Almost a decade ago, in November of 2014, I became so exhausted by seeing people throw around the absurd claim that Dean/Cas fans made up only 1% of SPN fandom that I decided to prove how wrong it was. The most readily available data which didn't rely on conducting a survey or poll -- and was therefore a more accurate representation of actual fandom activity rather than just whoever happened to respond to a survey -- came from fic numbers on Ao3.
I made a post about it at the time (the pertinent figures are included below, or you can see the original post here) and then completely forgot about the entire thing. Until now.
Why? Well, largely thanks to a sudden resurgence of the same old nonsense this week, mostly cropping up in the comment sections of a couple of polls that crossed my dash. The temptation to check if there had been any significant changes to the fandom's activity since I last looked ten years ago was too strong to ignore.
Friends. Things have proven to be shockingly consistent.
With the same caveat from last time -- that this is only showing trends in the subset of fandom who actively uses Ao3, and therefore obviously doesn't take into account the "general audience" subset of fandom who don't participate beyond watching the show and occasionally liking a social media post -- here are the numbers:
Old count | November 9th, 2014 | 4 episodes into S10
Total SPN fics posted - 86,352
Fics listed as gen - 22,718 (26.3%)
Fics with Dean/Cas - 33,762 (39.0%)
Fics with Sam/Dean - 12,286 (14.2%)
Fics with Sam/Cas - 1,634 (1.8%)
Fics with Sam/Dean/Cas - 787 (0.9%)
The remaining 18.6% of SPN fics were non-gen fics featuring other character pairings, including reader inserts and original characters.
New count | May 28th, 2024 | 3.5 years after finale
Total SPN fics posted - 290,707
Fics listed as gen - 61,343 (21.1%)
Fics with Dean/Cas - 116,925 (40.2%)
Fics with Sam/Dean - 34,673 (11.9%)
Fics with Sam/Cas - 5,548 (1.9%)
Fics with Sam/Dean/Cas - 1,957 (0.6%)
The remaining 24.3% of SPN fics are non-gen fics featuring other character pairings, including reader inserts and original characters.
Notes on data:
All data was collected while logged in on Ao3 to ensure no incorrect counts were caused by hidden works.
There is some overlap within these numbers due to fics which are tagged with multiple pairings. This might be possible to account for if someone felt like doing more intensive data collection, but I've already spent about an hour and a half on this and that's already a lot more time than I'd like to be doing voluntary math. I enjoy statistics as a point of interest, but goddamn do I hate actually crunching the numbers.
It bears mentioning that Sam/Gabriel (5.1%), Sam/Jess (2.2%), & Dean/Reader (2.5%) all have higher counts than Sam/Cas (1.9%) & Sam/Dean/Cas (0.6%), however I didn't make note of those pairings in 2014, so I'm unsure if there has been any change.
I shouldn't have to say this, but literally all of us are just smashing our fave characters together like dolls, so as interesting as these numbers are this post is not intended to suggest that any ship is "better" than any other ship. This post is intended to do nothing more than show the available data which disproves a baseless claim about the size of Dean/Cas fandom within the larger SPN fandom.
TLDR; the percentage of active Supernatural fans on Ao3 who are interested in Dean/Cas as a pairing is significantly higher than 1%, and that has been a consistent pattern within the fandom for the past ten years.
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Amanda Lehan-Canto's shipping data analytics on fanfiction (AO3)
Angela Giarratana's shipping data analytics on fanfiction (AO3)
-Note: Romantic pairings exclusive
-This is accurate to August 9/10: 11:12 PM-12:59 AM (PST)
-In the analytics this includes characters they play
-Fanfictions will appear multiple times based on how many relationship tags it appears in
-Disclaimer: This is not meant to comment on which ship is better and nor is anything listed supposed to prove something.
General thoughts: I made this because I'm such a huge fucking nerd and love data/analytics. I'm not sure if this is interesting to anyone else, but I made it so I might as well share it. I find it interesting how for Amanda's pie chart I had no idea who would be 2nd/3rd due to overlooking Sarah Christ and Redacted. For Angela I knew full well Courtney and Damien would at least rank.
Bonus: Amangela AO3 Stats in certain categories
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Have you ever been to a fan convention (of any kind)?
Have you looked at the Survey Report yet??
We asked where y'all spend your fannish time, and how could any fannish conversation ignore the draw of The Conventions?
Q10: Have you ever been to a fan convention (of any kind)?
● 68,855 survey takers received this question.
● 68,807 answered it
Yes 28,505 - 41.43%
No 40,302 - 58.57%
What about you, tumblr?
If you have, shout out in the comments and maybe we can get more OTW tables at more conventions!
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my aroace 101 presentation script is now available as a PDF for anyone who wants it! i've set it to Pay What You Want with a minimum of 0 dollar since i want it to be an accessible resource, but i did also work pretty hard on it so a little tip isn't unwelcome!
topics i cover:
- definitions of aromantic and asexual identities
- different types of attraction
- variety in ace & aro experiences
- challenges & stigma
- rethinking relationships
- allyship
it's 15 pages and 4.6k words!
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Ian Hecox's shipping data analytics on fanfiction (AO3)
Dedicated to: @lilac-hecox
-Note: Romantic pairings exclusive
-This is accurate to August 10: 6:48 PM - 7:58 PM (PST)
-In the analytics this includes characters they play
-Fanfictions will appear multiple times based on how many relationship tags it appears in
-Disclaimer: This is not meant to comment on which ship is better and nor is anything listed supposed to prove something.
General Thoughts: The amount of times I've had to type an obscenely long poly ship for this is something. The fact that Ianthony almost takes up 3/4 of Ian's shipping in AO3 is insane. Also typing Castiel from Supernatural x Ian Hecox made me so confused but okay.
-Shayne Topp version
-Amanda Lehan-Canto and Angela Giarratana version
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