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SHERLOCKIAN FANDOM STATS

A QUANTITATIVE LOOK AT FANDOM ACTIVITY

I’ve been gathering some data about fandom.

We’re going to look at some statistics about various Sherlock Holmes adaptations and the fan activity devoted to them.

We’ll be focusing a lot on fanfiction, because it’s one of the best organized and easiest to quantify type of fanworks. But we’ll also discuss some fan activity on Tumblr.

We’d like to start by sharing all the data and save most of the discussion about what we can conclude from it for after the slides. But if you have any clarifying questions along the way, please do speak up -- we want to be sure that everything makes sense as we go! And we haven’t tested these slides yet, so please don’t be shy about saying when you don’t understand something. We’re happy to get feedback and make it clearer!

We’ll also be sharing these slides and our notes online.

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“It is a capital mistake

to theorize before

one has data. ”

- Sherlock Holmes

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TOPICS

Why stats?
Popularity of Sherlock Holmes in fandom
Genres of fanfiction
Shipping and (a)sexuality
Response to Sherlock Series 3

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WHY STATS?

Statistics don’t

alarm me.

How would you know?

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WHY ASK WHY?

Quantitative literacy is fun (and empowering)
Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes approve (so does Mummy)
Stats are sexy

BALANCE OF PROBABILITY!

Why Stats - Why not?

-We sometimes hear the refrain by those who are more text oriented that ‘They don’t do math’, but just as the development of print literacy is be a tool of empowerment and joy and self-expression, so is quantitative literacy.

-There are different kinds of mathematics, just as there are different subfields in linguistics or different genres within literature. Statistics provides us with a set of tools for collecting and analyzing often large quantities of data and can be applied across many different fields.

-Knowledge of statistics can also be useful to help protect you from being fooled by numbers.

-Mycroft’s repeated phrase to Sherlock in this latest season of the BBC series ‘Balance of probability’ suggests he’s a fan of statistical methods.

-Hence, statistics are pretty damn sexy.

IMAGE MODIFIED FROM: http://i.imgur.com/3SZqjRo.jpg

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DATA TO HELP WITH DEDUCTIONS

Evidence =/= Proof
Ideal for answering certain types of questions
A different kind of meta

WHY STATISTICS

-Not only is Mycroft clearly a fan, but statistics provides us with a different kind of data for answering certain kinds of questions.

-We won’t claim to prove anything with statistics, but we will be using our data to look for evidence of certain patterns in some fandom spaces.

-There is a tendency in some places to place greater weight on quantitative data than on qualitative data as more convincing evidence either for or against something.

-It’s key to keep in mind that statistics or quantitative data is good for answering certain types of questions (e.g. is there more Elementary genfic than Elementary shipping fic) but cannot answer others (e.g. why isn’t there more femmeslash?)

-But fortunately fandom is not that kind of space and we consider these fandom stats just another kind of fandom meta only this time we’re analyzing numbers and not dialog, camera angles or lighting choices.

IMAGE FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jeremy_Brett.jpg

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DESCRIPTIVE VS INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

DESCRIPTIVE

Used to summarize numerical data for a particular sample

INFERENTIAL

Used to make inferences (generalize) to a larger population

foxestacado.tumblr.com

-One of the reasons we’re not claiming to prove something is due to the nature of the kind of numbers we’re looking at. For the most part, we will be looking at raw numbers and also general characteristics of these raw numbers.

-Two main categories of stats include descriptive and inferential statistics. We’ll be focusing mainly on descriptive statistics in this presentation. They allow us to describe numerical data to save space and time and to describe the characteristics of the specific parts of fandom (the samples) we’re investigating.

-For the data we are looking at descriptive statistics make the most sense. We are only able to look at certain sites using certain tools and these only represent a portion of the fandom and fandom practices. We recognize that fandom is diverse and that certain fans are drawn to certain sites more than others and won’t attempt to generalize from this data to all of fandom.

-Toasty will talk a little more about the specific parts of fandom and fan sites we are looking at that represent our sample.

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BEFORE THE STATS, FURTHER CAVEATS...

Fandom

Sherlock Holmes

A lot of the data we’ll be talking about comes from AO3, because they have a very accessible and well-organized system of tagging and searching. Some of the data I’ll be presenting is nearly impossible to gather on other platforms. But that doesn’t mean that AO3 is representative of the fandom as a whole. You have to apply for an invitation to post there, so there’s a higher barrier to entry than some platforms. And it has a bunch of quirks and biases as a platform. So when I talk about what’s popular on AO3, it’s not necessarily true everywhere, or anywhere besides AO3!

There’s also more data here from BBC Sherlock than other adaptations. That’s partly because there is a lot of data about BBC Sherlock right now, but also largely because the presenters are all big BBC fans, so that’s where they started looking. We would be so excited if some of you wanted to ask statistical questions about your favorite Sherlockian fandom — or other fandoms!

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THE POPULARITY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IN FANDOM

There’s a hell of a lot of fanfic out there about us, Watson.

Do tell.

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HOW MUCH BBC SHERLOCK FANFIC IS THERE?

63.3K

49.4K

34.8K

21.5K

17.8K

102K

91.8K

59.8K

47.4K

43.6K

Archive of our Own (AO3)

Fanfiction.net (FFNet)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Doctor Who

Supernatural

Glee

Sherlock

Supernatural

Doctor Who

Glee

Teen Wolf

Top 5 TV fandoms on major fanfiction archives

# Works

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DIFFERENT SHERLOCKIAN FANDOMS

93K

25K

5.5K

3.3K

1.4K

561

239

179

154

ACD Canon

RDJ movies

Mary Russell novels

AO3

FFNet

Granada TV show

# Works

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BBC SHERLOCK

ACTIVITY OVER TIME

1K

2K

3K

4K

S3

S1 UK

S1 US

S2 UK

S2 US

holiday gift exchanges?

setlock/

summer?

# Works / Month

DATA FROM

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ACTIVITY IN

ELEMENTARY & SHERLOCK FANDOMS

First Airdate:

September 27, 2012 (in US)

First Airdate:

July 25, 2010 (in UK)

6181

2807

1984

1181

910

581

545

295

ignify.tumblr.com

# Works

DATA FROM

To follow up on Toasty’s look at the popularity of different versions of Sherlock, I decided to compare the fanworks output of the two most recent modern AUs of Sherlock Holmes, which have often been compared in the press and in the fandom due to their modern settings, Elementary and BBC Sherlock. These are two very differently formatted shows which have been around for different lengths of time at this point, so I decided to take a compare their fanworks output over a similar time-frame in each show’s history:

Specifically, I compared the output of fanworks posted to Ao3 for each show after the first 9 months, one year and then after 18 months. This is due to the fact that Elementary's first episode aired in the US approximately 18 months ago (September 27, 2012). For the sake of consistency I searched the tag "Sherlock TV" for BBC Sherlock related fanworks and "Elementary TV" for Elementary related fanworks.

Artwork: http://ignify.tumblr.com/post/43828937904

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GENRES OF

FANFICTION

It’s all porn,

isn’t it?

Well.

Not all.

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BBC SHERLOCK:

RATINGS

31%

30%

15%

14%

9%

more explicit ratings

DATA FROM

% Works

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BBC SHERLOCK:

RELATIONSHIP TYPES

61%

29%

12%

2.8%

1.9%

1.8%

M/M

Gen

(not ship focused)

F/M

Multiple

Other

F/F

DATA FROM

% Works

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BBC SHERLOCK:

WORDCOUNT

35% of Sherlock fanworks are less than 1,000 words.

90% are less than 10,000 words.

3% are exactly 221 words. (AO3 average: 0.2%)

The median is 1,624 words.

The longest fanfic is 916,251 words.

Comparison:

The Final Problem

7,488 words

A Study in Scarlet

104,333 words

DATA FROM

% Works

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BBC SHERLOCK:

MOST COMMON TAGS

DATA FROM

% Works

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BBC SHERLOCK:

WHAT’S POPULAR TO READ

Word Count

DATA FROM

(fandom median = 22)

Kudos

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BBC SHERLOCK:

WHAT’S POPULAR TO READ

Relationship

Rating

DATA FROM

(fandom median = 22)

Kudos

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BBC SHERLOCK:

WHAT’S POPULAR TO READ?

(incomplete set)

average number of kudos for fandom

DATA FROM

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(BY FIC)

DATA FROM

# Works

Doctor Who

Harry Potter

Supernatural

James Bond

Marvel

Cabin Pressure

Star Trek

J. R. R. Tolkein

Merlin

His Dark Materials

Hunger Games

Labyrinth

X-Men

Inception

Buffy

Good Omens

Hannibal Lecter

Highlander

Stargate

Firefly

Pacific Rim

Bandom

Hitchhiker’s Guide

Sandman

Discworld

Maurice

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AO3 TAG WRANGLING

Sherlock (TV)

Sherlock Holmes - Doyle

Elementary (TV)

Sherlock

Sherlock Holmes (Downey Films)

Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV)

Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms

DATA FROM

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AO3 TAG NORMALIZATION

Harry Potter - Fandom

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter - Rowling

only knowledge of Harry Potter is necessary so don’t worry

Harry - Fandom

Harry Potter/Sherlock (BBC)

Sherlock/Harry Potter Crossover

Harry Potter

DATA FROM

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(BY KUDOS)

DATA FROM

28440

22761

16291

11046

7696

7071

7044

4928

4556

4273

3460

2306

2111

1302

1228

1135

1111

1050

1040

1038

1020

Harry Potter

James Bond

Doctor Who

Marvel

Supernatural

Cabin Pressure

Star Trek

Sentinel

J. R. R. Tolkien

His Dark Materials

Merlin

Jane Austen

Good Omens

Teen Wolf

Highlander

Garden Spells

X-Men

Push

Labyrinth

Firefly

Bourne

Mission: Impossible

Inception

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(BY SHERLOCK)

DATA FROM

# Works

Doctor Who

Harry Potter

Supernatural

James Bond

Marvel

Cabin Pressure

Star Trek

J. R. R. Tolkien

Merlin

His Dark Materials

Hunger Games

Labyrinth

X-Men

Inception

Buffy

Good Omens

Hannibal Lecter

Highlander

Stargate

Firefly

Pacific Rim

Bandom

Hitchhiker’s Guide

Sandman

Discworld

Maurice

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(BY SHERLOCK, - BBC)

DATA FROM

# Works

Doctor Who

Harry Potter

Supernatural

Marvel

Cabin Pressure

Star Trek

J. R. R. Tolkien

Merlin

His Dark Materials

Hunger Games

DCU

X-Men

Hawaii Five-O

Buffy

Sentinel

Teen Wolf

Highlander

Stargate

Game of Thrones

Pacific Rim

Bandom

Howl’s Moving Castle

Jeeves

Discworld

Mary Russell

James Bond

Phantom of the Opera

Ripper Street

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(- TOP 7)

# Works

DATA FROM

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SHERLOCK CROSSOVERS

(RARE BUT INTRIGUING)

DATA FROM

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SHIPPING AND

(A)SEXUALITY

IN FANDOM

...and then there’s this fic where you’re leaning over the sofa, and then I...

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HOW BIG IS THE HOLMES/WATSON SHIP?

27.5K

23K

21.6K

11.9K

9.8K

9.5K

7.9K

7.7K

7.5K

7.1K

Sherlock/John

Castiel/Dean (Supernatural)

Derek/Stiles (Teen Wolf)

Harry/Louis (One Direction)

Merlin/Arthur (Merlin)

Dean/Sam (Supernatural)

Steve/Tony (Avengers)

McKay/Sheppard (SG Atlantis)

Draco/Harry (Harry Potter)

Sherlock & John [friendship]

DATA FROM

# Works

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HOLMES/WATSON

ACROSS ADAPTATIONS

Granada ACD BBC RDJ Elementary

Percent of fanfic devoted to ship

100%

75%

50%

25%

0%

ireallyshouldbedrawing.

tumblr.com

DATA FROM

% Works

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JOHNLOCK (BBC SHIP)

OVER TIME

Percent of fanfic devoted to ship

100%

50%

0%

DATA FROM

S1

S2

S3

% Works

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OTHER SHIPS

DATA FROM

7.4%

2.7%

2.3%

1.2%

Sherlock/Irene

Joan/Irene

Sherlock/Marcus

Joan/Marcus

6.2%

4.2%

3.8%

3.0%

1.9%

1.5%

1.4%

1.1%

1.0%

Mycroft/Lestrade

Moran/Moriarty

John/Mary

Sherlock/Molly

Sherlock/Lestrade

Sherlock/Moriarty

Sherlock/Irene

Sherlock/Mycroft

John/Lestrade

patatomato.deviantart.com

% Works

The second most popular pairing in the BBC fandom on AO3 is Mycroft and Lestrade, despite their not having appeared onscreen together prior to S3. Moriarty and Sebastian Moran were also quite popular following S2. Sherlock and Molly is another popular pairing. We’ll be talking later about shifts in shipping following S3.

In Elementary, Sherlock/Joan is the most popular pairing, and after that, the biggest ships involve pairing one of the main characters with either Irene or Marcus. I don’t want to be spoilery about certain revelations in Elementary, but if you’re wondering whether the Irene Adler tag accounts for certain plot points -- I’ll tell you that it does. The AO3 tag wrangling that Strangelock discussed before allows for exactly the sorts of things to get categorized together that you’d hope for here.

Artwork: http://patatomato.deviantart.com/art/Mystrade-288318283

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ASEXUALITY ACROSS FANDOMS

1% of Sherlock fics are ace-related

38% of ace fics are Sherlock-related

586% more Sherlock ace!fic than Marvel

DATA FROM

# Works

Marvel

Sherlock

Les Mis

Supernatural

Homestuck

Doctor Who

Teen Wolf

Harry Potter

White Collar

Supernatural

Pacific Rim

Star Trek

James Bond

J. R. R. Tolkien

due South

RPF

WTNV

Bandom

Hetalia: Axis Powers

Original Work

Boondock Saints

DCU

Inception

Death Note

Disney

Dragon Age

MS Paint Adventures

Attack on Titan

Buffy

Cabin Pressure

Criminal Minds

Free!

Knight Rider

Merlin

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ASEXUALITY & SHERLOCK

DATA FROM

# Works

Mycroft/Lestrade

Moran/Moriarty

Sherlock/Molly

Sherlock/Lestrade

Sherlock/Moriarty

Sherlock/Mycroft

John/Lestrade

Sherlock/John/Lestrade

John/Mycroft

Sherlock & Lestrade

Sherlock/John

Sherlock & John

Sherlock/John/Mary

Sherlock/Victor

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RESPONSE TO

SHERLOCK

SERIES 3

The latest reports indicate that our fandom is decidedly #NotDead.

Woot!

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#SETLOCK

ON TUMBLR

11 Mar #replacesherlockquotewithgrape

Jan 2013-Feb 2014

E1: Barts;

Andrew Scott on set

E1: bonfire

E2: wedding

ComiCon

teaser trailer

E2: Gower St.

E3: Gower St.

BBC autumn trailer

BBC posts behind the scenes pics

1 Jan (TEH UK)

12 Jan (HLV UK)

19/20 Jan (TEH US)

DATA FROM

Posts / Day

Now we’re going to look at tag activity on Tumblr (posts per day using a given tag) -- in the lead up to S3 and following it. Caveat: a lot of data seems to be missing when you ask Tumblr (via the API, as I did here) for uses of really popular tags like #sherlock. Data may also be missing here; these numbers may be too low.

Fan tracking of Sherlock filming and related pre-season activity eventually settled on using the #setlock tag on Tumblr and Twitter, after some initial activity in other tags like #replacesherlockquotewithgrape (following set pics of Martin with grapes in his eyes). The items in red indicate dates when the Sherlock folks were filming in public, and the dates in purple are BBC promotional events. Green is the show airing.

Peak use: 958 uses in one day

Thanks so much to dudeufugly for help with matching up the dates/events. More info courtesy of dudeufugly:

march 25 - setlock begins with filming of bonfire scene in Bristol http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/46338877453/sherlock-series-3-spoilers-so-far-recap-march-25th

april 14 - highest ever setlock views for me personally, 35,000+ views of my blog in one day! Andrew was on set! filming at Bart's http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/47984759039/spoilers-sherlock-series-3-round-up-april-14th

april 22 - E2 starts filming (the wedding) http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/48636398456/spoilers-sherlock-series-3-round-up-april-22nd

May 21 - E2 filming at Gower - last filming before break http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/51015196720/spoilers-sherlock-series-3-round-up-may-21st

july 19 - SDCC Sherlock Comic Con : http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/55814444966/they-couldnt-be-on-stage-in-person-but-they-made

aug 2 - teaser for TEH came out after RBF repeat on tv: http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/57185134587/sherlock-series-3-teaser-trailer-bbc-one

aug 21 - Gower street filming: http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/58959026943/spoilers-sherlock-series-3-roundup-august-21st

sep1 - BBC autumn programme trailer with exclusive new sherlock footage came out : http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/59915506054/bbcone-our-brand-new-original-british-drama (it leaked a day early though)

sep 19 - BBC posted " a look behind the scenes" photos: http://dudeufugly.tumblr.com/post/61673385255/a-look-behind-the-scenes-of-sherlock-series-3-via

Images: Robert Viglasky; BBC One

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#SHERLOCKLIVES

ON TUMBLR

24 Nov

Three Patch Podcast

campaign begins

Nov 2013-Feb 2014

teaser trailer

London hearse event;

air date announced

HLV

TSoT

MHR

interactive trailer

TEH

DATA FROM

Posts / Day

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#JOHNLOCKARY

ON TUMBLR

Jan 2014

HLV

TSoT

TEH

DATA FROM

midoriner.tumblr.com

Posts / Day

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#BALLETLOCK

ON TUMBLR

Jun 2013 - Feb 2014

threadear.tumblr.com

26 June - 1 July

peak meme

TSoT

“balletlock is canon!”

DATA FROM

Posts / Day

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“FIX-IT” FIC

ON AO3

May 2010-Feb 2014

S1

S2

S3

DATA FROM

Works / Month

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OTHER SHIPS:

CHANGE IN POPULARITY

artbylexie.tumblr.com

DATA FROM

% Works

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BBC SHERLOCK FANWORKS:

SERIES 2 VS SERIES 3

DATA FROM

penns-woods.tumblr.com

# Works

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JOHNLOCK FANWORKS:

SERIES 2 VS SERIES 3

DATA FROM

foxestacado.tumblr.com

# Works

I then looked in particular at fanworks that were tagged for Johnlock to see if there was a difference there during the same time frame following both series.

-In absolute numbers, two months after series 3 aired, there were roughly 3 times as many fanworks tagged Johnlock that were uploaded to Ao3 compared to those uploaded in the same time period post series 2.

-This does not necessarily mean that these fanworks incorporate any of the series 3 canon. In fact, some may have been generated in response to the canon as a way to ignore or rewrite or explain portions of series 3 that posed a challenge to those wishing to write Johnlock.

-Therefore I looked at an emerging tag, the meta tag, to see what portion of post series 3 output might be non-fiction writing that attempted to analyze and deconstruct the series.

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THE EMERGENCE OF META

DATA FROM

penns-woods.tumblr.com

# Works

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THE END.

That was an exhausting amount of statistics.

Quite.

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FOR MORE FANDOM STATS:

destinationtoast

stats + fanfic + meta

destinationtoast.tumblr.com

destinationtoast@gmail.com

just the stats

toastystats.tumblr.com

penns-woods

Benedict Cumberbatch + meta + johnlock + fanart

penns-woods.tumblr.com

slytherinlife@gmail.com

Three Patch Podcast

threepatchpodcast.tumblr.com

strangelock

ace!Sherlock + johnlock

+ occasional analytics

strangelock.tumblr.com

strangelock@icloud.com

All derivative artwork has been used with permission from the copyright holders for the purposes of this presentation.