Welcome to a little side blog dedicated to looking at the statistics of works for Aramán posted to Archive of Our Own.
Why are you doing this?
Well, as someone that enjoys statistics and thinks that they can show interesting trends when looking at them through fan works, the chance to start crunching those numbers near the beginning of a "new" fandom that's starting off already primed with an existing audience sounded fun. And there's the potential for some unique statistical situations like the extra-large cast for this type of media and the episodes following separated tables, which adds to my curiosity as to how things will go or change compared to other fandoms I've looked at in the past.
What are you going to be posting about?
I'm mostly going to be focusing on two types of posts.
One based on the trends within the fandom itself; like what percentage of works feature what characters, what pairings might show up together, if any new tags get created for the fandom, and updates on the current popular characters/pairings/whatnot. These will likely be done week to week to cover things as new episodes come out.
The second is going to be more about comparing the fandom to all Ao3 works at-large; like the ratios of completed/incompleted works, how the fandom uses ratings or warnings vs. the rest of the site, or are there more or less archive locked works. These will be less frequent, maybe about once a month unless something surprising comes up.
The Romantic Relationships stayed fairly flat over the week with 2 staying even. None in these ranks moved more than 0.2%, but on average are trending very slightly up.
We get a slightly greater range of movement this week, but nothing overly unexpected. Being well into the Seekers table the 3 members that appear in these ranks are all gaining or breaking even, while everyone else is tracking lower.
The trends of the last few weeks have moved slightly more, though no rearranging of ranks. All of our Top 5 are spaced out enough I don't expect to much shuffling around.
I've chosen to allow relationships including NPCs in my main lists going forward. Julien/Aranessa technically joins the Top 5, but if they had been included this is around where they would have been for many weeks.
Mirroring the Romantic Relationships, adding NPCs into the Platonic Relationship ranks adds Julien & Aranessa at #2. The ratios that past week were very flat aside from Wicander & Tyranny, which saw a 0.5% downward trend.
As of January 29th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 887 works (+178 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
Similar to the romantic relationships, just not quite as wide, there is a good gap between the #1 and #10 platonic relationship tags. Collectively these are more down than up without any particularly notable moves aside from Halandil & Bolaire taking the top spot this month.
The featured category had an interesting swap around from last month. Despite being down via ratio, Julien moved up to #3. This was more due to Thaisha having a sharper drop off to land her at #5.
As of January 29th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 887 works (+178 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
There are still some pretty large gaps in the top romantic relationship ranks. Even slight shifts in the 6-10 places will cause a lot of rearranging. But our top 3 ranks are holding fairly strong.
The most featured category is a combined stat for all the works tagged where a character is part of a relationship tag.
While there wasn't technically any rank changes here, Wicander dropped and Bolaire gained enough to tie for #4. They are poised for a swap if the trends of the past 2 months continue.
As of January 29th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 887 works (+178 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
This month lets include a more expanded list of characters.
From last month Bolaire and Kattigan were the big gainers, with Kattigan raising 2 ranks. While Occtis and Thaisha saw the biggest drops, neither saw any rank movement because they were both well above the next closest character.
As of January 29th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 887 works (+178 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
0 words: 1.6% (↓ 0.2%)
1-99 words: 0.9% (↑ 0.3%)
100-999 words: 19.5% (↓ 0.7%)
1000-4999 words: 59.3% (↓ 1.5%)
5000-9999 words: 13.3% (↑ 0.9%)
10k-25k words: 5.2% (↑ 1.1%)
25k-50k words: 0.1% (↔ 0.0%)
50k-100k words: 0.1% (↑ 0.1%)
This past month we had a work pass the 50k word mark. Again works above 5k are trending up, which is typical of a growing fandom and works in progress.
As of January 29th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 887 works (+178 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
This post covers general work stats for the fandom tag and their comparison to overall Ao3 work stats.
Complete Works: 90.8%, down 0.2% from last month, 7.7% above current Ao3 average
Public Works: 89.5%, up 0.4% from last month, 2.2% above current Ao3 average
Single Chapter: 83.9%, down 1.3% from last month, 13.4% above Ao3 average
Single Fandom: 98.1%, down 0.1% from last month, 6.9% above Ao3 average
As a repeat of last month most figures are trending toward the over all Ao3 averages while still holding on to a lot of traits of a "newer" fandom; higher levels of single chapter and single fandom works. There is a little note to make about works with only a single fandom listed, but because it didn't impact any Aramán works that I noticed I'll stick it under a read more at the bottom if anyone is curious.
Not Rated: 5.6%, up 0.1% from last month, 5.4% below Ao3 average
General Audiences: 26.0%, down 1.5% from last month, 0.5% below Ao3 average
Teen And Up: 33.5%, up 1.6% from last month, 5.5% above Ao3 average
Mature: 14.3%, up 0.5% from last month, 1.5% below Ao3 average
Explicit: 20.5%, down 0.8% from last month, 1.9% above Ao3 average
A slight change of course for some ratings this month. The General Audiences count drops below the Ao3 average for the first time. And while the Teen And Up and Mature are trending up, Explicit tagged works saw a drop off.
No Archive Warnings Apply: 70.2%, down 0.9% from last month, 35.0% above Ao3 average
Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings: 20.2%, up 0.9% from last month, 33.0% below Ao3 average
Any Archive Warning: 12.4%, up 0.3% from last month, 4.0% below Ao3 average
Graphic Depictions Of Violence: 7.3%, up 1.1% from last month, 1.4% below Ao3 average
Major Character Death: 6.2%, the same from last month, 0.4% above Ao3 average
Rape/Non-Con: 0.8%, up 0.1% from last month, 2.4% below Ao3 average
Just a bit more movement than than past months for a few warnings. No Archive Warnings Apply dropped back to about where it was 2 months ago. While Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings rose the same ratio. Only Graphic Depictions Of Violence had a spike this month.
M/M: 33.1%, down 0.9% from last month, 14.8% below Ao3 average
F/M: 19.5%, up 0.6% from last month, 4.6% below Ao3 average
F/F: 5.0%, down 0.1% from last month, 4.6% below Ao3 average
Gen: 44.3%, up 0.2% from last month, 25.9% above Ao3 average
Multi: 3.8%, the same from last month, 1.5% below Ao3 average
Other: 3.7%, up 0.6% from last month, 0.4% below Ao3 average
Following from last month, still not many big moves in the paring categories. Other had the biggest relative jump, nearly pulling even with the Ao3 average.
Ao3 recently restructured and merged a number of fandom tags. This has caused a number of works that were tagged with multiple fandoms to now only have a single fandom tag. So the number of works that would be shown under "No Crossovers" increased very noticeably. By my calculations it seems around 200k or 1.2% of all Ao3 works were effected.
The Platonic Relationships were down across the board this week mirroring most tags in general.
Over all the week from January 16-22 was the slowest week for the Aramán tag since the campaign started. While there is often a noticeable dip in the entirety of Ao3 works posted in January, Aramán was quieter than average. This seems like the 3 week holiday hiatus in episodes combined with that regular new year dip. However the typical 'last Thursday off' release schedule isn't happening this week, so there is going to be a much more uninterrupted run of episodes. We'll see how that might affect works and tags coming up.
Yet another repeat of the trends for all our Top 5. Some closer to swapping than prior, but with all of our down trending player characters poised to be at a featured table shortly those gaps may be going in the other direction soon.
The ratios for Romantic Relationships were a bit split this week. Fairly minimal movent aside from the top spot where Halandil/Bolaire had a more noticeable rise.
A little less variance in Platonic Relationship tags. Halandil & Bolaire continue to widen the gap to their #1 spot, while our remaining ranks maintain or drop in ratio slightly.
A repeat of last weeks trends for all our Top 5. None are poised for swamping of ranks at these rates. However, as none of these characters have been main features of the Soldiers table and with the first major table swap after the Overture episodes approaching, their could be a shake up in the works.
Romantic Relationships were nearly down across the board in our top spots, only Halandil/Thaisha saw some gains. While the gaps between the Top 5 are more defined there always seems to be 3 or 4 Romantic Relationships within striking distance of #5. While this is not the case as much for other rankings, I am considering expanding them all to a Top 10 to better reflect how many characters and relationships this fandom has.
More up and downs for the Platonic Relationship tags brought about the first overtaking of the long running #1 rank of Thaisha & Occtis. Their slight dip in ratio let last weeks tie break, leaving Halandil & Bolaire at the top spot.
Starting our new year off our Top 5 most tagged characters have been fairly steady for months. Since mid November there has only been some swapping within these ranks.
There was some shifting in our Romantic Relationship tags. Wicander/Tyranny regained their #2 spot. And Halandil/Thaisha has retook it's slight lead over Thaisha/Vaelus who held or tied them for that spot for nearly a month.
It was a bit up and down for the Platonic Relationship tags. After a more general downward trend for our top spots, there is some slightly bump in the percentages. Halandil & Bolaire got a big enough boost to tie with Thaisha & Occtis, who have been reigning champ in this category since the earliest days.
❗ There will not be an Aramán of Our Own post today due to computer issues. Data was collected last week but I will be unable to post on the normal day.❗
As of December 25th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 709 works (+176 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
As apposed to the romantic relationships there wasn't any shuffling in the ranks of the platonic relationships. Things are trending generally down besides #3 Wicander & Tyranny that only had a tiny bump.
The featured category goes on in a similar fashion without any moving in the ranks and a downward trend for most. Occtis and Thaisha lost ground farther. And only Bolaire saw a fairly good gain in comparison.
As of December 25th the "Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series)" fandom tag contained 709 works (+176 from last month). All Stats are presented in a percentage of total works.
Lets see how the romantic relationship tags are doing.
There is a new entry coming into the #5 spot in Thaisha/Vaelus as a tie with Halandil/Thaisha. Following on from last month a gap is showing in these top spots, but it is slowing. Last month had a much higher swing in ratios and that's settled much more.
The most featured category is a combined stat for all the works tagged where a character is part of a relationship tag.
There was some movement in the featured ranks. Both Halandil and Julien over took for a #1 spot tie; knocking Occtis to #3. Tyranny, who also had a drop last month, fell off the list to make way for Bolaire to come it at #5.