reblog for a higher sample size !!

my opinions under cut

I got bored and I like making lists and excel sheets, so I went ahead and mined all the data from the various Bertholdt relationships that exist on AO3. The resulting statistics and graphs are quite interesting, so I want to share them!

To start, I went to AO3′s tag search page, searched for every ship that contains Bertholdt OR Bertolt, picked the Relationship category, selected Canon and Non-Canon, and sorted by chronological ascending so that they would show up in the order in which they were created.

Then, I went ahead and collected the following data: 

The canonical ship name

Characters involved

Type (romantic or platonic)

Genders involved

Number of characters in the ship

Number of fics in the tag

The order in which they were created

A link to the works and tag page

The number of G, T, M, E, and Not Rated fics

In doing so, I ignored synonym ships. Half of all of Bertholdt’s current 525 ship tags are variations on Reiner/Bertholdt. I’ve only catalogued the canon tag, or if that was missing, the most canon spelling.

Then, I went ahead and created some tables to count totals and other numbers that seemed interesting.

Important to note is that the total number of fics isn’t an accurate sum of total fics that are on the archive. For example, if a single fic is tagged with both “Armin Arlert/Bertolt Hoover” and “Armin Arlert & Bertolt Hoover”, then this fic will represent itself twice in the data. The numbers are more to be taken as relative: how many fics contain this ship tag and how does that compare to other ships?

I went with ships because these are the easiest way to ensure that the fic is at least a little bit about Bertholdt. Most fics that tag him have him in the background or he doesn’t even show up in them. When at least one relationship with him is tagged, the odds that he’s relevant in the fic increase by a lot. The number of fics that have him as a main character but that don’t tag him in any relationships is rather insignificant, so this is the best way to go through Bertholdt fics and collect some data.

You can find the full sheet here. Data was captured on the 8th of January 2023. The newest ship tag at the time was Bertolt Hoover/Onyankopon and I will likely not update these stats since it’s quite a bit of work. Unless some really bad life decisions lead me to still be in this fandom in five years and data has shifted enough to see an evolution.

Find the full sheet with data here.

Let’s go through the data!

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Number of fics

When sorted by size, these are the ships with the most fics:

Reiner Braun/Bertolt Hoover (2666)

Bertolt Hoover/Annie Leonhart (465)

Bertolt Hoover/You (310)

Reiner Braun & Bertolt Hoover (300)

Reiner Braun & Bertolt Hoover & Annie Leonhart (275)

Reiner Braun/Bertolt Hoover/Annie Leonhart (125)

Armin Arlert/Bertolt Hoover (75)

Bertolt Hoover & Annie Leonhart (63)

Bertolt Hoover/Eren Yeager (61)

Bertolt Hoover/Original Character(s) (59)

Bertolt Hoover/Jean Kirstein (58)

Marco Bott/Bertolt Hoover (55)

Bertolt Hoover & Reader (40)

Armin Arlert & Bertolt Hoover (32)

Sasha Blouse/Bertolt Hoover (30)

Reiner Braun & Pieck Finger & Marcel Galliard & Porco Galliard & Bertolt Hoover & Annie Leonhart (29)

Reiner Braun/Bertolt Hoover/Reader (25)

Mikasa Ackerman/Bertolt Hoover (23)

Porco Galliard/Bertolt Hoover (23)

Bertolt Hoover/Ymir (20)

Not unexpected that RBA ships and reader ships are at the top, considering the former has always been popular and the latter is a large trend at the moment. 

I was surprised that Bertholdt/Armin is the largest rarepair considering that when I first got into this ship in September of 2020, there were about 20 fics in this tag and over half of them were either crack, didn’t contain them, or had them as background characters. It’s nice to see it boom!

Ships with Eren, Jean, and Marco are one of the first Bertholdt ship tags to be created on AO3. They used to be popular in the early days but are quieter in recent years due to a shift in character spotlight.

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Characters

Ships

The following graph shows how many Bertholdt ships each character is a part of.

Reiner, Annie, Marco, Jean, Eren, Marcel, Armin, and Reader take up the top spots for characters who appear in the most ships.

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Fics ‎

When you bring in how many fics are tagged with a ship containing each character, the view becomes quite skewed.

Because of the sheer number of Reiner/Bertholdt fics, Reiner racks in 3530 fics, representing 65,8% of all Bertholdt fics. Annie comes in second at 996 fics or 18,4% and Reader is third with 310 or 5,7% of fics.

To give a more representative overview of the other ships, Reiner, Annie, and Reader’s data were removed from this graph.

Armin (122 fics), Jean (115 fics), Marco (106), and Eren (100) are notably higher than the rest.

Partially based off this

Bertholdt is the 3rd child who’s forced to pilot an EVA. He’s blackmailed by being shown an injured Mikasa (NERV set her up to get hurt). Shadis or Magath has Gendo’s role.

Mikasa is the first child. She’s not a husk, but she’s disinterested in everything that’s not Armin or Eren. Later learns to open up to others outside her friend group. (Sasha takes the place of Hikari here I guess)

Reiner is the 2nd child and is tsundere towards Bert (they have a rivalry and a will they won’t they thing). And he’s from Germany who wants to be a hero.

Annie is the 4th child and one of the friends Bert makes at school after being beat up by her. She ends up in a coma after her EVA gets infected and Bert almost kills her against his will.

Eren tells Bertholdt he loves him and then his head pops off after trying to start third impact

Reiner gets mindraped and his mommy complex breaks his psyche. Bert visits him in the hospital later. 

I think he likes it

AruBeru : Armin Arlert and Bertholt Hoover

AruEru : Armin Arlert and Erwin Smith

AruRei : Armin Arlert and Reiner Braun

EreBeru : Eren Jaeger and Bertholt Hoover

EreJean : Eren Jaeger and Jean Kirschstein

EreMin : Eren Jaeger and Armin Arlert

EreRei : Eren Jaeger and Reiner Braun

EreRi / Riren : Eren Jaeger and Levi Ackerman

EruMike : Erwin Smith and Mike Zacharius

EruNile : Erwin Smith and Nile Dawk

EruRen : Erwin Smith and Eren Jaeger

Eruaen : Jean Kirschtein and Erwin Smith

Eruri : Erwin Smith and Levi Ackerman

JeanBeru : Jean Kirschstein and Bertholt Hoover

JeanMarco : Jean Kirschstein and Marco Bott

JeArmin : Jean Kirschstein and Armin Arlert

Marmin : Marco Bodt and Armin Arlert

Mariner : Marco Bodt and Reiner Braun

Martolt : Marco Bodt and Bertholt Hoover

RivaFa : Levi Ackerman and Furlan Church

RivaMike : Levi Ackerman and Mike Zacharias

RivaNile : Levi Ackerman and Nile Dawk

ReiBert : Reiner Braun and Bertolt Hoover

ReiCon : Reiner Braun and Connie Springer

KenRi : Kenny Ackerman and Levi Ackerman

HanPeto : Petra Ral and Hanji Zoe

MikaAni : Mikasa Ackerman and Annie Leonhart

MikaHan : Mikasa Ackerman and Hanji Zoe

MikaSasha : Mikasa Ackerman and Sasha Braus

NanaHan : Nanaba and Hanji Zoe

YumiKuri : Ymir and Historia Reiss (Krista Lenz)

Vengeance