First of all, how have the ST sub-fandoms fared over the last two years of RL pain and confusion compared with 2019?
Except for Disco, Picard and in a lesser way, the AOS Movies, all the ST sub-fandoms are on a roll, with both DS9 and Voyager going past the 2,000 fics in a year in 2021.
Among the TV shows, DS9 and Voyager are doing very well, with DS9 passing Voyager in 2020, and TOS now relegated to third place. Despite a dip in 2020, Disco comes up 4th, beating TNG.
In terms of their share of the ST fandom, the AOS movies have been in free fall since 2016, and TOS has been slowing losing market share in recent years.
That has enabled Voyager and DS9 to fill in the gaps and those 4 sub-fandoms had each a stake between 15 and 18%, and together made up for 70% of all ST fics posted in 2021 on AO3. The newcomers: Lower Decks, Picard and of course Prodigy with only 15 fics in 2021 are still small in comparison, while Disco has already passed by Next Gen and Enterprise.
Because the AOS Movies were such a huge sub-fandom until very recently, they still dominate AO3 in terms of total number of fics over the years. You can see this postby@70thousandlightyearsfromhome for the proportion of each sub-fandom posted on AO3 since the start.
Note: The graphs above exclude crossovers with non-ST fandoms, but include crossovers within the ST universe. The following sub-fandoms were not included: ST- various authors; Comics; RPF; Videogames and Uncategorized, unless those fics were crossovers with other ST sub-fandoms.
As a last thing to ponder, this is where to find the various ST sub-fandoms on AO3. One surprise: the TV shows include the AOS movies, but not the TOS or the TNG Movies.
