I want this so bad. So freaking bad. I really doubt it though, I feel like the author may be dead (as why would you write a 1+ million word fanfic over ten years and abandon it so close to the end?)

 

Wheel of Time as well.

 

Hopefully more, good Ron-centric fics. Less bashing of characters. Less Hermione in general. More completed fics.

 

Hopefully HP fanfics will continue to be made at a similar rate as right now instead of sloping down a ton as it hits more years since the series will be completed.

Now that FBWTFT turned out to be sort of a flop instead of revitalizing the community, I don't think the fandom will experience a complete drop off like earlier ones did (Inuyasha, Ranma, etc) but it'll steadily decrease this decade I think. Hopefully movie #3 of Fantastic Beasts will be better so maybe that'll give some plot bunny's to work with.

Maybe by 2030 JK an hollywood will milk HP more and get something like a prequel series based on the first Voldemort war :/

I want both of these so bad

 

The Phoenix and the Serpent will finally be finished.

 

We will see a shift from Fanfiction.net to another fanfiction site with better UI.

 

Besides Ao3? Anyways nah ffn wont ever be fully or even mostly supplanted this decade unless the owner suddenly decides to shut it down for some reason. You're underestimating the internet's inertia, people know and are comfortable with ffn and the fandoms in it, it'd take a long while for a new site to build up that base.

What I can see is more niche websites like anonkun being started.

 

Mpreg, magical cores, Voldemort was actually Trump in disguise, Hermione wasn't JKR's SI character (it was Seamus all along since JKR isn't black like Hermione is, and she doesn't want to culturally appropriate or anything like that), and Dumbledore is evil all become canon via JKR tweet-posts.

 

FanFiction.Net is definitely here to stay with us. It has a massive, insurmountable incumbency advantage - so long as the majority of fics are there, the majority of users will be there too, and so long as the majority of users are there, so too will authors post fics there, and so on and so forth. Even AO3, FFN's nearest competitor, has perhaps only 10% of the latter's users.

 

10 years is a long time. I think there will be some drastic changes to the internet which sees sites like fanfiction.net become irrelevant or not accessible in comparison to what is available.

 

That is certainly true for legacy fandoms but new fandoms are a whole lot less beholden to FF.net. They can strike out and do their own thing. MLP:FiM, for example, forsook FF.net in favour of Equestria Daily and FiMFiction.net. Worm is based around SB and SV. We might see a move away from FF.net style mega archives and (back) towards fandom specific sites. Or just towards AO3 for a specific fandom. If a fandom starts with its stories only on AO3, that is where it's mostly going to grow.

 

I think for something like that to truly take off though, it would probably require that most of the early writers and readers are relatively new to fanfic in general - that it's their first major fandom.

If the majority of a fandom were to be newbloods, then they'd have no reason to stick to the existing site, but writers with a large catalog and semi-decent following probably would cross-post, at the very most, rather than migrate completely. As AO3 gains popularity, it might well be that some fandoms end up almost entirely there, although I suppose it depends on where the initial flurry of activity is.

If the mod team on FFN were more active, then I could certainly imagine a mass exodus, but probably to AO3 as another megasite, rather than fandoms splitting into their own things. I have no idea how fimfiction became so popular, although the ability to have coloured and sized text, and links/images in text probably helped with that.

 

It's certainly true that certain fandoms might be based around certain sites and forums (Worm on SB/SV, as you rightly point out; also stuff like FSN on Beast Lair etc), but that's not mutually exclusive with these fics being posted on FF.Net - in fact, a lot of authors upload twice, once on the forum, and once on FF.Net, with feedback gotten from the former oftentimes used to polish up either the chapter itself or the story as a whole before being published at the latter.

Quite a lot of authors in DLP, myself included, do just this - with FF.Net seen kind of as a repository for the finished work, and as the best venue for getting maximum exposure and views.

In short, I don't think balkanization of the fandoms will necessarily lead to FF.Net losing users, at least not over the next 5-10 years. The real threat is if all the new fandoms move en masse to a rival multi-genre multi-fandom site like AO3 - something we don't quite see as yet. Currently, any fandom-based division between FF.Net and AO3 occurs not between the old and the new, but between the male-reader dominated (Harry Potter, Naruto, PJO), and the female-reader dominant (Supernatural, Sherlock, Dr Who).

 

Harry Potter fanfics will probably come a full circle and lot of the old tropes, e.g. indie! harry fics will make an even greater comeback. Also with Rowling milking the series for all it's worth i don't think that the amount of fics being written will decrease anytime soon and instead will only increase, in the foreseeable future. and as Arthellion said:

the changes will be interesting to see as the types of work e.g. tropes etc will be effected by the new site and its initial dominant community. Of course this is all hypothetical though.

 

a rise or more likely a rerise of self inserts

 

A continued decline in quantity and quality of fanfiction overall.

HP will probably be more or less on its last legs at this point, with a few good stories coming out here on DLP but most of them won't go anywhere, everything posted on FFNet will be short and trash.

Star Wars FF will be as dead as ever.

Dresden will stay dead.

ASOIAF will see stories still maybe a few good ones here and there.

And Menace will start and abandon at least 3 stories.

 

I hope the author finally comes back and finishes the fic.

 

With any luck, that'll be the new Starfox.

//

In general, I suspect there'll be more stories about class struggles, like squib rights and what have you.