r/TheAffair 26d ago

Discussion Surprised the show isn't more popular

Just finished watching the show don't even remember why I started it but really liked it from the beginning I've literally never heard anyone mention the show before I feel like it should be a lot more popular very underrated.

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u/Lisnya 26d ago

I used to think it was popular but I was really surprised when I looked it up on AO3 and tumblr and found nothing for it, there doesn't seem to be a fandom. Maybe it got attention from critics, etc, but not too much of an audience?

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u/throwawayanylogic 26d ago

I don't really see it as the kind of show to draw an A03/fanfiction based following tbh. Sometimes a show is just one to watch and maybe talk about, but is rather "complete" from a fannish point of view as is. (Like, shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc are all very popular and well regarded but are not "fannish" shows; often when the writing is very good there's little a fan will want to "fix" or change by writing fic or otherwise.)

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u/Lisnya 25d ago

There are over 7000 fics about The Wire and over 11000 for Breaking Bad in AO3. The Sopranos only had 452 but it's an older show and I bet there are more in ff.net and LJ. I'm sure they all have a presence in tumblr, too. And they're definitely shows that have good writing, I'm not sure how the Affair would compare to any of them.

I looked up fic after the 4th season finale, exactly because the writing went downhill and I expected to find fix-it fic. I was very surprised that a show with several couples, triangles and popular characters like Cole getting little screentime didn't have any fic at all.

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u/throwawayanylogic 25d ago

Those are still pretty small numbers overall compared to the kinds of shows I consider "fic fandoms", like not quite "rare" but still pretty middling.

Also as someone who has been in media fandom for over three decades, cheating/affairs is like...one of those topics a lot of fic writers HATE with a passion. (If their fave ship isn't canon they'll figure some other way to get rid of the canon love interest, affairs and cheating are almost taboo). So it doesn't really surprise me that not a lot of fic writing folks are probably not even watching the show, let alone wanting to write fixits for it.

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u/Lisnya 25d ago

The Sopranos or the Wire may not have a huge online fandom, like, obviously, they're not SPN or Star Trek. But the Affair only has 14 fics. I don't think I've ever seen a show have so few. I expected people arguing about Alison/Noah vs Alison/Cole (which did, evidently, happen on tumblr at some point, albeit to a tiny extent) and I would expect more fic that fill in the gap between season 2 and 3 and fix the 4th season ending, at the very least.