You look like yourself but you're somebody else

Apparently, the only thing that gets me to post these days is doing a meme. I have all these things I think about writing down, but I just can't seem to make myself do it.

This is the AO3 top fic meme: List your top fanfic on AO3 for every year, sorted by kudos.

Despite my deep hatred for sorting by kudos, it looks like this (also, I went with 2009 as a start date, due to the fact that I posted a great deal of backdated fic because I've been doing it since the zine days, and all but one of those stories is barely a blip on the radar--Fast and the Furious, you are the perpetual fandom, I swear).

2009
Safe, Band of Brothers, Nixon/Winters
(Though I can't help thinking that if kudos had been a thing at that point, it might have been The Mirrorball Malefaction Misapprehension, The Middleman)

2010
Lesser Angels, Justified
(That was easy--it was the only fic I wrote that year, which was sort of typical then since Yuletide was almost all I could do emotionally in the years after sis_r died)

2011
The Outward Gift, Deadwood, Jane/Joanie
(Again, this was easy, but also, I think a lot of the kudos have come recently because of the Deadwood movie on HBO)

2012
Who Only Stand and Wait, The Avengers, Pepper and Loki
(My first foray into writing what I had no idea would become a major fandom for me!)

2013
Island Time, Pacific Rim, Herc/Stacker
(Man, you know, I look back on this and just...that feeling of finally being super!excite! fannish again. What a feeling.)

2014
I can't remember how this started (but I can tell you exactly how it ends), Captain America movies, Steve/Bucky
(This is literally the only thing you could ever even call slightly popular so it's no surprise; I've consistenly heard from people that they despise Groundhog Day stories but this one made them a believer, so...)

2015
Your 21st-Century Boy, Captain America movies, Steve/Bucky
(No surprise again, since this has the most kudos of anything on my page, which baffles me)

2016
War Dogs, Captain America movies, Steve/Bucky
(I think the only reason for this is that this Christmas story was in a list of holiday fics compiled by a popular fic finding tumblr and was reblogged by someone popular)

2017
Save my life and I'll save yours, Captain America movies, Steve/Bucky
(My first reverse big bang, and so I think it got the boost from that, also, people seemed to really want fix-its for Civil War)

2018
Anything to Make You Smile, Black Panther and Captain America movies, Bucky & Shuri
(This has literally one more kudos than lucida, obscura, the story I poured my heart and soul into for the Cap RBB that year and that is one of the best things I've written but hardly anyone wants to read, how typical)

2019
Cellies, Captain America movies and Thor movies, Bucky and Loki
(Sigh. I've hardly written anything this year, but it's that same thing--story you pour everything into: crickets, easy breezy story even with an unusual pairing, people read.)


The most interesting thing about this is what a crazy amount of difference it makes when someone who's actually popular reblogs a tumblr post or recs your fic on a recs page. For someone like me, there's an astronomical difference in eyeballs on the fic (or vid) and thus positive responses. And those events are rarer than hen's teeth.