Samhain Smut Statistics

[swissmarg]

samhain_smut has finalized their master list for their 2010 exchange, and I hereby present for your viewing pleasure the smutty statistics.

Fest community: samhain_smut 
Fest type: Anonymous prompting with claims
Premise: Rarepair smut and Halloween
Rating restrictions: R or NC-17
Length restrictions: Minimum 500 words, no maximum
Creation period: 2 months and 1 week

There were 30 fics and 7 artworks produced for this fest.

By rating:

FIC
R - 4
NC-17 - 26

ART
R - 3
NC-17 - 4

By pairing alignment:
Note that many fics had more than one pairing listed. Therefore, the numbers add up to more than the total number of submissions.

Het - 36
Slash - 8
Femslash - 6
Het threesome (M/M/F or M/F/F) - 3
Slash threesome - 3
Foursome - 1
Bestiality - 1
Incest (includes cousincest) - 5

By word count:

The shortest fic was 1,402 words long. The longest fic was 35,000 words long.

1-2K - iiiii ii
2-3K - iiiii ii
3-4K - iiiii
4-5K - iiii
5-6K - iii
6-7K - 0
7-8K - 0
8-9K - i
9-10K - i
13K - i
35K - i

Most popular characters:
This shows the number of submissions that featured the character in a lead role, whether in a pairing or not.

Hermione - 9
George, Sirius - 6
Harry - 5
Ginny, Lavender, Luna, Neville, Remus, Ron - 4
Draco, James, Lucius, Pansy, Snape, Tonks - 3
Astoria, Bellatrix, Fenrir, Fred, Percy, Romilda - 2

Generations of characters:
The 'in between' generation is those characters who were already finished with school when Harry came to Hogwarts, but younger than the Marauders (i.e. Bill, Charlie, Tonks, OMC paired with Charlie).

Next generation - 1
Harry's generation - 24
In-between generation - 4
Marauders generation - 9
Older generation - 9

Most different pairings:
This shows the number of different partners each character was paired with. If multiple pairings were listed for a fic, each pairing was counted separately, so a single fic might have given a character 3 or even more partners. For threesomes, each partner was counted separately, e.g. in a threesome with James/Sirius/Remus, that would count as 2 partners for James (and 2 for Sirius and 2 for Remus).

Ginny - 11
Harry - 10
George, Hermione, Ron - 7
Luna, Percy - 4
Bellatrix, Draco, Lavender, Sirius, Neville, Remus, Snape, Tonks - 3
Astoria, Fenrir, James, Lucius, Romilda - 2

Most popular pairings:

Harry/Hermione, James/Sirius/Remus - 3
George/Lavender, Harry/Luna, Hermione/Neville, Lucius/Sirius - 2

Some thoughts: The ratings were pretty much a given, as the whole point of the fest was to produce smut. ;-)

I was kind of surprised by the sheer number of permutations of characters, with many of the fics having multiple pairings. Het was the most popular by far, with slash and femslash a distant second and third. Incest was nearly as popular as femslash (and in fact much of the incest was additionally either slash or femslash).

The word counts were generally to be expected, except for at both extremes. On the low end, the shortest fic was 1,400 words, although only 500 words were required. That is unusual for a fest like this, especially since it was not an exchange. In other words, no one needed to feel they would be shortchanging someone by writing a short fic. Yet everyone wrote at least (or nearly) 3 times the minimum length. On the high end, the one fic at 33,000 words was way beyond the next longest fic, at 13,000 words. Given that there were basically only 2 months in which to write and have the fic beta read, that's a pretty amazing achievement. The rest of the word counts were pretty typical, with the lion's share at the low end and a quick drop off after 6,000 words.

Females were unusually strongly represented. Of the top 10 characters, 4 were female, and the most popular character was clearly Hermione, featuring as a lead in a quarter of the submissions. Characters from all generations were well represented, except for the Next Generation, whose only representative was Astoria, in 2 fics. It's true that most of the characters overall were from Harry's generation, but then most of the known characters are from his generation.

Despite the fact that Hermione appeared in the largest number of fics, Harry and Ginny appeared with the largest number of different partners. This statistic is skewed slightly by two particular fics: One Weasleycest fic in which Ginny has 3 different partners from among her brothers, and one in which several characters (but especially Harry) have multiple partners.

The fact that this was a rarepair fest kept the number of repeated pairings down. I was actually surprised that Harry/Hermione wasn't on the list of disallowed pairings, as I don't consider it rare. And so it ended up being the most popular pairing. It's interesting that James/Sirius/Remus was also so popular, but maybe that was a sneaky way of getting in Remus/Sirius. ;-)