It's that time of year again where I rant about the racism in the Marvel fandom as seen through the number of fanworks on AO3 per ship. I'll be focusing on M/M ships here as they're the biggest and most common on AO3.

Rather than repeat myself, here's my thread from last year. In the next few tweets, I'll be focusing on the ships I see the most often though I'm sure the pattern is consistent with more minor characters and subfandoms with fewer works. https://twitter.com/nostalgicatsea/status/1116748447430905856

I'll be focusing on ships that exist in the MCU (only or in addition to other universes) and on the film side, just to simplify things as the MCU fandom is the biggest and it gets complicated once you try to throw in other universes.

AO3 fanworks of some big MCU/MCU-based ships off the top of my head:

Steve/Bucky: 50,467
Steve/Tony: 36,595
Loki/Thor: 13,067
Clint/Coulson: 10,935
Loki/Tony: 9,874
Bucky/Tony: 7,495
Spideypool: 7,268
Starker: 6,045
Ironstrange: 4,837
Bruce/Tony: 4,733
Bucky/Clint: 3,832

AO3 numbers for MCU ships with 1 or more POC where the characters interact a few times or have meaningful relationships with each other:

Sam/Bucky: 3,016
Steve/Sam: 2,906
Rhodey/Tony: 1,430
Ned/Peter: 427
M'Baku/T'Challa: 155
Rhodey/Sam: 148
Strange/Wong: 82
Heimdall/Thor: 50

The comparison is particularly egregious when you consider:

- Clint/Coulson had 17 seconds of dialogue and 7 lines with each other (this is a generous estimate as I included pauses) and never interacted again after Thor
- Bucky and Clint never talk with each other

- Loki and Tony haven't interacted since The Avengers
- The only time Bucky and Tony interact is in the Siberian bunker
- Spideypool includes a character who isn't even in the MCU

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

Focusing on the Cap/Avengers/IM subfandoms in the next tweet as those are the three biggest in the MCU

How the hell does Bucky/Tony have 6k more fics than Rhodey/Tony and 3.4k more than Sam/Bucky and Bucky/Clint have 800 more than Sam/Bucky? The disparity is especially glaring when you compare Steve/Bucky and Steve/Tony to Steve/Sam, Sam/Bucky, and Rhodey/Tony; however, though I

think it's important to point out that wide gulf, I lose my mind more over the fact that ships that include 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 wth!) have more

fanworks than ships with POC who do or have potential. I will point out that at least with the MCU Spidey fandom, you do see some diversity: MJ/Peter has 3,506 fics, and there are two BP ships that have more fanworks: Erik/T'Challa (577) & Nakia/T'Challa (286). It's important to

note, however, that these two films are significantly more racially diverse than most MCU films; in fact, they're very much the outliers. That said, the numbers are very low compared to the big ships, and I want to bring attention to the BP ships and Ned/Peter because they also

are heavy indicators of racism in this fandom in that the ships with the least representation by a longggggg mile are ones that involve only POC. Their fanwork count is in the low 100s. If you want to make this even more infuriating, here's a random selection of crack ships and

ships that are more niche:

Stuckony (not rare, but I forgot to include it earlier): 2,329
Clint/Tony: 1,422
Loki/Steve: 1,251
Clint/Steve: 985
Bucky/Rumlow: 983
Clint/Pietro: 837
Hydrahusbands: 769
Grandmaster/Loki: 633
Steve/Rumlow: 547
Steve/Howard: 457
JARVIS/Tony: 414

Oh, I completely forgot about some other M/M ships with a POC where there's interaction, a meaningful relationship, or actual or crack potential:

- Coulson/Fury: 264
- Scott/Jimmy Woo: 35
- Scott/Luis: 23
- Alexander Pierce/Fury: 16 (fandom is also ageist lol)

And even though I'm concentrating on M/M, just for the hell of it because Darcy, though a minor character who appears in 2 movies, shows up all the time:

- Darcy/Steve: 3,013
- Darcy/Bucky: 2,640
- Darcy/Loki: 1,556
- Darcy/Clint: 1,108
- Darcy/Steve/Bucky: 676
- Darcy/Tony: 326

All this is to say that 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 get into a fandom because of an OTP!), it's fine if it's a white M/M ship and honestly, not that surprising considering most of the screentime and meaty

development is given to white characters because of racism (that's a thread for another day), but it IS a problem if most or all of your ships across all your current and previous fandoms are white (and if the only media you consume is predominantly or all white).

This thread went on longer than I planned, but tl;dr, fandom does have a racism problem which is nothing new, but we should all examine our feelings about different characters and relationships, both platonic and romantic, decision to seek out content or make content with

characters of color (this also includes content with your white ships that include POC in the work), the way we interpret and write/draw those characters (is Sam, for instance, a yes man? A therapist for white friends? The bro who cracks jokes and gives sage advice but seems to

not have any flaws or struggles or a life of his own? The BFF who thinks his white best friend is being dumb about another white guy and wants them to get their act together already?), and see and remedy any implicit biases that we have.

Oh wait, I'm going to end it with this: BLM! And if you want to help and get more Marvel fanworks with POC, this fandom event is raising money for organizations that help Black people and focuses on Black Marvel characters! https://marvelfans4blm.tumblr.com