Why do some fandoms have so many fanfics?

I've always been curious about this. Going by Website/Fanfiction.Net, Harry Potter has hundred of thousands of stories. I doubt that's just because it's popular. What factors do you think encourage fans to write their own stories? What about a particular fandom get you to write fanfics?

Whatever made these series popular also contributes to how many fans make fanfiction.

I think it also relies on potential and the number of fans invested. I actually find it harder to write fanfiction with tightly plotted stories that answer everything, versus ones where the 'what ifs' abound and you can spin more things from it

Harry Potter in particular has a lot of off-screen stuff you could write about, like the other wizarding schools and how other countries deal with The Masquerade.

Also, shipping.

edited 11th Oct '16 4:13:09 PM by Karxrida

Shipping is a major source of fanfiction, so things that have a lot of attractive characters are bound to have fanfics.

I like the explanation for a work to spawn lots of fanfic, it must be popular, yes, but it also must be good but heavily flawed as well. Heavily flawed because that encourages fans to write what they would think would be an improvement upon the original. Also, I think great worldbuilding and characters plays a heavy role as well.

Harry Potter fits, because you get lots of fans dissatisfied with the lack of romance, the characterization changing from black and white to more gray, stuff like that.

There's Twilight as well, but let's not fool ourselves: Nobody in their sane mind gives a damn about Twilight. Am I right or am I wrong about that?

Great worldbuilding definitely has a huge role. So many Star Wars fanfics are based on that. (But Star Wars is also a 'good but heavily flawed' franchise).

Avatar The Last Airbender is probably the only series I can think of that isn't heavily flawed that has a huge amount of fanfics. A lot of them are worldbuilding based, shipping based, or are A Us/What Ifs from what I remember.

Of course, introspection fics can be in any fandom as long as there's characterization as well.

World building a hobby of mine. I enjoy it!

Well, S Meyer did develop intriguing backstories for the vampires and side characters that are more interesting than the main characters, but most of the fanfic is just shipping Edward and Bella and is barely related to the source material, so huh.

A combination of factors:

First, I think "wanting to be in the world" inspires fanfics. This is why Harry Potter has loads of fics - tons of people were enchanted by the books. (Not a fandom I ever got into. Never read the books, only watched the movies with a "meh" attitude, I'm afraid), but loads of young people grew up mesmerized by the series and fanfic is a way to "stay in the world" and explore it. The "super popular" fandom that I am in now is The Legend Of Zelda. The game series is a Long Runner - the first game came out when I was a kid and canon is still being made... and, well, even though I've read pretty much all of the "popular in the fandom" plots and have written a crap-ton of my own fics for the series, it's one I keep coming back to despite "everything's been done in this fandom!" because the world itself is great to mentally be in. (I write fics for the same reasons I tell Nintendo to "Shut up and take my money!" when there's a new Zelda game).

Second, there are some canons that seem to invite fanfic - canons that give you just enough of a world to be intriguing but leave out bits and pieces of worldbuilding - worldbuilding that would be interesting! Stuff that the canon probably should have had! For my example - The Hunger Games. I'm not really big "into the fandom" but I have a couple of Hunger Games fics under my belt as a fic-writer simply because of the "open world" aspect of the books and films. There is a LOT that Collins teased us with and then left out. Parts of the story feel more like a "sketch of a world" than a fully-realized world. I do not know if this was intentional on her part - perhaps she wanted loads of people to use Panem as a creative-platform. She gives us all these Districts, but we only get to really know a few of them and only 12 very well. In Catching Fire there are tons of characters who are sketched out just enough to be interesting, but not enough for us to have really known them. (One of my fanfics is all about "the life of a random surviving Tribute from District 10" for just this reason). With such broad-strokes... you just want to fill it in!

Though I have an alternate theory on this, too. I've written a few fanfics for my favorite videogame, Shadow Of The Colossus . It has an intentionally minimalist world - just enough to intrigue, but a lot of "what the hell is going on here?" left out, and yet is is an obscure fandom. This is in part because it's an arty little game that's not a part of a huge everybody-plays-it long-running series like Zelda, but I think, also in part because it's just so stark and beautiful that most would-be fanfic writers find it intimidating. My small number of fics for it is for the same reason why I barely touched the anime Haibane Renmei with fics: "This thing as it stands as canon is a WORK OF ART that does not need my hands bespotting it!"

So maybe a third factor is "imperfection of canon" - that is, the canon winds up having little things that one is inspired to "fix" about it that makes it popular among writers. This probably accounts for the shipping-crazes, too... people seeing potential chemistry that is left hanging / never explored or is handled in an off way in the canon.

And then, there's the point at which some humorist writes a crackfic for an improbable / impossible pair or scenario and people laugh at it enough to jump on the bandwagon... there's that, too, which can become a popular fanon-thing.

I think it helps if the story is not quite linear, with plenty of "what if" scenarios to be explored. Loads And Loads Of Characters also helps, I think, because people can specialize in fics for their favorite characters.

It also helps if there are series gaps, or the show is good enough to be widely enjoyed but not so tightly written that there are gaps to be explored. So BBC's Merlin, by not giving us Arthur knowing Merlin's secret until the very end, gives writers a lot of scenarios to explore where that didn't happen.

Superhero fandoms have the advantage of big world, a lot of characters, and in the cases of stuff like DC and Marvel you can cherry pick your continuity to form your favorite continuity.

Then there's, of course, shipping. Fan preferred ships fuel a lot of fic in certain fandoms.

Of course, a work has to be popular enough to draw in a lot of fic writers and readers.

From what I've seen it also really helps (for certain fandoms, often ones less focused on romance) for a few big fics to set out a bunch of common tropes and ideas for other fanfics to copy.

It's because those type of stories never get old no matter how many versions you read. Characters have backgrounds, it's easy to diverge the story. One Piece and especially Fairy Tail are horrible at this, I don't wanna read another word about some of other version of their canons. Boring east blue again and first half of Grandline, Fairy Tail had never had a good canon to begin with and their magics are spammy instead of versatile and mysterious.

Sometimes is because is too easy to write fanfics about it. Hetalia is the second most popular in the anime section on FF dot net, having thousands of fanfic, and that's because is a silly webcomic with NATIONS as protagonist. Like, you can really write about anything that comes to your mind and still be plausible lol

For me, it's good characters. Good worldbuilding is a good setup for crossovers, but good characters can be taken out of the work and put into any possible scenario. That's the kind of work that attracts fanfic for me.

Though frankly, if the work has Loads And Loads Of Characters with only some of them having development, that's just a bonus because the extra background characters with no real personality in canon can be made into an O.C. Stand-in. That's why My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and South Park have a fairly strong fanfic presence.

In case of Hetalia, part of it was also because author took stereotypes and exaggerated much / made fool out of some countries to ths point that national pride made fanfiction authors out of a few pariots. As someone who, if anyone of my nationality ever acts remotely like that original character design, would not hesitate to throttle to make sure that the disgrace wouldn't spread to other countries, I would know.. (And this sentiment was shared by majority among my friends who knew Hetalia. My people did not survive between China and Japan without fighting endless war against both, and we culturally dislike both. Actually, Japan and China were top two countries my country's people dislike from a recent statistics I saw somewhere, USA coming third. And that author went and- ...It got banned in South Korea for many, many reasons.)

I had been involved in helping researching before, for someone who had been writing some fanfics with historically authentic details for that fandom.. And I remember reading a couple of nice fanfics made by someone from France & Germany with similar reasonings.

As for some of the fandoms' popularity, I feel like it's case of having enough building blocks but not complete picture? Quite a few popular fandoms with many fanfics tend to be, like- Enough facts & mysteries to build upon, but not enough information that you have to ignore majority of canon facts for it? Thos are very easy to write crossovers, too.

You can't go writing Sith is good/peace loving guys and Jedi is evil/violent ones in Star Wars fandom without major headache, for one.

Bur Harry Potter fandom, specifically.. Even for us fanfiction writers who all take some liberties from canons of any fandoms, Harry Potter fandom is a flexible & accomodating one to start a fanfic, in my experience.

I feel like it is because there's so many canonically available excuses for almost every premise of a fanfic. Imperio- mind control- can make traitor out of anyone, Amortentia- love potion- can make shipping with anyone reasonable- or separating canon pairings- even if they are ethically wrong.. As a book that was published for teens, it doesn't go deep into political / cultural reasonkng behind the Wizarding War as well, so Good & Evil can be reversed or twisted. Or the entire hows & whys behind the main conflict.

As characters are students of magic school, there are some magical 'laws' and some cultural information introduced, but there aren't enough to hinder anyone's imagination for worldbuilding.. And it's easier for writers to take only certain parts of the canon rather than keeping all canon world's setting same for their fanfics.

Time Turner exists to go back a few hours, so time magic exists and you can mess with generations of characters. Age-gaps can be changed, so supposed adult & child character in canon can exist in same timeline and become friend/enemy/etc reasonably.

Non-magical & magical communities are quite ignorant of each other, so non-magical character can learn about magic, or magical character learn of non-magical. They can co-exist, war against, or just in state of status quo like canon.

Basically.. A lot of A Wizard Did It sort of situation in addition to loose basic setting to do whatever a fanfiction writer wants with plausible excuses. It comes with 'expansion' with lots of additional material to make use of if writers needs it, even.. (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and whole other slew of books, movies, and games..)

Edited by Kalias on Mar 13th 2021 at 12:19:09 AM

Ben 10 has the possibility for creating new alien species; I've already been doing one where Ben 10 has Alien X reimagined and the species changed, and Ben also has the option of becoming a Maxatomar as well and a Pissciss Premann.

I'm in the fandom of the show, and although mine's nowhere near ready for public release, it's fun trying!

I'd also imagine a franchise with a The Chosen Many premise would generate alot of fanfiction since writers can create their own OC.

I think Windonda put it best. For example, I think one of the reasons why there's so much Friendship is Magic fanfiction is because it's loosely-plotted and episodic, so it's easy to imagine what happens between episodes.

I have to agree with the "more popular, the more fandom, the more fandom, the more fanfic" assessment. There are a lot of smaller fandoms that exist, yes, but often they don't have a lot of fan fiction stories (or in some cases, none at all). The more trendy a fandom is, the more than likelihood of there being fan works produced is high. Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, Harry Potter were all fandoms that grew and still grow, and basically have dominated in the pop culture eye. You're more than likely to see a fan fiction story based on Five Nights at Freddy's because it's popular, than you would see one based on something much smaller.

Edited by CB2001 on Oct 8th 2021 at 6:16:34 AM

This is definitely the case. I follow both the Spooky Month and Friday Night Funkin ' tags on AO 3; FNF has a much larger fandom than SM and has way more fics, despite SM being around for longer

It could also be 'cuz of ships and characterization.

Sometimes it is just popularity F-F-Dot-Net has a few thousand Super Mario stories, and that's not a franchise known for its plots.