How BTS Fanfiction has Grown since 2013
Not everyone in any given fandom will enjoy reading or writing fiction based on the characters, worlds, and real-life people they devote their passions to, but many fans do. If you’ve ever ventured onto a site that houses fan-written works, I’m sure you’re aware that there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. I’ve been intrigued by fanfiction for years—what’s out there? Why? Why do readers read and writers write? Why are some written on the same level as professionally authored work while others are riddled with less-than-stellar prose and flat characters?
I’ve previously looked into using fanfiction to teach writing to students (both high school and college). I loved working on that during graduate school, and it’s a topic I hope to revisit one day. But I started to wonder: how has BTS fanfiction changed over time? Are there any patterns? Which fics are popular and which are not? Why?
I can’t answer all of those questions today (and some may not ever have an answer that would fully satisfy us). But what I can do is look at the growth of BTS fanfiction since 2013. I get that fanfiction isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but regardless of if you read, write, or don’t participate at all, I find it’s a subject worthy of examination in the broader contexts of Fan/Media Studies.
My go-to for fanfiction research is typically Archive of Our Own (AO3). Of course, there are various other sites out there like Fanfiction.net, Wattpad, and Asian Fanfics. In my own experience, AO3 houses some of the most well-written examples around, and their user interface (especially for searching and pulling data) has always been useful to me. For those reasons, I’ll be focusing just on AO3 today (but I’d like to pull data from some other sites in the future for comparison).
Growth of BTS Fics on AO3
To start with, let’s look at how much BTS fanfiction has grown on AO3 since 2013. For now, 2019’s numbers only go up to October, so remember to take that into account when reading this graph!
Data was captured on October 24, 2019. Data originally captured in September 2019 indicated slight differences, which is likely due to fics being deleted. Capturing this same data tomorrow, or even later today could be slightly different if someone deletes a fic or posts a new one. Generally, the numbers stay relatively unchanged.
There’s definitely a huge increase over time, which both demonstrates how BTS and AO3 have become more popular each year. The data only reflects up to today, so we may see that October number jump up some more. It’s also possible that the increase will level off, now that there is a really active community of BTS fanfic writers/readers on AO3. Likewise, if we look at the growth of all fics on AO3, we can also see an upwards trend. AO3 has gained popularity over the years, and as it became more visible to more fans, it seem that BTS fans flocked to it too.
This data was also pulled on October 24, 2019.
As of today, AO3 contains 34,330 fandoms, 2,147,000 users, and 5,296,000 fics on their website. The current total number of BTS fics (103,654) accounts for 1.96% of that nearly 5.3 million. Yes, it’s a small number comparatively, but with over 34,000 fandoms represented, I’m surprised the percentage is that high! AO3 also has a parent tag for K-Pop, with 247,857 current fics. BTS makes up 41.82% of the fics within the K-Pop parent tag.
BTS Fics Compared to K-Pop Fics
I also compared the current total number of BTS fics (as of October 24, 2019) to some other K-Pop fandoms. To be clear, I don’t know much about other K-Pop fandoms in terms of where they congregate. It’s completely possible that fics featuring other K-Pop acts dominate other fic sites, but for AO3, BTS blows it out of the water. That said, if anyone has seen numbers for other K-Pop fandoms on AO3, let me know! Below, you can see that BTS has more than three times as many fics as EXO, who on my chart has the second highest amount of total fics.
This data was pulled on October 24, 2019.
Monthly Breakdown of BTS Fics by Year
Since 2019 isn’t quite over yet, I’m going to include graphs that show the monthly breakdown of BTS fics for each year, 2013-2018. At the end of the year, I can create new graphs for 2019 after we have the full number!
To keep this post more organized, below is a clickable gallery for the yearly graphs.
For most years after 2013, there’s a clear spike in fics in the winter months and the summer, which can possibly be attributed to school and work breaks around the holidays or summer break. Not all fanfic writers are students, but I do think it’s interesting there’s usually a spike in the summer months as well as winter break time. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues.
The total number of fics written each year has consistently went up, and it’s on track to be the same for 2018 to 2019. The sheer number of fics posted each month now is wild—I knew it was a lot, but I didn’t quite expect to find numbers that high. So far in 2019 there has been 33,596 fics posted, with the highest month being August. October is a close second, so it might outrank August over the next few days.
That’s it for now! I’m thinking about looking into this from other angles, such as number of fics per rating category, pairings, and more. As I mentioned before, fanfic (and pairings within fanfic) don’t have to be your thing, but looking at the numbers like this, especially in comparison to other fandoms, is pretty cool.
*Disclaimer: I’m a writer, not a statistician, so please forgive any errors that may exist =) I tried my best!