Fandom mechanics; or, the lessons of GameFAQs applied to shipping and wank

[petronia]

I was going to write a long and spurious ship rating post for FFXII like I did last night for FMA, but then I got through the cutscene-o-rama with Punjabi Lando [1] and decided I had to digest that, so I went and read all the game mechanics FAQs on weapon stats, quickenings, bazaar goods etc. instead. I really wish I hadn't because now I have much more to worry about. XD;

However then I started thinking about applying the same modelling technique to fandom. That is, I was merely being precious last evening but then I figured, you could actually do something with this. XD

NOTA BENE: the following all relates to "passive" popularity, i.e. what proportion of people you could expect to like your pairing (or at least agree to entertain the idea), not what proportion of people are likely to write/draw for it. That introduces a whole slew of other factors (ex. size of fandom, how "difficult" the series/characters are to fic for, etc.), and besides I believe this last is random starting condition + power rule anyway. XD Similarly, the "wank" rating is a measure of how much tinder the warehouse contains, not whether anyone is going to light a match.

NOTA BENE 2: the following is pretty much bullshit, but IMO not more so than many economic models.

Canonicity (C): a lot of fandom meta confusion results from the fact that people talk about canonicity as if it were a yes/no binary, but it's not - at least it doesn't behave as such in a model of its fandom effect.

0 = "do they even meet?"
1 = "they know each other"
2 = "good friends/part of a tight crew"
3 = "a declared Special Connection"
4 = "other characters tease them about being a couple"
5 = "indisputably canonical girlfriend/boyfriend/married sort of deal"

IMO Western animanga fandom's gotten more rigorous about C as time goes on - 2 used to be plenty, now if people ship based on less than 3 they're faintly embarrassed about it and all "I'm on crack really!" I say to these people: remember that less than 3 spells ♥. (There are also older fandoms, like FF7, that operate to this day under a sort of grandfather clause, whereby if a ship's been around for long enough it doesn't matter that there's no real canonical support for it.)

Moe (M): the BL/het romance cliche/kink rating. A somewhat subjective mark given based not on how I feel, but how I believe the averaged-out animanga fandom would feel, based on lengthy experience therein. XD You could actually derive a formula for M by tabulating a loooong list of cliches and assigning them 1-3 points each based on how popular said cliches are (itself statistically compiled from that "bulletproof kinks" meme), then totting up a points total for each pairing and reading off a pre-determined scale for M, but I do not think manually going through this process would make the rating less bullshit than me assigning it by eye. XDD It would definitely be more impressive, though.

Note that it's perfectly possible for the cliches that go toward this rating to contradict each other, ex. 1x2 in GW fandom rates "genki retard uke" and "dewy-eyed longhaired angsty uke", simultaneously. But you could not assign it "master and servant" or "snarky partners in crime" or "best enemies". Also note that m/f or f/f automatically lowers M by 0.5 and 1 respectively - modelling reality, remember, not how it should be.

Personality/Meta (P): how well you could support the pairing in an argumentative essay based on characterization. 0 = "canon might say so but there's no chemistry and they're terrible for each other besides", 5 = "they are perfect for each other and here is the bullet point list why".

I finally decided that this is personality and meta, not strictly meta about personality - I just feel there should be a scale for the more intellectualized / manifesto end of ship justification, like TezuFuji (which most people would agree has a surprisingly low moe rating for a fandom juggernaut XD), or desire vs. self-realisation (XD), or the Xtreme Meta school of pairing generation whereby one comes up with a clever what-if first then sees how it could be done (ex. "If FFXII is basically Star Wars, wouldn't that mean [insert crack pairing]?"), as opposed to M which is just fandumb through and through. P is not weighted as heavily as M in the calculation though. XD

Controversialness (W): how likely it is other fans will hate your pairing, based somewhat subjectively on its intrinsic qualities (stuff like, is it underage/incestuous/non-con/on crack/destroys a widely adored ship just by breathing). Higher than 3 means a fair chance of wank. XD
Inherent controversialness discourages people from shipping: all else being equal, fewer people will ship something if the characters happen to be closely related, or their friends are vocal about disliking the pairing, etc.

The formula for passive popularity (PP):

PP = C + M + 0.5P - 0.3W

In real (fandom) life, moe weighs as much as canonicity and in fact may replace canonicity altogether. XD You can derive this yourself but the highest possible score is 12.5 and the lowest is -1.5 (maybe I should add 1.5 as a constant so the scale begins at 0?). Practically speaking SxS is 11.2, BanxGinji is 10.2, RoyEd is 6.5.

The formula for wank potential between shippers of pairings A and B, assuming A and B contradict (WPab):

WPab = 1 / $(PPa - PPb) + (Wa + Wb) + G, where:
$(PPa - PPb) = larger(|PPa - PPb|, 0.1)
G = 3 if gender(A) != gender(B), otherwise G = 0

...Okay I've just lost half of you. XD Basically the idea of this formula is, the more similar the popularity ratings of A and B, the more likely that corner of fandom will "split down the middle" and start rivalizing (inverse operation). Then you add the inherent controversialness of the respective pairings, plus a constant if good ol' slash vs. het is invoked. The rigmarole with the $-sign operation is just to avoid dividing by zero or getting a negative result.

Actually I think the curve is more complex than 1/x - there ought to be a way to account for the fact that 60/40 splits are more inherently controversial than 50/50 - but for a basic model along the lines of supply/demand sans elasticity it'll do.

The formula for total shipping wank potential of a fandom (WPt):

WPt = sum(WPab) * sum(PP) / (N * F)

Where N is number of pairings widely agreed to be representative (extreme fringe/crack pairings tend not to influence WPt), sum is over pairings included in N, and F is some cosmetic constant (probably divide by 1000).

I'm far too lazy to calculate WPt for anything, but a quick scribble shows WP(Ban/Ginji, Ban/Akabane) to be 4.18, WP(Roy/Ed, Ed/Winry) to be 8.53, and - as an example of why I need to improve the WPab formula re: 60/40 splits - WP(SxS, SxK) to be as low as 3.45. XD 4.37 - let's all pretend I can count. Note however that WPt for TB/X is high, because sum(PP) is ridiculously high for a relatively low number of total pairings N, i.e. emotions are more at stake than usual.

Suggestions etc. are welcome. XDD

EDIT, ABOUT AN HOUR LATER -- I think I'm going to change this so as to put the PPa + PPb term in WPab instead of (or perhaps in addition to) sum(PP) in WPt. That is if both pairings are very popular in the fandom it's much more likely there will be wank between them than if both are fringe ships, for example R/H vs. H/H is likely to cause wank, Ron/Luna vs. Ron/Tonks, not so much.

So the new formula is:

WPab = (1 / $(PPa - PPb) + (Wa + Wb) + G) * (PPa + PPb), where:
$(PPa - PPb) = larger(|PPa - PPb|, 0.1)
G = 3 if gender(A) != gender(B), otherwise G = 0

Going by this WP(Ban/Ginji, Ban/Akabane) = 77.562, WP(Roy/Ed, Ed/Winry) = 87.85, and WP(SxS, SxK) = 83.9. Out of curiosity I did WP(Ron/Luna, Ron/Tonks), and it gave 18.146. My instinct is that WPab is logarithmic but I wouldn't be able to prove that mathematically. XD

EDIT 2 -- figured out how to shift the curve in the above formula to account for the 60/40 effect. $(PPa - PPb) should be something like larger(||PPa - PPb| - 2|, 0.2)? Will crunch more numbers when I have the gumption, or better yet you can do it for me. XD



[1] All the mooglecraft tech support gets outsourced to Bhujerba these days OH GOD I'M SORRY I'LL JUST BE OVER HERE [2]

[2] And anyhow it's not as funny as "How come you always see a Hume guy with a Viera girl and never the other way around?" Thanks a million, fabulous_papaya!

Comments

[akatonbo.livejournal.com]

You win at fandom. I am still laughing, and yet it is so true.

On the other hand, if you're still in Bhujerba, there's so much you're missing out on when it comes to pairing analysis for FFXII... I suggest the top of a certain mountain as a point at which you could take a much better stab at it. (Of course, my (99.9% platonic, thank you) quasi-OTP would have been basically crack on a stick up until the ending FMV, whereupon it was handed to me on a silver platter, garnished with parsley.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Being the sort of story it's stacking up as there's probably no real point in me talking about pairings until I've reached the end. XD Really what I wanted to point out was that this is the first FF game since... VIII?... that's honestly rather slashable (or "pairable", since including female characters in the previous statement changes nothing).

[akatonbo.livejournal.com]

I am perplexed, because in my view it's the least slashable -- or pairable -- anything I've seen in years... but if you're thinking about fandom-at-large, I suppose I can't disagree; it's just that almost none of it works for me personally, and what little does work, most of it requires even more specific interpretations than is usual for me in order for it to work. (Kind of like Yami no Matsuei, where even though my favorite pairing is probably the most popular in the fandom, I can't stomach most of the stories -- only more so, and in a different way.) After we passed a certain point in the game, most of my discussions with Andrea or anyone else about pairings turned into '...no. Well, ok, maybe like this, but otherwise? Um, no.'

But I do see where it would push other people's buttons. My brain just doesn't bend that way this time.

[ayabai.livejournal.com]

GOOD LORD WOMAN YOU ARE INSANE XD

[dipping_sauce]

TOO MANY VARIABLES.

I AM HAVING PTSD FLASHBACKS TO UNI MATH CLASS.

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

puu just told me on IRC that she read this and is going to tranq you. I suspect it is so she can drag you back to her lair and eat your delicious, clearly drug-addled brain. RUN AWAY!!

dare I ask how any jojo pairings calculate out? XD

[dipping_sauce]

dare I ask how any jojo pairings calculate out? XD

You get a divide by cucumber error, and then it throws an out of cheese exception.

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

are you saying that just because of all the incest?? D:

okay, so if we add some dried frog pills to the equation, then...?

You win an Enlightened!Ojii icon! XD

[maeran.livejournal.com]

*so very dead, but at least I died laughing! XD*

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, awesome!
(But there needs to be a graph for those of us for whom its been years since we've used logs. XD Visual aids!)

Though, passive v. active popularity is interesting, though, but isn't passive popularity really affected, after a time, *by* active popularity? In other words, people will begin to feel that the pairing is more plausible, possibly upon all aspects, if there is a lot of fic, which has the effect of justifying it? Or if it's not really a ficcing fandom, just people shipping? (Huh, *have* you ever been surprised by the shipping in a fandom after just seeing the canon?)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes and no? I mean, there is a feedback loop as always, but you can't have active popularity without passive popularity (as I've defined it), whereas you can have the latter without the former. This model is, as you say, probably most useful for predicting starting conditions. XD

I would not be able to transcribe this in spurious mathematical formulas, but I believe active popularity (AP) for any given pairing is dependent on PP plus founding effect (which is really the same thing as AP itself, since it means "what the first half dozen people in a fandom write and vocally ship" - basically, starting condition APf), which then grows iteratively according to a power-rule type function - you take the difference between APf and PP for each given pairing, if APf is greater it will cause M and P to rise a little and W to lessen, if APf is lesser it will cause M and P to drop a little and W to rise. Then you use PP to determine proportionately the number of shippers for that pairing who become "active" once a certain cutoff is reached, adding to the APf pool.

From which one can see that if one wants one's fledgling fandom to have high overall growth, one should write for as many pairings as possible, though with slightly more emphasis on pairings with high starting PP. XD If you are the founder but you happen to ship exclusively a minority pairing according to starting PP, you are dooming your fandom to remain small.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Yes... although isn't there the situation where the people keep on whining about how no one writes their pairing and eventually some writers begin to write it out of "consumer demand?"

Hah, so you're saying that in a way, this can determine whether the fandom gets off the ground or not? But what if the founders only ship, and don't write (because they're not writers)? Darn it, this information could be dangerous if in the wrong hands... XD

[one-if-by-land.livejournal.com]

oh, god, if my high school economics class taught graphs and equations using fandom pairings/wank, maybe I would've had more interest in it. XD

[bobthetrout.livejournal.com]

Now to test this you have to go get statistics based on HP fandom.

Simply because they're the biggest and best documented.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I figure too, but who needs proof really? XDXD Maybe I'll turn this into a fan_extension course and get other people to do the spreadsheet work for me.

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

That is awe-inspiring! Now, how can one test this amazing set of mathematical models and how can one use it to predict the level of wank in a fandom?

[yubsie]

(Here via metafandom

Wow. Just wow.

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Ha. This explains a lot.

[arboretum]

oh my god. *hands you a prize.* XDD