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Mar. 4th, 2013 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11I realize I haven't been linking to my original images with my plots. Will fix that from now on. You should be able to click and hopefully eventually get to the original image, which is usually bigger and better resolution than what's on the blog.
I realized one way to look at the prevalence of eras is to look at the character list and see how many stories list different characters. These are cross-listed of course, but you can at least see how many stories each character appears in, marginally. Now this is just the list that the authors put in their main tags, so it's a set of characters the authors felt were worth tagging in the stories.
It is basically what one might expect. Rose has the benefit of crossing two eras (Nine and Ten) so I think that might be why she is more prevalent in the stories than any of the Doctors. Still, wow, Rose! Over 1/3 of the stories! And Ten as well, 1/3 of the stories. And look at Doctors 1, 2, and 6; they all appear in nearly identical numbers of stories. They also tend to be cross-listed as we learned before.
I think that a pairwise matrix would be too big for all of the characters. But I might be able to do some studies of the most prevalent combinations of characters. I'm going to guess that the results will not be too surprising. It is also gong to be difficult to compare these with FF.net since FF.net only allows you to list 2 or fewer characters per story.
The distribution of the number of characters listed per story (counts and percentages) is:
Who lists 22 characters?
It's johne's set of drabbles for the Random Pairings generator. Nice. But most stories list 3 or fewer characters.
I want to look at some author stats before attempting to export all the pairwise relationships for the Graph of Fandom. Next post, I think.
I realized one way to look at the prevalence of eras is to look at the character list and see how many stories list different characters. These are cross-listed of course, but you can at least see how many stories each character appears in, marginally. Now this is just the list that the authors put in their main tags, so it's a set of characters the authors felt were worth tagging in the stories.
It is basically what one might expect. Rose has the benefit of crossing two eras (Nine and Ten) so I think that might be why she is more prevalent in the stories than any of the Doctors. Still, wow, Rose! Over 1/3 of the stories! And Ten as well, 1/3 of the stories. And look at Doctors 1, 2, and 6; they all appear in nearly identical numbers of stories. They also tend to be cross-listed as we learned before.
I think that a pairwise matrix would be too big for all of the characters. But I might be able to do some studies of the most prevalent combinations of characters. I'm going to guess that the results will not be too surprising. It is also gong to be difficult to compare these with FF.net since FF.net only allows you to list 2 or fewer characters per story.
The distribution of the number of characters listed per story (counts and percentages) is:
> table(table(tables$characters$story))
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
4974 14010 6521 2817 1664 1043 545 349 242 186 131 106 67
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
64 39 37 28 15 9 3 4 1
> round((table(table(tables$characters$story)))/(sum(table(table(tables$characters$story)))),4)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
0.1514 0.4264 0.1985 0.0857 0.0506 0.0317 0.0166 0.0106 0.0074 0.0057 0.0040
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
0.0032 0.0020 0.0019 0.0012 0.0011 0.0009 0.0005 0.0003 0.0001 0.0001 0.0000 Who lists 22 characters?
id title author authorname rating chapters words lengthcat reviews
26786 39739 22 Pairs 4073 johne 2 22 2400 2K-5K 3
uniqreview updated published complete
26786 2 12/06/10 12/04/10 1
description
26786 A set of drabbles: All the Doctors and companions, paired off at random.It's johne's set of drabbles for the Random Pairings generator. Nice. But most stories list 3 or fewer characters.
I want to look at some author stats before attempting to export all the pairwise relationships for the Graph of Fandom. Next post, I think.
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Date: 2013-03-05 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 05:23 am (UTC)I took a random sample of 30 of the stories with the TARDIS labeled as a character. We can track them down by ID and see how the TARDIS shows up, and that will get us an estimate of the TARDIS' profile within the stories in which she is listed:
> TARDISsamp = tables$story[tables$story$id %in% sample( tables$characters$story[tables$characters$character == 4], 30, replace=F),] > TARDISsamp[, c(1,2,4,6,7,11,12)] id title 2628 6272 The Doctor's Rib 2848 6560 Maybe 3710 7651 The Crack of Time 4216 8330 Donuts 4358 8536 Since The Beginning 5001 9503 An Egyptian Adventure 5032 9542 The Wish 6631 11789 I Woke Up Today, And You're On The Other Side 6871 12103 Family Loss 8218 13833 Ground Zero 9405 15250 The Random Element 9807 15723 Just Another Shop Girl 10041 16017 Eyes Open Confidential 11055 17214 Having Faith 11176 17362 Liberation of the Borg 11778 18128 Fade Away 12356 18902 Forgotten 16368 25082 The Crossroads Planet (Series Five) 17053 26043 To Save a Rose 17829 27040 Unwinding 21552 32343 Wounds 25416 37733 The Rebirth of Peladon 26406 39257 The Victorious Time Lord and the Battle of 9/11. 27050 40067 Starlight 29088 42792 Sexy Dresses 29713 43613 Sending Her to Sleep 32437 47176 Welcome Mrs Smith 32485 47239 Three's Company 32739 47573 Cerulean: A Force of Nature 33814 49101 Evil Stalks the NightFrom the descriptions below, I can count five out of the 30 that are obviously TARDIS-centric. But there may be a few others that are as well. So, conservatively, say that approximately 16.7% of the TARDIS stories are TARDIS-centric. That's a point estimate of 465, but since I only sampled 30, the margin of error is about +/- 0.14 so the real number could conceivably be anywhere from about 73 to 840 with 95% confidence.
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Date: 2013-03-05 05:25 am (UTC)2628 Hope can come from unexpected places.
*2848 She had been there with him, through everything. Maybe dying with him in the end wasn't so bad.
3710 Rose's twenty-First birthday is approaching.
4216 No longer are Jelly Babies his favourite snack.
*4358 If only she could tell him how she feels.
5001 The Doctor & Rose crash land in Ancient Egypt, but all is not as it seems. Sand dancers are coming to life, beginning a string of brutal and savage murders. Can the Doctor and Rose stop them before they claim another victim?
5032 Rose had been in 'Pete's World' for about a year now, almost forgetting everything about the Doctor, or at least trying to.The Doctor, stilling wishing he could bring Rose back,has picked up a very mysterious Princess with a some very deep secrets that could help the Doctor and Rose be reunited.
6631 It was a normal day for Rose in her new job well as normal as anything is in Torchwood, but soon, things are turned upside down all over again as she meets an alien that shouldn't exist. Can he help her get home to her Doctor?
6871 After telling the Doctor her one big secret Rose waits for his return.
8218 A crash leaves the Doctor stranded on an unknown planet that is slowly killing him as the years go by. But that isn't actually the problem.
9405 After five years in the parallel world, Rose is desperate to get back home to the Doctor, and now, at last, she thinks she has finally found a way.
9807 After acquiring an accidental passenger while escaping from an alien attack, the Doctor, Rose and Jack find themselves on the planet Tir in the middle of its population's uplifting to full sentience as they come fully into their pyschic gifts. But there is evil in the mix as a man named Harrington Conrad tries to use the creatures' unique abilities for his own ends. It's up to our trio plus one to stop him. This story takes place directly after Boom Town and is compatible with the Time Eternal series and the Jack's Path series, but is a stand alone adventure. Now in Rewrite.
10041 I adore the Doctor Who Confidential. As you may know I'm very poorly and everything I do is a great effort. Writing a commentary allows me to inform people about the thought processes that kept me awake for many nights. Join me and my rambling into the making of the Eyes Open series.
11055 The Doctor stops for a routine visit and ends up taking on a new Companion named Faith. Of course, it's far more complicated than that.
11176 A DW/Star Trek/Blakes 7 crossover.
11778 In Parting of the Ways the Doctor left a message for Rose. This time it's Jack who gets the message. A long time after everything.
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Date: 2013-03-05 05:25 am (UTC)*12356 Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it, no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And for years, no one does notice it, except for Billy.
16368 Alt Series Five. Interprets "The stars are going out" as the Void attempting to press itself into all universes. Rose and the Doctor are reunited, but crossing the Void has left her sick with voidstuff. A mysterious planet called Crossroads may hold the cure. But the same girl who could save Rose's soul may end up damning the Doctor's soul forever.
17053 Post Doomsday, the Doctor visits the year 2004 and bumps into an eighteen-year-old Rose. But when the time comes, can he really just let her go all over again? How many times will they meet before he realises how much danger he's putting her in?
17829 After the events of "Madly In Love," the Bliss team relaxes in the TARDIS hot tub (AU Nine/Rose/Jack).
21552 "Jack will never forgive me for this," the Doctor thinks. "But at least he'll be alive."
25416 As he begins his journey to show Bella the wonders of the universe, the Doctor takes her to one of his favourite planets to meet with an old friend.
26406 Nine/Ten/Eleven Doctors with Amy, Rory, Jack, Rose. AU. When Ten decides to use the knowledge that he can control time and space to go back and prevent Rose from going to the other universe, the Ninth and Eleventh Doctors team up to stop him.
27050 The Tenth Doctor is the property of the Master. The Eleventh Doctor doesn't remember how he ever escapes - all he knows is that Ianto is involved. Two versions of the Doctor collide, with Torchwood at the epicentre.
*29088 There is a reason why the Doctor has never had all that much luck repairing the chameleon circuit.
*29713 As their lips finally part and Amy's eyes drift shut, Amy could swear she hears the words "bad wolf" whispered on the air like a lullaby. (Amy/Rose, Amy/TARDIS)
32437 Donna fell deeply in love with John Smith in Goodbye Mr Smith but gave up her chance to travel with him. In this sequel she now gets to meet up with the Doctor properly.
32485 Three Doctors in one TARDIS can only mean trouble of the grandest and most explosive scale, and no one is safe. When the dust settles, the question remains: who has forced them to merge together, how could they have attained this sort of power, and to what purpose? Secrets are explored, partnerships are formed, and unlikely friendships and enemies are made as the Doctors, Amy, River, and Rory are thrown together in a whirlwind adventure none could have expected.
32739 "She is a force of Nature unto herself." He feels the strands of Time converging on this girl, intertwining their timelines. They're both alone and hurting and driving themselves to destruction. She can't be the daughter or the granddaughter he misses, and he can't be the father she barely knows. But he can show her the universe, and she can take the edge off his pain. Serial fic; crossover with Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century and the Sherlock Holmes canon.
33814 When the Doctor and Sarah land in an abandoned forest park, they don't expect much. But they didn't expect to be running for their lives from a mysterious being that seems intent on killing them. Can they find the TARDIS and escape the forest in time? Or will they become the enigmatic Slender's next unfortunate victims. . .?
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Date: 2013-03-05 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 09:35 am (UTC)This also confirms to me that I definitely need to finish writing The Three K-9s if only because he is woefully underrepresented in fic! (Plus, what a good boy. Yes he is! Affirmative!)
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Date: 2013-03-05 10:02 am (UTC)Anyway, let's not be negative! We are fairly even with male and female characters here, despite this being a show with a lead male (all 11 and counting of him); so that's nice. :-)
Surprises: most popular classic companion is Tegan! \o/ (Obviously, there's Sarah, but she's been in New Who and had three separate spin-offs, so of those who haven't...)
I am surprised at Zoe, Leela and Harry not making it - and the Delgado Master! In fact, you had better make sure he never sees this list or he will be suavely disguising himself online (any sudden colonel_masters out there now?) and writing all the fic, because while it's one thing to be outranked by the Doctor and his tiresome companions, but to be outranked by his later and obviously less classy selves will be too much for him.
I am noting, however where more fic is clearly needed: Liz, Mel, Vicki, Zoe, Steven, Dodo, Katarina, Romana I, Leela, Benton, Yates, Delgado Master, the Rani, Harry and my lovely Ben and Polly. Oh, and Adric. But maybe there are limits? (Also the one-off New Who companions are fairly rare, too, aren't they?)
If I write enough ficlets and actually post them separately, do you think I could knock Rose off the top? :lol:
As to the TARDIS, that's an interesting question - I'd only ever list her for a reason. I checked out one of your fics on the list (because B7 crossover!) - Liberation & the Borg. Not only did it not have the TARDIS, it was a tiny, unfinished, two-chapter, badly-written, horribly unformatted thing. (I was disappointed; can you tell?) But it was unfinished and they may well have intended to have the TARDIS in it - eventually.
Also, I'm now wondering how John made it to 22 characters - I've got a big drabble collection on there and the site cuts it off at 21 (literally partway through Polly's name). Unless part of it's length of names as well and his were shorter??
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Date: 2013-03-05 12:46 pm (UTC)Jack Harkness (6140)
Ianto Jones (3840)
Tenth Doctor (3496)
Eleventh Doctor (3039)
Rose Tyler (2698)
Gwen Cooper (1820)
Amy Pond (1777)
River Song (1702)
Owen Harper (1225)
Rory Williams (1179)
So, the 'Spoon is more female-friendly (or tends to slightly more het than m/m slash???) Anyway, the numbers are so much lower, it's probably not comparative, but I was just feeling intrigued. :-)
is this too off topic?
Date: 2013-03-05 01:02 pm (UTC)... what would happen if someone gave critique he didn't like though? (Would he cry? Hunt them down and leave their shrunken bodies in their crisper?)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 01:23 pm (UTC)The raw numbers may not be comparative but you can certainly look at the relative ranks, and you can look at percentages. In this case, because of the high multiplicity of cross-listing characters, you can eg, divide each of those numbers by the total number of stories (or something close) and see, eg, what proportion of AO3 stories Jack Harkness ends up in.
AO3 definitely looks more balanced than Teaspoon at the top, although Jack's count does look like a high outlier. Looks like more Torchwood writers are using AO3.
Re: is this too off topic?
Date: 2013-03-05 01:24 pm (UTC)I won't be happy until he sets up his own LJ and starts posting - and crossposting to Teaspoon. :lol:
what would happen if someone gave critique he didn't like though?
Oh, I think there'd mainly be some very barbed replies. Of course, the whole posting fanfic notion would in fact be a plan to align himself with fandom in order to destroy the Doctor, but would fail when the Ten/Rose shippers turn against him and troll him into having to join forces with the Doctor...
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Date: 2013-03-05 01:25 pm (UTC)Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that! It's a hard limit in the HTML. So my character list also has some chopped-off names, which I have not yet normalized. But they would only appear for the small fraction of stories that have a very long list of characters.
ETA: and I think that Tegan is high because Five/Tegan was kind of the classic version of Ten/Rose, before Ten/Rose was a thing ;) Or maybe just Five and Tegan. There are quite a few prolific Old School Five authors on Teaspoon (Patrice, warinbabylon, dblauvet, etc.)
I should do a series of Top Authors by Category graphs.
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Date: 2013-03-05 01:55 pm (UTC)Six would try to stop the flame war, end up joining in with gusto and make it ever so much worse, while Three would "help" by publishing all his private diaries, complete with all the embarrassing details (of how he defeated the Master/had to save him from his own plots what else could I have meant? *cough*) after which he and Delgado!Master would bicker over whether that was ungentlemanly or not.
Something like that?
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Date: 2013-03-05 02:01 pm (UTC)This probably isn't your data (or maybe it is?), but I'd be interested in seeing what kinds of trends there are in the dates for publication of stories featuring the characters. Like, what kind of a surge of fic is there after a companion leaves (or after a regeneration)?
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Date: 2013-03-05 02:07 pm (UTC)btw are you the one who is "whatthefoucault" on Teaspoon?
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Date: 2013-03-05 02:15 pm (UTC)From the FFNet data, I think there is evidence of a general spike in story production at the big events. I saw some blips in my graph of stories by date for unlisted vs. listed characters in the FF.net data.
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Date: 2013-03-05 03:16 pm (UTC)Although, looking at absolute numbers, it seems more a case of less Ten and Rose on AO3, than less Jack and Ianto on Teaspoon -- the Jack and Ianto numbers are actually surprisingly close between the sites. Maybe Torchwood fandom found AO3 (because it existed when Torchwood fandom was huge) and Ten/Rose fandom mostly didn't, because it came along too late.
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Date: 2013-03-05 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 07:25 pm (UTC)*HUGS*
< yes mine too
Date: 2013-03-05 08:39 pm (UTC)I guess at the end of the day we all sometimes feel our fave Doctors/characters aren't sufficiently appreciated
Unless you like Ten I guess?, so I try not to get into fights about it. :'D (Still want more fic with Three, Seven and Six though because MAH BBIES. Also Two. And all the classic Masters, and Shalka verse, and let's not even go into companions/one time characters here...).Re: < yes mine too
Date: 2013-03-05 08:49 pm (UTC)Three, Six, and Seven, eh? Well hey, if you are interested in participating in
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Date: 2013-03-05 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-05 09:13 pm (UTC)There's LilacFree and there used to be Freya as well. There were quite a cluster of them - and my first Teaspoon efforts were all Five/Tegan, although only one of them remains now. (I'm a rubbish ship writer, it has to be said!)
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Date: 2013-03-05 09:15 pm (UTC)Which would make sense - if you're not that much into DW but like TW, Teaspoon's a bit alienating. Also Eleven being nearly even with Ten suggests that it's more recent fics/more recent fans that have been using it more? The Ten/Rose shippers have got Teaspoon and ff.net, so why use AO3 so much, maybe?
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Date: 2013-03-05 09:44 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, I forgot about LilacFree. She wrote Transit of Venus too, didn't she? I love that story.
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Date: 2013-03-06 04:08 am (UTC)I have a co-worker who's a mathematician and seems to take it as a source of pride that nobody can understand what she does. Me, well, when nobody understands what I did, I call it "unsuccessful". But then, statistics as a discipline has a bigger emphasis on communication and collaboration.
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Date: 2013-03-06 08:15 am (UTC)And yeah, whatthefoucault is me. *hides under desk from anticipated onslaught of rotten tomatoes*
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Date: 2013-03-06 08:46 pm (UTC)I do find it a little surprising that Jack ousts every other character other than Ten and Rose, specifically by a huge margin, though it's supported by Ianto being that high?