Introduction

“The chart” is a connective narrative tool in TV series The L Word, following several queer women living in LA through a series of dramatic life events. “The Chart” was made by Alice Pieszecki, one of the main characters (featured in the image above) when she realizes that almost everyone in their queer community is connected through their romantic relationships. She spends a frantic night making “The Chart” drawing connections in her social network. It is a critical piece of the show, and it inspires Alice’s character in the spin off series, The L Word: Generation Q, to make a TV production called The Chart.

Inspiration

As seen above in the featured image, the hand-drawn network served as a main inspiration. The aesthetic choices of a hand-drawn network that can be translated into a visualization using software.

For example, the names of main characters have larger text and an exaggerated red outline. This gives emphasis to the main characters and their romantic connections throughout the series. While no color is used, other than the red outline, I can see its potential for clarifying some of the aesthetic choices beginning in the hand-drawn network. I also noticed that over time the show adds connections, so my interpretation of “The Chart” represents the culmination of the romantic interaction of the series.

There are undirected lines in the network, and the edges are drawn connecting nodes across the network, but it is not always a clear pathway. Many of the curved lines lead along a maze-like trail to get to the target from the source. I wanted to simplify that movement while maintaining true to Alice’s creation.

Materials

I began with a search for a dataset that compiles every romantic connection in the show. Because of the series popularity, I thought perhaps another fan would have wanted to recreate “The Chart” in a network visualization. However, I was only able to find visualizations, no dataset. So, I used this chart from a Wikimedia Commons post as a reference. Here, the creator chose to color code the names: pink represents main female characters; blue represents main male characters; green and purple represent minor male and female characters; and gray represents characters that are only alluded to, but never shown.

The dataset created in Excel contains 199 sources and targets in an undirected network. The CSV file served as a data source in Gephi. Gephi is an open-source, free visualization platform used to create relationship networks. It runs statistics on datasets and offers multiple layouts for visualizations.

Methods

After uploading the data source, I moved between the overview, preview and data laboratory tabs in Gephi to assess the network and create solutions to some of its design issues. I first ran statistic reports on my data. This populated my data laboratory tab and gave me a point of reference during adjustments.

Afterwards I spent some time in different layouts. I eventually decided on the Fruchterman Reingold layout. This option seemed the closest to the original, hand-drawn network, and its centralized design made the romantic connections easier to follow, avoiding the maze-like aesthetics of both “The Chart” in the series and the Wikimedia reference image.

I chose to apply color, pink and purple, as they connote lesbian and bisexual culture, to the degree of each edge. This created visual weight in the connections. Then I added labels to the chart to make the character names readable. The font was chosen based on its similarity to the logo of the show.

Here are some design issues I faced.

In this version, I chose to modify the nodes by scale minimum 1, maximum 7. I was using a larger line weight, and the clusters moved all to one portion of the network. The nodes also had a black outline making the labels difficult to read.

In this version all of the names were the same size, making them readable, but not a useful part of the visualization. And while I thinned the weight of the lines, there was no transparency to the color. My results considered these issues and addressed them.

Results

Above is the final iteration of the visualization. After resolving most of the aesthetic issues described above, I created a version of “The Chart” that observes romantic connections during the series of the show with emphasis on characters with the most connections. I wanted to revise some of the choices made from the reference images as well as the hand-drawn inspiration from the series.

First, I did not like the gendered separation in the reference network, especially the way that trans characters were recorded. So in this version, I chose to keep the character’s names as they were at the end of the series. I also find that by recording the gender of the characters at all, we lose the original intent of the chart that Alice has. She was creating a tool to represent connection, not a tool that represents sexuality.

A result that I was surprised to see, that perhaps may go unnoticed by someone who is not familiar with the characters in the show, is that the characters that identify as bisexual have noticeably more connections. Tina, Alice and Jenny are all bisexual. Shane and Helena are also node with many edges, but in the series they are seen as promiscuous characters. This visualization shows that the choices of the writers may feed into a stereotype that bisexual people date around more than other sexualities and cannot be trustworthy partners.

Reflection

While I find the visualization both compelling and fun to reference. I do no think the text size is accessible. I had the most difficulty maintaining balancing the spread and making the text readable. In some networks, the node labels aren’t always readable. In this case, it is important to see the labels. Reading the names seems like the most important part of the visualization, similar to the inspiration in “The Chart.” In the future, I may have imported a version of the network to Adobe Illustrator and added the labels there. Overall, I think this is a unique and useful way to visualize “The Chart” with my own aesthetic choices for the characters.