the BIGGEST fandoms on AO3

That's a lot of fanfics...

Note: For the sake of ranking I didn't include the broad categories of RPF and KPop just because I consider them more genres made of subfandoms than actual, singular fandoms themselves!

Timestamps:
0:00 - 4:20 Intro
4:20 - 8:05 (Bonus) Fandom #21
8:05 - 12:13 Fandom #20
12:13 - 16:00 Fandom #19
16:00 - 19:47 Fandom #18
19:47 - 23:33 Fandom #17
23:33 - 27:22 Fandom #16
27:22 - 32:22 Fandom #15
32:22 - 37:31 Fandom #14
37:31 - 40:33 Fandom #13
40:33 - 44:15 Fandom #12
44:15 - 46:57 Fandom #11
46:57 - 51:29 Fandom #10
51:29 - 56:31 Fandom #9
56:31 - 1:00:11 Fandom #8
1:00:11 - 1:05:07 Fandom #7
1:05:07 - 1:08:25 Fandom #6
1:08:25 - 1:11:27 Fandom #5
1:11:27 - 1:14:45 Fandom #4
1:14:45 - 1:17:46 Fandom #3
1:17:46 - 1:21:54 Fandom #2
1:21:54 - 1:25:05 Fandom #1
1:25:05 - 1:29:04 Fandom Comparison Rankings
1:29:04 - 1:29:52 Concluding Thoughts

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Social Media:

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Thanks for watching!

[ColeyDoesThings]

Go ahead and guess what the biggest fandoms on AO3 are👀

[kanemorsillo]

That feeling when you aren't into any of these fandoms and you're just here to be envious of their fic

[-kub]

One thing I've noticed about fanfics is that people will write about what the original is lacking/doesn't have enough of. For example, if the original work is a tragic fantasy story, you can expect fics about modern AUs and fluff fics. If the original work is cute family-friendly stuff, there'll be a lot of angsty, tragic fics.

It's kinda why I love fandom spaces so much. We build stretch, squish, twist and build upon the characters & concepts that we got and breathe a new life into it. It's literally like magic.

[violetagnes]

Ao3 is an addiction that cannot be helped

[starrysoda]

MINECRAFT HAVING THE MOST ANGST FICS WILL NEVER NOT BE FUNNY 😭😭

[GiornoLovesDeathGrips]

We're all here to see our fandoms mentioned

[vm]

"If youre intimately familiar with this home page" jokes on you i exclusively get to ao3 through a shortcut that leads to the jonmartin tag i havent seen the home page in years

[melemon]

ayo reminder that better help has been known for treated their patients AND therapists badly so just a warning

[beetea]

in regards to sports rpf, there's an ongoing formula one ao3 fic that's currently over 5 million words long. it's been ongoing since 2014 and was updated yesterday. it has 547 chapters. it's infamous in the f1 fandom!

[scrensaver_]

Reading SBI fics and being in the fandom *did* feel like being repeatedly stabbed, you're absolutely right

Ah, "There's Blood in your Web, Theseus (wipe it out)"...

[SignalShine]

Bro I had war flashbacks when you said passerine and tommyinnits unbeatable method of escaping sudden death. It’s truely just raw pain. 😭😭

[runa_cosplay_]

As a former dsmp fan I can say superhero/villan AUs were very popular in 2022 and there was a very little number of fics which were actually known by the whole community and tommyinnit's clinic for supervillains was only the second one to actually be known by a big amount of people in the fandom. (Edit: Passerine was the first)

[Alexander_Luv]

Seeing Tommyinnits clinic was so fun cause i was like " I know that one" only to be IMMEDIATELY followed by one of the most earth shattering, soul crushing, fandom annihilating fics to ever come out of sbi was great. i will never read that fic i am so weak to angst lol

[lemonicowo]

Sports RPF Omegaverse being one of the most popular tags in the fandom is SO FUNNY

[dramaticartisan]

Neopolitan trio (Techno, Wilbur, Tommy) being one of the frequent additional tags is funny to me when you compare it to the SBI platonic ship tag because it's like a handful of people decided "They're going unsipervised this time, hope dad comes back before it gets worse"

And then we have the fic type tags deciding it's flavoured like vinegar&salt chips with a side of iced lemonade

[jvever]

Be careful of Better Help, they don't fully vet their therapists and have been predatory to clients in the past.

[g_evrythng]

The captions are so funny on Coley videos sometimes, ‘cause instead of “canon divergence” you get “Canada v*rgins” 😂😂😂

[polinaignatenkova]

That opening line about being mostly isolated on ao3 and staying in your own little corner is SO TRUE. I was surprised and devastated that atla isn't in this video. Then I went and looked at the fic count . . . yeah no that makes sense, just cause I'm stuck in that beautiful world doesn't mean that it will be nearly as popular as these massive and long-standing fandoms.

[hrhkeepingtrack]

Hi Coley! As someone in a Sports RPF fandom (specifically Hockey RPF), I wanted to let you know that most people putting out fic make it archive locked on AO3 to help keep the fourth wall alive and well. There have been several purges of fic and fandom content over the years as broadcasters/podcasters/other people working adjacent to sports media find fic and try to bring it to the athletes' attention, so the fandom works hard to keep to itself to prevent it from happening again. I know you need to be logged in to do videos like this and get an accurate read on numbers, which I totally understand! I just also know that the fandom would appreciate if you didn't show archive locked fics on screen or share their summaries if you DO end up doing a deeper dive into RPF/Sports RPF at some point. There's an interesting page on Fanlore about Hockey RPF and the fourth wall if you wanted some more information on this all too 😊

[shinymist]

The reason video blogging rpf is so heavily tilted towards minecraft was because for a very long time there weren’t official tags for Minecraft characters, since most streamers just used their username as their character’s name. For the more popular SMPs and characters, real tags were created, but for the rest we are still stuck with the rpf tag. You’ll see a lot of these fics may have some variation “this is about the characters not the person” in the tags or notes, especially ship fics