I was thinking about Buffy's 3 main ships (to me): Bangel v. Spuffy v. Fuffy. I was wondering how many episodes (BTVS or ATS) where each ship has scenes together. Then inspired by these two polls I decided to add in two other non-Buffy ships: Gethan and Spangel.
Kudos to the Fuffy and Gethan shippers, who are working with not a TON of episodes with scenes together. Especially Gethan shippers, who only have 4 canon episodes! To be fair, Spangel fans only had 13 until S5 of ATS.
Summary ship episode count:
Spuffy (Spike x Buffy): 71
Bangel (Buffy x Angel): 49
Spangel (Spike x Angel): 35
Fuffy (Faith x Buffy): 21
Gethan (Giles x Ethan): 4
Any blatant negative ship comments, like calling a specific ship indecent will get you blocked. Ship and let ship. Other comments welcome.
Full details under the cut!
What's the Universe? The TV Buffyverse. (BTVS TV or ATS TV eps, the comics and books don’t count.)
How to start? I started with the pre-count. The pre-count is episodes where both characters in the ship appeared.
Spuffy pre-count: 96 (inc. 0 on ATS)
Bangel pre-count: 56 (inc. 2 on ATS)
Spangel pre-count: 42 (inc. 22 on ATS)
Fuffy pre-count: 21 (inc. 1 on ATS)
Gethan pre-count: 4 (inc. 0 on ATS)
How to verify? I did not rewatch all the episodes! I rewatched a few, after checking transcripts, recaps, and ship gif pages.
What doesn't count? Someone talking about the other person, because I am not trying to include the various episodes where Faith is haunting the show. They must appear in a scene together for it to count. They must both be fully aware of each other. Shared dreams (like the Fuffy ones) do count, but regular dreams do not. Buffy Bot, Wishverse Buffy, and FirstEvil Buffy do not count. I treated Faith and Buffy as their "mental" selves during the two body swap episode scenes. Also I treated Angel the same as Angelus and soul-less Spike the same as soul-ed Spike.
Notes per Ship...
Spuffy (Spike x Buffy) 71 total
S1: 0 / S2: 7 / S3: 1 / S4: 9 / S5: 18 / S6: 17 / S7: 19 / ATS: 0
4x06 Wild At Heart does not count because in the cemetery she is not aware he can hear her speech "to him." 4x16 Who Are You? does not count because Spike encounters Faith in Buffy's body, so I counted that as a Faith-Spike scene. 4x22 Restless also does not count because while he appears in Xander's dream and so does Buffy, this is Xander's dream so neither appearance counts. 5x08 Shadow does not count because he dreams of her, but it's not a shared dream.
Bangel (Buffy x Angel) 49 total
S1: 6 / S2: 19 / S3: 18 / S4: 1 / S5: 1 / S6: 0 / S7: 2 / ATS: 2 (S1)
3x03 Faith Hope and Trick does not count because when naked Angel appears at the end Buffy has already left. 3x09 The Wish does not count because Wishverse Buffy is not regular Buffy. 4x08 Pangs does not count because Buffy is not aware of him.
Spangel (Spike x Angel) 35 total
S1: 0 / S2: 10 / S3: 1 / S4: 0 / S5: 0 / S6: 0 / S7: 0 / ATS: 24 (S1, 2, 5)
4x08 Pangs does not count because Spike does not share a scene with Angel. 7x21 End of Days and 7x22 Chosen both do not count because while Spike watches Angel, Angel does not seem to be aware of him watching. For ATS, besides all of S5, they share scenes in 1x03 In The Dark and 2x07 Darla.
Fuffy (Faith x Buffy) 21 total
S1: 0 / S2: 0 / S3: 13 / S4: 2 / S5: 0 / S6: 0 / S7: 5 / ATS: 1 (S1)
Every Faith appearance in a BTVS episode means she will have a scene with Buffy. She has 5 Buffy-less episodes on ATS. I did count the dream sequence in 3x22 Graduation Day Part 2 because I read it as a shared dream. They are both aware of the other.
Gethan (Giles x Ethan) 4 total
S1: 0 / S2: 2 / S3: 1 / S4: 1 / S5: 0 / S6: 0 / ATS: 0
Similar to Faith, whenever Ethan appears in an episode, he will have a scene with Giles.
This doesn't have visualization yet but I wanted to share the results.
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Finally get to post something I created! Eventually I will make a Tableau dashboard to dig into this data, but for now here is a very rough racing bar chart, showing the top 11 BTVS characters by speaking time, per episode. This is built on the work done by J. Freedland in GitHub, which I linked to previously. Details below the cut.
A Flourish data visualisation by Buffy Data Viz
When I googled how to create a racing bar chart for free, I found something called Flourish. It was very easy to create, so I decided to go ahead and make a rough version of this. (No coding required if you want to create your own. This post sadly not sponsored.) The colors on this aren't great, to keep it legible I limited it to the top 11 characters, it lacks captions, and it lacks images (faces) for the top characters. I can actually fix all that in Flourish but don't have the time at the moment. BUT you get the point.
Notes:
This is cumulative speaking time per episode for each character, in seconds. (The original J. Freedland data did the work of compiling this for each character for each episode.)
Angel and Angelus are treated separately in the original J. Freedland data, but I chose to combine them into one character labeled "Angel." This is consistent with how Spike's speaking time is treated, with only one entry. (I also deleted the original Flourish bars for Angel and Angelus, you can only see the combined bar here.)
For whatever reason the original J. Freedland data combines E01 and E02 for S06 into one entry.
I have not spot checked the J. Freedland data with a stopwatch, but from reviewing it at a high level it seems accurate.
ADDED 09/01: Joyce has speaking time in S7, but this is the First using her body. So note that this data source credits First's speaking time to the character the First is using. (You can also think of it as this data using the actors and not the characters.)
Happy to share the source data (currently in excel) upon request, however it is really just the raw csv from J. Freedland's GitHub in excel, and then basic math making it cumulative to put into Flourish.
If you have any requests for this type of chart for BTVS let me know! It would be relatively easy to re-create this for specific characters and / or focus on specific seasons.
It's been a while! This is a quick post on the Goncharov Index for BTVS. (Inspired by non-BTVS things like this complaint and this poll.)
Basically Goncharov Index = GI = your works / Goncharov works. As of today Goncharov has 777 works on AO3.
BTVS fandom: 38,932 works (nothing filtered out, so includes crossovers, so also includes ATS crossovers) ===> GI = 50
ATS fandom: 6,535 works (filtered out BTVS crossovers) ===> GI = 8
Buffyverse fandom (BTVS + ATS): 45,467 works ===> GI = 59
And what about the ships? This is a little weird because we are comparing one ship to a whole fandom, but then again Goncharov is a fake Tumblr-fever-dream so what the hell.
We already know the top 5 ships in BTVS. Oh WAIT! Actually this is a little different now. There is another top ship now and the order has changed too. I'll have to do a separate post about that. (An old archive that focused on Giles/Buffy got imported into AO3, so there's a new top ship.)
Spike x Buffy (Spuffy): 6,215 works ===> GI = 8.0
Buffy x Angel (Bangel): 2,377 works ===> GI = 3.1
Giles x Buffy (BG): 2,232 works ===> GI = 2.9
Spike x Xander (Spander): 1,989 works ===> GI = 2.6
Tara x Willow (Tillow): 1,692 works ===> GI = 2.2
Faith x Buffy (Fuffy): 1,487 works ===> GI = 1.9
Bangel moved past Spander for number of works! The numbers above are technically for any fandom. (From a quick glance at comparing the numbers overall vs just in the BTVS fandom the difference is small.)
If you are curious about the next largest ships on AO3, after these 6, it's Xander/Anya, Angel/Spike, Dru/Spike, and then Jenny/Giles.
Earlier (while researching the BTVS Goncharov Index) I stumbled across the fact that Giles x Buffy is now #3 on the ship list for number of AO3 works! This is a change from before, the old top 5 in order were Spuffy, Spander, Bangel, Tillow, and Fuffy. I wanted to check the ranking of BTVS ships.
Ignoring the crossover effect (which is not too bad for BTVS ships), there is a very easy way to check what are the top ships on AO3. If you don't know how to do this, keep reading for simple directions and screenshots. I'll do another post with the Top 20+ ship results!
Pick your fandom on AO3, in this case "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)." You want the screen that lists all the works. Today there are 38K works for BTVS (TV). It looks like this:
(The default is sorted by Date Updated. Don't get distracted from your research by the new-to-you fic! Research!)
2. On the right hand side, under the Include section, click on the triangle by Relationships to expand it. It will show the top 10 ships. Next to each ship in parenthesis is the number of works.
3. Let's say you are bored by the top 5 (or 10) and want to dig into the even more rare ships. This is when the Exclude section is helpful. The Exclude section is under the Include section. Scroll down to it, expand the Relationships. Now click on the X, it will turn red once you exclude that ship. In the image I've excluded the top 4. Once you are done, click on Sort and Filter back up at the top.
4. The number of works will drop dramatically. Excluding the top 10 ships I end up with 22K works. Repeat the second step to expand the Relationships. You will find a new batch of 10 ships!
If you want to dig in on AO3 data, Destination Toast has a detailed tutorial that gets into more advanced stuff. I highly recommend it!
If you have a burning interest in non-Buffy fandom stats, but don't want to do the work yourself, you could nicely ask phantom statistician for some results. (You may have to wait a while, there's a long list of requests.) There is already a lot posted, so perhaps your question is already answered there. (She can use both AO3 and FFN as data sources.)
Shout out to Phantom Statistician who created the original pie chart of top ships in BTVS back in 2020, which is how I knew what the previous top 5 ships were.
And I know I've said it before, but while using AO3 data is easy, it does not include all fanworks, or even all fanfic for BTVS. Since Buffy went off the air before AO3 started, lots of works are on other websites and/or lost.
Also Elysian Fields is a huge long-standing Spuffy-only fanfic site, so focusing only on AO3 undercounts the amount of Spuffy fanworks. Even with that undercounting, Spuffy is still the number one BTVS ship on AO3.
BTVS Speaking Time: Buffy Boos edition (racing bar chart)
Buffy is a hero. Buffy saved the world ALOT. Buffy cannot be reduced to the people she dated / flirted with.
And Yet... It is fun to compare. I created the Buffy Boos edition of the previous chart, and made some other improvements. ("Love interest" sounds like a 1980s term, and trying to be gender neutral I chose "boos.") So you have 17 of Buffy's boos in a racing bar chart, showing their speaking time, per episode. Unlike the previous version (with all characters) this has images for the top characters, and INTERACTIVE CATEGORIES. (Again, credit to J. Freedland who did the GitHub data work.) Details below the cut.
A Flourish data visualisation by Buffy Data Viz
The best part is the INTERACTIVE CATEGORIES!! They are color-coded in the chart and you can add or remove them at will. You can also flip the chart from Most to Least. (Do you reject that Faith was a boo? Remove her. Don't want to see minor baddies like Dracula? Remove them. Bored with the people she only flirted with? Remove them.)
Made using Flourish, it was free. This still lacks captions, which I hope to add in later. Will update if I do. End goal is a Tableau dashboard to dig into the full data, but this is fun for now.
This is a cumulative speaking time per episode for each of Buffy's boos in seconds. (The original J. Freedland data did the work of compiling this for each character for each episode. Note that on a high-level review it seems accurate. And the original data combines E01 and E02 for S06 into one entry.)
I have combined Angel's and Angelus's speaking time. This is consistent with how Spike's speaking time is treated. (I also did this in the previous chart.)
Online it looks like The First used Spike as a disguise a few times, so Spike's time could be inflated by that. You would have to check the Forever Dreaming transcripts for those moments to be sure. No other boos were used by The First as disguises.
I used the term "boos" very broadly. A racing bar chart of just Angel vs. Spike would be boring. As expected, adding Riley in does not make it less boring! I would not really count all of these people as boos, but Buffy had some sort of interesting interaction with each of them. Note this includes any speaking time they had, including to people besides Buffy, and also even when Buffy isn't around.
I DID intentionally leave out Xander in this, even though Buffy does flirt with him (magic, making Angel jealous). I considered adding him but his speaking time will dwarf all the others, so I did not.
Happy to share the source data (currently in excel) upon request, however it is really just the raw csv from J. Freedland's GitHub in excel, and then basic math making it cumulative to put into Flourish.
If you have any requests for this type of chart for BTVS let me know!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Are you interested in digging into stats on your favorite BTVS (or other) ship? Here's a helpful data source: https://fandomstats.org/
They have a tag stats API and a GitHub repository and a full explanation of their work. Bravo to Fandom Stats!
Related to that pie chart on top BTVS ships in AO3, you can explore basics on any ship, including non-BTVS ones. For example, you can search "spike/buffy" and find there are 5,669 (public) works on AO3. The 3 top spuffy tags are angst, romance, and season/series 06. Or "drusilla/spike" returns 705 with the top 3 tags being angst, pre-canon, and vampires.
Since tumblr launched polls there have been a lot of ship and character polls, and some include BTVS! A recent tournament for the AO3 top femslash ships included Tillow (Tara x Willow) and Fuffy (Faith x Buffy). In Round 3 Tillow lost, but Fuffy pulled out a win, by only 20 votes.
As part of the tournament there are downloadable data sets and line graphs. The line graphs are for every single poll, showing the votes over time for both ships in each round.
You can see above once Tillow reaches about 1,000 votes the other ship gets a strong lead and never looks back.
On the other hand, the Fuffy matchup was fairly close the entire round. The lead keeps changing between Fuffy and the Amity/Luz (from The Owl House) ship.
Super cool that people are visualizing this poll data!
Thanks to a recent Sunnydale Herald post, I learned of a post on BTVS Ratings by reddit user Normal-Appearance982. Using Nielsen Media Research the ratings cover all seven seasons. The numbers switch from household rating/share to an ages 18-49 ratings starting in S4. While there are average ratings for each season, there are also detailed numbers for each episode on their rating's website. The viewership is for the live showings of the episodes, it doesn't cover re-runs or streaming.
My only commentary is that their recap implies the show ended with S7 because of low ratings. My understanding is that the show was known to be ending early in the season, partially because SMG (understandably) did not want to continue playing Buffy.
I don't care about ratings data but wanted to pass this along as a data source. And if you are into it, there's some good OP comments and discussion on the reddit post.
