This is interesting. Letâs talk about it.
Thing/Idea 1: Nursey gets talked about way, way more than Shitty by the fandom, which by extension means theyâll talk more about him vis-a-vis privilege.
Whether this is because people like Nursey more or because we are in a crash-course with the #nurseydex singularity, I canât tell. I donât know how to disassemble tumblr tags into data, but I can definitely mine some stats from AO3 and trawl through a couple pages of sort-by-kudos.
So hereâs some fic counts, by character/relationship, as of April 2017:
Nursey character tag at 1300 fics
Shitty character tag at 1376 fics
As you might expect, Dex/Nursey is a popular pairing, with over twice the fic count! You might be wondering why Shittyâs tagged more than Nurse overall, but (a) Shitty was introduced at least a full year earlier than Nursey, and (b) Shitty gets tagged a lot as a side character in fics. In the first five pages of Shittyâs sort-by-kudos, heâs typically the 3rd-8th tag. There arenât many/any âsolo adventures with Shittyâ fics - heâs typically a tool to help Jack along his journey around his anxiety and/or into Bittyâs heart. Weâre not following Shittyâs point of view very often. But thereâs plenty of fics that follow Nurse from sort-by-kudos page one (though mostly in the Nursey/Dex context), and sit in his head, and invent his past.
So why do people like writing, and writing about, Nurse more than Shitty?
Thing/Idea 2: With or without from #nurseydex, Nursey has a lot of unknowns that make him interesting to write and speculate about.Â
We get a ton of Bitty/Shitty interactions in the comic, either because Shitty is like Bitsâs crazy older brother, or because living in the Haus together means theyâre more likely to interact regularly. We get a lot of what Shittyâs all about, but much less about Nurse. (Like, the bit about how Nurse thinks heâll probably be able to annoy Dex out of Haus and into space in 3.17? Actually surprised me!)
Let me count the ways - what makes a Black kid from New York start playing hockey? What makes a prep school outsider (is he an outsider?) want to be a poet? Whyâd he get sent to boarding school anyways? What, actually, is the deal with his parents, two moms or bad dad or okay parents or all of the above? Or, hey Nurse, how come weâve never heard of you dating ever, making it so no one can say for sure what your sexuality is? Like, I know weâve come up with a lot of cool fanon reasons for all these things, but the point is that itâs all speculation, and we are making up some really cool stories off of crumbs of information. Which leads me to:
Thing/Idea 3: Shittyâs entire existence is a backlash against his upbringing and defines his character, while Nurseâs perceived/actual privilege (and how he really only talks about it twice) deepens our interest in him.
Shittyâs at Samwell, instead of Harvard. Heâs doing Womenâs Studies instead of Law. Heâs got long hair that heâs not supposed to have, and heâs loud about womenâs/reproductive/gay rights instead of learning cool golf or toting expensive cars. Heâs not shy about how much he hates his family. Like, we get it, Shits - youâre paying for the sins of your family by being everything theyâre not. When you graduate Harvard Law, $10 says you become a public defender because your family hates the poor. We donât need to analyze or talk about your privilege, because you would rather chew your own foot clean off than go to the country club one more goddamn time. Youâve said it twice now.
But Nurse⊠well, we can say so much more about Nurse. We can get tropey with him and make him not understand poverty, sure. I see more fics depicting wealth as a synonym for loneliness to Nursey. But I think the point Iâm trying to make is that I think we talk more about Nurse & privilege than Shitty & privilege because we just talk about Nurse so much more.
I could be totally wrong. I think the racial element is 100% worth discussing, and subconscious racial bias is definitely something to point out. I just felt like there were more sides to this than just the one, so I thought Iâd write for like an hour on race issues vs who gets more air time in the fandom??
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