#only guy who has disliked every marvel movie post black panther 1 but for some reason rotates 2 smaller role characters out of their most

[horrorgay]

honestly maybe I enjoyed eternals only because it gave me these two on my screen big. Huge and im critically and disgustingly attracted to both of them

and also their dynamic gave me shrimp emotions

[nostalgicatsea]

Racism in the Marvel fandom as seen through the number of fanworks per M/M ship on AO3

I talked about this on Twitter, but I'm posting it here with tweaks and additions.

A couple of notes about the ship selection process:

I focused on M/M ships here as they're the biggest and most common on AO3 overall and, for the most part, the Marvel fandom

I put aside my personal feelings, so the following selection ranges from my OTP and ships I like to ships I dislike or am squicked by and NOTPs. The big ships and crack/niche ships are ones that have the most popular male characters or I’ve seen come up the most often, but I'm sure the pattern is consistent with more minor characters and subfandoms with fewer works

I focused on ships that exist in the MCU (film side only, no TV), only or in addition to other universes, just to simplify things. The MCU fandom is the biggest, and it gets complicated once you throw in other universes considering the vastness of the Marvel multiverse

I looked at the overall fanwork count for the ships rather than fanworks for that ship in the MCU tag as people tend to miscategorize their works

As of 6/19/20:

AO3 fanworks of big MCU/MCU-based ships: 

Steve/Bucky: 50,501 

Steve/Tony: 36,638 

Loki/Thor: 13,071

Clint/Coulson: 10,940

Loki/Tony: 9,880

Bucky/Tony: 7,504

Spideypool: 7,271

Starker: 6,073 

Ironstrange: 4,844 

Bruce/Tony: 4,734

Bucky/Clint: 3,841

Stuckony: 2,331

AO3 fanworks of MCU/MCU-based ships with 1 or more POC where the characters interact a few times, have meaningful relationships with each other, or have genuine or crack potential: 

Sam/Bucky: 3,023

Steve/Sam: 2,908

Rhodey/Tony: 1,434

Erik/T'Challa: 578 

Ned/Peter: 429

Coulson/Fury: 264

M'Baku/T'Challa: 155 

Rhodey/Sam: 149

Strange/Wong: 82 

Heimdall/Thor: 50

Scott/Jimmy Woo: 36

Scott/Luis: 24

Fury/Pierce: 16 (fandom is also ageist)

The disparity between the two lists is particularly egregious when you consider:

Clint and Coulson had 17 seconds of dialogue and 7 lines with each other and never interacted again after Thor. This is a generous estimate as I included pauses

Loki and Tony haven't interacted since The Avengers 

The only time Bucky and Tony as a duo and Steve, Bucky, Tony as a trio interact is in the bunker in Siberia

Spideypool includes a character who isn't even in the MCU

Ironstrange didn't exist or really exist in MCU fanworks before 2018, and Tony and Strange only communicate once in their second movie together, with Strange holding up his finger silently 

Bucky and Clint never interact with each other

I’ll be focusing on the Captain America, Avengers, and Iron Man subfandoms first as those are the three biggest in the MCU. Before I start, here's my thread from last year about some of the ships I’ll be mentioning. 

Okay. How does Bucky/Tony have 6,070 more fanworks than Rhodey/Tony and 4,481 more than Sam/Bucky and Bucky/Clint have 818 more than Sam/Bucky? How do Loki/Tony and Ironstrange have 8,446 and 3,410 more fanworks than Rhodey/Tony, respectively, and Stuckony almost as many as Steve/Sam?

The gap is especially glaring when you compare Steve/Bucky and Steve/Tony to Steve/Sam, Sam/Bucky, and Rhodey/Tony; however, though it's important to point out that wide gulf, I lose my mind more over the fact that ships with white characters who have never interacted or only exchanged a few lines (Clint/Coulson never even STAND IN THE SAME ROOM, and they're one of the top ships!) have more fanworks than ships with POC who do or have potential. 

I will point out that at least with the MCU Spider-Man and Black Panther fandoms, you do see some diversity with their big ships (I’m including some M/F ships here to make a point in the next paragraph). MJ/Peter has 3,518 fanworks, and in addition to the two T’Challa ships above, Nakia/T’Challa has 286, MJ/Shuri 220, Bucky/Shuri 210, and Peter/Shuri 140 (Black Panther is a much smaller fandom, but some ship numbers are higher if you put BP and non-BP characters together, e.g., Tony/T’Challa (405) and Bucky/T’Challa (345). 

It's important to note, however, that these two films are significantly more racially diverse than all other MCU films; in fact, they're very much the outliers. These ships and Ned/Peter are also heavy indicators of racism in this fandom. These numbers are very low compared to the big ships, and there are fewer works for these fandoms especially in BP’s case. Additionally, ships with white non-BP characters rank second, third, sixth, and eighth in the fandom (Bucky isn’t a BP character as he is only in the post-credits scene). Nakia/T’Challa is canon but outranked by Tony/T’Challa and Bucky/T’Challa, and all other ships with only BP characters, not listed here as the numbers are much lower other than M’Baku/T’Challa (second-lowest among the listed), are outranked by all the ships with white non-BP characters. 

To sum up everything I said above:

white M/M ships are extremely overrepresented by a huge margin, even if they have little to no canonical basis

interracial ships are poorly represented even if the characters have meaningful relationships or potential (and even if they clearly have all the traits that would ensure that they would be a big ship had the character of color been white)

the ships with the least representation by a longggggg mile are ones that involve only POC. Their fanwork count is, aside from Erik/T’Challa (578), in the low 100s and 200s. Countless ships are below the 100 mark. 

If you want to make this even more infuriating, here's a random selection of white (or in one case, AI) crack ships and ships that are more niche that I’ve seen to compare to the ships of color above: 

Clint/Tony: 1,423

Loki/Steve: 1,251 

Clint/Steve: 986 

Bucky/Rumlow: 984 

Clint/Pietro: 837 

Hydrahusbands: 770 

Grandmaster/Loki: 633 

Steve/Rumlow: 547 

Steve/Howard: 457 

JARVIS/Tony: 414

And just for the hell of it because Darcy, a minor character who appears in only two movies and last appeared in 2013, shows up all the time in MCU fanworks (17,004 (these include ones where she’s not paired with anyone)) and is probably one of the top three or four little black dresses/fandom bicycles: 

Darcy/Steve: 3,013

Darcy/Bucky: 2,640

Darcy/Loki: 1,558

Darcy/Clint: 1,107

Darcy/Steve/Bucky: 676

Darcy/Tony: 326

The Darcy situation is a post for another day (she has more fanworks than all other female characters except ~3 women), but in the context of this post, it’s absurd that nearly all of the non-canonical ships above which feature characters whom Darcy has never interacted with (I don’t even remember if Darcy interacted with Loki) have more fanworks than the listed ships of color.

That said, if you like the aforementioned white M/M ships, even if they have little to no canonical basis, that's okay. Anything goes in fandom. It IS a problem, though, if you have more than one ship, but ALL of them are white M/M ships or, if you like F/F and M/F, those are also all white. If you only create and consume works for a single ship, which a good number of people do (many people only get into a fandom because of an OTP!), it's fine if it's a white M/M ship. Honestly, it’s not that surprising either considering most of the screen time and meaty development is given to white characters because of racism (that's a post for another day). However, it IS a problem if most or all of your other ships across your current and previous fandoms are white—and if the only media you consume is predominantly or all white.

This post is longer than planned, but tl;dr, fandom has a racism problem which is nothing new, and we should all examine the following and see and remedy any implicit biases that we have:

our feelings about different characters and relationships, both platonic and romantic

our decision whether or not to seek or make content with characters of color. This includes content with your white ships that have POC in the work because sometimes every other white character in the MCU show up except them or all of them play bigger roles than the POC despite their relationship with the protagonist(s)

the way we interpret and write/draw those characters. For example, is Sam a yes-man? An unofficial or official therapist for white friends? The bro who cracks jokes and/or gives sage advice but seems to not have any flaws, struggles, or life of his own outside of his white friends? The BFF who thinks his white best friend is being dumb about another white guy and wants them to get their act together already?)