kind of baller that there's such an emphasis on the ritual at the theater being fueled in part by intention, and the intention is now not just "put on a play about a failed orcish rebellion in conversation with the fact that the rebellion ultimately succeeded as shown by the largely orcish theater company putting it on in the former dithyramb of Azgra" nor "put on a play about a failed orcish rebellion in conversation with the fact that the Falconer's Rebellion failed twelve years ago, but perhaps a second-go-round will be as successful and decisive as the Shapers' War was" but also, specifically "fuck Yanessa Halovar in particular".
thaisha could’ve reforged the pariah blades into something else, whether for war, gods, or vengeance. yet it was her daughter, thjazi’s niece and a rungjani who chose to follow in her father’s footsteps, who unknowingly made the true anchor. prop swords painted with the blood of her people and with the intention to show the truth: her people’s history is something that cannot be buried or erased, nor can it go unseen or unheard.
really need to emphasize how sexy it is that julien is taking notches for every tachonis killed and thaisha just started putting notches on her belt for candescent creed/halovars killed
with convergence underway...lets talk ships! this is updating my post from the beginning of the year; if you want to see comparisons between tables you can find that here. First up: top ships!
Our top 10 ships is mostly the same as it was early in the year - Juliocctis, Julienessa, and Katteor having risen, with the only new addition Davinlloy having overtaken Teor/Wick. The top 10 also perfectly represents those ships >25 fics, which is fun.
Nothing has reached the episode 4 Halaire peak, but we see some Halaire high poins for e22 and e25, and Juliocctis in e16 making quite a show. Overall though the ships are mostly low counts/week but more varied (which makes sense, with 13 characters there's a lot of dynamics in play).
For the messier version with platonic pairings and character-specific graph breakdowns, lets head below the cut!
The big shift heree is Azune & Hal, knocking Occtis & Pin out of the water, but otherwise there aren't any drastic shifts. Bolaire & Hal has ajump to being the top platonic pairing, and the pairings beside Julien & Aranessa and Occtis & Thaisha haven't been growing as quickly as the romantic tags, but it's mostly consistent.
The big spikes we see here are from the Schemers' arc, with Bolaire & Hal in e22, and Azune & Hal in the 23-24 break and e25, really accounting for that fast rise. Occtis & Thaisha is the only other tag to hit more than 2/week since mid-Seekers arc where Julien & Aranessa has dropped off following her departure from the party.
For overall fics, we've hit 1400, almost double where we were at the start of the year.
Following Overture, things have settled into an average of 25 fics/week, with notable spikes at e9, e14, and e25. There's a rise with e27 and the Convergence getting into the swing of it, so it's likely we'll see a larger spike over that arc overall, but probably not as high as the initial Overture (and e4 especially) peak.
Comparing with previous campaigns, the continued trend is to be dancing at about the same as expected from early C3, and similarly I don't expect to see a massive spike until we hit something especially dramatic like a PC death...although that may be in the cards.
now, going character by character, lets start with the Soldiers.
Soldiers
The Soldiers haven't had as much focus since their arc ended, but we can see that Katteor has truly become the dominant ship for Kattigan even if the early peak still means Occtigan beats it by raw numbers. While Katteor has only peaked at 4 (with e9), it is Kattigan's one consistent ship, lasting through the Seekers arc and only becoming spotty during the Schemers (where it was the only Kattigan ship present aside from one Murrigan fic).
Occtigan, Kattigan/Wick, and Azune/Kattigan are the only other pairings to get more than 1/week, with Occtigan still present through the Soldiers arc but having only one peak during the Seekers. Kattigan/Wick is the most frequent of the smaller ships, but only has a few small peaks around the Soldiers arc, although much more common than Kattigan/Tyranny and especially Kattigan Thimble.
Only one new inter-party ship so far this year in the form of Julien/Kattigan at the start of Convergence, although after these early episodes it seems likely. Kattigan doesn't have any NPC ships of note (a few Thjazi pairings from Overture), but there is one new tag in the form of Marienna finally getting a name.
Teor still only has the two ships of note, Kattigan and Wick, but Katteor has well supplanted Teor/Wick following the end of the first Soldier's arc. Aside from that. Teor/Occtis hasn't had a lasting presence out of Overture, but Overture high Azune/Teor makes a spot as the only other ship tag to make an appearance besides Katteor and Teor/Wick so far this year.
Teor still doesn't have any NPC romantic pairings, only platonic tags, so no new ships at all this year, although we'll see if Convergence changes this.
Thimble is still a pretty sparse graph, with still no ships with more than 2/week. What is notable is that, while intermittent, Occtis/Thimble is now her strongest pairing, being the only one with multiple uses this year.
NPC ship wise, there is 1 fic of Thimble/Cyd that popped up early in the year, her only new ship tag so far, but it still hasn't recurred.
Wicanny has definitely dropped off from its Overture and Soldiers' arc highs, but remains Tyranny's dominant ship, and the only one to get more than 2 fics/week. Thimble/Tyranny makes note as her second largest ship, although it hasn't had much continual use, with her remaining ships mostly one-offs with the rest of the soldiers Teor and Kattigan.
New ships this year include Azune/Tyranny and Occtis/Tyranny, each at one use, but still no NPC ships whatsoever.
Wicanny remains the most dominant ship for Wick as well, with other notable pairings of Teor/Wick and Kattigan/Wick having dropped off following the end of the Soldiers' arc. Teor/Wick has continued to have some uses, with Kattigan/Wick only one so far this year.
New ships include Occtis/Wick (one of only two Occtis ships that hadn't had any uses, only in the form of Occtis/Wick/Tyranny) and the only NPC ship, Wick/Armas, who has been named but yet to show up.
Overall, the Soldiers are much in the same place they were at the start of this year and their arc, with no super notable highs and Katteor and Wicanny the main dominant ships.
Seekers
Julien has solidly had Juliocctis become the top ship, with number two Julienessa starting to fall to the wayside following her departure mid-Seekers arc, although it still remains solid with consistent if lesser usage through the Schemer's arc.
Davinlloy makes a sharp showing through the Seekers arc, earning a top 10 status, although has fallen off hard in the aftermath. Julien/Vaelus doesn't reach more than 1/week, but is one of the more common intermittent pairings. Instead, through the Schemers arc we see the rise of Azulien, overtaking Julienessa to become the solid number two pairing (and occasionally even #1 for a given week) for Julien.
Julien has the most NPC ships bar none (7 to Azune & Occtis' 5 and everyone else's 2 or less) all new this year save for Julien/Thjazi. Most notable is Julien/Alogar, sitting at 6, with the others at only 1-2, although it sets up Julien as definitely the most widely shipped character, vying for fandom bicycle status with Occtis.
Speaking of, Occtis. While still very widely shipped, unlike Julien there hasn't been a clear #2 ship since Occtigan fell off last year. We see that Occtis/Vaelus had a decent pull in the mid-Seekers arc, but not long lasting, and instead Occtis mostly has a
New this year are Wick and Tyranny, rounding out Occtis to have a ship with all 13 PCs (having previously only had the Occtis/Tyranny/Wick ot3 to keep that claim), as well as NPC ships Agony and Dr. Amry Talter.
Thaisha definitely has an even mix with her three main pairings. Vaesha is her overall top pairing, but has a large gap early in this year, only really coming back late in the Seeker's arc, where instead Davinlloy had a larger presence. With the Schemers arc we see the more background Hal/Thaisha pairing having a pesence, keeping a line with Vaesha, but not having any particular spikes of note.
Other than those three, the only pairings we've seen since Overture is Occtis/Thaisha and Thaisha/Aranessa, her top NPC ship, although not pictured is the one off Thaisha/Agony after the battle at the bridge.
Wrapping up the Seekers we have Vaelus - definitely dominated by Vaesha, but Occtis/Vaelus isn't that far behind especially early in the Seekers arc before Vaesha got back into focus. It hasn't had the same lasting power
New this year is Julien/Vaelus, but otherwise Vaelus isn't widely shipped, with Thimble/Vaelus the only non-Seekers pairing to show up outside of Overture (where Thimble, Murray, and Hal all had a fics hidden by the overlap). Vaelus/Aranessa is the only NPC pairing, with its peak of 2 following the scene of Aranessa's departure.
Overall, the Seekers definitely have a pretty active group, with almost all the interparty ships well represented, although only Juliocctis and Vaesha have a strong showing moving out of their arc.
Schemers
Azune is definitely the third contender to the fandom bicycle discussion with Julien and Occtis, with his easily being the most chaotic graph of the lot. With no one dominant pairing, and rarely having any ship get more than 1/week, this is a hard graph to read other than there are a lot of ships present.
Early on and in Overture we saw mostly Azune/Torn banner, but while there have been occasional fics after following the soldiers arc there isn't much of that. Instead, starting in the soldierse arc we see the rise of Azune/Murray, which was his top ship for some time, with other Schemer pairing Azune/Hal making up an early presence as well. Both show up with strong spikes in the early Schemers run, but so did Azulien, which now at #2 overall holds the tentative place of Azune's most dominant ship, although still yet to get more than 2/week.
Included on the graph is Azune/Shadia, his top NPC pairing, but new this year is also Azune/Alogar (although resoundingly more often as the platonic tag), Azune/Harondus, and Azune/Varan. Azune/Tyranny is also new, albeit at only fic (yet).
In turn, Bolaire is definitely the most single-focused character we've seen. This year has only seen two non-Halaire ship tags, one with Azune and one with Thjazi, neither of them new. Instead, Halaire is consistently and clearly dominant; while it fell off a bit through the Seekers arc it has definitely regained its spot, if not the height of the initial e4 reveal.
Hal is at least more varied, even if Bolaire is still the clear and everpresent #1. Azune and Thaisha are the other present ships, both having started high in Overture, and the only ones present through the Schemers' arc proper.
Hal/Elodie is the one NPC ship of note, but hasn't had much usage even with her proper on screen introduction, alongside Hal/Murray the new pairings this year.
And last but not least (...barely), we have Murray. Azune is definitely the only real ship of note here, with the only post-Overture pairings two Murrigan fics and one Hal/Murray...except for her one NPC pairing, King Augustus, with a very respectable surge following episode 25. With that ship dashed in e27, I don't think we'll see it recurring,
The Schemers are overall very heavily focused on Halaire, but we do see Azune and Hal having a decent variety of ships mixed in, although overall the Seekers definitely still take the cake for overall ship diversity & numbers.
Total Ships
Looking in at the total ships, this has really filled in, with the only same table pairings missing being Bolaire/Murray, Thimble/Teor, and Thimble/Wick. Crosstable, we can see that Occtis/Tyranny, Occtis/Wick, Julien/Thimble, and Azune/Tyranny have popped up, with Seekers (well, Julien and Occtis) having very strong showings. Occtis hit the buzzer, but Hal, Kattigan (10/12), Julien and Azune (8/12) are pretty close.
Julien remains the overall highest at 288 (Julienessa really bumps up his numbers), with Occtis at 233 and Hal at 218, the same top 3 as the start of the year. Least shipped is Thimble at 23 (up from 11) and Murray at 25 (up from 8, swapping places), with third place now Teor at 73 to previous 3rd Vaelus' 76.
For platonic tags, all same table tags have been filled in, and more than that are all at least 3, most higher. The cross table pairings are less filled in, but there's a large overlap p for Seekers & Schemers, and still decent among the soldiers cross table.
Occtis is again in the lead with 291 tags, followed by Hal at 228 and Julien at 204, the same top 3. Murray is still at the bottom with 49, but same as with romantic tags Vaelues and Teor have swapped with Teor at 52. Kattigan 55, and Vaelus 71.
comparing between the two, the romantic-platonic ratio (dividing the number of romantic ship tags by the number of platonic) we see that overall things are mostly leaning platonic, iwth a few large exceptions.
Notably, all of the pure-romantic tags are in cross-party pairings (excluding Tyranny/Tyranny selfcest) as are all the perfectly even numbers (mostly
For NPC pairings, Murray is the only one to have more romantic tags than platonic, but NPC/NPC pairings is overall more romantic (driven heavily by Thjazi/Aranessa)
and I know Tumblr's gonna eat the quality, but making this visual...
There are a lot more things bunched up on the platonic side than the romantic. Most of the big ships are sitting around 1-to-1, with Juliocctis and Vaesha being the big exception. Julienessa is the only major romantic ship sitting on the platonic side, with a preponderance of / and & tags (and the uncounted "secret third thing")
There are only a handful of ships with exclusively romantic or platonic tags, and most are only a handful of works (and all but a few are either Bolaire or Thimble pairings). There are fewer purely romantic pairings, but
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Of the 78 potential ships, 47 have a ship tag (60%) with an additional 10 with only platonic for a total of 57 dynamics with something written (78%).
79% of potential M/M pairings have been written, 50% F/F, and 48% F/M (the largest increase from the start of the year, but there are more potential F/M pairings, 40 to 28 M/M and only 10 F/F)
All of the missing same-table pairings are F/M; of the M/M pairings not represented most of them are with Bolaire (Julien/Teor and Azune/Wick the exceptions), while the F/F pairings not represented are mostly with Thimble and Tyranny (Thaisha/Murray the excception). All of the platonic-only pairings are also F/M, although the romantic-only pairings F/M and F/F.
Of the overall count of tags that have been used, 48% are M/M, 41% F/M, and 11% F/F (+6% to F/M from January), however weighing to number of uses/fics, this becomes 65% M/M, 28% F/M, and 7% F/F (only +1 to F/M and -1 to M/M from January)
and here at the end of the post is some dynamics that haven't been written but that I am very excited for as we enter into Convergence proper:
Bolaire & Julien. What is their history. What do you mean you were supplying him with drugs
Julien & Teor. They've had a lot of moments being mostly on the same team
Thaisha & Murray. I've been wanting mroe of this since episode 1 but also with the lack of interaction I haven't been able to write anything either so I can't blame anyone lol
Hal & Thimble. She's family!
Anyways, if you have any questions or ideas for other ship stats (or general AO3 stats) you want to see, let me know! I'm continuing to update these weekly, but probably won't drop another update until the end of the year (solidly into the next set of the arcs) because these posts are a monster to write lol.
There is a part of me that thinks there’s a possible fascinating opening for Bolaire as a character to explore the idea of like. How much are you willing to tolerate or endorse someone whose autonomy requires the destruction of another person’s autonomy? Where do we draw the line of competing needs if one individual’s need causes ongoing harm to a series of people? Do you trust anyone to only perpetuate that harm against “bad” people? Who gets to decide what is morally “bad”?
But I’m also still not convinced the narrative is interested in exploring this deeply and not just sitting in “yeah he takes people’s bodies and imprisons their minds but don’t think about it too hard”.
Rewatching the Seekers arc, and I twigged on something that got me busting out my conspiracy board:
When Occtis uses the druidic book to speak to the stone in the ruined temple, he sees a memory of a Halovar priest communing with Tansul. During this, we learn the main component for the Deva Invicta is a priest of Tansul. Meaning, we assume, either a Halovar or a Tachonis.
We know from the Segundus's letters that the first failed attemt(s) at creating the Deva involved a subject/subjects from House Halovar.
Further, the abomination the Seekers fought was a "partial failure, partial success" because Tertia's innate sorcery botched up something in the ritual. That's why they needed Occtis, the only Tachonis without innate sorcery.
But why would Tansul specify the heart of one of his priests if there was even a chance their sorcery would fuck up the ritual?
Unless it had to be the Halovar because their House never had sorcery in the first place.
What if House Halovar, a priestly House of Tansul, were just that: clerics whose power was fully dependent on their Shaper, and became mundane humans when he died?
Whether you believe her Wish spell story or think Yanessa went the turkey baster route, Wicander's sorcerer subclass is Clockwork, not Divine Soul, because Celestials in the world of Araman are constructs.
Maybe young Yanessa Halovar, powerless for the first time in her life and willing to make some insane moves, seals a deal with a demon prince for magic enough to cage an angel. Suddenly the demon deals, filiment tattoos and luxes who are probably unwitting warlocks make sense. This is Yanessa trying to replicate the lost power of her House in any way she can.
It's also possible the only true sorcerers in House Halovar are her direct lineage. But that's another post.
Meeting Tsul'reksh was probably the best thing to happen to tyranny thus far in her journey in regards to truly setting up her arc. Her and her sisters were created with the specific purpose to serve the creed, and, we can assume she's had no other interacts with demons apart from them. The sisters have more human names. They're still obviously demons, but they also have more appealing/palatable bodies. They were brought into this environment that is forcing them into a specific mold, and yeah, Tyranny might be aware that the creed is bullshit (she was in on it after all) but she still subscribes to their belief that demons are inherently corrupt creatures with no chance of being "saved". She was never given the chance to understand what she truly is outside of the propaganda that's surrounded her from day one.
And Tsul'reksh knows the creed is full of crap too. She also knows what she is and who she is. When she tells Tyranny that her/the knife's purpose is to hurt others, it's not said out of malice, but understanding. Because she's had the years of experience when it comes to battling with her own nature. It's not something to be afraid of, but rather something to work with. She knows what it's like to have to navigate this plane, when to conform and when to not. In a way, this is almost like a glimpse into what Tyranny's future could look like - one where she let's go of her fear and embraces what she is. Because she simply just is.
(and then on the other side of things, Araq sort of acts like this extreme mirror to where Tyranny is at right now. Desperate and in pain and yearning the freedom that the "Light" offers.)
I'm fascinated by the emerging characterization of Araman Demons as less like sinful and corrupting agents of some cosmic evil, and more akin to a destructive force that comes as part of a natural life cycle, like a wildfire or a volcano.
Granted, we are taking a literal demon's words at face value - but not only did she seem just as oddly concerned with honesty as a faerie would be... the fey and the Old Path are already being - deliberate word choice here - demonized by the Candescent Creed, the inheritors of the Shapers who conquered and subjugated those same ancient tribes of fairy, titan, and demon...
I do think it's really fun how Pascard and Thjazi discuss sacrilege/desecration of holy objects primarily as a practical matter: you cannot use the Shapers' relics for non-Shaper purposes without altering them. I think they certainly do not mind fucking up a relic, but ultimately they are trying to achieve goals that do not align with the world of the Shapers or even continue to make sense (eg, the Stone of Nightsong does not have a destination at this time). Meanwhile, the priestly houses of Tansul are down with sacrilege to an extreme degree, to the point of twisting Tansul's avenging angel to their own purpose or creating a completely fake religion. Yanessa in public calls the mask of Tansul blasphemy, but in private is happy to surmise that Tansul might not have even been a god, given that he was killable. There are lingering faithful in the world - we see them in Vaelus, and in the village in the Dvalmar Pass - but they're certainly not among the ostensible servants of Tansul.
Brennan's so right about the separately evolving genres, though. Soldiers in a blockbuster action, Schemers in a high-concept spy intrigue, and the Seekers have just been thrust against their will into a regency romance.
