Chapter Text

We’re going to be sharing data we’ve found by analyzing fanwork metadata. For instance, the way the author has described or categorized their fanwork, or the way the audience has responded. Therefore, a lot of this data is highly dependent on how the author has tagged or described their works.

We’ll be starting out talking about some recent trends on Archive of Our Own -- the fanwork archive with the best tagging system, where it’s relatively easy to gather data about what fans are up to. Later, we’ll talk about some differences between platforms.

Some of you may be aware the Game of Thrones recently ended... :) So how did fandom respond?

In May 2019, the Game of Thrones finale aired. While each previous season had caused a surge in fanwork production, Season 8 caused a spike like nothing before, and the fandom is still going strong.

raw data (for this and other GoT analyses)

What are people writing about? One thing I was curious about was how many people are creating fanworks where the story diverges substantially from what happened on TV. Turns out, there’s been a fairly steady increase in the percent of Canon Divergence works. (This graph shows the percentage of GoT works that have used this tag over time.) That's perhaps not a huge surprise; as more characters have died and other major events have happened over the course of the show, more and more authors have made at least one narrative choice that differs significantly from the show.

...By contrast, however, there has been a huge increase since S8 in the percentage of fanworks that are specifically written to fix something in the narrative (using the "Fix-It" tag).

I was curious which characters are getting written about the most, and how S8 changed that. Sansa and Jon Snow have been most written about, both before and since, but the finale didn't have a huge impact on their popularity.

Arya and Dany saw the sharpest increase in fanworks.

Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion, and Gendry also had large gains. (Bran and Cersei were only slightly behind.)

Another event that some of you may have been aware of [I said to an audience including a lot of Ineffable Husbands cosplayers]...

Good Omens the book was published nearly 30 years ago, and it has had a loyal fan following ever since, but that fandom has been pretty low-key in terms of fanwork production over the past bunch of years. When the TV adaptation aired in May, the fandom suddenly started producing thousands of new fanworks per month.

raw data for this and other Good Omens stats

For context, this probably puts Good Omens among the top 5 most productive fandoms on AO3 since the TV show aired. (Probably because I didn't exhaustively check all fandoms, I only checked the biggest fandoms plus a few other likely candidates. So there may be some fandoms missing here.)

Not only that, but in the past few months, Aziraphale/Crowley has become one of the biggest ships of all time on AO3!

raw data for biggest ships

I was also curious what characters have seen the biggest changes in popularity from book to TV fandom. A number of celestial beings have seen huge increases -- as well as a couple humans (Anathema Device and Warlock). Meanwhile, Adam and his friends ("Them") were less of a focus in the show than the book, and that is reflected in a decrease in fandom attention.

NB: I’ve omitted a bunch of other characters where attention increased but to a lesser degree. (And I’ve left Dog in because she amuses me to use as a neutral reference point.)

[BONUS SLIDE] And what themes are people writing about? This is a partial list of common tags in the TV fandom. It's full of a ton of fluff, but also angst, hurt/comfort, and (mutual) pining. And aside from MCU, Good Omens is the fandom that most often uses the “Idiots in Love” tag.

Based on Google Trends data, I believe the hugely popular "Ineffable Husbands" tag (and phrase) has only come into common online usage since the TV show.

There are a number of fandoms that Good Omens has a bunch of crossovers with.

NB: An incomplete list. And “a bunch” includes some fairly low numbers here (a few dozen), as is to be expected in the early days of a growing fandom.

I’ve noticed a few things that some of these fandoms have in common...

… interestingly, Untitled Goose Game does not fit any of these, but Good Omens is the most fandom that UGG most often crosses over with! :)

Sadly, the Chinese government recently cracked down on homoerotic fanworks and original works.

While large numbers of these works had previously been hosted on Chinese sites, after the ban many Chinese authors started moving their works to AO3.

If we compare Chinese works (blue) to AO3 overall (red), the Chinese fanworks are more often Explicit, Mature, or Not Rated. (Unsurprising, given that pornography is illegal in China and authors are more likely to get in trouble for such works.)

The Chinese works are also disproportionately M/M.

We also looked at the biggest fandoms where the authors have specified that the works are in Chinese (中文). Since this slide is particularly hard to read, here is the list:

Real Person Fiction 声入人心 | Super-Vocal (TV) Marvel Cinematic Universe 全职高手 - 蝴蝶蓝 | Quánzhí Gāoshǒu - Húdié Lán Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Chinese Comedian RPF ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Chinese Actor RPF 镇魂 | Guardian (TV) Captain America (Movies) 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV) Men’s Football RPF Original Work The Avengers (Marvel Movies) 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù DCU (Comics) Thor (Movies) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)

Of particular note -- there are about 12K fanworks for Super-Vocal, 75% of which are Chinese language. That makes it the 97th biggest fandom on AO3! So expect to see Chinese language works showing up in more analyses of top fandoms going forward.

raw data

Among the top fandoms, we find some familiar fandoms that are also some of the most popular AO3 fandoms overall.

But (as we can see by also looking at how many of the works are Chinese vs. other languages), all the fandoms where Chinese is >50% of the fanworks refer to Chinese cultural works or Chinese celebrities.

There are also several Western + Anime fandoms where Chinese is disproportionately represented. These include Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Men’s Football RPF (Soccer), and Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them. (Shoutout to Franzeska's favorite small fandom, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), which has 10% Chinese fanworks on AO3!)