Lovely Useless Statistics - Blog Posts

yet again, more useless statistics. love it.

can't wait to see another poll with more info / another post for my love of irl-useless statistics

because i'm interested

feel free to put in the tags how long you've had your account, how many fandoms they're for, etc

ooooh I love numbers

If you recall, a little while ago I manually scraped data regarding popular LotR ships from Ao3 using an extremely rough methodology. I had a request for the data, so what the heck, here you go.

Now, these numbers are ridiculously rough. In fact, you might even say they're bad. The first 10 are approximately correct. But, as explained in that link, every group of 10 after that is undercounted by more and more because I excluded fics from my search that contained the ships already on the list. Also, anything tagged in the Hobbit movies/book but not LotR was really, really undercounted.

Let this be a lesson in data sources! In fact, the best use of this data is to use it as a starting point for getting good data. Instead of checking every permutation of ships (like idk, Merry/Elrond) for proper numbers, you would start by checking the top 50 on this list. This is of course assuming you didn't have a better method of getting data out of Ao3 than using the work and tag searches like I've done here.

(The second-best use of this data is to go "lol, really?" which is what I assume/hope you're here for, because otherwise you're probably gonna be disappointed.)

(The third-best use of this data is to note that because the Hobbit movies came out 2012-14, right when Ao3 had achieved critical mass, it is much, much easier to find Hobbit-related fic on Ao3 than LotR, the films of which came out in 2001-03.)

For ships that intrigued me I've included the "actual" results in purple. But even those numbers are probably undercounting because some people don't use tags that map to the canonical tags.

Anyway, the top 140 ships for "Lord of the Rings - All Media Types" on Archive of Our Own using a Very Bad counting method are:

1 Frodo/Sam (2207) (2,250) 2 Gimli/Legolas (1918) (2,121) 3 Aragorn/Arwen (1509) 4 Aragorn/Legolas (1492) 5 Éowyn/Faramir (1055) 6 Bilbo/Thorin (996) (12,085!!!) 7 Erestor/Glorfindel (955) (1,158) 8 Aragorn/Boromir (766) 9 Celebrían/Elrond (752) 10 Galadriel/Halbrand (688) (691) 11 Legolas & Thranduil (439) 12 Legolas/Original Female Character (347) (539) 13 Legolas/Thranduil (308) 14 Merry Brandybuck/Pippin Took (305) (488) 15 Thranduil/Original Female Character (294) (653) 16 Legolas/Reader (269) (328) 17 Gimli & Legolas (248) 18 Elrond/Lindir (244) 19 Éomer Éadig/Lothíriel (233) 20 Thranduil/Thranduil's Wife (232) (512) (this tag cracks me up) 21 Celeborn/Galadriel (216) 22 Frodo & Sam (196) 23 Boromir/Faramir (157) 24 Aragorn/Frodo (155) 25 Boromir & Faramir (153) 26 Rose Cotton/Sam (147) (331) 27 Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron (145) 28 No Romantic Relationship (128) 29 Elrond/Thranduil (123) (325) 30 Thranduil/Reader (114) (620) 31 Elrohir/Legolas (122) 32 Aragorn & Legolas (119) 33 Original Female Character/Original Male Character (117) 34 Aragorn/Faramir (99) 35 Aragorn/Reader (89) 36 Kíli/Tauriel (80) (2,604!!!) 37 Elrond/Reader (78) 38 Elrond & Maglor | Makalaurë (75) 39 Haldir of Lothlórien/Legolas (71) 40 Thorin/Original Female Character (68) 41 Merry Brandybuck & Pippin Took (82) 42 Denethor II/Finduilas of Dol Amroth (80) 43 Elladan/Elrohir (78) 44 Haldir of Lothlórien/Original Female Character (77) 45 Boromir/Original Female Character (70) 46 Bard the Bowman/Thranduil (67) (1,727) 47 Bilbo & Frodo (64) 48 Minor or Background Relationship (60) 49 Elladan & Elrohir (58) 50 Éomer Éadig/Faramir (57) 51 Elrond/Ereinion Gil-galad (72) 52 Éomer Éadig/Reader (59) 53 Celebrimbor/Sauron (55) (783!!!!) 54 Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo (51) 55 Éowyn/Gríma Wormtongue (48) 56 Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (48) 57 Celebrimbor/Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (47) 58 Frodo/Faramir (46) 59 Arondir/Bronwyn (46) 60 Elrond/Legolas (45) 61 Arwen/Éowyn (52) 62 Aragorn/Éowyn (49) 63 Glorfindel/Original Female Character (48) 64 Legolas/Original Character (43) 65 Aragorn & Elrond (39) 66 Thorin/Reader (37) 67 Elendil the Tall/Tar-Míriel (34) 68 Legolas/Original Male Character (33) 69 Aragorn & Boromir (33) 70 Elrond & Elros Tar-Minyatur (32) 71 Durin IV & Elrond (37) 72 Ecthelion of the Fountain/Glorfindel (32) 73 Legolas/Harry Potter (30) 74 Original Character/Original Character (29) 75 Haldir of Lothlórien/Reader (29) 76 Glorfindel/Legolas (27) 77 Boromir/Reader (27) (85) 78 Legolas/Tauriel (26) 79 Elrond/Erestor (26) 80 Boromir/Legolas (26) 81 Frodo/Rose Cotton/Sam(25) 82 Diamond Took/Pippin Took (23) 83 Thorin/Thranduil (23) (723) 84 Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (22) (48) lol 85 Thranduil/Original Character (21) 86 Boromir/Théodred (21) 87 Éomer Éadig/Legolas (21) 88 Merry Brandybuck/Éowyn (20) 89 Aragorn/Original Female Character (20) 90 James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (19) 91 Éomer Éadig & Éowyn (25) 92 Elrond & Glorfindel (22) 93 Éomer Éadig/Original Female Character (20) 94 Sean Bean/Orlando Bloom (18) 95 Éowyn/Legolas (18) 96 Erestor & Glorfindel (18) 97 Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen (17) 98 Frodo/Merry Brandybuck (17) 99 Fëanor | Curufinwë/Nerdanel (17) 100 Elladan/Glorfindel (17)

101 Éowyn/Tauriel (20) 102 Frodo/Boromir (17) 103 Isildur/Valandil (17) 104 Elrond/Glorfindel (16) 105 Aragorn/Elrond (15) 106 Legolas & Original Female Character (14) 107 Lindir/Reader (14) 108 Elrond/Original Female Character (14) 109 Arwen & Elrond (14) 110 Elladan/Legolas (13) 111 Arathorn II/Gilraen (16) 112 Aragorn/Haldir of Lothlórien (16) 113 Galadriel/Sauron (16) 114 Elrond & Ereinion Gil-galad (14) 115 Human/Orc (13) 116 Sauron/Original Female Character (13) 117 Aragorn & Gimli & Legolas (13) 118 Witch-King of Angmar/Reader (13) 119 Bungo/Belladonna Took (12) 120 Frodo/Original Female Character (12) 121 Elendil the Tall/Reader (17) 122 Fíli/Kíli (15) 123 Frodo/Legolas (14) 124 Fíli/Original Female Character (13) 125 Ratbag the Coward/Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (13) 126 Estella Bolger/Merry Brandybuck (12) 127 Elladan/Elrohir/Legolas (12) 128 Celebrimbor & Talion (Shadow of Mordor) (12) 129 Loki (Marvel)/Thranduil (12) 130 Imrahil/Legolas (12) 131 Orlando Bloom/Viggo Mortensen (15) 132 Tom Bombadil/Goldberry (12) 133 Halbarad/Maglor | Makalaurë (12) 134 Frodo/Merry Brandybuck/Pippin Took (11) 135 Goldberry/Lady of the Blue Brooch (11) 136 Celebrimbor/Narvi (11) 137 Sauron/Reader (11) 138 Beren Erchamion/Lúthien Tinúviel (10) 139 Erestor/Reader (10) 140 Aragorn/Arwen/Boromir (10)