“the biggest ship of AO3, possibly even of all time, and the rightful successor to Spirk as modern fandom's ship regent.” Lmao WHAT. That reach omfg
Well, I know you don’t actually give a shit, but let me explain for anyone else who may be side-eying that statement from the original Meta Monday post. And please, guys, if you have different thoughts, I’m genuinely interested!
1) In terms of numbers, yes, Destiel is the top ship on AO3. That is a fact.
2) In terms of numbers — still talking about numbers here — it might very well be the most popular ship of all time. I suspect it is, but this is literally impossible to quantify. Obviously, we can scrape data from AO3 or tumblr with a high confidence that we’re getting a realistic picture, while so much from usernets and zines is either lost or in paper form that isn’t going to quantify itself. But more than that, the barrier to enter fandom is so much lower now than it was even in 2000. We’ll never know how many people WOULD HAVE participated had they even known it was a thing, or how many people may have written fanfiction while thinking they were the only one. Here I should note I’m talking western fandom only.
3) I do not know another post-Spirk ship that has this level of popularity. If you do, please share! I considered a few. Buffy and X-Files were bigger fandoms than Supernatural, and they generated a lot of ship-related fanwork, but back to point number two on why I honestly doubt they generated AS MUCH fanwork as many modern fandoms have. Harry Potter/Drarry is the most obvious competition, I think. Again the fandom is bigger, but I don’t think Drarry is. Fewer fics on AO3, I thiiink more on FFN but that’s also a platform in decline. When I compare that to Destiel with its meet-ups and dominance at conventions, and even the frequency with which it appears on tumblr’s top 10, my gut tells me Destiel wins.
4) None of this means Destiel is as important as Spirk, or that anything can be as important as Spirk. Spirk is the Big Bang. It gave us fanfiction — I would argue earlier Sherlock Holmes fanfiction was not true fanfiction but I’ll spare you — it gave us slash, and community, and truly filthy drawings of space dicks that fill my heart with joy. And don’t even get me going about Killing Time! There will never be another ship that did so much (Ok, I see you, too, Man from U.N.C.L.E., I do, but…)
5) All that to say, I don’t really see anything objectionable here. Destiel isn’t my otp. I dig it, I think the meta and community is amazing, I hope it goes canon; but I didn’t have a secret Destiel agenda.
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What do you guys think?
It also depends on what metrics you use.
I think it’s fair to say that the length of the show’s run will make a difference in how many fics will be produced and therefore help in determining it’s popularity. Besides that, there are also other ways to determine popularity besides fic; amount of money spent on merchandise, academic papers written, convention attendance, etc, etc.
Consider the length of time SPN has been running. It’s on season 13 now, yes? That’s twice as long as Buffy ran! I know we say it ran for 7 seasons, and technically that’s true, but season 1 was only 12 episodes. So if you are going by episode count, SPN has already lapped it. There is also an argument to be made that Angel’s run should be included in that count towards a total for the Buffyverse, which is where things get muddy but I’m not in the mood for math right now.
(As a counterpoint to my assertion that popularity could be linked proportionally to length of episodic run, I should mention Sherlock. Considering its popularity is in stark contrast to its lack of episodes. There has always got to be a pesky outlier!)
Fandoms thrive while new content is created and the BtVS fandom managed to live on for years after Ats ended. The sheer number of separate forums and websites, fanfic archives and vidding databases, and conventions devoted to BtVS blows my mind. There was even a magazine that ran from 1999 to 2007, which I may or may not own a few boxes worth. James Marsters had his own little fandom that followed him wherever he went, which is how I met most of my friends. A quick look at the fanlore page of links just scratches the surface of what existed during the fandom’s heyday.
Unfortunately migrating from LJ and the rings of separate archives, to Tumblr and A03, occurred mostly post the natural decline of BtVS in popularity. This means that tons of fanworks never found their way to being uploaded to A03. Subsequently, a decade’s worth of amazing meta and other fanworks, including fanvids that were never uploaded to YT, are lost to the ether.
You’re right, it’s almost impossible to quantify something like this. Especially when the structures we use to determine popularity shift around us. We can really only quantify what we see on a moment by moment basis.
So trying to equate fandoms from different eras within different technological frameworks, plus varied lengths of runs, there is no sure way to know what would come out on top. And each are important in their own ways. Star Trek and Spirk witnessed the birthing of fandom, while BtVS gave us the bridge between the pre internet fandom era and now.
All of that to say, in my heart of heats I have to believe that if all things being equal, I can’t imagine Spuffy wouldn’t come close or meet Destiel in popularity. That said, there really is no way of knowing without some kind of massive cross platform fandom data caching, which I am in no way suggesting someone should take on! Finally, obviously, I am of course totally biased and just enjoyed this as a fun mental walk down memory lane of fandom’s past.
I’m in heaven over your reply. I only saw the first line in my notes on mobile, and I thought it was an important point even on its own. But now seeing your full comments… This is excellent fandom meta regardless of the original question. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
Spuffy was probably the first popular ship I was even aware of, and that was back before I knew fanfiction was a thing. I remember the importance of being a Spike/Buffy fan versus an Angel/Buffy fan, how huge ‘Prophesy Girl’ was, and that doesn’t even get into Willow/Tara (my personal jam).
I agree with you entirely that Spuffy and BtVS are the bridge between Spirk and modern fandoms like Destiel. That’s far more accurate than the direct leap from Spirk to Destiel that I probably implied without meaning to. It belongs in the Major Ship Pantheon, to drop my royalty metaphor, both in numbers and historical significance. I know I’m oversimplifying here, but if Spirk was mimeographed zines and conventions, and Destiel is interactive websites and social media, then Buffy should be credited as pioneered popular internet fandom with forums and self-made archives. Not saying no one did it before Buffy, but I think it has to be one of if not the first fandoms/ships that really attracted a broader swath of people who might never have wanted to attend a convention or cared about ‘genre’ television before.
For younger fans, speaking as someone who used to read books about HTML in the library during lunch, so she could go home and work on her dorky fansites back before Buffy aired, it was not the cool kid pastime it is today. I was regarded as something between a level 20 nerd and a wizard. I wish both were actually true.
But anyway, is that fair to say? Anyone disagree? I feel like I never know enough about fandom, so I can’t say enough that I appreciate being corrected.
Now, coming back to the question of Spuffy versus Destiel… Honestly, I didn’t even consider the length of the show run, and now I can’t dismiss that. BtVS had 144 episodes over 7 seasons. As of April 12, Supernatural will have run 282 episodes and Thirteen seasons. I’m kind of amazed how close to perfectly double that is.
Sherlock, if you consider episode numbers, changes everything. Right this second, Johnlock has 56,783 fics on AO3, and Destiel has 72,089. That’s REAL close for such a big gap in original canon content. Just to make life easy, let’s assume every episode of Supernatural runs a full 45 minutes without commercials or 12,690 total minutes of canon content. Sherlock runs 90 minutes, and there are 13 episodes, so 1,170 minutes of canon content. This is bullshit math on many levels, I know, but just for a simple comparison, that means there are 5.7 Destiel fics per minute of their show versus 48.5 Johnlock fics per minute. On AO3 alone!
I mean, holy shit.
Even more complicated, let me throw in my baby Sterek. There were 6 seasons and 100 episodes, but Stiles and Derek only appear on screen together for less than 75 minutes total. That’s not even enough time to fill two of the shows 43-minute episodes.
Again, warning for junk math, but with 52,354 fics currently on AO3 (it’s the third-ranked ship on those AO3 stats, btw, right after Destiel and Johnlock), the Sterek ratio is 698 fics per minute of screentime. I don’t have the energy to adjust the Johnlock and Destiel ratios to only include their screentime, nor would I even know where to start, but I doubt it’s that high. Destiel and Johnlock both spend far more time together than a mere 75 minutes. But I don’t know a single Sterek shipper, as passionate as we are, who would ever call it the “biggest ship.”
THAT makes me think of my other major Ship, Stony or Captain America/Iron Man, which is ranked #8 on AO3 at a current 22,719 fics. I can’t even begin to guess how many thousands upon thousands of comics they’ve appeared in together, and how many thousands upon thousands of comics they’ve appeared in separately. Their ratio would be so tiny even Ant-Man would be like “I don’t see it.”
And I’m still focusing on AO3 fics, which is questionable in and of itself. What about fanart? What about meta? Cosplay? Viewership of all those episodes or readership of those comics? Or, as you said, fanvids! Shit, the vidding and bootlegging done long before YouTube that we’ll never see…
I think all I did was confuse myself, really, and probably bore a lot of people talking to myself, but this is a really fun puzzle to think about, and I may have blown off the last few hours of work to think about it. Whoops…
YOU MATHED FOR ME! *excitedly flails in your direction*
THIS is why I love fandom meta! Even if it’s something we know we can never put a figure to, we will give it our best shot. WOW, that must have been a lot of work. Breaking down fics per ship by minutes of screen time? Dayum! Even if it is ‘junk math’ as you say, it’s fun to parse these things back and forth.
It was doubly a treat for me that you responded so enthusiastically to my small meta cause I’m such a fan of your blog. I liken it to the old style newsletters and digests that were common back in the day. A centralized location for fanwork recs and notices, which I feel is sorely lacking on this site. Probably due to Tumblr’s lack of ability to create community owned blogs.
Of course these types of blogs are massive undertakings so anyone who even tries should be seriously applauded. So thank you for all the work you do here! I know many of us really appreciate it.
It made me wonder about some of the old BtVS newsletters I used to follow and I found the SU_Herald is STILL ACTIVE! With tons of posts and links and my mind is totally blown. What I thought was a dormant fandom, is still very much alive!
This whole interaction has made me look back at how my fandom experience shaped me as a person, the lasting friendships I made, my world view in many ways. No matter how much anyone might try, they’d never be able to put a metric on that. Thanks for taking this walk down memory lane with me. :D
Whoa… that is so incredibly sweet of you to say. I’m a little overwhelmed, honestly. Your kind words mean a lot to me, thank you! And dude, I will flail down memory lane any time 😄
I know what you mean about how formative fandom is, and I love how you put that: “No matter how much anyone might try, they’d never be able to put a metric on that.” So true. Hell, I literally met my (still) best friend roleplaying on a smutty HP LiveJournal over 12 years ago. Got on a plane to visit a total stranger, because we both pretended to be wizards online, lol.
Also WHOA, I cannot believe SU_Herald is still going! My mind is blown. I think this means I’m gonna have to do a Buffy-themed Fic Rec Friday soon!
Ok, ok. I’m not going to write another novel-length post. I’m sure nobody needs that. But again, thank you!!!