Ff.net's almost monopolistic position hasn't been true in a while, AO3 has been growing quite a bit as the next best thing. Especially for the "newer" fandoms. AO3 is a lot more openly lenient in the content it allows as well, filtering on content is also easier.

It is safe to say asoiaf's fandom prefers the latter with a combined 22.5k. Ff.net's heavy hitters aren't as much represented in return, like HP (119k) or Naruto (22k, which is downright tiny).

 

To address this miscarriage of justice, I have just begun a Dresden Files/Discworld XO an hour gone in which the hapless Rincewind winds up in Chicago, because frankly shooting Dresden into the Discworld from what I've read so far is just too game breaking to be interesting(the only novel I have under my belt in Discworld is Interesting Times, and I'm just beginning Color of Magic this afternoon). Should be fun.

 

AO3 would be easy to use if users didn't keep piling on useless tags or if they didn't tag passing mentions.

 

Well for the past few years Scott Snyder's run on the Batman comic has been getting rave reviews from fans and critics. I only just started reading it though beginning with Court of Owls and can say so far its fantastic.

Also, DC Comics has a well recieved Rebirth storylne going on across all their comics bringing back legacy characters and elements of the old continuity they got rid of with their New 52 reboot a few years ago. Fan favorite Batman legacy characters Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain have been brought back so that may have contributed as well. Those two characters were kicked to the curb because DC wanted Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl, in addition to managements dislike for legacy characters. I also started Cassandra Cain's Batgirl run and am liking it so far.

So Batman has earned a lot of goodwill from fans lately.

 

Got sick and then forgot to continue this, my bad.

Numbers I had gotten before on 28.02.2017



So, to continue where I left off. This section might be the shortest, since honestly have spent very little time perusing through these fandoms although I did check for Red vs Blue fanfics like a year ago.

Wrestling seems to have solid growth but then again, the Wrestling scene is still going relatively strong, I think. Still has new events and whatnot and is generally decently popular.

The newest Red vs Blue season had been several short stories/arcs, so I can understand why it got less fanfiction than the year before, where it was a conclusion to the bigger story. Still astonished that it has so few fics on ff.net, though, especially seeing that it has been a fandom that has been around for a decade.

Honestly no clue on vocaloid. Not surprised there are fanfics but all I know about it is that it's a hologram anime girl singer. Think there might be a few? 20k fics is nothing to sneeze at, going to see next year how much it grew.

Web Shows are stuff like fanfics about youtube and web personalities themselves, like PewDiePie and whatnot. Kinda surprised the crossovers are so few, comparatively. Would have assumed there would be more of them with content creators interacting or shipping or whatever. Heh, mybe there are some where someones favorite youtubers punches JonTron for being racist or shit like that? 13k fics is nothing bad, but then again, as much as I love fanfiction, I always find it weird to write fanfic about actual people. Then again, youtubers are more like characters they play, right?

As to the plays and musicals, honestly it has been really stale there. The only one that saw any growth really was that thing called Screenplays which is apparently huge somewhere and I still have no clue what it is. And it's growth is pretty substantial and better than most stuff. As in, better than Star Wars on fanfiction.net better and that had two movies come out.






So yeah, there is some growth all around but not that much. I mean, I expected way more Star Wars stories for one.

Avengers has slowed down but then again, all the Marvel movies have their separate categories which I feel is a mistake but meh. Guess it makes sense and people are still writing here. Beating the shit out of their comic based fanfics though but not unexpected. Way more people saw the movie(s) than there were people who read the comics.

Pirates of the Carribean has all but stopped. Makes sense, the movies have gotten less and less popular.

Frozen has really slowed as well. Has been a few years since the movie and nothing has really been added except like a short movie/clip, I think? Nothing on TV at least. I wonder if something like Frozen 2 would breath fresh air into the fandom or if will be shitty like most Disney sequels and thus insignificant.

I am surprised that Rise of the Guardians has more stories than Frozen, though. I guess it has been around longer and when Frozen came out, it revitalized Rise of the Guardians as well, what with all the crossovers people wrote.

Also surprised High School Musical is not bigger. I mean, Glee and Twilight are huge, why didn't HSM take off like that? Guess 2 or 3 movies just didn't have the lasting power of many seasons or books and movies.



Last but not least, the TV-shows.

Glee is still the second biggest fandom here but it has stopped growing, really, so it's just a matter of time before it is overtaken by something. Still, might take a while because the gap to the number three is still quite large and not easy to bridge. Think the series is also over at this point. Lots of shipping stuff here, as far as I can tell. Makes sense that the crossovers are fewer than its size would indicate, it is "just" a real life show whereas crossovers seem to be easier with fantasy/sci fi stuff and when there is fighting.

Supernatural the show is still ongoing and the fandom does so as well. 6k stories over the year and 1k of that was over one month. It has gotten less and less popular as the seasons march on but a big enough audience is still following. Slash fandom is probably a big chunk of the writers here but there are so many stories there and more get added every there, probably all kinds of stories. There have to be a few really good ones in a pool of over 100k stories on ff.net alone. Also unsurprising that so much slash is there. Most characters that remained alive and thus got the interesting characters, if not all, are dudes. So makes sense to explore those interesting characters that got way more screentime and development than whatsherface who died in season 3.

Dr. Who has slowed down but unlikely to ever stop. It's still getting new seasons and whatnot and so it will always have writers. Then again, it is also a rather old fandom for a TV Show, so yeah. Given its source material, not surprised that it has the most crossovers in the TV show section.

Sherlock got new episodes again, right? This year IIRC. It still has growth, bigger than Dr. Who at least but not as much as I would have expected, seeing how it initially exploded.

Buffy barely got anything, a few hundred stories, but then again the show has long been over and I think only continues in comic form. Unless it's done there as well. Still, testament to how popular it was that it reached the place it has. Also, no doubt a big chunk of stories are on other sites so yeah, likely that the buffy centric fan sites have more updates there.

Once Upon a Time had more stories between 2015/2016 than it had 2016/2017 but seeing that it's nearing its end (did the last episode air already?) I've been delving into this fandom for a bit in the last few months and there are a few gems here and there. A lot of femmeslash stories here, which is rare to be a majority. Then again, not sure if it IS a majority, but SwanQueen seems to be very popular at least. Then again, the hetships are prominent as well (Hook and Emma). Don't think there is much slash, though, but then again, not that many interesting male characters, I think. Honestly not sure though, I haven't watched much of the show.

That is not to say that it's all shipping stories, there is adventure and whatnot but most that I have found had some sort of romance involved. Then again, show is based on fairy tales and love plays a big role there. I am surprised there are so few crossovers though. It has magic and even dimension hopping which I would have thought make thins easier but apparently the fandom didn't really feel the need for it. Curious to see if there will be an influx of stories after the series is done. Then again, from what I've heard, many people didn't quite like the later seasons anyway, so who knows.

Walking Dead got slightly more stories this year than last year but not by much. Still, steady growth.

The superhero shows are all kinda the same. The two that have been around for longer have naturally more fanfics.

Game of Thrones, again, isn't really as big as one would have believed and that didn't change. Didn't have many fanfics back when the show was good and doesn't seem to have more now that the show's been shit for 2-3 seasons now, to fix the wrongs. Guess that most people, if they write GoT fics, tend to go for an AU restart of the plot from season 1 rather than explore things in the later seasons so it doesn't matter if it's about seasons 1-3 where it was good and seasons 4-current where it wasn't. That would be me guessing, though.

Really, really surprised Elementary barely has any fics. Guess it didn't have that slash fandom cranking out stories her. There was a lot of pushback from the Sherlock fandom when Elementary came out but honestly, show has been around for years at this point and still doesn't really have anything and it's actually really good. In a lot of ways, better than Sherlock and way more content. But I guess it didn't capture the fanfic-writers imagination.

Power Rangers is on here because I'm curious to see if the new movie will breathe life into the fandom. And honestly, am looking forward to seeing it myself. >_>

So yeah, tv shows that are finished, unsurprisingly get less fics than active shows. Most of the fanfic wise popular shows are fantasy/sci fi with Glee being the exception. Guess Sherlock doesn't have magic or sci fi either but it's hardly normal people so to me it's closer to stuff like Dr. Who than Glee. They are not on the list but crime procedural series are between 40k and 10k, guess Sherlock should be more there.

So, those are the numbers for tnow. Gonna see how many will be added over the year.


Edit:


Added the top ten list in terms of sheer numbers in the normal section. Ended up being eleven simply because there was such a small difference between the last two, even though Dr. Who spanks Kingdom Hearts in crossovers.

What I find interesting is what kind of medium those fandoms are. Spots number one and three were mainly books but also have movies that contributed to that. Half of the list are anime/manga fandoms. Pokemon is a bit of a special case as it started as a game but it would be dumb to disregard the influence the anime had on the fandom, especially as most fanfics are about Ash from the anime. Three TV shows and one game to top it all off.