#zelink vs sidlink

[cooking-with-hailstones]

The Legend of Zelda: stats of the kingdom

A Statistical Analysis of Popular Fanfiction in the Legend of Zelda Fandom on AO3

I like numbers and stats and for some unfathomable reason I find it calming. So over the past couple weeks, I’ve been making this spreadsheet!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a judgement of the quality, value, or merits of any of the fics on this list. It's just me being curious about what's popular with the Legend of Zelda fandom on AO3.

Feel free to go explore the spreadsheet. My own observations and analysis under the cut.

TL:DR, Link has a lot of kinky sex. Sidlink and Zelink are vying for who’s the most popular ship. Also, this fandom has a shit ton of sub categories that are truly islands unto themselves and have their own conventions.

Methodology: I'm including all fics from the first page of AO3 results (20 fics per page) sorted by:

Hits

Kudos

Comments

Bookmarks

Anything tagged under the Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms tag that was in the top 20 most hits, kudos, comments, or bookmarks made it into the spreadsheet. This ended up including 51 fics in total.

I put all the fics into one single spreadsheet in order to compare the differences between fics that are really high on the kudos count but not the hit count, or what has a lot of comments but fewer hits. Basically, I'm throwing a lot of things together to observe what gets engagement and looking at patterns that emerge!

Popular fandom subcategories:

Botw (41 fics tagged as such)

Linked Universe (9, including one mostly set in the world of BOTW)

OoT (2)

(I do wonder what it would be like to run these numbers on other fanfic sites, given the popularity boom of ao3 over the last 15 years or so. But also, Botw was an insanely popular game even by Zelda standards, so… who knows?)

Tags:

Character tags: Obviously, Link was by far the most popular character, but here are the characters that had a minimum of 3 appearances per category. Yay champions!

Zelda

Sidon

Mipha

Urbosa

Revali

Daruk

Story tags: Again, just going by sheer numbers, here are the story tags that appeared at least 3 times in every category:

Slowburn

AU – canon divergence

With honorable mentions to fluff, angst, double penetration, anal sex, amnesia/memory loss, and mute or selectively mute Link, who all cracked above 3 instances in 2 separate categories.

Relationships:

This was a tight race, but shoutout to Sidlink for eking out the win for the most highly rated ship in the Zelda fandom with 13 fics qualifying in my ranking. Zelink is close behind at 10 fics. (That being said, Zelink takes it by volume: 7,797 fics tagged as Zelink vs Sidlink’s 2,193)

Other popular ships:

Revalink (8) (this one surprised me! I didn’t realize my beloved birb was so popular)

Miphlink (3)

Link/Monsters (2)

Sidon/Reader (2)

Ganzelink, Ganlink, Malink, Miphzelink, and Miphzel all made single appearances.

(Pls don’t start ship war discourse in the notes kthanx)

All right, let’s deep dive into the numbers!

Fics in all 4 categories:

Interim - starkraving

Sands of time -tirsynni

Congrats you are officially the most popular Loz fics across all of ao3! at least according to my particular scope of analysis.

Fics in 3 categories:

Displaced - socksock

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

Popular authors (people who show up more than once in multiple categories sorry comments georg)

MarquesGillette

MaryDragon

SilvermistAnimeLover

ObakeAri

Hits:

Top 5 most popular fics by hit count:

Displaced - socksock

Interim - starkraving

To Save Hyrule - orphan_account

Sands of time - tirsynni

Drown In Me - bacchanalia

First page by hits:

Min: 117,917 – Sidon’s Epic Pining Adventure (ObakeAri)  

Max:  189,622 – Displaced (socksock)

Average: 145,385

Average wordcount for fics with the most hits:

140,909

Kudos:

Top 5 most popular fics by kudos count:

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Interim - starkraving

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

26 Minutes and 42 Seconds - T_5Seconds

Blood Moon Rising - MarquesGillette

First page by kudos:

Min: 4917 – Finding Link (Umbreonix)

Max:  10321 – Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy (Icka M Chif)

Average: 6981

Average wordcount for fics with the most kudos:

41,136

Comments:

Top 5 most popular fics by comment count:

Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes - KR5

This is an Adjuration - notfreyja

My Art - KR5

Sidon's Epic Pining Adventure - ObakeAri

Priestess of War - KR5

Woohoo! You all get to meet KR5 aka Comments Georg. Comments Georg has long conversations and RPs in the comments of their ao3 posts, which are usually fanart. TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS TOTALLY FINE AND COOL! I think it’s quite delightful! However, it does completely bork my ranking system because outside of comments, these posts do not have a lot of engagement (like, less than 100 hits and less than 20 kudos) and I don’t think they count towards my analysis of “what is popular in the Zelda fandom writ large”. But they qualified based on my criteria. Which I think speaks to the weakness of my criteria more than anything else tbh…

Anyways, shoutout to Comments Georg for truly showing off what it means to be a statistical outlier.

First page by comments:

Min: 1568 – The Quiet River Rages (MaryDragon)

Max:  43808 - Carlos from MarvelandZeldaFan's Children of the Heroes (KR5)

Average: 4131 (which goes down to 2042 if we exclude KR5’s impressive max, which is a full order of magnitude more than notfreyja in second place with 3470 comments. Very much demonstrating the power of a statistical outlier!)

Average wordcount for fics with the most comments:

275,593

Bookmarks:

Top 5 most popular fics by bookmarks count:

Interim - starkraving

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy - Icka M Chif

Sands of time - tirsynni

To My Dearest Friend - surveycorpsjean

Alone We Fight - SilvermistAnimeLover

First page by bookmarks:

Min: 973 – Expatriate (thehoyden)

Max:  2984 – Interim (starkraving)

Average: 1468

Average wordcount for fics with the most bookmarks:

70,027

Fic Ratings:

G: 3 (literally all fanart from KR5)

T: 22

M: 8

E: 17

Unrated: 1

Observations:

I ran this twice. Once including crossovers, and once excluding crossovers. This filtered out a lot of large drabbles and things like “flash fiction fuckings” which, no judgment, you do you, they just weren’t super relevant for what I was looking for. If you wanna see these stats including all the multifandom stuff that shows up, here’s the link for that:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DXDKXutIzVC-Iac93fFSDohAkphrn67yV-DmRt9xXmU/edit?usp=sharing

(I’m going to break academic professional analysis here and get on my soapbox for a sec – please don’t post big multifandom one shots where you tag like 20 different fandoms and every single kink that gets written about across 103 different chapters. This is literally what series are for. These kinds of things just clog up the tags, and it also makes it harder for people to find the things you’ve written that they want to read! I know this was a convention on ff.net, but this is not ff.net! We can make authors' lives and readers' lives easier!)

There were 38,427 fics in the tag “Legend of Zelda and Related Fandoms” (including crossovers, that goes up to 41,634). I manually added one back in though because it was entirely a botw story, just loosely inspired by another game.

Linked Universe fans comment a LOT. Strong correlation between high comment and Linked Universe fandom subsection. Y’all are very involved and active, and you show support to your authors. I salute you!

Sidlinkers, y'all are horny and I respect it.

Zelinkers, dear god we do love a slowburn.

All the most highly kudos’d fics are very low in the comment count. It’s almost an inverse correlation.

Excluding crossovers increased the correlation between hits and kudos quite dramatically.

There were not very many au’s other than canon divergence. Only one modern au as far as I could tell from a cursory examination of tags.

Lots more clustering, far less disparity between min and max numbers than when I ran this with A:TLA numbers.

Far less consensus on a vibe. Way fewer big writers, but lots of little writers doing their own thing.

Truly a lot of E fics. We are horny bastards.

We need more stuff written for games other than BOTW!!

There aren’t as many fics that are like “oh everyone in the fandom has read these fics”. There are probably those fics in each subcategory of the fandom, or within the specific ships, but there aren’t as many general fics that have entire fandom-wide appeal.

Thank you for reading! This was a lot of fun, and I hope you found it interesting. Shoutout to the Hateno Hangout discord for helping me refine this mess :P

Further shoutout to my partner who helped with writing some SQL to help with tag analysis. Truly partner of the year.

If you want more of this kind of egregious nerdiness, I did this with the top fics in the A:TLA fandom a couple weeks ago: https://www.tumblr.com/cooking-with-hailstones/751749202663669760/statistical-analysis-of-the-most-popular-atla

[keep-looking-to-the-sky-me]

The zelda fandom and homophobia and sexism to shippers

Before you read I'm not trying to say ALL yona defenders, zelink shippers or people who dislike sidlink are homophobic/sexist. This is a 'if the shoe fits' type post but I encourage everyone to read.

A type of homophobia I've seen in the fandom which isn't new to fandom spaces is the idea of wlw vs mlm. Presenting wlw as pure, more genuine and sexless well mlm is just sex and can't be deeper than that. No mlm ships are inherently unpure or immoral, even if they do have a lot of sexual content. spending so much time calling mlm shippers freaks does nothing to support wlw ships. you don't have the right to go on and on about how zelink and sidyona are 'really lesbian relationships' or 'straight ships for gay people' or just gay in general and actively try to push out actual gay ships and gay fans.

Whenever an anti sidlink post or tweet gets popular we see in the comments and likes, hard line conservatives and homophobes agreeing with y'all. I know this is unintentional but with the constant focus of proving why ships between two men are disgusting, you invite those type of people into fandom spaces and making them more unsafe for queer people as a whole.

Me and many others don't like sidlink just for sex. We like them because we like them. The idea that someone has to have a dark alterier motive for liking something is also deeply flawed.

if you can't defend yona from misogyny without resorting to misogyny yourself and demeaning others than your not getting rid of sexism in fandom spaces but adding to it. You don't get points for demanding woman for their personal interests. You're not helping the character by calling people who dislike her or ship sidlink bitches, slut, fujos, coomers,fetishist,groomers, cum-for-brains,cumdumpsters, dickriders or literal slurs(all things that I've seen). inorder to be a good feminist you have to care about the feelings of real life people more than a cartoon stingray and realize misogyny affects every one in fandom, including people who ship things that you dislike.

[blueskittlesart]

okay final thought but i do think its telling that a lot of the people who are arguing with me right now are consistently framing this argument as a sidlink vs zelink debate when that is literally not what i said. i do not care what you ship. i do not care if you like sidlink. i do not care how you feel about my personal opinions on the ship or sidon as a character, and i do not care how YOU feel about zelink. what i care about is how you treat female characters and how you treat the media as a whole. zelda is the driving force of the narrative. zelda is the titular character of the games and the character who the story revolves around. there is no story without her. so why does content about male characters dominate the fandom space? why is she reduced to a background character in fan content, ship-related or otherwise? why do fans react with visceral hatred when a female character "gets in the way" of a mlm ship, whether that character be a side character like yona or a main character like zelda? why do fans ignore nuanced, narrative-driving, well-written female characters in favor of comparatively boring male characters? i feel like every time i bring up misogyny in this fandom people become desperate to twist my words somehow. this was not and has never been about ships. i have deliberately avoided mentioning zelink this entire time because this is NOT ABOUT ZELINK ITS ABOUT ZELDA. the original post that prompted this debate was about how people REFUSE TO VIEW MEDIA THROUGH ANY LENS OTHER THAN SHIPPING, and being unable to view this debate as anything other than "this person obviously just doesnt like sidlink because they like zelink. there's no way they're actually upset about the way female characters are treated in fandom" is just so succinctly proving that point. dear god help me

[everwizard]

Zelink shippers vs Sidlink shippers: FIGHT!

[junietuesday]

my top 10 botw ships bc i might as well jump on the bandwagon on @botwstoriesandsuch this is hilarious

10) urbosa/zelda’s mom. hate that they fucking buried our gays but theyre so soft and it adds so much to the story

9) robbie/purah. i can see it. chaotic scientist bisexuals. but what im seeing here as an alloaro is that theyre friends with benefits who also use each other to get out of boring parties so they can get back to their ancient tech

8) zelink. i love their dynamic in general which is why this is ranked so low, honestly i prefer them as chaotic bffs but they do make a good romance....two people connected across time and through fate to always be there for each other....i can see the appeal even if the whole “lover bonded by soul” is the opposite of my thing

7) paya/zelda. i like the themes of duty and tradition vs the new and different, what with paya being raised to be the leader of the sheikah and zelda’s whole entire thing

6) miphlink. like with zelink, i love their dynamic, link having a childhood best friends is just so sweet and again the themes of duty to the country vs people you care abt, but i enjoy these two as mlm/wlw solidarity not so much as romance

5) revamiph. honestly hwaoc made me ship it. the gentle healer w the prickly fighter. red and blue bisexuals. short people solidarity. the way they bridge cultures, social class, so many things to be together. theres something here

4) sidlink. both of them trying to move on from their past but feeling guilty about leaving the people from before behind, but Also carving a path toward the future with these new people they care about. both learning to open up to each other, sidon who refuses to show anything but optimism and link who refuses to show anything but strength. also the height difference is funny

3) zelpha. princesses in love! the contrast between the princess who is struggling with her power and her relationship w her father and is doubted by the people, but who despite it all tries to stand up for herself wherever she can and do the thing she truly loves vs the princess who’s mastered her power and has a good relationship w her family and is adored by her people, but can’t gain the confidence to just confess and be open with the person she likes and do anything purely for herself! it’s so so delicious and i am a simple lesbian.....

2) eggbot/sheikah slate. i can see a rivals to lovers dynamic here with how the two are both pieces of ancient tech that zelda obsesses over in turn, but then they grow to respect each other as technology with different functions that work in tandem. but also they do have potential for a hard and fast romance, with how eggbot literally awakens to the sheikah slate’s chime in that introductory scene. like they were created to work together. there’s also a lot of potential for worldbuilding with these two and what’s better than that. really you can make this ship be anything, with eggbot’s lightheartedness there’s humor and banter, but with its time travel abilities there could be angst about honesty and communication, it’s such a versatile ship. lastly i mean theyre nonbinary icons

1) revalink. i am a sucker for repressed gays figuring out their shit together. with how both of them are valued only for their fighting ability and nothing else, but with link it was thrust upon him with no choice and with revali he saw it as the only way for people to respect him. revali’s bitterness against link for being chosen by the master sword while revali had to work so hard for his status honestly feels so justified, but then you think about it from link’s perspective and how he never chose any of this and now people are depending on one child to do the heavy lifting of saving the world, how he felt so pressured by everyone that he literally wouldn’t speak - contrasting with revali’s verbosity, because well-read people are always respected. just. the two learning to share their emotions with each other and lower their masks to gain a mutual respect for each other’s abilities but also really caring for each other despite those abilities because that’s not what makes you a worthy person. it’s really touching and with the whole canon setup of “revali is dead and link is rescuing his soul” there are so many opportunities for angst i don’t even have time to detail, but revali’s snark and pretty much any personality you can give link, whether snarking right back or letting revali lose his cool by just not responding, plays off of it for hilarious banter.

[atypicalloves]

hashtag guide for my blog

—

Favourite Artwork — #fav

Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra — #korrasami, #sukka, #kataang, #rangshi, #maiko, #zhurrick, #kainora, #bopal, #wuko, #tyzula, #senraq, #kyalin

Fire Emblem: Three Houses — #claudeleth, #petrathea, #ferdibert, #hildamari, #netteflix, #cathmir, #dimidue, #dimileth, #edeleth, #linspar, #claurenz, #sylvix, #sylgrid, #ferdidetta, #ignaph, #felibern, #cysithea, #leorenz, #ingrithea, #jeritri

Fire Emblem: Fates — #azurrin, #velourina, #sophelia, #sakuhana, #caminoka

Fire Emblem: Awakening — #chrobin

She-Ra: Princess of Power — #catradora, #glimbow, #seamista, #scorfuma, #spinnetossa, #entrapdak, #repkyle, #glance

The Dragon Prince — #rayllum, #janaya, #ruthari, #viravos, #harrai

My Little Pony — #rarijack, #sunsetsparkle, #startrix, #raridash, #rarishy, #skypie

Harry Potter — #romione, #hinny, #remadora, #jily, #deamus, #linny, #druna, #bleur, #harmione

Marvel — #spideychelle, #danbeau, #negayukio, #clintasha

Throne of Glass — #rowaelin, #elorcan, #chaolrene, #manorian

Other Ships — #viktuuri (yuri on ice), #ankko (little witch academia), #diakko (little witch academia), #pokeshipping (pokémon), #rocketshipping (pokémon), #jellowshipping (pokémon), #love square (miraculous ladybug), #ladynoir (miraculous ladybug), #ladrian (miraculous ladybug), #marichat (miraculous ladybug), #adrienette (miraculous ladybug), #rupphire (steven universe), #tomstar (star vs the forces of evil), #zelink (legend of zelda), #sidlink (legend of zelda), #percabeth (percy jackson), #feysand (a court of thorns and roses), #polin (bridgerton), #saphne (bridgerton), #cheleanor (the good place), #elhani (the good place), #tenrose (doctor who), #supercorp (supergirl), #barbie and the diamond castle (barbie movies)

[faeromis]

stop fighting about sidlink vs zelink. link has two hands