Snapecase statistics

[swissmarg]

snapecase has posted the Master List from their 2011 fest. I've compiled some statistics under the cut:

Fest community: snapecase 
Fest type: Team challenge
Premise: Snape-centric, teams assigned based on five periods in Snape's life.
Ratings restrictions: All ratings allowed
Length restrictions: Minimum 2,500 words, maximum 'short enough to fit into one LiveJournal post'
Creation period: Five months

There were 35 fanworks created for this fest: 5 artworks, 28 fics, and 2 combined fic/art pieces.

Number of participants: 31 (curia_regis, musamihi, iulia_linnea and opaljade contributed 2 fanworks each)

Ratio of art to fic: 20%

Number of fanworks per team: 7

By rating:

G - 12
PG - 8 (although one PG-rated artwork was NSFW and therefore I feel should have been rated higher)
PG-13 - 10
R - 1
NC-17 - 4

By word count:
The shortest fic was 1,373 words long. The longest fic was 10,700 words long.

1-2K - 1
2-3K - 8
3-4K - 8
4-5K - 4
5-6K - 3
6-7K - 1
7-8K - 1
8-9K - 0
9-10K - 3
10K+ - 1

Total words written: 141,923
Mean (average fic length): 4,731 words
Median (half the fics shorter, half the fics longer): 3,900 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 2-3K, 3-4K

By alignment: 

Gen* - 22
Het - 7
Slash - 5
Unknown - 1 (this was a piece of art in which is was not clear whether Snape's romantic partner was male or female)

*Some fanworks contained background pairings or hinted pairings, but if they were not noted in the header then I counted them as Gen.

Most frequent ships:

Snape/Hermione - 3
Snape/Harry - 2

Some thoughts: The ratings were generally low, with only 14% of the entries rated R or higher. This is probably due to the fact that there was so much Gen, although there was also one Gen piece rated NC-17, so that's not entirely the cause.

Speaking of Gen, I was a bit surprised by the high percentage of it, although that can again be partly explained by the nature of this fest, in which by design 20% of the submissions had to be set during Snape's first decade of life, when romance does not really come into play (even so, one managed it).

Snape is usually a very popular character for shipping, so I am not sure why there was so little of it in this fest. It is true that the focus was meant to be on Snape himself, and not on particular ships, so perhaps that is why authors and artists tended to downplay the romantic or sexual aspects in their submissions.

Of the ships that were represented, the most popular ones were all there: Snape/Hermione, Snape/Harry, Snape/Lucius, Snape/Lupin, Snape/Draco, and even Snape/Lily: although not as the focus of any fanworks, Lily and Snape's feelings for her were at least mentioned several times. There was even a rarepair represented with Snape/Emeline Vance.

The word counts were bunched toward the low end, with 57% of the fics shorter than 4,000 words. One of the entries was shorter than the fest minimum of 2,500 words, but it was a 'combined' piece which included art, so perhaps that is why the mods let it slide. On the upper end, I thought it very clever to make the cap be the maximum that would fit in a single LJ post, since there was no way for an author to slip in a few extra words. Either they fit or they didn't. ;-)

Comments

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

Nifty! It's interesting to see the stats. :)

Snape Showcase isn't a competition, though; the showcase has categories rather than teams to encourage a thorough exploration of Snape's life (and Shog and my combined entry was let slide on the word count because it was a seven-picture pinch-hit).

*makes note to return and read your other fest stats*

[swissmarg]

Sorry about that, I've changed it now to be a 'team challenge' instead. Better?

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

Well, co-creators in the showcase might be considered "teams" in the sense that they work together to produce their entries, but the participants aren't in competition against each other. The challenge of the fest is a personal one for creators, and that is to produce their best Snape-related work; that's why I call the fest a "showcase." :D