Raethanbhanneth - Insert Cool Thing Here

I do the opposite of gatekeeping, I’m not going to shut up until you like this thing as much as I do

Suicide of Lucretia

— by Meester met de Papegaai

The state of the Nine-Fingers Keene tag on AO3 | additional notes & thoughts

go away forever with me

Sappho, If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho (tr. by Anne Carson)

I'd do anything, literally ANYTHING, to hear Jaheira calling me a good girl

Could you reblog this if you enjoy seeing your writer friends ramble about their wips on your dash?

I decided to hop on tumblr because of @thecubspeaks

I read all of their Jaheira x Nine-Fingers fics (every single one like they were ambrosia and I was a starving goddess) and was immediately consumed by the ship. It landed me here. The creatures on tumblr (said affectionately) are far nicer than the humans I have to deal with in real life.

About a year ago, I started talking to one of the best RP partners I've ever had. It all began thanks to one of my longfics. They told me that, during the couple of months it took me to finish it, receiving the notification that I posted was to them like a sign that it'd be a good day.

A couple of months ago, one of my readers invited me to a Discord server about writing they created. I haven't interacted much with other people on the server, but we've been chatting pretty much everyday. They've gifted me some really cool stuff and, even more important than that, they've told me my stories have kept them company now that they feel disconnected from most of their writing buddies.

This morning I woke up to a message by another reader. They're going through pretty serious health issues and thanked me for writing my fluffy series because it's become their comfort through these terrifying times.

What am I trying to say with all of this? WRITE. Just keep writing. Write your silly, self-indulgent stories. Pour your heart and soul in every single one of them. Even if you don't think they're good enough. Even if you believe no-one else is interested in reading them. Do it. You have no idea how many days you may be improving, how many smiles you may be causing.

And no, the fact that it's only fanfic doesn't mean them any less worthy or "not real writing." It's still art. Your art.

Oh, and if you're on the other side, if you're one of those who have been touched by a story, let us know. Tell your authors how they made you laugh or how you felt less lonely because of them. This is exactly why we write.

notes and thoughts on the Nine-Fingers Keene tag dive

First, the unpretty Sheets chart:

For a deeper explanation of how I break down the roles, you can see this post here; and here is a comparison of NF's tag accuracy (percentage of main + side works) vs the rest I've done:

Raphael: 75% | Nocturne: 71% | Nine-Fingers Keene: 62% | Aylin/Isobel: 56% | Minthara: 54% | Alfira: 44% | Jaheira: 36% | Araj: ~27%

Please note that at this point, Minthara's is ~9 months out of date, the rest between then and now. Take these as a general baseline versus a hard truth.

Similarly to Nocturne, Act 3 easy-ish-to-miss Nine-Fingers Keene steps neatly out of the broader fandom spotlight and into the hands of people who actually like her.

Actually - I believe a lot of people genuinely like the women of BG3. But I also believe people do not care about them, which becomes really obvious with the amount of reverse-thought-criming in some characters' tags (Jaheiraaaa). AO3 users writing about Astele Keene, especially in her more recent works, like her and they care about her.

The minor role tags were in large part due to: a character, usually Tav, has a connection to the seedy underbelly of the city, and they need to call in a favor from NF. They will meet with her and/or discuss her and/or think about her for a few paragraphs.

Nine-Fingers' main ship was, predictably, with Jaheira. Her second largest fic-status was no tagged ship at all. The other ship-fics were individual one-shots with various characters (no repeat ships).

Regardless of relationship status, she's a girl's girl for sure:

This is subdivided, so works tagged both 'gen' and 'f/f' for example are counted as one of each; 76% of her works are not only ff, 76% of her works include the ff category.

And if we change this to only include works that actively ship Nine-Fingers:

Something else interesting is that Nine-Finger's tag is small enough that I could screenshot the entirety of my Roles column:

(rotated so it's oldest -> newest by post date. main, side, minor, mistag)

We can see her early tags were all side, background, a few mistags; the most recent works being on the other end of the spectrum, almost entirely fics truly about Nine-Fingers; and a pretty smooth gradient in the middle.

I am not going to lie, at first I was like yay looks like people are finally learning to tag :-) but, what this more likely indicates is just the fading popularity of a two-year-old game -- especially with newer shinier fandoms pulling audience from the bg3 pool. Users posting more recent BG3 fanfic are primarily those still standing in the now-settled dust, writing about favorite characters/settings/lore, with a drop in the general kind of 'this is my Tav's epic love story from beginning to end (with every NPC mentioned tagged as well)!' written and posted on a new-fandom high. I imagine that brand of enthusiastic-cum-careless writers are probably posting the same but with Rook now? Sympathy to my Veilguard mutuals.

Like I mentioned above, it's been almost a year since I posted my first Minthara infographic. It will be interesting to go back this summer and see what's changed for her as well, and if the above holds up for an unavoidable Act 1 character like her versus a more missable, late-game char like Nine-Fingers.