#obviously my spiritual home is spanish tennis but bff who has been my tennis guide for as long as we've known each other is a jannik fan.

[alacants]

hot take? maybe? mildly spicy take? but i feel like a lot of sincaraz people are jannik fans who don't make much effort to get carlos beyond him being happy & having muscles and it makes me slightly sad sometimes

ooh this is such an interesting take! i mean, i have definitely not been in sincaraz circles very long and i was coming at it from the opposite direction, so, confirmation bias. (carlos alcaraz, yeah, everyone knows he's the next big thing. jannik wh—oh ok wow.) but when i look around my dash it's for sure jannikblr heavy.

could be because carlos fans have a stronger tradition of alternative options, i.e. juanki/carlos? my own hangups aside, it's obviously compelling to many! i also feel like the doping case reveal meant a lot of fans armored up on their jannik feelings—like, it understandably focused the emotional attention in a very specific way.

but overall what you describe seems plausible because you're dealing with a couple things, right, first of all the inherently fractured and diffuse nature of source material in an rpf fandom—you have to work to stay on top of all the media and socials and promos and what have you and tennisblr is maybe a fraction as organized as your average c-list kpop bandom.

and second, and probably more importantly, how much easier it is to accept the surface reading for someone who is outgoing and expressive. if you're writing or reading or theorizing about someone who is more outwardly reserved then, like, by definition you have to ask yourself what they're thinking and how they feel. instead of assuming they just... don't have feelings. whereas it's a lot easier to take happiness at face value.

it'll be so interesting to revisit this next summer—i am so so so curious to see how the netflix doc presents carlos and what kind of narratives around his self and personality they decide to explore. like yes it's all a construct but it might be a good construct!! who knows!!!