#the third takeaway from this is that if you're a fan of shadowheart or lae'zel you have f/f fans to thank for about half their fics

[twilightoftheapprentice]

It's a combination of the two. Note that this analysis includes ships between the character and any other companion, Tav, Durge, or the reader, so /NPC pairings such as Shadowheart/Nocturne, Karlach/Dammon, and Wyll/Mizora are missing from this analysis. I simply did not know how to include them without risking blindspots. I filtered out gen fics and did not specifically search fics tagged with /OC, /OMC, or /OFC to avoid redundancy.

Here are the origin companions, ranked by how likely they are to be shipped in fics where they are tagged, from least to most likely:

Lae'zel - 27%

Karlach - 27%

Wyll - 29%

Shadowheart - 30%

Gale - 60%

Astarion - 83%

This resembles the rankings for lowest to highest decrease when OC ships are removed in the sense that there's a big gap between Astarion and Gale and then a big gap between Gale and everyone else, with the remaining four characters all clustered together within 5% of each other. Probably this is a function of other characters being tagged in /Astarion and /Gale fics, and it seems to affect all of them relatively evenly. It's not the whole story though, because you can see that when we look at how likely characters are to be shipped in fics where they're tagged, Karlach is actually below Wyll. As a side note, when you look at the raw number of fics where the character is shipped rather than a percent, Karlach does beat Wyll by a difference of 94 fics, which is about 6% of the number of fics Wyll is shipped in. What this probably means is that Karlach is more likely than Wyll to be tagged as a background character in fics that are about someone else (Astarion).

However, of the fics where they are tagged, Wyll and Lae'zel are the most likely out of any companions (including non-origins) to be shipped with another companion. Lae'zel is shipped with another companion in 73% of the fics where she is shipped, and Wyll is shipped with another companion in 68% of the fics where he is shipped. Most other companions are clustered between 35% and 55%, with Shadowheart coming in third at 58% and Astarion bringing up the rear at 29%. The reason for this appears to be twofold. First, Wyll and Lae'zel are shipped in relatively few fics, and second, they each have companion/companion ships that are relatively popular. Shadowzel alone accounts for 58% of the fics where Lae'zel is shipped (and is also likely the reason Shadowheart is in third by a healthy margin). Similarly, Wyllstarion fics account for 39% of Wyll's ship fics and Wyllach fics account for an additional 20%. Astarion is also involved in two popular companion/companion ships (Wyllstarion and Astarion/Halsin), but those two ships only account for about 1500 fics compared to the more than 11,000 fics where he's shipped with an OC, so they don't affect his numbers much.

Edit: I realized there was a lot of overlap between /reader and /Tav fics so I removed the /reader tag from the analysis. Didn't change most things more than a couple of percentage points.

hi! i think you're the one that posted that great infographic for the ao3 stats on baldur's gate 3. i wanted to say thank you for all your hard work because it was really easy to use and i learned interesting stuff from it. i also wanted to say that it was enlightening (for lack of a better term) to see the stats for wyll

hi! Yes I am. Thank you! I'm glad you found it both understandable and interesting, that's always my goal.

A lot has been said about Wyll's treatment by Larian (thinking specifically how he has the least amount of content out of all the Origin companions) and by the fandom, and I tend to agree with that. His tag numbers are rough, and a good reminder that fandom meta and character popularity/treatment is not a flat issue, but a snarl of sexism, racism, and other interconnected issues.

top 10 for reference ^

He and Lae'zel also have the lowest decreases (of the 6 Origin companions) when OC ships are removed, which is interesting. Are they shipped more often with other canon characters, or are they shipped less across the board? My cynical hunch is that it's the latter, but maybe not. Lots to dig into with Mr. Wyll Ravengard.