letzan

High-level stats for week of 2019-03-12 - 2019-03-18

Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 3898 (-165 from last week)

Works I classified F/F: 2349 (-80 from last week) (1042 new, 1307 continued)

0.94% of all 250023 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:

Okay, folks, we're back. What's new? I feel like Critical Role has been in the top 20 more recently than had previously been the case, but I also feel like the ratings in the lower 10 are pretty flat, so anything could jump into the top 20 somewhat arbitrarily.

But let's be serious for a moment: it's going to be the Carol/Maria show here at the Week In Review for the next while, so everyone remain calm. Have some recs from this week: two primarily set immediately post-canon here and here; one primarily backstory; one cute post-canon (warning: lots of conversations with dudes).

Also a cute Carol/Minn-Erva short piece.

Maybe y'all want to know a little more about why I took a week off? As it turns out, that's related too: last week, I was running behind on everything fandom-related because life, so it was the last minute when I needed to be posting, and I figured I'd just pull up the list of Carol/Maria fics from my recs engine, and give a run-down ...and then there were no Carol/Maria listings in my recs engine. Which seemed improbable. I figured out why the Carol/Maria tag had been misclassified reasonably fast, but then I failed to fix it immediately due to a mistake, and broke some of my graphs in the process because of another minor bug. So I would have had to sort that out to get anything postable at all, and I didn't want to post without fixing the initial problem because I wanted to know if MCU was going to get into the top 20 (which I'm still not sure about, because last week's stats are still a little messed up, but I'm not going to worry about it at this point). And I was just out of time, so I decided to punt, which, thanks for understanding, all.
- What was the bug, though? When I query ship tags from AO3, one of the things I look for is whether they are listed as common tags or not. I then assume that "uncommon" tags (the ones that show up in the AO3 tag search UI as something like "This is not a common tag, and cannot be filtered on") can't be F/F ships. The thinking is that if all the AO3 tag-wranglers don't have time to fix up a particular tag, I probably don't have time to do it myself working single-handledly. That's all fine and well; the problem is that I only check whether a tag is uncommon the first time I look it up. So if I happen to look up a tag right after the first time someone uses it when it's still unaudited by the tag wranglers, it doesn't matter how big it gets later, my stats will exclude it forever. Whoops.
- How am I fixing this root cause? Well, I haven't yet, but auditing ship tags has become my new top priority. I started out by doing some low-hanging fruit auditing; trying to find duplicate ship tags in my cache, and I've been using that as a first pass of just cleaning things up a bit. I think the right fix for the uncommon tag problem, is any week a ship appears in new works, look it up again even if I already have it marked uncommon. Ships which are actively appearing in works are the ones which are most likely to have been revisited by AO3. But I'll want to do a one-time audit as well: at this moment, I have 134585 ships in my cache, and 34447 of them are marked uncommon, which presumably means I'm missing enough data to make a difference.
- At the risk of sounding like I'm making excuses for myself: working with AO3's tags is a messy business. The programmers, tag wranglers, and participants do an excellent job of keeping the data rich and usable, but there's just a lot of distance between the data as it's available, and being able to provide meaningful numbers about which fandoms are big, which ships are big, and which fandoms are "ensemble-y", while cranking out new numbers in a reasonable amount of time/effort every week, and sticking with my stated goals of excluding cis dude and RPF ships. On the one hand, this week's bug exposed another gap which should make people nervous if they are counting on these stats for anything important. (Umm, which, maybe don't?) On the other hand, I actually don't feel like my data is that much of a mess, all things considered, and hopefully I'll be able to learn from issues like this and continue to make progress making it more accurate and useful.
- Finally: thanks everyone who left me nice comments and likes on my "taking a week off" post! I'm always pleased to see folks are reading the stats. Another thing I'm going to prioritize in the near future is doing a reader survey to find out what y'all want to see more (or less) of; the amount of work needed to patch known data accuracy bugs means I want to take a break and find out what people actually care most about, as readers.

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 (90) Alex Danvers,Maggie Sawyer (34) Alex Danvers,Kara Danvers (15)	37.39	139 (-32)	0.89%	27:1
2	RWBY Blake Belladonna,Yang Xiao Long (47) Ruby Rose (RWBY),Weiss Schnee (31) Weiss Schnee,Yang Xiao Long (11)	31.16	93 (-6)	1.80%	5:1
3	Steven Universe (Cartoon) Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe),Peridot (Steven Universe) (20) Blue Diamond (Steven Universe),Yellow Diamond (Steven Universe) (9) Ruby (Steven Universe),Sapphire (Steven Universe) (9)	29.57	49 (-4)	0.94%	15:1
4 (↑2)	The 100 (TV) Clarke Griffin,Lexa (The 100) (79) Anya (The 100),Raven Reyes (16) Costia (The 100),Lexa (The 100) (6) Luna (The 100),Raven Reyes (6)	24.48	85 (-3)	0.77%	5:1
5 (↑9)	Doctor Who Thirteenth Doctor,Yasmin Khan (30) River Song,Thirteenth Doctor (7) Kate Lethbridge-Stewart,Petronella Osgood (4)	21.91	51 (+11)	1.64%	1:1.5
6 (↓2)	Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Bellatrix Black Lestrange,Hermione Granger (12) Ginny Weasley,Luna Lovegood (11) Hermione Granger,Narcissa Black Malfoy (5)	21.60	61 (-9)	1.04%	1:8
7 (↑)	Life Is Strange (Video Game) Chloe Price (Life Is Strange),Maxine "Max" Caulfield (35) Chloe Price (Life Is Strange),Rachel Amber (14) Kate Marsh,Victoria Chase (Life is Strange) (7)	21.00	51 (+0)	1.78%	9:1
8 (⇑)	Marvel Cinematic Universe Carol Danvers,Maria Rambeau (15) Angie Martinelli,Peggy Carter (8) Natasha Romanov (Marvel),Wanda Maximoff (8)	19.96	62 (+19)	0.90%	1:8
9 (↓4)	Overwatch (Video Game) Lena "Tracer" Oxton,Widowmaker \| Amélie Lacroix (7) Angela "Mercy" Ziegler,Fareeha "Pharah" Amari (5) Emily (Overwatch),Lena "Tracer" Oxton (5)	18.63	31 (-17)	0.58%	1:2
10 (↑5)	Once Upon a Time (TV) Emma Swan,Evil Queen \| Regina Mills (68) Evil Queen \| Regina Mills,Maleficent (Once Upon a Time) (4) Belle (Once Upon a Time),Red Riding Hood \| Ruby (3) Dorothy Gale (Once Upon a Time),Red Riding Hood \| Ruby (3)	18.37	74 (+6)	0.60%	9:1
11	The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms Josie Saltzman,Penelope Park (43) Hope Mikaelson,Josie Saltzman (29) Hope Mikaelson,Lizzie Saltzman (11)	16.49	72 (+13)	7.23%	1:1.3
12 (⇑)	Fire Emblem: Kakusei \| Fire Emblem: Awakening Lucina (Fire Emblem),Serena \| Severa (3) Liz \| Lissa,Say'ri (Fire Emblem) (2) Noire (Fire Emblem),Serena \| Severa (2) Sumia (Fire Emblem),Tiamo \| Cordelia (2)	16.24	19 (+8)	1.88%	1:1.3
13 (↓3)	She-Ra: Princess Of Power Adora (She-Ra),Catra (She-Ra) (44) Adora (She-Ra),Glimmer (She-Ra) (7) Catra (She-Ra),Entrapta (She-Ra),Scorpia (She-Ra) (3) Netossa (She-Ra),Spinnerella (She-Ra) (3)	15.49	51 (-6)	5.12%	9:1
14 (↑2)	Critical Role (Web Series) Beauregard (Critical Role),Jester (Critical Role) (12) Beauregard (Critical Role),Yasha (Critical Role) (5) Yasha (Critical Role),Zuala (Critical Role) (5)	14.21	25 (+1)	2.83%	1:1.7
15 (↑2)	Pitch Perfect (Movies) Beca Mitchell,Chloe Beale (24) Beca Mitchell,Emily Junk (19) Aubrey Posen,Stacie Conrad (8)	14.16	43 (-9)	1.16%	93:1
16 (↓7)	Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types Akamatsu Kaede,Iruma Miu (3) Chabashira Tenko,Yumeno Himiko (3) Asahina Aoi,Ogami Sakura (2) Enoshima Junko,Ikusaba Mukuro (2) Enoshima Junko,Tsumiki Mikan (2)	13.99	22 (-11)	1.36%	1:3
17 (⇑)	Wynonna Earp (TV) Nicole Haught,Waverly Earp (43) Waverly Earp,Wynonna Earp (14) Nicole Haught,Wynonna Earp (11)	13.88	45 (+2)	1.40%	28:1
18 (↓6)	僕のヒーローアカデミア \| Boku no Hero Academia \| My Hero Academia Jirou Kyouka,Yaoyorozu Momo (41) Asui Tsuyu,Uraraka Ochako (36) Ashido Mina,Uraraka Ochako (5)	13.13	75 (-5)	3.38%	1:8
19 (⇑)	Dragon Age: Inquisition Female Warden (Dragon Age),Leliana (Dragon Age) (4) Leliana (Dragon Age),Warden (Dragon Age) (4) ...	13.02	21 (-4)	0.62%	1:3
20 (⇑)	Homestuck Kanaya Maryam,Rose Lalonde (8) Terezi Pyrope,Vriska Serket (6) Jane Crocker,Roxy Lalonde (4)	12.94	20 (+1)	0.36%	1:3

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.