Statistics on the acd_holmesfest exchange over the past 6 rounds

[garonne]

TL;DR: acd_holmesfest participants tend to produce PG-rated fic in the range 2000-4000 words, with a slight preference for M/M fic (almost exclusively Holmes/Watson) over gen fic, but with more gen fic than fandom in general.

Inspired by billiethepoet's recent analysis of the holmestice fic exchange, I did a purely descriptive statistical analysis of the contributions

Comments

[scfrankles]

This is so interesting - thank you for putting it together!

I must admit what surprised me the most was the number of works submitted over the individual rounds. The first round I got involved in (just as a reader) was no. 4 - I hadn't realised there had been a particularly large number of works that time. I'd thought the number of participants had been going down since then - which they have, but now I see the number of works last round is still higher than at the beginning ^^

Also, surprised at the percentage of gen but not surprised at the percentage of H/W ^^ (And I now feel rather proud to have contributed to the "other pairings".) Incidentally, though no f/f pairings have been in the headers, I can think of at least 2 ACD Holmesfest fics that have included them within the story (in both cases, they involved OCs). I think they probably weren't listed in the headers so as not to give away plot points.

[garonne]

Actually, I finished this a week or so ago, but didn't post it straight away, because I was convinced I'd read several f/f stories in acd_holmesfest (and in fact there's some implicit f/f in one of the fics I received myself, tweedisgood's Fair Hearts of Finest Glow), but they just weren't coming up in my analysis, no matter how often I double-checked. I ended up concluding that they must have been in holmestice instead. Actually the smart thing to do would have been to look at the acd_holmesfest collection on AO3, now that I think about it :)

Anyway, glad you found it interesting. It was fun to do!

[tweedisgood]

I was just going to say, I'm fairly sure most of the f/f contained in acd_holmesfest was written by yours truly.

See also Written on Sand from Round 4

The A03 collection only includes a minority of the fest fics, unfortunately.

Just consulting with the other mods about your question btw

[tripleransom]

Good point, Tweed - I know I need to get on the stick and post my contributions to AO3 - it's mostly just not taking the time to do it.

[garonne]

Yes, Written on Sand was precisely the story that had me scratching my head, thinking I must have missed an f/f fic somewhere, though all I had to go on was the memory of Holmes and a client, looking out the window at her 'sister' in the garden.

Many thanks for posting that link!