The soul of any fandom is the loyalty-driven sense of belonging to a community ed by similar interest, back by information/lore enough to speculate…
And the strongest are often divided in fun competitive sub-factions to root for. It’s in sports fans picking teams and analyzing team/player stats, games with play styles, comics/progressive fantasy Shōnen and myriad of characters/abilities, shipping in romantic anime, personal design in creative outlets, and factions/races in speculative fiction (like Sci-fi and Fantasy).
What makes MLP so powerfully stable is having multiples of these. Best pony, ships, race choice, waifus, interaction through OCs, easy art outlet, and plenty of worldbuilding lore. The potential in mix-and-match differences draws in more people with differing interests.
@Chopsticks
I’ve done the same thing… I’ve got a big Excel spreadsheet for tracking random character-related stats whenever I get curious about something.
I think Appledash shippers have really done a good job building up communities online since the end of G4 - especially on Twitter and Lofter. I actually scaled back the amount of Appledash artists I was covering because snowball sampling was proving way too effective, and there were increasingly nasty shipping wars going on between them and Rarijackers.
Now it feels like the new rising star is TwiPie, once again thanks to that community aspect. I’m not big on it though so I don’t cover the artists.
@Rare [Real tired had a dumb edited previous]
Yeah RariLight at nearly ~2,600, numerically mid-tier which is a shame because I think Rarity with nerd is more plausibly interesting and cuter but it’s hard to beat drama potential.
@Rare
Commenting only because I love discussing analytical data [on the subject]
I’ve been keeping tabs on ship popularity recently for some reason (weirdly since I’m not really a shipper the subject just fascinates me I guess and something to do when I’m too tired to do anything else). But I did notice RariJack was the #1 ship in the fandom for years (in all categories, animations, comics, images, videos, fanfics, etc.) but AppleDash had a huge upsurge in the past year or so. SoarinDash used to be extremely popular for years but I think the last episode of G4 toppled it.
Sparity managed to overtake both. [Edit had a brain dumb]
If I , at one point there was like one person that mass-ed as much Appledash as they could find, just so it can have the higher number. So Rarijack is still #1 if you ask me.
your current filter.Applejack’s just that attractive
Fascinating.
Edited
I’ve done the same thing… I’ve got a big Excel spreadsheet for tracking random character-related stats whenever I get curious about something.
[Real tired had a dumb edited previous]
Yeah RariLight at nearly ~2,600, numerically mid-tier which is a shame because I think Rarity with nerd is more plausibly interesting and cuter but it’s hard to beat drama potential.
What’s the 3rd Rarity ship? RariTwi?
Commenting only because I love discussing analytical data [on the subject]
Edited
your current filter.