swissmarg | Clue(do) Ficathon Statistics

rarepair_shorts has concluded its Clue(do) Ficathon with the posting of its master list. While there were only 12 entries, that doesn't mean fewer statistics. In fact, with so few entries, I had time to do a whole slew of permutations. So open up for the numbers...

Fest community:

rarepair_shorts
Fest type: Choose-A-Prompt, mix and match
Premise: Rare pairs, using a self-chosen prompt based on the board game Clue/Cluedo: (character A/character B) in the (place) with the (object)
Rating restriction: R or under
Length restriction: Under 2,500 words
Creation period: Originally one month, but left open for 3 months

There were 12 fics written for this challenge.

By rating:

G - i
PG - iiii
PG-13 - iiiii i
R - i

By word count:

The shortest fic was 655 words, the longest 2926 words.

500-1000 - iii
1-2K - iiiii i
2-3K - iii

By character:

Blaise, Ginny, Lucius, Pansy, Ron - 2 fics each
Amelia, Amos, Barty, Jr., Bellatrix, Charlie, Daphne, Draco, Fleur, Hermione, Myrtle, Penelope, Percy, Tom, Viktor - 1 fic each

By generation of characters:
I included Amos Diggory with the Marauders' generation, since he was a parent of someone about Harry's age. I also included Amelia Bones in the Marauders' generation, although she is often portrayed as a contemporary of Professor McGonagall in fandom, because in the fic written for this fest, she was explicitly of the same age as Lucius.

Harry's generation - 15
Marauders' generation - 6
Older generation - 2
Mid-generation (between Harry's and Marauders; namely here, Charlie) - i

By generation of pairings:

Harry's/Harry's - 7
Harry's/Mid - 1
Marauders/Marauders - 3
Older/Older - 1

By House of characters:

Slytherin - 10
Gryffindor - 7
Unknown - 5
Ravenclaw - 2

By House pairings:

Gryff/Slyth - 4
Slyth/Unk. - 3
Gryff/Unk. - 2
Gryff/Raven, Slyth/Raven, Slyth/Slyth - 1 each

By pairing alignment:

Het - 9
Slash - 2
Femslash - 1

By object:
Note that 'Basilisk' was not one of the original objects given in the prompt.

Chocolate Frog card, dragon hide gloves - 3 each
Cauldron - 2
Knife, Remembrall, Snitch, Basilisk - 1 each

By place:

no duplication

Some thoughts: I thought this was a really cute premise for a fest, and it generated some fun and interesting fics.

The ratings were lower than I would have expected, with only one R-rated fic. It seems that most of the authors took the prompts to explore emotions, power, and politics, rather than sex.

The word counts were as to be expected, given the word count restrictions for the fest and community. A couple of people did push past the given limit of 2,500 words, but that didn't seem to be a problem.

There was a very broad range of characters, with very little duplication, as befits a rarepair fest. The characters ranged from students of (nearly) all Houses, to parents, foreign students, Ministry employees, and Death Eaters.

The characters were mainly of Harry's generation, with a good representation of older ones as well. I was surprised that there were no Next Gen characters. In terms of the pairings, there were no cross-gen pairings at all. The one pairing of Charlie/Draco could be nominally taken as cross-gen, although Charlie is not that much older than Draco so I don't really count that.

The het pairings far outnumbered the slash and femslash pairings, but that's pretty typical of a non-pairing-specific fest.

The objects and places for the prompts were to be taken from a set list, and it was interesting to see that some of the objects did turn out to be favorites. Also that all but 2 people chose objects from the 'Potterfied' objects list. Only one person chose an object from the original board game, and one person chose their own object (the Basilisk). The only Potter object not chosen was the Pensieve.

It was also interesting that there was no duplication in the places chosen, and that only 2 people chose places from the original board game, with the rest choosing places from the Potter places list. It's true that the list of places was longer than the list of objects, but still that 12 people would have chosen 12 different places out of the 27 given in the prompt is unusual.