#I won't tag the ships cause I don't wanna fill the tags with discourse

[justaweirddruid]

After @thebeaubar ‘s post about the fan art yesterday, I decided to count the amount of fan art in the gallery for the ships too.

Notes:

- I looked at the past 46 galleries (not including for episode 134)

- I considered art of the duos together + art of just one of them if it was clearly related to the ship (example: Beau reading the letter Yasha wrote her)

-  I also considered art where other people were included but the focus was the ship (example: Fjord giving Jester the unicorn but Beau and Caleb are also in the art

 Results:

Beauyasha: 106

Fjorester: 37

Widojest: 29

Shadowgast: 23

Fjorclay: 18

Widobrave: 15

Beaujester: 13

Observations:

FJORCLAY – the art for fjord and cad together pretty much died since Cad was confirmed aroace. Most of the art for them was from the scene Fjord tried to pull Caduceus back when he was charmed and swimming towards Vokodo’s lair. RIP platonic relationships, I guess.

BEAUJESTER – sort of the same as fjorclay, the art for the ship disappeared after it was clear beauyasha and fjorester were going to be the canon ships. They’ve had 0 art since that time Jester used Dimension Door with Beau in the Rumblecusp arc. RIP platonic relationships 2.0

WIDOBRAVE – from what I’ve seen, most of the art for the ship is Nott on Caleb’s shoulder or the two of them just next to each other. There was a moment when the ship didn’t have any art for weeks in a roll. Only recently there’s been a few more pieces showing canon moments of the two of them (like Veth and Caleb at the beach or a hug), but it’s never from moments that could be seen as romantic (I haven’t seen any art of their kiss, for example).  

SHADOWGAST – the ship got a few pieces featured in the gallery from time to time, but usually only one every few weeks. Most of the art is from the past couple episodes which makes sense since it’s when the ship got more traction in canon too.

WIDOJEST – this is the non-canon ship that was featured the most and the only one that still does even though it’s very unlikely to happen considering fjorester is canon. The ship also had the same amount of art as fjorester in the weeks after the fj kiss (not considering the gallery for the kiss episode, but the ones since then). I also noticed that most of the art for the ship are from moments that (as confirmed by Liam on Talks) had romantic intent/context from Caleb’s perspective (like the waltz and the cat prince), but no art of a non-canon moment is featured.

FJORESTER – the lack of art for fjorester is very obvious. Even when the ship went canon, it got half the amount of art that beauyasha did a few weeks later (literally half, it was 9 pieces for the kiss in the week it happened + 7 for the next week. Beauyasha had 19 on the week of the date and 14 a week later). And since then it pretty much got 1 piece every other week. I also noticed that most of the art featured for the ship is from canon scenes, almost never just the two of them in a romantic scenery unrelated to something that happened in an episode. I also noticed that a lot of their moments before the kiss were barely featured in the galleries even though there was a lot of art for it (example: the unicorn scene) while other ships’ smaller moments usually got featured a lot. 

BEAUYASHA – honestly, this is the ship that is treated the best in the gallery and I’m happy with the amount of content it’s getting. It’s so hard to see a wlw couple get this much attention in media and I just hope beauyasha continues getting featured this much until the end of the campaign. The ship had 2 clear peaks in the galleries (the flight in Rumblecusp and the date) and it’s been pretty consistent since it went canon, with at least 1 piece every week, but usually more. I also love that a lot of art for the ship is just the two of them being a couple even if it’s not a scene from the episode. 10/10 can’t complain. 

And just in case people say that “artists don’t draw fjorester” and that’s why there’s so little art for them. That is not true at all. There’s tons of art for the ship every single week, just look at Laura and Liam’s likes on twitter. The art sometimes make it into the reel before the episode, but not the gallery. Many canon moments had a lot of art but they are not getting featured... like Jester braiding Fjord’s hair, their conversation at the grove, their kiss after the dragon fight and the giant fight... 

Edit: I would like to point out that this post is not to criticize the fandom or the artists. People can draw whatever they want and enjoy whatever content they want! That’s absolutely fine! Its point is to show the difference in the way all ships are treated in the show’s offical spaces, not the fandom.