Kaz after ordering Geels to pay him an additional 5% just because

TF Fanfic Census 2017 (pt. 3) - Quantifying IDW Fics

Let’s dig a little deeper into what’s going on with IDW Transformers fanfics on AO3 and try to quantify what people have posted. 😃

First off we’re going to take a look at how IDW Transformers stacks up against some other popular comics for number of fics - 5,000 seems like a small fandom, but the readership of print comics (excluding manga and some graphic novels) is really low these days, so it’s only fair to look at us in comparison to other print comics. All of these were fairly popular series that had a comics specific tag I could zero in on; keep in mind that series popular before AO3 existed (2009) or with demographics that don’t use AO3 won’t be fairly represented.

That said, wow! We’re right up there with some of these random-ass popular comics I picked cause I thought they’d have a lot of fanfiction. Cool!

Notes: If you have trouble reading the graphs, they’re also available in an image post: here and here

Most of this data is queried directly from AO3 using their advanced search. However, some data you just can’t get that way. So I also randomly sampled 620 IDW fanfics to give us some approximations - I’ll indicate if a chart is pulled from the sample instead of the full dataset.

Ratings Breakdown

There are nearly twice as many explicit as mature works, while teen and general audiences are about the same, nestled between the two.

Complete vs. Incomplete Fics

How many works in the archive are currently incomplete/works in progress? About 14% of fics.

But then, only a multi-chapter fic can possibly be incomplete. We should probably look at them separately from the one-shots. Slightly less than a quarter of all fics are multi-chapter fics.

So, let’s zoom in on just those mutichapter fics. Here we can see that nearly 60% of multi-chapter fics are currently incomplete.

Incomplete in this case doesn’t necessarily mean abandoned - they could be active works in progress. Let’s take a quick look at when incomplete fics were most recently edited (and I’m not saying everyone who’s taken more than a year to update has abandoned a work! this is just for reference! write at your own pace!)

So 55% percent of incomplete fics (387 of them) haven’t been updated in the past year. Take from that what you will.

How Many Works Were Being Written Each Year?

This, of course, gets complicated. Because a multi-chapter work could have continued on for many years - should we look at when it began or when it completed? If we look at all works and when they were last updated we see a sharp peak in 2015 and then a shallow decline in 2016-2017.

Is that the real data trend? Or are multi-chapter updates messing us up? Well, if we look only at one-shots, we see something very similar:

There’s still a peak in 2015, but now we see a steeper decline into 2016 and 2017. Which seems sad, I just got here. ☹ But have no fear, 2017 seems artificially low because we’re just counting the first 10 months. If we extrapolate a uniform upload rate for November and December, the total count should be at about as much as last year.

This chart could also reflect a shift towards multi-chapter fics instead of one-shots. I can’t figure any way to query that, so there’s no way to check.

How Long Are They?

First let’s query the database and see how many fics fall into different length ranges.

Hmm...interesting. How does that compare to Transformers fics as a whole?

Well, from here they look pretty similar, but it’s tough to compare them because the IDW sample is so much smaller. Let’s look at what percentile of fics fall into each bracket instead and see what’s different:

Ah, that’s better. Here we can see that IDW fics are more likely to fall in the 1,000-5,000 range than other Transformers fics, but less likely to be very short or very long.

We can also use the database to find the median fic lengths: just sort by length and go to the center. From that we can see that the median length of a IDW fic is slightly longer than that of the median aggregated Transformers fic.

We can also see that, predictably, one-shots are shortest, followed by incomplete multi-chapter works, followed by complete multi-chapter works. No surprises here.

If we look at it by rating, though, we get some interesting data. Explicit and mature works are by-and-away longest, while teen and gen works are comparatively short. Works that aren’t rated fall between the two.

The reason to look at medians instead of means is that fanfiction is going to have a bunch of outliers - the longest work in any category is far, far longer than the majority of other works and pulls the average up. Let’s take a peek at the longest work in each rating.

From our sampled data I estimated the mean lengths; sure enough, they’re a lot higher than the medians. I calculated an average length for a finished multi-chapter work at 33,943 words (versus the known median of 8,156) and that of an unfinished multi-chapter work as 10,225 words (versus the known median of 4,965). Meanwhile, one-shots have an average length of 1,906 (versus the known median of 1,316).

We can also use the sampled data to see see what the distributions look like. If we look at how many chapters fics have, the one-shot predominates.

If we look at the same dataset excluding one-shots, we get a better look at the spread of chapter numbers for multi-chapter fics. 2-3 chapter fics are nearly twice as common as 4-5 chapter fics. (The data gets patchy on the upper end since a sample of 600 fics is going to pick up on very few very long fics.)

Since the sample includes both word count and number of chapters, we can approximate how many words stories have per chapter. The calculated average number of words/chapter was 2,541 for complete multi-chapter works and 1,906 (same as the fic length) for one-shots.

Let’s look at the spread of all fics. (The histogram here has stupid block sizes which I could not change 😐.) If we look there’s a surprisingly sharp decline after a chapter length of 580 words.

This is, of course, because of short one-shots. If we exclude one-shots from the dataset we get a very different shape. Now chapter lengths are fairly evenly distributed between shorter-than-500 and 2000 words, then beginning a gradual decline.

And that’s about it for looking at lengths, chapters, publication years, complete/incomplete works and ratings.

What’s Next?

Pt. 1 - Quantifying TF Fanfiction between Adaptations

Pt. 2 - Relationship Scoreboard (All Series) - A Quick Look at the Most Popular Pairings

Pt. 3 - This post!

pt 4 - (IDW) Quantifying Reader Response - let’s take a look at how readers respond to the fanfics that have been posted.

pt 5 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (½)

pt 6 - IDW Relationship Spectacular (2/2)

Shitty samus returns review

i feel obligated to talk about how there hasnt been a new metroid game in 6 years, partly because its sad and i wanted more metroid, but mostly because every review ive seen started like this. 6 years is like 4 zeldas, 6 marios, 2 pokemons and 2 failed attempts at college. Yes technically metroid prime : chibi space marines + soccer came out in that time but if you couldnt tell by the (totally accurate title) that shit doesnt count. the world needed samus genociding aliens and promising strip teases if you do it fast enough. why not just do that by remaking the second worst metroid game(return of samus) with all the fixins of super, fusion, and zero mission. so yeah they did that something something transition story After defeating space pirates, destroying mother brain and the metroids in the first game, samus is on the galactic federations speed dial for anytime they fuck something up. This time, they find the metroid homeworld of SR388 and decide to go there without samus. 5 minutes later everyone is dead and they want samus to kill everything left on the planet. yay genocide. the story is basicly a setup to show off and kill a bunch of new metroid evolutions. its a pretty straightfoward story for a pretty straightfoward metroid game. they even got some beautiful artwork to show off these plot points as well as some chozo backstory. its some good shit. gameplay samus returns has built apon the tried and true formula of runing around, shooting aliens, and collecting shit that makes it easier to run around and shoot aliens. expect lots of caverns, hidden power ups bombable walls etc. if youve played a 2d metriod game super or after you have a pretty good idea what youre getting into. that being said there is enough new stuff here too to keep shit interesting. you have all the standard beams, missiles and bombs as well as the screw attack, morphball, spiderball, and grapple beam. the only thing missing is the shinespark, the lack of which makes back tracking a bit more tedious. most of the weapons function exactly the same althought the ice beam doesnt stack on the other beams which is kind of annoying / the grapple beam and powerbombs can pull off some new tricks. tbh im a spoiled brat and i wont be happy with the grapple beam until it has the same versatility as smash bros. as for new shit, you got a melee counter to deflect rush down enemies and set up for a quick kill or just push away critters that get to close. you have the 360 aim which makes it way easier to shoot down enemies at the cost of being locked into a standstill or jumping in place. and you got the aeion abilities that all deplete from a meter you can increase buy collecting upgrades. these abilities let you slow down time, shoot rapid fire, have a lightning armor that negates damage as well as increase the range of your mellee counter, and the scan pulse which can fill out chunks of your map and help find secrets. These new abilities are all really well implemented into the game, especially the 360 aim and the counter, i found myself using those very consistantly. they arent withought faults, the button used for the 360 takes up any space that could be used for a free running diagonal aim, something that is incredibly usefull but still doable by holding diagonal on the controll stick. the melee counter doesnt do any damage by itself which is kind of dissapointing to my fantasy of samus punching her foes to death. regardless the mechanic is still really fun even if i wish it was more damaging and could be used while running. the aeion abilities are great even if i only really used the rapid fire and slowmo when i was required. im too paranoid about running out of meter to ever use them outside of necesity or experimenting on how to kill a boss the fastest way possible. youll have plenty of time to experiment because you fight each form of metroid anywhere between 1 and 12 times. the metroids are fun, the melee counter quick time events and fighting the them in different arenas help keep shit interesting but at the end of the day youre still fighting some of these guys 10+ times. the 3 non metroid bosses are fun too, except maybe diggernaught, beating him was a little too criptic/trial and error -y. id say the bosses in this game are overall significantly harder than most of the other 2d games and im split on how to feel about it. on the one hand i like a challenge but on the other im an unstopable intergalctic genociding bounty hunter so i dont want to die 3 times on a digger robot FUCK YOU DIGGERNAUGHT. but yeah anyway i think the map is a little 2 linear for my taste. its set up in isolated levels with very little intersecting paths and almost no backtracking. for me it makes it feel less like a complete world and more like a series of stages seperated by elevators. it's a left over design from the original game that isnt exactly my cup of tea but also doesnt ruin the experience by any means. at least there are teleporters to make end game collecting easier. presentation i dont like the graphics in this game. all the edges are blocky but not really in a stylized way and the screan always seems blurry like there is to much light coming from the environment for the camera to get a crisp view. even the artwork has this overly lense flare thing going on. to be clear, the graphics in no way inhibit the gameplay. i think they get in way of the atmosphere of the game. for me id say about 50 percent of the metroid experience comes from the imursion and atmosphere that the games have. shit like big ass slugs, krysal caverns, waterfall and statues in the background go a long way to help in this department for SR but it feels like for every area there is with a great background or soundtrack there is another area with little to no soundtrack and the only background is blue or brown rocks. thats not to say this hasnt been the case in other metroid games but many of those had you spend more time running through each respective area. for me this familiarity with each area made each game feel like its own world. i remember traveling through talon IV swampy service because it was interesting, i did it a lot, and the music was great. i remember pendara drifts and norfair and kraid for all the same reasons, the seamed like part of a world. samus returns is a big circle of sometimes pretty caves and ruins connected by elevators . combine that with the less than stellar graphics (id take sprites any day) and you have a rather underwelming planet, at least on the whole. it probably doesnt help that i spent most of my time looking at the touch screen map instead of the actual game. i guess i could always just pause the game and and plan out my route on the map like i used to but meh. something i will praise about the presentation are the added cutscenes and semi quick time events. if you counter a certain bosses youll get a cutscene where you mash the missile button and beat the shit out of the bosses in spectacular ways. you fling some around by their tails, ride using there horns and all sorts of other crazy shit. these all give make samus seem as baddass as ever and really show off how strong she is. it might just be my favorite new feature in the game. i only recall 2 new/ remixed songs from metroid 2, the rest are recycled from other famous metroid games. whats there is great but id always love more. conclusion gameplay wise this might be the most refined and excessable entry in the series, at least in terms of being user friendly. controls are tight, responsive, customizable and the touch screen makes flippin through shit a breaze. the touch screen map combine with the aeion map pulse make exploring easier than ever(i haved mixed feeling but i also dont have to use it so whatever). the bosses are challenging and rarely unfair. the overall presentation is passable but not stellar. the map is pretty linear which could turn off some but does streamline the experience. overall i really enjoyed this game for what it was, as much as i harped on about things that i think have been done better in other entries in the series. i guess for a rating uh, i think i like it better than fusion but not as much as zero mission or super. lemme know if you guys want more ramblings in the future