Ever wish you could sort by number of reviews at ff.net? Well, curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what the most popular fics in the fandom were, so I trawled through hundreds of pages of results and made a list of those fics that had 1,000 or more reviews.

Before you ask: it took about eight hours total, and yes, clearly I'm a massive dork. Still, I bet you're curious about the results, aren't you?

Well, here they are. I noted the ship or genre for each one. I limited the search to fics with 40k or more words, so there are probably a handful of fics that slipped through the cracks. 12,900 of the 403,000 fics on ff.net had more than 40k words. Of those, 872 (or 6.7%) had at least 1,000 reviews. The results don't include stories from other sites or stories that have been pulled from ff.net for some reason.

The results, I thought, were surprising:

Primary Ship/Genre.......# of Fics:......Percentage:
No ship/odd ship*............273...............31.3%
Draco/Hermione...............111...............12.7%
Harry/Draco SLASH...........84................9.6%
Lily/James.......................78................8.9%
Severitus (usually no ship).70................8.0%
Harry/Ginny.....................70................8.0%
Snape/Hermione...............45................5.1%
Harry/Hermione................43................4.9%
Harry/Snape SLASH..........28................3.2%
Other SLASH...................26................3.0%
Draco/Ginny....................22................2.5%
Harry/Voldemort SLASH.....15................1.7%
Harry/Tonks.....................7.................0.8%

*This category includes Harry/Fleur, Harry/Luna, Harry/multi, and the child fics, time travel fics, and general fics that have no ship.

Draco/Hermione? Lily/James? Seriously? I've never read a single story that focused on either pairing. There's a whole lot of slash in there too, but I'm a bit surprised it wasn't worse. Only 17.5% of the most reviewed fics were slash.

Still, the fandom is obviously overflowing with Snape and Draco fangirls. They are the main characters in 41% of the most popular stories.

Those percentages derive from only the top 872 fics. There are over 400,000 fics on the site, so they don't necessarily give us an accurate picture of the entire fandom. Still, I suspect the numbers wouldn't change dramatically if we included everything. There's virtually no difference between the pairing percentages of the top 100 fics and the top 872.

Anyway, I won't post the whole list for obvious reasons. But here's the top 100 most-reviewed fics on ff.net, as of 6/30/09:

Congrats to nonjon for being the top DLPer with A Black Comedy in 43rd. He's almost as popular as the 5th-most popular Harry/Draco slasher. :awesome


Prominent DLPers who made the list:
nonjon
A Black Comedy 43rd 3779
Browncoat, Green Eyes 65th 3249
You Did What! 554th 1291

jbern
The Lie I've Lived 90th 2926
To Fight the Coming Darkness 177th 2197
Bungle in the Jungle 394th 1553

shezza
The Denarian Knight 422nd 1490
The Denarian Renegade 430th 1476
The Denarian Lord 518th 1351

dellacouer
HP and the World That Waits 339th 1662
It's All Relative on the Hellmouth 838th 1024

LT2000
Dakaath: Prince of Darkness 162nd 2293

Taliath
Young Again: The Rewrite 300th 1765

Heather Sinclair
Sacrifices to Be Made 412th 1511

Mr.Riddler
Secret of the Male Veela 652nd 1193

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sorry if I missed anyone here. Chime in if I overlooked your fic.

My favorite titles from the whole list: Whelp II: The Wrath of Snape, Unicorn Child (Harry is raised by a herd of unicorns), and 10 Ways to Kill Draco Malfoy (sadly, a Dramione romance).

EDIT: Sorry about the lack of columns on the lists. They weren't formatted that way. Evidently the forum doesn't like spaces, and the tab button doesn't work properly when making a post.

EDIT 2: That's not a typo at at the top of the list. The top two fics are tied at 11,131 reviews. Bizarre.

 

Dear God, I've been reading fanfic for too long. Particularly when I can look at fanfics I read back when I liked Dramione fics (don't ask) and wonder how on earth they received so many reviews.

That being said, I did recognize a few fics on that list, which have occasionally popped up on DLP (or are lodged quite firmly in the Recycling Bin):

1. "Make A Wish" - Rorschach's Blot (and not especially bad, either - think it's in the Recycling Bin or in the Library, not sure)

2. "Unsung Hero" (don't remember who wrote this, but if it's the one I think it is... god, I'm getting old... hang on, I found this fic - AND I FUCKING HATED THAT CONTRIVED PIECE OF SHIT)

3. "Partially Kissed Hero" (this, I know is in the Recycling Bin. And considering I can't stand that piece of shit, that'll be where it'll stay)

4. "The Moment It Began" - Sindie (as the lone semi-Lily/Snape shipper on DLP, I know this fic very well. Sindie did a decent job writing it, and it stands as one of the cornerstones of that genre (except for the ending, which MAJORLY pissed me off))

5. Miranda Flairgold's fics (both of those two monoliths are here, unsurprisingly. And considering neither of them could be considered good fics (or HP fanfics, but whatever), they're firmly stuck in the Recycling Bin)

6. "Lord of Caer Azkaban" (I'm pretty sure that's in the library here... or maybe not)

7. "Harry Potter and the Hero's Path" - JackofDiamonds (this is in the library, I'm almost positive of that; pity the guy dropped of the face of planet and hasn't updated in goddamn ages (consensus is he died))

8. "The Hogwarts Blog" (it was good for a laugh - yeah, it was pretty terrible, not gonna lie, but it was pretty funny at times)

Shame some of the more epic fics, the ones that really defined their genres (and I mean the GOOD fics) aren't seen as often as all the fangirl tripe, but I guess that's what you can expect in a fandom like this.

Oh well. Prayers are that Wastelands of Time earns its place in that lofty 1,000 review crowd.

 

You are absolutely, beyond a shadow a doubt, completely fucking crazy if you spent 8 hours on that o_o. Well done, I guess.

Interesting results.

 

Fuck me...

 

This is cool. Sounds like something I would do. Good job.

 

I have read (or at least read a few chapters of) way too many of those fics.
I'd say I have too much time on my hands, but obviously there's worse :awesome

Great work, though !

 

Pity they removed My Immortal. It would be in top 5 at least.

 

I'm speechless.

Some months ago, I went through the DLP Library and checked if each story was Complete. The job was made a lot easier by a script that tested the DLP story post for ff.net links, followed the link, and searched for the string "Completed". If you ever do this again, it might be wise to consider spending 1 hour on a script rather than 8 on a lot of clicking. (7 hours spent on writing is a new chapter or two).

To make things line up with spaces, surround your text with (CODE) (/CODE) tags, replacing parentheses with square brackets. For instance, you can do stuff like:

Code:

a       b ! c   dildo
e   filch ! gah h

A lot of fandoms (I don't recall if Harry Potter does) have a C2 listing the stories with 1k+ reviews. If there isn't one, perhaps you might wish to make one now that all the heavy lifting is done.

[Edit: You missed Della's fics from the list of DLP authors, Mike. It's All Relative on the Hellmouth and The World that Waits both are 1k+ (and are the best of their respective crossovers). Joe's Wastelands of Time (890 reviews) and jbern's Turn Me Loose (988 reviews) will make the 1k list soon.]

 

Damn, Pers. I don't think anyone wants to have a search where the words 'dildo' and 'Filch' are used in tandem.

You have far too much time on your hands, Mike, to do this. Nevertheless, it's interesting to look at it.

 

If I ever manage to find where I left the source code of a software I wrote a couple of years ago - which was some kind of software which sorted FF.net fanfictions by number of review per chapter (you know, this makes more sense than counting the raw number of reviews). Plus it had a lot of nifty options like filtering slash fanfiction or severitus' on top of having all FF.net criteria options.

I was certain I posted it here but can't find it :/

 

Dear. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Wow Mike. Just.. wow. Your dedication is impressive

I'd certainly agree that the results are 'interesting'. In the ancient Chinese sense of the word, at least.

I'm actually working on something similar for the BTVS/HP section on Twisting the Hellmouth in order to satisfy my own curiosity, except that I'm more interested in the distribution of pairings. So far, my results are as disturbing as yours.

 

Nice.

An Aunt's Love is the most reviewed fic on ff.net?

That piece of shit? really?

I remember Tinn tore the beginning of it to shreds. It's not even worthy of the DLP recycling bin.

 

Better that than the runner-up.

The fanbase for slash is much less reserved and usually more eager to review than the fanbase for a dark story like Dakaath. If someone reads Harry/Draco or Harry/Snape, that's it. There's nothing more shameful they have to hide, so might as well review.

Interesting to see Lily/James have a significant percentage, I didn't realize people were interested in them.

 

Everyone else has already said it. You have too much time on your hands.

Beyond that this made me look at some of the fics and think, hey I vaguely remember that. Maybe, I should recheck it out. Then I come to my senses and realize there was a reason I never went back to it.

Either way thanks for the compilation.

 

They say that ignorance is bliss...and not knowing what fangirls read, nirvana.

 

Yeah, clearly I do have too much time on my hands.

It wasn't that bad, actually. I spread it out over a few days, and played with the list when I was supposed to be working. I hadn't planned initially on making a comprehensive list, but I started encountering hugely popular Dramione fics by the dozen. I wondered just how fucked up the fandom was, so I started over from 40k to see what was out there.

My apologies to dellacouer for missing her fics. They've been added to the original post. It was hit-or-miss whether x-overs showed up on the search. nonjon's fic didn't, but I remembered that it had lots of reviews.

Persy, I played around with the code tags, but it converted everything to bullets and condensed it into a tiny window you had to scroll through. I fail at code. If you and Inky want to conspire and develop some software for searching through ff.net, though, I'd be interested to see the results. I don't have the slightest clue when it comes to programming.

And there is no damn way I'm hosting a C2 with all that crap in it. It would have to be updated constantly, and I don't want my name associated with all that Harry/Draco slash. If someone else wants to do it, be my guest. I'm happy to pass the whole list along.

 

No shit, never ever host a C2. Leave it to the pros. Great work on this, I learned something today.

Got any interesting results on the Naruto World?

 

I have a c2... but it's to keep track of stories that I like. Which means that it's updated seldom and only when I fall over something good. It's more for me than anyone else.

I do actually recognize some of the stories on the list. I've read some of the gen ones and things like This Means War (Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that in the library? I mean, it is Jeconais...) I'm not a big slash fan, so I haven't read many of those, and I don't read Marauder era, so none of those. Not fond of Draco, and I don't get ships like Draco/Hermione and Hermione/Snape...