Rarepair Shorts Winter Exchange stats

[swissmarg]

I am stepping up my game and getting graphic! Today's statistics from the rarepair_shorts Winter 2010/2011 fic exchange (master list here) include an actual visual aid. Ooh, aah! Now you know you're curious. See it (and the rest of the stats) under the cut.

Fest community: rarepair_shorts 
Fest type: Anonymous exchange
Premise: Rare pairs, short fics
Ratings restrictions: R or lower
Length restrictions: 800-2,500 words
Creation period: One month

There were 26 fics written for this exchange.

By rating:

G - 2
PG - 6
PG-13 - 11
R - 7

By word count:
The fics ranged from 701 - 2,500 words.

500-1000 - iii
1000-1500 - iiiii iiii
1500-2000 - iiii
2000-2500 - iiiii iii
~ 2500 - ii

Total words written: 43,856 words
Mean (average fic length): 1,687 words
Median (half the fics shorter, half the fics longer): 1,500 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 1-1.5K

And now the pretty picture showing the word count distribution:

 

There were 34 characters featured in the main pairings, from Antonin Dolohov to Mrs. Zabini. 

The most popular characters:
(number of fics featuring them)

Narcissa, Severus - 4 each
Hermione, Luna, Pansy - 3 each
Bellatrix, Bill, Gilderoy, Ginny, Neville, Regulus - 2 each

There was only one pairing that was featured more than once: Gilderoy/Severus, with 2 fics.

By pairing alignment:

Het - 12
Slash - 7
Femslash - 7

By generation of pairing:

Harry's Generation - 11
Marauders' Generation - 7
Cross Generation - 7
Next Generation - 1

Some thoughts: Authors seemed to prefer to keep their ratings cautiously low, given the community ban on NC-17 fics. Thus, PG-13 was the most frequent rating, with 42% of the fics. Still, the fics on either side of that were pretty evenly balanced, with 31% lower and 27% higher.

The word count range is quite narrow, according to the community rules. One author snuck in under the minimum, and two pushed the maximum with fics of 'exactly' 2,500 words, more or less (one of those two was me ;-). Everyone else, though, was comfortably within the two boundaries.

Not only was this a rare pair fest, but it also turned out to be a rather rare character fest. Never have I seen a fest where Narcissa ended up being the most popular character! Although the other 4 in the top 5 (Severus, Hermione, Luna, Pansy) are often among the top characters, two other less often seen characters, Gilderoy Lockhart and Regulus Black, also ended up in the top 10.

The fact that there were two Gilderoy/Severus fics was probably a fluke, although it's interesting that aside from them, there was no duplication of pairings at all.

Het pairings were the most popular, but not by all that much. In fact, slash and femmeslash taken together would outnumber the het fics by 54% vs. 46%. It's also interesting that the numbers of slash and femmeslash fics were exactly equal. I seem to be seeing an increase in femmeslash in general in fests recently (at least in those fests where it is allowed). It used to always come in 'last', but more and more it is second or even the most popular (see my hoggywartyxmas statistics).

Pairings with characters exclusively in Harry's generation (including slightly older characters such as Bill and Charlie) were the most popular, followed by characters of the Marauders' generation (or thereabouts -- I counted Lockhart as the same generation as Snape, even though we don't actually know his age). Cross generational pairings were also popular, most of them with one character from the Marauders' generation and one from Harry's generation (Lucius/Luna, Regulus/Draco), but also from the older (well, a bit older) generation and one of the Marauders' generation (Molly/Severus, Arthur/Bellatrix). 

Comments

[martinius.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I'm such a sucker for graphs, you've made my day :)

And I think it's nice that there was such a spread, both in characters and in het/guyslash/femslash. Obviously the mark of a successful fest!

[swissmarg]

LOL, I thought a few people would enjoy that.

[peskywhistpaw.livejournal.com]

This is so interesting, thanks! I was really astonished that Narcissa ended up being so popular... as well as the fact that we had two Gilderoy/Severus fics!

[jessicaqueen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this - it was really interesting. Also, I swear to God that my fic was exactly 2,500, for there was much word-cutting and hand-wringing involved in fitting it into the word limit. 2,500 is so not enough to believably pair two people who canonically could never have even met, LOL.

I think that Gilderoy Lockhart was actually in three fics, since he also starred in the one written for me (which wasn't Gilderoy/Severus). Who knew he'd be so popular?

[swissmarg]

You're right, but I didn't take the 'secondary' pairings or the main characters that were not involved in the main pairings. That would have meant I would have had to actually read all of the fics in order to be that complete, lol. So I just took the main pairings from the master list and worked with those. But you're right, Gilderoy was a main character in another fic as well. (As Pansy was also a main character in the fic I wrote, but since she wasn't in the main pairing, I didn't count her there. I'm sure there were others.)

[jessicaqueen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't saying you were wrong to list it that way. I was just musing over how popular Lockhart is despite being such a minor character canon-wise. Pansy I'm less surprised about, though; she manages to crop up in a lot of fics, considering how much 'screen-time' she gets in canon.