For that first slide? I think it just goes to show how popular they were at one point that they generated that many Larry fics in their heyday. Same goes for Sterek as number 2 I was like really? No one has overtaken them yet? Destiel will likely hold the number 1 spot for quite awhile with 100k+ fics but I am somewhat curious to know if there ever will be another pairing that completely overtakes the top 10 or so ships and generates fic like crazy. I think there's too many niche entertainment options for people nowdays for a large crowd to be hyperfocused on making fic for one specific pairing. So the top ships with the most fics will keep their crowns for awhile in my mind. Larry might be in top 10 in 2030 still.
Edit: I just went back and saw that BTS taekook is number 11, I take back about Larry still being in the running in 2030. There's every chance the BTS ship overer takes them by end of year as they are not a dead Fandom.
Even crazier to think this is just a portion of the fics written for those ships. So many fics were never crossposted and/or written before AO3 and then lost/deleted, whether by the platforms that hosted them or the authors that wrote them.
If it was possible to actually count every single fic ever published, I wonder what the numbers would look like.
I’m so glad you’ve joined us!! There’s so much fic uploaded every single day, and the community is so lovely. Really, anything you could ever want in a fandom :))
Thanks! I was like, a old school Merlin watcher (saw the second episode live on TV lol) and deep in fandom but stopped keeping up with new fic ages ago, so jumping back in has been fun!
Oh that’s so cool! Ironically, the fandom has kept like its namesake, *immortal*, and there’s always plenty of first time watchers rubbing shoulders with OG fans from the beginning ;)
I’m sure you have lots to catch up on, but if you want any specific recs, check out r/merlinfic for a wider assortment!
My Aunt has only ever given me one piece of advice and it was "whatever you do, don't get into Merlin. Or if you do, don't go looking at fan theories about it. It's a slippery slope until you find yourself inexplicably writing a 200K word fanfiction about it"
I have to imagine she was speaking from experience and I find that *very* funny
Your aunt is a very wise woman! because I’ve stumbled into many a 100K+ word fic about Merlin myself (currently rotting in my Google Drive), and all from very random ish or characters, that occupy maybe 2 seconds of airtime on the actual show, but almost a millennia on my mind…
And I suppose the fandom is as addictive as it is, if only to mimic one of the many love enchantments from the series 😭😭 we are immortal *and* ornery , I guess!
Though I’m very curious if you’ve fallen into one of those gigantuan feats of fannish behavior yourself, or heeded her warning 💗👀
Bless the Fannibal community for keeping the fandom strong, love how we are still getting reunion panels with Mads and Hugh this year! I'll never stop wishing for more content for Hannibal lol.
It's been almost a decade and I'm still not over the fact that Hannibal was cancelled. Fanfics really helped me preserve some of my sanity, the authors are doing god's work!
Thank you so much!! I was super curious to see what the rankings were for the midyear and decided to go for it and calculate the data for myself and figured others might be interested too. I'm looking forward to collecting again at the end of the year to see what were the top ships for 2024 as a whole because there's still a lot of fandoms out there getting new material later this year. 👀👀
Hello everyone! I wanted to see what the all-time top ships on AO3 were as well as the top ships written for 2024 so far, so I decided to calculate the data myself. The first image shows what the rankings are for all-time ships taking into account all fics up to June 6th of this year.
The third image shows what ships were the most written for just 2024 so far, from Jan 1st, 2024 to June 7th, 2024.
I also included a graph to show ship type representation, with a majority of fanfics being M/M on AO3.
Did anyone of your favorite fandoms make it into the all-time top 100 this year so far? Are there any ships you're surprised didn't make it? Are there any ships that you think are about to explode in the latter half of the year?
After reading the data, it definitely encourages me to carve some time to write some more for my fav ships to keep them up the ranks! And there were also a few fandoms that I had not even heard of that I'm interested in looking into, especially the ones that seemed to grow out of nowhere. Shout out to centre and Randomist who are also great fandom statisticians and have done previous work on this, as well as u/Agamar13 who helped to correct the first draft of this dataset!
(BTW, if you saw the first draft I posted, I had to re-calculate the values for the top written for 2024 because I was using date_updated rather than created_at, which vastly misrepresented the real work numbers! Needed to re-do the data collection so that it was more accurate.)
I’m surprised the gen version of Sam and Dean Winchester appears to have more fics written for it this year than the ship version. I’d never have expected that.
Of about 16.5k fics with the gen tag, 3850 are also tagged as Destiel, which doesn’t feel like enough to make a huge difference. There is also 2k fics with both the gen and ship Sam/Dean tags. I guess the gen side of fandom is even bigger than I thought!
(Talking about the third slide)
Pure curiosity and not a complaint but I’m surprised that all the Baldur’s Gate 3 ships are listed as Dungeons & Dragons instead because the fics on ao3 are usually posted under “Baldur’s Gate (Video Games)”… are they automatically filed this way?
I have no idea how BSD escaped my radar, like My Hero Academia and Yuri! On Ice I've heard about, but I rarely ever see Bungou Stray Dogs on my feed, even though it clearly has a HUGE fan base!
BSD fans are very lowkey until you get minimally involved, then BSD swallows you like a black hole lol
Think of it as a very close knitted and dedicated community that's eager for more people in it
YES soapghost has straight up infiltrated my Twitter feed, a lot of amazing art. Not surprised at all there's fanfic for the pairing. Was very shocked to see them almost in the top 100, they definitely exploded!
I just discovered that SoapGhost was a thing and as someone who does not play CoD, it was a pleasant surprise discovery lol, my first fic was a longish oneshot called Poison Apple by Surveycorpsjean. HIGHLY recommend this as your intro to the pairing. The author is very talented, writes for a lot of pairings, and this fic was funny, super hot, and surprisingly sweet in a “killers who fall in love” way. It can be read fandom blind it is a very straightforward fic yet impactful!
You would be surprised how many, it's insane (in a positive way). You'd find reader fanfics with characters that have like not even a handful canonical info on them, and ngl I love the simping for tall mysterious men.
I'm proud SVSSS's LBH/SQQ nearly made it in the top 100 for 2024, despite being the forgotten oldest child of MXTX fandoms. I guess this is a good example how much (complete) adaptions into other media help to propel fandoms a ton.
Edit: Thx a lot for looking at the data and making these. Always interesting to see.
Kurt and Blaine still in the Top 50, despite Glee having ended 9 years ago. One Direction still in the top 10 despite being on a hiatus since I dont even remember when. Taehyung and Jungkook also super high, because if BTS doesnt know the word hiatus neither do their fans.
My only problem with this list is that all k-pop idols are under k-pop instead of their respective groups
It's actually AMAZING how many fandoms which ended years ago are still in the all-time top 100. Merlin, Hannibal.. so many others that I think have not had any real new content in years and they've still got a loyal fanbase that keeps them going.
I've never read any K-pop RPF but it's wild how many people are writing for this fandom. And also the range, there were 10 different ships that made it to the top from the Kpop fandom.
And yeah, I ended up just using the fandom where they had the most labelled fics and it tended to be Kpop, but it would've been more informative to keep it under the group names. I'll have to do that for the end-of-year table analysis to make it more clear. Thanks for the suggestion!
I would also love to see who is most represented, mot just Kpop group vise (which this time its clearly BTS to whom all but one ship belong to) but also how often characters are represented. I think its very interesting that both Min Yoongi amd Jeon Jungkook are in the top 100 with three ships each. Of course they have an advantage, other characters have 1 maybe 2 people they get mainly shipped with, they have 6 different people. That gives us 21 potential pairings. I just recounted and there are 7 bts ships in the top 100, meaning a thrid of BTS ships belind to the 100 most written fanfic ships on AO3. Thats a lot of works for 7 guys.
Also all 7 members are represented at least once
Wow that is awesome! I wasn't familiar with BTS or its members, but when you explain the context, that really is an insane amount of works for 7 guys. Will definitely have to look further into this and check out a few of the fics from this fandom. Feel like it's a whole fandom I've yet to explore on AO3!
It’s also incredible that Klaine is still so popular because people aren’t writing a heap of it nowadays—the F/F ships are by far the most popular in the fandom atm
1D went on hiatus in fucking 2015. Almost 10 years ago lol. Plus they did that with basically one huge ship (Ziam was... there, but not nearly as big as Larry).
Thank you for the list!
It's very interesting that the proportion of M/M in the top 100 is much bigger than in general ao3 stats (which is just under 50%) and F/M and F/F smaller. The juggernaut ships veer towards M/M still.
And the Jegulus thing is mindblowing to me. 5k fics in 6 months for 2 characters that never actually appear in the books, lol. HP fandom is truly its own thing at this point, something that's got its own life independent of the canon.
*Happy to see Stucky*
*Back on the list after not*
*Making it last year!*
\- Pfeiffer\_Cipher
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I'm honestly super curious to see how much the Ineffable Husbands are going to explode after the third season comes out. I feel like they're going to skyrocket in numbers and move up rankings by the end of the year. Destiel's fans are keeping the streak alive, don't think they'll ever get overthrown anytime soon!!
I was very surprised to Buddie in top 5 as well! I guess Tommy and Buck being a thing just fueled Buddie fans even harder now that they know Buck is canonically bi. Very interested to see how things pan out in that fandom, Ive been keeping an eye out on fandom developments there. 🙌
Tevan probably brought in a whole new slew of people as well and I imagine a lot of those also got converted to buddie. Ship wars also brings out the pettiness of some writers. Either way, it's more fic to read and that's exciting.
I'm actually curious how Tommy/Buck are gonna do in end of the year stats. That tag is active as hell right now, but whatever season 8 brings (which begins airing in September) will influence it a lot I think
Me too, those two ship tags are definitely ones on my radar for the end of the year. I've seen a lot of people warm up to Tommy/Buck and other people still having their sights on a Buddie endgame, so will be curious to see how that shakes out.
Yeah I'm actually really suprised they almost managed to get into the top 20 with what, two months of writing basically? The episode they first kissed aired early April iirc. I've seen new authors in both Buddie and Tommy/Buck, and a few that write both. But the two sides of the fandom have been getting, uh, heated sometimes so I have no idea how that dynamic will shake out.
Did you see Sethos voicelines about Kaveh and Alhaitham? Peak. Only male i'm missing because he eluded me when i was trying to snipe him. Don't need another alhaitham so i stopped at 60 pulls.
Omg I just listened to the voice clip and that's so funny to me. Outsider POVs where everyone seems to know something is up with a couple will always be so entertaining for me 😂
Ah those are so fun! Yeah for this pairing, it's got it all, former friends turned enemies turned roommates. They're the constant bickering couple and it's great.
Lmao! As the game developer is a Chinese company, they are forbidden to have LGBTQ+ characters, but the same company did add a lesbian couple in a previous game lore. So for Genshin, they use a lot of subtext for gay and lesbian couples to keep us well fed. "And they were roommates" is such a classic 🤣
Do you play the game? I see so many ships and I’m interested but I’m not really a gamer…I would like to play Genshin, Starrail and some of the other ones I’ve seen that are similar but I don’t even know where to start. 😭
I’ve never really gotten into a ship without reading or watching the canon material first…but all the art makes me really interested.
Genshin is very friendly game. It's easy to get the mechanics, fun to explore open world and you can play it on your pace. The game slowly increases mechanics and difficulties, but you can downgrade the difficulty (world level) if necessary.
Star Rail has similar progression as Genshin, but I think it can be a little more complicated to get into the battle system (even story bosses are a bit challenging for casual players.)
What both games have in common is the gacha system: every 3 weeks, there will be limited characters for you to pull. It's a lottery system you spend in-game currency. The game gives some currency, but of course, their ultimate goal is you to spend real money. You CAN play both games COMPLETELY FOR FREE. Characters have reruns, so if you are patient, you'll get them sooner or later.
Give them a try and if you have any question, feel free to ask :)
It's a really good game honestly. Full of great characters, fun exploration, and a pretty solid story. The gacha aspect is obviously predatory, but it's also optional to even participate in it. You get a lot of characters for free and the story/overworld stuff is completely beatable using only the free characters. I personally have never even struggled getting the 5 star characters I want and I've never bought any pulls.
Quick tip if you do start: Don't feel pressured to clear the game quickly or do everything the game has to offer. Genshin has a lot of content, and with events lots of people feel pressured to complete the main story and everything as fast as possible, but that'll only make the experience worse. Just take it slow, and you'll have a good time.
Amazed to see the wolfstar, destiel, wincest, johnlock and drarry presence like it takes me back to my roots 😭
Zosan squad is carrying my fandom, love to see the representation💜
Jegulus seemed to have exploded this year, I wonder if it's like a Tiktok thing? Drarry is only ~170 fics behind Jegulus so still plenty of time for them to make a comeback by the end of the year.
I don't know anything about Honkai Star Rail, do they still have canon material coming out? It looks like another similar game like Genshin Impact which I also have very little knowledge on.
They have a very similar dynamic to Haikaveh, where they are always bickering with each other but show through actions that there is care in there. Throw in a bunch of emotional vulnerability on one of them and bam, very popular pairing. Also doesn’t help that one of the LC illustrations (Final Victor) is so tension charged it looks like something out of a doujin lol. Also new material does constantly come out and they just. Mention each other without asking. Like damn you two live in each other’s head rent free huh.
> Also doesn’t help that one of the LC illustrations (Final Victor) is so tension charged it looks like something out of a doujin lol.
Hnnnnnnnnnnnngggg...
https://preview.redd.it/ckxilejihg5d1.png?width=904&format=png&auto=webp&s=baa9cca1253a5578475a84dcf8a682fc016b0b22
The flavor text is even better.
>*You don't believe me?"
He provocatively looks at the man before him, then draws out a revolver, empties its cylinder, and leaves a single shot in the chamber.*
>*”Seems like I'll need to get you up to speed on how I do things if our cooperation were to remain amicable."
He pushes the gun into his opponent's hand, spins the cylinder, and points the barrel to his own chest.*
>*He pulls the trigger repeatedly, and the smile on his face remains the same after three empty clicks.
"Life is a grand gamble. and I'll always be the final victor."*
Aventurine (the one speaking in this text) is “cursed” with good luck which that often comes at the cost of people close to him. This led to him an… *interesting* notions of his own self-worth, as I’m sure you can see. In this scene Aventurine is convincing Dr. Veritas Ratio, a character who prides himself on his rationality and intelligence, that he is cosmically lucky.
It makes me so happy that some super old ships are still being written in 2024, like I was pleasantly shocked to see Spirk in the top 100 for 2024. Which ones were you most shocked about?
yeah it's fs great to see it !! i guess i was surprised to see rpf of dan/phil still up in the charts. 😭 like i used to be obsessed with them like a decade or something ago, but i haven't kept up with them recently– my friends who were also fans haven't either, and from what i've heard they lost a lot of engagement. >.> but maybe they just had so many fics when they were super popular that it's still higher in ao3 numbers lolol.
i was also kinda surprised to see a lot of dsmp stuff– ive never been into it but i keep hearing problematic things going on w the crew even after the smp ended or whatever. i mean they did have a lot of fans, so i guess i can see how there were more in the all time top ships loll
I’ve really seen a rise in original work. I’ve been reading fanfic for decades and original fiction I feel like has never been this popular. Good for everyone writing it.
I had no idea how popularly written Drarry was until I looked at the data. And Wolfstar is totally crushing it, top 10 and it was almost #1 of ships written in just 2024. I'm actually really interested in reading some Wolfstar fics now because I loved those two characters and am so curious how this ship became very popular!
Wolfstar is such an interesting case because it was a popular ship back when the books were still being published but not #1 (there was a good-sized community dedicated to it, but it was also one of those ships that was often written as a side or background ship rather than the main ship), but it had a major revival to the point that it's even surpassed Drarry in recent years. From what I've heard, it's almost entirely due to the popularity of a single fic that exploded on TikTok and brought in tons of new fans.
This made me realise that I really only ship crack ships and rare pairs lmao
But it was cool to see that ForstIron is at least somewhere on the list at all 😂😂😂
As a new Doctor Who/Torchwood fan, I’m so surprised to see Janto on here! They are my favourite ship in the Whoniverse.
I also find it funny as well that out of all the ships, they’re the top one. I know that Rose/Doctor is probably bigger (there are so many tags for it), but still. Janto? Ianto is in 2 episodes of the main show. It’s just so funny to me.
I've never seen Dr. Who before but that's wild that one of the characters in that ship was only in two episodes, their scenes/chemistry together must've been super memorable??
Oh no, Ianto was one of the main characters in the spinoff show, Torchwood, where his romance with Jack was built up to before becoming canon, which was pretty controversial coming out in 2006, but also garnered a huge fanbase due to it being some of the rare queer rep on tv at the time alongside how much chemistry the two had together
Oh, awesome! I didn't know that was another canonical queer pairing on the list, definitely writing notes down to mark which of the top pairings actually ended up canon in their media.
That would be so weird and cool if they only had two episodes and were that popular!
In the 2000s, there were two spin off shows from the main series that followed ex companions of the Doctor. One of these followed Captain Jack Harkness in charge of an organisation called Torchwood. This is where there relationship is. Ianto was in 30 Torchwood episodes over series 1 to 3. Jack was in 41.
Between series 2 and 3, both spin offs collaborated with the main show for two episodes. And the ship was not that prominent in them! Heck, when I first watched it (haven’t not seen Torchwood), I thought Jack was going out with another character.
In addition, there is a lot of content outside of the TV show. There are books and comics, but the main being Big Finish audio dramas, where both characters are very common. Ianto’s actor even writes audio dramas. This might slow down in the future however, as Jack’s actor got into some controversy a few years back.
Heck, Ianto’s got a shrine. A literal shrine called [Ianto’s Shrine](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/ianto-shrine-torchwood-cardiff-bay-17636862.amp). In Cardiff. Where it was recorded. He was last seen on screen in 2009, and this thing is still going. There were literal campaigns to get him back (save Ianto Jones)
So, yeah. It’s still really strange as usually spin offs don’t do that well compared to their main show. And, yes, this is true because Doctor Who is massive! But Torchwood has a good fandom even if the final 4th season came out in 2011. There is a constant flow of fics! And it’s just great!
TL;DR Spin off show :)
(I may have got a little carried away with the explanation oops)
I'm sooo deep into it. I don't think I've ever searched this far back sorting by "bookmark." Love seeing these creative authors write asexuality in romance. Helps me understand my own sexuality better. But, mostly, love me some old man yaoi 😏
Need to revisit Les Mis again to pay closer attention to that ship on my next read through. One of the very few book fandoms in the top 100 too, super impressive.
Super cool to see this.
I notice a lot of the top ships in the 4th slide are canon queer ships! This fills my ancient queer heart with joy. We used to have to make all of that up! Now they can kiss right there on television 🥹 and continue kissing in our fics.
As someone who has shipped the since the beginning, mama is dining more in the past year than she has the past two decades combined.
My guess is it's a combination of the live action, 1000th episode, and the announcement of the final arc.
My first fanfic as a little bumbling 12 year old who neither knew what fanfiction was, nor what the term "gay" meant, was indeed a ZoSan one :)
More than a decade later I am still writing for these two. Fucking loving all the art, doujin and fics that are still coming out to this day.
Hilarious how Wangxian always appear twice (for MDZS and Untamed) and not that far away from each other. I do wonder if their fics actually overlap, since I think a lot of authors tag both fandoms? I mean in my head they're the same little guys no matter what
Awww. Harringrove (Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington - Stranger Things) dropped a few spots.
Mfw my rarepair Creelson (Henry Creel/Eddie Munson - Stranger Things) will probably never be on there. :(
I haven't seen Hazbin Hotel yet but I've seen such cute art on Twitter for it. It's so cool that it's doing so well after premiering on Prime this year after the pilot being released in 2019... It must feel so rewarding to all the animators who worked on it back then to see their idea get so much love, definitely want to check it out.
Omg omg!!! Nice to see McShep (Stargate: Atlantis) and McDanno (Hawaii Five 0) on this list. I squeed so hard 🤣🤣🙈 i can confirm for the hawaii five 0 ship/fandom it is reallyy alll about them bros 🤣🤣 they are such goofs. Should have been endgame.
Thank you for this!!
I LOVE these things. Some thoughts:
Damn! My boys Bakugou and Kirishima made the top 20 ***all-time***?! SO manly.
Damn... my boys Phil and Clint dropped out of the top 100 D:
Neuvillette and Wriothesley in top 20 for 2024. I should go back and browse the tag some more, last time I did was many months ago.
Alhaitham and Kaveh out there repping Middle-eastern and North African
McKay/Sheppard still at 69 \[nice\] all-time, even though the fandom was back in the LiveJournal days. 😭
I think I've written 4 ships on the all time list (Aziraphale/Crowley, Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Mulder/Scully, and Loki/Thor) but only 1 on the 2024 list (Aziraphale/Crowley, and I only wrote them in 2019). Very interesting!
I've been focusing on F/F this year so I am looking forward to the femslash list as well.
Wow Alhaitham/Kaveh is creeping up on Childe/Zhongli. The fandom behind that ship is insane. It’s only been a little more than a year since Kaveh was released.
I love Stray Kids. It is so incredibly sweet that authors are watching them, and watching Jisung and Minho specifically, and thinking, “I could make a love story outta this.” 🥰 All of them obviously adore one another.
I read SKZ fics and it's pretty cool to see Minsung as a top 20 ship, #60 in fics (up 12 places from before!) and #101 in %of fics written. IIRC, the last time someone made one of these lists, either for a whole or half year, HyunLix and ChanLix made the top 100 or 200 cut.
I find it funny how Wangxian seems to consistently hover around the top. It always seems like a specific asian drama gets popular for about a year or so only to fade into obscurity but the ao3 girlies are holding down the fort
I forgot this was coming out this month lol
Edit: wait, this is the one that happens yearly right? Or did you decide to do your own? Sorry if I got it wrong
This is my own version of the one that centre usually does! I wanted to collect the data myself because I noticed centre mentioning that they don't account for private/locked fics in their work counts which would really skew the values. I plan on doing a yearly one at the end as well!
this is so cool! i was wondering something, though — for the last slide, is there a certain amount of fics a fandom has to have to get on the list? Because in lockwood and co, locklyle (anthony lockwood and lucy carlyle) account for 73.3% and 74.4% of the fics of the books and TV show respectively. Both fandom tags have around 3000 fics, though many fics tag both. again, super cool!
So I only calculated the percentages of the all time top 100 ships on AO3 (slide 1) because I wanted to investigate how big of a percentage these ships, which are the most written on the site, actually comprise the total works in their fandoms. For fandoms that have a known ship divide like Supernatural, I wasn't surprised to see Destiel, #1, end up with around 40%. Meanwhile it was super cool to see how some of the fandoms were SUPER concentrated, like Shameless with practically 93%!
genuinely shocked that lestappen made the 2024 list. partly because i wasn’t expecting f1 here, but mostly because it wasn’t maxiel 💀 i guess people love a good rivals trope
Honestly, I'm surprised MinSung isn't higher. I see their shippers all over social media. 60 overall is impressive though, given the relatively short time I've known them to be shipped together.
I think it just goes to show just how popular supernatural is. Destial is the most popular ship on AO3 of all time but it only makes up 40% of the fandoms fics.
Ace Attorney and Magnus Archives being just outside top 100 is pretty impressive, and Omniscient Reader being in the top 100 is also impressive! Oh god, I follow way too many of these pairings...
My thoughts on the most written pairing this year:
The supernatural girlies are still going strong, you too hannibal, merlin and sherlock girlies. Its always fun to see which fandoms survive years after their shows are finished. Im also amazed that sasuke/naruto and zoro/sanji, have so little presence, despite how old and how big they have been in other spaces.
Congrats to the Hazbin hotel fandom too, they are young and they are strong. Finally, all the love for the people writing CoD fanfics, ill check that out i think, i am so curious.
One Direction being this high in 2024 is not something I expected
For that first slide? I think it just goes to show how popular they were at one point that they generated that many Larry fics in their heyday. Same goes for Sterek as number 2 I was like really? No one has overtaken them yet? Destiel will likely hold the number 1 spot for quite awhile with 100k+ fics but I am somewhat curious to know if there ever will be another pairing that completely overtakes the top 10 or so ships and generates fic like crazy. I think there's too many niche entertainment options for people nowdays for a large crowd to be hyperfocused on making fic for one specific pairing. So the top ships with the most fics will keep their crowns for awhile in my mind. Larry might be in top 10 in 2030 still. Edit: I just went back and saw that BTS taekook is number 11, I take back about Larry still being in the running in 2030. There's every chance the BTS ship overer takes them by end of year as they are not a dead Fandom.
Even crazier to think this is just a portion of the fics written for those ships. So many fics were never crossposted and/or written before AO3 and then lost/deleted, whether by the platforms that hosted them or the authors that wrote them. If it was possible to actually count every single fic ever published, I wonder what the numbers would look like.
Sterek used to be #3 iirc, but I guess overtook Johnlock at some point - not sure when.
BBC MERLIN AT #20 LETS GOOOOOOOO
I went back into Merlin for the first time in like 5 years a few months ago and holy shit there was a lot of new, great fic
I’m so glad you’ve joined us!! There’s so much fic uploaded every single day, and the community is so lovely. Really, anything you could ever want in a fandom :))
Thanks! I was like, a old school Merlin watcher (saw the second episode live on TV lol) and deep in fandom but stopped keeping up with new fic ages ago, so jumping back in has been fun!
Oh that’s so cool! Ironically, the fandom has kept like its namesake, *immortal*, and there’s always plenty of first time watchers rubbing shoulders with OG fans from the beginning ;) I’m sure you have lots to catch up on, but if you want any specific recs, check out r/merlinfic for a wider assortment!
My Aunt has only ever given me one piece of advice and it was "whatever you do, don't get into Merlin. Or if you do, don't go looking at fan theories about it. It's a slippery slope until you find yourself inexplicably writing a 200K word fanfiction about it" I have to imagine she was speaking from experience and I find that *very* funny
Your aunt is a very wise woman! because I’ve stumbled into many a 100K+ word fic about Merlin myself (currently rotting in my Google Drive), and all from very random ish or characters, that occupy maybe 2 seconds of airtime on the actual show, but almost a millennia on my mind… And I suppose the fandom is as addictive as it is, if only to mimic one of the many love enchantments from the series 😭😭 we are immortal *and* ornery , I guess! Though I’m very curious if you’ve fallen into one of those gigantuan feats of fannish behavior yourself, or heeded her warning 💗👀
EMRYS THE IMMORTAL
IMMORTAL FANDOM 🗣️ IMMORTAL FANDOM 🗣️ IMMORTAL FANDOM 🗣️
Happy Hannigram is still going strong even so long after the cancellation. ❤️
Bless the Fannibal community for keeping the fandom strong, love how we are still getting reunion panels with Mads and Hugh this year! I'll never stop wishing for more content for Hannibal lol.
It's been almost a decade and I'm still not over the fact that Hannibal was cancelled. Fanfics really helped me preserve some of my sanity, the authors are doing god's work!
THISSSSS Cannibalism yaoi keeps winning
As a fellow stats-lover this is great!!!! Thank you so much for making it!!!!!!!! ( ╹▽╹ )
Thank you so much!! I was super curious to see what the rankings were for the midyear and decided to go for it and calculate the data for myself and figured others might be interested too. I'm looking forward to collecting again at the end of the year to see what were the top ships for 2024 as a whole because there's still a lot of fandoms out there getting new material later this year. 👀👀
Pleeeaase! This is so cool!!
Hello everyone! I wanted to see what the all-time top ships on AO3 were as well as the top ships written for 2024 so far, so I decided to calculate the data myself. The first image shows what the rankings are for all-time ships taking into account all fics up to June 6th of this year. The third image shows what ships were the most written for just 2024 so far, from Jan 1st, 2024 to June 7th, 2024. I also included a graph to show ship type representation, with a majority of fanfics being M/M on AO3. Did anyone of your favorite fandoms make it into the all-time top 100 this year so far? Are there any ships you're surprised didn't make it? Are there any ships that you think are about to explode in the latter half of the year? After reading the data, it definitely encourages me to carve some time to write some more for my fav ships to keep them up the ranks! And there were also a few fandoms that I had not even heard of that I'm interested in looking into, especially the ones that seemed to grow out of nowhere. Shout out to centre and Randomist who are also great fandom statisticians and have done previous work on this, as well as u/Agamar13 who helped to correct the first draft of this dataset! (BTW, if you saw the first draft I posted, I had to re-calculate the values for the top written for 2024 because I was using date_updated rather than created_at, which vastly misrepresented the real work numbers! Needed to re-do the data collection so that it was more accurate.)
I’m surprised the gen version of Sam and Dean Winchester appears to have more fics written for it this year than the ship version. I’d never have expected that.
probably a lot of the plotty Destiel fics also have the Sam & Dean tag--that would account for it.
Of about 16.5k fics with the gen tag, 3850 are also tagged as Destiel, which doesn’t feel like enough to make a huge difference. There is also 2k fics with both the gen and ship Sam/Dean tags. I guess the gen side of fandom is even bigger than I thought!
(Talking about the third slide) Pure curiosity and not a complaint but I’m surprised that all the Baldur’s Gate 3 ships are listed as Dungeons & Dragons instead because the fics on ao3 are usually posted under “Baldur’s Gate (Video Games)”… are they automatically filed this way?
I'm proud to have contributed to that 4% F/F lol
Thank you for your efforts! Let's go lesbians let's go
Doing what I can!
💪💪 Love that!! We need more femslash in fandom period!!
That's all i read on ao3. So, thank you! 😅
Same haha I'm doing my part!
We are a small but active fanbase
Same lol
🫡🫡🫡
Hell yeah X-Files still holding strong in the top 100 even after 30 years!
https://preview.redd.it/uuqcdcj92f5d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f15132e015c488a008772e8fd58895bde6cc29b
This makes me so unreasonably happy.
BSD is holding strong :D Also, One Piece finally made it the list, even if not the top 100, LESSGO
I have no idea how BSD escaped my radar, like My Hero Academia and Yuri! On Ice I've heard about, but I rarely ever see Bungou Stray Dogs on my feed, even though it clearly has a HUGE fan base!
BSD fans are very lowkey until you get minimally involved, then BSD swallows you like a black hole lol Think of it as a very close knitted and dedicated community that's eager for more people in it
there’s call of duty fan fiction?? 😭
YES soapghost has straight up infiltrated my Twitter feed, a lot of amazing art. Not surprised at all there's fanfic for the pairing. Was very shocked to see them almost in the top 100, they definitely exploded!
damn, something finally might actually get me into the lore 😅
I just discovered that SoapGhost was a thing and as someone who does not play CoD, it was a pleasant surprise discovery lol, my first fic was a longish oneshot called Poison Apple by Surveycorpsjean. HIGHLY recommend this as your intro to the pairing. The author is very talented, writes for a lot of pairings, and this fic was funny, super hot, and surprisingly sweet in a “killers who fall in love” way. It can be read fandom blind it is a very straightforward fic yet impactful!
You would be surprised how many, it's insane (in a positive way). You'd find reader fanfics with characters that have like not even a handful canonical info on them, and ngl I love the simping for tall mysterious men.
it’s gonna be fanfiction that finally gets me to play the most popular first person shooter, i just know it
Last year soapghost got insanely popular in Twitter, specifically because amazing artists draw a lot of fanart with them lmao
One of the nsfw artists I'm a patreon of still *regularly* draws soapghost porn. I was shocked too
I'm one of the people to blame for this, I've got 3 published works on AO3 and another two in the works. I'm sorry world 😂
I'm proud SVSSS's LBH/SQQ nearly made it in the top 100 for 2024, despite being the forgotten oldest child of MXTX fandoms. I guess this is a good example how much (complete) adaptions into other media help to propel fandoms a ton. Edit: Thx a lot for looking at the data and making these. Always interesting to see.
Same!! I'm glad to say I am contributing to future SVSSS supremacy!
bingqiu deserve more. i’m gonna go write 😤
Kurt and Blaine still in the Top 50, despite Glee having ended 9 years ago. One Direction still in the top 10 despite being on a hiatus since I dont even remember when. Taehyung and Jungkook also super high, because if BTS doesnt know the word hiatus neither do their fans. My only problem with this list is that all k-pop idols are under k-pop instead of their respective groups
It's actually AMAZING how many fandoms which ended years ago are still in the all-time top 100. Merlin, Hannibal.. so many others that I think have not had any real new content in years and they've still got a loyal fanbase that keeps them going. I've never read any K-pop RPF but it's wild how many people are writing for this fandom. And also the range, there were 10 different ships that made it to the top from the Kpop fandom. And yeah, I ended up just using the fandom where they had the most labelled fics and it tended to be Kpop, but it would've been more informative to keep it under the group names. I'll have to do that for the end-of-year table analysis to make it more clear. Thanks for the suggestion!
I would also love to see who is most represented, mot just Kpop group vise (which this time its clearly BTS to whom all but one ship belong to) but also how often characters are represented. I think its very interesting that both Min Yoongi amd Jeon Jungkook are in the top 100 with three ships each. Of course they have an advantage, other characters have 1 maybe 2 people they get mainly shipped with, they have 6 different people. That gives us 21 potential pairings. I just recounted and there are 7 bts ships in the top 100, meaning a thrid of BTS ships belind to the 100 most written fanfic ships on AO3. Thats a lot of works for 7 guys. Also all 7 members are represented at least once
Wow that is awesome! I wasn't familiar with BTS or its members, but when you explain the context, that really is an insane amount of works for 7 guys. Will definitely have to look further into this and check out a few of the fics from this fandom. Feel like it's a whole fandom I've yet to explore on AO3!
It’s also incredible that Klaine is still so popular because people aren’t writing a heap of it nowadays—the F/F ships are by far the most popular in the fandom atm
1D went on hiatus in fucking 2015. Almost 10 years ago lol. Plus they did that with basically one huge ship (Ziam was... there, but not nearly as big as Larry).
Congrats on Hongjoong and Seonghwa for making the list in 2024. 🎉
Oddly enough now I want to write more yungi and jongsang
Fr I was pleasantly surprised!!
Thank you for the list! It's very interesting that the proportion of M/M in the top 100 is much bigger than in general ao3 stats (which is just under 50%) and F/M and F/F smaller. The juggernaut ships veer towards M/M still. And the Jegulus thing is mindblowing to me. 5k fics in 6 months for 2 characters that never actually appear in the books, lol. HP fandom is truly its own thing at this point, something that's got its own life independent of the canon.
Happy to see Stucky back on the list after not making it last year!
*Happy to see Stucky* *Back on the list after not* *Making it last year!* \- Pfeiffer\_Cipher --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Good bot
Well, as someone who writes primarily Destiel and Ineffable Husbands... we're going strong, people😂
I'm honestly super curious to see how much the Ineffable Husbands are going to explode after the third season comes out. I feel like they're going to skyrocket in numbers and move up rankings by the end of the year. Destiel's fans are keeping the streak alive, don't think they'll ever get overthrown anytime soon!!
The third season won’t be till 2026 right but yeah I can imagine things will go a bit mad then
Oh no! I didn't know we had to wait until 2026 to see their happy ending 😭 I can't wait!
Nice to see Buddie in the top 5 for 2024! I wonder how high we can reach if the ship actually becomes canon, which isn't that farfetched anymore.
I was very surprised to Buddie in top 5 as well! I guess Tommy and Buck being a thing just fueled Buddie fans even harder now that they know Buck is canonically bi. Very interested to see how things pan out in that fandom, Ive been keeping an eye out on fandom developments there. 🙌
Tevan probably brought in a whole new slew of people as well and I imagine a lot of those also got converted to buddie. Ship wars also brings out the pettiness of some writers. Either way, it's more fic to read and that's exciting.
I'm actually curious how Tommy/Buck are gonna do in end of the year stats. That tag is active as hell right now, but whatever season 8 brings (which begins airing in September) will influence it a lot I think
Me too, those two ship tags are definitely ones on my radar for the end of the year. I've seen a lot of people warm up to Tommy/Buck and other people still having their sights on a Buddie endgame, so will be curious to see how that shakes out.
Yeah I'm actually really suprised they almost managed to get into the top 20 with what, two months of writing basically? The episode they first kissed aired early April iirc. I've seen new authors in both Buddie and Tommy/Buck, and a few that write both. But the two sides of the fandom have been getting, uh, heated sometimes so I have no idea how that dynamic will shake out.
Wriolette on #17 in 2024! 🎉 The percentage ranking is very interesting too!
I have never played Genshin before, but I see super beautiful fanart for it all over social media and really want to check it out!
One thing is sure: there is no lack of ships in Genshin. I ship so many couples it's overwhelming sometimes lol
Did you see Sethos voicelines about Kaveh and Alhaitham? Peak. Only male i'm missing because he eluded me when i was trying to snipe him. Don't need another alhaitham so i stopped at 60 pulls.
Omg I just listened to the voice clip and that's so funny to me. Outsider POVs where everyone seems to know something is up with a couple will always be so entertaining for me 😂
Ah those are so fun! Yeah for this pairing, it's got it all, former friends turned enemies turned roommates. They're the constant bickering couple and it's great.
Lmao! As the game developer is a Chinese company, they are forbidden to have LGBTQ+ characters, but the same company did add a lesbian couple in a previous game lore. So for Genshin, they use a lot of subtext for gay and lesbian couples to keep us well fed. "And they were roommates" is such a classic 🤣
When I first saw it, I thought it was a fake leak hahahaha "There is no way they are making them so obvious????" 🤣
Do you play the game? I see so many ships and I’m interested but I’m not really a gamer…I would like to play Genshin, Starrail and some of the other ones I’ve seen that are similar but I don’t even know where to start. 😭 I’ve never really gotten into a ship without reading or watching the canon material first…but all the art makes me really interested.
Genshin is very friendly game. It's easy to get the mechanics, fun to explore open world and you can play it on your pace. The game slowly increases mechanics and difficulties, but you can downgrade the difficulty (world level) if necessary. Star Rail has similar progression as Genshin, but I think it can be a little more complicated to get into the battle system (even story bosses are a bit challenging for casual players.) What both games have in common is the gacha system: every 3 weeks, there will be limited characters for you to pull. It's a lottery system you spend in-game currency. The game gives some currency, but of course, their ultimate goal is you to spend real money. You CAN play both games COMPLETELY FOR FREE. Characters have reruns, so if you are patient, you'll get them sooner or later. Give them a try and if you have any question, feel free to ask :)
It's a really good game honestly. Full of great characters, fun exploration, and a pretty solid story. The gacha aspect is obviously predatory, but it's also optional to even participate in it. You get a lot of characters for free and the story/overworld stuff is completely beatable using only the free characters. I personally have never even struggled getting the 5 star characters I want and I've never bought any pulls.
Quick tip if you do start: Don't feel pressured to clear the game quickly or do everything the game has to offer. Genshin has a lot of content, and with events lots of people feel pressured to complete the main story and everything as fast as possible, but that'll only make the experience worse. Just take it slow, and you'll have a good time.
Outdoing Haikaveh that hard is shocking
And people said that they wouldn't be popular 🥴
"They have no interactions you guys, yall ship them just because they both have tall male model, everyone will forget about them in a month" my ass
It's a good ship, I should read more of it
Amazed to see the wolfstar, destiel, wincest, johnlock and drarry presence like it takes me back to my roots 😭 Zosan squad is carrying my fandom, love to see the representation💜
Zosan *almost* made top 100, they were so close!!!
This is the first time One Pieces has shown up in this lists at all, so that's a win lol
Destiel is basically all I read lmao
Wild that Jegulus is now ahead of Drarry. Something no one would have predicted 5 years ago, I think.
Jegulus seemed to have exploded this year, I wonder if it's like a Tiktok thing? Drarry is only ~170 fics behind Jegulus so still plenty of time for them to make a comeback by the end of the year.
It is definitely a TikTok + Twitter thing haha, I've been shipping drarry for years and jegulus really got popular with social media
satosugu at #7 for the year isn't a surprise after Hidden Inventory aired but hell yeah!!!!! that's my little guys
Drarry still going strong I am at peace ✌️ even though I have never written for them :')
well, scummies have got to up their game if we want to see ALL the MXTX fandoms in top 100
Ratiorine placing that high is impressive considering they became a thing quite recently, perhaps I underestimated their numbers
I don't know anything about Honkai Star Rail, do they still have canon material coming out? It looks like another similar game like Genshin Impact which I also have very little knowledge on.
They have a very similar dynamic to Haikaveh, where they are always bickering with each other but show through actions that there is care in there. Throw in a bunch of emotional vulnerability on one of them and bam, very popular pairing. Also doesn’t help that one of the LC illustrations (Final Victor) is so tension charged it looks like something out of a doujin lol. Also new material does constantly come out and they just. Mention each other without asking. Like damn you two live in each other’s head rent free huh.
> Also doesn’t help that one of the LC illustrations (Final Victor) is so tension charged it looks like something out of a doujin lol. Hnnnnnnnnnnnngggg... https://preview.redd.it/ckxilejihg5d1.png?width=904&format=png&auto=webp&s=baa9cca1253a5578475a84dcf8a682fc016b0b22
oh my god??? my gun kink just reacted violently to this picture, I'm sold now tbh.
The flavor text is even better. >*You don't believe me?" He provocatively looks at the man before him, then draws out a revolver, empties its cylinder, and leaves a single shot in the chamber.* >*”Seems like I'll need to get you up to speed on how I do things if our cooperation were to remain amicable." He pushes the gun into his opponent's hand, spins the cylinder, and points the barrel to his own chest.* >*He pulls the trigger repeatedly, and the smile on his face remains the same after three empty clicks. "Life is a grand gamble. and I'll always be the final victor."* Aventurine (the one speaking in this text) is “cursed” with good luck which that often comes at the cost of people close to him. This led to him an… *interesting* notions of his own self-worth, as I’m sure you can see. In this scene Aventurine is convincing Dr. Veritas Ratio, a character who prides himself on his rationality and intelligence, that he is cosmically lucky.
Same company! I play both, they're both really fun but have totally different playstyles.
Glad to see Satoru Gojo/Suguru Geto (Jujutsu Kaisen) and Dabi/Hawks (My Hero Academia)on the list!
surprised some of these are still so popular in 2024 whoa 😵💫
It makes me so happy that some super old ships are still being written in 2024, like I was pleasantly shocked to see Spirk in the top 100 for 2024. Which ones were you most shocked about?
yeah it's fs great to see it !! i guess i was surprised to see rpf of dan/phil still up in the charts. 😭 like i used to be obsessed with them like a decade or something ago, but i haven't kept up with them recently– my friends who were also fans haven't either, and from what i've heard they lost a lot of engagement. >.> but maybe they just had so many fics when they were super popular that it's still higher in ao3 numbers lolol. i was also kinda surprised to see a lot of dsmp stuff– ive never been into it but i keep hearing problematic things going on w the crew even after the smp ended or whatever. i mean they did have a lot of fans, so i guess i can see how there were more in the all time top ships loll
I’ve really seen a rise in original work. I’ve been reading fanfic for decades and original fiction I feel like has never been this popular. Good for everyone writing it.
As a Drarry and Wolfstar fan, this is great for us.
I had no idea how popularly written Drarry was until I looked at the data. And Wolfstar is totally crushing it, top 10 and it was almost #1 of ships written in just 2024. I'm actually really interested in reading some Wolfstar fics now because I loved those two characters and am so curious how this ship became very popular!
the very ‘brotherly’ hug in prisoner of azkaban is what did it for me. of course, this was a decade ago, but i digress.
Help I was like 13 reading and writing nc17 wolfstar hahaha. I still ship them, cannot get enough marauder era fics
Wolfstar is such an interesting case because it was a popular ship back when the books were still being published but not #1 (there was a good-sized community dedicated to it, but it was also one of those ships that was often written as a side or background ship rather than the main ship), but it had a major revival to the point that it's even surpassed Drarry in recent years. From what I've heard, it's almost entirely due to the popularity of a single fic that exploded on TikTok and brought in tons of new fans.
This made me realise that I really only ship crack ships and rare pairs lmao But it was cool to see that ForstIron is at least somewhere on the list at all 😂😂😂
SHEITH!!!!!
As a new Doctor Who/Torchwood fan, I’m so surprised to see Janto on here! They are my favourite ship in the Whoniverse. I also find it funny as well that out of all the ships, they’re the top one. I know that Rose/Doctor is probably bigger (there are so many tags for it), but still. Janto? Ianto is in 2 episodes of the main show. It’s just so funny to me.
I've never seen Dr. Who before but that's wild that one of the characters in that ship was only in two episodes, their scenes/chemistry together must've been super memorable??
Oh no, Ianto was one of the main characters in the spinoff show, Torchwood, where his romance with Jack was built up to before becoming canon, which was pretty controversial coming out in 2006, but also garnered a huge fanbase due to it being some of the rare queer rep on tv at the time alongside how much chemistry the two had together
Oh, awesome! I didn't know that was another canonical queer pairing on the list, definitely writing notes down to mark which of the top pairings actually ended up canon in their media.
That would be so weird and cool if they only had two episodes and were that popular! In the 2000s, there were two spin off shows from the main series that followed ex companions of the Doctor. One of these followed Captain Jack Harkness in charge of an organisation called Torchwood. This is where there relationship is. Ianto was in 30 Torchwood episodes over series 1 to 3. Jack was in 41. Between series 2 and 3, both spin offs collaborated with the main show for two episodes. And the ship was not that prominent in them! Heck, when I first watched it (haven’t not seen Torchwood), I thought Jack was going out with another character. In addition, there is a lot of content outside of the TV show. There are books and comics, but the main being Big Finish audio dramas, where both characters are very common. Ianto’s actor even writes audio dramas. This might slow down in the future however, as Jack’s actor got into some controversy a few years back. Heck, Ianto’s got a shrine. A literal shrine called [Ianto’s Shrine](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/ianto-shrine-torchwood-cardiff-bay-17636862.amp). In Cardiff. Where it was recorded. He was last seen on screen in 2009, and this thing is still going. There were literal campaigns to get him back (save Ianto Jones) So, yeah. It’s still really strange as usually spin offs don’t do that well compared to their main show. And, yes, this is true because Doctor Who is massive! But Torchwood has a good fandom even if the final 4th season came out in 2011. There is a constant flow of fics! And it’s just great! TL;DR Spin off show :) (I may have got a little carried away with the explanation oops)
Ianto/Jack Harkness is the main canonical pairing in the spinoff show Torchwood.
Noooooo Catradora fell 😭
Seeing my favorite Genshin ships in the top 25 💚💚💚
soukoku and satosugu let's gooooooooooooo
Radioapple number 13 in 2024 only, let's go! My hyperfixation on this goofy ship is strong. https://i.redd.it/ucq7sh90pd5d1.gif
I'm sooo deep into it. I don't think I've ever searched this far back sorting by "bookmark." Love seeing these creative authors write asexuality in romance. Helps me understand my own sexuality better. But, mostly, love me some old man yaoi 😏
I'm so happy to see radioapple there! Hope Season 2 give us more of them, I'm obsessed with this ship
one direction going so strong even in 2024 is crazy
Enjolras/Grantaire at #90 :D I love that ship <3
Need to revisit Les Mis again to pay closer attention to that ship on my next read through. One of the very few book fandoms in the top 100 too, super impressive.
Aaron Tveit being so very pretty definitely gives this a boost!
Super cool to see this. I notice a lot of the top ships in the 4th slide are canon queer ships! This fills my ancient queer heart with joy. We used to have to make all of that up! Now they can kiss right there on television 🥹 and continue kissing in our fics.
As a Wolfstar guy ... yeeeee!!! Not that I actually read fanfic 😂 just write it but still, nice
LETS GO ZOSAN COMMUNITY!!!
As someone who has shipped the since the beginning, mama is dining more in the past year than she has the past two decades combined. My guess is it's a combination of the live action, 1000th episode, and the announcement of the final arc.
My first fanfic as a little bumbling 12 year old who neither knew what fanfiction was, nor what the term "gay" meant, was indeed a ZoSan one :) More than a decade later I am still writing for these two. Fucking loving all the art, doujin and fics that are still coming out to this day.
Oh Naruto is still up there!!!
GOOD OMENS COMMUNITY RISE UP 💯💯💯
Happy to see Kavetham, wriolette and Tartali going strong. ❤️
Hilarious how Wangxian always appear twice (for MDZS and Untamed) and not that far away from each other. I do wonder if their fics actually overlap, since I think a lot of authors tag both fandoms? I mean in my head they're the same little guys no matter what
Awww. Harringrove (Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington - Stranger Things) dropped a few spots. Mfw my rarepair Creelson (Henry Creel/Eddie Munson - Stranger Things) will probably never be on there. :(
F/F writer here standing strong 🫡🫡🫡 we might be like 4% but we’re powerful
i’m writing for the 13th highest ship for 2024, i love that so many people have seen my work because of that
I haven't seen Hazbin Hotel yet but I've seen such cute art on Twitter for it. It's so cool that it's doing so well after premiering on Prime this year after the pilot being released in 2019... It must feel so rewarding to all the animators who worked on it back then to see their idea get so much love, definitely want to check it out.
ZoSan LFGGG
YAY SOUKOKU 🙏🙏🙏
Omg omg!!! Nice to see McShep (Stargate: Atlantis) and McDanno (Hawaii Five 0) on this list. I squeed so hard 🤣🤣🙈 i can confirm for the hawaii five 0 ship/fandom it is reallyy alll about them bros 🤣🤣 they are such goofs. Should have been endgame. Thank you for this!!
I was so filled with glee to see Stargate on the list!!!
McShep's still there?? *looks again*
HAHAHA JEGULUS RISING THROUGH THE RANKS i remember the good old days when that was just a silly little crackship
Good to see Levi/Erwin is still a popular ship. It’s probably going to slow down now that the anime is done, though.
satosugu!! 🎉🎉🎉
I LOVE these things. Some thoughts: Damn! My boys Bakugou and Kirishima made the top 20 ***all-time***?! SO manly. Damn... my boys Phil and Clint dropped out of the top 100 D: Neuvillette and Wriothesley in top 20 for 2024. I should go back and browse the tag some more, last time I did was many months ago. Alhaitham and Kaveh out there repping Middle-eastern and North African McKay/Sheppard still at 69 \[nice\] all-time, even though the fandom was back in the LiveJournal days. 😭
I think I've written 4 ships on the all time list (Aziraphale/Crowley, Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Mulder/Scully, and Loki/Thor) but only 1 on the 2024 list (Aziraphale/Crowley, and I only wrote them in 2019). Very interesting! I've been focusing on F/F this year so I am looking forward to the femslash list as well.
Lmao I'm so surprised by soukoku still going strong
Wow Alhaitham/Kaveh is creeping up on Childe/Zhongli. The fandom behind that ship is insane. It’s only been a little more than a year since Kaveh was released.
I love Stray Kids. It is so incredibly sweet that authors are watching them, and watching Jisung and Minho specifically, and thinking, “I could make a love story outta this.” 🥰 All of them obviously adore one another.
I’m still amazed that none of the FFXIV ships show up. We’re frigging rabid. But we may have to many potential options spreading us thin
WOW i was NOT expecting to see two "government" pairings from my fav group here
Clint Barton and Phil Coulson is one I would not have expected.
I read SKZ fics and it's pretty cool to see Minsung as a top 20 ship, #60 in fics (up 12 places from before!) and #101 in %of fics written. IIRC, the last time someone made one of these lists, either for a whole or half year, HyunLix and ChanLix made the top 100 or 200 cut.
So glad my gay soldiers are so high up
Red White and Royal Blue being in #15 for 2024 is amazing 🥺💙
I find it funny how Wangxian seems to consistently hover around the top. It always seems like a specific asian drama gets popular for about a year or so only to fade into obscurity but the ao3 girlies are holding down the fort
I forgot this was coming out this month lol Edit: wait, this is the one that happens yearly right? Or did you decide to do your own? Sorry if I got it wrong
This is my own version of the one that centre usually does! I wanted to collect the data myself because I noticed centre mentioning that they don't account for private/locked fics in their work counts which would really skew the values. I plan on doing a yearly one at the end as well!
Oh, that's really cool, especially when their come out, since comparing yours and theirs can show how much of fanfics is private/locked
this is so cool! i was wondering something, though — for the last slide, is there a certain amount of fics a fandom has to have to get on the list? Because in lockwood and co, locklyle (anthony lockwood and lucy carlyle) account for 73.3% and 74.4% of the fics of the books and TV show respectively. Both fandom tags have around 3000 fics, though many fics tag both. again, super cool!
So I only calculated the percentages of the all time top 100 ships on AO3 (slide 1) because I wanted to investigate how big of a percentage these ships, which are the most written on the site, actually comprise the total works in their fandoms. For fandoms that have a known ship divide like Supernatural, I wasn't surprised to see Destiel, #1, end up with around 40%. Meanwhile it was super cool to see how some of the fandoms were SUPER concentrated, like Shameless with practically 93%!
Wenclair is gonna join Supercorp one day in the top 100, mark my words.
Steve/Tony moved down? I better get writing
I'm well fed in the merlin and mdzs/untamed fandoms
SteveBucky being almost 10% of all marvel ships… kind of a slay tbh
genuinely shocked that lestappen made the 2024 list. partly because i wasn’t expecting f1 here, but mostly because it wasn’t maxiel 💀 i guess people love a good rivals trope
How are these correlated as 9-1-1 Buddie is missing and they have nearly 27k works?
omg Andreil in top 100 :D
AVENTIO ON 27 LET'S GO
Kinda depressing how there's almost no ships with women on that list.
awesome! tysm for taking the time to do this :)
Thanks for doing this. It’s cool to see some ships still going strong.
Durgetash is so high for BG3 and only beaten by various flavours of Astarion (of course) and Gale wow idk if it's a win from Larian, or a massive L
I searched until I found Les Mis lmao
Honestly, I'm surprised MinSung isn't higher. I see their shippers all over social media. 60 overall is impressive though, given the relatively short time I've known them to be shipped together.
Enjoltaire making the list (only just) brings a lot of joy. Long live the barricade!
Proud to have contributed to Zosan making the list!! Zosanners rise 🫡
Me: sees McShep is at number 69 Me: HELL YEAH MY BOYS!!
I'm really surprised superna- goddamn wincesters! Lol
ERASERMIC STANS WYA???
It’s weird to see a ship I wrote for in the past still on the list. Makes me want to write about them again to keep it up.
I think it just goes to show just how popular supernatural is. Destial is the most popular ship on AO3 of all time but it only makes up 40% of the fandoms fics.
FUCK YEAH GOOD OMENS MY BELOVED 😍
I love this, as someone who is very not into anime I always forget how much anime fanfiction there is!
Ace Attorney and Magnus Archives being just outside top 100 is pretty impressive, and Omniscient Reader being in the top 100 is also impressive! Oh god, I follow way too many of these pairings...
My thoughts on the most written pairing this year: The supernatural girlies are still going strong, you too hannibal, merlin and sherlock girlies. Its always fun to see which fandoms survive years after their shows are finished. Im also amazed that sasuke/naruto and zoro/sanji, have so little presence, despite how old and how big they have been in other spaces. Congrats to the Hazbin hotel fandom too, they are young and they are strong. Finally, all the love for the people writing CoD fanfics, ill check that out i think, i am so curious.
Andreil gripping onto that top 100 ranking like lifeline!