#same with an hypothetical scenario in which the female/male character ratio is more equal

[the-goldsmith]

You're absolutely right that making content out of spite is very much not a healthy mindset to have, and I appreciate that your original post was about encouraging creatives to do the things they want to do because they like them and not due to any outside pressure. I do think that's something that's always worth bringing up considering today's state of social media/fandom and how frustrating it can be.

Re: your other frustrations:

This now has much less to do with the original tweet and more my own personal projections/speculation.

I believe that while farcille is currently the top ship it will very likely soon be overtaken by an m/m ship, and its progression won't see the uptick that the m/m ships have seen.

The reason I feel this way is that dungeon meshi, before the anime came out, was a decently popular work among people who like yuri. This is obviously because it's easy to read farcille as romantic, and the story revolves in some way around them, so while Falin isn't actually around very often it makes for very good romantic subtext.

Now, unfortunately the number of people who like yuri is proportionally very small, they are used to not getting a lot of content, and are a fairly tightly-knit community. Meaning that once a New Lesbian Thing is discovered, most of the people who are likely to take an interest in it will do so right away. Additionally, himejoshi (getting tired of saying "people who like yuri" lol) are used to consuming manga over anime, since very few yuri anime adaptations get made.

So a good majority of people interested in farcille and willing to make content for it have likely already encountered it before the anime significantly heightened the manga's popularity, which is how we get farcille currently having the most fics out of any other ship on ao3.

Meanwhile, people who enjoy yaoi aren't exactly starved for content, so they can just organically come across new stories once they become popular.

This is all to say that I think farcille has already achieved somewhat close to peak popularity (proportionally to the size of the fandom), and while it will definitely get a bit of a boost once we get to the resurrection scene I don't think even that will be enough to garner much more attention.

On the other hand, labru/other m/m ships have only now started to get content because the larger animanga fandom has set its gaze on dunmeshi for the first time, and the larger animanga fandom tends to like yaoi.

So what I think will happen is that as the dunmeshi anime reaches the more interesting parts of the story and its popularity rises, the rate at which m/m content gets made will soon easily overtake the rate at which farcille content gets made, so the fact that it's still in the lead right now isn't necessarily reassuring. If anything, I'm so sure that this is what will happen that it only makes me dread the day it gets "dethroned" (dramatic choice of words but rest assured I'm not actually that invested in this situation).

As for the faults of the work itself, I agree that part of this phenomenon is to blame on the fact there's just not as many female characters, though one counterpoint I have is that the male characters who get the most spotlight in the story itself (Laios, Chilchuck, Senshi), don't exactly have "yaoiful" dynamics between them, and that's reflected on ao3. The two most popular yaoi ships are between Laios and a guy he has a very limited number of interactions with (significant interactions, but still), and two secondary characters who, again, have a few significant interactions but still not that many. Also, while every element in the story matters as it otherwise wouldn't have been included, these relationships are secondary aspects of the story. They inform the characters, but they're not necessarily integral.

Compare that to how farcille is very much a foundational aspect of the narrative, despite the fact that they also end up not getting to interact that often.

The way I see it there's comparatively a lot more meat on the farcille bone that will go largely unaddressed because fandom, as a rule, would rather focus on secondary dynamics so long as they involve men.

I don't want to make this a case of "my ship is better than yours" though, I really don't care about that, and I think I should add that a lot of my opinions on the matter are informed by similar dynamics in other fandoms and not dunmeshi's necessarily (the anime just came out so it's still a baby fandom in many ways), so this might actually play out differently from what I expect for all I know. Though I don't think it will, because so far it reads as another textbook case.

@the-goldsmith It is, though I didn't know it was a tweet until later, just that I saw people making posts about it in the tag.

And yeah, I don't really blame people for needing to vent about stuff, and I definitely think it's worth talking about fandom trends and how they can reflect misogyny, racism, etc. I do also think the form that this venting takes can slip into bullying sometimes, or just be more stressful than helpful for people involved.

The main reason I made that post was for writers and other fandom creative types. If writing from spite is a good motivator for someone then more power too them, but I'm intimately familiar with the feeling of wanting to "prove" something or change the tide of fandom by writing good enough or often enough about the thing I love. It is always an exhausting and demoralizing thought-spiral to get caught in for me, and truly I hope that the people frustrated by the ao3 stuff don't experience the same thing.

However, to soapbox a little... I also think the framing of the situation (in the original post/tweet/whatever) also is kind of disingenuous. Which isn't really the main point I was originally making but also I do find it frustrating. So I'm gonna talk a little about that too

THESE are the top relationship tags for dunmeshi on ao3:

Mar/Fal is still by far and away the most popular relationship. The reason there is more total M/M is because there are is a larger variety of M/M ships.

There are three major M/M pairings here with over 10 fics, as well as three categories of /Reader fics.

There is basically ONLY Mar/Fal for F/F content. Mar/Izu is the next closest, and most of those fics are pretty old, too. I don't think there will be a ton of focus on that category in the future, due to Izu's age and implied aroace orientation. Beyond that there are 4 Ki/Nam fics, as well as 2 Hien/Benchidori ones not in the screenshot.

And this also can be influenced by people not wanting to focus on female characters. Why isn't there more variety in pairs here? Well... to be honest, I think if we are going to talk about lack of content focused on women, we should also look at the source material.

Because like, don't get me wrong. I love dunmeshi. I think it does well by its female characters. But not THAT well. Marcille and Izutsumi are the only real main female characters. Even if we include Falin in this list, that's only three. Hell, let's even throw in Namari! Compared to Laios, Chilchuck, Senshi, Thistle, Kabru, Mithrun, and Shuro, that's barely over half as many major women as there are men in the story.

It's not an even playing field here, and I frankly think that sucks. I think it is a flaw of the story. And I don't think it gets talked about enough. If people are frustrated about misogyny, I wish they would dig into this too, and not just blame fans. And god, I know that gets touted a lot, the whole 'well it's not my fault that media focuses on men!' thing. I'm not saying that there's no biases in the fandom. But it is frustrating to see people talking about dunmeshi as if it's a super yuri/woman focused story when it just isn't. The lack of variety of female characters is the primary reason that total F/F content is less than M/M, and that problem DIRECTLY traces back to the canon.