what's big in fandom these days

[melannen]

In all that reminiscing about platforms of old that I did on the survey, I realized the only one I really missed (as opposed to missing the people who were there) was del.icio.us, and specifically del.icio.us 's "recently popular pages with this tag" pages. I had the "popular pages tagged 'slash'" page on del.icio.us bookmarked and basically read everything that appeared on it (unless it was one of my DNW pairings.) It was the zeitgeist of fandom-as-a-whole (or, at least, the parts of lj slash fandom that had adopted del.icio.us) and always full of good fic to read.

There doesn't really seem to be anything that will do that anymore. pinboard.in/popular/fandom tries, but there's really not enough people bookmarking fic there for it to work. And I'm kinda between fandoms right now (or, well, not super-plugged-in to any fandom that is large enough to get me all the fic I want, anyway) so I miss it a lot.

It occurred to me though that AO3 would probably let me filter for recent, popular fic if I massaged its Advanced Search page. And it will! Sort of. You can't filter by *when* a kudos was given, and there doesn't seem to be away to search for works posted in a particular time range - only for works posted *or* updated in that time range, which doesn't give as good of results because it's swamped by long-going WIPs that just finished.

But I kind of got there by searching completed works in English with more than 500 kudos sorted in order of posting, which seems to give a pretty good overview of recently popular fics in recently popular fandoms.

If you're curious as to what those fandoms are right now, here's all the ones with 2 or more works in the first 200 fics on that sort, as of now:
Black Panther (23)
Teen Wolf (22)
Bangtan Boys (21)
Supergirl (20)
Marvel movies, other (17)
Captain America (14)
The 100 (14)
*Naruto (11)
Yuri on Ice!!! (10)
Voltron Legendary Defender (10)
SKAM (7)
My Hero Academia (5)
Harry Potter (5)
Star Wars (2)
Supernatural (2)
Shadowhunters (2)
*Transformers (2)
Final Fantasy XV (2)
...with a long tail of about a dozen more with one each. (Naruto gets an asterisk because all 11 fics were by the same author; Transformers because both fics were by the same author; so it may be an author effect rather than a fandom effect.) And, hey, only about a third of the fics are about two white dudes in love!

So there is the list of current popular/active fandoms. Now, somebody explain to me what SKAM is and why it's on the list (I know all the others, more or less.)

Comments

[thawrecka]

I think SKAM is a Norwegian teen show that has boys kissing, which is why it might be on the list! Don't quote me on that, though, I've never watched it.

[melannen]

It does definitely seem to be Scandinavian and gay, going by the character tags.

[cathexys]

How did Teen Wolf get there in second place? I know i've been rereading a lot, but I can't believe the fandom's still going that strong...

Also I'd have expected Star Wars to be higher, but that last film killed a lot of fannish love, didn't it?

[melannen]

I don't think it killed the love, but the only fics that made it up that high were Rey/Kylo, but of course a significant proportion of SW fandom won't touch that ship. So I guess when your most popular ship is also the most hated ship in fandom, it kind of splits the kudos vote.

I have no idea why Teen Wolf is still going so strong! Of course I never understood why it took off so well in general, other than the obvious. :P It could be people still finishing up post-series-finale longfic? Of course a significant portion of the assorted Marvel was Steve/Tony that is ignoring all canon since Avengers. I guess when you get a good two white dudes fandom going, it can still be self-sustaining for a long while. (I personally am wondering at The 100 being that high. I had no idea that show was even still on the air! But lookit, still there being an f/f juggernaut.)

[muccamukk]

I think the 100 people are spite shipping, since canon offed one half of their ship a few years back. Good for them!

[melannen]

Yay, one of the best kinds of shipping! Even if I do always look at their pairing tag and expect genderswapped Smallville fic.

[cathexys]

The 100 also has the advantage of having several het and slash and femslash pairings.

As for TW, I think it hits a bunch of kinks that can be transported anywhere. Kind of like RPF :)

[melannen]

Yeah, I think TW Is basically acting like an RPF fandom at this point!

....pretty much all the 100 fic I see is Clexa. I'm sure there are other pairings, but it seems to have one main one.

[lannamichaels]

Teen Wolf seems to have slipped the tracks of being at all tied to its canon and has gone off onto a whole new world of its own, chuging away under its own power. ;) I subscribe to someone who posts a lot of Teen Wolf and I'm honestly not sure she kept watching after s4. AUs are forever. (I also wonder if Stiles is an archetypal-character who hits fandom in a way that Methos did, guess we'll see if in ten years we keep having AUs where Stiles shows up in other people's canons, although Methos has certain advantages over him.)

[melannen]

I think it slipped the tracks long ago, yeah. And nothing newer really seems to have turned up to replace it in terms of "badly-written sf-ish show with lots of hot slashy white dudes", so unlike when that happened with, say, SGA, people aren't moving on.

And, yeah, Stiles. Stiles is definitely... a phenomenon.

[muccamukk]

I'm glad BP is doing so well! I had a post a few days back saying I was between fandoms, and wasn't sure what was around, but it seemed like ppl were enjoying that.

(I'd need to see the film again, which isn't in the cards, but I'm happy it exists.)

[melannen]

I think that's partly because people are coming back from the movie being thirsty for fic, but there isn't enough yet to be choosy, so anything halfway decent gets *everybody's* kudos. (I know I had read pretty much everything in the tag, as of last week.) But I hope BP continues to thrive! or at least manages to establish itself well enough to survive Infinity War ruining everything.

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you so much for posting the link! I have bookmarked it!

[melannen]

I hope it is useful! I haven't been able to test yet to see how fast it moves (although the kudos threshhold could be lowered if needed, I guess.)

[ratcreature]

Google tells me that SKAM is a tv and web series about high school students in Oslo that started because a Norwegian radio station wanted to improve its online presence to attract a younger audience. It apparently was first online only (partly eps but also viewers could follow the characters on various social media to get more and there were chats on the website) and then later seasons aired on TV. Also apparently initially you coul watch it from everywhere but then they had to geoblock because of music rights.

[melannen]

Ah! Yes, that explains why the popular fic seems to be about undercover police. :D

[ratcreature]

Heh.

It's apparently really famous though and won all sorts of stuff. And probably might grow further since they sold the rights to the concept all over, so now there is a US version planned (Wikipedia says Facebook bought the rights?), also a German version starts this month, and rights have also been sold to Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, and the French version already started.

[luzula]

I'm Swedish, and I can tell you that SKAM (the name means "shame", btw) was widely popular in both Sweden and Norway, and not only among young people. My mom liked it, for example. Haven't seen it myself.

I'm surprised so many of the fics are in English, though--only 167 of the 4581 fics are in Norwegian. I'm guessing the Scandinavian fans are not on AO3 but somewhere else.

[melannen]

Huh! Cool. I feel like I'm sort of vaguely aware of Scandinavian TV, but then I realized, no, the people I follow only talk about Icelandic stuff, which is not the same. :P

[schneefink]

Oh, neat! Thanks for sharing :)

[melannen]

I hope it turns out to be useful!

[white_aster]

:goes to look what transformers is in there: ah! Yeah, those fics are good and I know she's a bnf, but wowza, I've never seen "two fics with over 500 kudos each in less than a month" before!

[melannen]

Yeah, astolat probably never published a fic that gets less than 500 kudos in a month. I'm marveling more at blackkat, the Naruto person who's putting out a new 500-kudos fic every 3 days! And they seem to be posting mostly rarepairs with minor characters, too.

[white_aster]

I was honestly so excited when astolat moved into the TF fandom. And she's writing all the fixit fic I could ever want. I roll around in it gleefully every time she posts some new way to fix that crazy, crazy canon. :D

[melannen]

:D I dipped my toe in Transformers fandom a few times and was like "where is all the Decepticon/Autobot end-the-war fixit fic?" I feel kind of like a fake fan that it took following Astolat there for me to find it, but I'm not *complaining*!

[white_aster]

:D Yeah, they're definitely doing that niche right, and really going for the gold. I love those sort of fics, too. I could probably make some recs, if you want. >_>

[afearfulthing.livejournal.com]

Blackkat is the one who starts a new trope-y au every few weeks, has a million multi-chapter wips... And yet has completed not one but TWO 100,000+ word time travel fix-its. O_o I stand in awe

[green]

Ahhh I forgot how much I loved the big in fandom pages. I use my pinboard for recipes these days, whoops.

I'm honestly pleased to see Teen Wolf is still chugging along. I'm in the fandom in a big way still, and not with the pairing the ate fandom, either (though I do stray over there sometimes).

[lokifan]

Pleased to see FFXV up there, if only just :D And yeah, I know what you mean about it being harder to take the pulse of fandom overall.