Two weeks ago, I took a snapshot of entry counts for each tag on the fandoms page at Archive of Our Own, hoping to eventually get a sense of which fandoms were growing fastest. Comparing that data with the entry counts on the site today, I think it might be possible to understand which fandoms are growing most quickly.
Unfortunately, a simple count of how many times each fandom’s tag was used is going to be imperfect—maybe much more misleading than my BoardGameGeek reports. Evidently, AO3 tag counts can fluctuate quite a bit: their names can change; tags can reportedly be reclassified such that their new parent tags suddenly get credit for existing entries; and the archive accepts mass uploads of fanfic from old repositories / personal collections such that work written long ago can suddenly show up as if it were new.
Still, it’s something. I’ll start with the top 25 fandoms by a raw count of new entries appearing in the past two weeks:
∆ %∆ Total Fandom ---- ----- ------ ------ 3218 0.023 143559 K-pop 3105 0.013 241238 Marvel 2792 0.013 220048 Marvel Cinematic Universe 1619 0.038 44004 Voltron: Legendary Defender 1572 0.026 62339 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS 1278 0.063 21405 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia 1263 0.008 167506 Real Person Fiction 1249 1.892 1909 Detroit: Become Human (Video Game) 1215 0.01 118844 The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom 1214 0.011 115916 The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types 1185 1185.0 1186 Metalocalypse (Cartoon) 1116 0.007 169996 Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling 1034 0.009 116772 DCU 1011 0.01 98215 The Avengers (Marvel Movies) 936 0.005 184710 Supernatural 715 0.01 72436 Star Wars - All Media Types 706 0.017 42992 Original Work 607 0.009 65714 Captain America - All Media Types 568 0.098 6376 Firefly 557 0.01 58797 Captain America (Movies) 498 0.005 93744 Teen Wolf (TV) 462 0.034 13870 Spider-Man - All Media Types 451 0.004 113953 Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms 423 0.072 6285 NCT (Band) 397 0.013 30213 Final Fantasy
Honestly, the most surprising items are things like Firefly, the tag count for which has likely been skewed by one of the factors I mentioned above. Only Detroit: Become Human pops out as the kind of fast-growing category I’m sure I’m looking for (though I have doubts about the game itself). So a raw count of new entries is probably not very helpful for discovering newly popular / fast-growing fandoms.
So here’s a list of every fandom that had more than 25 new entries in the past two weeks, that grew by more than 4.0%, and that had more existing entries two weeks ago than it has gained in the past two weeks (a criterion that will eliminate things that are really too new to judge; for example, assuming it has real growth potential, I’ll have to catch Detroit: Become Human next time, because it’s more important to weed out name changes and weed out percent changes that only seem large because the population is too small):
Total ∆ %∆ Fandom ----- ---- ----- ------ 21405 1278 0.063 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia 6820 298 0.046 Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types 6376 568 0.098 Firefly 6285 423 0.072 NCT (Band) 4936 365 0.08 Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) 4637 256 0.058 Critical Role (Web Series) 3999 181 0.047 New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing 3245 255 0.085 Sanders Sides (Web Series) 3211 174 0.057 全职高手 - 蝴蝶蓝 | Quánzhí Gāoshǒu - Húdié Lán 2068 104 0.053 Black Panther (2018) 2061 105 0.054 Figure Skating RPF 1508 91 0.064 Doctor Strange (2016) 1449 65 0.047 Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series) 1329 94 0.076 Bendy and the Ink Machine 1307 51 0.041 RuPaul's Drag Race RPF 1116 90 0.088 Far Cry (Video Games) 1104 83 0.081 Timeless (TV 2016) 1093 75 0.074 Stray Kids (Band) 1006 148 0.172 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV) 955 66 0.074 Deadpool (Movieverse) 889 49 0.058 Fire Emblem Heroes 833 45 0.057 MacGyver (TV 2016) 772 46 0.063 Fate/Grand Order 753 30 0.041 Falsettos - Lapine/Finn 724 49 0.073 Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli 676 52 0.083 The Arcana (Visual Novel) 671 48 0.077 Disney Duck Universe 663 43 0.069 13 Reasons Why (TV) 633 38 0.064 Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel) 633 38 0.064 Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types 583 36 0.066 The Worst Witch - All Media Types 570 85 0.175 Far Cry 5 539 45 0.091 Love Simon (2018) 531 52 0.109 Trollhunters (Cartoon) 517 28 0.057 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games) 511 31 0.065 Call Me By Your Name (2017) 497 114 0.298 NINE PERCENT (Band) 481 36 0.081 The Worst Witch (TV 2017) 441 99 0.289 Ocean's (Movies) 409 30 0.079 Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes 399 62 0.184 Splatoon 374 27 0.078 Humans (TV) 369 38 0.115 DuckTales (Cartoon 2017) 361 43 0.135 BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game) 304 34 0.126 Granblue Fantasy (Video Game) 295 56 0.234 凹凸世界 | AOTU Shijie | AOTU World 293 28 0.106 Eurovision Song Contest RPF 265 27 0.113 Boruto: Naruto Next Generations 245 41 0.201 The Incredibles (2004) 193 45 0.304 Flight Rising 179 34 0.234 Garrison's Gorillas 121 30 0.33 HiGH&LOW: the Story of S.W.O.R.D. (TV)
I’m not positive this is the best way to look at the data, but there sure are plenty of things here I’ve never heard of and would like to know more about.