[Poll] The Science of Slashiness

[thefourthvine]

Recently, cimness posted a graph of genius, comparing level of canon gay and quality of canon writing across several fandoms.

I, of course, immediately looked at it and thought: this calls for science. Because clearly what we need are definitive numbers for each of these values for many, many fandoms, so that they can be plotted on graphs. This will make me HAPPY. Possibly it will also make you happy - or perhaps you are just interested in increasing overall happiness in the universe! - in which case I direct you behind the cut.

ETA: lolitakun has provided us with some preliminary scientific results here. Go and behold!



A quick note on the selection of the fandoms: I picked ones I thought a lot of people would have opinions on. If I left something critical out, feel free to tell me in the comments.

A quick note on voting: When I say "slashy," I include femslash. Buffy/Faith, Gabrielle/Xena - these are pairings worth considering! Also, if you haven't seen an episode of the show, please don't vote on canon writing quality. (Ideally, you would have seen three! Or even more!) But if you think you can make a fair estimate of slashiness based on vids or YouTube pieces or transcripts, by all means, vote on that.

ETA: For quality, 1 = worse than anything you could find on fanfiction.net, even if you were funded by a grant solely for the purpose of finding the worst writing the world has ever known. 10 = genius unparalleled. For slashiness, 1 = straighter than a ruler. 10 = they could suck cocks or finger each other right there on the screen and it would only reduce the overall slashiness. Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity, lolaraincoat!

And now it's time for...SCIENCE.

[Poll #1352713]

Comments

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

Fandoms to consider for an addendum poll, if you want some historical dimension in your science (and, yes, science huzzah!):

MUNCLE (as mentioned above)
Starsky & Hutch (as mentioned several times above, and it's all, all true)
Star Wars IV,V,VI (control sample -- huge fandom but little slash in spite of tasty potential pairings)
Professionals (invented crack AUs, and kind of invented gay-theme slash; S&H were slashy buddies extraordinaire more often than culturally gay)
Blakes 7 (dystopic slash was never slashier)
X-Files (antagonist slash out of nothing but it suited the theme)
Babylon 5 (not so much slash as gay characters, er, yes that turned out to be like slash)
Star Wars I TPM (slash as product of inspired fannish activity -- without the MA archive early on, it wouldn't have been the same)
Popslash (introduced multiple musical revolving pairings which mysteriously did not explode the fandom in ship wars, and also that RPS thing)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thank you! I didn't use popslash, because you can't really rank the canon writing quality of an RPS fandom, but I put in almost everything else you suggested (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99145.html). Forward, science!