swissmarg | H/D Fan Fair Travel Fair Stats (Reply)

hd_fan_fair has posted their big reveal, and I'm so excited because I can make stats for something in addition to the usual ratings and word counts, namely... countries! (Yes, I do lead a rather sad and uneventful life.) So join with me in the statistical celebration of the H/D Travel fair!

Fest community:

hd_fan_fair
Theme: Harry/Draco, Travel
Fest type: Open prompting with anonymous claims
Fic length: Minimum 1000 words, no maximum
Rating restrictions: None, all ratings allowed
Creation period: 2 and a half months

There were 48 fics and 14 artworks created for the fest. 3 of the fics had integrated artwork, so actually there were 17 works of fan art created. However, in the following statistics, the fic/art combos are counted together in the fic category.

By rating:

ART
G - 2
PG - 7
PG-13 - 4
R - 1

FIC
G - 1
PG - 3
PG-13 - 11
R - 14
NC-17 - 19

By travel destination:

USA - 9
Multiple/Around the world - 9
Time travel/Historical - 7
France - 4
A dream - 4 (including waking dream states)
Alternate universe - 3
Japan - 3
Canada - 2
1 each: An airplane, a cave, Cambodia, Canary Islands, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, space, Scotland, Spain, Thailand, the Underworld, Wales

Most popular continents:

Europe - 16
North America - 11
Asia - 6
Africa - 2 (both North Africa)

By word count:

The shortest fic was 1,578 words long. The longest was ~50,000 words long.

1-2K - i
2-3K - iii
3-4K - ii
4-5K - iii
5-6K - i
6-7K - iiii
7-8K - iii
8-9K - ii
9-10K - iii
10-15K - iiiii
15-20K - iiiii iiiii
20-30K - iiiii
30-40K - iiii
40-50K - i
50K+ - i

Mode (most frequent word count): 6-7K and 17-18K (not visible in these statistics because I compressed some of the longer categories for display)
Mean (average): 14,462 words
Median (half the fics longer, half shorter): 10,500 words

Some thoughts: Harry/Draco is popular. Not that anyone needed me to tell them that. :) There was just an all-round wide range of creativity in this fest, whether it was genre (angst, fluff, humor, smex, you name it), plots, ratings, fic lengths, everything really.

The fics did tend more toward the high ratings, with 2/3 of the fics rated R or above, and 2/5 rated NC-17. The art, though, as these things have tended to pan out, was lower-rated, with all but one artwork rated PG-13 or below.

The United States was the most popular single travel destination, although Europe was the most popular continent. To me, this says that there were quite a lot of Americans writing (and/or prompting). There was also a lot of non-geographical travel (time travel/AU/historical/dreams/etc.). Added up, the non-geographical travel accounts for just over 1/3 of the fics. I was surprised there were no fics set in Australia or Central/South America (although there may have been stops in those places in some of the multiple-location fics).

The word counts were quite long, with the mean, median, and mode being even higher than those from the

sshg_exchange. This to me is a hallmark of a pairing that people are passionate about. You have to get emotionally invested in the characters in order to be willing to spend so much time with them, writing their stories. And not only willing, but glad to do so. This wasn't a big bang fest, so there was no reason for writers to create novel-length gifts. I think that when a story goes beyond 10,000 words, it becomes not so much a gift for the other fan, but a gift to oneself as well. You have to enjoy what you're doing to do that much! Which is not to say that people who wrote less don't care about the characters, or care less. I'm really glad that there are people who are able to "keep it down" to a couple of thousand words. I don't always have time to read a 30,000+ word fic, and then I'm happy to have a fan fix in 5,000 words or less.

My pick, by the way, of the fest is Hot Pursuit by