What Are the Top TF2 Merc Ships… Mathematically-Speaking?
Below are charts I've made by gathering data from AO3 for the Team Fortress 2 work tag. This data was gathered by myself manually by filtering each year by each merc ship, then writing down the number of fic results. That's 17 years, times 35 ships total.
To search AO3 works by year, you can use the search string: created_at:["2009-01-01" TO "2009-12-31"]
The TF2 AO3 works tag can be found on: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Team%20Fortress%202/works
Top Ships By Total Fic Amount:
The top 3 most popular ships are Heavy/Medic, Scout/Sniper, and Sniper/Spy,
With the next most popular fics having a wide margin from the top 3.
Total Merc Ship Fics Gained By Year:
The year 2023 caused a massive jump in fics for HeavyMedic and ScoutSniper.
And the earliest merc ship on AO3 is a SniperSpy fic from 2009:
Most Popular Mercs to Ship By Year:
The 3 most popular mercs to ship are Sniper, Medic, and Scout:
Scatter Chart of Total Fic Gains By Year:
HeavyMedic has the highest amount of fics gained in 1 year, with over 400 fics released in 2025:
The Gathered Data as a Table:
A plain version of the data:
Soldier/Spy has a boom in fics in 2023 (46 fics released in one year), the same year as the release of the fan film Emesis Blue, which helped to legitimise the ship from a crack ship by providing a lot of interactions between the two mercs:
I am left impressed and amazed by TF2 fic writers! Here's to more years!
theartofmadeline
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