The impact of emotional journeys on fanfiction popularity

A computational analysis of linear correlations between emotional behavior and popularity

Bachelor Thesis (2025)
Author(s)

J. van der Weijden (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Contributor(s)

C. Hao – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

I. Kondyurin – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

Hayley Hung – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

E. Eisemann – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)

Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
More Info
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Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Graduation Date
07-02-2025
Awarding Institution
Delft University of Technology
Project
['CSE3000 Research Project']
Programme
['Computer Science and Engineering']
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
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Abstract

Fanfiction writers always look for ways to make their stories more engaging. Analyzing what influences the popularity of fanfiction provides insights into readers' preferences and allows writers to tailor to these. This paper attempts to find linear correlations between fanfiction stories and the emotional journey of their characters. It does so by computationally extracting these journeys from 319 Good Omens fanfiction stories, defining and extracting several features from them and using simple linear regression to determine their correlation to fanfiction popularity. Five features were found to have a significant influence on fanfiction popularity. It was also determined that readers prefer characters that have low emotional fluctuations in their behavior.

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