Fictional Fans

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.