a tale of three archives: an kpop ao3 ethnography

[citadis]

One who has been in and around the kpop fanfiction ringer for a length of time has probably delved into the tags of other groups that they're not fans of... Maybe out of pure curiosity, or maybe for mental find-and-replace crimes (LOL). Having been a former connoisseur of the NCT tag, a current Seventeen tag buff, I am a veritable Kpoppie of ao3 experience in some of the bigger Kpop tags on the site. I feel like I need to include another here, so I will also be discussing the Stray Kids ao3 tag which I have observed to be worthy of study, and is similar in that they're a popular 3rd-ish gen boy group that's popular on AO3. Let's get into it. Let's start with some statistics, at the time of the writing of this post (May 17th, 2022). First works are differentiated from post-dated fics from date of comments.

PART 1: THE SIZE FACTOR

⮞ SEVENTEEN (Band): 30,091 works

• First fic posted: 14 March 2015 (Meanie, of course. The next few are jihan)
• Time since debut: 6 years 11 months

⮞ NCT (Band): 57,060 works

• First fic posted: 15 October 2015 (It's Dojae. LOL)
• Time since debut: 6 years 1 month

⮞ Stray Kids (Band): 32,181

• First fic posted: 30 October 2017 (not even a pairing, its this)
• Time since debut: 4 years 6 months

Obviously the first thing that is apparent is NCT's domination in terms of sheer number of works. One easy thing explanation here is that there is just south of two dozen people to work with here, as well as kind of SM privilege popularity. I think that lots of members have chemistry or other shipping potential with a lot of other people, or have A LOT of shipping chemistry with one or several other people. My first example that comes to mind is within NCT dream, the 00z+mark quintet (markhyuck, though they are kind of separate, nomin, noren, and more recently dongren and nahyuck) have inspired quite a lot of sickos (including me, in a bygone era), across all fandom demographics (more about this later). In 127 there is something similar, and while it has changed over time, mostly involve some combination of Jaehyun/Doyoung/Taeyong/+Johnny(?). Remember when winil and yuwin were huge a few years ago? RIP Winwin, you sure were rotateable to some people. Overall, NCT have a lot to offer fans who want to write. I'm sure there's something here to say about Markhyuck, which clocks in today at 9000 fics -- a solid 16% of NCT fic. Nomin is a somewhat distant second at 5800, which is so wild to me.

In fact looking at the NCT most popular ships it's crazy to see how it's changed in the past few years, with Dream pairings occupying a good amount of the top ten. (I tried to put these under cuts but I'm of tired of fighting with dreamwidth formatting)

NCT top 10, June 2022

• Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee (9003)
• Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin (5800)
• Jeong Yuno | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong (2986)
• Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin (2896)
• Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno (2657)
• Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny (2630)
• Jeong Yuno | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung (2560)
• Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le (2405)
• Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong (1905)
•  Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny (1702)

Let's see what that was like in fics only up until 2018. Also noticed kind of insane year over year growth. Here's a table (probably one of the dumbest uses of Excel I've ever done). Number of works is pulled from January 1st of each year, except for the May 2022 stat. This isn't formatted well but again I don't want to fight with dreamwidth over this.

	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	May 2022
Seventeen	388	2686	6180	10458	14505	21185	27509	30097
NCT		569	2461	9043	19631	34504	50919	57091
Stray Kids			83	2266	6599	13822	25948	32215

 

NCT top 10, June 2018

• Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee (685)
• Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny (407)
• Jeong Yuno | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong (375)
• Lee Taeyong/Nakamoto Yuta (329)
• Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin (316)
• Jeong Yuno | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung (289)
• Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno (194)
• Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Nakamoto Yuta (153)
• Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong (142)
• Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Lee Taeyong (141)

 

NCT 2018 was definitely a turning point in both Nctzen population (gained more popularity than before) as well as fanfiction demographics. New members, new ships, as well as new dynamics; this was the first time we really got to see these random ass NCT U units just composed of anyone. No surprise the amount of fic skyrocketed between 2018 and 2019. 

 

Now, Seventeen and Stray Kids have a fairly similar amount of works, with SKZ having debuted two and a half years after SVT. Number of people isn't really a factor here, as SVT has 13 and SKZ have 8 (formerly 9). I think this has more to do with fandom demographics in terms of nationality/location (i.e. domestic korean, japan, seasian [filo, indo, thai, etc.], "overseas" [NA, europe, australia], brazilian/SA [i think the "style" of brazil fandom for example varies from other overseas/"western" demographics). Korean fans don't use AO3, they are more likely to post fanfic to postype, twitter, etc [I'm also unsure of how much of domestic fandom engages in shipping, I'm sure I have a biased view on twitter]. Japan fandom is a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm sure they disseminate their fanfic in their own places, though you still do see a fair amount on ao3. Seasian and overseas fans (not sure about brazil fanfic culture, thoughts appreciated) are the most likely to use ao3. While it's hard for me to gauge how much of the English language works are contributed by seasian or western fans, SVT do have proportionally more filipino and bahasa indonesia language fic (about 2% for each) compared to SKZ (1% bahasa indonesia, a measly 0.2% filo). From what I've seen on twitter too, it seems like Seventeen have a quite sizable filipino fanbase compared to SKZ. Either way, though, Seventeen are the most popular group of the three domestically (thinking about album sales) though NCT is also pretty close. I think that the demographic makeup of a fandom does have an impact on these ao3 stats... though in a way I haven't and am unable to deconvolve. Overall, I think that SKZ fans are slightly more sickos with more of an overseas fanbase that thwarts SVT. 

And this is only talking about how many works are in the tag. Let's move on. 

PART 2: THE SICKO FACTOR

I think one of the main ways (at least, for me) to pick apart the way these fandoms write is their overall fic ratings. Basically, what proportion of it is Horny? What kind of Horny is it? There are also some other ways to differentiate fandoms, that I'm probably not going to get into here: do they write lots of chaptered fics? Do they write lots of AUs, what kind of AUs are they writing? This is kind of hard to do with just tag stats and I'm not some CSS genius so for now... let's just look at their respective ratings.

⮞ SEVENTEEN (Band): 30,091 works

• General Audiences (8638) – 29%
• Teen And Up Audiences (8538) – 28%
• Not Rated (4812) – 16%
• Mature (4273) – 14%
• Explicit (3830) – 13%

⮞ NCT (Band): 57,060 works

• Teen And Up Audiences (16237) – 28%
• General Audiences (13633) – 24%
• Explicit (11068) – 19%
• Mature (8608) – 15%
• Not Rated (7514) – 12%

⮞ Stray Kids (Band): 32,181 works

• Teen And Up Audiences (9033) – 28%
• General Audiences (7767) – 24%
• Explicit (7251) – 22%
• Mature (4365) – 14%
• Not Rated (3765) – 12%

There is a pretty similar percentage of gen/teen fic across the board, although Seventeen has nearly equal amounts of each which make up almost 60% of the tag. When you disregard NR fic (this can be wildcard, and is a bit annoying to me for the purpose of this study), Teen and Gen combined make up 68% of SVT fic (dammit, so close to 69%). This same exercise with NCT and SKZ gives 60% and 59% Gen and Teen rated fics, respectively. We (those who have spent any amount of time in the SVT tag) have known that carats are prudes for some time.. the numbers don't lie (though they aren't THAT statistically different, though. Just funny). It's funny though that NCT and SKZ have the exact same order for ratings, and with generally similar percentages (SKZ coming in with a bit more E-rated, lol), with SVT's being very different. What's with NR being 3rd place? I think this is where carats put all their sad hanahaki stuff (Proportionally, SVT have the most hanahaki fic at 0.5% of all works; SVT and SKZ at 0.3%).

Okay let's get a bit crazy, percentage of works for each tagged: 

⮞ Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics

• SVT: 2.6%
• NCT: 3.6%
• SKZ: 3.1%

• • SVT: 11%
  • NCT: 14%
  • SKZ: 17%

Wow. Who could have seen that coming. My only joke about the NCT tag for like 2 or 3 years now is about how all they know how to write is omegaverse. Also not surprised at SKZ leading the way in terms of the non-traditional A/B/O works, they truly love subverting leaky boypussy. Or knots. Whatever. I'm sure like, half of those are about Bang Chan. 

⮞ Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

• SVT 0.06%
• NCT 0.3%
• SKZ 0.7%

For those who don't know, the DDDNE tag is mainly for super taboo/less savoury stuff, you can imagine. Laughing at this one too, I have joked that Stray Kids probably have the highest proportion of Dead Dove: Do Not Eat works within Kpop. And this doesn't include those kinds of taboo fics that don't have this as a tag, I just figured it would be a good metric for this kind of stuff. 

I guess I could do more but I think we're getting the point here. Some observations:

• Stray Kids fans/writers are singularly deranged. Likely a fair amount of transplants from NCT fan/ficdom, but attracting the most deranged of NCTzen. Respect to them though, they're crazy but free.
• NCT fans/writers are still pretty overwhelmingly horny, and they are obsessed with writing omegaverse. I wish they could think of anything else.
• SVT fans/writers are Prudes. We know this. I wish they weren't I wish they'd let their freak out. Wouldn't all those 70k T-rated fics be that much more impactful with a sex scene? 

Anyways hope you enjoyed this semi-deranged pursuit of knowledge, maybe it'll be interesting. Glad to have tested some of my hypotheses and proven them to be correct.

 

 

Comments

[dramaturgist]

i stumbled across this post while searching for skz dreamwidths and you need to know that this is probably one of the most entertaining dw posts i've read in a while. losing my mind because it basically confirmed everything i've assumed about these tags myself (such as the fact that stays are seriously Insane) with the added bonus of backing it up with facts <3

i think the difference between ship popularity in the fandoms is also so funny because in my experience both svt & nct have a few Very Popular ships that get written the most while there's a bunch of rarepairs straggling at the bottom; skz ao3 seems more proportionate in that sense? though this could also be because of the lesser number of members.

hope it wasn't too weird to get a long comment from a stranger!! i loved this post!!

[citadis]

OMG im sorry for such a late response I had been meaning to get to this forever. I'm so happy you found and enjoyed my post lol, I'm glad that I got some stuff right on the stray kids side given they are not my specialty. Thanks for reading and your comment!