#I’m not into ships in general I never read shipfic anymore but I can get into art

[petrichorium]

I have 2 b so honest my entire distaste for jingfu is that she looks like 12 yrs old bc the vibes genuinely do hit and there’s banger art I just feel uncomfortable looking at it most of the time

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Trick or Treat Author

Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3 (and have been since LJ days, but my LJ is locked down and I only have a DW to see locked things). I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Far From the Madding Crowd | Simoun | Spinning Silver | The Strange Case of Starship Iris

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity; stories whose resolution isn’t the sex scene.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships.

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Fandom: Far From the Madding Crowd

Character(s): Bathsheba Everdene

One thing that always sticks in my mind about this novel is the way Hardy calls Bathsheba “the young farmer” just as he refers to the men as farmers - which, just saying, is more than most people writing about this story can do - and so, that being the case, what I’m most interested in is something about Bathsheba as farmer. One day in the life or four seasons in the life or five plantings/harvests in the life, or pseudo-academic fic about a case study of a woman farmer in the Victorian era, or a conflict between the farm and nature that Bathsheba has to decide how to solve.

Feel free to bring in other characters if it suits what you’re trying to do, but what I’m really looking for is a focus on Bathsheba’s work, determination, and process of learning. (I like how Bathsheba's relationship with Gabriel ends up playing out in canon, but I don't want shipfic.) Other ideas: something like a merchant ship AU (as the first alternate setting that came to mind where it would be not exactly the done thing for her to captain her inherited ship and make commercial decisions herself - although I do have to point out that contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of women on shipboard in the age of sail, may this be useful - but also where nature and luck/fate are as influential as they are in the original setting), or something in which the land, superstition, and ritual are more overtly magical.

I've only requested treats for this fandom, so I would prefer that the outlook of the fic, including if you decide to incorporate non-canon magical or spooky elements, be ultimately positive. A seasonal treat would be right up the alley of this request. I'd also be into interactive fiction.

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Fandom: Simoun

Character(s): Neviril, Paraietta, Mamiina, Rodoreamon, Yun, Dominuura

This is a perennial request for me and anything would make me very happy. I'm so interested in how the war changes all the characters and their relationships with one another, how Everything is Beautiful and Then Shit Gets Real but amidst the war-is-hell there's still the creation of bonds of trust and loyalty and chances to do what's right (the bits with the Plumbish priestesses, for instance). Every character gets a chance to develop and make choices that are all brave in different ways. Would also be curious about post-canon (what happens if Neviril and Aeru make it back to the main world when war is brewing again, but Neviril has no one from the old cohort to lead because they can’t fly anymore?) and/or about magic and time weirdness retconning character deaths or disappearances.

I've requested either tricks or treats here. For tricks I'd prefer "dark" to "cynical" - throw as much shit at them as you want in terms of war-is-hell and weird magic and time horror, but I believe that the characters mostly want to do what they believe is the right thing and help each other. My treat preferences are, I think, more about thematic focus than content - if it's slice of life, how is that life striving towards their ideals even in small ways? (Helping the war orphans, flying the Simoun, growing a garden?) If it's more about Things Happening, in the war or whatnot, what do those things show about their growth or the changes in their relationships? I would also be super into interactive fiction.

As far as ships go, I'm on board with most of the canon ones (no romantic/sexual Dominuura/Limone, please) but have a small soft spot for postcanon Paraietta/Rodoreamon as well.

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Fandom: Spinning Silver

Character(s): Miryem Mandelstam

I love hard-headed, practical, ambitious women who get into adventures because of, rather than in spite of, those qualities, and so I love Miryem and her good sense, pride, and rules-lawyering. I’m really interested in what the book does with power - Miryem’s real-world power of accounting and hardheadedness becoming magic in the Staryk world, being a queen in one world while belonging to a disenfranchised minority in another. What happens when Miryem is back in the human world, post-canon? I never got the impression that she’d be happy just avoiding the whole question of the town’s contempt for her by finding power elsewhere - what’s it like if she comes back a queen? (Can she use the mirror from Irina to do an end run around the whole Persephone setup and travel back and forth whenever she wants, and if so, what sorts of plot would make that fun to play with? If not, that’s still fine.) Or, what are some adventures in the Staryk world where she could use her Accounting Powers, other than the post-war rebuilding the book talks about? Or tell me more about Miryem practicing Judaism in the Staryk world, and the application of Judaism to that world and those customs that we get some hints of (that’s a hell of a diaspora - what would the rabbis think of it?).

I'm very uninterested in Miryem's romance with the Staryk Lord unless you feel like making it f/f, so while I don't require you to retcon it or break them up, I don't want a fic focusing on it. If you're interested in shipping her with Irina or Wanda, I have some previous prompts for them in my "dear author letters" tag. (These may also be relevant to platonic fic that includes Irina or Wanda - like Wanda becoming a magical gatekeeper to Miryem's land or having the "magic" of reading/writing that Miryem gave her become magic-magic in the Staryk land, or Irina and Miryem's different ideas of who their commitment as queen is to - but there's more detail and prompts in the tag.)

I'm happy to receive either tricks or treats for this fandom. I'm explicitly okay with a story in either category involving anti-Semitic prejudice, but would prefer that the dark/scary elements in a "trick" fic come from supernatural horror rather than the human capacity for racist violence. I suppose treat fic would be about finding or making one's place in the world, the place where you can use the powers that you've got and make your world safe for yourself and others around you.

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Fandom: The Strange Case of Starship Iris

Character(s): Sana Tripathi, Arkady Patel, Krejjh, Brian Jeeter, Rumor Crew, Agent Park

I just want MORE of any or all of these people because I love them - Krejjh's dashing pilot thing ("feast on my leavings, mortality! I am danger on wheels and those wheels are rooOOOOLLING!") and what it masks, Brian's geekery and humanist passion, Arkady's tough outside and squishy center and Sana's soft outside and iron center, the crew-as-found-family, Park's fifth-cup-of-cold-coffee burnout and wry edge. Slice of life? Their backstories? Things they like or get excited about? (More about the music they like to listen to/sing/play!) Arkady and/or Sana (or other crew members) on missions off-ship, or the crew all facing a problem or a heist together? Dwarnian customs (and Krejjh introducing Dwarnian customs to their friends and how they maybe pick some of those up - or adopting human customs and how they're different)? Park adjusting to the crew and them adjusting to him (and what's his role going forward)?

I've requested treats only for this fandom, no tricks - I'm totally fine with characters' angsty pasts and angsty present feelings being included, but I'd prefer that the overall mood of a fic that involved angst be one that focused on a better future, bonds with others, a cause to believe in, etc.

I ship Arkady with Sana (that loyalty kink!), but I don't mind if a fic includes Violet/Arkady (after all, it is canon) as long as it's not shipfic/focused on their romance. Brian/Krejjh is good too.

[thatsjustsupergirl]

enchntedapril ha respondido a tu publicación “ur post about fic & racism in the supergirl fandom really got me...”

I get the parts about Jimmy vs Mon-El, but the rest? Not so much. Since when has Sanvers NOT been huge? I see tons and tons and TONS of Sanvers fics, and let's keep in mind that Alex is not the main character. I don't know what you're talking about re:Floriana being or not being white having anything to do with her popularity. In fact the only criticism I saw was, as you say, about Floriana not being ENOUGH of a WOC. Roulette fic? M'gann??? Seriously?

Why the heck would there be Roulette fics? Perhaps the reason has less to do with race and more to do with the fact that she was a relatively poorly written character in two measly episodes? Likewise, M'Gann was never a main character, and if anything, I would pair her with J'onn, but the fandom (at least as represented on AO3) seems much more devoted to wlw pairings.

Personally, I'm a huge Sanvers shipper, as well as Kara/Lena, Kara/Cat and canon endgame Kara/James. I'm not even sure why any of this is an argument. Pairings between characters who rarely have shared screen time are simply never going to be as popular as those that do.

Also, where is Maggie being demonized within the fandom?? Apparently I'm blissfully unaware...

Sooooooo lemme kick this off with a seemingly-unrelated story, since “well-meaning” skeptics like you are the reason I started doing all this data-tracking in the first place:

Several years ago I took my daughter on vacation to a country where I used to live, speak the language fluently, and racially blend in. We went out to dinner the first night and the waiter didn’t give me my change when I paid the bill, then seemed annoyed when I asked for my money. It was a holiday and busy, so I shrugged it off. 

Except then it happened again the next morning at breakfast. And then again at lunch, where the waiter tried to give me the bill for another table that had ordered multiple bottles of alcohol and some seafood platters, when all I’d bought was two sandwiches and a Coke. At this point I was getting pissed off, because what the hell, I speak fucking Spanish and in ten years of traveling to this region I’d never had this happen before.

The next day, all of these mysterious “accidents” with trying to rip me off miraculously stopped. And when I figured out why, I got even more pissed off. Know what happened? My daughter had started wearing her sunglasses and people couldn’t see her eyes anymore. (She’s Asian. I’m not.)

Like. Whether it was malicious or not, people were straight-up ignoring my visibly local-ass face, hair, and accent like I wasn’t even there and fixating on the fact that my kid looked foreign, then treating us as they would have if she had been alone. That is how implicit racism works: there are always plenty of ~reasonable excuses~ for it when you’re not the one it’s happening to.

So congratulations, just because *you personally* don’t perceive fandom racism on your very narrowly-curated tumblr dashboard doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist -- or that you have any right to dismiss the hundreds of other people who see it for what it is.

Also, I am confused as to where you think anyone is arguing, or that this is even something to argue about. It is a fact that implicit racism affects fan behavior and preferences, just like it affects our behavior everywhere else. @diversehighfantasy made some excellent additions to my post with examples of how this behavior plays out across multiple fandoms in multiple ways. There is plenty of literature on this problem of racism by fans within the field of fan studies. None of this is an opinion. It’s a fact.

And the fact that you’re so quick to defend the disparity by a) scoffing off the idea that anyone might find Roulette shippable in the first place; b) suggesting that M’gann’s relative lack of screentime is the only factor explaining the general lack of interest in her; and c) throwing up “but everyone’s into femslash” as an excuse for the lack of black het pairings when I’ve spent the better part of a year and a half tracking this fandom and can tell you, with detailed references, that you are wrong ... says a whole lot about you, none of it flattering.

It also says that you don’t follow my tumblr, because I don’t write things I can’t back up. And thanks for telling me there’s lots of femslash like I don’t already know.

Let’s go through this step by step, shall we?

“I see tons and tons and TONS of Sanvers fics, and let's keep in mind that Alex is not the main character”

1) High five for your use of hyperbole, but here are the actual AO3 numbers from March:

2) Despite how hard CW keeps trying to change this, Alex is still the co-lead of the show. She has the most screentime after Kara. The amount of fics featuring each of them as a romantic lead is roughly proportional to their levels of screentime. (49% less time vs. 44% less fic)

3) There was a mass migration of queer fans explicitly because of Alex’s coming out arc that inflated the interest in her character. How do I know this was an inflation? Because S1 fans did not move away from their old ships -- output for every other femslash ship has stayed consistent since S1 ended. (Supercat is at 1/2 scale so it fits on the graph.)

“I don't know what you're talking about re:Floriana being or not being white having anything to do with her popularity.”

You say this like I didn’t explicitly note in my original post that I had the data to back myself up re: the drop in interest in Sanvers. Here you go:

This graph is on a log scale, aka it’s showing growth exponentially so it’s easier to make comparisons and see trends. Sanvers, when it first appeared onscreen, had the quickest growth of any Supergirl ship to date. And yet, there’s a sharper-than-expected publication slowdown throughout November of 2016.

That’s because this appeared on October 26th:

So, yes, the race/ethnicity clusterfuck did have something to do with the popularity of the ship. People backed off writing the pairing. I mean, I can explain further why the legitimate criticism from latina fans re: Kreisberg’s racist assumption was advantageous to racist people uncomfortable with Maggie’s clearly nonwhite skin color, but this post is long enough as it is. Moving on...

“Roulette fic? M'gann??? Seriously? Why the heck would there be Roulette fics?”

Gee, I don’t know, enchantedapril, maybe because there are published romantic and/or smutfics for all of the following:

Kara and Max Lord

Kara and Livewire

Kara and Silver Banshee

Alex and Max Lord

Alex and Silver Banshee

Alex and Cat Grant

Cat and Livewire

Cat and Astra

Lucy and Alura

J’onn and Jim Harper

J’onn and Clark

J’onn and Mon-El

Kara and Eliza

Kara and Non

Kara and Clark

Assorted threesomes of the above

Come on. Even your dismissiveness at the idea that people might see Roulette as desirable or interesting reeks of prejudice. And your incredulity over anyone thinking M’gann might be a ship-worthy partner is just gross. To put your comments into perspective: by 2x12, which aired in February, M’gann had racked up more screentime than Lena. And yet, by the end of January there were exactly four shipfics featuring M’gann on AO3 (zero of which included J’onn), compared against 1162 for Lena.

And to counter arguments about screentime proportions making a difference: Alex has had more scenes & time with M’gann than with Lena, yet there are 11 Alex/Lena fics and zero Alex/M’gann ones. There are also more femslash fics about Alex and her friend from high school than there are about Lena & Veronica Sinclair.

So, nice try.

“Pairings between characters who rarely have shared screen time are simply never going to be as popular as those that do.”

Ah, yes, and this is why Lucy Lane and Kara’s dead mother, who have never met onscreen, have more shipfics about them than multiple WOC from Season 2 who directly interact with main characters. This is why Karolsen flatlined for months, but Karamel took off like a rocket, and why there’s more fic of Winn & Mon-El than Winn & James. Like, if you’re going to make this basic argument, maybe crawl out of your Tumblr bubble a little more often, because multiple people in the fandom have started researching this shit specifically to refute people like you who insist that we’re exaggerating or imagining things. There is literally more shipfic on AO3 about Kara's terrorist uncle than there is about M’gann and anyone.

“Also, where is Maggie being demonized within the fandom??”

I don’t read a lot of Supercorp, which is where it tends to crop up most often, but here’s one example (in which the OP respectfully listened to people’s concerns and reworked their idea).

“Apparently I'm blissfully unaware...”

tl;dr: yay for being ignorant?