The numbers for HL's women

[brightknightie]

I'm planning to participate in the rarelywritten ficathon. I've shared my likely nominations (in FK, HL, YB, BSG78 and D&DC) in case anyone would like to discuss or collaborate!

Most of my dearest fandoms fall well below the threshold where we need to calculate eligibility per character. But HL, bless it, has *3,300* stories on the AO3 right now. It's over the threshold. I decided to calculate exactly how rarely-written HL's women characters are:

Percentage	Stories	Character
11.030%	364	Amanda Darieux
2.181%	72	Cassandra
1.697%	56	Tessa Noel
1.455%	48	Rebecca Horne
1.212%	40	Alexa Bond
0.515%	17	Amy Brennan-Thomas
0.455%	15	Ceirdwyn
0.333%	11	Anne Lindsey
0.333%	11	Grace Chandel
0.212%	7	Claudia Jardine
0.182%	6	Michelle Webster
0.091%	3	Randi McFarland
0.091%	3	Angie Burke
0.091%	3	Rachel MacLeod
0.061%	2	Nefertiri
0.031%	1	Annie Devlin
0.031%	1	May-Ling Shen

Comments

[greerwatson]

It looks as though even Amanda qualifies, then. She's well under 500 hits.

[brightknightie]

Yes, you're correct; Amanda is eligible.

I feel that this tally represents a sad observation about HL fandom's overall relationship with its women characters.

The gap after Amanda is extreme. For myself, I feel that Amanda, as the most frequently written woman character in HLdom, and perhaps also Cassandra, with actually an impressive ratio of on-screen appearances to stories, doesn't need this ficathon in quite the profound way that many of the others do.

[havocthecat]

That is a hugely disproportionate number, wow. I knew all this from previous years, but still. I get amazed all over again every year.

[brightknightie]

Yes! Every year, it's downright astonishing how huge HL's gap is. None of my other fandoms are on even the same continent as this gap.

I was interested, fwiw, to notice the relative ranking of Cassandra's 1:24 (3:72) appearances-to-stories ratio. That doesn't outshine Alexa's 1:40, but it does meet Amanda's ~1:20 (18:364) and Rebecca's 1:24 (2:48). I hadn't expected that. I hypothesize that Cassandra appears in Horsemen stories.

(Tessa's ratio is less than two stories for every one on-screen appearance (29:56).)

[havocthecat]

I feel like the disparity between Amanda (and the other Immortal women, but I deal mostly with Amanda, as Duncan's main Immortal love interest, and Tessa as the mortal love interest he starts the show with) and Tessa is because Amanda is the one who draws Duncan into Immortal life, into shenanigans and hijinks and gets him in all kinds of trouble - she's a lively type, an action girl, and while she's got cunning, she's not quite as cerebral or emotionally deep as Tessa, and fandom likes that.

Tessa is the down to Earth character, the magnet - no, the star that Duncan and Richie orbit around. She's the one who brings Duncan in tune with the mortal world, who helps him define his compassion and his empathy, and she's the one who settles him and calms him. She's his hope, where Amanda is his wild side. Tessa knows herself and how she feels, she knows what she wants, and she creates her art, and she's never afraid to fight for what she believes in - but she fights with words (barring one beautiful exception with a welding torch), and wields her insight into Duncan (and also Richie) like a surgeon's scalpel, helping to cut away at the unnecessary and the old pains to reveal whatever she needs to so they can heal and grow as people.

Fandom's not much for the mortal side of things, for the everyday happiness with the one you love - that gets disturbed by the occasional swordfight. They like the wild, madcap adventures. There's a place for both, of course, and a place for Tessa and Amanda each in Duncan's life and his heart.

Unfortunately, fandom tends to choose one over the other, and people who love both (or who love the one who isn't as well represented) lose out. Personally, I love them both, but I miss the Tessa stories, even while I enjoy the Amanda stories.