally chose to read once the total count dropped to 10 or lower. This is because lots of platonic ships might be incidental to a fic, rather than the main point. Of my top 50 relationships, only 18 were romantic!
Something new for me this year is zelgan! The ship has had a huge surge in fandom popularity lately compared to past years, and zelgan shippers are determined to stoke the flames, between their two dedicated events hosted in 2025. I only ship a few zelgan incarnations and mainly read AUs, but they've hopped high into my list nonetheless.
(Yes, that is Chad and Ryan from High School Musical. Can you look into your heart and honestly, really, blame me?)
Tags
Top Genre Tags
Fluff (260)
Angst (198)
Hurt/Comfort (160)
Romance (100)
Humor (67)
Fluff and Angst (63)
Domestic Fluff (55)
Character Study (55)
Angst with a Happy Ending (54)
Emotional Hurt/Comfort (52)
Friendship (45)
Light Angst (44)
Fluff and Humor (33)
Slice of Life (29)
Tooth-Rotting Fluff (27)
Hurt No Comfort (26)
Eventual Romance (25)
Romantic Fluff (22)
Adventure (20)
I call these "Genre Tags" because of the FFN genre system I grew up with, haha. They describe overall fic contents rather than any particular trope, and provide no detail on when or how the fic is set.
When one aggregates all fluff, angst, etc into mass categories, the breakdown is thus: Fluff: 460, Angst: 385 (I included Hurt No Comfort as Angst), Hurt/Comfort: 212, Romance: 147, Humor: 100. Last year, my Fluff and Angst were nearly equal when aggregated. This year, there's a clear distinction!
A few more shifts since last year: Humor jumped from #12 in 2024 to #5 in 2025; Domestic Fluff and Angst With a Happy Ending swapped places, but Character Study remained at #8; and Adventure replaced a couple smut tags that didn't appear this year! Angst is also at only slightly over half of 2024's score (385 compared to 609). I think this is potentially due to a trend I noticed this October: there were far fewer Whumptober fics posted in 2025 compared to 2024 in the LoZ fandom. Perhaps people were writing—or I was seeking out—lighter and happier works during this year of upheaval.
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Top Setting Tags
Post-Canon (84)
Alternate Universe - Modern Setting (77)
Pre-Calamity (74)
Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (70)
Canon Compliant (54)
Post-Breath of the Wild (44)
Alternate Universe (42)
Post-Game: Tears of the Kingdom (35)
Original Legends (31)
Pre-Game: Tears of the Kingdom (31)
Pre-Canon (27)
I use "setting" to refer to when or where a fic takes place! Many of these are predictable for the fandom (ex: temporal tags relating to BotW/TotK to designate when the fic is set, since those games share a fandom tag), and a couple are predictable for me specifically, like the prevalence of Modern AU (my weakness).
Something new this year is the inclusion of the tag Original Legends! If you're not already familiar, check out the @expanding-hyrule blog—you've probably read an Original Legend yourself without realizing it. The increased popularity of the tag this year is partially due to my own tastes—I have always loved original LoZ quests/storylines/incarnations!—but also due to the growth of that archive, so kudos to the EH community!
A call to action: last year, College/University AU was my #9 Setting tag, and #58 overall. This year, it did not even appear in my top 100 tags. Please, please, LoZ writers, supply me with some quality College AU in 2026!!
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Top Relationship Trope Tags
Established Relationship (73)
Slow Burn (71)
Mutual Pining (60)
Pining (50)
First Kiss (39)
Friends to Lovers (34)
Idiots in Love (26)
Eventual Romance (25)
Falling in Love (24)
Pre-Relationship (23)
Love Confessions (22)
Yearning (21)
Flirting (19)
This year Established Relationship and Slow Burn were nearly the same, with ER on top, whereas in 2024 I read substantially more Slow Burn! Enemies to Lovers was #7 last year and did not appear in 2025's top tags at all. And for some reason there are three different ways of writing "Character A wants Character B so bad" this year lmfao. I love fandom <3
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Top Fun Tags (including romantic tropes)
Selectively Mute Link (92)
zelink (82)
Zelda (Legend of Zelda) Needs A Hug (77)
Established Relationship (73)
Link (Legend of Zelda) Needs a Hug (72)
Slow Burn (71)
Talking Link (Legend of Zelda) (69)
Mutual Pining (60)
Grief/Mourning (58)
Pining (50)
Link (Legend of Zelda) Uses Sign Language (49)
POV Zelda (Legend of Zelda) (48)
POV Link (Legend of Zelda) (46)
One Shot (43)
Canon-Typical Violence (42)
First Kiss (39)
Mute Link (Legend of Zelda) (35)
Friends to Lovers (34)
Zelink Week 2025 (34)
Blood and Injury (33)
Zelgan Week 2025 (33)
Explicit Sexual Content (29)
Found Family (29)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD (28)
Drabble (27)
Idiots in Love (26)
Eventual Romance (25)
Falling In Love (24)
Legend of Link Fic Fight 2025 (24)
Pre-Relationship (23)
Introspection (22)
Love Confessions (22)
Canonical Character Death (22)
Yearning (21)
Trans Link (Legend of Zelda) (21)
Zelink Week (20)
Flirting (19)
Eventual Smut (19)
Oral Sex (19)
King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule's Bad Parenting (18)
Minor Character Death (18)
Some observations:
The tags about how Link communicates (Selectively Mute, Talking, Uses Sign Language, and Mute) appeared in the same order in 2025 as they did in 2024!
Canon-Typical Violence holds the exact same spot (#15) both years. I must be pretty consistent in the amount of action-oriented fic I read!
Despite reading fewer fics overall in 2025 (1304) than 2024 (1744), I had almost as many PTSD fics this year (28) as last year (33) lol.
Introspection is new, and likely tied to Character Study fics! I'd even hazard a guess that the genfic brought about by the Legend of Link Fic Fight 2025 is the main reason this tag made an increased appearance.
There are more tags warning about Character Death (Canonical and Minor)! Neither appeared on my top tags in 2024. My guess is that most of the Canonical deaths are in reference to BotW's Calamity. I'm curious whether I was just reading more death in 2025 than years previous; if more people were writing death than in years previous; or if people were tagging death more? Only the third option really supports my theory that people were writing (and I was reading) more lighthearted content than in 2024.
Lots of fandom events, including debuts! Zelink Week (and its applicable year) appeared on my list in both 2024 and 2025, but others have shifted. New in 2025 are Zelgan Week and Legend of Link Fic Fight, both of which had their inaugural year in 2025! In a shift from last year, Whumptober and Zelinktines both appeared in my top tags in 2024 but not in 2025 (likely due to both events having fewer fics posted to them in general).
Last year, I deleted a few tags I felt didn't contribute anything to my understanding of my reading habits. This year, I'm keeping some in, with a question attached. Reader, if you use the tags zelink, POV [Link or Zelda], or One Shot, could you explain why in a Tumblr Ask? What does tagging zelink accomplish that the relationship tag Link/Zelda isn't already doing? Why tag whose POV it is, when I imagine your summary must already demonstrate who the protagonist is? Why tag One Shot when the reader can see the "Chapters: 1/1", or filter fics by word count and completion to find a more complete list of oneshots? Clearly lots of people find these tags useful or evocative, so I'm very interested to learn reasonings behind this!
A Few Final Observations
I read 895 oneshots in 2025, meaning that 68.6% of the fics I read were oneshots. The reason for this is likely because I literally keep up with the LoZ archive on a daily basis, and read lots of oneshots (which are more commonly posted than multichaps) as they're published! If a long multichap I haven't seen before is updated, I might add it to my Want to Read pile and never get to it, in an effort to keep up with the archive in general.
Of all the fics I read in 2025, my average word count was 16,493 words. My median word count was 3,082 words. This helps to demonstrate just how common oneshots and other short fics were in comparison to multichaps!
I likely wrote at least 1500 comments on fics in 2025! I received 1471 replies from authors in 2025, meaning that the total could be far more than 1500 depending on how many authors did not reply to comments I left on their works.
I read more than 21 million words of fic in 2025, according to my graphic. This is the equivalent of 210 fantasy novels.
1180 of the Legend of Zelda fics I read in 2025 were last published in 2025. A total of 8,976 fics were posted to the LoZ archive in 2025, meaning that I read 13% of all fics written for LoZ in 2025. When filtering out the Linked Universe fandom tag (because I don't read LU, and don't believe it to count as LoZ overall), there were 6,468 fics posted, meaning I read 18% of all fics. When filtering out non-English language fics (because EN is the only language I can read), I read 19% of all fics. If one filters out crossovers (because many of them are simply smut repositories), I read 21.8% of all LoZ fics posted to AO3 in 2025.
In conclusion, you may refer to me as the LoZ Archivist. :)
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Again, if you want to see your own AO3 Wrapped data (perhaps at the end of 2026, as we're nearly 1/12 of the way through it already, whoops!) you can access it via Google Colab here! Enjoy!
