I saw a post recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. In it, someone mentioned Julie and the Phatoms being a dead or dying fandom. Someone replied rather heatedly denying this phrasing.
Okay. Listen, this fandom has owned my entire heart for four years. I've written hundreds of thousands of words and I see no signs of slowing down anytime soon. And I'm sorry, I really am, but no matter how much I love it, it is a dying fandom. It's impossible to deny. There has been no new content to provide fuel for years. Look at the amount of engagement on fics from three or four years ago, then from two years ago, then now. There has been a massive decline even from a single year ago. I'm admittedly on the fringes, primarily writing crossovers, gen fic, or one of the less popular ships, but you can't deny the facts. Because for all that gen fic is not generally popular, Family Matters - a fic that was written very early on, and definitely not the best or most cohesive work - is still the most kudos'd JATP fic on AO3. Meanwhile, the stories I've written in 2023/2024 - most of which I'd argue are far better - are lucky to still be hitting double digits.
I have literally experienced the entire range of this fandom, most popular to least and every angle in between, and I have witnessed the steep decline, the slow death, the masses of people who moved on to other things and never came back, especially after the cancellation announcement.
And it sucks, obviously it sucks, but that shouldn't stop the people who love it from still loving it. It shouldn't stop people, new to the fandom or old friends, from engaging with it. Because, yeah, the fandom is dying, but it's also still here. There are a lot of us still not willing to let it go. Call it life support.
JATP is not the first dying fandom I've been a part of. It won't be the last. The way we engage with media has changed so radically from what it was ten, twenty, thirty years ago that fandom deaths happen so much more swiftly and brutally now. There isn't a lot of staying power anymore, especially for shows that were streamed from a place like Netflix, shows that never even got multiple seasons. Frankly, it's a miracle there are still any of us here at all, and that does speak to how much this show meant (and still means) to so many people.
But dying or not, that doesn't mean you shouldn't find the joy where you can. it doesn't mean you should feel strange if you got into this fandom late and want to create for it now. My last fic gave me a ton of joy to write, and received all of 13 kudos. And I treasured every damn one of them all the more for knowing how few people are left to have enjoyed it.
Don't be offended that people understand when a fandom is dying. Just do what you can to keep it going as long as possible, for as long as it continues to mean something to you and give you any amount of happiness it can.
