Azriel Character Analysis
Why would a minor character be more popular in fanfiction than a main character and how does this relate to canon?
This Gephi image shows the relationships between characters and their popularity in relationships is represented by the size of their name.
From the Gephi web produced by the first data set of the most recently published fanfics, it is confirmed that Azriel is the most popular character in relationships. His name is bigger than both Feyre and Rhysand’s names, whose names I expected to be bigger since Feyre is the main character and Rhysand is her love interest. Initially I expected Rhysand to have the most representation in recently published fanfics because of the large female audience for this series and fanfiction in general since he is the character readers know the most about besides Feyre. For the purposes of this analysis Azriel and Cassian play almost the same role in the series so what exactly makes Azriel so much more popular? It could be attributed to the many connections Azriel's character has as represented by his central location on the web. This indicates he is being written into a relationship with many other characters unlike Rhysand, Feyre, or Cassian, who all have canonically been paired with their endgame relationship partner. This provides evidence to support the theory that an unknown canonical ending can lead to a rise in popularity for a character in fandom, as authors feel more freedom to write about the relationships they want to see in the future.
Minor Character Popularity in Relation to Canon
Does Azriel's popularity change over time as canon continues to develop with the release of new books?
Graph Analysis and Methodology
This graph was created using Tableau and the second data set of the 1000 most popular Azriel fanfics over time. The count of work ids was measured against the date of publication with no filter since this data set already contains a filter for Azriel from AO3. The graph demonstrates how Azriel’s popularity in published fanfics varies over time on AO3. Because the data set is different from the original set, there is a much larger time period to analyze starting from March 2017 to June 2022.
Timeline Comparison
The notable peaks on this graph consist of one in May of 2017, July of 2018, April 2019, April 2020, and a sharp peak in February of 2021. There are a few peaks after 2021 but the overall trend is a slow decrease in popularity after February of 2021. Several of these peaks do align with significant dates on the ACOTAR timeline. A Court of Wings and Ruin was released in May of 2017 which likely resulted in the present peak because Azriel played a slightly more significant role in the plot than in the previous book. There is a smaller peak in 2018 that could be a delayed rise in popularity of ACOTAR fanfiction overall after the novella. The peak in April of 2020 shows an increase from the previous months and could be attributed to the rise in popularity of the ACOTAR series on booktok. There were no other significant events in this time period so this theory about booktok is possibly an explanation for the peak. The sharp peak in February of 2021 represents the new interest in Azriel after the release of the latest book, A Court of Silver Flames, in which Azriel had a more important role. This set the all-time high in popularity with the line having yet to dip below where it was in November of 2020.
Overall Takeaways
The timeline graph using the Azriel data set reveals that updates to canon with the release of a new book do in fact appear to play a role in the popularity of a minor character like Azriel in published fanfiction for the fandom. It is also possible that the lack of a canonical ending for Azriel’s character has helped maintain his popularity in published fanfiction. After he became slightly more relevant with the release of a book in 2021 his character has slowly dwindled in popularity but still remains more popular than other characters during this time without any news on the release of the next book. This provides evidence to support the idea that a minor character can be more popular than a main character in fanfiction when there is not yet a canonical ending for that character.
Rating Analysis
Why are people writing about Azriel? Is Azriel content more explicit than fanfics from the rest of the fandom?
Data Representing Fanfics from the Entire Fandom
Most Popular Azriel Fanfic Ratings
From these two pie graphs produced using Tableau we can gain some insight into what sort of content is being published recently in the entire fandom in comparison to the 1000 most popular Azriel fics. The main difference between the two graphs can be seen in the General Audiences and Explicit sections. The popular Azriel fics appear to have over one third explicit content with a small sliver of General Audience rated fics. This significantly differs from the chart on the left, representing the entire fandom, which shows an almost equal representation between all the ratings. It is interesting to note that the Mature and Teen and Up Audience ratings don't differ in percentage significantly between the two. This shows that popular Azriel fics tend to be more explicit than the fics in the fandom overall.