What makes a rare pair rare?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

This time I'm going to be specific, and MCU & Marvel (comics). Keep in mind I was quickly made over as a slasher when I joined the internet's version of media fandom. At the time, that meant my 'ships and canon ships wouldn't even pass in the night.

Stony (aka Steve/Tony) is not a rare pair; it's canon in some multiverse realities, and fandom ran with it when MCU was unformed enough raiding comics canon was common. Stucky (Steve/Bucky) is not a rare pair because fandom ran with it. Pepperoni (Pepper/Tony) I wouldn't consider rarepair, it's MCU on and off and on again canon. Phlint (Phil Coulson/Clint Barton aka Shieldhusbands) is not a rare pair, slashers love that.

Is it a rare pair if it has Clint in it? Natasha/Clint, Bobbi/Clint, Penny/Clint, Spider-Woman/Clint (sorry, too many Jessicas) are all comics canon. Okay, arguably Winterhawk (Bucky/Clint) and Frosthawk (Loki/Clint) are rare pairs.

And yes, it does say something about fandom that I'm in the fourth paragraph before I ask if there are non-rarepairs for either Rhodey or Sam Wilson.

earlier related discussion

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Also to my (admittedly limited) knowledge you have mentioned 0 women of color, and also 0 trans/non-binary/genderqueer people unless we make specific reference to never-cis genderbend fics, and furthermore none of the ships you mention are femslash.

I think these are more "general society problems to which media fandom is far from immune" than "media fandom problems", but like, if I had seen Iron Man back when it was the sum total of MCU? Tony/Rhodey is not merely the obvious m/m to ship but (if we rule Stane out bc my various squicks and triggers) the ONLY m/m to ship! AND YET

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Oh, I'm not saying that this is fandom's special challenge. Most of the women (MCU) are in the later waves of movies or small screen and most of the black women are Netflix. Fandom certainly reflects the wider culture.

[fullupwithfire]

I wouldn't actually say that being canon stops something from being a rarepair in fandom spaces -- not arguing this for Pepper/Tony in specific, but just in general. Bruce/Betty, for example, is technically MCU canon, but it's not even got 1,000 fics; I'd consider that fairly rare. (I'm coming from MCU entirely, as I'm pretty low on comics canon knowledge.)

Hmm. Neither Rhodey nor Sam get nearly enough love or shipping and I wouldn't try to argue that; but I have a hard time calling Sam/Steve a rarepair with over 2k fics on Ao3. I don't have a hard line for where "rare" ends, but that seems past it to me, even in a fandom the size of Marvel. This may be a function of being a large fan of A) really random pairings and B) threesomes and moresomes -- I've definitely been into pairings, even in giant fandoms (even in MCU, actually), that had single-digit fic counts, so a couple of thousand is a pretty decent number in my book.

It also might be a function of where in the fandom you hang out. I saw a lot of people talking about Sam/Steve, or threesomes/moresomes that included them, and therefore even without fic, it didn't feel as rare to me. In contrast, in the areas I've been in, I saw Jane/Thor be brought up very rarely, and usually as an example of canon doing ships badly, so I felt like that was rarer. (It's not -- it has close to 5k fics, way more than I anticipated even accounting for "I mentioned this in passing cause it's canon, so I tagged it". Definitely not a rarepair.)

Also, in Marvel specifically, the subsections of fandom can make a difference, at least to me? What would be a rarepair in Marvel whole may not feel that way if it's really popular in a tiny corner of the fandom. Take Guardians of the Galaxy as an example: The most popular Guardians-specific pairing, Peter/Gamora, has only about 1k fics, which is low enough that it probably counts as pretty rare in overall MCU fics -- but since none of the other Guardians-specific pairings come close, it doesn't feel nearly as rare as, say, Bruce/Thor, which has around 1,100.

I'm not sure any of this is helpful and I'm a little zonked out, so apologies if none of this made sense, but I've been thinking about this myself lately, so I thought I'd put in two cents.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Thanks for speaking up!

Betty does seem to get less love than she should, and I think that gets at some important things, both regarding ships specifically and fandom more generally. Speaking of canon not making something popular, Bruce/Natasha; there are some I really like and they may predate Age of Ultron.

Sam/Steve has some traction. That the beats in the movie really do lend to "Um, that was the meet cute." I'm really not sure how to work numbers there. It's certainly not a rare pair in the sense of Laura Barton/Bobbi Morse. (Which, even allowing for the femslash versus m/m slash ratio, very rare.)

How's the Pepper/Natasha?

Sense was made, but take care of yourself. Let a few characters roll you up into a burrito of care.

[fullupwithfire]

The fact that Betty's in one movie that most people barely count as canon and hasn't come back since probably doesn't help, either -- I know I'd love to put her in more fic, but that movie is an assault on my senses (not a quality assessment, a "this movie has awful noise and hurts me" assessment) and I was only able to watch it once. There is definitely a trend, though, and you can see a lot of it looking for female characters.

I think Sam/Steve should be bigger based on the canon we got for them, as should quite a few others, but yeah, there's definitely a lot of tinier ones out there. I do understand why some of them end up tiny, even if they're interesting -- I still need to watch AO3 but I can see the appeal of Laura/Bobbi, but I can also understand why, being in different corners of the franchise, they're not as big; or why nobody's writing, say, Gamora/Jessica Jones (although now that I've thought about it, I kind of want it).

Pepper/Natasha actually surprised me -- I believe for a while it was really the biggest f/f pairing in the franchise, and it's been outpaces now, though only by TV show pairings. Peggy/Angie, at 2k, and Jemma/Skye, at 1.5k, appear to be the biggest, with Maria/Natasha at 944 just barely outpacing Pepper/Natasha at 917. I'd consider both of those surprisingly small; they're pairings that I feel like I hear people talk about enough, especially Pepper/Natasha, that I'd expected more. I didn't consider them rare pairs, but now I'm contemplating if that's accurate. F/F stats are definitely way lower than anything else, though.

(And only four of the top ten for AO3 when the F/F box is checked is actually F/F -- they don't even get the third highest under the category. Man, there needs to be more F/F in this fandom.)

♥ Thank you! Feeling better today, thankfully.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I've put her in a fic mostly using screen caps, recaps and osmosis comics.

Was that Agents of Shield or Age of Ultron that you needed to see? (Both do have strong 'Apply Fanfiction?' aspects.) Hmm. Maybe we should apply Agents of Carter and luxuriate in Peggy Carter and Samantha Carter on Mars (with Edgar Rice Burroughs seasoned by The Martian). We'll clone Sebastian Stan's abs.

[diandrahollman]

I'm with fullupwithfire: canon pairs are not always necessarily popular in fan works. Most third point in a triangle characters added to come between the popular pair never gain popularity.

Does Loki/Doctor Strange count as a rare pair?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That feels like it should count as a rare pair; I admit to having some trouble with Loki shipping within the core Avengers just what with Clint as wronged party, but I'm not a certifying office or anything. Milage May Vary and all.

Your icon makes me wonder if Holmes is Dancing with the Stars...

[diandrahollman]

Ha! I admit I don't know much about the comics, so my understanding of Marvel is basically the MCU so my shipping is heavily influenced by the actors that play them. Hence the icon. I seem to be stuck on variations of this pairing. This is the icon version of the lovely cover art a fan artist made for one of my stories.

[melannen]

Honestly, I consider it a rarepair if I go looking for fic with the pair + whatever trope I want this week, and I can't find any. :P

If I know I can definitely find it, it's not a rarepair.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'm so bad at finding tropes I want, anymore, I generally don't look. ;/

[novembermond]

I feel like "canon pair" and "rare pair" are two different pairs of shoes. what is in canon text must not necessarily be popular in fandom.

how I judge what is a rare pair in any given fandom (just my way to do it, not a universal definition): I look at the ao3 page of the fandom. Example: Captain America (movies). Then I open the Relationships tab in the side bar. This lists the ten most tagged pairings in the category. Imho none of these can be considered rare since they are the top ten, even if #1 probably got a lot more works than #10.
For Cap movies we got the following top ten pairings:


James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (29114)
James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers (5203)
Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (4647)
Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers (2767)
James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader (2258)
Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (2220)
James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark (1988)
Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov (1957)
Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson (1880)
Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov (1680)

Steve/Bucky has more fics than Steve/Sam but the latter is still in the top ten and therefore not rare to me. Same goes for Clintasha, which is probably a side pairing here (same with Tony/Pepper) but used to be huge huge huge in Avengers fandom aomong people who prefer het.

[novembermond]

the same list but for Iron Man (movies):


Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (4889)
Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (4299)
Loki/Tony Stark (2252)
James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark (2045)
Peter Parker & Tony Stark (1892)
James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (1228)
Steve Rogers & Tony Stark (926)
James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark (920)
Tony Stark/Stephen Strange (876)
Bruce Banner/Tony Stark (827)

The numbers are overall a lot lower than for Cap, but Rhodey makes the list. However he makes the list as an "&" instead of "/", so friendship instead of sexy tiems. Rhodey/Tony on the other hand clocks in at 525 fics so kinda rare but there.

[kingstoken]

What is considered rare is, fortunately or unfortunately, subjective. When it comes to most fandoms I consider any pairing with under 100 fics on A03 to be rare. However, the MCU is such a massive fandom that you'd have to move the goal posts. I agree with novembermond, if the pairing is within the top ten for a fandom then it is not rare, however, I know it can get muddy when some pairings are always side pairings in fics.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Least this thread not get seen FrostIron