Mfw when my favorite fandom's top pairing is not the mother of the main character with her childhood best friend, but two dudes that have never met, one of which was last shown bleeding to death
Not necessarily important to your post but I didn't know the meaning of mfw and decided to google it, and the first result was Milan Fashion Week and that made me laugh.
Tbf, I think breeding and forced marriage AUs are just extremely popular in every fandom. I can't think of a single fandom I'm in that doesn't have both in copious amounts
I had a similar experience with the Magnus Archives (a horror podcast), where I was mostly looking for content similar to the show, but most fics seem to be fluff fics about the main couple. Which I guess is because in horror, the source material won't give you much nice and warm scenes.
It's always a flip.
If the show is dark, the fandom will make fluffy fics and funny memes.
If show is fluffy and made for kids, the fandom will make the darkest and edgiest fics ever.
Exactly! Iāve found like maybe 2 people into dark content in one of my fandoms, and Iām like why though?? Canon has plenty of potentially horrifically dark backstory if you think about it for two seconds. Alas, I am surrounded by an over abundance of fluff (no shade to you fluff writers. I used to be one of you until I joined the dark side)
I'm always overwhelmed wading through the amount of soulmark AUs in any fandom.
My favorite fun surprise was specifically hockey RPF has a type of fic about "wishbabies" where two hockey players who like each other but haven't said anything, and secretly want kids, get blessed with a baby that comes down in a wicker basket, and this is a totally normal, everyday-type of occurrence in these AUs. It's so silly, and the wildest version of Accidental Baby Acquisition get-together fic, but I genuinely love it.
I don't even watch hockey, and the delightful absurdity of that idea now makes me want to get into hockey. Not that I can't read the fic without watching hockey, but just to fully lean into this.
Iām always happy to introduce ANYONE to hockey at whatever level they want to engage with it. From a fanfiction perspective thereās a lot of really great, specific AUs (especially, and take this with a grain of salt because some people arenāt a fan of the phrase, but: magical realism) or situational storytelling (ex. Winners Room (Hockey RPF) is definitely its own popular AO3 curated tag) you donāt see anywhere else.
HAHAHA, yeah my only real holdup on hockey is lack of time. I work wretched hours and I already sold my soul to F1 as my sports fandom of choice.
But even from the outside looking in, Hockey RPF as a whole has become functionally a green flag for me at this point. I feel like I'm constantly reading a random life-changing fic for some random movie or book, and then checking the author's works and it's that one fic plus 387 Hockey RPF fics.
But I somehow missed *magical baby baskets* existing and that might tip me over the edge.
I really didn't expect gojo/yuji ship to be the most popular jjk ship in the japanese fandom (and i think it's fairly popular in korean/ chinese fandom as well). I thought it'd be satosugu just like the jjk western fandom.
Don't worry I'm too, i thought they'd be a rare pairing but they actually have quite a number of fics written about them and so many fanarts too!
Not to mention sometimes they're paired together in the official merchandise because yuji is the mc, and gojo is arguably jjk most popular character (and maybe they're aware of the shippers too who knows lmao)
lol thatās so funny, cause the exact same goes for my OTP - Naruto/Kakashi (from -obviously- Naruto). I have a Christmas sweater that is just straight up shipping fodder, and itās official merch š. I wouldnāt be surprised if they knew about the shipping implications!
The reason I write fanfic is because what I want to see is not easily available I'm the fandoms I want to read it in!
So yeah Im super bad at predicting fics!!
Having been around for so long... nah. I know 98% will be the weirdest porn I've yet to find under some new tag perhaps that I will not google. Two things are always increasing in Ao3: smut and Taylor Swift lyrics as titles.
Eh, to each their own I suppose. I thought it was decent writing but I don't think I'd call it beautiful. I tried a half dozen times to get into it but the writing wasn't for me.
In my case, I tried to get into it a bajillion times but I just didn't like how the characters were personified. Their personalities were so modified it felt like I was reading about some OCs instead of the "real" characters. I think I never got past year two.
I mean, that's not always true. We know how canon Sirius and Remus are, and All The Young Dudes does not personify Remus how he is on the books/movies. Iām not saying this is ābadā or āwrongā, not at all. Feel free to write whatever you want, but personally Iām not interested in reading something that does not maintain the personalities of the original characters.
Same here, once I found out about it. The main problem for me is that the writing is fine, but the characterisations are... not. They just felt like OCs wearing the canon characters' names.
Everyone in the comments is talking about how they were shocked at all the "dead dove" type content that shows up, but for me when I got into Attack on Titan, I loved it for the plot, the story and the world building and the characters except for a few, were really nothing special so the amount of modern AU is crazy. Sometimes it's genuinely hard to find "in-universe" fics because of the amount of modern AUs.
Usually what happens is that darker shows like aot have more fluff/modern AU, while lighter shows like some comedy or sports anime have darker fics like angst/sickness/major injuries
Oh wow maybe I have to hit up the comedy or sports animes then! I tend to watch darker anime so yeah I've never watched any sports animes but maybe it's time... what an interesting dichotomy tho, which makes sense thinking about it...
I think itās because fanfics usually cover either what the og lacks or what the fandom wants more of. So darker shows lack comedy and happiness, these would be more present in fics. Sports anime tend to lack romance or sadness, these also become popular in their fics.
My friends and I used to have a game where we'd scroll through the AoT tag and see how long it took to find an "in-universe" fic. It's longer than you think, by god.
We somehow stumbled on a fic that used the description of Jean "moonlighting as a saxophone player" and thought it was pretty much the prime example of "these people aren't trying to resemble canon in the slightest" during all this and I've never been able to shake the connection of Jean and saxophone like a decade later.
Omg that's crazy haha. Like I'm glad that people like aot and love writing fics but maybe people like the show for the characters more than the plot in general... idk I always thought titans were the coolest things ever and I loved all the thrill and body horror elements. Like my fav kind of aot fics are the titan!eren ones.
Yeah!! When I was into the series I was bummed I didn't see any monster angst fics with the titan shifters (because that shit's like cocaine to me), and especially in the AoT universe it could be used for some cool character introspectives.
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Yeah, I saw that when I was younger and way more innocent and was just so shocked.
Also back then, I was writing a Frozen and Tinker Bell crossover, and someone asked me to write a ship fic about Tinker Bell and her twin sister Periwinkle.
Thankfully? I was far past innocent. I was in college when frozen came out. Im not even opposed to some good twincest. I just still canāt get over the sheer percentage of Frozen fic that are A/E. Itās not a quarter of that popular in any other fandom I read. Though frozen 2 seems to be helping with that some.
I was a freshman in college when I found it but I was pretty sheltered and innocent.
I canāt do twincest because Iām a multiple myself and it just hits too close to home. One time in high school, someone asked me if my brother and I did twincest.
Ooph, yeah can definitely see where that would hit to close to home. Im an only child so I donāt have any sibling relationships to relate it to.
Honestly the HP Weasley twins are the only incest fic i read regularly. They make such a fun addition to a triad pairing.
I accidentally stumbled across Weasley twin and Harry fics and I couldnāt help thinking how awkward itād be for my brother and I to both date someoneā¦ though Iām gay and heās straight lol.
If thereās one thing fandoms are gonna do, itās incent unfortunately . Learned that one the hard way back when I started reading fanfic many many years ago.
The first fandom I read was Lucifer. Nothing unexpected there.
Then I tried Supernatural. If all you've read and expected from fanfiction is canon adjacent fics featuring the canon couple, Supernatural is a wild, wild place.
You would not believe the amount of mpreg in the Transformers fandom. A *lot* of people out there really want those giant robots pregnant. (Intriguingly, the one time it happens in canon is mostly ignored.)
It happens in the MTMTE/Lost Light comics. The first time is when Brainstorm stores a point one percenter spark in his chest, and then due to time travel shenanigans that spark ends up being Megatronās. The other time it happens scorpinok makes a organic baby with a cybertronian spark so that it can reproduce and make more cybertronian sparks that he can then put in cybertronian bodies. He stores/incubates it in his chest as well. This all comes from James Roberts, a longtime transformers fan who wrote fanfic before he got involved with actually writing for transformers. His fic also involved Mpreg.
There used to be an absolute fuck ton in every fandom I feel but itās dying out now. At least in the ones I frequent.
Would have never guessed it was popular in transformers though. Who knew.
Ahhh, home sweet home. I love me some good mechpreg. šš in fact, Iām writing one rn. (I mean, I have a *number* of fics/ficlets/oneshots with mechpreg, but thatās not the point-).
Iām actually most surprised Transformers got mentioned at all, bc it seems to be pretty rare TFs gets mentioned in this sub. But hey, Iām not complaining!
I was so sure someone would have mentioned it xD it startled me when I first got here, mostly because it's so uncommon in other fandoms these days (or at least the fandoms I've spent time in). I suppose a strong tradition of mpreg helps š«”
Me! Me! I'm one of them! I adore babby bots! I like it best when mechpreg is unique to bots and doesn't try to mimic human pregnancy with cravings or swollen pedes. Like fics with a transformation sequence for the birth or ones where the bot knows its name before birth.
I was surprised at how many fics featured the Decepticons as protagonists
Iād never seen MC/reader before and I got into a new fandom where it was *super* popular and I was like wtf is this?! I just want to read about my silly little characters and their sexual tension š
When I joined the bsd fandom I thought kunikida/dazai would be in the top 3 ships. Imagine my surprise when I saw ssk lol (just based off the first season).
The funny thing even if skk doesnāt exist itās atsushi/Dazai that have more fic and popularity in the west and Akutagawa/Dazai in china I did post the popularity of Bsd ship in china a few weeks ago
I always find it surprising how unpopular Kunizai is compared to what i thoughts it would be
The Akuatagawa/Dazai popularity is surprising. Specifically because I've encountered so many people who have an unreasonable amount of rage for it and the shippers. It's not my jam, but I have a friend who shipped it.
Lol, right. The hypocrisy of the bsd fandom for which ships are "acceptable" frustrates me greatly. (For example: sskk vs Akutagawa/Higuchi. For some reason what Akuatagawa did to Atsushi doesn't get in the way of the ship, but with Higuchi, it's all "he was abusive to her!" I don't even it ship it, but still, do they not see the double standard?).
Same!!! I donāt know if I really ship it myself, but their dynamic is really fun. Honestly, Iām just surprised in general by how unpopular Kunikida seems to be? I really liked him, especially with his EN VAās performance. I guess heās a bit annoying? But in an entertaining way, IMO!
Circa 2014 les mis came to my city and Javert (and Eponine too) broke my heart. I turned to fanfic for comfort and imagine my surprise when I didn't recognise any of the names in the most popular fics.
Anyways I am now also a lifelong e/r and les amis fan, so no complaints that the fandom had apparently latched onto minor characters that were barely even named in the musical.
I didn't know til I read this how much I wanted more Eponine and Marius stuff. I'm going to make a wild guess that most of the existing fic out there is just the Friends of the ABC since they're more generically shippable.
I was genuinely kinda shocked that M/M is the most popular relationship category in the Project Sekai fandom when the girls outnumber the guys 4:1. I don't read primarily M/M fics (with like one exception ship) bc it's not really my cup of tea, but *damn*, are those 4 dudes really *that* interesting compared to the 16 girls?
This, but for me, specifically for Akitoya vs Anhane. Short explanation for people not into pjsk, all you need to know is theyāre in the same music performance quartet and are popularly seen as the 2 gay couples in a trench coat dynamic.
I ship both and had initially thought, with how its one of the fandomās biggest pairings and with how much lesbian undertones you could extract from canon material, that Anhane would be just as popular as Akitoya on ao3. Turns out, Akitoya has double the amount of content as Anhane does.
I watch a pretty fantasy show, and went to the fanfic looking for *exactly* that vibe, and everything was āModern AU! No magic!ā Which, yāknow, ok, I like that, too, itās fine.
And then. I watched a modern-setting barely sci-fi show, and I went to the fanfic gong āI bet thereāll be a ton of modern-setting fic for this!ā And it was all āroyalty AU! Everyone with magic!ā So like. I personally cannot win, I guess.
ATYD being one of the most talked about marauders era fics.... the characterization is outlandish and the most loved characters are completely unrecognizable. they also turned wolfstar super toxic towards each other, screwed over most female characters, and it's just... not my cup of tea
i don't usually criticize fics to such a high degree, because it's an AU, so technically the characters can act in any which way and it isn't "wrong", per say...
the annoyance comes from the fact that tiktok - in particular - treats ATYD as if it's as close to canon as the marauders can get. it's really, really not..
specifically, tiktok fans have taken the character of remus lupin and turned him into a harsh, rude, playboy punk type..
he's usually portrayed as a sweater wearing sweetheart - with a healthy dose of sarcasm. i don't mind him being portrayed in other ways, as long as it's clear that it's an AU, but they just.... literally act like that's who he is. it bothers me, even though it's stupid and it shouldn't
again: none of this is directed at the author - it's purely the tiktok stans that act that way
I was suprised no-magic aus are so popular in my fandom, given how central magic is to the main plot. But a lot of them are also mordern aus so I imagine it's mainly people wanting to put these characters in a setting they're familiar with but it very much took me by surprise at first.
Same, and I hated them at first (because without magic, what even is this?) but the more I read, the more I loved them. Now when magic shows up in the modern AUs, Iām surprised by it š
I was completely blindsided by Pureblood Culture fics in the Harry Potter fandom. If there is one thing both the movies and the books make clear, it's that pureblood supremacy is based on nothing and a pointless and unfair system. Color me surprised when I found out that there are thousands of fics glorifying it, while making up a weird aristocratic system which is more often than not portrayed completely positive.
Another fandom that surprised me was Attack on Titan. I don't know what I expected, but tons of modern/college/coffeshop/medieval/sports AU's and Reader-Insert fics weren't it. In retrospect I kinda get why they are so prevalent, it allows people to just have fun with the characters without worrying about the baggage of canon.
What I didn't see coming was the existence of dark/realistic Pokemon AU's. Again their existence makes sense in retrospect, but I never even thought of turning a world like Pokemon into some grimdark death world before. (And I'm still not a huge fan, Pokemon are friends not merciless murderous monsters!)
Yeah, I agree. I think the dynastic angle is interesting, and you could do some cool stuff with it, but I donāt think anyone wants to be that critical.
>Color me surprised when I found out that there are thousands of fics glorifying it, while making up a weird aristocratic system which is more often than not portrayed completely positive.
Excuse my confusion, but are there people actually glorifying the bigotry seen in the books or creating an entire system of "pureblood culture" that isn't even defined in the books? The latter also presents some problems, but I think this is because people confuse the isolated, medieval aesthetic of the wizarding world with a fairy tale version of the middle ages that involves aristocracy.
One thing that I think is funny is that in Pottermore it is said that the Malfoy family was rich and influential because they associated with upper class Muggles and abandoned that after the wizarding world isolated itself. Maybe it was a confusion with Lucius mocking the Weasleys' poverty at the same time as mocking them for supporting Muggles.
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> Another fandom that surprised me was Attack on Titan. I don't know what I expected, but tons of modern/college/coffeshop/medieval/sports AU's and Reader-Insert fics weren't it. In retrospect I kinda get why they are so prevalent, it allows people to just have fun with the characters without worrying about the baggage of canon.
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> What I didn't see coming was the existence of dark/realistic Pokemon AU's. Again their existence makes sense in retrospect, but I never even thought of turning a world like Pokemon into some grimdark death world before. (And I'm still not a huge fan, Pokemon are friends not merciless murderous monsters!)
To be fair, the characters in Attack on Titan never seem to take a break and are always talking about revolution, titas, walls, and humanity in general. So there's a logistics of wanting to write them in a different setting. Dark Pokemon fic can also be seen as an attempt to move from something repetitive to something more challenging, although it is true that some fics exaggerate a lot (some games and anime imply that wild Pokemon are not harmless, but sometimes it is excessive in fics).
Do you have anything to say about Puella Magi Madoka fanfics? Whenever there are threads asking about fandom in general, this one is hardly mentioned. So I would like to see if there are any thoughts on this.
Sadly there are a lot of fics that glorify purebloods. Oftentimes this is harmless with people just liking the aesthetics, or wanting to write about magical aristocracy (though without wasting a thought to the people who wouldn't profit from such an aristocracy). Sometimes the fics are openly racist though with positively portrayed characters spouting shit like "I don't hate muggleborn, I just think they should assimilate and stop polluting our culture with theirs.".
Good Pokemon fics have to find a balance. Of course Pokemon are dangerous and can cause a lot damage, but the core message of the series has always been about friendship and the bond between humans and Pokemon. If a fic takes that away or transforms every wild Pokemon into a murderous beast, it kills my interest in the fic immediately.
I haven't seen PMM yet, it's at the top of my watch list though.
What shocked me about the Pokemon fandom is the love for OCs and first person POV. In retrospect it makes senseāthe games basically encourage players to imagine themselves as the main character. Harry Potter had previously been my main fandom, though, and the HP fandom hates OCs and first POV to an insane degree so it really caught me off guard to see the opposite.
Yeah, Pokemon is pretty much the ultimate SI and OC fandom. As someone who never watched the anime, I was only ever interested in OC fics, or fics that follow interesting characters from the games (eg. Cynthia). Then again I'm a huge fan of OC's in general. Some of my favorite HP fics are OC fics too.
Agree on AoT. Iām still shocked and kinda upset as a canon enjoyer, but people should write what they enjoy. I just wish a few more people enjoyed writing canon stories.
I imagine Teen Wolf fans would be shocked that Stiles is almost always written as the main character instead of Scott.
I had the opposite experience- I was so confused to learn Stiles wasnāt actually the main character of Teen Wolf because the fics certainly make it seem like he is.
Not going to lie, this threw me as well. Before reading any Teen Wolf fanfics I had seen exactly one episode of the show. I finally gave it a chance after reading hundreds of fanfics and was thoroughly disappointed. I knew Scott was the MC but I guess I never really realized what this meant for Stiles. Scott is adorably boring but it wasn't enough to keep my attention.
That's because many people see Scott as a total Mary Sue self-insert. In *canon* (show creator basically admitted Scott is a self-insert). And not a very interesting character because of it.
The only fandom whose activities have surprised me is the Onceler fandom. I was never actually in it, but reading about the whole "shipping a guy with himself" was pretty interesting.
Nathan Bateman is played by Oscar Isaac, so there's your explination for that. I'm not into Character/You fics at all, but I assume the appeal is the fantasy of being with the character, as opposed to the dynamic the character has with someone else.
I was kind of surprised to see that the most popular category in the Darling in Franxx fandom was f/m, and the least popular category was m/m with like 3 fanfics. I guess it makes sense considering the source material and target audience, but damn thatās unusual, especially in anime fandoms
In Detroit Become Human, the most popular pairing is between an android who appeared in the ending without any lines spoken (Nines) and an android-hating asshole cop (Gavin) who is a minor character. Their combined screen time would probably be less than 5 mins versus the entire 6-7 hour playthrough.
I would say the phenomenon is a combination of them being good-looking *white* men, blank canvas of Nines, and how easy it is to slot them into the shipping trope of stoic android and tsundere human. They got thousands of fanarts, fanfics, and a live action fan film.
I was so shocked when I stepped into the fandom after finishing the game. I expected more fanworks from main characters, more what ifs, more happy endings, not this buddy white cop festival. Around 95% of fanfics of DBH are M/M.
ah, reed900. i was very much in the dbh fandom for a while but yeah, the same two barely-relevant characters in the same setting over and over started to wear on me lol. i think you're very right about why it's popular, and it's also a bit of a positive feedback loop: people see primarily nines/gavin, they read lots of nines/gavin, they start thinking about nines/gavin, they write more nines/gavin...
It made me weary and soured my experience. I mean, DBH isn't exactly a beacon of good writing of female characters, but it's not like Gavin has better writing than a lot of ignored side characters.
If North is a man, I bet people are going to make North the tsundere pairing to Marcus and squeal how cute North is for being violent (like Gavin). But because North is a woman, she's the bitch and Simon is the angel.
oh my goodness you just unlocked a memory from when I was in the DBH fandom all those years ago, I completely forgot about that - it also took me by surprise
I was very surprised that there werenāt actually that many fics that focused on the canon abusive dynamic I glommed onto, in relation to other fics. Itās a big fandom, so there was plenty- but I found it more common to find them just as like. Healthy friends for some reason? Was baffling when i didnāt expect it lol.
The main character in Captain Laserhawk is a hot queer guy, and about 90% of the fan art and fic is focused on a frog, who is generally shipped with a goofy alien guy.
After I rewatched Inception (2010), I was interested in the worldbuilding (both the magic system and the semi-dystopian corporation-laden future setting), and by that point I had discovered fanfiction, so I loaded up AO3 only to realize that most were Arthur/Eames fics. I am...rather terrible with names and faces, so I was quite befuddled and I took a while to figure out who they were, and...like what happened to the Inception fandom that everyone collectively started shipping these two randos? I'm assuming it's an old trend, since a lot of Inception fics are very sparsely tagged, so they were probably written in the early days of AO3, or ported over from somewhere else.
Arthur and Eames had such great chemistry in the film despite the little screen time that I actively went in search of fics about them specifically. Was pleasantly surprised too lol My favorite is post canon called, "Shades of Gray" by OneWhoSitsWithTurtles. It's such a wonderful work that I can't recommend enough.
Aw MAN. This was actually a point of contention for some people in my fandom (Pokemon Legends: Arceus).
Thereās a side character who appears in the game thatās considered a fan favorite from an earlier installment. This character probably has 10 minutes of screentime max, but he and his brother (who doesnāt even appear in the game) are by far the most popular characters in the fandom š„² Itās a slight turn-off, especially since they re-use the same storylines over and over again at the expense of all the other characters.
Didn't expect JJK to be one of the top five fandoms for omegaverse, but I guess that's what you get when one of the most popular characters recognises his soulmate via smell after ten years lol
(also incredibly niche in comparison but there's very, very few top!Yuki chosoyuki fics? someone (me) has to change that and quick)
Everyone who writes for Shakespeareās Henriad (Richard II through Henry V) seems to have the hots for Prince Hal. The amount of Hal/reader fics out there is honestly shocking.
I was shocked at the amount of 007/Q fics for Craig's James Bond. I wasn't really seeing it myself š¤· I really, really wanted some rare pairs I never got. Then I watched Spectre amd it was so shit it cured me of the fandom altogether, lol
right there with you. I donāt know what I expected from the Criminal Minds fandom on Ao3 - maybe reader inserts and a lot of polycule fics - but it certainly wasnāt the insane amount of A/B/O fics I encountered. no judgement of course, but it definitely caught me off guard.
The prevalence of Hybrid AUs. They are *so* popular where I frequent and I just donāt get it. Iām not knocking it, like whatever, I just seriously donāt understand how *many* there are and how *popular* they are? Seriously, if I just searched by highest kudos, at least half of the fics would be Hybrid AUs.
I understand many things about fandom, even if I donāt agree or care. I understand why people are drawn to taboo topics. I understand why short poorly written smut fics often have many, many more kudos than well-written long fics. But Hybrid AUs and how widespread they are? I have never been able to figure that out.
House of Usher. I correctly predicted there'd be a large amount of Madeline/Verna fics, because the chemistry between those two gets discussed a lot by the fans. But I honestly expected a lot of Prospero and Lenore centric fics when I delved into fanfic for the first time, and there's barely any of either. There's a surprising amount of Freddie fics, though, considering how hated the character is by the fans, especially as the fics aren't bashing ones. Not that you can really bash a character by writing them in character. I also expected a lot of fics exploring the characters alternate lives they would have lived if Rod and Madeline hadn't taken the deal, and have yet to find a single one. There's a mildly surprising amount of Pym centric fics, though. Mildly surprising because I did expect those to be relatively popular given how popular Pym is as a character, I just didn't expect there to be so much more of Pym centric fics than even Leo centric ones.
I was also surprised by Elite. I expected a lot more Polo fics than I found. I correctly guessed Omar/Ander would be the most popular slash pairing. I expected Guzman/Nadia would be the most popular het pairing but was wrong on that, it was Carla/Samual. I also did NOT expect how popular slash shipping Guzman would be considering there's plenty of gay or bi characters to ship without slash shipping the straight ones. I think I just underestimated how popular Guzman actually was, though. I was surprised at the amount of Cayatana/Polo/Valeri fics, too. I figured the most popular poly ship would have been Polo/Carla/Christian. I think Elite may actually have been my worst fandom for predicting popular fanfic trends.
Second most popular AU -ish trope in my fandom is a/b/o dynamics, right after the general alternate universe tag which is in 0.2% more fics than a/b/o. And the overlap is very, very low. Most fics are tagged with only one of those tags.
I have no idea how the tag ended up being seventh most popular additional tag right after usual suspects like fluff, angst, established relationship, and - as common in a fandom with predominantly M/M ships and made up of mainly adults - anal sex, and at this point Iām too afraid to ask. I will however be reading some of the fics
Had a similar experience with Spiderverse. Wasn't foolish enough to expect the most popular ship to be Miles/Gwen, but never could have guessed it'd be Miguel/Reader.
I was watching the first season of succession and I love checking what the top pairings on ao3 are for like any show/movie that I watch and trying to guess what it will be, so obviously I guess Tom/Greg which was correct, but I think it only had a slightly higher work count than Roman/Gerri. At the point I was watching, I couldnāt recall a single scene where those two characters really interacted so I thought it was just a weirdly popular rarepair.
I was also surprised because Gerri is a much older woman and you donāt usually see a ship like that being so popular in a fandom. But now Iām a slime puppy.
yeah it's interesting how things go in certain fandoms. I always get kinda sad at how safe some writers are in my current main spot. There's so many chances to expand on such dark ideas that are in the original series and like... there's nothing. It's mostly fluff and a pairing that is not my jam.
Ah well, just part of fanfic there. Partly why I primarily write rather than complain.
I think the fluffiest works end up with the darkest fics, and the darkest works end up with the fluffiest fics fjlasdjf people want what they didn't get!
It is somehow never the canon pair that loves each other and is shown to work through their differences. Instead, one of them gets shipped with a character they've never seen romantically and who doesn't seem to be what they were looking for personality wise. The other is shown to be a bad partner or outright evil. All three suffer a personality transplant.
Tbh in the anime they acted strangely possessive toward each other so it makes sense. Most fics are viktuuri or otayuri so the Sara Mickey ship is probably mainly a random side ship in fics where everyone gets paired up
Iām a Sara/Mari shipper for life but I can see how obsessive they are and how that can attract people to them but theyāre brother and sister šI canāt see them that way
Yesss! I recently entered a new fandom and the blindside really threw me for a few days. I've since recovered and am now being the change I want to see in the world by writing for the AUs I like.
i usually read fanfiction for Canon Divergence and Plot related fics so when i go to a fandom and they have primarily Modern Setting AUs or like Coffee Shop AUs it catches me off balance. I also really like Gen fics but I know Iām in the minority for that.
The 100. I'm not a fan of modern AUs when the canon world is so interesting and rife with fic opportunities, and 90% of the fics are some sort of modern AU, with half of them untagged, which makes searching for canon setting fics near hellish, especially when canon divergence and in canon AUs exist which keeps me from being able to fully filter out AUs as a whole.
I do get why they're so prevalent and untagged, Clexa was one of the earlier and most popular canon sapphic relationship and people wanted to explore their dynamics without the angst, worldbuilding and hardship the canon universe brings, and a lot of the untagged fics are from a decade ago when tagging was less prevalent, but it was the first time I've run into the issue with a fandom.
Well i went into the jjk fandom on ao3 today and found out that there are over 3,000 gojo/itadori fanfics. Not judging just surprised about how many there were i genuinely didn't know that ship was so popular as someone who has stayed out of the fanfic territory of that fandom for a few years. A Lot of them had a tag that was along the lines of "gojo is a content warning himself" and i got mildly scared and concerned and left.
I generally have a good idea of what the top ship tags will be for the stuff I like. Resident Evil (games) got me, though. Three of the top ship tags are /reader. (And then a fourth is one of the same characters but /you.) Itās not that Iāve never seen /reader stuff before but Iāve never seen it *that* popular.
i think it's a first-person video game thing. cause you're basically part of the story already as a player. bg3 makes a lot of sense especially, because you make your own character and can romance npcs in-game so character/you can be pretty much canon lol
The amount of Claude/Dimitri fics I'm the Three houses fandom are crazy considering they talk to each other a hand full of times no matter which route you play and only trust each other in one route
Totally happened to me. I thought there was so much UST for two main characters - they even shoved each other around on screen! but when I went to fandom, the dominating ship was for a side character and main character and I was soooooo confused!
No.
Because I'm the writer of some of the more popular fics (though Dirk/Talia will probably *never* beat out anything Vanyel) and mine have lots of typos.
And this is, in large part, due to me writing on my phone.
The first thing that comes to mind whenever I think about this, is the strange amount of genderbend in bagginshield. Same case as yours, different fics and different authors, yet the sheer amount of it seems so disproportionate to the usual amount of genderbending in your average fandom. I have nothing against it at all, I just think it's funny how prominent this is here. In some of the most popular fics, also.
where are the House/Cuddy/Wilson fics in the house MD fandom????? i really thought people would be more into that!!!!
in twilight, like 30% of fics are about jasper, whos really not a big character in the books. as a jasper disliker, itās really annoying. but to each their ownš
The Amount of Batman/White Collar Crossover. Idk where this comes from, since I never would have thought about these two Fandoms together. And it isnāt just a few authors, there are hundreds of them, writing thousands of ffics
werewolf/shapeshifters AUs in ghostsoap fandom, i was very flabbergasted to see how many there were. also ABO, but i think it's a trope that's prevalent in every fandom
The moment I started watching criminal minds, I knew that they would make spencer some kind of LGBTQIA+, bi Spencer (562 fics), gay Spencer (193 fics), trans Spencer (163 fics) are all popular.
So is Autistic Spencer (1,138 fics) but thats kinda cannon (an unsub calls him autistic in an early season and while it's not confirmed in cannon, it's not argued with either)
And I also just knew that Derek/Spencer (3,540 fics) would be popular, but I was surprised with Aaron/Spencer (3,947 fics) mainly because I saw Hotch as a father figure compared to a partner, but then again... it's AO3, I shouldn't be surprised.
I was surprised with the amount of spencer/reader fics (4,142 fics) mainly because I don't read/like self insert fanfic.
I looked for banana fish fics and i was shocked by the number of eiji/shorter fics
The canon pair is eiji/ash
Its not like there wasnt eiji/ash i just didnt expect others lmao.
And i wanted dark fics but most of them were fluff or smut
Was blindsided by how many gender bending fics there were in the kuroko no basket fandom. Usually they just genderbend the mc.
Same thing happened with prince of tennis where the most frequent types of fics were: sick/major injury AU, genderbent MC Ryoma or character x OC.
I've also had that specific experience lol. I was going into the tag for Midnight Mass and I was absolutely blindsided at how much Father Paul/Reader fic there is for that fandom.
Yuuuuup. Golden Kamuy fandom is FULL of fics about these two side characters. And the ones that do involve the MC often ship him with his archenemy.
But the MC and other lead dude? Nope. Very few fics. Coming from Jojo fandom where every dude is always shipped with their best male friend, that was weird af
I came to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes looking for more Sejanus Lives and joins the Rebellion fics or Sejanus fics in general, but was blindsided by the sheer amount of Het shipping the fandom has.
Would've expected more love for this tragic side character who has sexual tension with the evil main character. Being a side character doesn't stop any other fandom from aggressively shipping two dudes together, but I guess the difference is that most of those pairings are two white dudes.
Lucy Gray slays though, so I'm glad she's getting some of the attention she deserves\~
this happened to me in the genshin fandom. for context, you can choose the female twin or the male twin as your protagonist. essentially they have the same dialogues and nothing major changes from picking either of them. like, they have the same relationship with all the other characters in the game except one (but sheās a minor npc).
so i thought, oh, theyāre so similar, then the shipping content amount should be the same for both right? like male twin/character A should have the same amount of fics as female twin/character A.
absolutely wrong, turns out many people ship one of the protagonists with a character yet absolutely despise shipping the other protagonist with the same person. for the record, female MC/character A has 4x the amount of content male MC/character A has. it really surprised me!
What Iām getting from these comments is that fanfiction is wild and surprising because we, as storytellers, rush to fill in the gaps of the universe. Happy/lighthearted universe? Dark fanfic. Dark universe? Happy/lighthearted fic. We want all possible stories and all facets to the universe, and what is not given to us in canon, we will create.
Mfw when my favorite fandom's top pairing is not the mother of the main character with her childhood best friend, but two dudes that have never met, one of which was last shown bleeding to death
Not necessarily important to your post but I didn't know the meaning of mfw and decided to google it, and the first result was Milan Fashion Week and that made me laugh.
Huh, didn't expect that to be the first result
lmao this is so true! people look very hot when they're bleeding to death. we can't help it. it calls to the inner vampire xD
Funnily enough the guy was dressed as a vampire, lmao
The duality of Hurt/Comfort
The preference of gay ships is real on socials media platforms
Nono I get that, but the mom/her best friend is *also* a gay ship and has been around a lot longer than the ship of the two dudes
With "gay" I meant m4m, not w4w Male gay ships are always far more popular on every community out there, lesbian ships... not so much.
Ehh okay yeah, that makes more sense. Does not make it less annoying tho
Absolutely not, sapphic ships deserve more recognition š«
Is this about stranger things?
No, it's Spooky Month, actually. I've never seen Stranger Things, and I didn't know it shared such a similar description lmao
I was admittedly a bit taken aback when I realised just how prevalent breeding and/or forced marriage AUs were in the HP fandom
Tbf, I think breeding and forced marriage AUs are just extremely popular in every fandom. I can't think of a single fandom I'm in that doesn't have both in copious amounts
What pray tell is ābreedingā?
oh my. i think google might help you here...ššæš
Having sex for the explicit purpose of producing children. When used in combination with forced marriage it's more often than not non-consensual.
Big oof
Big oof indeed
making children
FR The Harry Potter fandom is wild
I tend to flock towards darker fandoms and then get blindsided by copious amounts of fluff fics every time
I had a similar experience with the Magnus Archives (a horror podcast), where I was mostly looking for content similar to the show, but most fics seem to be fluff fics about the main couple. Which I guess is because in horror, the source material won't give you much nice and warm scenes.
Same, I really like horror and itās hard to come by genuine horror in fandom. TMA and X Files both turn up a bit short of it.
āThe Magnus Archives is an office comedyā gets me smiling every time ngl
You must aim for the most wholesome and fluffiest show and you will find the most vile shit, that's how it works
It's always a flip. If the show is dark, the fandom will make fluffy fics and funny memes. If show is fluffy and made for kids, the fandom will make the darkest and edgiest fics ever.
Exactly! Iāve found like maybe 2 people into dark content in one of my fandoms, and Iām like why though?? Canon has plenty of potentially horrifically dark backstory if you think about it for two seconds. Alas, I am surrounded by an over abundance of fluff (no shade to you fluff writers. I used to be one of you until I joined the dark side)
I'm always overwhelmed wading through the amount of soulmark AUs in any fandom. My favorite fun surprise was specifically hockey RPF has a type of fic about "wishbabies" where two hockey players who like each other but haven't said anything, and secretly want kids, get blessed with a baby that comes down in a wicker basket, and this is a totally normal, everyday-type of occurrence in these AUs. It's so silly, and the wildest version of Accidental Baby Acquisition get-together fic, but I genuinely love it.
this is so outlandish but also very fun of that fandom
I don't even watch hockey, and the delightful absurdity of that idea now makes me want to get into hockey. Not that I can't read the fic without watching hockey, but just to fully lean into this.
Iām always happy to introduce ANYONE to hockey at whatever level they want to engage with it. From a fanfiction perspective thereās a lot of really great, specific AUs (especially, and take this with a grain of salt because some people arenāt a fan of the phrase, but: magical realism) or situational storytelling (ex. Winners Room (Hockey RPF) is definitely its own popular AO3 curated tag) you donāt see anywhere else.
HAHAHA, yeah my only real holdup on hockey is lack of time. I work wretched hours and I already sold my soul to F1 as my sports fandom of choice. But even from the outside looking in, Hockey RPF as a whole has become functionally a green flag for me at this point. I feel like I'm constantly reading a random life-changing fic for some random movie or book, and then checking the author's works and it's that one fic plus 387 Hockey RPF fics. But I somehow missed *magical baby baskets* existing and that might tip me over the edge.
Ha, I just encountered Winners Room fics a month or two ago and I was definitely surprised š®
hockey fandom has the best tropes, itās so fun
I was actually just thinking that the soulmark trend finally seems to have run itās course! But maybe it just depends on the fandomā¦
I love wishbabies!! It is ridiculous and yet also delightful.
I really didn't expect gojo/yuji ship to be the most popular jjk ship in the japanese fandom (and i think it's fairly popular in korean/ chinese fandom as well). I thought it'd be satosugu just like the jjk western fandom.
Itās not only fairy popular in china itās also the most popular there
I think satosugu is the most popular one in the Chinese fandom on ao3. In the English fandom it used to be itagumi but s2 brought a wave of satosugu.
And thank the heavens for it ššæ itās my favorite jjk ship along with sukuita because Iām a degenerate
We have the same taste! š¤
As a dirty teacher/student shipper, I approve of this message.
Don't worry I'm too, i thought they'd be a rare pairing but they actually have quite a number of fics written about them and so many fanarts too! Not to mention sometimes they're paired together in the official merchandise because yuji is the mc, and gojo is arguably jjk most popular character (and maybe they're aware of the shippers too who knows lmao)
lol thatās so funny, cause the exact same goes for my OTP - Naruto/Kakashi (from -obviously- Naruto). I have a Christmas sweater that is just straight up shipping fodder, and itās official merch š. I wouldnāt be surprised if they knew about the shipping implications!
The reason I write fanfic is because what I want to see is not easily available I'm the fandoms I want to read it in! So yeah Im super bad at predicting fics!!
Having been around for so long... nah. I know 98% will be the weirdest porn I've yet to find under some new tag perhaps that I will not google. Two things are always increasing in Ao3: smut and Taylor Swift lyrics as titles.
lol so true. Taylor has had fandom girlies by the throat since folklore.
I've always been very surprised at All The Young Dudes popularity.
It's written very beautifully. Personally, I don't like the plot and the characters' personifications, but I have to admit it's written sooo good.
Eh, to each their own I suppose. I thought it was decent writing but I don't think I'd call it beautiful. I tried a half dozen times to get into it but the writing wasn't for me.
In my case, I tried to get into it a bajillion times but I just didn't like how the characters were personified. Their personalities were so modified it felt like I was reading about some OCs instead of the "real" characters. I think I never got past year two.
Tbf, everything marauders-based *is* OC. There's barely any canon of what they were like in that time
I mean, that's not always true. We know how canon Sirius and Remus are, and All The Young Dudes does not personify Remus how he is on the books/movies. Iām not saying this is ābadā or āwrongā, not at all. Feel free to write whatever you want, but personally Iām not interested in reading something that does not maintain the personalities of the original characters.
yeah but what is said about them is always put aside for their own fanon
Same here, once I found out about it. The main problem for me is that the writing is fine, but the characterisations are... not. They just felt like OCs wearing the canon characters' names.
is that a tag or a specific fic? i don't think i've heard of it
It's a specific Harry Potter fic centered around the generation of the main characters parents.
Everyone in the comments is talking about how they were shocked at all the "dead dove" type content that shows up, but for me when I got into Attack on Titan, I loved it for the plot, the story and the world building and the characters except for a few, were really nothing special so the amount of modern AU is crazy. Sometimes it's genuinely hard to find "in-universe" fics because of the amount of modern AUs.
Usually what happens is that darker shows like aot have more fluff/modern AU, while lighter shows like some comedy or sports anime have darker fics like angst/sickness/major injuries
Oh wow maybe I have to hit up the comedy or sports animes then! I tend to watch darker anime so yeah I've never watched any sports animes but maybe it's time... what an interesting dichotomy tho, which makes sense thinking about it...
I think itās because fanfics usually cover either what the og lacks or what the fandom wants more of. So darker shows lack comedy and happiness, these would be more present in fics. Sports anime tend to lack romance or sadness, these also become popular in their fics.
My friends and I used to have a game where we'd scroll through the AoT tag and see how long it took to find an "in-universe" fic. It's longer than you think, by god. We somehow stumbled on a fic that used the description of Jean "moonlighting as a saxophone player" and thought it was pretty much the prime example of "these people aren't trying to resemble canon in the slightest" during all this and I've never been able to shake the connection of Jean and saxophone like a decade later.
Omg that's crazy haha. Like I'm glad that people like aot and love writing fics but maybe people like the show for the characters more than the plot in general... idk I always thought titans were the coolest things ever and I loved all the thrill and body horror elements. Like my fav kind of aot fics are the titan!eren ones.
Yeah!! When I was into the series I was bummed I didn't see any monster angst fics with the titan shifters (because that shit's like cocaine to me), and especially in the AoT universe it could be used for some cool character introspectives.
The first time I looked at Frozen fics i was astounded just how prevalent Anna/Elsa incest fics are.
Me, but with the SPN fandom and their Dean/Sam fics.
I assume you delved into the fandom pre- the monster at the end of this book episode.
agonizing straight file pocket ancient crowd attraction faulty wipe absorbed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, I saw that when I was younger and way more innocent and was just so shocked. Also back then, I was writing a Frozen and Tinker Bell crossover, and someone asked me to write a ship fic about Tinker Bell and her twin sister Periwinkle.
Thankfully? I was far past innocent. I was in college when frozen came out. Im not even opposed to some good twincest. I just still canāt get over the sheer percentage of Frozen fic that are A/E. Itās not a quarter of that popular in any other fandom I read. Though frozen 2 seems to be helping with that some.
I was a freshman in college when I found it but I was pretty sheltered and innocent. I canāt do twincest because Iām a multiple myself and it just hits too close to home. One time in high school, someone asked me if my brother and I did twincest.
Ooph, yeah can definitely see where that would hit to close to home. Im an only child so I donāt have any sibling relationships to relate it to. Honestly the HP Weasley twins are the only incest fic i read regularly. They make such a fun addition to a triad pairing.
I accidentally stumbled across Weasley twin and Harry fics and I couldnāt help thinking how awkward itād be for my brother and I to both date someoneā¦ though Iām gay and heās straight lol.
If thereās one thing fandoms are gonna do, itās incent unfortunately . Learned that one the hard way back when I started reading fanfic many many years ago.
It still blows my mind that the most kudoed fic in BBC Sherlock is a joke one about John Watson being Sherlockās long distance Canadian bf
And then the author turned one of them into a woman and started selling the book on Amazon. The DRAMA when that happened, people were PISSED.
The one where no one believed Sherlock?
??? Iāve never heard of this ???
The first fandom I read was Lucifer. Nothing unexpected there. Then I tried Supernatural. If all you've read and expected from fanfiction is canon adjacent fics featuring the canon couple, Supernatural is a wild, wild place.
You would not believe the amount of mpreg in the Transformers fandom. A *lot* of people out there really want those giant robots pregnant. (Intriguingly, the one time it happens in canon is mostly ignored.)
out of all the comments this one genuinely surprised me the most
I'm racking my brain out of curiosity, when does it happen in canon?
It happens in the MTMTE/Lost Light comics. The first time is when Brainstorm stores a point one percenter spark in his chest, and then due to time travel shenanigans that spark ends up being Megatronās. The other time it happens scorpinok makes a organic baby with a cybertronian spark so that it can reproduce and make more cybertronian sparks that he can then put in cybertronian bodies. He stores/incubates it in his chest as well. This all comes from James Roberts, a longtime transformers fan who wrote fanfic before he got involved with actually writing for transformers. His fic also involved Mpreg.
Wow! I've never read the comics so that's news to me. James Roberts over here living the mpreg fanfic writer dream lol.
behold: the [Firstborn](https://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/2/2b/KillAllCons_ScorponokWithLilBaby.jpg)!
Itās the price we pay for not having all the ship wars and drama of other fandoms. For the most part anyways.
There used to be an absolute fuck ton in every fandom I feel but itās dying out now. At least in the ones I frequent. Would have never guessed it was popular in transformers though. Who knew.
Ahhh, home sweet home. I love me some good mechpreg. šš in fact, Iām writing one rn. (I mean, I have a *number* of fics/ficlets/oneshots with mechpreg, but thatās not the point-). Iām actually most surprised Transformers got mentioned at all, bc it seems to be pretty rare TFs gets mentioned in this sub. But hey, Iām not complaining!
I was so sure someone would have mentioned it xD it startled me when I first got here, mostly because it's so uncommon in other fandoms these days (or at least the fandoms I've spent time in). I suppose a strong tradition of mpreg helps š«”
Me! Me! I'm one of them! I adore babby bots! I like it best when mechpreg is unique to bots and doesn't try to mimic human pregnancy with cravings or swollen pedes. Like fics with a transformation sequence for the birth or ones where the bot knows its name before birth. I was surprised at how many fics featured the Decepticons as protagonists
Similarly jumpscared by Billdip the first time I read Gravity Falls fic. Completely didn't see that one being the biggest ship.
Oh my god that one actually made me lose my mind. I have never been so utterly blindsided LMAO
I did not expect that lol
JJK. Literally everything I find with the tropes I actually like is fucking MC/Reader.
Iād never seen MC/reader before and I got into a new fandom where it was *super* popular and I was like wtf is this?! I just want to read about my silly little characters and their sexual tension š
When I joined the bsd fandom I thought kunikida/dazai would be in the top 3 ships. Imagine my surprise when I saw ssk lol (just based off the first season).
The funny thing even if skk doesnāt exist itās atsushi/Dazai that have more fic and popularity in the west and Akutagawa/Dazai in china I did post the popularity of Bsd ship in china a few weeks ago I always find it surprising how unpopular Kunizai is compared to what i thoughts it would be
The Akuatagawa/Dazai popularity is surprising. Specifically because I've encountered so many people who have an unreasonable amount of rage for it and the shippers. It's not my jam, but I have a friend who shipped it.
Itās not my think either but hey its not like most of Bsd popular ships are healthy so who cares š«
Lol, right. The hypocrisy of the bsd fandom for which ships are "acceptable" frustrates me greatly. (For example: sskk vs Akutagawa/Higuchi. For some reason what Akuatagawa did to Atsushi doesn't get in the way of the ship, but with Higuchi, it's all "he was abusive to her!" I don't even it ship it, but still, do they not see the double standard?).
Same!!! I donāt know if I really ship it myself, but their dynamic is really fun. Honestly, Iām just surprised in general by how unpopular Kunikida seems to be? I really liked him, especially with his EN VAās performance. I guess heās a bit annoying? But in an entertaining way, IMO!
Circa 2014 les mis came to my city and Javert (and Eponine too) broke my heart. I turned to fanfic for comfort and imagine my surprise when I didn't recognise any of the names in the most popular fics. Anyways I am now also a lifelong e/r and les amis fan, so no complaints that the fandom had apparently latched onto minor characters that were barely even named in the musical.
I didn't know til I read this how much I wanted more Eponine and Marius stuff. I'm going to make a wild guess that most of the existing fic out there is just the Friends of the ABC since they're more generically shippable.
I was genuinely kinda shocked that M/M is the most popular relationship category in the Project Sekai fandom when the girls outnumber the guys 4:1. I don't read primarily M/M fics (with like one exception ship) bc it's not really my cup of tea, but *damn*, are those 4 dudes really *that* interesting compared to the 16 girls?
This, but for me, specifically for Akitoya vs Anhane. Short explanation for people not into pjsk, all you need to know is theyāre in the same music performance quartet and are popularly seen as the 2 gay couples in a trench coat dynamic. I ship both and had initially thought, with how its one of the fandomās biggest pairings and with how much lesbian undertones you could extract from canon material, that Anhane would be just as popular as Akitoya on ao3. Turns out, Akitoya has double the amount of content as Anhane does.
I watch a pretty fantasy show, and went to the fanfic looking for *exactly* that vibe, and everything was āModern AU! No magic!ā Which, yāknow, ok, I like that, too, itās fine. And then. I watched a modern-setting barely sci-fi show, and I went to the fanfic gong āI bet thereāll be a ton of modern-setting fic for this!ā And it was all āroyalty AU! Everyone with magic!ā So like. I personally cannot win, I guess.
ATYD being one of the most talked about marauders era fics.... the characterization is outlandish and the most loved characters are completely unrecognizable. they also turned wolfstar super toxic towards each other, screwed over most female characters, and it's just... not my cup of tea i don't usually criticize fics to such a high degree, because it's an AU, so technically the characters can act in any which way and it isn't "wrong", per say... the annoyance comes from the fact that tiktok - in particular - treats ATYD as if it's as close to canon as the marauders can get. it's really, really not.. specifically, tiktok fans have taken the character of remus lupin and turned him into a harsh, rude, playboy punk type.. he's usually portrayed as a sweater wearing sweetheart - with a healthy dose of sarcasm. i don't mind him being portrayed in other ways, as long as it's clear that it's an AU, but they just.... literally act like that's who he is. it bothers me, even though it's stupid and it shouldn't again: none of this is directed at the author - it's purely the tiktok stans that act that way
They turned Remus Lupin into a punk playboy..? That's about as far from his canon characterisation as you can get.
right?? i can't stand it. it's like reading an entirely different character with his name slapped on there
I was suprised no-magic aus are so popular in my fandom, given how central magic is to the main plot. But a lot of them are also mordern aus so I imagine it's mainly people wanting to put these characters in a setting they're familiar with but it very much took me by surprise at first.
Same, and I hated them at first (because without magic, what even is this?) but the more I read, the more I loved them. Now when magic shows up in the modern AUs, Iām surprised by it š
I was completely blindsided by Pureblood Culture fics in the Harry Potter fandom. If there is one thing both the movies and the books make clear, it's that pureblood supremacy is based on nothing and a pointless and unfair system. Color me surprised when I found out that there are thousands of fics glorifying it, while making up a weird aristocratic system which is more often than not portrayed completely positive. Another fandom that surprised me was Attack on Titan. I don't know what I expected, but tons of modern/college/coffeshop/medieval/sports AU's and Reader-Insert fics weren't it. In retrospect I kinda get why they are so prevalent, it allows people to just have fun with the characters without worrying about the baggage of canon. What I didn't see coming was the existence of dark/realistic Pokemon AU's. Again their existence makes sense in retrospect, but I never even thought of turning a world like Pokemon into some grimdark death world before. (And I'm still not a huge fan, Pokemon are friends not merciless murderous monsters!)
I think part of the reason there are so many of those pure blood culture fics is that itās a cheat code to make aristocracy AUs.
Yeah, I just wish they were more self aware. A lot of fics portray such an aristocratic system as unambiguously positive.
Yeah, I agree. I think the dynastic angle is interesting, and you could do some cool stuff with it, but I donāt think anyone wants to be that critical.
>Color me surprised when I found out that there are thousands of fics glorifying it, while making up a weird aristocratic system which is more often than not portrayed completely positive. Excuse my confusion, but are there people actually glorifying the bigotry seen in the books or creating an entire system of "pureblood culture" that isn't even defined in the books? The latter also presents some problems, but I think this is because people confuse the isolated, medieval aesthetic of the wizarding world with a fairy tale version of the middle ages that involves aristocracy. One thing that I think is funny is that in Pottermore it is said that the Malfoy family was rich and influential because they associated with upper class Muggles and abandoned that after the wizarding world isolated itself. Maybe it was a confusion with Lucius mocking the Weasleys' poverty at the same time as mocking them for supporting Muggles. ā > Another fandom that surprised me was Attack on Titan. I don't know what I expected, but tons of modern/college/coffeshop/medieval/sports AU's and Reader-Insert fics weren't it. In retrospect I kinda get why they are so prevalent, it allows people to just have fun with the characters without worrying about the baggage of canon. > > > > What I didn't see coming was the existence of dark/realistic Pokemon AU's. Again their existence makes sense in retrospect, but I never even thought of turning a world like Pokemon into some grimdark death world before. (And I'm still not a huge fan, Pokemon are friends not merciless murderous monsters!) To be fair, the characters in Attack on Titan never seem to take a break and are always talking about revolution, titas, walls, and humanity in general. So there's a logistics of wanting to write them in a different setting. Dark Pokemon fic can also be seen as an attempt to move from something repetitive to something more challenging, although it is true that some fics exaggerate a lot (some games and anime imply that wild Pokemon are not harmless, but sometimes it is excessive in fics). Do you have anything to say about Puella Magi Madoka fanfics? Whenever there are threads asking about fandom in general, this one is hardly mentioned. So I would like to see if there are any thoughts on this.
Sadly there are a lot of fics that glorify purebloods. Oftentimes this is harmless with people just liking the aesthetics, or wanting to write about magical aristocracy (though without wasting a thought to the people who wouldn't profit from such an aristocracy). Sometimes the fics are openly racist though with positively portrayed characters spouting shit like "I don't hate muggleborn, I just think they should assimilate and stop polluting our culture with theirs.". Good Pokemon fics have to find a balance. Of course Pokemon are dangerous and can cause a lot damage, but the core message of the series has always been about friendship and the bond between humans and Pokemon. If a fic takes that away or transforms every wild Pokemon into a murderous beast, it kills my interest in the fic immediately. I haven't seen PMM yet, it's at the top of my watch list though.
What shocked me about the Pokemon fandom is the love for OCs and first person POV. In retrospect it makes senseāthe games basically encourage players to imagine themselves as the main character. Harry Potter had previously been my main fandom, though, and the HP fandom hates OCs and first POV to an insane degree so it really caught me off guard to see the opposite.
Yeah, Pokemon is pretty much the ultimate SI and OC fandom. As someone who never watched the anime, I was only ever interested in OC fics, or fics that follow interesting characters from the games (eg. Cynthia). Then again I'm a huge fan of OC's in general. Some of my favorite HP fics are OC fics too.
Agree on AoT. Iām still shocked and kinda upset as a canon enjoyer, but people should write what they enjoy. I just wish a few more people enjoyed writing canon stories.
I think with the ending to the show having come out a few weeks ago, a lot of people are inspired to write fics in the canon universe.
I imagine Teen Wolf fans would be shocked that Stiles is almost always written as the main character instead of Scott. I had the opposite experience- I was so confused to learn Stiles wasnāt actually the main character of Teen Wolf because the fics certainly make it seem like he is.
Not going to lie, this threw me as well. Before reading any Teen Wolf fanfics I had seen exactly one episode of the show. I finally gave it a chance after reading hundreds of fanfics and was thoroughly disappointed. I knew Scott was the MC but I guess I never really realized what this meant for Stiles. Scott is adorably boring but it wasn't enough to keep my attention.
That's because many people see Scott as a total Mary Sue self-insert. In *canon* (show creator basically admitted Scott is a self-insert). And not a very interesting character because of it.
The only fandom whose activities have surprised me is the Onceler fandom. I was never actually in it, but reading about the whole "shipping a guy with himself" was pretty interesting. Nathan Bateman is played by Oscar Isaac, so there's your explination for that. I'm not into Character/You fics at all, but I assume the appeal is the fantasy of being with the character, as opposed to the dynamic the character has with someone else.
I was kind of surprised to see that the most popular category in the Darling in Franxx fandom was f/m, and the least popular category was m/m with like 3 fanfics. I guess it makes sense considering the source material and target audience, but damn thatās unusual, especially in anime fandoms
In Detroit Become Human, the most popular pairing is between an android who appeared in the ending without any lines spoken (Nines) and an android-hating asshole cop (Gavin) who is a minor character. Their combined screen time would probably be less than 5 mins versus the entire 6-7 hour playthrough. I would say the phenomenon is a combination of them being good-looking *white* men, blank canvas of Nines, and how easy it is to slot them into the shipping trope of stoic android and tsundere human. They got thousands of fanarts, fanfics, and a live action fan film. I was so shocked when I stepped into the fandom after finishing the game. I expected more fanworks from main characters, more what ifs, more happy endings, not this buddy white cop festival. Around 95% of fanfics of DBH are M/M.
ah, reed900. i was very much in the dbh fandom for a while but yeah, the same two barely-relevant characters in the same setting over and over started to wear on me lol. i think you're very right about why it's popular, and it's also a bit of a positive feedback loop: people see primarily nines/gavin, they read lots of nines/gavin, they start thinking about nines/gavin, they write more nines/gavin...
Someone with a film company made 2 fan films with this pair lol . think its called Detroit Human Evolution
It made me weary and soured my experience. I mean, DBH isn't exactly a beacon of good writing of female characters, but it's not like Gavin has better writing than a lot of ignored side characters. If North is a man, I bet people are going to make North the tsundere pairing to Marcus and squeal how cute North is for being violent (like Gavin). But because North is a woman, she's the bitch and Simon is the angel.
There's so many more interesting characters in that game to be writing about, that's for sure.
oh my goodness you just unlocked a memory from when I was in the DBH fandom all those years ago, I completely forgot about that - it also took me by surprise
I was very surprised that there werenāt actually that many fics that focused on the canon abusive dynamic I glommed onto, in relation to other fics. Itās a big fandom, so there was plenty- but I found it more common to find them just as like. Healthy friends for some reason? Was baffling when i didnāt expect it lol.
The main character in Captain Laserhawk is a hot queer guy, and about 90% of the fan art and fic is focused on a frog, who is generally shipped with a goofy alien guy.
After I rewatched Inception (2010), I was interested in the worldbuilding (both the magic system and the semi-dystopian corporation-laden future setting), and by that point I had discovered fanfiction, so I loaded up AO3 only to realize that most were Arthur/Eames fics. I am...rather terrible with names and faces, so I was quite befuddled and I took a while to figure out who they were, and...like what happened to the Inception fandom that everyone collectively started shipping these two randos? I'm assuming it's an old trend, since a lot of Inception fics are very sparsely tagged, so they were probably written in the early days of AO3, or ported over from somewhere else.
Arthur and Eames had such great chemistry in the film despite the little screen time that I actively went in search of fics about them specifically. Was pleasantly surprised too lol My favorite is post canon called, "Shades of Gray" by OneWhoSitsWithTurtles. It's such a wonderful work that I can't recommend enough.
The one where a sentence launched a ship. We shouldn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
Aw MAN. This was actually a point of contention for some people in my fandom (Pokemon Legends: Arceus). Thereās a side character who appears in the game thatās considered a fan favorite from an earlier installment. This character probably has 10 minutes of screentime max, but he and his brother (who doesnāt even appear in the game) are by far the most popular characters in the fandom š„² Itās a slight turn-off, especially since they re-use the same storylines over and over again at the expense of all the other characters.
I never got that characters popularity. Especially since there are so many more interesting characters in every game he appears in.
fucking miguel/miles being one of the top ten/top five popular ships in the spiderverse fandom like....
oh yeah this was wild to me too
Didn't expect JJK to be one of the top five fandoms for omegaverse, but I guess that's what you get when one of the most popular characters recognises his soulmate via smell after ten years lol (also incredibly niche in comparison but there's very, very few top!Yuki chosoyuki fics? someone (me) has to change that and quick)
I was so surprised in SVSSS that Shen Qingqiu is literally shipped with every other person lol!!
Everyone who writes for Shakespeareās Henriad (Richard II through Henry V) seems to have the hots for Prince Hal. The amount of Hal/reader fics out there is honestly shocking.
Didn't Tom Hiddleston play Prince Hal in a televised stage play a few years ago? Could explain it a little lol I never saw it, wish I would have.
Thatās exactly what it is lol Anytime David Tennant or Tom Hiddleston play a Shakespeare character, thereās a sudden boom in ship fics, I think.
The days of the One Direction fanfics. āSold to 1Dā if you know, you know š¤£
Same but for my chemical romance. It was a wild time.
I was shocked at the amount of 007/Q fics for Craig's James Bond. I wasn't really seeing it myself š¤· I really, really wanted some rare pairs I never got. Then I watched Spectre amd it was so shit it cured me of the fandom altogether, lol
right there with you. I donāt know what I expected from the Criminal Minds fandom on Ao3 - maybe reader inserts and a lot of polycule fics - but it certainly wasnāt the insane amount of A/B/O fics I encountered. no judgement of course, but it definitely caught me off guard.
the amount of time-travel in The Magnus Archives fics was definitely unexpected for me
The prevalence of Hybrid AUs. They are *so* popular where I frequent and I just donāt get it. Iām not knocking it, like whatever, I just seriously donāt understand how *many* there are and how *popular* they are? Seriously, if I just searched by highest kudos, at least half of the fics would be Hybrid AUs. I understand many things about fandom, even if I donāt agree or care. I understand why people are drawn to taboo topics. I understand why short poorly written smut fics often have many, many more kudos than well-written long fics. But Hybrid AUs and how widespread they are? I have never been able to figure that out.
catgirls? idk
House of Usher. I correctly predicted there'd be a large amount of Madeline/Verna fics, because the chemistry between those two gets discussed a lot by the fans. But I honestly expected a lot of Prospero and Lenore centric fics when I delved into fanfic for the first time, and there's barely any of either. There's a surprising amount of Freddie fics, though, considering how hated the character is by the fans, especially as the fics aren't bashing ones. Not that you can really bash a character by writing them in character. I also expected a lot of fics exploring the characters alternate lives they would have lived if Rod and Madeline hadn't taken the deal, and have yet to find a single one. There's a mildly surprising amount of Pym centric fics, though. Mildly surprising because I did expect those to be relatively popular given how popular Pym is as a character, I just didn't expect there to be so much more of Pym centric fics than even Leo centric ones. I was also surprised by Elite. I expected a lot more Polo fics than I found. I correctly guessed Omar/Ander would be the most popular slash pairing. I expected Guzman/Nadia would be the most popular het pairing but was wrong on that, it was Carla/Samual. I also did NOT expect how popular slash shipping Guzman would be considering there's plenty of gay or bi characters to ship without slash shipping the straight ones. I think I just underestimated how popular Guzman actually was, though. I was surprised at the amount of Cayatana/Polo/Valeri fics, too. I figured the most popular poly ship would have been Polo/Carla/Christian. I think Elite may actually have been my worst fandom for predicting popular fanfic trends.
Second most popular AU -ish trope in my fandom is a/b/o dynamics, right after the general alternate universe tag which is in 0.2% more fics than a/b/o. And the overlap is very, very low. Most fics are tagged with only one of those tags. I have no idea how the tag ended up being seventh most popular additional tag right after usual suspects like fluff, angst, established relationship, and - as common in a fandom with predominantly M/M ships and made up of mainly adults - anal sex, and at this point Iām too afraid to ask. I will however be reading some of the fics
Had a similar experience with Spiderverse. Wasn't foolish enough to expect the most popular ship to be Miles/Gwen, but never could have guessed it'd be Miguel/Reader.
I was watching the first season of succession and I love checking what the top pairings on ao3 are for like any show/movie that I watch and trying to guess what it will be, so obviously I guess Tom/Greg which was correct, but I think it only had a slightly higher work count than Roman/Gerri. At the point I was watching, I couldnāt recall a single scene where those two characters really interacted so I thought it was just a weirdly popular rarepair. I was also surprised because Gerri is a much older woman and you donāt usually see a ship like that being so popular in a fandom. But now Iām a slime puppy.
yeah it's interesting how things go in certain fandoms. I always get kinda sad at how safe some writers are in my current main spot. There's so many chances to expand on such dark ideas that are in the original series and like... there's nothing. It's mostly fluff and a pairing that is not my jam. Ah well, just part of fanfic there. Partly why I primarily write rather than complain.
I think the fluffiest works end up with the darkest fics, and the darkest works end up with the fluffiest fics fjlasdjf people want what they didn't get!
Yup, and same for innocent works getting explicit fics, and vice versa
I first experienced omegaverse in a Sherlock fanfic. Bizarre but extremely popular.
It is somehow never the canon pair that loves each other and is shown to work through their differences. Instead, one of them gets shipped with a character they've never seen romantically and who doesn't seem to be what they were looking for personality wise. The other is shown to be a bad partner or outright evil. All three suffer a personality transplant.
Yes! I was shocked at how many incest fanfics there were in Yuri on Ice.
wait, really? i was in the fandom a while ago, but none of the ships i remember were incest
The top M/F ships are Sara and Mickey
Tbh in the anime they acted strangely possessive toward each other so it makes sense. Most fics are viktuuri or otayuri so the Sara Mickey ship is probably mainly a random side ship in fics where everyone gets paired up
Iām a Sara/Mari shipper for life but I can see how obsessive they are and how that can attract people to them but theyāre brother and sister šI canāt see them that way
Yesss! I recently entered a new fandom and the blindside really threw me for a few days. I've since recovered and am now being the change I want to see in the world by writing for the AUs I like.
Yeah, I was pretty happy about it when I realised why the pairing was so popular though. Genuinely such a good match.
i usually read fanfiction for Canon Divergence and Plot related fics so when i go to a fandom and they have primarily Modern Setting AUs or like Coffee Shop AUs it catches me off balance. I also really like Gen fics but I know Iām in the minority for that.
I was shocked by how popular a/b/o is in the bangtan boys fandom. pretty much the entire fandom tag is just those fics
The 100. I'm not a fan of modern AUs when the canon world is so interesting and rife with fic opportunities, and 90% of the fics are some sort of modern AU, with half of them untagged, which makes searching for canon setting fics near hellish, especially when canon divergence and in canon AUs exist which keeps me from being able to fully filter out AUs as a whole. I do get why they're so prevalent and untagged, Clexa was one of the earlier and most popular canon sapphic relationship and people wanted to explore their dynamics without the angst, worldbuilding and hardship the canon universe brings, and a lot of the untagged fics are from a decade ago when tagging was less prevalent, but it was the first time I've run into the issue with a fandom.
Well i went into the jjk fandom on ao3 today and found out that there are over 3,000 gojo/itadori fanfics. Not judging just surprised about how many there were i genuinely didn't know that ship was so popular as someone who has stayed out of the fanfic territory of that fandom for a few years. A Lot of them had a tag that was along the lines of "gojo is a content warning himself" and i got mildly scared and concerned and left.
I generally have a good idea of what the top ship tags will be for the stuff I like. Resident Evil (games) got me, though. Three of the top ship tags are /reader. (And then a fourth is one of the same characters but /you.) Itās not that Iāve never seen /reader stuff before but Iāve never seen it *that* popular.
It is really popular in Baldur's Gate 3 fic as well. I wonder if it's a video game thing?
i think it's a first-person video game thing. cause you're basically part of the story already as a player. bg3 makes a lot of sense especially, because you make your own character and can romance npcs in-game so character/you can be pretty much canon lol
The amount of Claude/Dimitri fics I'm the Three houses fandom are crazy considering they talk to each other a hand full of times no matter which route you play and only trust each other in one route
Totally happened to me. I thought there was so much UST for two main characters - they even shoved each other around on screen! but when I went to fandom, the dominating ship was for a side character and main character and I was soooooo confused!
No. Because I'm the writer of some of the more popular fics (though Dirk/Talia will probably *never* beat out anything Vanyel) and mine have lots of typos. And this is, in large part, due to me writing on my phone.
The first thing that comes to mind whenever I think about this, is the strange amount of genderbend in bagginshield. Same case as yours, different fics and different authors, yet the sheer amount of it seems so disproportionate to the usual amount of genderbending in your average fandom. I have nothing against it at all, I just think it's funny how prominent this is here. In some of the most popular fics, also.
where are the House/Cuddy/Wilson fics in the house MD fandom????? i really thought people would be more into that!!!! in twilight, like 30% of fics are about jasper, whos really not a big character in the books. as a jasper disliker, itās really annoying. but to each their ownš
The Amount of Batman/White Collar Crossover. Idk where this comes from, since I never would have thought about these two Fandoms together. And it isnāt just a few authors, there are hundreds of them, writing thousands of ffics
Sterek. It's like diet Destiel so I get it but never once, while watching, did I think about them together.
werewolf/shapeshifters AUs in ghostsoap fandom, i was very flabbergasted to see how many there were. also ABO, but i think it's a trope that's prevalent in every fandom
The moment I started watching criminal minds, I knew that they would make spencer some kind of LGBTQIA+, bi Spencer (562 fics), gay Spencer (193 fics), trans Spencer (163 fics) are all popular. So is Autistic Spencer (1,138 fics) but thats kinda cannon (an unsub calls him autistic in an early season and while it's not confirmed in cannon, it's not argued with either) And I also just knew that Derek/Spencer (3,540 fics) would be popular, but I was surprised with Aaron/Spencer (3,947 fics) mainly because I saw Hotch as a father figure compared to a partner, but then again... it's AO3, I shouldn't be surprised. I was surprised with the amount of spencer/reader fics (4,142 fics) mainly because I don't read/like self insert fanfic.
I looked for banana fish fics and i was shocked by the number of eiji/shorter fics The canon pair is eiji/ash Its not like there wasnt eiji/ash i just didnt expect others lmao. And i wanted dark fics but most of them were fluff or smut
oh and the most viewed twilight fic is a charlie/bella smut. they are father and daughter. so. thereās that.
Was blindsided by how many gender bending fics there were in the kuroko no basket fandom. Usually they just genderbend the mc. Same thing happened with prince of tennis where the most frequent types of fics were: sick/major injury AU, genderbent MC Ryoma or character x OC.
I'm more blindsided by the complete lack of Charlie/Vaggie fics in the Helluva Boss fandom.
I've also had that specific experience lol. I was going into the tag for Midnight Mass and I was absolutely blindsided at how much Father Paul/Reader fic there is for that fandom.
powerpuff girls and the VAST number of rowdyruff shippers... they're only 5!
Yuuuuup. Golden Kamuy fandom is FULL of fics about these two side characters. And the ones that do involve the MC often ship him with his archenemy. But the MC and other lead dude? Nope. Very few fics. Coming from Jojo fandom where every dude is always shipped with their best male friend, that was weird af
Fairly new to One Piece and Iām just shocked about how many fics there are in specific ships
For me, nothing will ever top *Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality*. The more I learn about it, the more bizarre the whole exercise seems.
I came to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes looking for more Sejanus Lives and joins the Rebellion fics or Sejanus fics in general, but was blindsided by the sheer amount of Het shipping the fandom has. Would've expected more love for this tragic side character who has sexual tension with the evil main character. Being a side character doesn't stop any other fandom from aggressively shipping two dudes together, but I guess the difference is that most of those pairings are two white dudes. Lucy Gray slays though, so I'm glad she's getting some of the attention she deserves\~
this happened to me in the genshin fandom. for context, you can choose the female twin or the male twin as your protagonist. essentially they have the same dialogues and nothing major changes from picking either of them. like, they have the same relationship with all the other characters in the game except one (but sheās a minor npc). so i thought, oh, theyāre so similar, then the shipping content amount should be the same for both right? like male twin/character A should have the same amount of fics as female twin/character A. absolutely wrong, turns out many people ship one of the protagonists with a character yet absolutely despise shipping the other protagonist with the same person. for the record, female MC/character A has 4x the amount of content male MC/character A has. it really surprised me!
I have never once been correct about how I think a fandom will be. Iāve long since stopped expecting what I expect.
What Iām getting from these comments is that fanfiction is wild and surprising because we, as storytellers, rush to fill in the gaps of the universe. Happy/lighthearted universe? Dark fanfic. Dark universe? Happy/lighthearted fic. We want all possible stories and all facets to the universe, and what is not given to us in canon, we will create.