Most used tags!

Digging up the links to so many DW tags got me wondering what tags I've actually used more than any others over here. It will probably look different after I'm done cross-posting, and maybe I'll check again then. But as of right now, the evening of 29 April 2024, this is every tag I've used over 100 times since my first post on 19 July 2009—

A. Tags used over 500 times:

1. #site: tumblr

This is far and away my most commonly used tag (used 1739 times), mainly because I've been cross-posting old Tumblr posts to Dreamwidth for years now, but also because I use it for every post referring to basically anything going on at Tumblr as well as the cross-posts.

2. #fandom: star wars

This feels like the "real" #1 tag, used 668 times and beating out all other fandoms (and indeed, everything). I suspect this is partly because I got into SW after making my DW account, but at a time when journal fandom was still quite active, so one of my most intense periods of SW fannishness was based here (or synced with lj, so the content is here as well). And then when you add in SW cross-posts and "overflow" material from Tumblr once Disney SW got kicking, especially after Rogue One, it's enough for the SW tag to jump ahead of every other tag but the Tumblr one.

3. #genre: meta

I periodically whine about feeling like I'm perceived more as a meta writer than a fic writer, even though I care more about fic and derive far more joy from it ... but I've tagged 667 posts with the meta tag and far less with any fic-related tag. In fairness, I originally conceived as "meta" as basically any post talking about a canon or fandom that wasn't fic, no matter how abrupt, so things I wouldn't really describe as "meta" these days fell under the tag until pretty recently. Even so, I've posted a lot more serious meta than fic!

4. #fandom: austen

The only surprise here is that this one wasn't even higher. I've tagged 640 posts with it over the years, and if you've followed me on Tumblr for awhile, you know there's only more coming. I'm pretty sure it'll beat out SW in the end for sheer quantity.

5. #fandom: middle-earth

While the previous three tags are clustered pretty closely together, there's a jump from the 640 Austen posts to a mere 505 Tolkien posts. This is partly because a bunch of my Tolkien stuff never made it onto Dreamwidth (that is, it happened on sites that are now dead or on lj before Dreamwidth was ever founded, or much later, was posted over at Tumblr and much of it hasn't made its way back over here). It's still one of my biggest fandoms, obviously; SW, Austen, and Tolkien will probably always be the Big Three for me.

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An unexpected benefit of early modern studies: perspective

I was feeling a bit gloomy about how, in many respects, my life is only just beginning at 38.

Meanwhile, in an article I was reading for my dissertation, there was a reference to the early seventeenth century pop culture concept of Lucrezia Borgia, with a footnote about Actual Historical Lucrezia Borgia (aka Lucrècia). I don't think it actually listed her age at death, but I already knew what it was, and reading about her reminded me of everything that happened to and around her before her premature death at age 39. At that point, she had already outlived most of her brothers and one of her two sisters.

This isn't an "everyone was dying of old age in their 30s back then" thing, which is a wildly inaccurate take on the human lifespan (the greater likelihood of dying young =/= 35-year lifespan). Lucrècia died young. She struggled through years of difficult pregnancies, including after providing her husband with an heir, and eventually died a few days after delivering a daughter who also died. Sarah Bradford's biography observes that Lucrècia had essentially emerged triumphant over the incredibly complex and daunting obstacles she was faced with throughout her life as a political figure, navigating them all, only for childbirth to kill her as it killed so many other women.

In her life, Lucrècia experienced luxury on a scale that is unimaginable to most people today, or ever. This isn't meant to downplay that, but ... it didn't save her. She was at once influential, resourceful, and profoundly exploited throughout her life in ways that hinged on her gender and culminated in her death, only for her name to be trashed for hundreds of years afterwards. This isn't unique to her, or to her region of the world, or her time, even though there were culturally specific elements at work.

And for all the awful, shitty elements of my life thus far, I'd much rather be facing the beginning of life at this age than the end of it.