silverliening replied to your post: Have you heard of the fandom thing known as...
Oooh I’ve seen this around a bit. I’ve actually read a few fics and seen pics where it’s not tagged and so I think it’s more popular than people know. If I’m not mistaken it originated in the Kpop boy band fandoms … which is a little odd but considering the one direction fandom gave us the flower crown what can you do. The disease is caused by unrequited love and the flowers the person cough up are often related to the object of their affections. In some versions the ‘disease’ can be cured
It may be more common on Tumblr Kpop fandoms vs AO3? I mean on AO3, there’s literally only 500 fic results if you search ‘Hanahaki’ across all fandoms, which is a drop in the fanfiction ocean theme wise (and overwhelmingly anime and/or Kpop centric -> I’m not active in any anime fandom/s except YOI and Kuroshitsuji -> and I don’t read fanfiction for YOI). It may be more popular on Tumblr, or one of those things that’s growing quickly in popularity on Tumblr, while AO3 doesn’t reflect that accurately yet (sort of like red string of fate - v. popular on Tumblr, really not reflected re: content on AO3). Google wasn’t very helpful at all, maybe I should’ve just Tumblr searched it, lol. Even flower crowns and their origin are on Fan Lore; Hanahaki isn’t.
I think it’s one of those things that feels way more common/prevalent than it is depending on the fandoms you’re in and the saturation you see in your circles as a result. I mean to me, Thorki (Thor/Loki) feels like a massive pairing that everyone knows about (it has 27,000 fanfiction results on AO3 alone, after all), but even that’s a less common pairing in the Marvel fandom and many people have been active in MCU all their lives and never even read a Thorki fic, let alone know the common tropes in those 27,000 fics. And within those 27,000 fics, there’d probably be a lot of themes that are found in 500-1000 fics and feel really popular as a result, but...well, you end up in echo chambers in fandom where something is reflected to you over and over and over again because of your circles, but rarely reflects what is trending in ‘big fandom.’ (Not that RotG is big fandom either, but anyway).
From your second comment though - that it’s connected to soulmate trope/s, it doesn’t really seem like a trope I’d like in general. I’m not a huge fan of soulmate storylines or themes.
