Fic Failure Rates, 2025 Edition

We’ve reached episode 499 (1) of the Rebuild of Elmer Studios, which means that we’re on the cusp of a major anniversary. I think that this is a good time to take a look back over the Rebuild period as a whole and examine some trends and patterns across the fics we’ve covered and see what we can find. There’s a couple of interesting surprises along the way

Count the Fics

Since the launch of the Rebuild, we’ve covered 103 distinct fanfics. That number has been arrived on from a number of different factors. First of all, and the most important, is the idea of what is a distinct fanfic versus a part of an overall series and merely a continuation of the same fic.

For example, the three Fics in the Kevin Cycle, The DarkSpiner, Old Conflicts Renewed and Chaos Lives are considered to be separate fics as they are all complete narratives of their own (well two of them are, given that the third was abandoned after a single chapter, but you get the idea). Conversely, The Vault Dweller and War for the Wastes were considered to be the same fanfic, as it’s essentially just the same story divided into two separately named parts. The same goes for The Newcomer and The New Adventures of the High Five, which are merely the same fic.

At the same time, we also count cases when we riffed two fics in the same episode for whatever reason as separate fics. While the last episode of Zoids: Chapter Two also includes Chaos Lives, they are still counted separately.

There were also a number of things that were excluded for various reasons. First and foremost were the various professionally published comic book riffs we’ve done over the years. At the same time, we also need to exclude Trinity: Forgotten Flame because it is an original published work by the most generous definitions of the term. Even though it’s clearly the author’s Mass Effect fanfic with the numbers filed off, it doesn’t count towards our totals. Finally, we didn’t count other debris like roleplay biographies or the like; they’re not meant to be a complete narrative in any form. However, we do still consider cases where character biographies and such are still a part of the story, such as with DELTA Invasion and Dreamstar and the Court ofDreams.

For the record, if you count all of these elements, we reach a total of 126 distinct pieces of fiction.

Fic Failure Rates

One of the most common trends in the fics we cover is that they’re abandoned by their writers. Usually this comes when the fic finishes its setup and it’s clear that there’s no further long-term direction for the story. There are a few other common points, such as the tournament arc, but that’s a very distant second. Added to that are those cases where it becomes clear that a fic is wandering aimlessly and doesn’t seem to have an actual direction, but the author doesn’t seem to want to abandon it for whatever reasons.

Out of the 103 fics we’ve done to date, 72 of them (or 70%) have been abandoned outright. Most of those are abandoned pretty quickly, but there are a few notable exceptions. Shadow of a Phoenix ran for a staggering seven episodes across the course of seven years before it was finally abandoned. Dreamstar and the Court of Dreams was apparently dead for two years before spluttering out a final chapter and again dying. Chroniclesof the Mad Dog Squadron was apparently written across the course of a couple of years before being abandoned (2). However, the vast majority are fics that last only one- or two-episodes worth of materials before being abandoned.

Another 28 fics (or 27%) are completed. As can be expected, most (but not all) of the longest fics we’ve covered have reached their conclusion, but there are a number of exceptions. Both Girl on Fire and The Death Games were by the same author and carried on for some time before reaching their conclusions; in the former case, it actually appeared to have been abandoned several times over while we were working on it. However, most of our other long-term complete fics were ones we found well after the fashion, such as The Apocalyptic Battle or The Adventures of Jack. Possibly the most terrifying is Dire Straights which is not only a complete, if incredibly boring fic but is a part of a far larger series of incredibly long and boring fics with similar stylistic elements. We may yet revisit it some day. Yes, that is a threat.

That leaves three fics. Two of them were deliberately removed at some point for different reasons. The version of The Tale of Yurei and Lance we have is effectively a fragment of a larger fic that was posted on a forum, but longer versions of it existed in at least two different locations. The first was posted on an archive, but was removed by the author by the time we got to it. A second version of it was posted on a forum that had been shutdown before we got to it. As such, there may have been a longer version of it, but it’s been lost to history. The second is My Way to the Championship which was removed from fanfiction.net at some point after we began working on it because the author breached the site’s regulations.

Finally, there’s AYGNEL Project, which can be best described as “we have no idea at all”. The fic cuts off in the middle of a chapter; in fact, it’s in the middle of a scene. The fic is incomplete otherwise, and it’s impossible to tell why that happened, if there’s any more of the fic or anything else. And we will likely never, ever know. The simple existence of The Apocalyptic Battle suggests that it was finished, but there’s no solid proof.

Another odd case comes in the form of Zoids Battle Saga. The version we found was uploaded to fanfiction.net as a single, massive, block chapter. However, while we don’t know for sure, the fic shows a lot of signs of being a far older fic, almost certainly re-uploaded from an older archive. It’s possible that there might be a longer, or even complete version of the fic that existed in past at some point, but if so, there’s no traces of it elsewhere. Of course, that also doesn’t rule out the idea that no other versions of the fic exist anymore and are lost. Since there’s no solid evidence, we’ve just simply listed it as ‘incomplete’.

There are a number of other things that should be noted here. Aside from those that have been deliberately removed as mentioned above, there are a number of ones that have been completely lost outside of our riffed versions. A few of them have been recovered through use of the Internet Archive, but some are simply and irrevocably gone for a number of reasons. Chronicles of the Mad Dog Squadron, Coalition War Story, Fur and Metal and, most tragically, Legend of the Black X-1 and The Resurrection are among those that are completely lost. Finally, it has to be said that despite all our efforts, the third chapter of Bubblegum Shift is also completely lost; the version used in our Rebuild is reconstructed from our original version.

Long and Short

In terms of pure episode count, the longest fic we’ve done is DELTA Invasion at thirteen chapters. However, it has to be said that choice was reflective of our older style and approach. In retrospect we probably would have done it as four episodes.

Putting that aside, the longest fics we’ve covered in terms of pure episode count are Girl on Fire, The Death Games and The Apocalyptic Battle at eight episodes each. All of these, it has to be said, are complete. Three more sit at seven episodes each, being Dire Straights, Shadow of a Phoenix and Chronicles of the Mad Dog Squadron, only the first of which is finished. Two more sit at six chapters, being The Adventures of Jack and Zoids Battle Saga, with only the former being finished (Maybe). There are five fics at five episodes each and seven at four chapters each.

There are fifteen fics at three episodes each, 23 at two and 44 at one. It has to be said that the failure rates increase with the shorter fics, with the vast majority of these being abandoned. Our average fic is 2.5 episodes long; even if you reduce DELTA Invasion down to four episodes, that simply changes it to 2.4.

Crossover Season

Of all the fics we’ve covered, 25 of them (or 24%) are some form of crossover. However, there are a few caveats to this figure.

First of all, we need to figure what exactly constitutes a crossover. It has to be a deliberate and conceptual part of the story that it is written around. A random background joke appearance doesn’t warrant an actual crossover. Likewise, throwing in a few elements, regardless of how out of place they may be, really doesn’t count either. Finally, there’s a few metafictional elements that need to be considered. Gundam Build Fighters and Ready Player One are both series that are designed to be deliberately meta, essentially being series about fandom. Throwing in crossover elements to these series aren’t inherently crossover if they’re handled within the fiction (eg as a part of a Gundam Fight or in the OASIS). If it was a crossover element that affected the “real world” of such a fic (such as, I don’t know, having the OASIS of Ready Player One in the Command and Conquer world) then it’s actually a crossover.

Yeah, complex, I known.

What’s more interesting is some deeper analysis of the crossover. There are six fandoms which are exclusively represented as a part of crossovers; Cyberpunk 2077, Harry Potter, Mass Effect, Need for Speed, Predator and Star Trek. Although it has to be said that three of them have only a single fic each. Macross has a two-thirds crossover rate, while Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teknoman sit at fifty-fifty.

The longest crossover fic is The Apocalyptic Battle. It’s one of those cases which really stretches the definition of fanfic or, for that matter, crossover. While nominally an Evangelion fanfic, it has elements from Dragonball and other things just simply thrown in because the writers thought it would be cool. But at the same time, it doesn’t reach the same metafictional level as described above. AYNGEL Project in theory reaches the same level and has the same elements, but of course, it’s hard to measure since it just stops.

Second place is Harry Potter and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at five episodes. However, it is also incomplete. Most of the other crossovers are shorter fics in the one-to-three-chapter range, but they also have a very high failure rate. In fact, of these 25 crossovers, only three are completed. That’s a 83% failure rate, which is well above our average. What does that mean? Personally I suspect that it’s a conceptual thing. I imagine that most crossover fics start with the “what if X meets Y” concept but lack an actual story to go with it. It says a lot that of these three complete fics, two of them are single episodes.

Fandoms of Choice

Taking all the caveats above, we have fics from 28 different fandoms. The most common fandom we use fics from is Bubblegum Crisis, which has thirteen fics. Of these, five are complete for a 62% failure rate. Three of them are crossovers for a 23% crossover rate. A large part of this is due to BGC fics being used heavily in our ‘lost pilot’ episodes for thematic reasons due to it being an ‘old’ (ie, dead) fandom which hasn’t had much activity in the last twenty years. For anyone who is curious, only one of those is a BGC 2040 fic.

In second place is Transformers. This is sort of a cheat, as it’s the first case that we have a massive, long-term franchise with many, many entries. In these cases, I basically compressed them down to a single point rather than splitting hairs and trying to over-granulate things. Only one of them is complete for a staggering 91% failure rate. Six of them are crossovers for a fifty percent crossover rate; in fact, we have more Transformers crossovers than any other fandom.

Third place is split with two different fandoms. The first is Robotech at ten fics. This has four finished fics, although one of them is Dire Straights, so take that how you will. There’s only two crossovers in the list. Alongside it is, somewhat surprisingly, Zoids, with ten fics. However, it has to be said that they are very front-loaded, with none of those in our first three years. Zoids has a 50/50 failure rate, mostly thanks to the Kevin Saga. And only one is a crossover.

The next two represent this same “merging down” approach, being the greater DC (9 fics) and Marvel (8 fics) universes. Both have three crossovers, two of which are with each other, so take that how you will. Below that is G.I. Joe at seven (57% failure rate, 2 crossovers) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at six (83% failure rate, 3 crossovers)

The only exception we had to the massively merging down was Gundam: Build Fighters for the meta reasons outlined above. There are five fics in the category, all of which have failed and none are crossovers. It also needs to be said that all five of them have horrible, actively unlikeable characters while actively avoiding the series’ actual themes of friendly competition and love of the hobby. It’s interesting how that works.

Finally, there are five fandoms that are represented only by a single fic. Of them, four exist solely as a part of a crossover.

Other Random Detritus

Of the 103 fanfics, 6 (for just under 6%) are Rebuilds; two of these are “lost pilots”. 19 fics (a bit under 18%) are B-Team fics, with 11 fics (just under 11%) being Zogster and 8 (just under 8%) are Rick. However, given that the Rick B-Teams were used mostly for pro comic riffs, that’s a tad skewed. Finally, six fics (just under 6%) are “lost pilot” fics.

Out of the 28 fandoms we’ve covered so far, 12 of them have 100% failure rates. The Marvel Universe has the highest level of failure, with eight out of eight fics failing to complete. This collection includes four fandoms that are represented only by a single fic.

All four Evangelion fics we’ve done so far are by the same author, either in whole or part. Likewise, four of the ten Zoids fics we’ve done so far were by the same author, making them our most prolific so far. There are several other repeat authors, but none reach that level of saturation in a single fandom.

This all leads to Cowboy Bebop being our ‘perfect’ fandom. One fic that lasted one episode and was complete and was not a crossover. So take that how you will.(3)

What Comes Next?

Episode 500 is already well in progress as the first of a four episode riffing. Following that we have an unusual choice for episodes 504 – 506 that’s out of our usual wheelhouse, but also very much connected to material we’ve covered already. Finally, we’ve got a number of fics lined up to carry us through to about episode 520 or so. Our goal is to maintain a steady once a month release schedule, which seems to have worked for us since we adopted it.

As always, we’re open to fic recommendations and suggestions, be they from fandoms we’ve covered so far or other things on the horizon.

(1) We count our episodes up from 201 as the start of the rebuild, but the truth that we don’t know the full episode count of the classic Elmer Studios era. We ended on episode 150 with 151 in progress. However, there’s also a number of spin-off series, guest appearances, crossovers and the like, many of which are completely lost to history. When we launched the rebuild, we simply settled on episode 201 as the start point for simplicity.

(2) There was another chapter of Mad Dog Squadron that was lost when the archive that it was on went down that we didn’t cover. However, as it was a character profile appendix, it didn’t add anything to the fic by our not including it.

(3) The original Elmer Studios run had a fair number of Cowboy Bebop fics. Its one of those things we had intended to do more of in the rebuild but never did for whatever reasons.