Femslash week in review: 2020-12-22 - 2020-12-28

[letzan]

High-level stats for week of 2020-12-22 - 2020-12-28

• Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 7592 (+988 from last week)


• Works I classified F/F: 4918 (+739 from last week) (2769 new, 2149 continued)


• 1.26% of all 390683 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

• Work count is not just an all-time high, but an all-time high by a lot. The previous record was 6846 new works in a week. That's not Yuletide, for the simple reason that Yuletide isn't that big. Maybe there are other end-of-year exchanges I'm not tracking, or maybe it's just that a lot of the AO3 audience had a week off work and posted more.
  
• Supergirl is back in a commanding first place for the second week in a row. It definitely looks like things are in the process of getting shaken up at the top, but who knows?
  
• A few more Yuletide recs: Héloïse/Marianne AU with daemons and a somewhat alternate ending. Obligatory Kristy/Mary Anne rec. Huntress/Black Canary getting bad relationship advice from Harley.
  

Most active classified fandoms:

Rank	Fandom (and top three ships)	Rating for week	F/F works updated this week	% of F/F works updated this week	F/F:M/M ratio (all works)
1	Supergirl (TV 2015) Kara Danvers,Lena Luthor (174) Alex Danvers,Maggie Sawyer (54) Alex Danvers,Kara Danvers (35)	66.28	300 (+104)	1.24%	29:1
2 (↑)	Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Ginny Weasley,Luna Lovegood (33) Bellatrix Black Lestrange,Hermione Granger (23) Hermione Granger,Pansy Parkinson (18)	52.73	180 (+22)	1.80%	1:7
3 (↓)	RWBY Blake Belladonna,Yang Xiao Long (66) Ruby Rose (RWBY),Weiss Schnee (34) Penny Polendina,Ruby Rose (RWBY) (18)	46.05	135 (+30)	1.40%	3:1
4 (↑2)	Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types Fukawa Touko,Naegi Komaru (17) Mioda Ibuki,Tsumiki Mikan (13) Celestia Ludenberg,Kirigiri Kyouko (12)	41.04	90 (+21)	2.53%	1:3
5	She-Ra: Princess Of Power Adora (She-Ra),Catra (She-Ra) (176) Perfuma (She-Ra),Scorpia (She-Ra) (28) Adora (She-Ra),Glimmer (She-Ra) (10) Netossa (She-Ra),Spinnerella (She-Ra) (10)	34.33	187 (+11)	2.76%	5:1
6 (↓2)	Avatar: The Last Airbender Azula (Avatar),Ty Lee (Avatar) (28) Mai (Avatar),Ty Lee (Avatar) (21) Kya II (Avatar),Lin Beifong (20)	32.54	92 (-5)	3.80%	1:1.8
7	The Owl House (Cartoon) Amity Blight,Luz Noceda (122) Emira Blight,Viney (The Owl House) (21) Boscha (The Owl House),Willow Park (20)	29.67	136 (+0)	6.55%	18:1
8	The 100 (TV) Clarke Griffin,Lexa (The 100) (100) Anya (The 100),Raven Reyes (16) Luna (The 100),Raven Reyes (14)	28.40	118 (-4)	0.88%	5:1
9 (↑2)	BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game) Imai Lisa,Minato Yukina (6) Aoba Moca,Shirasagi Chisato (4) Hazawa Tsugumi,Hikawa Sayo (3) Ichigaya Arisa,Toyama Kasumi (3) Udagawa Tomoe,Uehara Himari (3)	26.43	28 (+1)	1.05%	225:1
10 (⇑)	Love Live! Sunshine!! Kurosawa Dia,Tsushima Yoshiko (5) Sakurauchi Riko,Watanabe You (5) Kurosawa Ruby,Matsuura Kanan (3) Matsuura Kanan,Ohara Mari (3) Takami Chika,Watanabe You (3)	26.04	33 (?)	1.34%	237:1
11 (↓2)	僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Jirou Kyouka,Yaoyorozu Momo (58) Asui Tsuyu,Uraraka Ochako (39) Todoroki Fuyumi,Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko (12)	23.99	125 (-8)	2.16%	1:8
12 (↑3)	Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses Dorothea Arnault,Edelgard von Hresvelg (11) Dorothea Arnault,Petra Macneary (9) Hilda Valentine Goneril,Marianne von Edmund (8)	23.75	54 (+8)	2.27%	1:2
13 (⇑)	Marvel Cinematic Universe Maria Hill,Natasha Romanov (Marvel) (11) Natasha Romanov (Marvel),Wanda Maximoff (8) Angie Martinelli,Peggy Carter (6)	22.79	68 (?)	0.69%	1:8
14 (⇑)	The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms Hope Mikaelson,Josie Saltzman (35) Hope Mikaelson,Lizzie Saltzman (14) Josie Saltzman,Penelope Park (14)	20.47	59 (?)	1.78%	1.5:1
15 (↑2)	Overwatch (Video Game) Angela "Mercy" Ziegler,Moira O'Deorain (6) Emily (Overwatch),Lena "Tracer" Oxton (4) Lena "Tracer" Oxton,Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix (4)	19.75	27 (+1)	0.41%	1:2
16 (↑3)	Once Upon a Time (TV) Emma Swan,Evil Queen | Regina Mills (47) Emma Swan,Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard (3) ...	19.25	60 (+3)	0.41%	9:1
17 (⇑)	Pitch Perfect (Movies) Beca Mitchell,Chloe Beale (47) Aubrey Posen,Stacie Conrad (8) Aubrey Posen,Beca Mitchell (7)	18.96	61 (?)	1.21%	62:1
18 (⇑)	Doctor Who & Related Fandoms Thirteenth Doctor,Yasmin Khan (29) River Song,Thirteenth Doctor (7) Rose Tyler,Thirteenth Doctor (6)	18.90	54 (?)	1.13%	1:2
19 (⇑)	Batman - All Media Types Harleen Quinzel,Pamela Isley (20) Cassandra Cain,Stephanie Brown (7) ...	18.06	42 (?)	1.76%	1:9
20 (⇑)	Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game) Nakasu Kasumi,Ousaka Shizuku,Tennouji Rina (5) Takasaki Yuu,Uehara Ayumu (5) Nakasu Kasumi,Ousaka Shizuku (4) Uehara Ayumu,Yuki Setsuna (4)	17.90	28 (?)	12.96%	217:1

What is all this again?

Mission statement: help out people (including myself) who read fic on AO3 and wish they were reading more femslash, but don't know what's out there. Plan: do a week-in-review post every week which contains general stats about new fic and a few recs.

I am starting with the list of all works on ao3.org which were updated within a given week, and which were categorized as F/F, but I am not reporting stats on 100% of those works --- I'm narrowing down to a subset of fandoms and works for which it's tractable for me to actually look at all the character tags, and then I'm excluding ships containing what I believe to be cis-male characters. I'll give overall stats about how many works I've reported on and how many I've excluded. If you think I'm excluding a fandom you care about, please let me know!

More info about column headers:

• Fandom (and top three ships): If multiple tags that seem to correspond to the same fandom (e.g. "The 100 (TV)" and "The 100 Series - Kass Morgan") show up in my ranking, I report the one with the best rating. There's totally a judgment call here about what things are "the same fandom" --- I'm going to err on the side of reporting more different things when I can, but I won't skip something with a lot of works which aren't otherwise accounted for. When measuring the top three F/F ships in a fandom, I count both "A/B" and "A & B" as "A,B". Ties are broken by including all of the ships, but I only include a maximum of five ships per fandom to keep the table length reasonable.


• Rating for week: I like fandoms with ensemble casts, so I'm doing a weighted sum based on the logarithm of number of works by pairing, so that fandoms with several different F/F pairings get a significant bonus.


• F/F/ works updated this week: includes both new and continued works.


• % of F/F works updated this week: This is the percentage of all F/F works I've ever categorized in the fandom, so a big number probably means a brand new fandom, or at least one which was unusually active this week.


• F/F:M/M ratio (all works): This ratio is taken from all works in the fandom tag, and is just a hint to readers about how F/F-dominant the fandom is. Obviously there's no reason you can't find great F/F works in a predominantly male fandom (we've all read those), but the ratio may give a hint about whether the F/F pairing is likely to be the dominant one in a work with multiple pairings. Note that the "F/F" and "M/M" numbers for this column are taken directly from AO3, not from my compiled character and ship stats. (Since I don't categorize M/M works, I couldn't do it any other way.)

Known bugs which affect the accuracy of this data:

• AO3 does not modify the "last updated" date of a work in a revealed exchange when the exchange reveals, so my database can miss exchange works entirely if they're last edited awhile before the exchange works are revealed. This probably leads to a serious undercount of works in revealed exchanges.


• When canonical names for characters and ships change over time, my database can wind up containing entries for both ships. This makes ratings inaccurate.

Share and enjoy, and let me know what I can do to make this more useful.