#did i explain here how at least in the op spanish speaking fandom there is a gag that zoro is racist?? it started with that woman from bw

[hauntingblue]

Kaido lore?!

[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?