#shrikewrites

There’s a fairly obvious phenomenon in fandom in general, and it’s present in most (but not all! I’ll talk about this later) fandoms. You go to the main AO3 page for a fandom and look through it, and you’ll usually see blue icons galore without much red or purple. For those not familiar with AO3, that means there’s a lot of M/M shipping without much M/F or F/F. There’s also often not a lot of gen fics (shipping not a focus) though this does depend somewhat on fandom! (Again, I’ll talk about some exceptions later.)

I call this the Yaoi Effect.

So, why does it happen? And when does it NOT happen?

There’s actually two major parts to the issue. I see people talking about one or the other, but rarely both at once.

To start, let’s talk about bias towards male characters and M/M.

I’m going to bring up one of the exception fandoms now, Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It has about 7,000 works on AO3 last I checked, and almost 4,000 of those are F/F. The next two thousand are gen fics. There is very little F/M or M/M.

I believe this can be credited to the source material. There are an abundance of well-written female characters with meaningful relationships with each other, and by my count, exactly three male characters. Madoka’s father, Madoka’s little brother, and a classmate, Kyousuke. None of them are particularly plot relevant and Kyousuke has never interacted with the other two. Thus, there simply aren’t enough men for proper yaoi, and there’s only a couple M/F options even slightly supported by text.

In a lot of media, though, the inverse is occurring.

Marvel. Not super familiar with them but I’ve watched some movies. There’s a lot of men and not many women.

Stand Still Stay Silent. Seven major characters. Only two women.

Six of Crows. Six major characters. Two women.

Vampires SMP. 14 people. Four women, plus Cleo (who is not a woman but I’m including her based on fandom perception).

Jackson’s Diary. Nine major characters. Three women.

As for nonbinary characters, well, they’re in even worse shape. A lot of fandoms don’t even have any.

It’s statistics at this point. The fewer female characters, the less options you have for interactions between them and between female and male characters, the less likely you’ll end up with an interesting or meaningful interaction, the less likely you’ll get a popular M/F or F/F ship. If the few female character that ARE there are poorly characterized or neglected by the source media, the issue compounds. 

However, I don’t think that’s the only thing at play here.

From what I recall of Percy Jackson and related series, the gender ratio’s pretty even. You have a decent number of both minor and major female characters. Of the canon relationships, most (but not all) are M/F.

There’s about 82 thousand works on AO3. 34k M/M. 27.5k M/F. 8.5k F/F. (And 19k gen fics.)

Under statistics alone, with equal amounts of each gender, we would expect lots of M/F, and equal amounts M/M and F/F. Taking canon ships into account, we’d expect M/F to continue to dominate, and M/M would get a boost over F/F. (I don’t recall any canon relationships between two girls. It’s been a while though and I haven’t read all the new books, so I might be wrong!) That’s not what we see here.

We see bias towards M/M and away from M/F and F/F, even when gender ratios are equal and female characters get fair amounts of screen time and development. I think this is due to a couple things.

One, misogyny (internalized or not) leading to bias against female characters. People avoid writing and reading stories focused on female characters, gravitating to M/M over other categories as a result. (As for nonbinary characters, it’s hard to assess the presence of exorsexism in fandom when there’s so few of them. Discrimination probably plays a role, but far and away their issue is lack of representation in source media)

Two, a preference for M/M specifically. According to a 2024 demographics survey here, there are far more women than men on AO3.  M/M tends to be more popular among women than F/F. (Apparently Spacebattles, a largely male fanfiction site, has a lot of F/F.) There’s a lot of different reasons why this is the case, but I’m not focusing on the why here, just that it happens.

So. We get more M/M than M/F or F/F because a lot of fandoms are devoid of interesting female characters, because people are biased against female characters even with equal rep, and because people like M/M specifically.

 That’s one half of the story.

Now, let’s talk about amatonormativity in fandom, and the lack of genfic.

Gender ratios shouldn’t change the amount of genfic unless a fan base is deeply homophobic (and we’d see the opposite pattern if that were the case). Platonic and familial bonds are not constrained the same way as romantic or sexual relationships. However, the source material can still influence things!

To give a couple examples: Tian Guan Ci Fu is a popular BL with a very heavy focus on romance, and has a ship in the top 100 AO3 ships. Quite impressive! There’s about 32,000 works, of which 3,222 are gen. So about 11 percent genfic.

Project Hail Mary is also quite popular, but has basically no romance. There’s a couple canon relationships, but they’re either between minor characters or entirely offscreen. The relationships that are focused on are entirely platonic in canon. It has 12,532 works, of which 4,570 are gen. That’s about 36 percent genfic.

Vampires SMP has 14 cast members, plus some highly relevant backstory characters. There are three backstory characters important enough to frequently and prominently feature in fics, so we’ll bring the count up to 17. There’s a few canon ships, but they’re mostly all offscreen. About 33% of works are genfic.

It makes sense! Someone reading romance is looking specifically for that, so they’re a lot more likely to make ship fics. The source media also offers ships within easy reach of fans (as opposed to resorting to crackships and crossovers). Someone reading a non-romance might also do shipping, but there’s a lot of people there for other reasons as well.

That being said.

36 percent genfic means 64 percent ship fics (here I’m counting Other in shipping. Other tends to be a small category, so moving it wouldn’t change the numbers much.). 33 percent genfic means 67 percent ship fics. That’s still a lot of ship fics, for pieces of media with little emphasis on romance. 

Why are we seeing this?

One reason is probably smut writers. Someone who really wants to write smut of a character will bring in OCs or reader inserts or crossover characters or whatever necessary to make their smut. It doesn’t have to make sense. Porn Without Plot is a tag for a reason. Who cares about canon. The majority of ship fics aren’t smut, though, so that can’t be the only driver. It’s probably not even the main driver.

A somewhat related reason is the urge to explore every facet of a character, and some things are only unearthed in specific situations. You may require shipping to see a certain side of them. Hell, that’s the case for my original work: the main thing has zero romance, but I actually have a short sequel planned focusing on romantic relationships, because there’s some very interesting stuff for some characters that you’ll only see when they’re trying to date someone. So, shipping as character analysis. I actually see a lot of this in Vampires SMP!

Another reason is a tendency to assume meaningful relationships have to be romantic and/or sexual. Ex. shipping Rocky and Grace from Project Hail Mary. Rocky ends up far and away the most important person in his life (and Grace is definitely as important to Rocky as his mate Adrian), but I don’t think it’s like that in canon. A friendship can be just as important as the most meaningful romance.

Finally, I’m bringing back something from the first half of this post. Lots of women on AO3. Lots of women like yaoi. Thus, you get writers smushing male characters together like Barbie dolls.

So, we see a lot of ship fics because romances attract shippers, because shipping can uncover cool character details,  because people are biased against platonic/familial relationships, and once again, because people like M/M specifically.

In conclusion:

The Yaoi Effect is the combination of two separate phenomena: a tendency to focus on male characters over female characters, and a tendency to focus on shipping over genfic. To properly understand it, we have to look at both contributors. The degree to which we see the Yaoi Effect, and how it manifests, also varies a lot by fandom due to factors in the source material and the type of fans that are attracted to it.

A lot of the motivations for these phenomena are perfectly innocent. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to explore a character through shipping, or preferring a well-developed character over a shallow one… or specifically liking BL, as long as you’re not being creepy towards men IRL.

However, some drivers are harmful, or indicators of harmful ideas in the source media. If you dislike pretty much all female characters, that’s bad. If you ship these characters because you don’t think a friendship could be that important, that’s bad. If you prefer male characters in your fandom because the female ones are written terribly, it sounds like there’s a lot of misogyny in your source media. If you prefer the ships because there aren’t really any good friendships in canon, it sounds like your source media is devaluing friendship and pushing the idea that romance is necessary to be happy.

If your fandom gets a lot of the Yaoi Effect and you’d like to see something else, my advice is to be the change you want to see. Write genfic! Write fic focusing on female/enby characters! Leave kudos and comments on genfic and fics focusing on female/enby characters! You’d be surprised at the amount a nice comment can fuel a writer. A baker won’t know how much people love their carrot cake unless people tell them. And if they know people really like their carrot cakes, they might make more.

If you write/read M/M, that is perfectly fine. Do what makes you happy. This post is not a “here’s a PROBLEM we need to FIX” it’s a “Huh, interesting thing in fandom”. Go bake your cakes. Yes there’s three hundred chocolate cakes already, so what? Don’t force yourself to make a strawberry cake if you don’t like strawberries. (But if you think strawberries are ontologically evil, you might want to reconsider that.)

Your years aren’t being counted yet. Voices echo through skin and muscle and fluid to reach your half-formed ears. This womb is crowded, someone is kicking you through the sac. Even here, you are not alone.

You are two, or perhaps three years old? You have your mommy and daddy and your sister who’s your best friend, and your Halmoni and Halabugi are visiting. Halabugi puts you in a toy stroller, made for dolls not people, and breaks it.

You are five years old and you have a cousin now. You get to hold him for a second but he’s really heavy so your aunt (mommy’s little sister) takes him back pretty fast.

You are seven and at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. They have cats and you like the cats but the cats run away from you because they don’t like you. You’re also allergic so you get hives if you touch them too much. They have a fire pit and you love watching it and (with supervision) putting in balled-up napkins and old newspapers to burn. Your uncle (daddy’s big brother) and your aunt (his wife) are there too.

You don’t remember how old you are when you stop visiting Grandma and Grandpa and your uncle and aunt as much.

You are nine and you love love love everything cats and finally you have kittens of your own! You used to be allergic but you did desensitization and now you’re not, and the shots really hurt but it was worth it because you have cats! They’re so cute and fun and they’re a perfect addition to your family.

You are eleven and eating dumplings with your sister at Halmoni and Halabugi’s house. Halmoni made them, your mom’s the best cook but Halmoni’s the best at making Korean food. They’re delicious. You got to sleep over at their house, and they don’t have much interesting stuff but you and your sister have fun anyways. You poke around the vegetable garden and make up games with the pieces of a game you don’t know how to play.

You are thirteen and your friend group is breaking up. You won’t talk to them once you’re in high school and that’s probably for the best. There’s no bad blood (as far as you know), it’s just not working. (Maybe it’s because you’re the youngest. You’ve always been a little more immature than the rest of them.)

You are thirteen, or maybe fourteen, and Halabugi is teaching you to fish. You have a line with two hooks and you cast it out and reel in two fish! His English isn’t so good but you still find ways to connect.

You are fifteen and you have lots of new friends, and your lunch breaks are full of chatting and laughter.

You are sixteen or maybe seventeen, and your uncle (your father’s older brother) is teaching you how to hunt for mushrooms. Your family’s reached out to him again, now he’s over for Thanksgiving or Christmas sometimes, or he’ll visit other the times during the year. You still don’t see your paternal grandparents.

You are seventeen and listening to the stories Halmoni tells you about growing up in Korea.

You are seventeen and away from home. You find friends at university and you make sure to be early to your classes but it’s still scary and you miss your parents. You come home on the weekends for a while until you get used to it. (Of course, your sister’s there. She’s always there.)

You are eighteen and your cousin is thirteen and you’re a little worried about how he’s turning out. He seems spoiled, and it’s not so bad now, but if he keeps that attitude it won’t go well when he’s older. There’s not much that you can do. (Your aunt was always a bit of a pushover, at least that’s what your mom says.)

You are eighteen and now your uncle’s over every Tuesday. You’re happy to see him.

You’re eighteen, or maybe nineteen, and your grandpa is dead. Nobody in your family is surprised, his health was pretty bad. Nobody’s that upset either. Your dad and your uncle had a lot of resentment towards him. You have one memory of him laughing. You don’t know him well enough to miss him.

You are nineteen and you don’t talk to your mom’s side of the family anymore. Your mom had been fighting with them for a while before that, though. You learn that she was the scapegoat of the family. You learn that the people you know are not the ones she knows. (You don’t see your cousin again.)

You are nineteen and you and your father are driving two hours to go look for morels. You’ve never found any, but you like the hike and you’ve found lots of dryad’s saddle there and you like the conversations you have on the drive.

You are nineteen and you don’t like going back to your childhood home. The yelling and fights aren’t new but it’s gotten worse lately, or maybe you’re just getting sick of it, and it happens more when you’re there so really it’s a favour for everyone if you stay away. You don’t understand why your parents want to see you, well you do, but it doesn’t seem worth it.

You are twenty and see Grandma again for the first time in a long time. She brings you her homemade jam. It’s nice to see her again, and you don’t remember her that well but you still care. Your family has her over for Thanksgiving that year.

You are twenty and you’ve fallen out of touch with most people you met in university. You still talk to your high school friends, though.

You are twenty-one and start posting on Tumblr. At first no one notices you, but slowly more people start seeing your posts. It’s fun! It’s fun to see what ideas people come up with and it’s fun to take inspiration from them and post your own ideas. Nobody else you know is in these fandoms so you didn’t have anyone to talk about it with before. Now you do!

You are twenty-one and your parents are splitting up. You’re not the least bit surprised, nor are you upset. It’s better this way.

You are twenty-one and now you’re upset. The split isn’t amicable like you’d hoped. (It’s your father’s fault. It’s always been his fault, but it took you until you were sixteen to see it, until you were nineteen to admit it to yourself, and until you were twenty to say it out loud.)

You are twenty-one and you hear that one of your cats is acting weird. He’s always been very dependent on humans and he’s struggling now that nobody’s getting along. His brother’s doing fine but he’s not. You wish you could comfort him somehow but you’re an hour drive away and you don’t want to go to that house.

You are twenty-one and your mom calls you crying, again and again. (There’s two sides to every story, he says. What he forgets is that you were witness to it all. You make decisions based on what you’ve seen, not what you’ve been told, and your eyes don’t weigh the scales in his favour.)

You are twenty-one and you’re not sure if you’ll see your uncle or your grandma again. You’re not sure if you want to see your father.

You are twenty-one and you don’t talk to your friends anymore. You just didn’t have the energy to reach out.

You are twenty-one and going to a new university soon. Your sister is staying here. It’s over two hours of travel.

You are twenty-one and you just want to hide. 

You are twenty-one and you don’t say anything, not because there’s nothing to say, but because there’s no one to say it to.

You are twenty-one and you’re pouring out your soul on the internet because why the fuck not. You have to get this shit out of your head, may as well hand it over to Tumblr. Maybe someone will find it relatable.

You are twenty-one and you’re so tired.