HP Canon Fest statistics

[swissmarg]

Fest community: hp_canon_fest 
Master List: Here
Fest type: Anonymous prompt claim
Premise: Authors create art, artists write fic.
Ratings restrictions: All ratings allowed
Length restrictions: Minimum 1000 words, no maximum
Creation period: 2 months

There were 48 fanworks created for this fest: 

44 fics
4 artworks

Ratio of art to fic: 9%

By rating:

G - 7
PG - 9
PG-13 - 21
R - 6
NC-17 - 5

By word count:
The shortest fic was 1,137 words long (there was also one that was 1,138 words long). The longest fic was ~23,000 words long.

1-2K - iiiii iiiii
2-3K - iiiii iiiii ii
3-4K - iiiii ii
4-5K - ii
5-6K - iiiii
6-7K - ii
7-8K - ii
10-20K - iii
20K+ - i

Total words written: 188,427 words
Mean (average fic length): 4,282 words
Median (half the fics shorter, half the fics longer): 3,000 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 2-3K
 

By pairing:
(Note that only pairings were allowed that appeared in the books, or were named by Rowling in an interview. Some submissions had more than one pairing.)

Angelina/George – iii
Arthur/Molly - ii
Astoria/Draco - iiii
Audrey/Percy – iii
Bellatrix/Rodolphus - i
Bill/Fleur - i
Ginny/Harry - iiiii iii
Hannah/Neville - iii
Hermione/Ron – iiiii iiiii iiiii iiiii
James/Lily – iiii
Lucius/Narcissa - i
Luna/Rolf - ii
Remus/Tonks – iii

Some thoughts: Although all ratings were allowed, this was very much a non-smutty fest, overall, with less than a quarter of the submissions rated R or higher (and one of those R ratings was only for language). My first thought was that some of the pairings are not necessarily sexy, but fandom is capable of writing anything, and I've seen NC-17 fics for all of these pairings, so that can't be it. It might be that people who are fans of canon pairings are generally more conservative or traditionalists, and so don't generally write smut anyway, regardless of the pairing.

I was actually surprised to see such a huge portion of the submissions (42%) feature Hermione/Ron. Maybe it's because I've seen so much argument against this ship. But I also had the feeling that, outside of Hermione/Ron communities, this ship doesn't get much fantime, whereas James/Lily, Lucius/Narcissa, and Astoria/Draco will pop up just about anywhere. I guess I just thought Hermione/Ron and Harry/Ginny would have been more even, and maybe more of a few others.

It's also interesting which canon pairings were not represented at all, namely Andromeda/Ted, Teddy/Victoire, Petunia/Vernon, and Cho/Muggle (this last one was not mentioned in the official fest list of allowed pairings, but would also qualify). The lack of Teddy/Victoire is especially puzzling, given how popular the Next Gen is in general.

Comments

[slumber.livejournal.com]

I participated in this fest, and actually, the main reason I signed up here (and at hp_spring_fling), besides wanting to write Draco/Astoria, is that there was no R or NC-17 requirement. That's just a personal opinion, though, so I would be interested to see if the fests that don't require smut end up just attracting more participants who favor writing lower ratings or not.

Maybe not. I just looked at a few all-ratings-accepted fests that you had tracked, and the ratings were pretty evenly spread.

[swissmarg]

As you say, other all-ratings fests like April Fools, Next Gen, and Lucius Big Bang (just to name a few at random) usually end up with half or more of the entries rated R and higher.

But look at the H/G Seasons Winter Fest, where only 5 out of 28 entries were rated R or higher (and the highest rated one of those was Hard R/NC-17, not even full-on NC_17). MetamorficMoon (Remus/Tonks fest) allowed up to NC-17 (although you needed permission for NC-17), but all the entries were PG-13 or less.

Sure, the R/Hr Love Valentine's Day Challenge was half R/NC-17, but the premise was romance.

Must mention, however, the R/Hr Big Bang produced 11 fics, 8 of which were rated R/NC-17. So that's a big counterexample.

[slumber.livejournal.com]

Ooh. See, even if the R/Hr Big Bang had R/NC-17, I'd argue given the length requirements, most participants just probably thought there was space to add adult content, maybe. :P

Are you tracking stats for all these fests in a master spreadsheet of some sort? I wonder if there are any fandom-wide trends about these fests... like are canon ships really more conservative, which kinds of fests tend to have the most words written, where do the artists go, is there a ratio between time frame given and the word count produced, etc etc.

[swissmarg]

No, I haven't collected statistics on the statistics. :p I agree, it would be fun to see if there are any larger trends, or meaningful tendencies. To see if canon ships are really more conservative, though, I think someone would have to go back through all the fests that allowed canon ships, and tabulate all the results for canon ships vs. non-canon ships. It would be a daunting undertaking!

[slumber.livejournal.com]

Haha, you're right, you'll have to pretty much take note of the disparity of ratings between canon vs non-canon within all fests ever. Maybe for another day. :P

I'd be interested to see what the stats of your stats might say about fandom, though, if any at all. Would you mind if I went back through your stats posts and consolidated them to see what kind of stuff they might reveal? I don't know that I'd ever get around to it, exactly, but I used to get bored and play around with spreadsheets for my sports team, but if you have no problem with me using your data (with credit to you, of course) I might take a look into it?

[swissmarg]

Sure, go right ahead. Playing with numbers is fun!

[leigh-adams.livejournal.com]

I wrote the only Bill/Fleur fic. How shocking! (Not really).

And I think it's funny you were surprised at the number of R/Hr fics. Every previous round, that pairing has dominated because the majority of participants are diehard R/Hr shippers. It's probably my biggest turnoff because I ship very few canon pairings, and I knew this round would be overrun with that particular ship.

[swissmarg]

That's a good point. I don't usually go back and look at how a certain fest has done in previous years. I generally assume (clearly a wrong assumption) that fests start from zero and represent fandom at large. But if this has traditionally always been a Ron/Hermione shipper gathering place, then it makes sense that they would continue to be the largest faction.

[arctic-comet.livejournal.com]

I've gotta say that "Don't Blink" is my fave of all the Canon Fest 2011 fics that I've had time to read :)

I agree with you on the R/Hr thing. While I do ship them, I wish there had been more fics featuring other pairings.

[leigh-adams.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! I was worried no one would read it (since B/F is such a neglected ship in fandom) but I'm glad you enjoyed it! :D

I so wish there had been more "other" fics. I admit, I'm not a big canon shipper; I love B/F, and I like R/T (wrote them for last year's canon fest), but all the others, I'm pretty 'meh' about. I need to go back and read the entries I missed, but overall, the huge presence of R/Hr kinda made me crinkle my nose.

[arctic-comet.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the statistics, I always enjoy them :)

[swissmarg]

You're very welcome. Love your icon. :)

[bitchet.livejournal.com]

Teddy/Victoire isn't very popular, sadly. Even among the OBHWF the not-canon (and very controversial) Rose/Scorpius has more stories written about it. (Teddy/Victoire, however, is more likely to pop up as a background pairing.)

As for R/Hr, I think the mods did a good job of promoting the fest in communities for all canon couples but R/Hr, being one of the more popular canon couples, was always going to dominate. What surprises me is that there isn't more H/G. I know there isn't that clean overlap between R/Hr fans and H/G fans but the gulf between the two still surprises me.