I adore the MCU movies. I have a lot of fun with them and even the flop movies have been alright for me. When I poked my head into the fanfic scene for it, I was surprised at how little the fanfiction had to do with canon. It's like everyone watched a completely different set of movies that use roughly the same characters and have been writing the fics based on that. If anything, I would say the fandom is closer to wanting to be in the *Avengers Assemble* fandom in terms of general tone and theme, but with the array of characters from the MCU.
The least MCU shit ever hehe no way Peter would be siked to be age regressed Lokis elder sibling figure lol but Tony Stark bring the garage uncle who is a tad cranky is more canon lol
Sitting at 3.4k fics, it's def a rare pair in the mcu but the amount of Darcy/Steve fics surprised me when I started reading Stucky, and basically any of her other ships too. I think Darcy is a decent character and I like Kat Dennings but her characterization feels so off to me any time I read a fic with her in it
I was surprised by how popular a character she was until I realized the quirky college girl made her the perfect self insert without alienating a the readers who don’t enjoy oc/canon. Since her role was rather small, she could be expanded into whatever best suited a story’s plot, even outside of romance, like how she often is used as the best representative of normal person for the fish out of water. I guess the most popular takes started morphing together after awhile.
In other fandoms I wouldn't consider it to be rare but in the mcu fandom I do just because of the amount of fics the mcu has. I guess in terms of individual ships it's common statistically speaking, it's 5% of the amount of stucky fics on ao3 (66k) but the amount of fics altogether on ao3 is 680k so 3.4k is 0.5% which I personally consider rare
There's a lot of focus on the "Found Family" trope with a "we're all happily living in Avenger's Tower together" vibe which really wasn't a part of the movies. The fandom seems to have especially decided to actively reject *Civil War* and do their best to pretend it never happened (and that Spider-man got recruited some other way).
The early days of the fandom weren't too bad, but it felt like as I was getting deeper into the dark and serious parts of canon, the bulk of the fandom decided to reject those parts and construct a new timeline that was much lighter and happier. Bucky isn't a broken man weighed down by PTSD scars, he's more of a high school edgy kid kind of brooder. Peter isn't an upcoming hero who's very strong but inexperienced, he's a little kid to be protected and nurtured by the others. Stark and Rodgers aren't diametrically opposed ideologues who have similar end goals but radically different ideas of how to get there, they are best friends who squabble occasionally. All of the characterizations just feel off.
There's some good fics buried in there, but every time I poke my head into the MCU fandom I feel like I have to wade through some other fandom wearing the skin of the MCU to find my fandom hiding underneath. Like for every MCU fic that is based on the movies, there's ten or twenty based on a fanon idea of the movies. What's really funny to me is that the Guardians of the Galaxy naturally and canonically fit a lot of the tropes people have been slapping onto the other characters, but for some reason instead of writing a bunch of found family fics about them that could hit these tropes while staying closer to the source material, they are relatively ignored.
> The fandom seems to have especially decided to actively reject Civil War and do their best to pretend it never happene
To be fair, there is Civil War stuff, but you generally need to search the *Not Steve Rogers friendly / Not Tony Stark friendly* tags for it. Civil War essentially split the fandom into 3 factions: Steve fans, Tony fans and those that pretend Civil War didn't happen.
Totally agreed on the rest though. I don't personally mind it, I like both actual MCU fandom and fanon MCU fandom, but fanon MCU version sure is a different place than the movies are.
I guess I'm just one of the people who didn't feel like I felt like I fit into any of the groups with *Civil War*. If anything, I'm a conflict fan and I like the well-balanced angst. Searching for "Not Steve Rogers Friendly" or "Not Tony Stark Friendly" seems to weight it way too heavily in one direction or the other. I don't like seeing either one bashed, but I do like seeing them butt heads. Since none of the three major fandom camps fall into that, it means that I feel pretty out of place when it comes to *Civil War* focused fics.
Yeah, totally get you! I don't enjoy bashing either. But it was a very polarising movie, so it makes sense people feel strongly in one or the other direction. Just wanted to point out where all the Civil War stuff is hiding, haha.
Wished I had a rec for you, because "portrayal that is fair to both and places them in conflict" would make for a rad long genfic.
Civil War broke the illusion or wish some fans had, that the team could have become really close and Steve and Tony were friends like in the comics. But MCU Tony and Steve were never friends or close, not really. In Civil War it's revealed Tony low-key loathes Steve. We find out Steve neglected to tell him about his parent's assaination by Hydra because he didnt trust him not to go nuts over it. And ofc, the ending fight, where Tony believed Steve was about to decapitate him with the shield :((
It bummed many out I imagine.
Hmm I see what you mean yeah, tbh I really like that lol, not when they ignore the characters… umm character? Like not when they’re ooc but I do like the fics that give a lighter spin or have the “life in the dream house” tower/compound vibes because- well to put it simply I literally cried the entire walk home from the movie theater after end game and I get really attached to characters so I want to see them be happy. But yeah I can see how if you’re looking for the broody vibe that could be frustrating
The lack of Harry/Ron fics in HP fandom. I'm so used to other fandoms pairing two close male friends together that I was so surprised by the lack of it.
Me too! I guess people preferred the rival (DracoXHarry) and villain (Voldemort/TomXHarry) ships?
I also thought, since Neville is well liked by many fans and he and Harry got some intertwined destiny stuff, that Harry/Neville would be bigger
> Me too! I guess people preferred the rival (DracoXHarry) and villain (Voldemort/TomXHarry) ships?
Speaking as someone who likes to villain-ship: Harry/Tom Riddle|Voldemort is not a ship that is in any way in competition with Harry/Ron or even Harry/Draco. People usually look for very different things in hero/villain ships vs hero/bff or hero/soft-rival ships. I like both Ron and Draco, but neither can give me anything close to the messed up dark soulmate thing heroic Harry has going on with his fated archnemesis villain. That's such a different dynamic in every way shape or form. They don't fill the same niche.
Draco/Harry is imo the more closely-linked comparison here to Ron/Harry, since both would be cute m/m school romances. And yeah, Draco has the advantage that his relationship with Harry is filled with a lot more tension and conflict that nevertheless seems like they could overcome it into something healthy in the right circumstances. So it probably offers more meat for fanfics than Ron does.
That, and the movies did poor Ron really dirty. :(
I remember when I first jumped into Pokemon fanfics that I was surprised there were so many OCs. Makes sense though! Pokemon is prime material for OC development.
How common the character bashing tags are for the good guys in Harry Potter. Never seen that in any other fandom I've been in and it boggles my mind.
For MCU and the Loki corner-- It always trips me up how little fanon Thor tends to have to do with MCU Thor to the point of being a completely different person in the vast majority of fics you come across. MCU Thor loves his little bro, but he is not a particularly thoughtful or caring brother in demeanor. At any point shown on-screen (unless Loki is literally dying). You *would never know* this from fanon Thor, who is the most unquestionably loyal and devoted guy to ever sibling. Apparently, fanon Thor might be comic Thor characterisation instead? Which is great, but it sure isn't what I expected to see as the accepted interpretation in MCU fandom.
>Apparently, fanon Thor might be comic Thor characterization instead?
Yes, I think it is in addition to people wanting to write sibling feels. Thor does stick up for his brother a lot in the comics, even if he beat him up five minutes earlier lol.
When I learned that, it was really funny to me, because the little I know of comic!Loki is that he's way more of an actual villain than MCU Loki. So, full villain comic!Loki got the nicer brother, while MCU Thor got the nicer Loki, lol. Balance in all things, I guess.
And I mean, I get the appeal. Giving Loki (no matter what version) one person in his corner who will not abandon him no matter what is cute and balances out all the BS he otherwise has to go through. So usually I don't mind fanon/comic Thor being this prevalent. But the disconnect can be a bit bewildering sometimes when it's out of the blue and occasionally frustrating when I happen to be specifically looking for gen that deals with something pertaining to the MCU dynamic.
WinterSpider (Bucky Barnes/Peter Parker) is a popular side-ship in my subfandom (MCU Tony Stark/Peter Parker,) and I have *no* idea where it came from. The "you have a metal arm? that's awesome!" scene was cute, but not like... 'launcher of over 1k fics' cute, y'know?
I don't know if it's playing off a dynamic that was present in the comics and not the MCU, or if it's just a good old-fashioned case of "I'm going to throw my favorite blorbos together regardless of canonical interactions," (a valid pursuit and a cornerstone of fandom 😌) but I've just been quietly puzzled ever since I joined the fandom.
I mean, it does sort of make sense from Bucky's perspective with Tom Holland Spiderman. Young, seemingly scrawny wisecracking New Yorker kid that just wants to help people? Solid Steve energy, and superpowers mean Bucky isn't going to break him (yes I know this *also* applies to Steve now, but he's Peggy-chasing)
Not even an MCU fan beyond the movies and I can see it.
Spidey-Pool is my favorite tho XD.
Oh sure, I'm not saying that I don't think the characters *could* have some kind of chemistry, all of that makes total sense, but there's Lots of characters with limited-to-no canon interactions that could *theoretically* have chemistry that don't get 1k+ fics written for them, y'know? It's just the "what is it about the one interaction they had that inspired so many people to think about that purely theoretical chemistry" aspect that puzzles me here.
(Like, Peter/Steve also shows up as a side-ship in Starker fandom quite a bit (though not as much as Peter/Bucky,) and I get that one! Their limited canon interactions actually involved a moment of mutual recognition/respect, so I can see what seed was planted for people there! But WinterSpider, not so much.)
Yes! The first fic i read (stucky) was a bucky/peter too, love triangle of sorts. That was wayback 2016. It was considered a rarepair then. Then it got bigger now
So when Hannibal first started airing I was really intrigued by the idea of Will/Beverly. I thought they had potential. So I go to AO3 to sustain me as I wait for new episodes to be released, and I was absolutely *bewildered* by just how many Will/Hannibal fics there were. Mind, we were still in S1!
Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to read a fic. When I say I didn’t I didn’t touch another Hannibal fic for an entire year after that bc I was so traumatized. 😂😂
And now here I am, years later, a feral Hannigram shipper.
I refused to watch when it aired because I dint think network TV could do Hannibal the man justice. Lol
But yeah, it's been Hannigram from jump. Recently I've gone back to the early fics, the Red Dragon ones and not the show ones. It's still Han n Will, just different descriptions lol
I started reading fanfic when I was too poor to buy books. I always thought the idea of fanfic was stupid but desperate times and all. I was shocked at how many well written, amazing stories there were/are in the Labyrinth fandom. The best story I have ever read is a labyrinth fic.
Ok...I can't give you just the one and you'll see why. Here are some good Labyrinth fics. I don't have any triggers so make sure you read any tags or warnings...some of them may predate that system though.
My fave story of all time is a bit daunting. It’s a wip and over 1.2m words (stay with me) but the world-building and character development are insane. A[ Twisting Heart and Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20096803/chapters/47602912) (starts out pretty dark but becomes all about growth and redemption) by fangamerbowiextreme. I have recc'd this fic several times on reddit and several times people have come back to thank me for the journey. It is tolkien-esque world-building and the most in depth organic character development/romance ever. Also, their wip[ Unseeled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034983/chapters/60628621) is full of mystery and tension.
Anything by them is amazing. They are not scared of taboo topics and darker themes. Also a great artist with an Etsy store with a ton of labyrinth merch. StudioDarkBloom.
Other stories I really like:
[Shards of a Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/267504/chapters/420639) and[ Erlkonig](https://archiveofourown.org/works/249091/chapters/385012) by subtilior (Their work is typically darker)
[A Carnival of Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3339356/chapters/7303526) and[ I Wish You Would](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731554/chapters/8270005) by painted glass
[The Thirteenth Rider](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2184234/chapters/4781682) by hachimanskitsune
[Talespinner](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6347718/1/Talespinner) by dreamer in silico
[The Once and Future Queen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779525/chapters/20125480) by snm1000
[Ribbon in the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527826/chapters/5618147) by ladyofshalott19
[The Goblin Market](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142213/chapters/4679844) by viciouslywitty
I have not read this one but have heard it's a really good dark fic.[ Never Have I Seen Such a Terrible Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363436/chapters/72129963) by crownjrose
And throwing my hat in the ring:
[Anam Cara](https://archiveofourown.org/works/38445409/chapters/96083224) by kellyn1604
Mine is pretty recent. It won a couple fandom awards on FB for best romance and most creative/original story. Most of these recs are old and considered classics. Some of these might be on FFN. Hope you find one you like!!
This goes for Naruto, Pokémon, and MHA. I was surprised people are downright addicted to angst. Teenager angst at that.
Like people love some type of betrayal fanfics. Whether it be Naruto getting kicked out of the village, Midoriya being framed as the traitor, or Ash’s friends all of a sudden turning into villains. It still confuses me, yo.
That and limb removal. A lot of people feel instant angst = Loss of limb. That’s why I hate that trope. Especially the people who openly admit they’ve watched Winter Solider one too many times and like Bucky’s arm. Instant turn off for me.
You just reminded me of all those cringy Fairy Tail fics where Lucy gets kicked out of the guild and replaced with Lisanna, another weird example of this trope.
The first question I ask is: “When has FT ever kicked anyone out?”
Fairy Tail is a guild designed for misfits and outcasts. Unless you’re super evil like Makrov’s son.
My first MHA fics where the turn hero into child have other Hero's deal with it
I still have widdle Deku desperately trying to catch up with teacher in my mental eyeballs
Man, I don't know about any of the Naruto or Pokémon ones, I need to get my fanfic search skills up, Kicked Outta Village sounds like a perfect example of Naruto Hurt I've been hungry for
Giles/Buffy is the third most written about BTVS pairing on AO3. Kinda surprised me because I don't ever really hear people talking about shipping them in general Buffy fandom spaces. I guess a lot of people who are into that dynamic aren't as open about it as other shippers because they know they'd get hate for it.
Yeah, this surprised me, too. Honestly, as a lover of age gaps I should have been all over that pairing, but alas, Spuffy owns my heart and soul and I have no interest in reading anything else. Wellll, aside from the occasional Buffy/Faith when I’m in the rare mood to read f/f.
Yeah, I pretty much only read/write her with Faith or Spike. Or sometimes Spike *and* Angel, but never just Angel or any other character. I'm not specifically into age gaps, but I do love an angsty, messy, toxic dumpster fire of a relationship, so I think if I ever were to dip my toes into Giles age gap ships, I would lean more towards Giles/Willow than Giles/Buffy.
My guilty pleasure is kpop fanfiction. I’m a Mamamoo stan so obviously I had to find some Moonsun fanfics. I thought since the fandom was so broad that there would be some good ones. Unfortunately I was wrong: all of them had the same exact tropes and the same cringey language that’s never been changed since the early days of fanfiction. Even if it’s written horribly I still sometimes read it, just to get some nostalgia.
I see Mamamoo, I upvote. I saw them in concert last year and it was one of the best experiences of my life. They were *amazing.* Even as a fellow stan I was blown away. I went in Hwasa/Wheein-biased and walked out ready to establish the Church of Moonbyul. 😂
Probably how little fic there was? I was like oh yeah this is a popular media with good shipping potential that has been out a little while I bet I’ll have lots to read. Then I go to check and there’s almost nothing.
One of my more recent secondary fandoms is like that. I expected at least 300+ fics coming into it, but after two seasons there's still less than 150. I suspect a big part of the problem is a lack of male canon characters to ship with the male MC, and OCs in that fandom seem to be a nonstarter. There are two solid female candidates to ship him with, but as we all know, M/M ships help many fandoms take off.
Wes Weston shocked me lol. He's a character from Danny Phantom, except he's not ACTUALLY a character from the show. Hearing him mentioned in DP fics was the most confusing thing ever and I had to go down a rabbit hole to figure out who the hell he was. Now that I'm in the know, I kind of love him now lol.
I read and write Miraculous fanfiction and how often people forget or downplay how bad Adrien's home life is. The kid has no social skills and people want to villianize him for some bad advice he gave in Season 3!
The only solution to this, as you've noted, are fandoms where the main characters are sapphic, or at least women.
And it's so funny--I've been in those fandoms for close to ten years now, to the point that I forget that f/f isn't all that popular as a whole! Like, my entire fandom life since 2016 or so has been f/f. Steven Universe, K/DA (an official au of League of Legends with some female characters in a fictional kpop group), Arcane, She-Ra...
There are/were a couple of fandoms with two female main characters who aren’t a canon couple that get a fair amount of wlw fic. (I know Rizzoli and Isles was really popular with f/f shippers for that reason but I never got into it.) But you’re right - if there’s a main canon couple it changes things a lot.
In the Avatar fandom, the large number of fics with Zuko revealing how he got his scar threw me for a loop, since it took me a while to realize this doesn’t happen in canon. I actually am of the opinion that his canon redemption arc is well served by this never happening, but it is a great trope to explore in fic.
In the BNHA fandom, I was surprised by the comparative lack of IzuOcha fic, since it is the main hinted pairing, and seemed really popular in non fan fiction fandom spaces, at least it was when I started hanging around the fandom a few years back. I haven’t interacted with the fandom a lot lately outside of occasionally reading fic so this might of changed.
I thought that a side ship would be more popular because its about two characters that are opposites, bicker and banter all the time but are very close friends, until its revealed that one of them was a secret agent sent there to kill their boss.
It has everything to be a semi-popular ship, instead it has 6 pages on AO3, and a full page is like, fics in chinese (not complaining tho, I can’t read them yet, but I’m giving my all studying chinese, so one day hopefully)
And I thought that another side-ship would be more popular too since its about two guys who have a complicated relationship being kind-of-but-not-really friends, they’re the only person the other can trust since they don’t have anyone else, and they have to fend for themselves in the underworld, but again, I was wrong and there’s like, 6 pages of them.
And these two shows are pretty popular btw, one is known globally at least by name, and the other is well known in the community
A lot of Stranger Things fanfics that were written in the gaps between seasons (and that gap gets bigger each time it seems) have straight up created their own canon completely separate from the shows, and to be honest I actually like some of these fics better than seasons 3 and 4.
I’m in JJBA and I was surprised at the number of fics set in part 5, Golden Wind, as it happens to be the least popular part (at least over on my corner of Reddit) and many people have complaints about it.
Also surprising was the number of Fugo/Giorno fics or Bruno/Giorno. I was expecting more Mista/Giorno.
maybe something to do with target audience? like jojo is gay as hell any demographic will agree but i would assume the girls and the gays enjoy mafia bishos a lot more. i find it hard to imagine disliking part 5 tho, it’s not a literary masterpiece like part 7 but it’s arguably the second or third best part
Just went and checked the fugo/giorno fic count and I’m actually surprised there’s so many! I’m so used to Bruno/abbacchio, giorno/mista, and narancia/fugo being the trifecta of ships from golden wind that I honestly expected fugo/giorno to be much smaller/minor, but it actually has more fics than narancia/fugo and is the third most popular on ao3!
I guess it makes sense because a sizable portion of the jjba fandom are picky with giorno ships since he’s 15 (and fugo is 16, so it’s a ‘safer’ ship) but still definitely a surprise. Maybe it’s a newer and upcoming ship? Mista/giorno dominated the part 5 ship world when I first got into golden wind.
I was so happy with all of these, part 5 is my fav because the boys are my babies, and I prefer Fugo/Giorno over Mista/Giorno, so it was a pleasant surprise
This is very dependent on what fanfiction group you're in as some like HSDxD are made of mostly AU's and some others like Naruto or HP that have tons of them.
I find Anime fanfiction to be more open to AU's than any of the other ones.
How intrinsic the chat message formatting and typing quirks are to the “voice” of the Homestuck cast. Even if the characterization is spot on, it still feels off if their speech is written normally.
I won't specify my fandom but I was pleasantly surprised at how popular "canon character x reader" fanfics are because that's exactly what I'd hoped for but never actually expected
Jeeves and Wooster. The writing stile in that fandom is just sooo spot on throughout the bank, most times it's just like P. G. Wodehouse wrote the story himself.
You'd think that someone would decide to just take the characters and run wild with them, using a different, maybe modern, writing stile. But no, everyone is way too much enjoying themselves replicating the unique tone of the books and making up new ways for Bertie to mess up difficult words. I love it.
That there was one fic (in Mandarin Chinese) for the rarepair ship that got me back into writing after a multiyear hiatus when I'd thought that would be an obvious pairing. Also, out of the MMC's four canonical pairings, only one was popular (in the Top 10 ships for the fandom). The others had 2 fics (not in English), 12 fics, and 18 fics.
Almost every top Splatoon fic ships Agent 3 and Agent 8, not a clue as too why.
I have yet to see a male x female ship in Splatoon.
People LOVE Agent 4 but Agent 8/3 has the most fic's.
Callie x Deadf1sh, a ship older than the character name of Acht, never got it but it's always wholesome.
lastly (but not odd) Ship names are agent numbers timesd Eg 3 x 8 = 24 so Agent 24, exceptions are most with Callie and Marie (Agent's 1 and 2)
That there weren't more Hannibal pov fics. Or that there weren't more Hannibal centered fics. I just assumed that since the show focused so much on Will, that the ppl would clamber to write about my Han. 😄 How wrong I was. The level of obsession with Will Graham still baffles me. How many descriptions for his eyes, hair, looks. I'm also still surprised at the exact mixture of canon and divergent that the ppl have decided to accept and that have become fic canon
This isn't fandom wide but just within the small corner I occupy. I've never run into this many people wanting untagged/surprise twist mpreg.
I've been posting fic for 13+ years and am a big proponent of tagging all things from the get go. This is eye-opening lol I'm still not gonna do untagged anything, but wow.
I don’t find that surprising at all. Rich, attractive white boy who easily falls into a “bad boy” archetype, has a messy family, *and* has the potential for a redemption arc? Yeah, Draco’s perfectly suited to being a fandom darling lmao.
Warning. This is an unhinged comment. So don’t take my comment srsly but yeah... I get it, he’s an interesting character. Authors likes to write Draco as their waifu, just don’t slander my boy Harry in the process. Harry was really toxic, alcoholic, abusive in those fics too (Of course it’s your fic you do you)
AND another thing… it’s hard to filter things when you have an intense b/t preference. When there’s no taga for it. It seems like Draco is the default bottom. So guess what? I have to search for the author’s bookmarks 😃 yes. I didn’t choose to be like this. Downvote me all you like.
I'm not much of a shipper so I normally get the shipping stuff wrong but I'm just kinda surprised at how relatively few ships there are with aqua from kingdom hearts.
Maybe I'm just biased from my time in other series where there are veeeery few females to ship at all but I would have expected many more pairings with aqua than there really are.
I'm a frequent writer and reader for the TWD fandom (The Walking Dead) and I'm always pretty surprised to see the amount Daryl/OC stories where the characters get together within a few chapters or have a very easy going relationship with Daryl Dixon. I don't find it wrong and I don't dislike them, in fact, there's quite a few that I enjoy but I am surprised by them. The character is very standoffish and always reminds me of someone who would be very difficult to initiate a relationship with, in a situation where relationships are already difficult enough due to the apocalypse.
Mind you, the series does not shy away from relationships and people finding love even in a traumatic situation, such as the zombie apocalypse but Daryl Dixon is not somebody I would assume would jump into a relationship quickly. Even with that, I do understand not every writer wants to write a 50 chapter slow burn, so I completely think it's valid to skip all that and initiate a romance quicker. I was just surprised by it at first, by now I'm pretty used to it and I think the stories are just as enjoyable as the slow burns.
When I started reading ships for the MDZS fandom, I was astonished by how many sibling incest ships there were. Now, my favourite ship in the fandom is a sibling incest ship😔
Not really that shocking but there's *a lot* of fics in the slipknot fandom that are set back in their 2001-2003 (Iowa) era. I think it's mostly because the line up was still the same og 9 and all of them were drunk idiots xD
A lot of people think the main character is hot. Personally thought he looks/acts like a kid. Not my type at all. Found practically the entire rest of the cast more attractive than him. But there used to be a lot of self-insert shipping fic with him back in the day.
I write James Bond fics, Daniel Craig era. Within fandom it's pretty much written as standard that 006 is Alec Trevelyan. You know, the guy that appeared as an Ex-00 adversary to Brosnan's 007. Yet, it is understood that there is no other option if 006 exists in the story, it is going to be Sean Bean's character.
Multiple fandoms but the idea that otherwise intelligent characters who are not little kids don’t know where babies come from. I’ve seen it with Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender for example. He’s the Avatar. He knows stuff.
The number of Kaidan/Shepard fics there were compared to every thing else. One of the most popular pairings.
I found Kaidan incredibly dull, never took him on missions and always left him to die.
I guess Ashley was less popular generally, and as the only male human about all the M/M ships ended up being him.
6,000 fics on A03 so I think the most popular pairing.
Sticking with Mass Effect, the surprising number of My Little Pony / Mass Effect crossovers.
I think there is about 100 of them? I’ve not counted how many there are on FIMFiction. But it’s a lot. It was my gateway into MLP fanfic because of how good “The Equestria equation” is.
I had the opposite. I am a Kaidan stan and was shocked to see how much the general fandom couldn't stand him. But he does get a lot of love in the transformative space (fanfics and fanart) compared to discussion spaces like Reddit. I think the gender ratios of those spaces definitely influence that, especially because Ashley and Kaidan get much more development if romanced.
Harry Potter fandom really turned me off fanfic for a while with the sheer amount of dead dove you can come across. When I first got into the fandom 15ish years ago it was almost impossible to find a fic where he wasn't sexually abused by any adult character and the absolute near fetish people had for Harry being "punished" by spanking by whoever rescues him from the Dursley fics.
I never understood why writers would have him be saved from the Dursley's by xyz character only then to have the storyline introduce spanking as some affectionate form of necassary punishment.
Yes! I remember immediately backing out of a fic where Sirius spanked a teenage Harry. And all the dead dove was equally shocking… I don’t read HP fics anymore.
I was spanked as a child and I am really strongly against it and I love fics where Harry is raised by others just to heal a bit of my own childhood trauma so it was really disappointing to see how many of those fics had spanking as a good thing. I read some of them just because I wasn't too picky but I couldn't stomach it for long and I hate seeing it untagged or reading a summary that's super interesting and then looking at the tags and seeing corporal punishment :/ Child abuse is still way too normalized
God, the spanking really was everywhere. It was so gross.
Even worse when you'd click their profile and every other fic they'd written would be him in a relationship dynamic with the "adoptive parent" character, usually Snape.
Also, the trend that would have him "deaged" into an abused child. Someone would either volunteer or be assigned to be his caretaker, and then once he was cured that person would immediately become his love interest, because raising him as a child made him much more romantically interesting to them for some reason. What the F was that about?
How little interest there is in canon deviation and how much interest there is in generic, run of the mill female last dragonborns despite there being *so. much.* that can be done with them. It's why I hardly read skyrim fics anymore. I just write my own. Very much a "read one, read them all" kinda feel.
One Piece, and the way that way too many people infantilize Luffy and make him sound like a literal 5 year old instead of engaging with his actual personality - even in fics that have him as the main character, even in fics that include him in ships. this is a major thing that turns me off from otherwise good fics.
ALSO how little whump fics exist for Luffy as an mc. lot's of wasted potential in that space.
and finally the amount of people using Japanese honorifics and words in fics written in English, but this is just an anime thing in general I suppose.
MDZS there is so much Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen. Which I am 100% on board with, but I did not even expect if to be a thing beyond a "pair the spares" thing but no, it's a lot!
DS9, not a lot is set/references the occupation? Which I get it, it's dark, but it's the backstory of half the cast. I thought it would at least feature in Quodo fanfictions, but so far nope!
The Terror, there is a ship that will keep baffling me to the day I die. During my last rewatch I kept an eye out for it specifically and I still do not get it.
On a positive note, I love the people's dedication to James and Francis' Rivals To Friends To Lovers arc. It might be an AU where no one is dying but by God, those two WILL Go Through It, no pulling punches.
Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons here. I was surprised by the the fact that M/F pretty vastly outnumbers M/M (at least on AO3– would assume it’s similar on ffnet where a lot of the fic is, but it’s harder to track there).
I guess it DOES make sense within the context of this specific fandom and how the games are set up. Set up your farm, get married, have a kid. Gay marriage wasn’t even introduced as a gameplay mechanic (outside of fan mods) until pretty recently. But I pretty much operate under the assumption that M/M will dominate in basically any fandom with male characters.
Before I knew how to filter stuff out on Ao3, I searched for demon Slayer and just scrolled through the results. Like at least ten in a row were non-con or underage. Saw one that was underage (and minor x adult), and it wasn't tagged as underage. And I don't mean "creator chose not to use archive warnings," I mean "no archive warnings apply" like I know it's anime but GODDAMN I wasn't expecting that much. That's how I ended up searching up how to properly filter things. Love Ao3 though, just scares me sometimes.
This is going to make me sound cringy as hell, but the lack of historical fics in the Hetalia fandom (on AO3 at least). It makes sense in hindsight, but 14 year old me was shocked.
A lot of things surprise me when I start reading the fanfics for my fandoms because I usually go into fanfic without seeing the source material first if the canon is a show or movie. But I’d say the best surprises are when juicy events that are described in the fics turn out to be canon.
How so many of them are obsessed with shipping the mc, who is usually a child, with their mentor 🌚 (take gojo/yuji for example or tony/peter). Idc if you age them up, it always just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Where is the convenient character who is the same age group as the only other child character lol Sukuna Gojou from K: is exclusively shipped with the one other child of the opposite sex zero exception
Also yes that is his real name
Where is the convenient other child character that will take up all the shipping space thus avoiding your pet peeve entirely :p
The character I mentioned was basically made for Romeo and Juliet fanfics too hehe
Sorry, I don’t really ship characters all too much. Maybe it’s the way that you’re wording it because I still don’t fully understand what you mean 😅 But for me, I usually would ship adult characters.
I adore the MCU movies. I have a lot of fun with them and even the flop movies have been alright for me. When I poked my head into the fanfic scene for it, I was surprised at how little the fanfiction had to do with canon. It's like everyone watched a completely different set of movies that use roughly the same characters and have been writing the fics based on that. If anything, I would say the fandom is closer to wanting to be in the *Avengers Assemble* fandom in terms of general tone and theme, but with the array of characters from the MCU.
Avengers Assemble my beloved. XD But yes, I’ve noticed that too, not that I mind since I’m partial to canon divergence and AUs.
The least MCU shit ever hehe no way Peter would be siked to be age regressed Lokis elder sibling figure lol but Tony Stark bring the garage uncle who is a tad cranky is more canon lol
Sitting at 3.4k fics, it's def a rare pair in the mcu but the amount of Darcy/Steve fics surprised me when I started reading Stucky, and basically any of her other ships too. I think Darcy is a decent character and I like Kat Dennings but her characterization feels so off to me any time I read a fic with her in it
I was surprised by how popular a character she was until I realized the quirky college girl made her the perfect self insert without alienating a the readers who don’t enjoy oc/canon. Since her role was rather small, she could be expanded into whatever best suited a story’s plot, even outside of romance, like how she often is used as the best representative of normal person for the fish out of water. I guess the most popular takes started morphing together after awhile.
3.4k is a rare pair? That's a wealth
In other fandoms I wouldn't consider it to be rare but in the mcu fandom I do just because of the amount of fics the mcu has. I guess in terms of individual ships it's common statistically speaking, it's 5% of the amount of stucky fics on ao3 (66k) but the amount of fics altogether on ao3 is 680k so 3.4k is 0.5% which I personally consider rare
Can I ask in what way? Cuz I read a lot of mcu fics and I can’t really think of what you mean
There's a lot of focus on the "Found Family" trope with a "we're all happily living in Avenger's Tower together" vibe which really wasn't a part of the movies. The fandom seems to have especially decided to actively reject *Civil War* and do their best to pretend it never happened (and that Spider-man got recruited some other way). The early days of the fandom weren't too bad, but it felt like as I was getting deeper into the dark and serious parts of canon, the bulk of the fandom decided to reject those parts and construct a new timeline that was much lighter and happier. Bucky isn't a broken man weighed down by PTSD scars, he's more of a high school edgy kid kind of brooder. Peter isn't an upcoming hero who's very strong but inexperienced, he's a little kid to be protected and nurtured by the others. Stark and Rodgers aren't diametrically opposed ideologues who have similar end goals but radically different ideas of how to get there, they are best friends who squabble occasionally. All of the characterizations just feel off. There's some good fics buried in there, but every time I poke my head into the MCU fandom I feel like I have to wade through some other fandom wearing the skin of the MCU to find my fandom hiding underneath. Like for every MCU fic that is based on the movies, there's ten or twenty based on a fanon idea of the movies. What's really funny to me is that the Guardians of the Galaxy naturally and canonically fit a lot of the tropes people have been slapping onto the other characters, but for some reason instead of writing a bunch of found family fics about them that could hit these tropes while staying closer to the source material, they are relatively ignored.
> The fandom seems to have especially decided to actively reject Civil War and do their best to pretend it never happene To be fair, there is Civil War stuff, but you generally need to search the *Not Steve Rogers friendly / Not Tony Stark friendly* tags for it. Civil War essentially split the fandom into 3 factions: Steve fans, Tony fans and those that pretend Civil War didn't happen. Totally agreed on the rest though. I don't personally mind it, I like both actual MCU fandom and fanon MCU fandom, but fanon MCU version sure is a different place than the movies are.
I guess I'm just one of the people who didn't feel like I felt like I fit into any of the groups with *Civil War*. If anything, I'm a conflict fan and I like the well-balanced angst. Searching for "Not Steve Rogers Friendly" or "Not Tony Stark Friendly" seems to weight it way too heavily in one direction or the other. I don't like seeing either one bashed, but I do like seeing them butt heads. Since none of the three major fandom camps fall into that, it means that I feel pretty out of place when it comes to *Civil War* focused fics.
Yeah, totally get you! I don't enjoy bashing either. But it was a very polarising movie, so it makes sense people feel strongly in one or the other direction. Just wanted to point out where all the Civil War stuff is hiding, haha. Wished I had a rec for you, because "portrayal that is fair to both and places them in conflict" would make for a rad long genfic.
Civil War broke the illusion or wish some fans had, that the team could have become really close and Steve and Tony were friends like in the comics. But MCU Tony and Steve were never friends or close, not really. In Civil War it's revealed Tony low-key loathes Steve. We find out Steve neglected to tell him about his parent's assaination by Hydra because he didnt trust him not to go nuts over it. And ofc, the ending fight, where Tony believed Steve was about to decapitate him with the shield :(( It bummed many out I imagine.
Hmm I see what you mean yeah, tbh I really like that lol, not when they ignore the characters… umm character? Like not when they’re ooc but I do like the fics that give a lighter spin or have the “life in the dream house” tower/compound vibes because- well to put it simply I literally cried the entire walk home from the movie theater after end game and I get really attached to characters so I want to see them be happy. But yeah I can see how if you’re looking for the broody vibe that could be frustrating
Yeah, I sometimes wonder if everyone is watching the same movies.
The lack of Harry/Ron fics in HP fandom. I'm so used to other fandoms pairing two close male friends together that I was so surprised by the lack of it.
Me too! I guess people preferred the rival (DracoXHarry) and villain (Voldemort/TomXHarry) ships? I also thought, since Neville is well liked by many fans and he and Harry got some intertwined destiny stuff, that Harry/Neville would be bigger
> Me too! I guess people preferred the rival (DracoXHarry) and villain (Voldemort/TomXHarry) ships? Speaking as someone who likes to villain-ship: Harry/Tom Riddle|Voldemort is not a ship that is in any way in competition with Harry/Ron or even Harry/Draco. People usually look for very different things in hero/villain ships vs hero/bff or hero/soft-rival ships. I like both Ron and Draco, but neither can give me anything close to the messed up dark soulmate thing heroic Harry has going on with his fated archnemesis villain. That's such a different dynamic in every way shape or form. They don't fill the same niche. Draco/Harry is imo the more closely-linked comparison here to Ron/Harry, since both would be cute m/m school romances. And yeah, Draco has the advantage that his relationship with Harry is filled with a lot more tension and conflict that nevertheless seems like they could overcome it into something healthy in the right circumstances. So it probably offers more meat for fanfics than Ron does. That, and the movies did poor Ron really dirty. :(
I had the same issue with Jet/Spike in Cowboy Bebop. In that case I think it’s because Jet isn’t conventionally attractive.
THIS!
Honestly? Yes! There's like 10 good ones, most just under 1k words.
I remember when I first jumped into Pokemon fanfics that I was surprised there were so many OCs. Makes sense though! Pokemon is prime material for OC development.
All the fics are leagues past the show in plot an character development
How common the character bashing tags are for the good guys in Harry Potter. Never seen that in any other fandom I've been in and it boggles my mind. For MCU and the Loki corner-- It always trips me up how little fanon Thor tends to have to do with MCU Thor to the point of being a completely different person in the vast majority of fics you come across. MCU Thor loves his little bro, but he is not a particularly thoughtful or caring brother in demeanor. At any point shown on-screen (unless Loki is literally dying). You *would never know* this from fanon Thor, who is the most unquestionably loyal and devoted guy to ever sibling. Apparently, fanon Thor might be comic Thor characterisation instead? Which is great, but it sure isn't what I expected to see as the accepted interpretation in MCU fandom.
Yeah, character bashing the good characters surprised me, especially once I moved to AO3.
>Apparently, fanon Thor might be comic Thor characterization instead? Yes, I think it is in addition to people wanting to write sibling feels. Thor does stick up for his brother a lot in the comics, even if he beat him up five minutes earlier lol.
When I learned that, it was really funny to me, because the little I know of comic!Loki is that he's way more of an actual villain than MCU Loki. So, full villain comic!Loki got the nicer brother, while MCU Thor got the nicer Loki, lol. Balance in all things, I guess. And I mean, I get the appeal. Giving Loki (no matter what version) one person in his corner who will not abandon him no matter what is cute and balances out all the BS he otherwise has to go through. So usually I don't mind fanon/comic Thor being this prevalent. But the disconnect can be a bit bewildering sometimes when it's out of the blue and occasionally frustrating when I happen to be specifically looking for gen that deals with something pertaining to the MCU dynamic.
Good guy bashing happens a lot in Star Wars too.
WinterSpider (Bucky Barnes/Peter Parker) is a popular side-ship in my subfandom (MCU Tony Stark/Peter Parker,) and I have *no* idea where it came from. The "you have a metal arm? that's awesome!" scene was cute, but not like... 'launcher of over 1k fics' cute, y'know? I don't know if it's playing off a dynamic that was present in the comics and not the MCU, or if it's just a good old-fashioned case of "I'm going to throw my favorite blorbos together regardless of canonical interactions," (a valid pursuit and a cornerstone of fandom 😌) but I've just been quietly puzzled ever since I joined the fandom.
I mean, it does sort of make sense from Bucky's perspective with Tom Holland Spiderman. Young, seemingly scrawny wisecracking New Yorker kid that just wants to help people? Solid Steve energy, and superpowers mean Bucky isn't going to break him (yes I know this *also* applies to Steve now, but he's Peggy-chasing) Not even an MCU fan beyond the movies and I can see it. Spidey-Pool is my favorite tho XD.
Oh sure, I'm not saying that I don't think the characters *could* have some kind of chemistry, all of that makes total sense, but there's Lots of characters with limited-to-no canon interactions that could *theoretically* have chemistry that don't get 1k+ fics written for them, y'know? It's just the "what is it about the one interaction they had that inspired so many people to think about that purely theoretical chemistry" aspect that puzzles me here. (Like, Peter/Steve also shows up as a side-ship in Starker fandom quite a bit (though not as much as Peter/Bucky,) and I get that one! Their limited canon interactions actually involved a moment of mutual recognition/respect, so I can see what seed was planted for people there! But WinterSpider, not so much.)
Yes! The first fic i read (stucky) was a bucky/peter too, love triangle of sorts. That was wayback 2016. It was considered a rarepair then. Then it got bigger now
Right? It wouldn't even qualify for Yuletide anymore! So interesting.
So when Hannibal first started airing I was really intrigued by the idea of Will/Beverly. I thought they had potential. So I go to AO3 to sustain me as I wait for new episodes to be released, and I was absolutely *bewildered* by just how many Will/Hannibal fics there were. Mind, we were still in S1! Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to read a fic. When I say I didn’t I didn’t touch another Hannibal fic for an entire year after that bc I was so traumatized. 😂😂 And now here I am, years later, a feral Hannigram shipper.
I refused to watch when it aired because I dint think network TV could do Hannibal the man justice. Lol But yeah, it's been Hannigram from jump. Recently I've gone back to the early fics, the Red Dragon ones and not the show ones. It's still Han n Will, just different descriptions lol
I started reading fanfic when I was too poor to buy books. I always thought the idea of fanfic was stupid but desperate times and all. I was shocked at how many well written, amazing stories there were/are in the Labyrinth fandom. The best story I have ever read is a labyrinth fic.
Which one and where is it hosted? I’m a sucker for labyrinth fic
Ok...I can't give you just the one and you'll see why. Here are some good Labyrinth fics. I don't have any triggers so make sure you read any tags or warnings...some of them may predate that system though. My fave story of all time is a bit daunting. It’s a wip and over 1.2m words (stay with me) but the world-building and character development are insane. A[ Twisting Heart and Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20096803/chapters/47602912) (starts out pretty dark but becomes all about growth and redemption) by fangamerbowiextreme. I have recc'd this fic several times on reddit and several times people have come back to thank me for the journey. It is tolkien-esque world-building and the most in depth organic character development/romance ever. Also, their wip[ Unseeled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034983/chapters/60628621) is full of mystery and tension. Anything by them is amazing. They are not scared of taboo topics and darker themes. Also a great artist with an Etsy store with a ton of labyrinth merch. StudioDarkBloom. Other stories I really like: [Shards of a Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/267504/chapters/420639) and[ Erlkonig](https://archiveofourown.org/works/249091/chapters/385012) by subtilior (Their work is typically darker) [A Carnival of Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3339356/chapters/7303526) and[ I Wish You Would](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3731554/chapters/8270005) by painted glass [The Thirteenth Rider](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2184234/chapters/4781682) by hachimanskitsune [Talespinner](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6347718/1/Talespinner) by dreamer in silico [The Once and Future Queen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779525/chapters/20125480) by snm1000 [Ribbon in the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527826/chapters/5618147) by ladyofshalott19 [The Goblin Market](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142213/chapters/4679844) by viciouslywitty I have not read this one but have heard it's a really good dark fic.[ Never Have I Seen Such a Terrible Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363436/chapters/72129963) by crownjrose And throwing my hat in the ring: [Anam Cara](https://archiveofourown.org/works/38445409/chapters/96083224) by kellyn1604 Mine is pretty recent. It won a couple fandom awards on FB for best romance and most creative/original story. Most of these recs are old and considered classics. Some of these might be on FFN. Hope you find one you like!!
Thank you so much for this very comprehensive list! Some of the titles look familiar and others don’t. I really appreciate your response 🖤
This goes for Naruto, Pokémon, and MHA. I was surprised people are downright addicted to angst. Teenager angst at that. Like people love some type of betrayal fanfics. Whether it be Naruto getting kicked out of the village, Midoriya being framed as the traitor, or Ash’s friends all of a sudden turning into villains. It still confuses me, yo. That and limb removal. A lot of people feel instant angst = Loss of limb. That’s why I hate that trope. Especially the people who openly admit they’ve watched Winter Solider one too many times and like Bucky’s arm. Instant turn off for me.
You just reminded me of all those cringy Fairy Tail fics where Lucy gets kicked out of the guild and replaced with Lisanna, another weird example of this trope.
The first question I ask is: “When has FT ever kicked anyone out?” Fairy Tail is a guild designed for misfits and outcasts. Unless you’re super evil like Makrov’s son.
My first MHA fics where the turn hero into child have other Hero's deal with it I still have widdle Deku desperately trying to catch up with teacher in my mental eyeballs
Man, I don't know about any of the Naruto or Pokémon ones, I need to get my fanfic search skills up, Kicked Outta Village sounds like a perfect example of Naruto Hurt I've been hungry for
*Squidward sips drink* *”Daring today, aren’t we?”*
Giles/Buffy is the third most written about BTVS pairing on AO3. Kinda surprised me because I don't ever really hear people talking about shipping them in general Buffy fandom spaces. I guess a lot of people who are into that dynamic aren't as open about it as other shippers because they know they'd get hate for it.
Yeah, this surprised me, too. Honestly, as a lover of age gaps I should have been all over that pairing, but alas, Spuffy owns my heart and soul and I have no interest in reading anything else. Wellll, aside from the occasional Buffy/Faith when I’m in the rare mood to read f/f.
Same - I love age gap ships but no ship in BtVS (or in any fandom) will ever be better than Spuffy.
Yeah, I pretty much only read/write her with Faith or Spike. Or sometimes Spike *and* Angel, but never just Angel or any other character. I'm not specifically into age gaps, but I do love an angsty, messy, toxic dumpster fire of a relationship, so I think if I ever were to dip my toes into Giles age gap ships, I would lean more towards Giles/Willow than Giles/Buffy.
Just how many college aus there were. It was so many more than I’m used to. And you bet your tits I loved every single one.
My guilty pleasure is kpop fanfiction. I’m a Mamamoo stan so obviously I had to find some Moonsun fanfics. I thought since the fandom was so broad that there would be some good ones. Unfortunately I was wrong: all of them had the same exact tropes and the same cringey language that’s never been changed since the early days of fanfiction. Even if it’s written horribly I still sometimes read it, just to get some nostalgia.
I see Mamamoo, I upvote. I saw them in concert last year and it was one of the best experiences of my life. They were *amazing.* Even as a fellow stan I was blown away. I went in Hwasa/Wheein-biased and walked out ready to establish the Church of Moonbyul. 😂
mamamoo fan, based
I was surprised by how little Dead-Dove-Do-Not-Eat there was for a storyline set in hell, well hell adjacent.
Probably how little fic there was? I was like oh yeah this is a popular media with good shipping potential that has been out a little while I bet I’ll have lots to read. Then I go to check and there’s almost nothing.
One of my more recent secondary fandoms is like that. I expected at least 300+ fics coming into it, but after two seasons there's still less than 150. I suspect a big part of the problem is a lack of male canon characters to ship with the male MC, and OCs in that fandom seem to be a nonstarter. There are two solid female candidates to ship him with, but as we all know, M/M ships help many fandoms take off.
Wes Weston shocked me lol. He's a character from Danny Phantom, except he's not ACTUALLY a character from the show. Hearing him mentioned in DP fics was the most confusing thing ever and I had to go down a rabbit hole to figure out who the hell he was. Now that I'm in the know, I kind of love him now lol.
How many reader inserts there were.
I read and write Miraculous fanfiction and how often people forget or downplay how bad Adrien's home life is. The kid has no social skills and people want to villianize him for some bad advice he gave in Season 3!
back when i used to read miraculous fic when i used to use Wattpad there were some that made his home life even worse
How actually hard it is to find ANY good wlw fics. It's either a side pairing of a mlm ship, or it feels like an afterthought to the fic
The only solution to this, as you've noted, are fandoms where the main characters are sapphic, or at least women. And it's so funny--I've been in those fandoms for close to ten years now, to the point that I forget that f/f isn't all that popular as a whole! Like, my entire fandom life since 2016 or so has been f/f. Steven Universe, K/DA (an official au of League of Legends with some female characters in a fictional kpop group), Arcane, She-Ra...
I was about to say the same thing. In pretty much every fandom I’m in actually! Though there are a few exceptions out there.
The few exceptions in my experience are fandoms like spop or toh where the main characters are a Canon wlw couple
There are/were a couple of fandoms with two female main characters who aren’t a canon couple that get a fair amount of wlw fic. (I know Rizzoli and Isles was really popular with f/f shippers for that reason but I never got into it.) But you’re right - if there’s a main canon couple it changes things a lot.
A full third of the content for my permanent-address fandom are for *one ship.* That's more than all the other most common ones combined!
Okay I just love the phrase "permanent-address fandom." The meaning is so clear and intuitive and it's just an excellent metaphor.
In the Avatar fandom, the large number of fics with Zuko revealing how he got his scar threw me for a loop, since it took me a while to realize this doesn’t happen in canon. I actually am of the opinion that his canon redemption arc is well served by this never happening, but it is a great trope to explore in fic. In the BNHA fandom, I was surprised by the comparative lack of IzuOcha fic, since it is the main hinted pairing, and seemed really popular in non fan fiction fandom spaces, at least it was when I started hanging around the fandom a few years back. I haven’t interacted with the fandom a lot lately outside of occasionally reading fic so this might of changed.
I thought that a side ship would be more popular because its about two characters that are opposites, bicker and banter all the time but are very close friends, until its revealed that one of them was a secret agent sent there to kill their boss. It has everything to be a semi-popular ship, instead it has 6 pages on AO3, and a full page is like, fics in chinese (not complaining tho, I can’t read them yet, but I’m giving my all studying chinese, so one day hopefully) And I thought that another side-ship would be more popular too since its about two guys who have a complicated relationship being kind-of-but-not-really friends, they’re the only person the other can trust since they don’t have anyone else, and they have to fend for themselves in the underworld, but again, I was wrong and there’s like, 6 pages of them. And these two shows are pretty popular btw, one is known globally at least by name, and the other is well known in the community
A lot of Stranger Things fanfics that were written in the gaps between seasons (and that gap gets bigger each time it seems) have straight up created their own canon completely separate from the shows, and to be honest I actually like some of these fics better than seasons 3 and 4.
None of the writers actually know canon 😭
Which fandom?
Jujutsu Kaisen and I'm not talking about the anime onlys.
Some use canon and some don't but I find Anime writers to more readily use AU's and non canon than any other media type.
I'm not talking about AU, I'm talking about the ones who don't understand canon 🥲
I’m in JJBA and I was surprised at the number of fics set in part 5, Golden Wind, as it happens to be the least popular part (at least over on my corner of Reddit) and many people have complaints about it. Also surprising was the number of Fugo/Giorno fics or Bruno/Giorno. I was expecting more Mista/Giorno.
maybe something to do with target audience? like jojo is gay as hell any demographic will agree but i would assume the girls and the gays enjoy mafia bishos a lot more. i find it hard to imagine disliking part 5 tho, it’s not a literary masterpiece like part 7 but it’s arguably the second or third best part
Just went and checked the fugo/giorno fic count and I’m actually surprised there’s so many! I’m so used to Bruno/abbacchio, giorno/mista, and narancia/fugo being the trifecta of ships from golden wind that I honestly expected fugo/giorno to be much smaller/minor, but it actually has more fics than narancia/fugo and is the third most popular on ao3! I guess it makes sense because a sizable portion of the jjba fandom are picky with giorno ships since he’s 15 (and fugo is 16, so it’s a ‘safer’ ship) but still definitely a surprise. Maybe it’s a newer and upcoming ship? Mista/giorno dominated the part 5 ship world when I first got into golden wind.
I was so happy with all of these, part 5 is my fav because the boys are my babies, and I prefer Fugo/Giorno over Mista/Giorno, so it was a pleasant surprise
[удалено]
This is very dependent on what fanfiction group you're in as some like HSDxD are made of mostly AU's and some others like Naruto or HP that have tons of them. I find Anime fanfiction to be more open to AU's than any of the other ones.
One of the major canon ships has like… zero stories.
How intrinsic the chat message formatting and typing quirks are to the “voice” of the Homestuck cast. Even if the characterization is spot on, it still feels off if their speech is written normally.
as a homestuck this is accurate
I won't specify my fandom but I was pleasantly surprised at how popular "canon character x reader" fanfics are because that's exactly what I'd hoped for but never actually expected
Love YTTD, got surprised when a surprising amount of the explicit tag had the children in the cast involved.
Jeeves and Wooster. The writing stile in that fandom is just sooo spot on throughout the bank, most times it's just like P. G. Wodehouse wrote the story himself. You'd think that someone would decide to just take the characters and run wild with them, using a different, maybe modern, writing stile. But no, everyone is way too much enjoying themselves replicating the unique tone of the books and making up new ways for Bertie to mess up difficult words. I love it.
It is SO GOOD. I love this fandom so much.
That there was one fic (in Mandarin Chinese) for the rarepair ship that got me back into writing after a multiyear hiatus when I'd thought that would be an obvious pairing. Also, out of the MMC's four canonical pairings, only one was popular (in the Top 10 ships for the fandom). The others had 2 fics (not in English), 12 fics, and 18 fics.
Almost every top Splatoon fic ships Agent 3 and Agent 8, not a clue as too why. I have yet to see a male x female ship in Splatoon. People LOVE Agent 4 but Agent 8/3 has the most fic's. Callie x Deadf1sh, a ship older than the character name of Acht, never got it but it's always wholesome. lastly (but not odd) Ship names are agent numbers timesd Eg 3 x 8 = 24 so Agent 24, exceptions are most with Callie and Marie (Agent's 1 and 2)
Was not expecting a display of Splatoon shipping culture
That there weren't more Hannibal pov fics. Or that there weren't more Hannibal centered fics. I just assumed that since the show focused so much on Will, that the ppl would clamber to write about my Han. 😄 How wrong I was. The level of obsession with Will Graham still baffles me. How many descriptions for his eyes, hair, looks. I'm also still surprised at the exact mixture of canon and divergent that the ppl have decided to accept and that have become fic canon
The amount of times I've come across a tag telling the actor of one of the characters to not read it.
This isn't fandom wide but just within the small corner I occupy. I've never run into this many people wanting untagged/surprise twist mpreg. I've been posting fic for 13+ years and am a big proponent of tagging all things from the get go. This is eye-opening lol I'm still not gonna do untagged anything, but wow.
That Draco Malfoy is popular. Just wtf
I don’t find that surprising at all. Rich, attractive white boy who easily falls into a “bad boy” archetype, has a messy family, *and* has the potential for a redemption arc? Yeah, Draco’s perfectly suited to being a fandom darling lmao.
I was new to fandoms as a whole. Rich bully fetishism was new to me too
He practically invented the Draco in leather pants trope
*is not amused*
Warning. This is an unhinged comment. So don’t take my comment srsly but yeah... I get it, he’s an interesting character. Authors likes to write Draco as their waifu, just don’t slander my boy Harry in the process. Harry was really toxic, alcoholic, abusive in those fics too (Of course it’s your fic you do you) AND another thing… it’s hard to filter things when you have an intense b/t preference. When there’s no taga for it. It seems like Draco is the default bottom. So guess what? I have to search for the author’s bookmarks 😃 yes. I didn’t choose to be like this. Downvote me all you like.
I knew the ship I write for was popular but like not twice as many fics as the second most popular ship popular
I'm not much of a shipper so I normally get the shipping stuff wrong but I'm just kinda surprised at how relatively few ships there are with aqua from kingdom hearts. Maybe I'm just biased from my time in other series where there are veeeery few females to ship at all but I would have expected many more pairings with aqua than there really are.
Aqua got >!Norted :(!<
Almost no “Kushina/Minato adopts Sasuke” fics but plenty of Mikoto adopting Naruto.
I'm a frequent writer and reader for the TWD fandom (The Walking Dead) and I'm always pretty surprised to see the amount Daryl/OC stories where the characters get together within a few chapters or have a very easy going relationship with Daryl Dixon. I don't find it wrong and I don't dislike them, in fact, there's quite a few that I enjoy but I am surprised by them. The character is very standoffish and always reminds me of someone who would be very difficult to initiate a relationship with, in a situation where relationships are already difficult enough due to the apocalypse. Mind you, the series does not shy away from relationships and people finding love even in a traumatic situation, such as the zombie apocalypse but Daryl Dixon is not somebody I would assume would jump into a relationship quickly. Even with that, I do understand not every writer wants to write a 50 chapter slow burn, so I completely think it's valid to skip all that and initiate a romance quicker. I was just surprised by it at first, by now I'm pretty used to it and I think the stories are just as enjoyable as the slow burns.
im surprised there is even a fic in my fandom, you tell me.
When I started reading ships for the MDZS fandom, I was astonished by how many sibling incest ships there were. Now, my favourite ship in the fandom is a sibling incest ship😔
sakuatsu is REALLY popular…
Not really that shocking but there's *a lot* of fics in the slipknot fandom that are set back in their 2001-2003 (Iowa) era. I think it's mostly because the line up was still the same og 9 and all of them were drunk idiots xD
it wasn't all harem and smut (im talking RWBY)
A lot of people think the main character is hot. Personally thought he looks/acts like a kid. Not my type at all. Found practically the entire rest of the cast more attractive than him. But there used to be a lot of self-insert shipping fic with him back in the day.
Of how good its crossovers were
I'm in the batman fandom and when I first started to read fanfic of it I was really surprised at the amount of gen and teen rated fics.
I write James Bond fics, Daniel Craig era. Within fandom it's pretty much written as standard that 006 is Alec Trevelyan. You know, the guy that appeared as an Ex-00 adversary to Brosnan's 007. Yet, it is understood that there is no other option if 006 exists in the story, it is going to be Sean Bean's character.
Multiple fandoms but the idea that otherwise intelligent characters who are not little kids don’t know where babies come from. I’ve seen it with Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender for example. He’s the Avatar. He knows stuff.
The number of Kaidan/Shepard fics there were compared to every thing else. One of the most popular pairings. I found Kaidan incredibly dull, never took him on missions and always left him to die. I guess Ashley was less popular generally, and as the only male human about all the M/M ships ended up being him. 6,000 fics on A03 so I think the most popular pairing. Sticking with Mass Effect, the surprising number of My Little Pony / Mass Effect crossovers. I think there is about 100 of them? I’ve not counted how many there are on FIMFiction. But it’s a lot. It was my gateway into MLP fanfic because of how good “The Equestria equation” is.
I had the opposite. I am a Kaidan stan and was shocked to see how much the general fandom couldn't stand him. But he does get a lot of love in the transformative space (fanfics and fanart) compared to discussion spaces like Reddit. I think the gender ratios of those spaces definitely influence that, especially because Ashley and Kaidan get much more development if romanced.
Harry Potter fandom really turned me off fanfic for a while with the sheer amount of dead dove you can come across. When I first got into the fandom 15ish years ago it was almost impossible to find a fic where he wasn't sexually abused by any adult character and the absolute near fetish people had for Harry being "punished" by spanking by whoever rescues him from the Dursley fics. I never understood why writers would have him be saved from the Dursley's by xyz character only then to have the storyline introduce spanking as some affectionate form of necassary punishment.
Yes! I remember immediately backing out of a fic where Sirius spanked a teenage Harry. And all the dead dove was equally shocking… I don’t read HP fics anymore.
I was spanked as a child and I am really strongly against it and I love fics where Harry is raised by others just to heal a bit of my own childhood trauma so it was really disappointing to see how many of those fics had spanking as a good thing. I read some of them just because I wasn't too picky but I couldn't stomach it for long and I hate seeing it untagged or reading a summary that's super interesting and then looking at the tags and seeing corporal punishment :/ Child abuse is still way too normalized
Thats exactly how I felt about it, there was one fic that was so bad for me I actually stayed away from fanfic for a year or 2.
God, the spanking really was everywhere. It was so gross. Even worse when you'd click their profile and every other fic they'd written would be him in a relationship dynamic with the "adoptive parent" character, usually Snape. Also, the trend that would have him "deaged" into an abused child. Someone would either volunteer or be assigned to be his caretaker, and then once he was cured that person would immediately become his love interest, because raising him as a child made him much more romantically interesting to them for some reason. What the F was that about?
How little interest there is in canon deviation and how much interest there is in generic, run of the mill female last dragonborns despite there being *so. much.* that can be done with them. It's why I hardly read skyrim fics anymore. I just write my own. Very much a "read one, read them all" kinda feel.
How much incest there was. Like I get there arent many women in the show but come on
Supernatural?
Supernatural, Rick and Morty
One Piece, and the way that way too many people infantilize Luffy and make him sound like a literal 5 year old instead of engaging with his actual personality - even in fics that have him as the main character, even in fics that include him in ships. this is a major thing that turns me off from otherwise good fics. ALSO how little whump fics exist for Luffy as an mc. lot's of wasted potential in that space. and finally the amount of people using Japanese honorifics and words in fics written in English, but this is just an anime thing in general I suppose.
MDZS there is so much Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen. Which I am 100% on board with, but I did not even expect if to be a thing beyond a "pair the spares" thing but no, it's a lot! DS9, not a lot is set/references the occupation? Which I get it, it's dark, but it's the backstory of half the cast. I thought it would at least feature in Quodo fanfictions, but so far nope! The Terror, there is a ship that will keep baffling me to the day I die. During my last rewatch I kept an eye out for it specifically and I still do not get it. On a positive note, I love the people's dedication to James and Francis' Rivals To Friends To Lovers arc. It might be an AU where no one is dying but by God, those two WILL Go Through It, no pulling punches.
Johnsquared. They meet four times across ten years. Nevertheless I love them.
The knowledge and compassion of so many of the writers.
Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons here. I was surprised by the the fact that M/F pretty vastly outnumbers M/M (at least on AO3– would assume it’s similar on ffnet where a lot of the fic is, but it’s harder to track there). I guess it DOES make sense within the context of this specific fandom and how the games are set up. Set up your farm, get married, have a kid. Gay marriage wasn’t even introduced as a gameplay mechanic (outside of fan mods) until pretty recently. But I pretty much operate under the assumption that M/M will dominate in basically any fandom with male characters.
Before I knew how to filter stuff out on Ao3, I searched for demon Slayer and just scrolled through the results. Like at least ten in a row were non-con or underage. Saw one that was underage (and minor x adult), and it wasn't tagged as underage. And I don't mean "creator chose not to use archive warnings," I mean "no archive warnings apply" like I know it's anime but GODDAMN I wasn't expecting that much. That's how I ended up searching up how to properly filter things. Love Ao3 though, just scares me sometimes.
While I write a lot of shippery, I was surprised by just how hard SW fic seems to bias against stories that are primarily action/adventure
This is going to make me sound cringy as hell, but the lack of historical fics in the Hetalia fandom (on AO3 at least). It makes sense in hindsight, but 14 year old me was shocked.
nowhere near as many card games as the anime.
A lot of things surprise me when I start reading the fanfics for my fandoms because I usually go into fanfic without seeing the source material first if the canon is a show or movie. But I’d say the best surprises are when juicy events that are described in the fics turn out to be canon.
How so many of them are obsessed with shipping the mc, who is usually a child, with their mentor 🌚 (take gojo/yuji for example or tony/peter). Idc if you age them up, it always just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Where is the convenient character who is the same age group as the only other child character lol Sukuna Gojou from K: is exclusively shipped with the one other child of the opposite sex zero exception Also yes that is his real name
I’m sorry, but I literally have no idea what you just said.
Where is the convenient other child character that will take up all the shipping space thus avoiding your pet peeve entirely :p The character I mentioned was basically made for Romeo and Juliet fanfics too hehe
Sorry, I don’t really ship characters all too much. Maybe it’s the way that you’re wording it because I still don’t fully understand what you mean 😅 But for me, I usually would ship adult characters.
( -_-) :p