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Just so we're clear, everyone knows I'm an engineering student, right?
I was giving my site a bit of a face lift the other day -- just adding a few more sections and changing the banners, as it only had sections for Due South, X-Men, and Alias. Everything else was just shoved into Misc.
So, while I was doing this, I got to wondering about my story stats. I have been at this something like five years, after all. (Which, in and of itself, OMFG. I left newbie land behind a long time ago.)
It turns out I've written 59* stories in 20 fandoms. But that's not the meat of the matter. What's important is that
Firstly:
Story Distribution: Alias (4), Buffy (2), Dead Like Me (1), Doctor Who (3), Dogma (1), Due South (11), Firefly (4), Harry Potter (3), LotR (1), LXG (1), Matrix (1), Mysterious Ways (1), Nikita (1), Ocean's 11 (2), SG1 (1), SGA (3), Smallville (1), West Wing (5), X-Files (1), X-Men/Gen-X/Movieverse (16).
The more mathematically inclined amongst you may notice that this is more than 59. That's because of crossover incidences, which are listed in fandom total, but only added once to the overall total. There was originally a pie chart, but the low story to fandom ratio made it into a big rainbow ball.
Now that the preliminaries are out of the way: here's what you all knew. I write a lot of gen. I'm going to assume everyone here knows how to read a Venn diagram.
That's 57% in the gen circle, just FYI, including stories that happen to contain pairings that I still consider to be gen. I think there's probably an entire post in that idea, somewhere, on writing a character who happens to be in a relationship vs writing about the relationship.
More specifically, as a percentage of total stories written, we have:
The 'kiss' section includes such things as '"Uhuh," he said, and dropped a kiss to her lips on the way out the door.' It's not an actual example, but you get the idea. *G*
The trouble with both of these is that I honestly believe some of the shipiest things I've written are technically gen, and a number of the stories I've written with pairings are NOT ship-fic. Due South is a particular example of this.
My output as of late as been down, and an overall analysis shows that I only write about half of my stories just for myself.
If this analysis were to be run on stories written within the past year or two years only, I suspect that the 'Pure Inspiration' slice would go down by about twenty percent.
So, yeah, not really many surprises, but I did blink a bit at the story to fandom ratio, and the fact that 61% of my stories have no physical contact. I'm not going to promise they don't have emotional porn, though.
Aren't charts and diagrams fun? I had a bunch of other data collected, about things like friendship and OCs (both of which I use to a large degree), and pairings (if a story has one pairing, it probably has at least one more, and friendship, the other ship) but then I figured I was probably scaring everyone enough by this point.
(HI! We all knew I'm an engineering student, right? Right?)**
* That is kind of a depressingly small number of stories when considered over a five year time span, but in my own defense, one was thirteen chapters. Also, I was 15. (Yeah. I'm getting on towards being a random fandom dinosaur.)
** Hey, "I'm an engineering student" is an excuse that gets you forgiven for all sorts of personality quirks and social disorders. Might as well get my mileage out of it.
So, while I was doing this, I got to wondering about my story stats. I have been at this something like five years, after all. (Which, in and of itself, OMFG. I left newbie land behind a long time ago.)
It turns out I've written 59* stories in 20 fandoms. But that's not the meat of the matter. What's important is that
Firstly:
Story Distribution: Alias (4), Buffy (2), Dead Like Me (1), Doctor Who (3), Dogma (1), Due South (11), Firefly (4), Harry Potter (3), LotR (1), LXG (1), Matrix (1), Mysterious Ways (1), Nikita (1), Ocean's 11 (2), SG1 (1), SGA (3), Smallville (1), West Wing (5), X-Files (1), X-Men/Gen-X/Movieverse (16).
The more mathematically inclined amongst you may notice that this is more than 59. That's because of crossover incidences, which are listed in fandom total, but only added once to the overall total. There was originally a pie chart, but the low story to fandom ratio made it into a big rainbow ball.
Now that the preliminaries are out of the way: here's what you all knew. I write a lot of gen. I'm going to assume everyone here knows how to read a Venn diagram.
That's 57% in the gen circle, just FYI, including stories that happen to contain pairings that I still consider to be gen. I think there's probably an entire post in that idea, somewhere, on writing a character who happens to be in a relationship vs writing about the relationship.
More specifically, as a percentage of total stories written, we have:
The 'kiss' section includes such things as '"Uhuh," he said, and dropped a kiss to her lips on the way out the door.' It's not an actual example, but you get the idea. *G*
The trouble with both of these is that I honestly believe some of the shipiest things I've written are technically gen, and a number of the stories I've written with pairings are NOT ship-fic. Due South is a particular example of this.
My output as of late as been down, and an overall analysis shows that I only write about half of my stories just for myself.
If this analysis were to be run on stories written within the past year or two years only, I suspect that the 'Pure Inspiration' slice would go down by about twenty percent.
So, yeah, not really many surprises, but I did blink a bit at the story to fandom ratio, and the fact that 61% of my stories have no physical contact. I'm not going to promise they don't have emotional porn, though.
Aren't charts and diagrams fun? I had a bunch of other data collected, about things like friendship and OCs (both of which I use to a large degree), and pairings (if a story has one pairing, it probably has at least one more, and friendship, the other ship) but then I figured I was probably scaring everyone enough by this point.
(HI! We all knew I'm an engineering student, right? Right?)**
* That is kind of a depressingly small number of stories when considered over a five year time span, but in my own defense, one was thirteen chapters. Also, I was 15. (Yeah. I'm getting on towards being a random fandom dinosaur.)
** Hey, "I'm an engineering student" is an excuse that gets you forgiven for all sorts of personality quirks and social disorders. Might as well get my mileage out of it.
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Is it wrong that I fell over laughing, reading this?
Not wrong at all. In fact, it made my night. *G*
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And you can make them pretty colours and they make really pretty patterns... :)
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oh, I love the geeky girls.
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I wonder if I could make my team at work use gantt charts...
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We're not like other people, Laura.
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*recovers sanity by luring it with porn and then slamming a net down on it when it gets near*
I, um. I loved this. (You've seen Blythe and Circe Tigana's recent journal article, right? Because if not you so totally must.) It spoke to my inner geekgirl, who wishes everything in the whole world could be summarized with numbers and entered in a handy meta-spreadsheet for convenient analysis.
(Actually, given the first draft of this comment, I think it's safe to say it spoke entirely too loudly to said geekgirl, but that's a whole other story.)
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See, this was initialy much more in depth, but then I took a few steps back and took a deep breath. Originally, the physical contact diagram branched off of each gen/het/slash overlap and showed incidences within each area, but it got really, really large. Also, I realized with the low number of full stories I've actually written, the data pool was too small to have any statistical relevance. I had many other columns as well, but decided they just wouldn't be telling anyone anything they didn't already knows.
(Hi! I'm not like other people.)
You've seen Blythe and Circe Tigana's recent journal article, right? Because if not you so totally must.
Alas, I have not.
It spoke to my inner geekgirl, who wishes everything in the whole world could be summarized with numbers and entered in a handy meta-spreadsheet for convenient analysis.
I am such a dork, because I am always running percentages in my head. I'm pretty sure there's more Stackhouse/Markham than Ford fic, and what did they ever do but blow up and die? Yeah, I fan the cool parts of fandom. *G*
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I love it beyond all things.
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(Chi-squares! Type one errors! Circumcision in the wizarding world!)
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writing a character who happens to be in a relationship vs writing about the relationship.
Oh, you should write this, because yeah, I think about that now and again. And sometimes it's really hard to label stories when I'm not sure how other people view them, and yes.
Also? I found the first story I ever wrote, which was originally posted in Nov. '97, and I have written like half as many stories as you, so, yeah. Although you've been at this longer than five years, haven't you? Because there's a comment on that story from you in 2000, and I was sure you had stuff written then. ;)
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See, this is part of why the stories on my site do not have pairing labels. I don't want to tell someone how to interpret a situation or a pair of characters. A lot of my stories with pairings are actually characters, and I have a few gen pieces in which no one even touches that I count as incredibly romantic/pairing centred.
Although you've been at this longer than five years, haven't you?
I distinctly remember starting when I was 15, because my first story was posted a few months before I turned 16.
That was a Christmas story, eh? December 2000 was around when I was discovering exactly what fic was, but I didn't post until spring-ish, I think.
Oh, god, I'm old.