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g_uavaPrompt: In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom.
I've done lots of 'fortune-telling' for my fandom based on yearly patterns of my fandom's activity on AO3.
The year will end with about 15 Explicit fics posted in the fandom tag. The total number of fics for the most popular pairing will not exceed one third of the fics in the fandom tag. At the time when the series goes off the air, the second most popular pairing will not have more than one page of fics (<20).
After gathering the data (to practice Excel hacks and become employable), I set out to change the fandom's future by breaking the recurrent patterns. I deliberately made sure that there were 15 Explicit fics in the fandom tag before the show's second quarter begins. I started writing early in the show's run and posted about a fic a week for my ship so it may end up with the same number of fics as what will eventually arise as the most popular pairing.
By the end of the show's run, there were about 40+ Explicit fics not written by me. What was the actual most popular ship wasn't clear from the fandom's statistics alone due to the high number of fics that I've racked up for my ship (that is actually unpopular).
The pattern has been broken and it gives me faith that other fandom-wide patterns, those unrelated to fanfic, can be broken too. Maybe I'm taking the message from the show to 'change your fate' too seriously in applying it to this hobby. But I'm still going to continue looking out for and disrupting patterns that don't help me grow.
The future of fandom may be unpredictable, but I believe my future in fandom will certainly involve going back to the past - looking at what has been done and what I can do differently to see more interesting sights.
That time I tried to change the future, Game Master style
I've done lots of 'fortune-telling' for my fandom based on yearly patterns of my fandom's activity on AO3.
The year will end with about 15 Explicit fics posted in the fandom tag. The total number of fics for the most popular pairing will not exceed one third of the fics in the fandom tag. At the time when the series goes off the air, the second most popular pairing will not have more than one page of fics (<20).
After gathering the data (to practice Excel hacks and become employable), I set out to change the fandom's future by breaking the recurrent patterns. I deliberately made sure that there were 15 Explicit fics in the fandom tag before the show's second quarter begins. I started writing early in the show's run and posted about a fic a week for my ship so it may end up with the same number of fics as what will eventually arise as the most popular pairing.
By the end of the show's run, there were about 40+ Explicit fics not written by me. What was the actual most popular ship wasn't clear from the fandom's statistics alone due to the high number of fics that I've racked up for my ship (that is actually unpopular).
The pattern has been broken and it gives me faith that other fandom-wide patterns, those unrelated to fanfic, can be broken too. Maybe I'm taking the message from the show to 'change your fate' too seriously in applying it to this hobby. But I'm still going to continue looking out for and disrupting patterns that don't help me grow.
The future of fandom may be unpredictable, but I believe my future in fandom will certainly involve going back to the past - looking at what has been done and what I can do differently to see more interesting sights.
