High-level stats for week of 2018-11-27 - 2018-12-03
- Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 3675 (-77 from last week)
- Works I classified F/F: 2400 (+16 from last week) (1219 new, 1181 continued)
- 1.04% of all 230770 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week

A few callouts this week:
- All of the usual suspects except Supergirl and RWBY are out of the top five this week in favor of an occasional Harry Potter surge, and both of She-Ra and Doctor Who reaching their highest ranks yet.
- Lardo/Caitlin Farmer trapped in an art studio
- Ginny/Luna post-canon where Luna is a tattoo artist
- Valkyrie/Nebula meet on Sakaar and wind up in a heist scenario
- There was a Star Wars Rare Pairs exchange this week, so read around in that. (It's presumably responsible for Star Wars showing up in the top 20 for the first time in six months.) Here are a few post-last-Jedi fics: Leia/Holdo backstory, Leia/Holdo fixit (with backstory), Phasma/Rey post-canon
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 (109) Alex Danvers,Maggie Sawyer (50) Alex Danvers,Kara Danvers (15) | 70.54 | 168 (-5) | 1.16% | 27:1 |
| 2 | RWBY Blake Belladonna,Yang Xiao Long (31) Ruby Rose (RWBY),Weiss Schnee (28) Weiss Schnee,Yang Xiao Long (14) | 56.50 | 91 (+0) | 2.05% | 5:1 |
| 3 (↑6) | Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Ginny Weasley,Luna Lovegood (12) Hermione Granger,Pansy Parkinson (7) Bellatrix Black Lestrange,Hermione Granger (5) | 36.55 | 68 (+0) | 1.26% | 1:9 |
| 4 (↑6) | She-Ra: Princess Of Power Adora (She-Ra),Catra (She-Ra) (85) Adora (She-Ra),Glimmer (She-Ra) (19) Adora (She-Ra),Catra (She-Ra),Glimmer (She-Ra) (4) | 31.41 | 100 (-18) | 35.09% | 9:1 |
| 5 (↑9) | Doctor Who Thirteenth Doctor,Yasmin Khan (79) River Song,Thirteenth Doctor (18) Rose Tyler,Thirteenth Doctor (7) | 30.26 | 114 (+20) | 4.65% | 1:1.8 |
| 6 (↓3) | Steven Universe (Cartoon) Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe),Peridot (Steven Universe) (12) Jasper (Steven Universe),Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe) (4) ... | 30.12 | 28 (-10) | 0.58% | 15:1 |
| 7 (↓) | The 100 (TV) Clarke Griffin,Lexa (The 100) (77) Anya (The 100),Raven Reyes (21) Costia (The 100),Lexa (The 100) (4) | 29.72 | 81 (+4) | 0.77% | 5:1 |
| 8 (↑8) | Dragon Age: Inquisition Female Warden (Dragon Age),Leliana (Dragon Age) (8) Cassandra Pentaghast,Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age) (4) Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age),Josephine Montilyet (4) Female Mahariel,Leliana (Dragon Age) (4) | 29.44 | 28 (+6) | 0.87% | 1:3 |
| 9 (↓) | Overwatch (Video Game) Angela "Mercy" Ziegler,Fareeha "Pharah" Amari (15) Angela "Mercy" Ziegler,Moira O'Deorain (12) Emily (Overwatch),Lena "Tracer" Oxton (8) | 29.26 | 48 (-3) | 0.96% | 1:2 |
| 10 (↓3) | Marvel Cinematic Universe Angie Martinelli,Peggy Carter (9) Natasha Romanov (Marvel),Wanda Maximoff (9) Jessica Jones,Patricia Walker (Marvel) (6) | 28.75 | 65 (+1) | 1.01% | 1:8 |
| 11 (↓7) | Once Upon a Time (TV) Emma Swan,Evil Queen | Regina Mills (66) Dorothy Gale (Once Upon a Time),Red Riding Hood | Ruby (4) Alice | Tilly,Robin | Margot (3) Aurora (Once Upon a Time),Mulan (Once Upon a Time) (3) | 27.21 | 77 (-8) | 0.65% | 9:1 |
| 12 (↑7) | American Horror Story Cordelia Foxx | Cordelia Goode,Misty Day (26) Cordelia Foxx,Misty Day (8) Madison Montgomery,Zoe Benson (8) | 26.43 | 43 (-4) | 7.48% | 3:1 |
| 13 | Wynonna Earp (TV) Nicole Haught,Waverly Earp (66) Waverly Earp,Wynonna Earp (18) Nicole Haught,Wynonna Earp (10) | 25.36 | 74 (+2) | 2.56% | 28:1 |
| 14 (↓3) | 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Jirou Kyouka,Yaoyorozu Momo (56) Asui Tsuyu,Uraraka Ochako (41) Uraraka Ochako,Yaoyorozu Momo (4) | 24.78 | 91 (+12) | 5.39% | 1:8 |
| 15 (↓10) | Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types Chabashira Tenko,Yumeno Himiko (9) ... | 24.23 | 25 (-10) | 1.80% | 1:3 |
| 16 (↓4) | Life Is Strange (Video Game) Chloe Price (Life Is Strange),Maxine "Max" Caulfield (29) Chloe Price (Life Is Strange),Rachel Amber (12) Chloe Price (Life Is Strange),Maxine "Max" Caulfield,Rachel Amber (6) Maxine "Max" Caulfield,Victoria Chase (Life is Strange) (6) | 23.13 | 40 (-1) | 1.52% | 9:1 |
| 17 (↓2) | Pitch Perfect (Movies) Beca Mitchell,Chloe Beale (24) Aubrey Posen,Stacie Conrad (5) Aubrey Posen,Chloe Beale (4) Beca Mitchell,Emily Junk (4) | 23.04 | 34 (-4) | 0.98% | 85:1 |
| 18 (⇑) | Star Wars - All Media Types Amilyn Holdo,Leia Organa (10) Phasma (Star Wars),Rey (Star Wars) (4) Rey (Star Wars),Rose Tico (4) | 20.49 | 40 (+28) | 2.59% | 1:9 |
| 19 (↓2) | Love Live! School Idol Project Ayase Eli,Toujou Nozomi (7) Nishikino Maki,Yazawa Nico (5) Hoshizora Rin,Koizumi Hanayo (3) Minami Kotori,Sonoda Umi (3) | 19.17 | 13 (+1) | 0.66% | 116:1 |
| 20 (⇑) | Archie Comics Cheryl Blossom,Toni Topaz (37) Cheryl Blossom,Veronica Lodge (5) Betty Cooper,Veronica Lodge (4) | 18.19 | 48 (-1) | 2.56% | 1:1.1 |
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.)
Share and enjoy, and let me know what I can do to make this more useful.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 02:45 pm (UTC)Couple questions:
1. I'm curious about the inclusion of & for the intrafandom ship ranking -- what's the story behind that? Do you find it makes a difference to rankings?
2. Would you be down with putting some interests in your profile for discoverability, or would you prefer to fly under the radar a bit? I'm super glad I found you, but I only found you because I was doing a sitewide text search for some character names that made it into those top-ranked ships -- I don't think most people do that.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 01:23 am (UTC)Re your questions (wow, ampersands look weird in this font. Another thing for the todo list): I don't actually know if including both / and & makes a difference, because I haven't tried doing anything else. My assumption is that whether someone tags a work A/B or A & B or both, is a lot less relevant to the kind of relationship the fic is about than the characters involved. I'm only looking at works which are categorized F/F, so I should only be picking up works where the author thought there was some kind of significant relationship between female characters. Obviously, it means people who don't like sibling-cest can't look at the rankings and know at a glance how many of the "Waverly Earp,Wynonna Earp" people were / vs &, but it's always easy enough to click through and use AO3's filters. My primary interest is in ensemble fandoms with a number of female characters, so I wanted to make the ranking more sensitive to ships with different characters, than to qualitatively different ships with the same characters.
Good idea about putting interests in my profile --- I'll get on that! I've really only just set up shop here. I've been running the project on tumblr for about a year, but I wanted to start cross-posting for people who might be moving away from tumblr. So I haven't customized anything at all (including that font, ahem), and will do so.
Thanks again for commenting!