How Big Are Your Fandoms?

[ermingarden]

A fun meme borrowed from ysilme:

How big are your fandoms? List them in order of the number of works posted for them on AO3.

I'm doing this for the fandoms I'm currently active (i.e., regularly reading and/or writing fic) in. As of approximately 6 PM Eastern Time on March 20, 2022, the work count is as follows:

1) Star Wars – All Media Types has 192,780;

2) 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù has 54,335,

3) The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth – J. R. R. Tolkien has 21,340,

4) The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien has 21,168, and

5) 天官赐福 - 墨香铜臭 | Tiān Guān Cì Fú - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù has 9,221.

I'm totally shocked – MDZS has over twice as many works on AO3 as does the Silm or (bookverse) LotR!

The MDZS novel serialization on JJWXC only began in 2015, and CQL only came out in 2019! (2019 was also the year the fan translation of the novel by Exiled Rebels was completed.) CQL has 38,138 works; 9,883 of those are not also tagged with MDZS, bringing the total for the umbrella fandom across media types up to almost 65k! (There's no "All Media Types" umbrella tag for MDZS; there are 250 works tagged with the donghua but neither the novel or CQL.) TOLKIEN J. R. R. – Works and Related Fandoms, the broadest Tolkien umbrella, beats that with 84,066 – but the oldest of the Tolkien works is (back)dated to 2003, and The Hobbit was published in 1937!

Comments

[ysilme]

I think getting "correct" numbers with Tolkien fic is particularly difficult - and likely with any fandom which has similar fandom tags. For one, a lot of people who migrated their older fic aren't aware that there are other fandom tags and migth tag only for Lord of the Rings - I've seen a big number of fics which are clearly pre-LotR but still tagged as that. Then there are the archived small archives who have been migrated to the AO3, which also tend to be tagged only with Lord of the Rings. And then there's the question of what is really Silm fic and what not - I've had a complaint once that what I'm writing shouldn't be tagged as such since it's not about things directly happening in the book. I'm mainly writing about the late Second and early Third age in Rivendell, with bits of Lindon, Lothlórien and Rhovanion thrown in, and back when I started the tag "Tolkien and related fandoms" didn't exist. I also want to be found by people who're searching for Silm fic, too, and tags are essentially there for people to search for/find things, after all... it's complicated. XD But for the purpose of this meme it's fun to check out the numbers.
A note also on the numbers of works: you've seen in my take on the meme that there are only very little works for Earth's Children. On AO3 there are some really short ones, but others which are beyond epic - the one I'm currently reading has three parts, part one is finished on the AO3 with over 500k words, part 2 is being posted but finished at a fandom-specific forum and not shorter, and part three is in the process of being written. Other fandoms, though, tend to have mostly very short fanworks but a high number of them. And then there are numbskulls like the "author" of one fanfic I've once come across, who stated their only intent about that fanwork was to reach the 1 million word count to be counted among those fics, and they had countless chapters wiht one or two paragraphs each of absolute nonsense, no story whatsoever, just some generic blather about the weather and their slippers or so. LOL

[hhimring]

WangXian is a bit of a juggernaut of a ship. I imagine it is partly responsible for this quick rise in MDZS fics.

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, this is fun! What interesting numbers -- I'm actually really surprised there's no CQL/MZDS "All Media Types" catchall tag.

[swankitty]

hi!! hope this reply isn't too awkward, nice to properly talk to you for the first time!!

this year i've been on quite the mxtx kick, so my current fandom (and most of my recently read fic) is mdzs. previously, i read a lot for svsss, which has 10965 fic.

i'm also marginally in genshin impact, which has 64917 fic (though i haven't actually read anything outside of friend recs for genshin in a while)

the fandom i'm most consistently in though is the king's avatar (it's a chinese webnovel about esports that has a donghua & live action adaptation). there's a novel, donghua, and live action tag for this one, but mostly i go through the novel tag which has 13395 total works and 2450 works when you specify english only (which is pretty interesting haha)

[sunshine304]

Hi there! *waves*
I'm not all that surprised that MDZS is so big - it really took off after CQL came out on Netflix and so many people discovered the original novel in its wake.

And with book!LotR I think that a) many people might not have migrated their fic to AO3 at all, and b) it might just be miscategorised under the movies, or people use the movies like an umbrella term. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd imagine there must be loads of fic for the book, but it's a very old fandom.

I think I'll steal this. Might be interesting XD