the vision of hetjoshi t’pel is so clear in my mind it’s basically canon to me. woman very much invested in the eroticism of close friendship as well as her husband’s gorgeous bestie. she takes janeway aside at some point and tells her that if tuvok goes into pon farr while they’re on a mission she’s allowed to fuck him. you know, just to save his life. extremely disappointed to find out that the only time he went into pon farr while on voyager janeway wasn’t around. tuvok’s waxing poetic about he was so faithful he submitted himself to the humiliation of his most annoying coworker making him a pon farr wife sex holoprogram to get through it and she’s just like “oh…. that’s so….. romantic of you”
ever asked yourself (or a friend, or your grandma, or maybe the internet) "which katharine hepburn movie should i watch"? well, look no further, because i've prepared a powerpoint presentation just for you!
People keep posting these images that are misleadingly color-“enhanced” and it’s infuriating. Our moon is demonstrably grayish-white in color and she’s beautiful as she is
"What they've shown, to me, is a great example of why we go and do these missions. Right? If you can't take love to the stars, then what are we doing? Why would we even go?"
– Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator
This is the 3rd post in my star trek ao3 analysis series: ds9 is here and Enterprise is here (Enterprise post contains info about how I calculated stuff like ship ratings and explanations of r-values if that's of interest!). I'll be looking at fic data on ships, categories and ratings over time since 1999, the first with more than 50 fics backdated to it in the Voyager fandom tag.
(thank you to @bloodredfountainpen for suggesting doing this one next, i hope you find it interesting :))
1. Number of fics over time
The upward trend of fics posted per year since 2008 is notable, with the biggest single increase between 2019-2020; however, it seems to have flattened off and even dropped a bit in recent years
The big spike in 2003 is due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive, which was overwhelmingly backdated to that year (more effects of this to come later!)
(on a side note of data presentation i am aggrieved that the labelled years are so close together but thought this was better than having no line on the graph on the right hand side which was frankly upsetting to look at)
2. Popularity of ships over time
Had to remove a non-top ship for the first time to make the second graph here -- despite being no. 4 overall the Chakotay/Tom spike is huge!
Apart from a few rogue years in the early-mid 2000s, Janeway/Chakotay has been a very consistent top ship, seeming slightly less popular in recent years than its mid-late 2010s peak but still very dominant
I was surprised at how relatively low J7 was for much of the graph, as before I watched any Voyager/got into the fandom they were the ship I'd heard most about in passing (including having heard about them being popular back when Voyager was airing). It's really grown in recent years though and has held a steady second top ship status since 2020!
In terms of other F/F ships (there's more than one for once!!), Janeway/B'Elanna was most popular in the early-mid 2010s and B'Elanna/Seven in the early-mid 2020s
Chakotay/Tom is a ship whose trajectory I expected as it's one of the top Voyager ships on AO3 but I've very rarely seen it discussed. Their big spike in the mid 2000s is mostly due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive being largely backdated to those years
It seems like Janeway/Tom had a moment in 2008, but this was an outlier year for the 2000s with only 43 fics so the spike in fact only corresponds to 5 fics that year, all written by the same person. I'd say their most significant moment was being 4th top ship last year -- a lower percentage but the highest number of fics for them in a year at 94.
Award for the fandom's specialest most-shipped character goes jointly to Janeway and Tom for both having 4 ships in the top 10!
correlation stuff:
Janeway/Chakotay and Chakotay/Tom have a fairly significant negative correlation of r=-0.7, the strongest correlation between any two Voyager ships for this data
Janeway/Chakotay also had a medium positive correlation of r=0.5 with Chakotay/Seven, interestingly -- looking at the C7 tag 67% of fics also have J/C tagged which would explain this
B'Elanna/Seven and Janeway/Seven also had a positive correlation of r=0.6, despite the fact that there are very few fics tagged with both ships. In fact, none of the F/F ships had a negative correlation with each other!
3. Average ship ratings (all time)
Chakotay/Tom are the highest rated ship I've come across so far, with a rating of 69% (obligatory NICE). As with a lot of things about this ship I definitely wasn't expecting to find this!
The only two couples in the top 10 to be in a relationship in canon (Tom/B'Elanna and Chakotay/Seven) are the lowest rated of them all, at 33% and 35% respectively
Congratulations go to Tom Paris for both fucking and not fucking. Schrodinger's sexyman
Congrats to J7 for being the horniest F/F ship I've come across so far at 46% 🎉
4. Fic ratings over time
Bucking the trend of DS9 and Enterprise, Voyager's average rating has been on a general decreasing trend (r=-0.6).
Again, the high spike in 2003 is due to the upload of the Tom Paris archive and sheer amount of Chakotay/Tom (always at the scene of the crime)
An unusual increase in unrated fic in the last two years, even being more prominent than explicit & mature rated fics
5. Fic category composition over time
2023 was the Voyager Year of Yuri and 2003 was the Year of Yaoi
Not much competition for the top space here: there's only been 4 years in which F/M wasn't the top category
The F/M graph shape is of course very similar to the J/C graph, save for 2010 which is a big drop in the J/C graph but not here. I'd probably pin this on Tom/B'Elanna being the second top ship that year and making up the numbers
M/M has a negative correlation of r=-0.7 with both F/M and Gen
6. Misc notes
several parts of the category composition graph look like cat ears (yes this is vital information to impart)
janeway/crusher were the 11th top ship just behind T'Pel/Tuvok -- extra surprising considering they're a cross-series ship who've never interacted in canon (at least until an episode in prodigy S2, so some googling tells me)! I did a bit more research because such a comparatively popular cross-series ship intrigued me, and found that just under half were written by the same two people — impressive dedication
Neelix did not appear once during all my searches from 1999 onwards. Only one ship for the doctor appeared in the top 10 at any point (Doctor/7)
complete side note — i’ve always found it super interesting that the voyager fandom still mainly uses what i understand to be the older ship naming conventions (J/C, P/K etc) rather than portmanteau ship names like the other trek fandoms, even for shows that aired around the same time (e.g. modern DS9 fandom using garashir instead of G/B)
"The images are color-enhanced photos by astrophotographer Ildar Ibatullin to highlight subtle mineral differences on the Moon. It appears mostly gray in true color, not vibrant like this. These are not from NASA's Artemis II mission."
I'm aware that a lot of people love Janeway for her unquestionable badassery (and rightly so) but personaly I just adore that next to being so mind-bogglingly smart, and skilled and beautiful and what's not - next to all that she is also so so so unapologetically cringe.
She'd be there dating holograms on a public holodecks or indulging in her victorian romance holonovels and prancing in that victorian outfit on the corridors and she gives zero fucks.
I aspire to be at this level of unapologetic cringiness.
saw a post letting people know that your ao3 bookmarks are viewable on your account unless you make them private, which suggests that the median ao3 user does not use ao3 in what i will call 'the optimum fic-finding treadmill' where you find a fic author you like and look through their bookmarks to find more fics that are good and then look through that author's bookmarks for even more good fics. like a conga line of great but extremely specific tastes. or one of those chessboard rice doubling analogies and oh no that is a LOT of ao3 tabs.
Getting close to doxxing myself here, but I’ve known this woman for years professionally and she’s such a delightful person. And an incredible scholar. She’s having a blast with these vids and you love to see it
Them: yeah that one episode where Beverly bangs a ghost—
Me: it was an anaphasic life form that needed an organic host to maintain corporeal form which it accomplished by merging with the women of the Howard family due to their genetic biochemical compatibility with its energy matrix then it weaponized their dopamine response to control them against their will so it could leach off their life force indefinitely, but yes continue—
Did you hear that? That's the story I just wrote. Yes, yes, I know we had a bargain. I just said I'd write it, I didn't say I wouldn't tear it up! It's all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day!
ROSALIND RUSSELL as HILDY JOHNSON
His Girl Friday (1940) • dir. Howard Hawks
dededos
annaxmalina
titsay
yousharknotpass
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
