#as we were saying in the friend group: the power of blorbo/ an oc i am unwell about really does make me draw more xD

[quilleth]

I have done a doodle page of fluffy things and now my brain is like it's cooler out. The days are getting shorter. It's Time for Angst

[wander-wren]

sorry to yoink your tags into the light @avalonjoan (hi again btw) BUT!! i love shiver and i have been nurturing my Theory On How Fandom Forms for like, a year, so here we go!

it’s been a hot minute since i made my list, but i think i decided that the main characteristics of fandom were shipping potential, worldbuilding potential, and oc potential. plus of course amount of content—very few standalones gain fandoms. and i say POTENTIAL bc fandom is transformative, it’s about filling gaps, so sometimes ironically very well-done media doesn’t gain a fandom bc there’s nothing to add/change.

if there are exceptions to this rule, like fandoms that ship mostly canon ships, it’s usually because those ships are queer (Ronan/Adam from TRC, Jesper/Wylan from SOC, Cecil/Carlos from WTNV), or because they’re het ships with a lot of, again, unexplored potential bc of where the story cuts off (Blue/Gansey from TRC, Kaz/Inej from SOC). i point out shipping specifically bc it is the backbone of fandom. genfic is also good and important! but shipping is pretty much always first.

*note that it also helps to have a large cast for max ship potential. and also max blorbo potential, in case someone finds the protag(s) annoying, boring, etc, but can latch onto major side characters. wolves of mercy falls has four pov characters that i remember and they pair off with each other. ofc i love them all, but that’s besides the point

so if you don’t have a lot of ship potential, as you don’t in shiver bc there’s no love triangle and the main couple are intensely in love for all three books, you need a lot of worldbuilding and oc potential. the two are pretty linked. this is like your Warrior Cats or BNHA fandom, or Divergent if you want to go farther back. the ability to make a character that fits into a specific group or has specific powers is very appealing. what faction are you? what clan? what’s your quirk? the worldbuilding is also important bc fans LOVE to play with that. BNHA, for example, has taken hints of quirk discrimination and expanded them into multiple theories/aus that are popular fanon now. Warriors is infamous for it’s bare-bones worldbuilding that fans take in a million directions.

shiver/womf doesn’t really have this. and again, there are exceptions to EVERYTHING, but i actually can’t think of any media with a fandom presence that doesn’t have at least one of these going strong for it rn, so. but yeah, while werewolves exist, there aren’t really distinct packs you can classify yourself/an oc into, no special powers, nothing cool like that. if the mercy falls pack were more established rather than rapidly degrading during the series, maybe there would be something there, but they’re all aging out so again, it’s mostly just sam. and a few others later but they don’t really count as pack.

so to answer the first question, no, gay people didn’t latch onto the series, mostly bc there’s nothing queer TO latch onto (except for werewolves as a metaphor for queerness, maybe, but i don’t take it like that and given the narrative around sam vs the wolf i think that’s a bad idea). maybe you could ship grace with one of her gal pals, or with isabelle. but her friends just don’t show up that much and she’s SO so in love with sam, dude, like that’s The Whole Point.

okay but like, what about twilight, that took off pretty hard? someone called shiver a twilight ripoff and i briefly wanted to go full darrio’s dogs on them but i am calm and rational (look i did a shiver reference are you proud). basically, idk much about twilight, but from the rules above? there was a love triangle. ship potential. there were a lot of extra vampires and werewolves to play with. vampires all have unique powers, right? oc potential! plus i think that fandom was mostly teenage straight girls with crushes on edward which is a fundamentally different kind of fandom. no one has a crush on “bakes bread, makes origami birds, recites german poetry” sam rilke. well i do. but he’s not a bad boy, okay. he’s actually never done anything wrong ever in his life, thanks.

so shiver is a prime example of a very commercially popular fic that didn’t take off in fandom because there wasn’t much for fandom to dig into. but also, if you got this far, you should read shiver maybe. it’s one of my comfort books even tho i have cried over it before.

[OH I FORGOT TO ADDRESS THE BLUEY THING!! idk shit about bluey so idk what happened there but i’m gonna say at least a major driving force is that it became pretty popular and a meme. i guess that’s your exception to the rules??]

you know. i find it so interesting how mstiefs arguably much more commercially successful series (wolves of mercy falls) which is now getting a movie adaptation has like. zero fandom presence whatsoever. did gay ppl just not latch onto that series or what