if finn and poe were played by two white guys and kylo and hux were played by black and latino men i 100% assure you no one would have latched onto general “side character who has maybe a handful of lines and is generally unpleasant and unforgivably evil” hux as much as they have to fill up his ao3 tag with over a thousand fics centered around him. it’s so frustrating that even when the white guy characters are, for once, sidelined to barely any lines and deplorable personalities, they still get proportionately more love and attention from the fanbase than beautifully written and portrayed black and latino main characters.
Finn, a black MAIN character has less fics with him than Hux does on ao3
you know i actually thought “that can’t REALLY be correct”, like i’ve been saying “proportionately" to refer to their respective number of lines and on screen appearances vs the size of their fanbase. but then i actually checked
are u KIDDING
somehow i don’t believe this has anything to do with whether the characters are poc or not. there’s always that one minor character that somehow becomes a fan favourite
“somehow i don’t believe this has anything to do with whether the characters are poc or not” said the white person with no experiences with racism in fandom space or actually racism in general
so sorry for being white. and no i don’t have experience with racism (expect the fact that me being white makes me the worst person ever)
i just don’t think that the reason people don’t write as much fic about finn is because he’s black. i’ve noticed that many people (at least on the internet) fixate on the bad guys even if they have just two lines and 2 minutes of screen time.
I’ve been in online fandom since you were still in middle school, so I can tell you from observational experience: this is almost entirely about racism. Mostly not “I hate black people” racism, but the kind that makes people subconsciously devalue the importance of a leading black man, in this case.
It doesn’t matter what fandom it is, or the type of role (hero, villain, lead, side character, etc.). Fans as a whole will almost always migrate toward the characters played by white people, especially white men. They’ll find excuses for why this is: “I like villains.” “Redemption arcs are my thing!” “The innocent hero is just my type.” “I like well-defined characters.” “I’d rather play with the characters we don’t know much about, because there’s more room to imagine.”
Those things suddenly stop working when it’s a character of color. Just as one example: fandom loves to ship two white men together when they’re best friends, right? Sherlock and Watson, those two men from Hawaii 5-0, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, etc.
Now look at Psych, an American-made TV show with a white (passing) leading man and his black best friend. Fandom shipped the white man with his work enemy. Also look at Scrubs, same scenario. Same resulting ships: the leading white man was shipped with a work enemy. Take a look at how little Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson fic there is in comparison with Steve/Tony Stark, even though Steve and Sam are close friends.
I can go from fandom to fandom and find the exact same patterns. With TFA, it was a bit trickier, because there wasn’t a leading white man, so fandom took the leading villain and shipped him with either the leading (white) woman or the other villain.
EXACTLY
Psych is the perfect example because in ANY other circumstance, the two leads would be shipped together. There’s no getting around it, no arguing anything else – it’s just. Obviously true. The show ships it, the characters ship it, the actors ship it, but the audience willfully turns away.
Psych was done that way because the two main characters were basically brothers. Other than that, agreed.
without looking i can guarantee that wincest (actual brother on brother) is astronomically more popular than shawn/gus, two best friends who solve crimes together and get up in each other’s bizz all the time and are basically exactly an au holmes and watson, one of the most iconic slash pairings of all time.
and “too brotherly” is the same defense of the absence of tony/rhodey. best friends who have bickered, disagreed, questioned each other’s loyalty, and had dramatic fight scenes, but are ultimately ride or die forever. and this has been portrayed over four movies. you don’t GET more prime slashy conditions than that. yet their fandom consists of two and half fics and a stale bagel.
like, fine. shawn/lassiter, steve/tony, bruce/tony, steve/bucky, stiles/derek, they have appeal. but we should all be thinking more about why we’re so quick to dismiss the pairings gift-wrapped by canon that all include a person of color.
ok but like, for anyone who argues “but they’re too brotherly” I refer you to supernatural fandom, where for four seasons the only huge ship was between two ACTUAL, FACTUAL brothers
Also the villain thing is bullshit because Nick Fury was vilified by the MCU fandom and they all drew him evil/mean/untrustworthy even though he is more complex than that. People don’t care unless he is white 100% believe that Tony X Fury would be a thing if Fury was white
Also lets talk about the fact that Teen Wolf had a literal Gay Pacific Islander in a canon relationship with a white guy for almost 2 whole seasons and no one in the fandom even looked their way or even cared about them.
PoC can be in LGBTQ relationships and the only true canon LGBTQ representation in a show and white fandom will literally ignore them or head canon them out of their relationship if they’re with a white person in order to ship two white men.
And remember when it was said that Hermann Gottleib from PacRim was married?
And how folks were going around talmbout ‘we don’t have to end this awesome queer relationship between these two white scientist men! She (the WOC mother of Hermann’s CHILD) can be with someone else!!!“
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