Ranking a load of shoot from the hip ships :)

Stats on ships going into the semi-finals

As per usual, all of this information can be found in my previous post which discusses the results of Round 3, but I have summarised them here to make them easier to find.

4 canon ships

4 queer ships, of which 3 are two men and 1 is two women

4 ships in which Luke plays one of the characters, 2 ships in which Tom plays one of the characters and 2 ships in which Sam plays one of the characters

2 ships are Tom/Luke pairings and 2 ships are Luke/Sam pairings

Once again, the stats on views per day and number of ao3 fics are the same as those used in Round 1 and all notes made in the Round 1 post still apply here.

Semi-finals results

I will start by noting that there are several stats that have been a key part of previous analysis that are now irrelevant here. For example, discussing whether a ship is canon or non-canon is irrelevant to its success at this point in the bracket as all ships are canon. Additionally, all ships that made it to the semi-finals were queer ships, so I will not be including an discussion on the success of canon straight ships vs canon queer ships (for example) in any detail. However, this does make it very clear that the SFTH fanbase favours canon queer ships over any other type of ship. This was something that could be seen throughout the bracket - almost all the instances of a canon queer ship being knocked out of the bracket was by another canon queer ship, the only exception being Alan/Frankie from The Bard with A Scar being knocked out by John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland from The Off Season.

The distribution of straight/queer ships in match-ups is:

1 match-up that featured two M/M ships

1 match-up that featured one F/F ship and one M/M ship

As with Rounds 1 and 2, F/F ships are once again the most successful category. The only remaining F/F ship, Annabelle/Butch from Never Give Annabelle A Gun, won its match-up, resulting in a 100% win rate for F/F ships in this round. M/M ships weren't as successful, only winning the match-up in which they were guaranteed a win (Bubba/Jeremiah from Inside the Mysterious Cube vs Derek/Titch from The Unrelenting Aubergine) as both ships were M/M. It seems that, even though there aren't many F/F ships in SFTH longforms, the ones they have are favoured by the fans (maybe a sign for them to have more F/F ships in longforms? I certainly would not complain).

Overall, 1 F/F ship (100% of those that made it to the semi-final and 25% of those in the ranking) and 1 M/M ship (33% of those that made it to the semi-final and 7% of those in the ranking) make it through to the final.

The distribution of SFTH members in match-ups is:

2 match-ups that feature two ships with one character played by Luke

2 match-ups that feature one ship with one character played by Tom

2 match-ups that feature one ship with one character played by Sam

The semi-finals once again saw ships featuring Tom absolutely dominate, with both match-ups being won by a ship in which one character is played by Tom. As Luke features in all ships that reached the semi-finals, he automatically has a 50% win rate (the maximum he can in this scenario). The only real loss in this round were for ships featuring Sam, neither of which won their match-ups, meaning we now have the second SFTH with no ships remaining in the bracket. As with AJ, this is a somewhat unsurprising result as Sam featured in the second fewest ships at the beginning of the ranking. Tom and Luke both featured in 19 ships, closely followed by Sam who featured in 16 and then AJ who featured in 9.

Overall, 2 ships featuring a character played by Tom (100% of those that made it to the semi-finals and 11% of those in the ranking) and 2 ships featuring a character played by Luke (50% of those that made it to the semi-finals and 11% of those in the ranking) make it through to the final.

The distribution of SFTH member pairings in match-ups is:

2 match-ups that feature one Tom/Luke pairing and one Luke/Sam pairing

This is the area in which we can best examine the fandom's preferences at this point in the ranking. As both match-ups featured one Tom/Luke pairing and one Luke/Sam pairing, this allows us to clearly see which pairing is most popular.

I will start by saying that going into this, Tom/Luke and Luke/Sam pairings were probably the two favourites to win. From what I have seen, these two pairings are far and away the most popular. They also came into the ranking with the most ships (another indication of their popularity) with there being 7 Tom/Luke pairings and 8 Luke/Sam pairings.

However, it is now clear that the most popular pairing is Tom/Luke, as both ships that were a Tom/Luke pairing winning their match-ups. This means that, overall, 2 Tom/Luke pairings (100% of those that made it to the semi-finals and 29% of those in the ranking) make it through to the final.

Once again, there is little correlation between the number of views per day for the longform and the percentage of votes received by the ship, as one match-up was won by the ship with more votes per day (Derek/Titch vs Bubba/Jeremiah) and one match-up was won by the ship with fewer votes per day (Annabelle/Butch vs Percy/Franklin).

However, this round seems to be the strongest evidence that the number of fics on ao3 gives the strongest indication as to the success of a ship in this ranking. Derek/Titch and Annabelle/Butch, the two ships that won their match-ups in this round, are the two ships with the most fics on ao3 of all SFTH ships (in fact, they are the only two ships with over 100 fics, Derek/Titch having 142 and Annabelle/Butch having 114). Throughout this ranking, the number of fics on ao3 has been a decent way of predicting which ship will win an individual match-up, likely because the people reading and writing about these ships on ao3 are probably also the people voting in a Tumblr poll such as this one.

Overall, the ship that won by the greatest margin was Annabelle/Butch with 73.2% of the vote against Percy/Franklin. Derek/Titch also had decently big margin in their victory over Bubba/Jeremiah with 62% of the vote, but this is significantly smaller than Annabelle/Butch's. Going into the final round, my guess would be that Annabelle/Butch win the ranking as they have won their match-up by the greatest margin in three of the four rounds. The only round in which they did not have this was Round 3, for which Derek/Titch won by the greatest margin, but it is worth noting that Annabelle/Butch won by the second greatest margin here. I have already voted in this poll and had to flip a coin because I could not choose (I love them both so much).

Closing thoughts

First of all, I would like to apologise that this post is significantly shorter than the previous ones. There was simply less to talk about in this round, both due to there only being 4 ships left in the ranking and the lack of variety in the ships (the most variety we had was one being a canon F/F ship compared to the three canon M/M ships). I am planning on doing a summary post looking back at the statistics from the entire ranking (at the moment I plan on talking about the average percentage of votes in each round against various factors such as canon/non-canon, queer/straight, who the characters are played by, views per day for the longform and amount of time that the longform has been out, as well as looking to see if similar statistics regarding the number of ao3 fics can back up the trends in the fandom's general preferences). However, this is likely going to take me a lot of time to do, so it may be a couple of weeks before I am able to make this post (excitingly, one of the things taking up my time is a trip to see SFTH, which I am so very hyped for).

As always, thank you to anyone who has read this far. I have had several absolutely lovely interactions off the back of these posts and it fills my heart with joy every time I get one (usually followed by an long voicenote to my irl best friend expressing my joy in some words and many happy noises). As per usual, there are likely some sections that ramble on, don't make sense or have typos - feel free to express this to me via messages/comment, but please be nice. As I am planning on doing a big summary post, any requests for what I could include would be very welcome. Also, please let me know if anyone would like to see the big spreadsheet I made at the end of all this so I know that I have to make it a bit less of a mess.

Thank you to @shoot-from-the-ship for giving me their blessing to post about this. Once again, thank you to everyone who has interacted with any of these posts in any capacity, you absolutely make my day any time that you do. Finally, thank you for reading this, I am so glad that several of you seem to enjoy all of this madness.

Stats on ships going into Round 3

As before, all of this information can be found in the post discussing the results from Round 2, but is spread throughout that post so is summarised below:

7 canon ships and 1 non-canon ship

1 straight ship and 7 queer ships, of which 4 queer ships are two men and 3 queer ships are two women

The 1 straight ship is canon, whereas 6 of the queer ships are canon and 1 of the queer ships is non-canon

7 ships in which Luke plays one of the characters, 5 ships in which Tom plays one of the characters, 3 ships in which Sam plays one of the characters and 1 ship in which AJ plays one of the characters

4 ships are Tom/Luke pairings, 2 ships are Sam/Luke pairings, 1 ship is a Tom/Sam pairing and 1 ship is a Luke/AJ pairing

Once again, the stats on views per day and number of ao3 fics are the same as those used in Round 1 and all notes made in the Round 1 post still apply here.

Round 3 Results

Once again, there is still no easy way of determining whether there is a preference for earlier longforms vs later longforms due to how the match-ups were organised. I am still thinking of doing a summary post to include all the stats I did not mention in each post, which would maybe include a discussion of this, but this is very dependent on me not getting too busy with my job/uni work.

The distribution of canon/non-canon match ups is:

3 match-ups that featured two canon ships

1 match-up that featured one canon ship and one non-canon ship

Round 3 has seen the last of the surviving non-canon ships, Clarissa/Amanda from Clarissa's DIY Wedding, eliminated by Derek/Titch from The Unrelenting Aubergine. As such, we now only have canon ships remaining moving into the semi-finals. At this point, this is fairly unsurprising as we have seen that the SFTH fandom tends to have a slightly unusual preference for canon ships. Overall, 4 canon ships (57% of those that made it to Round 3 and 19% of those in the ranking) make it through to the semi-finals.

2 match-ups that featured one F/F ship and one M/M ship

1 match-up that featured one F/M ship and one F/F ship

1 match-up that featured two M/M ships

Round 3 has also seen the last of the surviving straight ships, John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland from The Off Season, eliminated by Annabelle/Butch from Never Give Annabelle A Gun. However, it is the first round where F/F were not far and away the most successful category. F/F ships had a win rate of 75% and 100% in Rounds 1 and 2 respectively, making them the most successful by a significant margin (the closest any other ship type came was M/M ships in Round 2, with a win rate of 57%). However, only one of the three remaining F/F ships has made it to the semi-finals, this being Annabelle/Butch. This does come as a bit of a surprise, but looking at the results in context, they begin to make more sense. Clarissa/Amanda were up against Derek/Titch, one of the most popular ships in the fandom with the most ao3 fics of any SFTH ship. Ginny/Lenora from Ginny's Wild Adventure were up against Percy/Franklin from We Love Poetry (a loss I felt in my soul, I love Ginora), again one of the most popular ships in the fandom. One other factor that may have worked against Ginny/Lenora (this is not backed up by stats but rather my personal opinion) is that it is the most recent ship to be added to the list, meaning that while they may have the advantage of a slight recency bias, people have had more time to grow attached to Percy/Franklin.

M/M ships were the most successful in this round, with the only M/M ship eliminated being Tomlock/Watsam from The Mystery of the Midnight Circus and The Final Baker of Baker Street, which was against Bubbah/Jeremiah from Inside the Mysterious Cube. I would say this is a fairly expected result as (as far as I know because I haven't been into SFTH for that long) Bubbah/Jeremiah were the most popular ship in the fandom for a long time and likely have a special place in a lot of people's hearts due to them being the first canon queer ship in a SFTH longform.

Overall, 3 M/M ships (75% of those that made it to Round 3 and 20% of those in the ranking) and 1 F/F ship (33% of those that made it to Round 3 and 25% of those in the ranking) make it through to the semi-finals.

The distribution of straight canon/queer canon/queer non-canon ships in match-ups is:

1 match-up that featured one straight canon ship and one queer canon ship

2 match-ups that featured two canon queer ships

1 match-up that featured one queer canon ship and one queer non-canon ship

As in Round 2, canon queer ships were the most successful, with every match-up being won by a canon queer ship. This firmly cements that canon queer ships are the most popular type of ship in the SFTH fandom (truly, a fork has been found in the kitchen). 4 canon queer ships (66% of those that made it to Round 3 and 50% of those in the ranking) make it through to the semi-finals.

The distribution of SFTH members in match-ups is:

2 match-ups that featured two ships with one character played by Tom

3 match-ups that featured two ships with one character played by Luke

1 match-up that featured two ships with one character played by Sam

1 match-up that featured one ship with one character played by Tom

1 match-up that featured one ship with one character played by Luke

1 match-up that featured one ship with one character played by Sam

1 match-up that featured one ship with one character played by AJ

Once again, ships featuring Luke absolutely dominate in this Round. Only one ship that does not feature Luke made it to Round 3, Tomlock/Watsam, which lost its match-up. Looking purely at the numbers, it does appear that Sam was the most successful in Round 3, with 2 of the 3 ships that feature Sam making winning their match-ups (the highest win rate of any SFTH member in Round 3). However, as 3 of the match-ups had two ships featuring a character played by Luke, 3 ships that feature Luke were guaranteed to lose their match-ups. Ships featuring Luke won the maximum number of match-ups they could, resulting in every ship in the semi-finals featuring a character played by Luke.

However, it is clear to see that Sam and Luke were the most successful SFTH members in Round 3. In the case where there are two ships that feature the same person, there is a guaranteed win and loss for that person. As such, a better measure of success is examining match-ups where only one ship featured that person. Both Sam and Luke won their match-ups where they only featured in one of the ships (Percy/Franklin for Sam and Bubbah/Jeremiah for Luke). Conversely, it could be argued that Tom and AJ were equally unsuccessful in this round as they both lost their match-ups where they only featured in one of the ships (Tomlock/Watsam for Tom and Ginny/Lenora for AJ).

This also marks the first SFTH member with no ships remaining in the ranking - the elimination of Ginny/Lenora means there are no ships featuring a character played by AJ remaining. Looking at the stats for ships involving AJ, this is somewhat unsurprising. On top of having the fewest ships to begin with, 82% of ships featuring AJ were either straight canon ships or queer non-canon ships which, as previously discussed, are less popular than canon queer ships.

Overall, 4 ships featuring a character played by Luke (57% of those that made it to Round 3 and 21% of those in the ranking), 2 ships featuring a character played by Sam (67% of those that made it to Round 3 and 13% of those in the ranking) and 2 ships featuring a character played by Tom (40% of those that made it to Round 3 and 11% of those in the ranking) make it through to the semi finals.

The distribution of SFTH member pairings in match-ups is:

2 match-ups that feature two Tom/Luke pairings

1 match-up that features one Tom/Sam pairing and one Luke/Sam pairing

1 match-up that features one Luke/Sam pairing and one Luke/AJ pairing

Going into Round 3, Tom/Luke pairings were clear favourites, having won 80% of their match-ups in Round 2 and having the most ships enter Round 3. However, Sam/Luke pairings were far and away the most successful, winning both of their match-ups whereas Tom/Luke pairings only won 50% of their match-ups. This is because, due to the way the match-ups were sorted, all Tom/Luke ships were against another Tom/Luke ship, meaning there was a guaranteed win and loss for a Tom/Luke pairing in those match-ups. This makes it very difficult to actually evaluate the success of Tom/Luke pairings in this round. Looking at the previous rounds, both Clarissa/Amanda and John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland were strong contenders, being the only non-canon and straight ships respectively to make it through to Round 3. Furthermore, Clarissa/Amanda was the only non-canon ship to beat out a canon ship in both Round 1 and Round 2 and John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland won by the second largest margin in Round 1. Also, it looks like it is going to be Derek/Titch and Annabelle/Butch in the final, the two ships that knocked out Clarissa/Amanda and John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland. Overall, I would say that these results are not especially representative of the popularity of Tom/Luke pairings (a much better example would be the Round 2 results).

This round does confirm that Tom/Luke pairings and Luke/Sam pairings are generally the most popular in the fandom. From what I have seen, I do think that this is the general opinion (for example, my personal favourite pairings are generally Tom/Luke pairings, so this might make me slightly biased). However, both of these pairings had the most ships going into the ranking (8 for Luke/Sam and 7 for Tom/Luke) so this might be a contributing factor.

Overall, 2 Luke/Sam pairings (100% of those that made it to Round 3 and 25% of those in the ranking) and 2 Tom/Luke pairings (50% of those that made it to Round 3 and 29% of those in the ranking) make it through to the semi-finals.

As in the previous rounds, there is little correlation between the number of views per day and the percentage of votes received by the ship. However, it is the first time that the minority of the match-ups were won by the ship with more views per day - in this round, only one match-up was won by the ship with fewer views per day, this being Annabelle/Butch. This is also linked to the fact that in 3 of the 4 match-ups, a ship from an earlier longform won the match-up, with Annabelle/Butch once again being the only exception. Plotting the logarithm of the views per day against the percentage of votes received by the ship shows the lack of correlation below.

Also as in the previous rounds, the ships with more fics on ao3 were more likely to win their match-ups, with every match-up being won by the ship with more fics on ao3. However, plotting the logarithm of the number of fics on ao3 against percentage of votes received by the ship reveals an interesting trend.

As seen above, there appears to be a positive correlation between the number of fics and percentage of votes received for the winning ships, but a negative correlation for the losing ships. This observation does come with slight caveats, as the two ships with the fewest fics, Tomlock/Watsam with 7 fics and Ginny/Lenora with 4 fics, had an estimate rather than a precise measurement for the number of fics and are the most recent longform (so have had significantly less time to write fanfiction in) respectively. Furthermore, the other two losing ships were up against Derek/Titch and Annabelle/Butch, which it would be fair to say are looking like the two most popular ships in the ranking and are the only two ships with over 100 fics on ao3 (with 142 for Derek/Titch and 114 for Annabelle/Butch). However, it is an interesting observation and indicates that at this stage of the ranking, number of fics is a good way for estimating the general popularity of a fic but not for how well it will do in a match-up (i.e. the percentage of votes that it will receive.

Overall, the ship that won by the greatest margin was Derek/Titch with 78.3% of the vote against Clarissa/Amanda. As in Round 2, no other ship comes especially close to this, the second greatest margin being Annabelle/Butch against John Jacob McAllister/Angelina Roland. The narrowest victory was Percy/Franklin against Ginny/Lenora with 60.3% of the vote.

Closing thoughts

As always, thank you to anyone who has read this far. I am still having a lot of fun doing this and the fact that there are people who respond positively every time I do this means the absolute world. As per usual, this likely rambles on and doesn't make sense in some parts (I feel like this is more true than it usually is for some reason) - feel free to express this to me via messages/comment, but please be nice. I am also sure there are some typos here and there (I have tried to spot as many as I can) for which I apologise. I am fairly set on doing a follow up post after the ranking has finished with some bonus content, although it likely won't be immediately afterwards as I have a couple of busy weekends coming up (including going to see SFTH (not at the Fringe) for the second time, which I'm incredibly hyped about). Any suggestions for things I could include in this post would be greatly appreciated as I want it to be things that people actually want to know rather than just my own ramblings.

Thank you to @shoot-from-the-ship for giving me their blessing to post about this (I love reading your response every week). Thank you to everyone who interacts with this post because, as much as I do this for my own enjoyment, it is nice for the void to respond when you scream into it. Finally, thank you for reading this, it brings me so much joy that people seem to like reading about this.

Hope to be back soon :)