
Throwing a question out there to the room: What do you think are some of the qualities that results in some piece of media, any piece of media, picking up a let's say small to medium-sized fandom? (Not necessarily juggernaut-sized, which I think is The Claw as much as anything.)
I'm asking partly just because I haven't been talking on here much lately and this is something to talk about, but also because I was thinking tonight that it might be fun to craft some future project with the intention in mind of seeing if I could pick up a little bit of a fic fandom for it, in the same way that the Zoe Chant books are intentionally crafted to appeal to romance readers - so this would be a project that was dangling a lure in front of transformative fic fandom, not necessarily what people's wish lists are (I have my own wish list, which would almost certainly feature heavily), but what people tend to write fic about.
I realize it's a broad question and varies hugely based on individual preferences and what part of fandom you're in (e.g. slashers want one thing, gen people want another, everybody has their own personal preferences, etc), but I do think there are some broad trends: e.g. ensemble canons typically do better than canons focused on just one or two characters; canons with multiple open-ended installments typically do better than those with one self-contained installment.
What do you think some of the qualities of such a canon might be? Would it be different for books vs. a visual medium like TV/movies, do you think?