Ahaha. My methodology for that last list is a last-minute sloppy mess, which is why I chose not to elaborate on it! (Let's pretend it was a test. About not blindly trusting stats. And you passed. ^_^)
You can see the raw data and calculations in the badly-labelled spreadsheet if you can figure it out!
(Basically I did *not* use OTP=true on that one, but I *did* use AO3's tag exclude filters, which means if a ship tag was used the same amount of times, but had a lot of overlap, which one made it onto the list was down to which one AO3 randomly decided to list first in the filter. Those two ships both have exactly 6 results on that filter, with an overlap of 3, and because of *filter magic* Alya/Nino came up first, which kicked Marinette/Adrien down far enough to fall off the list.
On my first list I did a double-check on the pairings that rose to the top without using any other tag filters, to make sure stuff didn't get missed because of *filter magic*, but that was too much work for the last-minute bonus.
But the fact that this method did kick some background pairings extra high on the list is kind of interesting on its own - Tony/Pepper is the top Marvel pairing and I wouldn't have guessed that either, but because it tends to turn up on fics that aren't all that shippy, and a lot of the top Marvel fics this year weren't, it rose up as a sort of sign that actually the thing most people in Marvel fandom seem to want to read rn is "like canon but better". (That's maybe also part of why Alya/Nino came up? The non-overlap Marinette/Adrien fics are all Marinette/Adrien OTP, but Alya/Nino shows up on readerfics and mostly-gen stuff too, so while people do like Marinette/Adrien better than any other non-canon ship in the fandom, they seem to like more-of canon-as-is just as much.)
I decided I was going to pretend this result was on purpose as a way to compromise between OTP:True and background ships taking over, but I knew it was a bad way to do that. :P)
The actual answer is that I should have cut that list off at 25 instead of 45 because 6 fics isn't really enough to conclude anything reliable from anyway.
no subject
You can see the raw data and calculations in the badly-labelled spreadsheet if you can figure it out!
(Basically I did *not* use OTP=true on that one, but I *did* use AO3's tag exclude filters, which means if a ship tag was used the same amount of times, but had a lot of overlap, which one made it onto the list was down to which one AO3 randomly decided to list first in the filter. Those two ships both have exactly 6 results on that filter, with an overlap of 3, and because of *filter magic* Alya/Nino came up first, which kicked Marinette/Adrien down far enough to fall off the list.
On my first list I did a double-check on the pairings that rose to the top without using any other tag filters, to make sure stuff didn't get missed because of *filter magic*, but that was too much work for the last-minute bonus.
But the fact that this method did kick some background pairings extra high on the list is kind of interesting on its own - Tony/Pepper is the top Marvel pairing and I wouldn't have guessed that either, but because it tends to turn up on fics that aren't all that shippy, and a lot of the top Marvel fics this year weren't, it rose up as a sort of sign that actually the thing most people in Marvel fandom seem to want to read rn is "like canon but better". (That's maybe also part of why Alya/Nino came up? The non-overlap Marinette/Adrien fics are all Marinette/Adrien OTP, but Alya/Nino shows up on readerfics and mostly-gen stuff too, so while people do like Marinette/Adrien better than any other non-canon ship in the fandom, they seem to like more-of canon-as-is just as much.)
I decided I was going to pretend this result was on purpose as a way to compromise between OTP:True and background ships taking over, but I knew it was a bad way to do that. :P)
The actual answer is that I should have cut that list off at 25 instead of 45 because 6 fics isn't really enough to conclude anything reliable from anyway.