She also breaks down the genders of the participants and their race. Ao3 user Centeroftheselights has for years crunched ships stats on AO3 and the latest “What fanfic was the world writing in 2020? (AO3 Year In Review)” tells us a lot about what’s popular in the fic world, what’s changed from years past, and where fandom has some serious work to do in terms of inclusivity.Ĭenteroftheselights lists the top 100 ships (romantic and platonic) based on new fics added to AO3 in the year 2020.
Another we can look at is the top ships on the popular fanfic site, Archive of Our Own. One good indicator is statistics, such as the Tumblr Year in Review, but that’s just one data set. “What’s fandom into these days?” is a hard question to answer, because fandom is not a monolith and fandoms lurk in all sorts of different places.
