The impact of emotional journeys on fanfiction popularity

A computational analysis of linear correlations between emotional behavior and popularity

Bachelor thesis (2025)

Authors

J. van der Weijden Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

C. Hao Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics - EEMCS (mentor)
I. Kondyurin Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics - EEMCS (mentor)
H.S. Hung Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics - EEMCS (mentor)
E. Eisemann Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
More Info
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Published Date

07-02-2025

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

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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