(I know some people hate Zak S, but the dude has a fine arts degree and knows his shit on this topic.)
Yes! This thread made me think of this essay when I first read it, but I couldn’t think of any identifiers from it to google so I didn’t bother running it down to include. Thanks to the-real-seebs for unknowingly providing a link to an essay I had lost track of, but was secretly thinking about for the last week :p
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but – it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration – why do assholes always come out on top? – and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise – female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship – and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios – this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming – again, for the sake of simplicity – that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom – and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women – for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
YES YES YES HOLY SHIT YES FUCKING THANK YOU!
Also food for thought: the obvious correction to a lack of non-male representation in a story is to add more non-males. Female Original Characters are often decried as self-insertion or Mary Sues, particular if romance or sex is a primary focus.
I really appreciate when tumblr commentary is of the quality I might see at an academic conference. No joke.
This doesn’t even account for the disparity in the amount of screen time/dialogue male characters to get in comparison to female characters, and how much time other characters spend talking about male characters even when they aren’t onscreen. This all leads to male characters ending up more fully developed, and more nuanced than female characters. The more an audience feels like they know a character, the more likely an audience is to care about a character. More network television writers are men. Male writers tend to understand men better than women, statistically speaking. Female characters are more likely to be written by men who don’t understand women vary well.
But it’s easier to blame the collateral damage than solve the root problem.
Yay, mathy arguments. 🙂
This is certainly one large factor in the amount of M/M slash out there, and the first reason that occurred to me when I first got into fandom (I don’t think it’s the sole reason, but I think it’s a bigger one than some people in the Why So Much Slash debate give our credit for). And nice point about adding female OCs.
In some of my shipping-related stats, I found that shows with more major female characters lead to more femslash (also more het). (e.g. femslash in female-heavy media; femslash deep dive) I’ve never actually tried to do an analysis to pin down how much of fandom’s M/M preference is explained by the predominance of male characters in the source media, but I’m periodically tempted to try to do so.
All great points. Another thing I notice is that many shows are built around the idea that the team or the partner is the most important thing in the universe. Watch any buddy cop show, and half of the episodes have a character on a date that is inevitably interrupted because The Job comes first… except “The Job” actually means “My Partner”.
When it’s a male-female buddy show, all of the failed relationships are usually, canonically, because the leads belong together. (Look at early Bones: she dates that guy who is his old friend and clearly a stand-in for him. They break up because *coughcoughhandwave*. That stuff happens constantly.) Male-male buddy shows write the central relationship the exact same way except that they expect us to read it as platonic.
Long before it becomes canon, the potential ship of Mulder/Scully or Booth/Bones or whatever lead male/female couple consumes the fandom. It’s not about the genders involved. Rizzoli/Isles was like this too.
If canon tells us that no other relationship has ever measured up to this one, why should we keep them apart? Don’t like slash of your shows, prissy writers? Then stop writing all of your leads locked in epic One True Love romance novel relationships with their same-sex coworkers. Give them warm, funny, interesting love interests, not cardboard cutouts…
And then we will ship an OT3.
I would like to add a probably problematic addendum to this. In that in certain pieces of media that are pretty much all centered around families–where everyone interesting is related to each other in some way–that makes the probability that incest ships will get somewhat popular fairly high. Simply because there aren’t any real OPTIONS for ships that aren’t in some way incestuous or otherwise weird and taboo, like huge age gaps or really noticeably unbalanced power dynamics.
I’m not CONDONING shipping those things. I am simply saying that when you decry the horrific depravity of fandom for daring to ship two people who are related, maybe consider the statistics involved, and consider HOW those ships are commonly shipped over the fact that they are at all. Like if you find that fans are going out of their way to write characters who are siblings as not related to each other in AU for fic or whatever then like?? Yeah. That’s probably a factor.
I’ve been in different fandoms for ten years so far, and in that time, I also happen to have gotten a Sociology degree. And these are the “rules” I’ve picked up on.
1) Shipping will happen. Accept it and plan for it.
2)The most popular ship will be amongst whoever character’s inner life, relationships, and screen time are delved into the most–as long as…
Addendum to 2: they’re marginally attractive. If that important main character happens to be, say, a talking dog, then most of the fandom will resist and ship other things because of the “marginally attractive” rule. Others will come up with elaborate body switch/humanization/whatever plots to handwave it away and imagine the dog looking like their favorite actor. There will be a small group who straight up ships the dog as is anyway, but waaaaaay smaller than if it was a normal attractive male human. But still–you’ve put a talking dog in center stage, so prepare for fanfic to be written about it in some way. It will just be significantly less if it breaks the “marginally attractive” rule.
3)There will always be outliers in fandom. Just because a fanfic exists of Roy Orbison in clingfilm, doesn’t mean much. That just tells us about the proclivities of that particular dude who write it. When we notice overall TRENDS and popular ships of broad swaths of people, then we can start seeing actual patterns. So there WILL be people who break these rules in disturbing ways, but those people are exceptions to the rule that don’t discount the overall trend.
Now, WHAT fandom and people as a whole considers acceptable for the “generally attractive” rule, that’s when we can notice some interesting things. The majority of fandoms where I’ve seen lots and lots and LOTS of ships around what are technically underage teenagers are from media that are a)Films with characters played by much older actors, and b)written narratives where we can imagine the characters as said much older actors. Our idea of what certain ages “look like” is warped pretty heavily from Hollywood casting much older people in the roles. Fanart of teenage characters from written works usually bear this out–they will usually be drawn older than an actual person that age tends to look.
Now, let’s apply this rule to one of the mysteries of Tumblr: The goddamn Onceler. Now WHY of all goddamn things the completely mediocre Lorax movie got so much fanart and fanfiction attention, I don’t know. I’m still picking apart what creates MORE fanfic of one media property over another(its not just popularity–lots of book series can be popular but have bupkis for fic), but I have a feeling, even if I did, the goddamn Lorax would probably still end up as a paradox. But when you look at the characters with ACTUAL SCREEN TIME in the movie, it becomes easy to apply this rule. The only people with significant lines and screen time are characters who are VERY clearly children, a strange little creature voiced by Danny Devito, and the Onceler. The only marginally attractive one is the Onceler, so the only possible option fandom could come up with is to pair him with HIMSELF from the FUTURE.
When you frame it in terms of how fandom makes decisions on who gets shipped, it makes perfect sense. Weird Onceler time shipping was bound to happen just from how the movie is written. If your only alternatives are straight-up pedophilia and imagining this strange orange creature with DeVito voice having sex, then yes, I’d choose shipping the Onceler with a future version of himself too.
Let apply it to another fandom: Supernatural. Now, any fan of that show can tell you that for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time, everyone but the two main characters–who are brothers–dies around them. ESPECIALLY if you’re presented as a love interest in any way. The two attractive brothers have absolutely no one to depend on but each other, only about once a season visiting a long-time associate holed up in a bunker, who provides pretty much only resources and infodumps(spoiler alert! They also inevitably die, it just takes longer). Think of the rules: the Supernatural writers basically wrote their fandom into either writing incest, or sitting on their hands and shipping nothing at all. I will certainly not deny that incest is a kink some people have, but statistically there are no doubt lots of shippers in Supernatural who never thought of doing such a thing–and for which the kink has no particular thrill–who have nevertheless been roped into doing so just because the need to write SOMETHING to comfort those beleaguered characters.
After Supernatural had an episode or two lampooning fan culture and generally letting the audience know they were aware of their fandom, they finally wised up that they’d put their fans in this weird position and gave the brothers the consistent angel associate, Castiel. But this was seasons and seasons late in the game, so for some, that damage has already been done, so to speak.
You’ve made a show where most of the characters are robots, like Transformers? Well, prepare for written robot sex. You’ve written a show about humanized animals and their adventures? Congratulations, you’ve made furries. You can apply this to basically anything.
I think this also ties in with fandom’s accepted problem with racial minority characters as well. If the show just shoves a character in there for diversity’s sake and the writers seem unwilling/afraid to actually use a character, then the fandom won’t either. The characters fandom will write the most about will statistically be white males, because those are statistically the most common heroes and characters with the most development and screen time. Now, does the usual unconscious bias of fans also hurt matters? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. But fans also aren’t writing in a vacuum. They’re building off the original work, and some of the flaws of the original are going to come through.
It’s amazing to see how this post has grown and the amazing additions to it.
Regarding race: yes, when (white) writers are lazy and biased and write POC poorly, those characters are gonna get passed over/ignored in favor of better-developed white characters.
But it also happens even when the character of color is well-written. Fuck, it even happens when the POC is the protagonist. For example, Finn from The Force Awakens. He’s young, attractive, has an angsty backstory, plenty of heroics, has interesting relationships of various kinds with basically everyone in the movie. Given that there’s also a female protag (one praised by loads of (white) people for being good female representation) who is, at the very least, Finn’s canonical BFF and more likely his love interest, then you’d expect the mega-ship to be FinnRey.
But it’s not. Of the 23,000+ Force Awakens fics on AO3, there are well over six times as many Kylo Ren/Hux stories, and three times as many Rey/Kylo stories, than Finn/Rey. There are about twice as many Kylux stories as FinnPoe stories. And there are 50 times as many Kylux as Finn/Kylo Ren, despite all the ways in which that ship resembles Harry/Draco and other popular enemy ships. And that’s just looking at pure numbers, not even touching on problematic fanon.
So to the addendum we have to add that racism plays a part in which characters are considered attractive. We see the protagonist of color being passed over for less prominent white characters in the Teen Wolf fandom too. Given the fandom numbers for that, I had no idea Scott was the protagonist until I read @lj-writes, @luminousfinn, and @diversehighfantasy all discuss this phenomenon.
This very good point about racism can also be pointed back at the original gender argument. It’s not just that there are more white and male characters than POC and female characters, it’s that many fans go out of their way to center narratives about white male characters over all others.
I’m not disagreeing with the point about the disparities between the number and importance of female/POC characters vs. white male ones; that’s a definite failing on the part of scriptwriters. But how many times have you seen someone write fic about some absurdly minor white male character–I’m talking about someone who was in one ep of a show or one scene of a movie–passing over a more prominent female or POC character? I admit that I’ve done it myself in the past.
I’ve often heard people say, about minor or poorly written white male characters, “This character is so great! They’re like an acceptable OC: totally canon, but really a blank slate because we don’t know anything about them uwu” or, “lol yeah they’re bad in canon but that’s what fanfic is for” But bring up minor or poorly written female characters or characters of color and it’s, “They’re not interesting because we don’t know anything about them/they’re badly written.”
if you can write complex emotions and shit for Kent and fucking FRY GUY then u sure as hell can write about nursey a biracial black possibly Muslim boy in a white dominated sport
I’m not giving a pass to the writers and creators of our favorite shows and movies. I’m saying that crying, “Fan artists aren’t racist/sexist; we can only work with what we’re given!” is a huge honkin’ cop-out when we’re being so blatantly selective in what we count as “what we’re given.” We need to do better.
hmmm…check ao3? sometimes people put fanart there or they link to it
I have now learned that there are nine (9) fanworks on AO3 for the Inda series. Sadly, this makes me feel a bit better – it just is that small of a fandom.
HEY, FOLLOWERS! Y’ALL SHOULD READ INDA AND BECOME INDA FANS AND DRAW STUFF FOR IT!
Why?
-It’s really well-written – not necessarily in a floral prose way, though there is some poetry included, as in a well-constructed way. This is an epic saga, and everything that’s introduced is going to be important later.
-The worldbuilding is quite literally the best I’ve ever seen. Maybe barring Tolkein. Maybe. Sherwood Smith has been working on this world for upwards of fifty years. She’s not as into conlang as Tolkein is, but she’s a lot better at dribbling hints of things into the story so you don’t have to read the gd Silmarillion to find out what was going on in the background. And while she’s not a linguist, she does include freaking linguistic drift in the books, both in the ones set centuries apart and as a minor plot point
-Did you like the more famous Wren series, or maybe Crown Duel, and wished there were more? There is.
-Do you like Victor Hugo and wish there were something like Les Mis but more recently written? There is. You can cry all you want – or if you don’t want to cry, you can try to remember that all of the characters got everything they ever dreamed of.
-Do you want queer representation? It’s all over these freaking books. It is just not necessarily important – after all, some people are plotting for the kingdom and others are plotting for the apocalypse. That being said, at least two sexualities become increasingly important over the course of the series. (If you include Banner of the Damned, then the asexuality becomes really important to the entire narrative and it’s the best representation I’ve ever seen.)
-Do you just want some freaking swordfights? Well have I got a story.
–What about magic both deeply woven into the fabric of society and displayed impressively across the field of the story? Sure! (Although the central country has had sanctions put in place that keep it from getting many trained magicians, so you’ll have to bear with the story for a while – unless you start with Banner of the Damned.)
-Do you really just want to fall in love with characters? WHY DO YOU THINK I LIKE THIS BOOK.
All that being said, Nimbler… Why not?
-The Inda series is something like 3000 pages. It’s not a small commitment. That being said, the slow reader I lent it to finished the first book in 6 months, the second in 4, the third in 3, the fourth in 2. It will pull you in.
AVAILABLE NOW IN LIBRARIES NEAR YOU
Victor Hugo and wish there were something like Les Mis but more recently written? There is.
…okay this is honestly like 90 percent of what I want always constantly from books, but I’m gonna need to know More. How is it like Les Mis? Lots of description? A focus on the non- standard-Hero classes and people living “ ordinary” lives? Surprising amounts of socialist theory for a fantasy series? I Want to Know More!:D (also is there a reading order you’d suggest?)
Hmmm, I’m not really sure how it’s like Les Mis really, but I can try and make a few guesses (possibly vaguely spoilery):
Really long, intricate story with multiple strands, side plots and supporting protagonists, even though the backbone of the story is the life of one person
It could maybe be seen as a sort of in-universe social history? There are lots of little societal details, and the narrator makes the odd throwaway comment about how this or that tradition changed or evolved before and after the events of the story
I guess the omniscient narrator/narrative style is maybe kind of similar?
There is no real Big Bad (there is sort of one in the overall arc of the whole story world, but not the Inda books so much), and plenty of characters (even on opposite sides of a conflict) who are trying to do the right thing most of the time. They may fuck up (a lot), and they may have very different ideas of what constitutes the right thing, but yeah
I mean, there are some characters who are clear-cut villains, but they tend to drive subplots rather than the overall narrative?
There are definitely elements of the “non-standard-Hero classes and people living ordinary lives” thing
But basically these books deserve to have a bigger fandom than they currently have.
honestly, as someone who’s hardcore a Tolkien fan and a Tolkien’s worldbuilding fan, I’m going to take a deep breath and look the world steadily in the eye and say Inda has the better worldbuilding. The Inda series has the best worldbuilding of anything I have ever read in my life. Inda’s worldbuilding is the standard by which all fantasy worldbuilding must be measured.
I haven’t read Les Mis, so I can’t comment on that, but it has a seriously enormous ensemble cast and I care so much about absolutely all of them, the characters are to die for. by which I mean I would die on a battlefield for them.
the character growth arcs are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen
my otp ends up together! but like, in a natural and realistic way! having overcome obstacles (OH GOD SO MANY OBSTACLES)! it is all I wanted, it is all I dared ask and I received it
Inda came out on 2006, the queer representation was happening at a time when I feel like there was relatively little, in fantasy writing; I remember running into my parents’ room and wailing at my mother about how much I loved these characters and she kept trying to get me to admit that they were only gay in my head BUT NO. THEY WERE GAY IN THE TEXT. ON-PAGE, IN THE TEXT.
(yo I was still just a teenager it was a big deal. the various cultural attitudes and the characters’ personal attitudes about sex and love and all that was pretty deeply influential for me. different people were allowed to feel all sorts of different ways and it was revolutionary, man)
individual characters’ actions having far-reaching consequences on the actual plot!
sprawling
fucking
epic
plot!!!
C U L T U R A L W O R L D B U I L D I N G
characters who are PEOPLE! PEOPLE JUST TRYING TO DO THEIR THING!! PEOPLE I LOVE WHO SHOULD GET TO BE HAPPY *hysterical fucking sobbing*
politics! battles! characters! logistics! everything feels so goddamn real and immersive! the narrative tension is genuinely terrifying! the endings are so genuinely if bittersweetly satisfying!
I will never be over anything about this series. anything. you never get over any of it. everything that happens in these books has just straight-up marked me for life.
STUPID HORSE VIKINGS! STUPID! HORSE! VIKINGS!!!
*hysterical fucking sobbing*
reading order should go: Inda, The Fox, King’s Shield, Treason’s Shore. Then Banner of the Damned (I haven’t read that one myself yet, but it takes place at least a century later). (I have read Crown Duel/Court Duel and actually I didn’t like them. I reread them recently and still didn’t like them. so I can’t recommend them, really, but if you want them anyway read them after the Inda quartet & presumably after Banner as well, as they’re chronologically much much later)
…well this took off abruptly. Good! Go forth, my minions, enjoy!
@pilferingapples: It’s been a while since I made this post, but probably what I meant in comparing Inda to Les Mis is that there’s a broad cast, all of whom you wind up deeply invested in, and all of whom make you sad. Did you want to meet the Amis when they were 11? Except, like, actually get to know each of them instead of just a paragraph or two on each? Inda will show you how they meet each other.
(That being said, it doesn’t cover things like ‘sweeping social justice’ or ‘background from people from all walks of life (as long as they’re miserably poor)’ – but it will tell you things like ‘how do people handle having their marriages arranged at birth’ in many different ways, or ‘what sort of person becomes a pirate, and what exactly counts as piracy.’)
Otherwise, I’ll let Tansy’s comments answer you.
That being said, Silentstep, one comment on reading order, and then the fandom tears will be under the cut: There’s a quartet and then Banner, and while you’re absolutely right that Banner comes after Inda &c, I would argue that it doesn’t have to be read after. You will get some spoilers for Banner, but you might not… recognize them, honestly. Or maybe I’m just saying because I read Banner first, and it took me a year or two to get round to Inda.
i think the thing with harry potter – why it’s so loved, why it’s so derided, all by people who grew up reading the books – is just that. a lot of the people on sites like this who are reading it and critiquing it and analysing it are people who were kids reading these books, and grew up reading them. (mostly because we’re a large age demographic on these sorts of social media) i know i was four or five when i read them for the first time; i think they might have been the first novels i read independently like that. and i loved them! of course i did, i was four or five, and already an up-and-coming urban fantasy fan. they were full of magic, and kids who were sort of like me, and i loved them.
of course, i’m not four or five now. and neither are any of the people who grew up with the books when they were released. we’re all in our late teens and twenties, and when we look back, we’re looking back with an adult’s critical eye.
because when you’re nine years old, as i was when half-blood prince came out, or eleven, as i was when deathly hallows was released, the idea of harry going into the cave with dumbledore, or snape’s past with lily, don’t seem all that bad. after all, harry’s sixteen, and that’s way old – and snape’s past totally absolves him of any wrongdoing, right? it’s so romantic
and then we got older, and we read that series we’d loved when we’re kids, but we’re older and more critical. we look at it as adults, and see where it’s lacking. how there’s maybe five people of colour in harry’s year, how the only lgbt+ character was revealed to be so outside the books and it was never mentioned inside them, how messed up it is that harry did all this stuff and lived through so much when he was just a kid. even silly stuff – holes in the worldbuilding, little details that make no sense when you look at them twice.
now i’m twenty one and wondering why dumbledore couldn’t have put more adult wizards on harry’s case to help and protect him; why jk rowling imagines a world that seems to be white and straight and cis in its makeup. because i’m older, i understand these things a little more. and i can critique them, because why not? all media is flawed, in some way or other.
but at the same time, i’m still that four or five year old reading these books for the first time and imagining myself with harry, ron, and hermione. having magical adventures in a land far more interesting than mine.
and i think that’s what i, personally, got from harry potter. it inspired me to write my own stories, the kind of stories i want to see. and on its flaws and failings, i want to build my own worlds, building on the things that annoyed me about the worldbuilding to make my own thing.
and it’s gonna be flawed, too. in different ways. but if i can make one person feel the way i felt, sitting up past my bedtime devouring philosopher’s stone like a starving person at a banquet, it’ll all be worth it.
just moving along like everyone else 