TV3 Fanfic Stats

[RetroVenus]

meant to make this like a week ago and then didn’t haha whoops

To preface this, I was inspired by these two lovely little fanfics, which aren’t actually fanfics at all. Instead they’re a sort of “AO3 in review”, a list of the most popular ships on Archive of Our Own as of 2021. A look around the site showed me that there were multiple “fanfics” of the sort, most of them focusing on cross-fandom ships, though there are a few focusing on other things such as tag usage. Others focus on one fandom only, typically a large one.

It is the last point that made me wonder; since SOTF is supposed to be the most popular tv show in America, what would it’s fanfiction look like? What would the statistics look like?

I’ve already discussed this in the voice chat on the Discord, but I would like to have any ideas and discussions collected here for reference. I would like to see your thoughts on what a kid’s fandom would be like, what the most popular ship with them is, what the most commonly used tags are, things like that. Once there’s enough data, I’ll compile everything together, apply random numbers to each stat, make a fancy spreadsheet, and post the entire thing onto my AO3 account (Zwischenzug)

Keep in mind that while TV3 will be the main focus (as the in-universe explanation is that there have been similar fics focusing on the previous seasons), you can also talk about TV1 and TV2, or even the lore seasons. They’ll be used as a reference; something like “x/y from Season 67 has this many fics, which is more than a/b from Season 66”.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please tell me!

[Dogs231]

My idea (though CondorTalon obviously has the right to overrule my own personal nuclear take) is Oliver Sheffield being used in AUs as a blank-slate POV character. With such a short run, he could be vague enough for people to ascribe any personality they want onto him, and by extension, serve any purpose they seek to achieve. Even better, he's morally ambiguous enough to serve any role, protagonistic or antagonistic.

The possibilities for his start:

• He awakens in the Cargo Floats, but he does not lose his bag. This is a more positive outcome.
• He loses his bag but successfully steals Carol's to replace it. This is the typical route for those looking for a villainous POV.
• He starts somewhere other than the Cargo Floats. This is the wild card option.

[Dogs231]

Also, my hot take is that Cory is used as a background extra in AUs who only exists to be merc'd in the background, unless Olivia, Lucia, or Gregory are the POV characters.

[Yonagoda]

Aw heck yeah Meta Commentary!

So I’ve actually had like. A lot of thoughts about like. Fandom and its tendency to be a little icky and like TBH I legit designed Vasily partially to “cater” to the problematic side of fandom and have him be aware of the fact that yeah he is kind of Fujoshi Bait in a way. Like. It’s really meta. But like hot take he’s the tumblr sexyman and he’s the character that people slap insensitive trans “headcanons” on and then fetishize and he’s the one where if you click on his character and go check the most popular tags they’re all like. Various ways to have sex because despite the genuine nuance of his personality people will inevitably go like “hey do you think he has piercings on his-”

Like

You know.

And I personally do believe that he would’ve been popular. If not by personality then by association w/long lasting “main” characters and his general appearance. It’s kind of unfortunate tbh. I’d say there’s a decent amount of people shipping him with… everyone I guess he’s kind of a slut that way (reference)

Especially Ivan? Look I’ve BEEN in weird fandoms and people go “oh these characters are thematically related and hate each other I bet they fuck”

And um like Fisk and Keegan and all that.

Also vampire AUs. Those weird camboy AUs. Once in a while you get a 1000 word character study introspection drabble that is beautifully written but also wonderfully inaccurate and it has like 30 views. P

His fanbase would be fucking rabid tbh. Not even joking like I firmly beliefe the hypothetical SOTF fandom would probably have a small but outspoken niche dedicated to him, going “OMG gender” and having weird references and also being unspeakably horny.

Also his fans are either thirteen year olds complaining that thirty year olds find him hot or thirty year olds complaining that thirteen year olds find him hot. Because like. Fandom discourse I firmly believe Vasily has the WORST fandom/ the weirdest shit written. Like “proud lolisho enjoyer” twitter profiles and all four archive warnings slapped onto it and all that.

OK

Moving on to Leah

I think the people that would enjoy Leah as a person and also as a character in any deep way would probably not really engage in SOTF as a whole. Because I think Leah is like, more of a talker and a passive force. As a result she isn’t the most interesting to watch, but I also think a small community exists mostly on the peripherals of non-sotf tumblr, where a lot of posts take her quotes out of context and generally mention her off-handedly but never truly actually, like, acknowledging her as a part of SOTF just as someone who Existed? I guess. Like. I don’t know.

Also has a niche fandom- smaller and less dedicated than Vasily’s and vastly more civil. I do thiink that she would be a character that is surprisingly discoursy as she did like actively ramble A Lot about some topics that people would find controvercial (“Why do people think rape is bad?”) and simultaniously was interconnected with more major characters (Seo, Mary, Jewel, Olivia) but I think despite croaking it relatively late she’s a bit of a dark horse.

Rather notably attracts domestic fluff content. Her and Mary baking vegetarian tarts together. Her and Seo doing each other’s hair. Meeting Jewel in a coffeeshop AU except nobody’s kissing anyone they just become good friends. Soft contemplated poems. Teen and up, Gen or F/F, no archive warnings apply.

Also someone archived her lemon bar recipe probably.

Then you get the weird acephobic dead dove do not eat rule34 of her but every time someone posts that a million of her fans always go and report it.

[Cicadan]

Couple of thoughts on my characters to help flesh out the project. It's a really cool idea, let me know if I can do anything else to help out!

Timothy:
- Being a member of the niche Strawberry Shortcake fandom (the bronies of the late 2010s of TV-verse, because my SI needed a parallel) Timothy is by obligation of the fandom canonized in a number of fanworks and fanarts as someone to be mourned because they have to latch onto something relevant like that. He finds peace among the Strawberry Shortcake canon characters, isekai-tier resurrections into their adventures, so on. No one really cares so much and it's more performative mourning of a fandom member who got 2 minutes in the limelight of mainstream media, so most of those fics would be unfinished or fairly poor quality drabble.
- He probably otherwise doesn't get much. Boring character who didn't say much and wasn't attractive enough to get any fan following on the basis of looks. Can't attract a niche following.
- There is the meta aspect of how he was a TV RPer, which is probably common knowledge. Maybe in SOTF-TV RPs, specifically his own (the SOTF of SOTF-TV), his character roster gets NPCed in tribute to him?
- Maybe some memes because of how fast he died.
- A minor presence in Verity-centric fiction (Yugi has final say here) because she's a major endgame player so by proportion of how much attention she'd get he gets a little boost in numbers of his fic present on AO3. As a presence in fiction involving her I presume he's a blank slate character that can be used to accomplish whatever they want with the hurt/comfort fic, be flanderized, turned into a villain as needed, rescue her from her fall to darkness with wildly out of character romance, so on.

Lucille:
- I feel like she probably gets mild backlash from the TV fandom at large: there was a narrative that she would be a skilled contestant due to experience + willingness + physical prowess and she blows it quite utterly and in a mostly boring way. This invites a general theme of two types of fics about her: fix fics where she does what she was supposed to do and lives up to her potential, probably popularly typecast as a flamboyant murderer who bitches about her kills being poorly dressed or something like that; and venting about her where she's used as the even more pathetic heel to more interesting character arcs and ships, so on.
- In Bethany centric fic (Pip can negate my takes here, as above with Yugi and Verity) Lucille typically will play the role of an easily written out villain and antagonistic force holding Bethany back from better partners like Kaya or so on. I imagine most average viewers will not get Lucille and Bethany as a couple and will want to correct this mistake of casting.
- She probably gets more positive traction out of Akeno/Lucille. I imagine there's a decent amount of edgy, sexy thriller type fiction where they become a murder duo: Akeno's rough tomboyish love (I hate everything I am typing as I channel my inner tween fic writer) snaps Lucille out of her funk, Lucille redeems Akeno with tender super cheesy cuteness, blah blah, so on.
- She's probably decently popular as a fan art character, more so than in fics, just because of the tremendous fit and drip. The cosplay go-to of average height Latina fans all over the United States.

[KamiKaze]

I’m going to start by suggesting the same thing I did in chat: that there’s a badfic/trollfic that tends to be memed to shit by literally everyone. We discussed a bit the possibility of it being a S1-10 era fic. So, that means I’m up for terrible s6 fanfiction if anyone wants to pick that one.

I’ll be back later with my own headcanons about what people do to my kids, but just wanna throw that out there.

[DerArknight]

Since I only adopted my TV3-kids, everything I say here can be shut down by SansaSaver and Irina Ivanov. Plus the handlers of any character I mention.

Sofia is most likely a part of a love triangle consisting of her and Bacchia being in love with James. Since all three were members of one of the most important groups of the season and James kissed both of them during the season, there is probably a Shipping War going on.

There might be JamesXBacchia-fics in which Sofia is potrayed as shallow or abusive towards James to justify him leaving her for Bacchia. On the other hand, there are probably just as many JamesXSofia-fics that potray Bacchia as butting into the loving relationship of Sofia and James. Discussions between the members of these two fangroups will not be pretty in most cases. Of course, there could also the ones who turn James into a Harem Protagonist. Although that is up for Catche to decide.

Apart from that, there might be some Good!Sofia-fics where Sofia doesn't betray the Buccaneers and helps Lucille escape the ferry.

Sofia might also play a role in some Akeno-centered fics. While her internal dialouge told us that Akeno did not kill Sofia out of revenge for Lucille, IC the audience can't know that and will probably see Sofia's death as a revenge killing. Fenrir and I even briefly talked about it when planning the scene.

I am not going to write anything about Chris since he is still kicking.

[MurderWeasel]

Keep in mind that while TV3 will be the main focus (as the in-universe explanation is that there have been similar fics focusing on the previous seasons), you can also talk about TV1 and TV2, or even the lore seasons. They’ll be used as a reference; something like “x/y from Season 67 has this many fics, which is more than a/b from Season 66”.

If you want some old takes, here is the TV1 shipping discussion thread.

I’m going to start by suggesting the same thing I did in chat: that there’s a badfic/trollfic that tends to be memed to shit by literally everyone. We discussed a bit the possibility of it being a S1-10 era fic. So, that means I’m up for terrible s6 fanfiction if anyone wants to pick that one.

It should definitely involve a bunch of twin swapping except the author forgets the swaps at several points so who's who is constantly changing.

re my characters:

Keegan is probably kind of lower-tier in terms of shipping stuff because he's weird, nerdy, and less photogenic than the rest of the Respects. At the same time, he probably has a niche as a character who stands kind of to the side of the stuff going on in Respects fics, maybe as a PoV or maybe kinda haphazardly paired off with whoever else needs a match. Probably a bunch of hurt/comfort stuff too. Most likely nobody understands his relationship with Verity.

Mandy got discussed in chat some but she's probably either paired with Seo-yun or the villain of Seo-yun-centric stories. Also Mandy is staggeringly immature even for the cast of TV3 so there's probably a bunch of folks who are really grumpy about her being shipped with anyone. Also, almost certainly there's a little slice of fandom that gets weird about her and Ashanti, due to the hostage situations.

Jewel is an odd case because she probably brings with her a whole lot of older material/a rabid following from 66 who is intent on pairing her with folks from that season and/or older contestants, dead or alive. In a 66 context, there's probably stuff between her and most of her team, though a decent amount of it likely skews platonic. There's probably a whole bunch of Jewel/Stephanie too, and maybe some appearances by the other people outside her team who she interacted with, especially Luanne and Seo-yun. Jewel occasionally acknowledges particularly egregious fics which absolutely 100% encourages a segment of her fandom to get super weird and transgressive in hopes of getting noticed, which probably in turn leads to a lot of discourse.

[RetroVenus]

Couple of thoughts on my characters to help flesh out the project. It's a really cool idea, let me know if I can do anything else to help out!

This is a super late reply so I'm not sure if the offer still stands, but please do! I'll need help with...basically everything, so if you wanna DM me on Discord you can go right ahead!

[Namira]

Nobody likes Tristan. He does not get fics. Except maybe ones where he is meanspiritedly dunked on or killed after being used for a one off joke.

Nate has fics to a problematic degree. She was fanservicey. She had that awful thing happen to her. It pushes her right into the territory in which people. Write things. (I kinda hate that this would be the case but I'm thinking about fandom and I'm thinking about TV and I genuinely just think that. yeah). Her biggest ship is probably Marvia because christ it's messed up but people just are like that. so yes. very unfortunate. probably nate stans have to be very careful about their filter use to avoid flinging themselves headlong into extremely dead dove do not eat territory. not that everyone tags appropriately WOOPS.

She maybe gets some love with a specific type of AU where she gets to band together with Shawn and co earlier on than endgame, but maybe not. that was a big group.

There are like, a small but weirdly dedicated section of fans who really, REALLY like to pair her off with Karen because they were one another's respective first interactions. one of those things where you're like 'wait, this ship has this many fics?' and you then see that 90% of them are written by the same three people.

Amir was decently charismatic and I think writers hunting for alternative groups and such would pick him up fairly regularly to use as comic relief. I'm not sure if he would get many ships, per se, but designated funny guy? yes. Would quite possibly become somebody where specific lines within the fandom would get passed around a lot and become a sort of fanon thing and folks would forget that Amir didn't actually say that.

maybe would get a couple of fix-its where somebody helped him get out of the floorboard predicament but those would be VASTLY OUTWEIGHED by all the ones where it devolves into raunchy smut because come on that scenario is just. it's gonna happen.

Ramón gets paired with Corin because tbh I think players getting paired with their killers would happen quite a bit and Corin is the winner so. y'know. I think he'd also have a mild subgenre of writers flipping the outcome of his and Corin's battle and using it as a what if for butterfly effects because it's an easy starting point. 1% of those fics ever finish because nobody ever thinks past the first couple of plot points.

Nura I'm not sure about. I think Jewel is the easy pick and probably there's some stuff with every team that involves various members getting paired off so off tha tbasis she'd probably get some Leviathan pairings in there, and the frontrunner there is definitely Amy since they actually interacted. Yeah thinking about it, there would definitely be a decent chunk of fics focusing around both of them making it out of the Seo-Yun shootout and then romance etcetera. Angst fiends would love to put her together with Jewel and also wildly out of character both of them.

Stokes has a lot of store related stuff and is a slam dunk for being the shop owner in the COFFEE SHOP AU YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING Y'ALL. this would get her into fics which weren't even about her because she'd just... be like the default person you put in charge of the coffee shop that [insert protagonist here] works at. She'd be paired with Chris in spite of having none of that kind of thing hinted at because lbr people just do that. also junji. but maybe not as much as it could be because I sort of think that the nature of their friendship would knock away the kind of people who'd be attracted to writing junji shipfic. pops up in some respectscentric stuff but it's like a 50:50 on it being horrible, whether or not it's shippy.

Emmy pretty much supercharges the 'classmate as mentor' subgenre. it probably already existed, but it being canon means that everyone and their dog wants to swap a student from the game into the mentor hotseat, and probably retroactively with the previous two seasons, at that. gets a phenomenal amount of angst and shipped with her team a lot, especially Ivan, Akeno, Alaska, and Olivia. (Laura/Alaska with Emmy thirdwheeling or involved might actually be amongst the OT3s of the season, tbh). some people probably really hate her though and just kind of delete her. I think there would be a fair few emmycentric fics that put her into the game and then keep the focus on her, too. So yeah, I think all in all a bigtime generator.


You know everyone ships the hell out of Kenny. Kenny/Reilly is, I reckon, one of the behemoths of the fandom from sheer inertia.

Actor era Kenny/Mentor era Parker is one of those things you think of as a rarepair but pops up surprisingly often.

Kenny/his boyfriend is a ship that annoys the shit out of a lot of the SOTF fandom fans because IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SHOW UGH.

[ItzToxie]

Fisk simps are the same type of rabid dweebs who'd attach themselves to Ryan Gosling as the Driver, or Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, Joachim Joker etc and be like "wow they're literally me 0>0" with like zero self-awareness. Expect a lot of montages on Tik Tok of Fisk being an American Psycho interspaced with his many many many speeches with the color saturation turned too high and tinted pink with vhs screen tearing effects in the corners while some form of Little Dark Age, Molchat Doma, Phonk, Crystal Castles, or other Doomer music plays over it. Fisk's haters also make high effort shitposts roasting him, like mocking the above vids but with Fisk's Ryan Gosling/ Netflix Adaptation Death Note Light's tier shrieking interspaced with Sigma grindset music at their most tame.

In terms of fanficy shit, either the Fujoshits get a hold of him and write really cringey erotica, or the aformentioned "Literal me" turds grab him and do gay erasure on him, or 'trap justification' or some other insecure bs and write cringey erotica. Occasionally there's the what-if fics if Fisk and the Respects made it to the end, but they're usually rife with mary sue tier writing ala the plot of the Hunger Games, or used as sad ending fics. After a while it's hard to be an unironic Fisk fan because his fanbase is regarded as cringy tryhards, even amongst the cringy tryhards of SOTF TV fanboys. Whilst it's possible, to be one without getting side eyed, it's like being a Joker fan when you're surrounded by other Joker fans who are unironically into the 'gamers rise up' meme. And don't even get me started on the cosplayers, we've all seen "I'm da jokah baybee."

Also his death is fuel for furries getting YCH commissions.

[AnimeNerd]

The best way I can immediately describe how people see Jasper and RJ is with tropes; Jasper is a Memetic Badass, and RJ is a Woobie.

Jasper took on three people and nearly ended half the original Respects then and there. Add to that the fact that viewers may have seen through his plan to aid in the escape group, and people definitely see him as at least a little cool. There's definitely several fics out there where he did kill Fisk, Bacchia and James, and they probably also have Jasper and his group escaping the game. Maybe also some shipping here and there, but due to his general attitude over romance there's no real ship beef between any of the shippers.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong for RJ did. Tried to make allies, an ally tried to kill him. Just want to rest on one boat, found a dead body. Ran into teammates and friends, both groups had a casualty, one of which was caused by him. Ran into another friend that tried to kill him and another that sided with said near murderer, found someone that actually wanted to work with him only for her to die within twenty-four hours, saw a dead body fall from the sky and assumed God themself was telling him he didn't get to relax, then eventually died by a former friend's hand. There's probably fics out there where he actually did double tap Anthony and maybe went on to be a bit more of a threat, actively going for the win once he realized he was alone. Also maybe the subject of hurt/comfort fics, and fics that are specifically one or the other, with RJ going through even more suffering or no suffering at all say, in a fic where he won and is getting comforted by family.

Also, the SOTF team definitely started making merch off of the two of them thanks to them trying to stand out clothing wise. Replicas of RJ's music shirt with the bloodstains from Leo, replicas of his Halloween sweatshirt with the cut across it from Anthony, and replicas of Jasper's rose Hawaiian shirt with blood splatter from Fisk cutting his neck open. Easy money so why not?