Talk:The Fandom That Ate Fandom

SGA probably wasn't the first to use this expression. I think I saw someone use "fandom that ate fandom" in references to TPM. Maybe in an arcticle on the Fanfic Symposium site?

I added a change in the meaning of the expression after Harry Potter and removed the SG-1 line because listing every fandom that hasn't been described as eating fandom would take a long time and just randomly including one example feels derogative, especially when there is probably more SG-1 fic than SGA fic, only SG-1 had more gen and het. I removed one reference as well because it felt a bit random. If we do compare things, we should add numbers for all of them. For example, I have no idea how many people "normally" finish a big bang assignment in a first season big bang that started a few weeks after the first episode aired, so the raw numbers didn't tell me much.--Doro 13:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

well there is this column that talks about the phenomenon with TPM, but it does not use this expression.--RatCreature 14:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe SGA really *was* the first, but it's the earliest I found in my extremely cursory google. It seems it is not as widely used a phrase as I imagined! How sad.

What I meant was that HP was HUGE outside fandom too, I tinkered around with that and moved the gen/het exception up to the intro, since it seems notable to me - it hadn't actually occured to me that they are always slash fandoms! ha ha my slash goggles ;{.

I totally didn't mean to sound derogative, I was going more for how being a very large and popular fandom (like SG1) is not the same as being a fandom that ate fandom. Since they are both the same franchise I think it would be interesting to compare them, but I suppose it is impossible to quantify the difference between "big and popular" and "ate fandom". I posit, nonetheless, that there is a difference!

Fair enough re: Merlin's numbers. I have no idea what's typical either, 18% just seemed really low. I think it is still worth mentioning that it was only a fandom that ate fandom for a few months, so I added back a 'briefly'.

Also, I'm not sure the fandoms are in chronological order, as I can't remember where Smallville goes. And I forgot the X-Files, do you think the X-Files counts? It was so huge, but fandoms that eat fandom seem to me a fairly recent thing - not having a huge fandom, but having it be *unavoidable*, if you know what I mean. Like, the first thing it eats is your flist. I'd argue you couldn't have a pre-internet one at all.--MegR 15:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I would say the difference between a large and popular fandom and a fandom that ate fandom is that the latter heavily draws from other fandoms. Something like that is especially noticeable in slash fandom because although it's big, it's more of a limited resource than gen and het fandom. In addition to that it doesn't really describe the size of the fandom but the exponential growth. If a fandom reaches a certain size or something happens in canon that makes it less attractive, the fandom stops growing that rapidly and that's what happened to Merlin. It hasn't become smaller, on the contrary, and there isn't less fiction (I have so many unread stories bookmarked, it isn't even funny! D: And I read Merlin fanfic every day!!), it's just that it has stopped drawing established authors at such an excessive rate (although it still heavily draws from ff.net).--Doro 15:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not even sure HP is a fandom that ate fandom any more than Twilight is a fandom that ate fandom. Even though Twilight is huge, and grew relatively fast even, I'd say faster than HP, which from what I gathered only really kicked off after the fourth book, and it took the fifth before I ever noticed much of it in my fandom circles. And it still still was not overwhelming, except that so many entirely new people joined fandom with HP as their first, so it got this juggernaut size.--RatCreature 16:13, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. I hadn't thought of it that way but obviously a fandom can't eat Fandom without pulling in existing fans, or the effect wouldn't be noticeable. I think that's why I didn't even think to include Twilight, despite its size, because it mostly seems (to me, but I've avoided it) to be a feral fandom largely made of new fans. So the same may go for HP. It really was so unprecedentedly enormous it would seem weird not to include it, and yet it doesn't quite fit. Maybe it's more that it pretty much ate *the mundane world*.--MegR 16:34, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ratcreature that HP doesn't really fit. I think maybe we should change it to "And then there are fandoms like HP and Twilight that eat *the mundane world*" because this is brilliant! Seriously, if I have to listen to one more "Team Edward vs. Team Jacob" discussion at work, I might scream. --Doro 17:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I think Twilight is an entry fandom, though I think it attracts its share of established fans too, it just has very little slash in relation to its size (though it might have a larger number of slash stories than some minor slash fandoms...). But I have for example fanartists on dA who previously drew LOTR movie portraits draw Twilight portraits, so it's not completely outside of media fandom. And it is huge, i.e. by number of stories on ff.net it has more than a fourth of the size of HP, i.e. about 126k+ stories to HPs 437k+. For comparison the largest tv fandoms there are Buffy with 37k stories, followed by SPN with 31k+ and SGA is on eight place with 15k+ stories, which wouldn't even register much if you added the whole wraithbait archive on top which has less than 9k stories. So I think this "eating fandom" designation is more about a big fish in a small pond making an impression, not about the real size of a fandom or the total amount of fanfic written for it.--RatCreature 17:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree re: section about eating mundanes! I am so surprised to hear that about SGA. Even if there is a lot that is just archived on LJ it is still much smaller than I thought. --MegR 19:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Contradictory Information

There is contradictory information on the page. On the one hand, it says that Harry Potter, despite its huge size and phenomenal growth, didn't negatively impact the size of other contemporary fandoms. Quite the opposite, actually, at least in my fannish experience. Because of Harry Potter there were suddenly more authors, which later increased the size of other fandoms and made the phenomenon of a fandom that eats fandom much less likely as the pool suddenly became much bigger. See other fandoms that became big during the height of Harry Potter fandom (Popslash, Lord of the Rings, Smallville, and later Supernatural and SGA). On the other hand, it says that Harry Potter was a fandom that ate fandom and negatively impacted some circles between 2003-2006. If so, I think examples should be added. --Doro 09:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't see where it says anything about HP negatively impacting some circles? Almost all reference to Harry Potter seems to have been removed in fact; it now says it *isn't* a FtaF, which I'm not sure I agree with, just because it *also* ate mundanes. In any case, I do not see how it is either contradictory or surprising that a fandom the size of Harry Potter should both positively and negatively impact other fandoms.--MegR 09:57, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I removed the 'negatively' impacted comments], because I didn't have the spoons to argue -- I firmly believe that it was a fandom that ate other fandoms, because once it seemed to suck people in, it didn't let go for a number of years. Other fandoms did exist and flourish during the time, but did they have a lot of fans that were also Harry Potter fans in them? --Awils1 10:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Movie Fandom

Inception ate much of movie fandom in 2010. I don't think there is such a thing as a general movie fandom which would notice that people write more in another movie fandom than in a movie fandom they used to write in. Did all the Inception writers come from other movie fandoms? I thought they came mostly from other slash fandoms. However, I didn't notice Inception "eating" slash fandom either. My impression is that fandom (even the highly specialized media slash fandom) by now is too big for any new fandom to have the effect of a Fandom that ate Fandom. They are just new fandoms that turn into new big fandoms. We had that in the past too, only on a smaller scale. --Doro 19:39, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I remember people talking about how surprising the size and activeness of Inception fandom was, but I don't remember which fandoms it supposedly lured people away from, if any. Franzeska 18:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Music RPF

I'm aware that much of this page is ymmv, but I think One Direction and kpop are sizable enough in some aspects (kpop appears very under the radar from the perspective of western-only fans, but it's still massive and draws large amounts of people in each year with new groups constantly coming out, BTS recently especially) but I'm not sure if they should be put under examples or if music RPF should be a section itself. --Sparrow (talk) 15:47, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

ETA: I just saw the note about media fandom (oops) but I'm not sure that I agree that RPF fandoms should be exempt from being classified as megafandoms, 1D especially. --Sparrow (talk) 15:50, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Being massive is not what this page is about, though the fandoms are also that. It's specifically about: "Hey, where did everybody go... Oh, they're in that fandom." However, I agree: I had lots of friends from SGA and that sort of fandom suddenly run off for 1D or kpop and try to drag everyone with them. There was a year when Wincon was all 1D talk all the time. Franzeska (talk) 17:32, 28 September 2017 (UTC)