#enchntedapril

[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?

[beaglesinbowties]

enchntedapril

 omg now i feel the need to rewatch the mamma mia...

If you haven’t seen the stage version, you NEED TO DO SO! The singers are SO much better than in the movie. My twin boys were actually having a dance party to the musical soundtrack this morning. :)

I live in the Netherlands, so catching stage versions of things can be dicey. (Especially since I don’t drive.)

I didn’t watch the Mamma Mia movie for the music quality, I watched it for the comedy of actors I like essentially performing karaoke of ABBA songs to propel a story forward - which was very fun and entertaining!

That said, I’m sure the live musical is very impressive! Your kiddos seem to have great taste in music. ^.^

[queercapwriting]

Dancing on my Own

“Maggie dealing with the breakup because we're not going to get her perspective and that's so heartbreaking” from @dogs-of-society and ​“Kara and everyone else calling/visiting Maggie to make sure she’s okay and they know she may not want to see them because it’s too soon, but they don’t want her to think she’s alone.  Actually, showing that she has some other friends and ISN’T alone would also be nice.” from @enchntedapril and “mgann checking on maggie.” from @kirstyn-loftus

This is an angsty, Maggie-perspective post-break up, since the show won’t honor her feelings enough, ever, to give us that. I’m also going to write an Alex post-break up fic. Just to get it over with. After that, all tonight’s fix its will be non-break up. Stay tuned.

She told her she had a friend to stay with. 

And she could have.

Could have crashed on her work partner’s couch. His wife wouldn’t have minded -- she probably would have liked the company, honestly -- and their kid would have been thrilled. 

Their kid loves Maggie, and she loves their kid.

Their kid.

She doesn’t want to be around kids right now.

Because she loves kids, she just doesn’t... want them, for herself.

Because she loves kids, but she loves Alex more, but Alex doesn’t...

So she doesn’t call him. She doesn’t ask.

She just checks in at the Baldwin.

Where Emily had caught her cheating, all those years ago.

She chuckles masochistically to herself.

It’s fitting.

She’s through her third shot at the hotel bar when a familiar hand touches her shoulder.

“The hell are you doing here?” she asks, forgetting, for a moment, that she’s just lost everything, as she launches herself into M’gann’s arms. “I thought you were off leading a revolution.”

M’gann pulls back and holds her by the shoulders, searching her face like she’s searching for evidence of harm. To herself.

“Revolutions don’t mean anything unless we care for our own, Maggie. And you -- “

“But I didn’t send you a message.”

Maggie blinks like the alcohol is finally starting to hit her brain, because it is.

M’gann just guides her back to her bar stool and taps at her own temple.

“Telepathy, remember?”

“Across all that space?”

“You love her that much,” M’gann says just above a whisper, and Maggie finally breaks.

She breaks forward into M’gann’s arms, breaks forward and breaks down, breaks up and breaks entirely.

“Shhhh, I know. I know,” M’gann whispers, running war-torn fingers through her hair and soft comforts through her wet cheeks.

The bartender grimaces in sympathy and pours them both free shots. M’gann mouths a thank you at him over Maggie’s shaking shoulder.

“I can’t... I can’t...”

“Shhhh, it’s okay. Take your time,” M’gann tells her, rubbing circles onto her back and peace into her stomach.

Maggie turns and downs the shot that’s appeared, to her, out of nowhere. 

“She was my family. And she... I wasn’t enough for her. Wasn’t enough family for her. So she... she’s leaving me on the side of the road, and I can’t... I don’t know how to even stay in this city, with... we’re gonna still work the same cases, we’re... and her sister, I’m the NCPD’s liaison with... I can’t... M’gann, how am I going to do this?”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” a voice says softly, but it’s not M’gann’s. 

Maggie jumps and wipes her eyes, her nose, rapidly before turning somewhat unsteadily.

“James, Winn, what the hell -- “

“Hi Maggie,” Kara steps out from behind them, and her voice is small, her body even smaller.

“Kara?” 

She says it like she’s talking through a dream, because she thinks maybe she is.

Kara doesn’t speak. She just strides forward and wraps Maggie in her arms.

“Listen, I have to... I have to go be with...”

“I know. I know you do.” Maggie’s heart wavers and she tries not to break. Again. 

As she ponders whether someone who’s already completely broken can, technically, still break.

“But I wanted to just... you’re not alone, Maggie. You’re part of our family, and that.... that doesn’t change just because you guys...”

Maggie trembles and James takes her hand while Winn puts a hand on her thigh and M’gann rubs her back.

“Your sister dumped me,” she states tonelessly, and Kara’s eyes flood.

“She loves y -- “

“No. No, no. Kara, I get it, I do, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t hear that she... I can’t. It won’t help, it’s not... enough, apparently.”

“Maggie, that’s not what -- “

“It is what it is, Little.... Little Danvers.” Her voice breaks on their last name -- the last name she’d wanted to be hers -- and she lets her head rest against Winn’s chest, because she has no other choice but to surrender.

“Maggie, my point is that you’re not alone, okay? You don’t have to do any of this alone. We don’t abandon family, okay?”

Maggie swallows thickly and nods tightly.

“Go. Be with her. Take good care of her, okay?”

Kara nods solemnly. “Always,” she promises, leaving Maggie with a broken heart and a family.

“So you told Alex you’re staying with a friend,” Winn says softly, and Maggie almost groans. But before she can object, he keeps talking, staring at his hands. “And you know, we don’t wanna make a liar out of you, Sawyer. Or rack up your credit card bill on this place, so uh... you know, my couch is extremely comfortable.”

There’s a pause and she doesn’t know if it’s the liquor or the tears that make her world almost spin out.

“Is it?” she croaks, somehow stable because of M’gann’s hand on her back, because of James’s steady eyes, because of Winn’s almost bashful offer of... a home.

“Sure is. And I have all the gaming systems you can dream of. Come stay with me. Please? You don’t have to be alone, you pool shark, you.”

She thinks about protesting. She thinks about insisting that she’s fine. 

She thinks about lying and she thinks about pushing her feelings down and she thinks about Alex so she thinks about throwing up.

And then she thinks about family, and these people.

These people who somehow love her even after... after.

“Take me to your leader, Schott,” she manages, and James and Winn walk her out with their arms around her while M’gann picks up her luggage and brings around her space ship car.

Because J’onn isn’t the only one with cool toys, and because if Maggie’s heart is going to be broken, at least it can be broken with family and with a flying Mustang convertible soaring over the desert. Together.

[findsupercat]

I'm trying to find a supercat fic where the only part I remember is kara being extremely injured somehow & the only option to help her is like an adrenaline shot or something similar that causes her to have a seizure & I think flat line & Alex & cat are in the room too & cat absolutely freaks the fuck out during it? BTW you're doing gods work here

Thanks! I think you’re looking for When I need you-When you need me by @enchntedapril

[ultranos]

wtatennisfreak-blog replied to your post “thatsjustsupergirl: enchntedapril ha respondido a tu publicación ...”

Also accusing people of being racist for not shipping Kara with the slaver Roulette is, shall we say, ironic.

I literally only looked at stats for sanvers and supercorp, why are you replying to me about this?

are you new here?

I just have to wander into just about any other damn fandom in the history of ever to see that shipping hero-with-moral-black-hole is not exactly uncommon.  If we want to stay in this fandom, shipping Alex with genocidal-terrorist-with-a-messianic-complex is, by your assessment, “surprisingly” popular.  (As would be Alex and a man who tried to murder her sister and literally treated a series of women as disposable objects to play god)

“Surprising” that is for anyone who hasn’t been in any fandom for like five minutes.

tl;dr: citing morality as a reason ship numbers are low is adorable.

[the-laughing-wolf]

What fanfiction writers do you follow?

Oh geez....so many. Uhh...

@biisabellelightwood @queergirlwriting @kara-danvers-lena-luthor @saviorsanvers @rtarara @fictorium @enchntedapril @juicecupswanqueen @private95

I know I’m missing like half of them, but this is all I can think of while my brain is pretty much toast. (Yay insomnia) I will add the rest of you lovelies later when I can think!

[debbielouocean]

enchntedapril replied to your post: i just remembered that some guy at work today...

Stephanie, which is the female version of Stephen. Many, many Stephanie’s go by Stevie. Naming a kid not only a boy’s name, but a nickname is very odd to me, so I would have assumed it was short for something as well.

i guess i just never really thought of it as a ‘boy’s name’ since i know of just as many women named stevie as i do men. 

stephanie was the only one i could come up with too, but he seemed so reluctant to tell me what he thought it was short for that he had to have had something way wilder in mind 

[rizzles-fanfic]

Does anyone know what happened to the fic author becauseihaveyourback? I was desperately looking for her story "Sit Still" and she seems to have vanished!

She removed everything a long time ago, sorry.

[supercatslam-blog]

enchntedapril replied to your post “Slam-iquette”

Actually I haven't seen anything except a zero word filler on ao3. Could you post a list with links as things are posted?

There is a Tumblr post for each piece in the queue, they won’t start posting until morning in EST, from about 8am in that timezone.

The tag is the same supercatslam one we’ve been using so far, so feel free to track that one.

Reveals will be approximately one per hour, so each new reveal gets some spotlight to itself.

The collection is currently 14 Mystery Works, each of which will show as it gets revealed.

Thank you for checking, hope that makes some sense of it!

[bridgetteirish]

enchntedapril replied to your post: “Slam-iquette”:

I haven't seen anything on tumblr yet. What's the tag??

I don't think any of the works have been posted yet. I think the tumblr tag will be supercatslam. The AO3 collection is Supercat Slam: Fall

[thatsjustsupergirl]

enchntedapril ha respondido a tu publicación “Surprise, bitch”

Fantastic post. I do think your assumptions as to race vs number of pairings is off, however. Kara is the main character. I would expect anyone paired with her to have higher counts, and Cat and Lena happen to be the ones who have had the most onscreen interaction with her and therefore have the most fics. Even then, the number of Maggie fics is coming close to passing Cat fics and she's only been a character for less than six months... Less than half the time Cat's been a known commodity.

As for Lucy vs Astra vs M'gann, I think it would be tough to argue that Lucy had as much character development as Astra.  M'gann, I feel has not had enough on-screen time with any of the female characters (maybe Alex, but she's canon paired to Maggie now, so people aren't writing her with others as much) and seems to have more of a connection with J'onn.

Hey!

To the first point: you’re right about interaction time being a major factor, but you’re off in judging who spends the most time with Kara. Both Alex and Astra have shared more screentime with Kara than Lena has to date.  And, in case you think this is irrelevant because they are her family members : for all of S1 Kara/Alex was the #2 Kara ship. Yes, really.

With regard to the total numbers of fics, I am going to call out a very bizarre trend that has occurred for every femslash ship: the fic output is linear. That is to say: the amount of it being published isn’t changing in response to the show. At all. There are still roughly the same number of Supercat fics being written per month right now as there were a year ago. The volume of Alex/Maggie fic we’re seeing now is largely being written by new fans. (The amount of new fics has jumped from an average of 350/month to around 1050/month.) 

People are not actually migrating away from their original ships. The fandom is just MUCH larger now, and new people came for the new pairing. So, that in mind, I’d be curious to do separate comparisons on screentime for S1 vs. ship output, and then S2 screentime vs. ship output.

I agree that Lucy had less character development than Astra, but that still doesn’t fully explain why she was so overlooked for the entirety of S1, despite a) being roughly the same age as both Kara and Alex and conveniently not related to either of them; b) having far fewer ethical conflicts of interest with either Kara or Alex than Cat or Astra; c) having approximately the same number of tense/weighty scenes with Alex as Astra, and getting the big Superhero Reveal scene with Kara that is usually reserved for love interests.

100% agree that M’gann has not had enough screentime for people to warm up to her, although this has not deterred people in the past from shipping such gems as Cat/Astra, Cat/Alex, etc. There is also more shipfic about Vasquez, a character who has never so much as been given a full name onscreen, let alone a story arc, than there is about M’gann.

[ofendlesswonder]

@enchntedapril replied to your post:40. Supercat but Carter is the one with the black...

Adorable! I’m wondering, where do you find your prompts??

Thank you :D 

It depends! If I ever see any floating across my dash that other people have reblogged I’ll just like them and save them for when I’m in the mood to fire off some ficlets, or sometimes I’ll google them but that usually takes me ageeees to find one I like the look of