Ship Stats in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fandom
For my next stats post, I wanted to compare the popularity of ships in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fandom in terms of both the number of fanworks and the number of creators.
By either metric, the most popular ship is Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons. Almost 1000 creators have posted at least one work in the Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons tag on AO3, and the number of creators posting in this tag grows every season.
The Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons tag has both the most creators posting in it every month and the most fanworks posted in it every month. The other most popular ships are Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward (although the activity in that tag has dropped off since the end of Season 2), Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson, and Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson.
The Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson tag is interesting because it has a much higher ratio between the number of fanworks posted and the number of creators posting than any of the other tags. Most of the other tags have a ratio between 1 and 2 (meaning that on average, a creator posting in that tag posts 1-2 works per month), but the Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson tag has an average ratio of about 4.
You can read about my methodology here. Please feel free to message me with any comments or questions.