SwissMiss' Creativity Outlet

hp_mhealthfest's reveals are up. I've put together some statistics under the cut.

Fest community: hp_mhealthfest 
Fest type: Open prompting with anonymous claims
Premise: Any mental health issue
Ratings restrictions: None, all ratings allowed
Length restrictions: Minimum 1,000 words, no maximum
Creation period: 3 months

There were 10 fics and 2 artworks created for this fest.

There were 64,274 total words written for this fest.

Mean (average fic length): 6,427 words
Median (half the fics shorter, half the fics longer): 5,000 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 3-4K, 7-8K

All gifts by rating:

PG - 1
PG-13 - 5
R - 5
NC-17 - 1

Fics by word count:

The shortest fic was 1,504 words long. The longest fic was 22,800 words long.

1-2K - i
2-3K - i
3-4K - ii
4-5K - i
5-6K - i
6-7K - i
7-8K - ii
22K+ - i

Lead characters:

Harry, Ron - 5 each
Draco - 4
Pansy - 2
Bellatrix, Scorpius, Severus, Sirius - 1 each

Most popular pairings:

Harry/Draco and Gen (no pairing) - 3
Ron/Pansy - 2

Pairing alignments:

Slash - 8
Het - 3
Gen (no pairing) - 3

Mental Health Issues:

Depression - 4
Anxiety or Panic attacks - 3
Delusion, Dementia, Eating disorders, Schizophrenia - 2 each
Attachment disorder, Cotard Delusion, Sadism, PTSD - 1 each

Some thoughts: The ratings distribution was interesting, with no fics rated lower than PG-13 (the one PG-rated submission was a drawing). Half of the fics were rated PG-13, and nearly all the rest were rated R, with only one NC-17 entry. Also, not all of the higher ratings were for sex; some were for violence. I think that the submissions for this fest were nearly all rated above PG because the subject material alone can be disturbing, and many of the mental health issues featured led to violence or self-harming that requires at least a PG-13 rating.

The word counts were unusual in that there was no bunch toward the bottom; in fact, that there was really no bunch anywhere, with nearly all of the fics spaced out exactly in 1000-word steps, almost as if they had been assigned that way, and then the one super-long fic at the end. 

The most popular characters weren't too surprising, with Harry, Ron, and Draco at the top. There were only 2 females represented among the 8 main characters, which is a bit low, but then HP has more major male characters than female.

The most popular pairing was also not surprising, Harry/Draco being probably the most popular pairing in overall fandom. It's interesting that Ron/Pansy came in second, but with such a small sample I don't think it means much.

I was surprised at the high percentage of slash in this fest. In part this is because there were so many Harry/Draco fics, but also because Gen turned out to be popular, especially in the art, which was all Gen.

The most popular mental health issues depicted (depression, anxiety, eating disorders) were what I would think of as 'common' ones, issues that many people can either relate to themselves or else may know someone dealing with the issue. I think that is why there were more submissions focusing on those issues: because authors feel that they understand those issues better and could portray them realistically. There were also a few more severe or 'exotic' issues such as Cotard delusion and Sadism. I think the reason they did not get as many submissions is because they are less familiar to the general public, and so may have needed some additional research to portray accurately.