![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
obstinatecondolementI used to get very preoccupied with the idea that I was personally responsible for increasing the representation of f/f and f/m fanworks through my output, largely because of moral scrupulosity OCD brain. I don't feel the same way anymore.
I think it's worth thinking about how and why we ship what we ship and if we might have unconscious biases that make us overlook characters who are not men or ships other than m/m ships. Just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm certainly not saying that any individual has to ship things they are not enthused by or that they are obligated to Blorbify characters who do not speak to them. I'm also not saying that individual fans have to meet a quota of different ship categories or that they are personally responsible for increasing the representation of a diverse category of ships on AO3. Additionally, I'm not saying that the answer to the question, "Why do I mostly ship m/m?" is always, "Because I overlook and undervalue characters who are not men." Sometimes it's, "because I am primarily or exclusively attracted to men and ships featuring characters I am not myself attracted to do not interest me" or, "because I mostly read/write explicit fic and explicit fic about women makes me dysphoric" or, "because the kinds of characters I tend to be drawn to are seldom not male" or any number of other perfectly valid reasons. Again, this is a big picture issue, not a problem with individual fans' preferences. Note: the focus of this post is gender, but there are obviously many other forms of diversity that can be represented in fanworks. I took this as my primary focus mainly because the default ship categories make it easier to look at numbers for this particular kind of diverse representation.
[EDIT Jan 22 2023: I think that I could have expressed myself better in the above here. For one, I think that my use of the word "we" implies that I think everyone reading this post is primarily an m/m shipper or someone whose favourite characters are all men, which is obviously not the case. I meant "we" in the sense of "transformative fandom on AO3 collectively" which does disproprortionately favour m/m and male characters. I think I also neglected to say that people should create for and engage with ships and characters that they like! I said that no one is obligated to create for or engage with things they don't like, but that still leaves room for the interpretation that it would be a good thing for them to prioritise increasing representation at the expense of having fun anyway even if they chose not to do it. That's not at all what I want! I think that we could all be having even more fun, basically, and that people who primarily or exclusively like m/m ships and male characters are potentially missing out on fun that they could be having. Also, that people who like ships involving characters who are not men or fans of non-male characters are potentially missing out on friends, community and fanworks that they could have if transformative fandom as a whole was less weighted towards m/m ships and male characters.]
All that preamble out of the way, out of curiousity, I have looked at how my driving has been with regards to this on AO3.
So, at a casual glance, it would look like the overall trend here is that I typically favour m/m but not the degree that the current overall numbers suggest. Notably though, when Cobra Kai, Karate Kid and Our Flag Means Death are excluded, I have no works in the "other" category. Of the four works in that category I have overall, two feature a canon non-binary character, Jim Jimenez from OFMD, and two were genderqueer interpretations of Daniel LaRusso from Karate Kid/Cobra Kai.
However, this still isn't the full picture! Many of the works I have uploaded to AO3 were created for![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
trek-rarepair-swap or other events and I may not necessarily have shipped the ships in the fanworks I created for those initially, because I generally select "any" for relationships when I sign up to an exchange, unless I have very strong feelings against the ship. I typically did ship these things by the time I had finished my assigment, but is unlikely that I would have created fanworks for those ships without having an assignment to complete. Note: this does not mean that I do not like these works! Some of them are my favourite things I've ever created and many have introduced me to new ships that I very much ship now.
So, for the sake of getting a better look at what my output would be when you exclude things that I wouldn't have created if not for an exchange, I went through my works on AO3 and tagged things with Gift Work, Trek Rarepair Swap and Gift Exchange as appropriate (I removed that Gift Exchange tag after I ran these numbers, because it appears to be about in-character gift giving within a work). I did not add these tags to works that I feel I would have created even if they were not a response to an exchange request, because I already shipped them.
Now, the data here is not so complex as to need a spreadsheet to draw conclusions from it, but a spreadsheet is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, so I went ahead and made one anyway and used it to create these graphs:
So when I look at this, it looks like, left to my own devices, I still favour m/m overall, although, again, when you exclude my three biggest recent ships this difference is not as pronounced.
Now. It was at this point that I decided to make sure I hadn't made any typos transcribing any of my percentages (as I had done once when gathering the data intially, typing a 3 instead of a 2, but I caught myself as I did it) and summed the first row of my overall percentages, which came to 128.1%. I immediately felt very foolish, remembering that several works were tagged in more than one category, so obviously it was going to come to something over 100%. But that got me to thinking: what if I excluded m/m from the dataset?
All the percentages I have given as part of this have been rounded to one decimal point (unless I messed up in the first two datasets with my rounding—I had not yet broken out Excel at that stage of the proceedings). I have not checked my work for transcription errors and I probably won't in the near future because I'm trying not to go too far down the rabbit hole on this.
Could this data be more precise or useful? Absolutely! I haven't controlled for the medium of the fanwork or things like length, where relevant. Also, while part of the bigger output for my top three most represented ships has been that I've been more productive with creating fanworks generally since October 2020, I do think it's not to be discounted that I have specifically gone the most bananas about three m/m ships rather than any other category of ship between 2012–2023, at least as far as that is reflected in the fannish output that I archived on AO3. Of course, three is not a huge sample size, so who knows if it is or is not truly significant.
But, again, I'm trying not to get too obsessive about this... which may already be too late, but better late than never.
A final note: I in no way would expect anyone to examine their fannish output in this level of detail I have here, or at all, and I don't think that I'm being morally virtuous by doing so myself. I'm just really fascinated by data and this kind of thing is interesting and fun for me. Also, to reiterate, shipping is not activism and your fannish output is not necessarily a reflection of your politics or values. While I would personally like to diversify my output in the future, and I think that as a community transformative fandom would be better served by a more diverse offering of fanworks, I don't think that anyone is bad or wrong for liking what they like.
That said...
However, I do think, "I just coincidentally only ship m/m ships ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" can be a cop out and attempts to explain m/m's overrepresentation in the works posted to AO3 as, "male characters are typically the only ones given the depth and dimension which lends itself to shipping" is, in my opinion, disingenuous when you consider how ready, willing and able fandom is to invent characterisation out of whole cloth for minor male characters and shippable dynamics between male characters, who may never share screentime together or reference each other in dialogue, that just do not exist in the source material. I would like to clarify: I do not think this kind of transformation of the source material is sinister! I just think that since we can do that and we often do do that, we can, as a community, also do it for characters who are not male and ships that are not m/m more often.I think it's worth thinking about how and why we ship what we ship and if we might have unconscious biases that make us overlook characters who are not men or ships other than m/m ships. Just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm certainly not saying that any individual has to ship things they are not enthused by or that they are obligated to Blorbify characters who do not speak to them. I'm also not saying that individual fans have to meet a quota of different ship categories or that they are personally responsible for increasing the representation of a diverse category of ships on AO3. Additionally, I'm not saying that the answer to the question, "Why do I mostly ship m/m?" is always, "Because I overlook and undervalue characters who are not men." Sometimes it's, "because I am primarily or exclusively attracted to men and ships featuring characters I am not myself attracted to do not interest me" or, "because I mostly read/write explicit fic and explicit fic about women makes me dysphoric" or, "because the kinds of characters I tend to be drawn to are seldom not male" or any number of other perfectly valid reasons. Again, this is a big picture issue, not a problem with individual fans' preferences. Note: the focus of this post is gender, but there are obviously many other forms of diversity that can be represented in fanworks. I took this as my primary focus mainly because the default ship categories make it easier to look at numbers for this particular kind of diverse representation.
[EDIT Jan 22 2023: I think that I could have expressed myself better in the above here. For one, I think that my use of the word "we" implies that I think everyone reading this post is primarily an m/m shipper or someone whose favourite characters are all men, which is obviously not the case. I meant "we" in the sense of "transformative fandom on AO3 collectively" which does disproprortionately favour m/m and male characters. I think I also neglected to say that people should create for and engage with ships and characters that they like! I said that no one is obligated to create for or engage with things they don't like, but that still leaves room for the interpretation that it would be a good thing for them to prioritise increasing representation at the expense of having fun anyway even if they chose not to do it. That's not at all what I want! I think that we could all be having even more fun, basically, and that people who primarily or exclusively like m/m ships and male characters are potentially missing out on fun that they could be having. Also, that people who like ships involving characters who are not men or fans of non-male characters are potentially missing out on friends, community and fanworks that they could have if transformative fandom as a whole was less weighted towards m/m ships and male characters.]
Important disclaimer about my pre-AO3 work
Most of the works on my AO3 page were created after I joined AO3 in late August/early September 2012 and the fanworks I created prior to that are largely not yet uploaded. Most of what I created between 2008, when I started posting fanworks online, up to when I joined AO3 was m/m. There was some f/f for a femslash ship I was into, maybe some(/one?) f/m work(s), at least one f/m/m work and possibly more that are slipping my mind and one (gen) fic involving a character who was not male or female, but it was not handled sensitively and I would not happily claim it now. I created a certain amount of other gen works too, but they were very much a small minority of my overall output during that time.On my AO3 account currently, when you look at all the works, these are the numbers:
- m/m: 118
- f/m: 34
- gen: 22
- f/f: 18
- multi: 10
- other: 4
- m/m: ~72.5%
- f/m: ~20.7%
- gen: ~13.4%
- f/f: ~11%
- multi: ~6.1%
- other: ~2.4%
When I filter out Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, John Kreese/Terry Silver and Wee John Feeney/Frenchie, who are pretty overrepresented, I get:
- m/m: 39
- f/m: 25
- gen: 21
- f/f: 18
- multi: 6
- other: 3
- m/m: ~44.3%
- f/m: ~28.4%
- gen: 23.9%
- f/f: ~20.5%
- multi: ~7.1%
- other: ~3.4%
When I filter out the fandoms Cobra Kai, Karate Kid and Our Flag Means Death entirely I get:
- m/m: 34
- f/m: 24
- gen: 17
- f/f: 17
- multi: 6
- other: 0
- m/m: ~43.6%
- f/m: ~30.8%
- gen: ~21.8%
- f/f: ~21.8%
- multi: ~8%
- other: 0%
So, at a casual glance, it would look like the overall trend here is that I typically favour m/m but not the degree that the current overall numbers suggest. Notably though, when Cobra Kai, Karate Kid and Our Flag Means Death are excluded, I have no works in the "other" category. Of the four works in that category I have overall, two feature a canon non-binary character, Jim Jimenez from OFMD, and two were genderqueer interpretations of Daniel LaRusso from Karate Kid/Cobra Kai.
However, this still isn't the full picture! Many of the works I have uploaded to AO3 were created for
So, for the sake of getting a better look at what my output would be when you exclude things that I wouldn't have created if not for an exchange, I went through my works on AO3 and tagged things with Gift Work, Trek Rarepair Swap and Gift Exchange as appropriate (I removed that Gift Exchange tag after I ran these numbers, because it appears to be about in-character gift giving within a work). I did not add these tags to works that I feel I would have created even if they were not a response to an exchange request, because I already shipped them.
With those exclusions, my numbers are:
- m/m: 107
- f/m: 28
- gen: 15
- f/f: 7
- multi: 8
- other: 4
- m/m: ~80%
- f/m: ~20.9%
- gen: ~11.2%
- f/f: ~5.2%
- multi: ~6%
- other: ~3%
With those exclusions, plus excluding my top three ships, my numbers are:
- m/m: 28
- f/m: 19
- gen: 14
- f/f: 7
- multi: 4
- other: 3
- m/m: ~52%
- f/m: ~35.2%
- gen: ~26%
- f/f: ~13%
- multi: ~7.4%
- other: 5.6%
With those exclusion, plus excluding Cobra Kai, Karate Kid and Our Flag Means Death completely, my numbers are:
- m/m: 25
- f/m: 18
- gen: 11
- f/f: 18
- multi: 4
- other: 0
- m/m: ~54.3%
- f/m: ~39.1%
- gen: ~23.9%
- f/f: ~13%
- multi: ~8.7%
- other: 0%
Now, the data here is not so complex as to need a spreadsheet to draw conclusions from it, but a spreadsheet is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, so I went ahead and made one anyway and used it to create these graphs:
graphs of above data
And here it all is in a table
| Numbers of works | m/m | f/m | gen | f/f | multi | other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| overall | 118 | 34 | 22 | 18 | 10 | 4 |
| w/o top 3 ships | 39 | 25 | 22 | 18 | 10 | 4 |
| w/o top 3 fandoms | 34 | 24 | 17 | 17 | 6 | 0 |
| w/o exchange works | 107 | 28 | 15 | 7 | 8 | 4 |
| w/o exchage works or top 3 ships | 28 | 19 | 14 | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| w/o exchange works or top 3 fandoms | 25 | 18 | 11 | 18 | 4 | 0 |
| As a percentage | m/m | f/m | gen | f/f | multi | other |
| overall | 72.5% | 20.7% | 13.4% | 13.0% | 6.1% | 2.4% |
| w/o top 3 ships | 44.3% | 28.4% | 23.9% | 20.50% | 7.1% | 3.4% |
| w/o top 3 fandoms | 43.6% | 30.8% | 21.8% | 21.8% | 8.0% | 0.0% |
| w/o exchange works | 80.0% | 20.9% | 11.2% | 5.2% | 6.0% | 3.0% |
| w/o exchage works or top 3 ships | 52.0% | 35.2% | 26.0% | 13.0% | 7.4% | 5.6% |
| w/o exchange works or top 3 fandoms | 54.3% | 39.1% | 23.9% | 13.0% | 8.7% | 0.0% |
So when I look at this, it looks like, left to my own devices, I still favour m/m overall, although, again, when you exclude my three biggest recent ships this difference is not as pronounced.
Now. It was at this point that I decided to make sure I hadn't made any typos transcribing any of my percentages (as I had done once when gathering the data intially, typing a 3 instead of a 2, but I caught myself as I did it) and summed the first row of my overall percentages, which came to 128.1%. I immediately felt very foolish, remembering that several works were tagged in more than one category, so obviously it was going to come to something over 100%. But that got me to thinking: what if I excluded m/m from the dataset?
So we got these additional two graphs
And if you prefer data presented less visually, here are the numbers in a table
| Number of works | f/m | gen | f/f | multi | other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| overall | 18 | 17 | 18 | 2 | 3 |
| w/o Daniel/Johnny | 18 | 17 | 18 | 2 | 2 |
| w/o top 3 fandoms | 17 | 15 | 17 | 2 | 0 |
| w/o exchange works | 12 | 11 | 7 | 3 | 1 |
| w/o exchage works or Daniel/Johnny | 12 | 11 | 7 | 1 | 2 |
| w/o exchange works or top 3 fandoms | 11 | 9 | 6 | 1 | 0 |
| As a percentage | f/m | gen | f/f | multi | other |
| overall | 36.7% | 34.7% | 36.7% | 4.1% | 6.1% |
| w/o Daniel/Johnny | 37.5% | 35.4% | 37.5% | 4.2% | 4.2% |
| w/o top 3 fandoms | 39.5% | 34.9% | 39.5% | 4.7% | 0.0% |
| w/o exchange works | 44.4% | 40.7% | 25.9% | 11.1% | 3.7% |
| w/o exchage works or Daniel/Johnny | 46.2% | 42.3% | 26.9% | 3.8% | 7.7% |
| w/o exchange works or top 3 fandoms | 52.4% | 42.9% | 28.6% | 4.8% | 0.0% |
All the percentages I have given as part of this have been rounded to one decimal point (unless I messed up in the first two datasets with my rounding—I had not yet broken out Excel at that stage of the proceedings). I have not checked my work for transcription errors and I probably won't in the near future because I'm trying not to go too far down the rabbit hole on this.
Could this data be more precise or useful? Absolutely! I haven't controlled for the medium of the fanwork or things like length, where relevant. Also, while part of the bigger output for my top three most represented ships has been that I've been more productive with creating fanworks generally since October 2020, I do think it's not to be discounted that I have specifically gone the most bananas about three m/m ships rather than any other category of ship between 2012–2023, at least as far as that is reflected in the fannish output that I archived on AO3. Of course, three is not a huge sample size, so who knows if it is or is not truly significant.
But, again, I'm trying not to get too obsessive about this... which may already be too late, but better late than never.
A final note: I in no way would expect anyone to examine their fannish output in this level of detail I have here, or at all, and I don't think that I'm being morally virtuous by doing so myself. I'm just really fascinated by data and this kind of thing is interesting and fun for me. Also, to reiterate, shipping is not activism and your fannish output is not necessarily a reflection of your politics or values. While I would personally like to diversify my output in the future, and I think that as a community transformative fandom would be better served by a more diverse offering of fanworks, I don't think that anyone is bad or wrong for liking what they like.