#and another time where i was comparing the amount of yumejoshi fics across different fandoms

[elany]

Let's do this then =D First a disclaimer and a bit about my methodology because while the math here is very barebones I want to at least explain what I was doing. Essentially I picked a few ships in different fandoms, calculated the percentage of E and M rated works in the tag, then compared that to the percentage if at least one person in the main pairing is trans, using the "Trans Character A" OR "Trans Character B" filter. I didn't look at non character specific tags such as Trans (Male) Character because I didn't want too many false positives. Since this was part of what I was initially interested in, I then also compared the percentage of mpreg works within those featuring a trans character to the percentage in the ship tag overall. Another note, I'm using the word 'mpreg' because that's inherently what we're talking about, but I found out that only around 20% of works tend to be tagged with 'Mpreg' as opposed to 'Pregnancy', and since that is also the parent tag it's what I had been filtering for. Then, because that's what the OG post was about, I also looked into how often Character A is headcanoned as trans vs Character B.

As for the disclaimer - I redid all of it yesterday, in part because the last time I did this the intention was only to drop the results in a gc and it shows lol, in part because I was curious if anything's changed, but mostly because I'm boo boo the fool who never wrote down which fandom some of this data is even for.

Now for the actual numbers!

I started with two Genshin Impact ships because I figured that's a good baseline for current fandom trends. One that's slightly more recent and another that includes a character I've seen thrown around in the tags a bunch. So;

Alhaitham/Kaveh (Genshin Impact)

All works: 14,589 | E/M: 38% Works where either is tagged as trans: 461 or 3% of all works | E/M: 70% Of those 40 or 9% are mpreg, compared to 2% in the ship tag overall. Meaning those make up for 13% of all mpreg works in the ship tag. Trans Kaveh was tagged 316 times, trans Alhaitham 188 times, 43 works were t4t So right off the bat we get some stats that, spoiler alert, will become a pattern. Works centring trans characters are nearly twice as likely to be rated E or M than the ship average (and most of those are Explicit, like, it's not even close for most ships). Second, works featuring trans characters comprise a disproportionally large amount of all mpreg fics, compared to the overall percentage they make up - in this case 13% vs 3% - altho this particular stat varies greatly from fandom to fandom. It's going to be lower with some. But it's also going to be much, much higher with some others.

Diluc/Kaeya (Genshin Impact)

All works: 8152 | E/M: 55% Works where either is tagged as trans: 186 or 2% of all works | E/M: 89% 22 or 12% of those mpreg, compared to 4% in the entire ship tag. They make up for 7% of all mpreg. 128 trans Kaeya fics, 74 trans Diluc fics, 16 t4t This is by far the horniest tag I looked at lol. 55% is a staggering number and while it's literally impossible for it to meet the 2:1 e/m ratio of most other fandoms, by gods, a solid attempt was made. 89% huh. Nobody here's interested in writing anything but smut. This one also continues the pattern of works centring trans characters being 3-4 times more likely to be mpreg than the average, and one person being portrayed as trans far more often.

Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (Critical Role)

This is one of the ships I originally looked into. Nothing's really changed since. All works: 4076 | E/M: 33% Works where either is tagged as trans: 224 or 5% of all works | E/M: 74% 11 or 5% are mpreg, compared to 0,6% in the ship tag overall. Meaning that works centring trans characters make up for, deep breath, 42% of all mpreg fic in the tag. 5% of all fic is trans. 42% of all mpreg is trans. 63 trans Caleb works, 194 trans Essek works, 33 t4t Yeah idk what to say other than there's a reason I was already looking into this one 4 years ago.

Kabru/Laios (Dungeon Meshi)

All works: 628 | E/M: 48% Works where either is tagged as trans: 64 or 10% of all works | E/M: 89% 6 or 9% of those mpreg, compared to 5% in the entire ship tag. They make up for 20% of all mpreg. 62 trans Kabru works, 7 trans Laios, but 5 of those are transfem Laios. 5 t4t Smaller sample size means that the numbers are a bit more all over the place, but congrats to that one person in the tags that fully predicted the 9:1 split.

Now for a fandom that I thought might shake things up a little, because it's the first one on this list where the top/bottom dynamic is heavily implied by the source material and where the supposed bottom is canonically a bit baby crazy.

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (The Untamed/MDZS)

All works: 45,505 | E/M: 38% Works where either is tagged as trans: 444 or just under 1% of all works | E/M: 64% 70 or 16% of those mpreg, compared to 4% of all fics in the ship tag. They make up for 4% of all mpreg. 208 works tagged trans LWJ, 290 works tagged trans WWX, 54 t4t The fact that fics centring trans characters make up a relatively small percentage of all mpreg fic is not entirely surprising in a fandom this big on (magical) baby acquisition. So the most interesting part about this one ended up being the relatively equal number of trans fics for both characters, which I wasn't entirely expecting from a fandom where the source material already comes with certain BL tropes.

And now for the crown jewel of this entire thing. Going in I already knew approximately what results I'm likely to get, so I was a bit blase about everybody in the the tags saying jayvik. I figured, surely it's not any worse than the rest of them. I was wrong. I would like to formally apologise to jayvik shippers, y'all really are fighting for your lives in the trenches.

Jayce/Viktor (Arcane)

All works: 9616 | E/M: 47% Works where either is tagged as trans: 1262 or 13% of all works | E/M: 80% 53 or 4% of those mpreg, compared to 1% of all fics in the ship tag. They make up for 36% of all mpreg. 205 trans Jayce fic, 1199 trans Viktor fic, 142 t4t 1199 trans Viktor fics and basically all of them just porn. Whew. 36% of all mpreg. Whew. I mean it's not reaching the heights of labru and shadowgast in their respective departments, but it's the combination that's the real kicker.

And you might be looking at this thinking, well, it's not really that bad. These are all pretty small numbers, 9% is hardly an epidemic of people writing trans men as baby making machines. And yeah, when you're looking at all the thousands of works available it doesn't seem that bad.

But when you're browsing a 'Trans [Character]' tag and every 7th fic involves them getting pregnant? When half of the entire 'Pregnancy' tag is trans men? When the rest is just extremely heteronormative PIV smut? And the only characters portrayed as trans men are short and skinny and have long eyelashes and their more traditionally masculine counterparts are being headcanoned as transfem??

That says something.

I know this is only a handful of fandoms and you're welcome to add more! Please do! But personally I don't have the spoons to keep looking into this right now and getting hit over the head with the same pattern over and over again. 80% porn. 4 times more likely to involve pregnancy. That 9:1 split. jesus h christ

It's really fucking annoying shipping an mlm ship and everyone in the goddamn universe is like "the bigger stronger one is a dominant cis man who tops and the smaller weaker one is a submissive trans man who bottoms :)"