Send Up a Signal (that everything's fine)

Fanfiction
Title:	Send Up a Signal (that everything's fine)
Author(s):	coalitiongirl
Date(s):	19 August 2015
Length:	120'256
Genre:	femslash
Fandom:	Once Upon a Time (TV series)
External Links:	Archive of Our Own
Fic Cover created by possibilityofmagic (2015)
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Send Up a Signal (that everything's fine) is a Swan Queen story written by coalitiongirl. It is a self-proclaimed meta fic due to being an Actor AU that draws heavily on the history of the Swan Queen fandom and the experience of its fanbase.

Synopsis

Summary

Emma Swan is catapulted into stardom, the newest lead actress on a sanitized show featuring modern fairytales. Regina Mills is a long-undermined star with a chip on her shoulder and a thousand reasons why she's invested. Naturally, they loathe each other on sight. Their characters' fanbases, however, have other ideas.

Author's Notes

THIS IS THE MOST META TO EVER META. amycarey would like me to market this as "dystopian Down the Rabbit Hole," which is a worryingly close description (and this is probably all DtRH's fault in the first place). Much love to my dumpster ladies for coaxing this story out of me and working through the tough stuff, and to JS in particular for faithfully screencapping every headcanon along the way in the hopes that I would turn it into a fic. Victory is yours, JS. Victory Rose, however, may take a bit more than that.

So as you can tell from the summary, we're going with the characters all being cast and crew on OUAT. Because of that, the characters may have different names (and in some cases, as with our Henry stand-in, neither actor nor character will share his name). It's still the same canon unless otherwise indicated! You'll pick it up as we go along.

And two final notes: 1) this is not meant to be RPF. You'll see from the start that these are clearly Emma and Regina, not Jen and Lana, and I'm not making any specific commentary on what has actually happened on the show or what might have gone on bts. This is all just very meta fiction.

and 2) ***Henry is not Emma's biological son in this***. I didn't want to take that piece of Emma away from her and remove the entire adoption storyline, but it seemed a bit too neat to have Henry and Jamie reflect each other so neatly. No worries, Henry and Emma will still develop a relationship, but without the biological aspect.

Reactions and Reviews

this fic perfectly encapsulates not just Regina and Emma’s complex relationship but also the combination of hope and pain and mistrust fans face when the stories they love don’t love them back so i’m just gonna sit here crying over fanfiction don’t mind me

I haven't watched OUAT in about four years and even before then I wasn't really in the fandom, but I'm a gay lady on social media so I saw a lot of the Quality Content being created and would dip my toe in the fandom waters every now and then. My dashboard has been especially OUAT heavy this past week and I was bummed to see how dirty the show did you guys, and even more so when I ended up in something of a fanwork spiral that basically left me singing "WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALLLLLL!" in my head at a very loud volume.

Anyway, I stumbled across this fic and was curious, and here I am 100k+ words into a fic for a fandom that I was never really in, sobbing. I wish that you guys - all of us! - could have gotten something half this thoughtful and interesting on the show, but when it's over (and I assume the writing is on the wall at this point), you guys and the ship that could have been is going to be what's remembered. Major kudos to you all. Thanks for sharing this lovely fic with the world.

It was also referenced in Rukmini Pande and Swati Moitra's essay "Yes, the Evil Queen is Latina!": Racial dynamics of online femslash fandoms

coalitiongirl's Send Up a Signal (that everything's fine), reimagines Once Upon a Time as Happily Ever After, a modern fantasy drama. It stars the debutante Emma Swan and veteran actress Regina Mills, and in a conscious act of racebending, casts an Afro-Latino original character (Jamaal) as their son in the fictional show's narrative. The show is produced by none other than Cora Mills (Regina's mother) and Leopold Blanchard (King Leopold), who serve as convenient stand-ins for the showrunners and writers. A love letter to the Swan Queen fandom, the fan fic is a story of triumph against all odds—Emma and Regina's television counterparts, Rose and Victoria, overcome the demands of heteronormative storytelling and queerbaiting to eventually emerge as a canon couple, even as the two women who play the said characters navigate their own love story and the perils of being queer in a homophobic media industry. There are inside jokes and tongue-in-cheek references to various incidents over the years that are instantly recognizable to Swan Queen fans, but amidst it all, the story never loses sight of the fact that "the Evil Queen is a Latina." The author, who identifies as white, locates her in a world wherein racism is an everyday reality, often in delicate touches such as her typecasting in Hollywood.

Inspired Fanworks

Manips

• Send Up a Signal (that everything’s fine) by @coalitiongirl is a must-read. I can’t even with this thing… <3 by curiouslycurious-me
• jay’s fic of the month by reginasblazers
• fanfic aesthetics: ‘Send Up A Signal (that everything’s fine)’ by banditsregina

Fan song

• With You by just_sq