I'm with you there man. I've always been a huge nerd for the Warcraft lore, part of the reason why I'm so annoyed by what Blizzard's done with it in recent years. I'd love to get some decent fics from it.

The only reason I can think of why there might not be any is that people have just been turned off by how silly it's gotten. Maybe there's something else, I dunno, but as you say, on the surface it seems pretty fertile ground for fanfiction.

 

I'm sure a lot of fanfics that would pad out that total are written on various Warcraft forums rather than on FFN.

 

The problem is though that because of Wow a lot of the fics that are written tend to be about the WOW character the author has, and inevitably they manage to ruin everything by having the character be the half-vampire, Death knight son of Illidan and that never makes for decent reading.

Plus if the fandom is full of crap like that there isn't anything to inspire people to try and write their own works. Plus there are the Lore and story issues that have come up over the years.

There is one I've found that is alright but it suffers from harem shit and anime face faulting ect which makes it a bit difficult to read however.

I do have a vague idea for a story that grew out of a quest I was thinking of running where Arthas ends up being killed during the culling of Stratholme and is raised without the events that led to him going nuts and throwing his lot in with the Lich King occurring. The eventual outcome was for him to end up leading the equivalent of the Forsaken in this world with a Lordaeron that was still functioning as a kingdom but with Death Knights instead of the nobility ect. Kel'Thurzard was going to end up as the next Lich king and I thought about having Anub'arak taking Kel'thurzard's place as Arthas' right hand in undead Lordaeron with some sort of free nerubian under kingdom being established.

 

I would read the shit out of that Brukel. That's kind of an amazing idea. There's so much you could do with that.

If we're sharing story ideas, I've had one floating around in my head for a couple years now but never got around to doing much of anything with. Maybe it'll inspire someone to write something. The core idea would be to explore what life on Azeroth would be like if the Burning Legion had succeeded in their original invasion, back in the War of the Ancients. The story would start a few thousand years after the invasion was complete, when the resistance led by Tyrande and the recently-deceased Malfurion are on their very last legs, and when A'dal and the Sha'tar finally arrive at the front of a near-endless horde of hulking green brutes strangely reminiscent of the warrior that gave his life to prevent Sargeras from manifesting completely at the moment of his triumph.

I figure the story would follow either Tyrande or Go'el, Chieftain of the Horde, as they try to reclaim Azeroth from the demons, perhaps with some "is he friend or foe?" bits featuring Illidan passing along information that's a trap as often as it is vital, life-saving intelligence.

 

There are a couple good Warcraft fics about OCs, I'll see if I can dig them up tomorrow.

 

I've been meaning to try writing something again for a while so i'll try and bust something out if I can get a decent amount written without losing interest and it doesn't look too terrible I'll put it in the WBA and see where things go.

A Thrall/ Goe'el that's been raised as an Orc instead of a human come slave has been something that interested me as well, although I always found the Scourge characters more interesting than the others.

 

That would be awesome. We also have a Warcraft fic thread so, might be better to post the reccs there

 

There's Tor, no idea, why no-one made a underground fanfiction site yet.

 

Thanks, I recommend the Unlikely Heroes stories.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2585244/1/Unlikely-Heroes-The-Lich-Phage-Marrowice

Maybe it's to meta there's a fine line between 'common sense' and 'sounds like an arrogant ff reader'. But they are still four fine fics.

I also liked this one:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5707920/1/Cold-Comfort-Castle

A human mage and a draenai warrior are get stuck in a lone castle in alterac during a blizzard. We, the reader, get some nice character development. Romance/ Mystery, I guess.

 

When it comes to Warcraft Fanfiction, I am still waiting for a good one where Arthas never fell to the darkness, Alas, what exsists in that category is crap

 

That would be a good read.

 

So, roughly a year ago, I looked at the fanfiction numbers of various fandoms on fanfiction.net. Decided to do so again, to see how much those fandoms grew, - or didn't -, in one year.

Books

Harry Potter from ca 700 000 to ca 736 000

Twilight from ca 210 000 to ca 218 000

Percy Jackson from ca 60 000 to ca 66 700

LOTR from ca 53 000 to ca 54 600

Hunger Games from ca 42 000 to ca 44 300

ASOIAF from ca 5 600 to ca 6 800

Worm from ca 167 to ca 372

Discworld seemingly stayed the same at around 2k
​

So, Harry Potter is still going on very strong, ff.net alone cranked out nearly 40k stories, so, safe to say HP fandom is not dying any time soon. The other top fandoms had a steady influx as well. HG has surprisingly little, when one realizes that the movies are still relatively new.

ASOIAF also got relatively few new stories, given the series but will look into the GoT section as well.

Worm has doubled its number but still not that much. Most of it is still on SB and SV, retelling the same few stories with different powersets.

Stuff I want to check next year:

Dresden Files ca 1 000


Anime and Manga

Naruto from ca 377 000 to ca 398 000

Inu Yasha from ca 144 000 to ca 116 000 *1

Hetalia from ca 110 000 to ca 117 000 *2

Bleach from ca 80 000 to ca 82 000

Yugioh from ca 65 000 to ca 66 300

FMA from ca 40 000 to ca 47 200

DBZ from ca 40 000 to ca 47 200

Digimon from ca 40 000 to ca 43 800

Gundam from ca 40 000 to ca 41 500

Sailor M from ca 40 000 to ca 41 300

Fairy Tail from ca 40 000 to ca 53 400 *3

One Piece from ca 30 000 to ca 34 300

Ranma from ca 13 000 to ca 13 300

RWBY from ca 6 600 to ca 12 300
​

*1 I either fucked up last year or Inu Yasha got a huge story purge. Think I mistyped 144k instead of 114k, which would make more sense.

*2 Either way Hetalia is now Nr. 2 in Anime and Manga, instead of Inu Yasha

*3 Fairy Tail climbed from Nr. 11 to Nr. 6 in terms of stories.

The stories in the 40 k range were rounded to 40k, not sure if where exactly the numbers were, but the order was right.

Anyway, Naruto, like Harry Potter, is here to stay, it seems. DBZ got a big push, it seems, from the new series. Digimon too but hope with the release of the other episodes, this will rise as well.

Fairy Tail also grew a lot, surprisingly. I mean, yeah, it still has an ongoing manga and anime, I think, but still. 13 k stories is more than RWBY has in total.

Speaking of which, it's cool to see that RWBY doubled its numbers. Hopefully, we will get even more stories this year.

Fandoms I didn't list last year, for reasons I do not know, stupid Nemrut, but I will list now to check next year are the following:

Fate Stay Night ca 2 700
Puella Magi Madoka Magica ca 2 200
Familar of Zero ca 996

Granted, I am not sure how the crossovers fit into all these numbers, whether they count to the overall number or are a separate score. Pretty sure it is the second, seeing as there is another category for that entirely but the numbers are a bit wonky either way. FoZ, naturally, has more crossovers than actual stories.

Cartoons

ATLA from slightly less than 40 000 to ca 40 400

TLOK from 11 000 to ca 13 600

Teen Titans from ca 38 000 to ca 39 000

Transformers BW from ca 26 000 to ca 27 200

MLP:FiM from ca 23 400 to ca 26 700

Young Justice from ca 17 000 to ca 17 700

Kim Possible from ca 9 000 to ca 9 400

W.I.T.C.H. from ca 1 800 to ca 1 800
​

Stuff remained the same, relatively. ATLA got less stories than I thought, barely 1 k but meh. Biggest growth was for MLP, surprisingly enough. Thought that was mostly dead by now. Young Justice barely got anything as well.

Still crying that there is no W.I.T.C.H. fandom.

Comics

Homestuck from ca 16 000 to ca 16 500

X-Men from ca 12 400 to ca 12 600

Batman from ca 12 300 to ca 14 000 *

Justice L. from ca 5 000 to ca 5 300

Spider-Man from ca 4 400 to ca 5 000

Iron Man from ca 3 800 to ca 3 900
​

* Batman is now Nr 2

So, yeah, barely got any stories. Only Batman fandom cranked out a lot, with roughly 1.7 k stories. Comics barely get fanfiction.

Games

Pokemon from ca 80 000 to ca 85 400

Kingdom Hearts from ca 72 000 to ca 72 900

Final Fantasy 7 from ca 40 000 to ca 39 400 *1

Sonic from ca 35 000 to ca 36 500

Legend of Zelda from ca 27 000 to ca 28 400

Mass Effect from ca 16 000 to ca 17 500

Dragon Age from ca 15 300 to ca 18 700 *2

Super Smash B. from ca 10 000 to ca 11 400

Persona from ca 5 000 to ca 5 700
​

Stuff I want to check next year:
Warcraft 6 200
Final Fantasy XIII 3 600

*1 : Pretty sure I rounded up last year.
*2: Dragon Age took over ME, probably due to the new game, whereas ME did not have one.

So, Pokemon had some growth, so did Dragon Age, the rest, not so much. Although I do think ME has also a strong crossover presence, with various sci-fi fandoms and tons of Humanity Fuck Yeah stories.

Honestly, really surprised ME and DA are still so small.

Misc

Wrestling from ca 38 000 to ca 39 900

Red vs Blue from ca 1 500 to ca 1 900
​

Not much to say here, don't really care about anything here. Even the largest fandom, Wrestling, barely got anything. Surprised RvB has such a small fandom, though, especially seeing how old it is. RWBY had probably more stories in the first month than RvB had over all.

Movies

Star Wars from ca 33 400 to ca 38 000

Avengers from ca 28 300 to ca 34 200

PotC from ca 20 000 to ca 19 900

Frozen from ca 8 500 to ca 10 000
​

Well, new movie allowed Star Wars to defend its lead. PotC barely got anything and Frozen has a nice influx of stories, especially seeing that it most likely has a strong presence elsewhere in the net, for all the yuri incest smut ('sup @Jarik =P)

Avengers doesn't count Thor, Captain America and so on, they have separate sections for those. Kinda wish they would pool the MCU in one section.

Plays/Musicals

Screenplays from ca 30 000 to ca 37 900

Rent from ca 7 000 to ca 7 000

Wicked from ca 6 000 to ca 6 100

Cats from ca 3 300 to ca 3 300

Les Miserables from ca 3 300 to ca 3 400

Shakespeare from ca 2 100 to ca 2 200
​

Screenplays, whatever that is, is apparently booming and the rest barely got anything. Les Mis rose one spot but pretty much nothing changed.

TV-Shows

Glee from ca 107 000 to ca 109 000

Supernatural from ca 104 000 to ca 112 000 * now Nr 1.

Doctor Who from ca 67 000 to ca 71 300

Sherlock from ca 51 000 to ca 54 900

Buffy from ca 48 400 to ca 49 200

Once Upon A Time from ca 32 000 to ca 41 500

Castle from ca 19 000 to ca 21 600

Teen Wolf from ca 17 000 to ca 20 100

Walking Dead from ca 12 000 to ca 14 700

Veronica Mars from ca 4 000 to ca 4 300

Arrow from ca 4 000 to ca 6 600

Agents of Shield from ca 4 000 to ca 6 700

Game of Thrones from ca 2 800 to ca 3 700

HIMYM from ca 2 000 to ca 2 100

Scrubs from ca 1 700 to ca 1 700

Orphan Black from ca 1 200 to ca 1 600

Orange is Black from ca 761 to ca 1 300
​

Stuff I want to check next time

Rizzoli and Isles ca 7 400
Firefly ca 7 100
Flash ca 2 000
Supergirl ca 308

So, Glee got surprisingly few stories for a fandom of that size. Supernatural started up again, probably because the newest season is marginally better than the seasons before. The active shows got naturally more fanfics. The level of growth seems to be similar though, probably because the shows are similar and get the same fans.

No idea why GoT/ASOIAF are so small, are all the wirters on AO3?

Still surprised that Walking Dead is so small, but probably because the people mainly watching that aren't people who read and write otherwise.


So, yeah, might be of some interest for some. Think @Newcomb had some last year.

 

Nemrut

In Anime, Death Note has 34.9K, so I think it should be noted too.

There's (supposedly) going to be a North American remake of the Death Note movies, so I expect a large influx of stories in the future.

 

Indeed I do! I always find this kind of stuff fascinating.

I too am a bit curious about the ASOIAF/GoT numbers. It really seems like that fandom should be bigger. I suspect a combination of an off-FFN community and an expansive world - thus making it harder to write for - are the culprits there.

Also cool to see RWBY double in size. A few people in the RWBY thread talked about how the show is tailor-made for fanfiction, and I think that's pretty accurate.

Burn/10.

 

Almost seven thousand new PJO fics, but the quality of fics there is still as garbage as ever. ;-;

 

I remember when there were 25,000 fics in the PJO community. It seems that despite the huge growth, all the fics are terrible. Just the same "Percy gets betrayed by [insert name here] and gains l33t powers" stories.

As for Game of Thrones not having many stories, it is well known that GRRM doesn't like fanfiction, so some people may be discouraged from writing fanfiction because of that. Also, ASOIAF is more complex reading material than PJO or Harry Potter so perhaps the people who generally write the bulk of badly written fanfiction just aren't familiar enough with the universe to actually write anything about it. However, that argument falls apart when you consider the T.V. show and how widely watched it is.

 

Well, two years ago I started to look at fanfiction numbers and why stop doing that now?

Two differences to last time. This time, I also wrote down the numbers at the start of February and today at the end, so we can see the numbers rise in a year and a month. I also included the numbers in the crossover sections.

In the crossover column, the left number is 1.02.2017 and the one on the right is the number of 28.02.2017



So, I think it's safe to say that Harry Potter remains the juggernaut that it was. It may not have its astronomic rise from a decade ago however in the last two years at least 60k stories were added to it, not counting crossovers and stories on other sites. It got 2k in a month. HP has a larger growth-rate than most fandoms have fanfics in total.

It got more fics from 2015 to 2016 than it did from 2016 to 2017, though, and that is with a movie and whatever Cursed Child was. So, yeah, in decline, absolutely, but not exactly struggling. Every other fandom would kill to have the current HP numbers. Well, maybe except for Naruto.

Twlight, we have another thread for, but yeah, numbers seem to back it up. Twlight fandom has basically come to a halt. Just one thousand fics from the second biggest fandom on ff.net in a year? That's basically nothing. Or maybe it's more fair to say that it became a normal fandom. 1k stories is actually nothing to sneeze at but compared to the output it even had one year before that? That's a significant drop.

Well, that's to the two heavy hitters of the books section. And I admit, I don't really understand the Percy Jackson numbers. How come with so many fics, there isn't really anything decent there? There HAS to be. It's just impossible otherwise. I have read a few Twilight fics that I enjoyed, ffs. Admittedly, those were yuri guilty pleasures at most but Percy Jackson doesn't really even seem to have any guilty pleasures.

That said, I haven't really searched for a while, but I know we have a few fans on the site and no one really has posted anything. I guess Ryuugi and his various crossovers still remain the one thing, next to a few one-shots. I am open for reccs, btw. As to the numbers, well, it's actually got a really solid growth, still. 10k fics over 2 years, yeah, not bad. Actually pretty good. With the many books in the series, we got a lot of diverse characters and I can imagine that being a rather large driving factor in fanfiction, more people seeing characters they like and kinda identify with and write for them. Which is all very good, actually. I just wish there were a few gems like other fandoms have. Even My little Pony has Fallout:Equestria.

LotR, well, I expected more, to be honest. More crossovers and more fics in general. Then again, the Hobbit is its own category, so maybe because all the attention has been on that for the last few years, the LotR fans have concentrated on that. Pretty sure there was a rise in yaoi/slash fics between Thorin and Bilbo.

Hunger Games seems to be petering out as well. With no more movies or books coming out, and with countless copies out there, splitting the fanbase even more, yeah, its time seems to be mostly over. I'm sure it will still have some growth, given its size but yeah.

Honestly, shocked that ASOIAF is so small. I mean, Game of Thrones has its own space in the series section but even put together it's really not that big. I guess the world and the amount of characters, plots and locations it juggles can be intimidating for some writes but I'm still amazed that it's not up to 50k or so, what with various AU fics and so on. Westeros High School fics.

GoT has been an outright phenomenon for a few years and I think it's safe to say it's heydays are also over and it didn't really become this bonfire of fanfiction that I would have expected it to.

Well, Worm has more than tripled in size as to where it was in 2015 but still hasn't cracked the thousand, even counting in the crossovers, although I'm sure if we counted SB and SV it would have. After all, most of the stories there aren't cross-posted. Interesting note, it's on nr 22 for crossovers in the book section with its 400 stories. Given how new it is and how many books are out there, that's surprising, tbh. Shows you that not really all that many books get a dedicated fanbase willing and wanting to write for it. Really waiting for the books to come out for it to break to mainstream and open the floodgates. Still very much an underground hit although I am seeing worm fics in both, author favorites and stories they have written more and more, having overlap with Naruto and HP authors quite often.

And those who read/write femmeslash/yuri, given how predominant that is in the Worm fandom which is interesting. Probably because Taylor is such a large character that people love to explore, even if it is her in name only and most other well developed characters tend to be women as well, so, it kinda makes sense in that regard.

Discworld fandom is pretty stale, barely got anything added to it. A bit surprising, with Sir Terry's death, would have though to get a few in memoriam fics but I guess his is a writing style not easily copied.

Dresden Files is another surprise to me. I don't think there is another way to say it but in terms of fanfiction, DF seems to be a flop. Around a hundred fics in a year. That's really low. And DF have been around for ages. The first one was released in 2000, right? It even had a TV-show, as ill-conceived as it was.

It's well known and well regarded and it still doesn't really have a presence in fanfiction. I would go even as far and say we have most if not all fics worth reading in our library here. With so many characters and concepts to play with in DF, rather surprised we don't see more of it. Maybe the new book will revitalize the fandom and I guess we still have at least a decade to go until it will be concluded. Maybe by then, we'll even get another show or an anime or something, which will bring more people to write for it.



I'm not going to go over every single one here, just a few that interest me.
One important thing, the dates in the brackets are not necessarily the animes which I think is fair to say are often the ones that grabbed the bigger audience but the first publications of the manga/light novels.

Naruto still has an admirable growth, but I think both, the anime and the manga are still ongoing. Well, the Boruto manga at least. Still tons of games and movies. All in all, despite the manga end, the fanbase is still alive and well and gets some content to latch onto. Not a crazy growth or anything but I think better than anything that isn't Harry Potter.

What I find interesting is, while HP has a lot more normal stories, the gap between the two in terms of crossovers isn't really that large and I would think that HP is actually better suited for those. Then again, you can handwave a lot away in Naruto and explain it with chakra and seals. And I guess it does have dimension travel in its canon.

Inu Yasha still gets stories but nothing crazy but how long has it been since the anime and manga concluded and I doubt it's getting games and stuff at a crazy rate. Maybe with all the anime reboots this might get one as well and it certainly would have a fanbase waiting for them.

Don't know anything about Hetalia, only that it's ruled by the yaoi fandom, I think.

Bleach still getting a steady influx as well. FMA doesn't but it still has more fanfics than I would have assumed. Mostly because FMA is such a satisfying experience, I don't really see much reason to explore it with fanfiction. I guess there is a lot of slash and romance fics in it.

DBZ has a new anime and manga continuation, right? Guess that kinda breathed new life into the fandom but not really by much. Same with Digimon and its new series with Adventure Tri, as bad as it is. Sailor Moon also got a surprisingly small amount of fanfics with its reboot, given how big it was and is. Although, I am certain it is one of the cases where there are plenty of sites on the web that house tons of SM stories, same with Ranma.

Fairy Tail really got an amazingly large boost over the last two years., with over 20k stories. I am reading FT and I guess the large cast and the easy setting makes it a solid ground for fanfics but I mostly saw badfics. Either a crossover with Naruto or Ichigo joining Fairy Tail or some romance stuff. One of the tropes here, interestingly enough, is for Lucy the female main character to get thrown out of her team (either because mind control or they just become OOC bastards) and then she joins the team of whoever her love interest is in that fic. (Some brooding bad boy mostly). Sound familiar, anyone?

Guess the protag getting betrayed by their friends and then striking out on their own and getting a Monto Christo esque revenge is rather prevalent.

One Peace is, I think, getting more fanfics than ever before. To go from 30k to 37k in two years is no small feat. I mean, it also has been around for ages and roughly 1/4th of its fics it gained the last two years. That's surprising, imo. Is the current manga so captivating ? Because when I browse it, I still mainly see either Luffy travels back in time or Luffy restarts the journey with X power and he is DARK.

RWBY rather reliably got 6k stories every year, not counting crossovers. Pretty admirable growth in terms of fanfic numbers.

Fate Stay Night is also a fandom I somehow imagined to be bigger, to be honest. With all the games, all the animes and whatnot, it's surprisingly small. With 3 200 normal fics and 1 800 crossovers it shows how much those are liked by the writers.

Similar to Familiar of Zero which got around one hundred fics over the year but it still has more crossovers than regular fics. The disparity there got smaller, though, and I think it got more regular fics than crossovers over the year which is a bit surprising but then again there are a lot of crossovers in the normal section as well.

SAO and Code Geass I find interesting because both have been rather large hits and SAO especially was rather dominant in the anime fandom for a while and still is and honestly, it doesn't really have all that many fics to show for it unless those are mainly on Japanese sites.

Yuri on Ice has already over 2 500 fics and remember it got released four months ago or so. It's super new and already outperformed DF for example. Then again, it's a show that actually showed a well developed gay relationship between two men (or so I am told, I still haven't gotten around to watching it but it's on the list) and the yaoi community is notoriously productive.

Looking over the numbers, one thing that pops into my eye is that most fanfics with the bigger numbers tend to be those that have been around since 1980-2001. That they started then and have been around ever since, one way or another. However, the number two in sheer numbers, Hetalia and the number six, Fairy Tail are the exceptions, both being relatively "new" in comparison. Hetalia, I kinda get, what with the yaoi stuff and all but Fairy Tail doesn't really have that, at least not more than any other shonen. So, what was the difference here? What propelled Fairy Tail above the countless shonen and other manga/anime? The fanservice? The characters? The setting?

That's it for now, going to add the other stuff over the next few days, don't want to make the posts too long.

 

I'm not too surprised at Dresden. A lot of fanfiction exists to "fill in the gaps" that writers feel the story has, and Dresden is just pretty well done overall. That goes for quite a few of these, I'd assume. The setting and story are just written well enough that there's not much room to "grow" fanfiction.

Glad that One Piece is getting a bit of a surge, but yeah, mostly it's just reboots and nothing of significant quality that I've found.

Data is fascinating, thanks for keeping track of this.

 

Anything you'd recommend?

 

But DF is an easy sandbox to play in, though, and quite open for experimentation and exploration for all kinds of writers. Would have expected more on that front. Heck, even Dresden power trips or the like. Seems to be especially well suited for harem writers. Dunno, maybe Dresden lacks the "je ne sais quois" that is not shitty writing per se. Something to think about.

Part 2: Cartoons, Comics and Games




ATLA and TLOk are still getting a steady amount but with both being done it's getting less and less. Same with Teen Titans, difference there is that has been off the air for nearly a decade now. Then again, DC property that still gets comics and whatnot and the characters have appearances in stuff elsewhere even if it's not the same continuity. Heck, the beast wars stuff is even older and I don't think there is a current reboot of that franchise. So yeah, once entrenched, the fanbases seem to keep going.

MLP still seems to have a solid following, whereas Young Justice seems less than it should be, given its popularity. Especially since a third season was announced but I guess it needs to be out to get going again.

On the other hand, other older stuff like Kim Possible is relatively quiet. Around a 100 stories in a year. It's better than nothing but seing how popular it was, a bit weird that transformers beast wars is outperforming it.

Still crying about the W.I.T.C.H. fandom.

Here is the newer stuff regarding cartoons. Steven Universe, Gravity Falls and so on, all being roughly on the same level. Guess they are comparable to RWBY but not quite on the same level. Then again, I guess RWBY is a bit more accessible and I would assume quite a lot of the fanbase there is just too young to write. Gravity Falls was awesome and all and I have heard a lot of good things about the other three shows and I am not surprised to see that they have relatively solid fanbases, still would have expected higher numbers there.

Guess Voltron is still too new to have that many fanfics.

DuckTales, Hey Arnold and PPG are here because the former two are supposedly getting reboots whereas the latter already did (think that flopped though) and I'm curious to see how this will impact their numbers.

Rick and Morty was a cult hit but not really in the fanfiction department, it seems. Can imagine it being difficult to match the tone and quality of writing of the show and that being intimidating.

I am surprised that the cartoons section overall has so much lower numbers though. The biggest fandom there barely slips into the top ten of anime and manga and if you think about it, cartoons are a lot easier to access for a western audience than anime and manga are, at least most of the time.



Well, not much to say here. Most are getting a few, maybe a hundred over the year, whereas Batman is seeing the most growth. Seeing that this is the comic section, is there something happening or are the movie and cartoon fans also flocking here?

Not that surprised about the low numbers here. Comics are hard to get into and keep track off, not to mention expensive. Getting every issue, then having to buy the issues of other series connected to the main plot there and so on. Then there is the problem of where to even start and since there are so many, really difficult to really get to everything.

Not to mention the really varying levels of quality. To be able to navigate through that quagmire and then write fanfics about it? Yeah, I can see why not that many are drawn to it.



Pokemon seems to keep growing at 5k a year. Surprised Sun&Moon and Pokemon GO didn't have a bigger impact but I guess pokemon never really went away for a single game to launch a comeback. Anime is still ongoing, right? And a game comes out every one or two years.

Kingdom Hearts I am actually surprised it has such huge numbers, now that I think about it. I mean, it stretches over several platforms, games are relatively long and from what I can tell the plot is overly complicated, it's even difficult to understand in which order to play the various handheld console titles and yet so many people did. That said, 1k over two years for a fandom of that size? Not that many but then again, the third main game is going to come out this decade, maybe, so yeah, it can sustain itself until then.

FF7 is still getting stories and I think a remake is on its way? Might see an influx here as well. Same with Sonic and LoZ. Numbers are rather similar.

Still confused as to why Dragon Age has overtaken Mass Effect in numbers but it has the newer game out but ME is getting a new one this year, so that might change. It doesn't surprise me that ME has a lot more crossovers though, being much easier to do with various Sci Fi settings. Especially with the amount of HFY stories that are prevalent in the fandom or X from Y gets dumped on the Normandy type of stories.

Warcraft barely saw anything, even though Legion came out. It really needs Warcraft 4. I have a hard time believing that in over 20 years of Warcraft that there are so few stories on ff.net. There must be huge warcraft fic archives somewhere.

FFXIII has also gotten really stale. Less than a hundred fics, that's rather disappointing, but I guess since the first game was panned, it never built up that big of a fandom. Wasn't the main character really popular though? Used as an actual model or something?

Overwatch came out half a year ago and is hovering around 2k stories with crossovers included which isn't too shabby. I can see Overwatch being a very fertile ground for fanfiction. The characters are all interesting, diverse and evocative and easy to ship, the setting is easy to write in and so much stuff is shrouded in mystery that it is fun to explore. Maybe a bit too much mystery and I guess once Blizzard drops some good chunk of story, it will really take off.

Right now, store info is really only trickling in with a few tiny drops of info once every two months or so.

So yeah, that's to these sections.

Games have the most stories which isn't all that surprising. All the games at the top are game franchises everyone knows and I don't think there is any surprise there. Most of them are older, with the Bioware games being the exception but even there, it's not hard to see why they have gotten so popular. Interesting settings and characters really go quite a way, especially combined with the investment one has by controlling the characters and bonding a bit more than usual.