Why Do People Like Weird Ships? An Analysis of AO3 Porn Statistics

Meta
Title:	Why Do People Like Weird Ships? An Analysis of AO3 Porn Statistics
Creator:	Sponge
Date(s):	2017
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	correlations between the character of the pairing and the percentage of explicit fics written about the pairing
External Links:	on Medium
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Why Do People Like Weird Ships? An Analysis of AO3 Porn Statistics is a 2017 essay posted by Sponge on Medium.com website. The author measured the percentages of each rating on AO3 for fics about "biggest pairings for a bunch of popular shows (plus some rarepairs)" and speculated about reasons that determined why some pairings had higher amount of explicit fics and others didn't.

Some Conclusions

• Incest pairings tend to have a very high percentage of explicit fics and adult/teen incest fics tend to be explicit more often than stories about incest between adults or between teens
• The percentage of explicit stories is higher for slash ships with a big age gap (about 30–40% of fics for such pairings is rated E) and "darker" relationship dynamics. The amount of smut is lower for the "combative rivalry-style" of age gap ships in comparison with the pairings where the older character tends to be portrayed as abuser or predator
• Fics that pair enemies, rivals or villains are more often explicit than fics that pair friends, coworkers or even some canonical lovers
• The percent of E-rated fic is generally much lower for m/f pairings than for m/m ones. The most common rating for het pairings is T (Teen and Up Audiences) while E rating is generally 19% or lower. Like with m/m stories, the percentage of explicit m/f fics is higher for more "DirtyBadWrong" dynamics, often for the ships where a predatory or evil older man is paired with a younger woman or teenage girl
• Pairings featuring Black characters tend to have less explicit fic written about them than white/white pairings
• The percentage of fics rated Explicit for f/f pairings is very small

Excerpts

I’ve always been interested in shipping psychology. Why do people ship certain things? Why do “bad” or “Problematique™” ships exist? Why does slash dominate het? Why does femslash barely exist?

Recently I discovered a really handy measuring stick: look at the percentage of each rating for a given ship on AO3. How much gen does it have? How much smut? Are people coming to this ship for fluffy romance or for hardcore ass-slamming?

If a Ship Has 40%+ E-Rated Fic, It’s Incest

Incest is the greatest human taboo. If you’re going to break it, it’s not so you can write two siblings drinking tea and holding hands. <...> As you can see, these pairings are heavily skewed towards Explicit, with almost no Gen, because again, why bother? The whole point of shipping incest is that it’s DirtyBadWrong and therefore titillating. (Or because you’re writing coping fic, which again, not going to be rated G.) And indeed, adult/teen incest consistently has a higher percentage of Explicit than adult/adult or teen/teen, because more depraved [equals] less reason to write anything mild.

There are a few exceptions to this rule:

Fili/Kili: 28–24–27–15

Jon/Sansa: 21–26–26–17

Cersei/Jaime: 17–34–30–11

Cersei/Jaime is the really odd duck, I suspect because it’s canon. Those two have a lengthy established and very complicated relationship, so you have plenty of fodder for fic beyond “siblings banging.” Jon/Sansa’s sibling bond growing up was more distant than most, which might be why they’re perceived as “not that weird” (a perception reflected by their percentages and their popularity in the fandom). I don’t know enough about the Hobbit to account for Fili/Kili.

The Higher a Slash Ship’s E-Rated Percentage, the More Depraved the Ship

These four aren’t just age gaps involving a teenager—they have a distinctly dark and disturbing flavor. The elder character either is or gets portrayed as an abuser or predator. As with the incest ships, these are Explicit-heavy because that’s the whole point. No one ships these because they’re craving romance or fluff — the whole point is DirtyBadWrong smut. (Or again, coping fic.)

Amicable Slash Relationships Score Lower

As you can see, the smaller the Explicit percentage, the more vanilla and amicable the ship. A lot of these 10%-25% slash ships are between best friends. A few are canonically dating! These ships work well with all 4 ratings, so you see a diverse spread.

That said, Voltron fandom: Why the hell is there no Klance smut? I know they’re teenagers, but that’s never stopped fandom before. This is one of the biggest slash ships of the past year, and all anyone wants to write is T-rated! Bizarre.

No One Wants the Heteros to Fuck

Back in Old Fandom, we had a saying: Het is Ew.

It was a joke, but it was also true in practice. Some slash fangirls really acted like a man and a woman having sex was repulsive. And it seems nothing has changed, because most het ships have 19% or lower E-rated fic.

All of these het ships skew heavily towards T-rated fic — not even M! Even with larger het ships, fandom seems to prefer mild romance over sexytimes. Plus, “large het ship” is an overstatement: almost all of these ships are dwarfed by their slash counterparts in sheer volume of fic.

You could argue this disparity is because of MLM Fetishization™ (or just the fact that straight/bi women find guy-on-guy inherently sexy), but I propose it might also be because fandom is disproportionately LGBP, and especially since het sex saturates our mainstream media, we might prefer a break from it in fic.

Just Kidding, the Heteros Can Fuck, But Only If It’s Depraved

The only ships to escape the Sexless Hetero Curse are those few which are DirtyBadWrong: <...> Those first two score as if they’re spicy slash, since both involve a younger woman (or teenage girl) being paired with a much older, evil, predatory man. The “forbidden” factor is a big draw. Jon/Sansa scores lower, as I addressed above, but at the end of the day it’s still incest.

No One Wants Black People to Fuck Either

Star Wars fandom is racist.

No, scratch that.

ALL fandom is racist. But Star Wars is a good example:

Kylux: 36–20–25–14

ReyLo: 28–25–28–13

Finn/Poe: 17–12–34–28

Finn/Rey: 15–12–29–37

Okay yes, the first two are DirtyBadWrong, and will naturally have a higher Explicit percentage. But I can’t overlook how the two pairings involving the black protagonist have such low E and M percentages, while the two white/white pairings are smut-heavy.

Fandom racism regarding shipping is nothing new, but it’s interesting to see it spelled out so clearly here.

No One Wants the Lesbians to Fuck

“Oh yeah, we love lesbians, lesbians are great, KorraSami favorite ship ever, Supergirl is rad, Clexa is OTP, so cute, lovely AS LONG AS NO ONE HAS SEX, APPARENTLY”

LET THE LESBIANS FUCK, FANDOM, WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST PUSSY-EATING YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE ANOTHER SUGARY PASTEL WOOLOOWOO MOODBOARD UNTIL YOU GET ALL THOSE E-RATED PERCENTAGES UP TO 20 AT LEAST

CHOP 👏 CHOP 👏

And it’s not like these ships are obscure — the ones I listed include some of the biggest ships on AO3! And you people wasted all that fic on Gen and T! *lights entire fandom on fire*

I shouldn’t be surprised. Straight women make up the majority of fandom, no matter how much Tumblr might insist otherwise, and straight women’s interest in femslash is going to stop short of muff-diving. (On the flip side, I could meta about bi/lesbian women’s oft-troubled relationship with their own gay sexuality and femaleness and possibly-connected avoidance of Explicit lesbian fic, but TL;DR.)

In Conclusion

Every ship exists to scratch a particular primal itch. You can get a rough idea of which itch based on the ship’s rating percentages.