Visualizing Fimfiction character popularities as treemaps · 11:20pm Aug 7th, 2020
WARNING: contains stats
So there's a Fimfiction group called Time Action Glory Challenge, which has the noble goal of getting every character who has a tag on Fimfiction up to at least 100 stories. And every month, they publish a list of all character tags and the number of stories that contain those tags so that we can see how they're doing.
I like this list because I am a huge nerd who just likes looking at lists of numbers it forms a natural sort of "tier" list for characters on Fimfiction, with each successive tier 10 times harder to break into. On Fimfiction, with 130,000+ published stories, that gives six possible tiers (100K+, 10K+, 1K+, 100+, 10+, 1+). It reminds me of how collectible card games work and therefore it's awesome.
One way to visualize information like this is with a kind of chart called a treemap, which is a rectangle sliced up into lots of smaller rectangles. Each component rectangle represents an item (say, a character tag) and its area represents the weight of that item (in this case, number of fics which use the tag). It's good for visually comparing relative amounts of things because you can just directly compare the sizes of rectangles in the chart to each other.
So, that's what I did. I initially tried putting all characters into the same treemap but my computer fell apart, so I went for the next best option of creating separate treemaps for each tier, which is a bit more readable. So let's start at the top:
Tags with fewer than 100000 fics
The colors don't mean anything, they're just to make rectangles more distinguished from each other. This rectangle shows the whole of Fimfiction, but everyone below the 10K tier is lumped into the big <10000 rectangle. Or to put it another way, the 8 tags on the left cover about half of all tag usages on Fimfiction. They are the big guns of ponyfic.
Eagle-eyed readers might immediately notice that there seem to be more fics in the <10000 area than there are on Fimfiction. This is because fics can have multiple tags, so if two characters appear in the same fic, it gets counted twice. Don't worry, it all works out trust me
Twilight is Fimfiction's single most popular character, very narrowly followed by Celestia - they've traded the title back and forth a few times over the years. Rainbow Dash is the only other Mane Six who makes it into this tier. You can see that along with Spike and Luna, these five characters alone account for a quarter of all tag usages on Fimfiction. Even Twilight, however, can't stand up to the formidable might of the OC collective.
Let's zoom into that <10000 section to see our next tier:
Tags with fewer than 10000 fics
This tier is mostly dominated by the mane cast and fan favorites who have been around since the beginning. Sunset Shimmer has gained a respectable position here considering that she started later than others; I guess this is because she is essentially the Twilight of her own universe, so most EQG stories are likely to contain her. Or maybe it's that Anon-a-Miss thing. Sci-Twi also just about scraped into this tier. Surprisingly, despite having been around for more than half of the series' run and being a main character, Starlight hasn't been able to unseat some of the older fan favorites like Vinyl or Trixie.
Tags with fewer than 1000 fics
Things get a bit crowded here so apologies if some of the text is truncated or unreadable. Algorithmically overlaying the text was honestly the most difficult part of producing these treemaps - SVG doesn't give you a lot of text control.
The Dazzlings make their home in this tier, along with the rest of the Humane Six, and we also see the Young Six start to appear here. Fandom skew is quite visible here - Minuette, for example, dominates Moondancer when you'd think it would be the other way round, but I believe that's because Minuette has been a fan-favorite time pony since long before Moondancer came onto the scene. You also have ponies like Caramel, obscure by today's standards but a long time minor character in ponyfic.
Tempest Shadow also manages to break into this tier, the only Movie character to do so.
Tags with fewer than 100 fics
Now we're into Time Action Glory territory, as these are all the prospective graduates trying to break the coveted 100 fic barrier. Sour Sweet is the closest and would be the first Shadowbolt to do so. Pear Butter is also up there, proving that being dead is no barrier to popularity. Most of the Movie characters show up here, along with a few IDW-only characters and all the old-timers who seemingly couldn't ride the wave quite as successfully as their contemporaries, like Little Strongheart. Poor Little Strongheart, we hardly knew ye.
Luster Dawn is also here showing everyone how it's done by being literally the last character to show up and still earning a respectable 73 fics.
Tags with fewer than 10 fics
Finally, the lowest tier, which is full of newbies and the tags that just couldn't make it in the ponyfic world. Scootaloo's parents were so popular weren't they? It's because they showed up so late in the series and not because they're terrible people or anything. We also have most of the Rainbow Roadtrip crew here, and White Lightning, who exists apparently.
Hm... I've just tested some of the counts, using Mistmane, Kettle Corn, Cherry Berry, and Petunia Paleo as random test cases. Despite the fact seven fics show up on the search for Mistmane, for example, the count stubbornly remains at six. The others show similar mismatched numbers.
I think a few others have this odd count discrepancy too. I'm just not sure why. It can't be a delay, because most of these haven't been updated for weeks. While it's unlikely to affect the more populous tags significantly, I'm at the very least still curious as to what's behind it.
Heh, I’ve edited for the guy who has five of the Toola Roola fics. In fact, I edited the most recent fic with her, Filly Cheesesteaks.
I’m responsible for one of the Petunia Paleo fics (well, arguably Bad Horse is, since he made me do it).
I may have White Lightning tagged in one of mine--she’s a character in the story, but I don’t know if she’s tagged. She’s the white pegasus that swooped through in the old intro.
derpicdn.net/img/2013/1/9/207412/large.png
5331359
Yeah, I see that too... well, at least it's Fimfiction's figures that are wrong and not yours :) I can't figure out those impossible numbers either.
5331371
I do know who she is. ^^ I'm just surprised she has a tag at all!
5331381
Maybe Knighty has the hots for her (or someone else on admin).
5331371
I am puzzled as to how Toola Roola gets ten fics (not nine: I checked) whereas Coconut Cream has seven (not six). Then again, there are other pairing oddities like that at various tiers, like how Bright Mac is in the 60s zone and Pear Butter is way up in the 90s.
Hm, just checked, and I don't see your White Lightning one among her list of fics.
5331380
At least it only ever seems to be off by one, so it's easy to ignore in the other tiers. It's just really odd when you look at the lowest tier.
5331381
I think she was just sort of thrown in, way back in January 2017. No one, as far as I'm aware, even knew who she was, much less was clamouring for her inclusion. I had to go to mlp.fandom.com to find out anything about her; everything I learned since then was as a consequence of her inclusion on FIMFiction in the first place.
There's a story prompt. Or just a description of most wish-fulfillment stories.
I have to think there are some cases of tags being added long after the authors of many applicable fics were no longer on the site. Especially for Steven Magnet. (Heck, we still don't have a tag for Magic: the Gathering among the series... mostly because I never got around to asking for it.
)
In any case, I do love seeing visualized data. Thank you for this.
5331371
FTR there are multiple fics featuring Screwy (including one of mine), but Knighty won't add her to the list.
Well, Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury would agree.
Also, it seems that my Chip Cutter story is still the only one (it also stars Toola Roola, Petunia Paleo, and Coconut Cream). Though I'm surprised Grace Manewitz also has only one fic, given she's bigger on derpibooru (granted, one of her tags is Grace Manewitz is an armpit slut, but still).
Also, it's ironic: I can't see Wallflower anywhere...
She is there! (She's in the third treemap but her square is one of the smaller ones)
5331608
Third map. Go there, start at the middle of the topmost row with Aria Blaze's rectangle, then go two down. Wallflower's rectangle is sandwiched between Thorax and Screwball.
5331608 5331621
Is there somewhere that you can see what all the different character tags are? I know you can type them in and hope for the best when you’re editing your story, and you can search for them, but you’re just wondering if that’s going to bring something up or not.
EDIT: NVM, I found it.
EDIT EDIT: I now have the only fic that has Hayseed Turnip Truck tagged, yay!
5331632
On a first read I missed "rectangle" and now I have to live with this mental image...
5331739
I'm pretty sure I saw another Hayseed fic, but maybe he didn't have a tag yet.
5331860
Mine's been around for years, but wasn’t tagged, because either there wasn’t a Hayseed tag then, or I just assumed there wouldn’t be.
Just found this blog post and the stats are fascinating. And motivates me to write a few of the real edge cases to spread the love.
5331391
That particular discrepancy is easy to explain and you can see it repeated throughout similar ones - Windy Whistles outdoes Bow Hothoof, Vapor Trail outdoes Sky Stinger, etc. The answer is, of course, porn. In basically every heterosexual couple, the female character significantly outstrips the male character.
Some amateur statistical analysis, going by this blog's assessment that Twilight, Luna and Celestia are the three most tagged characters overall;
1. Twilight Sparkle
S1-3 Appearances: 60 episodes
Fimfic Tags 2011-2013: 9,871
2. Celestia
S1-3 Appearances: 25 episodes
Fimfic Tags 2011-2013: 10,606
3. Luna
S1-3 Appearances: 8 episodes
Fimfic Tags 2011-2013: 8,788
(I omitted fics from November-December 2013, as November is when S4 premiered. I'm going by the years with the highest amount of fics published. Appearances counted are flashbacks and cameos, but not photographic appearances, going by the wiki).
Apparently Celestia is the most tagged character between these three for that period, while Luna is the most disproportionately written about character, with +/- 1,000 fics per episodes she appeared in.
At the height, I guess she was just that popular, huzzah!
5400199
I guess fans just love a dark horse :)