shipping kills puppies!

[xparrot]

I've seen a couple discussions about the negative turn SGA fandom has taken, re: McKeller, people, mostly Keller fans (or at least not anti-Keller fans) who are feeling actively driven from the fandom by aggressive character/pairing hate. They feel this is a recent trend, and I concur; while SGA had its share of past wank, I think it was one of the lower-conflict fandoms for its size. And if that's changed now, then I blame shipping. Or rather, canon shipping.

Every fandom I know of that has these battles, has these levels of anger and resentment between fans, is a fandom with canon ships. Witness Smallville, or HP. Ships going canon wreak havoc on a fandom. Nothing embitters your average fan as much as a ship that sinks their own, and an embittered fan can be eager to share their hate, wants the solidarity of all of fandom telling TPTB that they're wrong, wants all of fandom together seeking change. Even killing a character doesn't cause the kind of conflict that shipping does...

There are other things that get fans' backs up, but the majority of fen are shippers, and ships are often why they fan. There are exceptions, there are other types of fans - and other types of shippers - but in modern Western media fandom, the majority of fans (slash, het, even many gen fen) are in it for particular relationships. Mess with those relationships in canon, and you get fandom meltdown.

(I think there's a reason that a lot of the old fan shows, the big ones, were series that never had canon ships, never had any romances that lasted more than a single episode. Star Trek, Starsky & Hutch, The Sentinel, all those old episodic shows that never really progressed the character relationships - that never changed them, never pulled the figurative rug out from under fannish feet. The only series I know of with low-conflict canon ships are ships which were introduced in the first season, that the fandom grew up around, and even in those there's often little interaction between contrasting shippers. I also suspect it's a major reason why new female characters are viewed with such suspicion, because while male characters are often introduced for plot purposes, nine times out of ten a new female character is going to mean new canon ships.)

I don't blame shippers. I'm a shipper myself; I wouldn't fan without my ships. I need my OTPs to fic. And I strive to be reasonable and fair to all my fellow fans, but I still have been known to go utterly psycho batshit when I feel my OTP is "threatened," so it doesn't surprise me to see other otherwise reasonable types lose it over shipping. It's frustrating since the fandom used to be cooler about it - but then the fandom didn't have canon ships before. A fandom with canon ships has ship wars. It just seems to be a fact of fandom; it's why I tended to avoid Who fandom, or Avatar fandom, why I often keep wary distance from anime fandoms.

My OTPs aren't canon, generally (at least not in my fic fandoms, my active "Type B" fandoms - and I tend to avoid main fandom for my Type As, because I'd just as soon not get drawn into shipping wars.) But I don't need my OTPs to be canon to be satisfied, don't need my interpretation of the characters validated above all other interpretations. As long as they're never actually denied, I'm good. The more open-ended canon is, the more freedom there is for all fans, all different shippers, to peacefully co-exist, and I like it that way.

If I sound like I'm saying I'd rather not have canon ships in my ficcing fandoms - yeah, I am. Bring on the subtext and the UST, and leave the consummations to the fanfic. Maybe it's unrealistic and maybe it's boring, but I don't care. It's more peaceful that way XP

Comments

[mistress-kabuki.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom.

First off, I'm a slasher so my response if from that background. Hardly any of those fandom ships are made canon.

Very intersting observations regarding female characters. I have to admit that the shipping doesn't interest me unless there's a gen story behind it and I tend to get frusterated with forced realtionships i.e. characters introduced in canon and shown beginning a relationship without good canonical reason. A good example of this was the Remus/Tonks pairing in the HP canon -- true it pissed off a lot of Sirius/Remus and Snape/Remus fans, but the way the relationship was dropped out of the blue was the truely irksome part.

This brings me back to your point about female characters. Most of the ones I like are ones that have no canon ship and draw strength from their own actions instead of a canon relationship. Maybe it's just me and the fact that I primarily enjoy slash pairings, but the idea of women only being introduced as pairing partners might contribute to this resentment and eventually some of the shipping wars -- that a character is purposefully being introduced to "cure the gay" so to speak. In that sense, fans have a right to be mad. Not only are female characters being introduced for shallow reasons but their ships are being termed invalid and perhaps dangerous by the creators.

Just my $.02 -- I'm fascinated by the reactions in fandom when new characters and relationships are introduced. It always causes division.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Metafandom brings all the commenters to the yard!

I have to admit that the shipping doesn't interest me unless there's a gen story behind it

This is true for me as well - my favorite pairings are usually those solidly based in friendship. Which is why I tend to go for slash more than gen, because slash pairings are often close friendship in canon, while as too many canon het ships don't seem to be based on much of anything except sexual attraction. The rare het pairings that come from other sorts of partnerships, I'm often all over (hence my Mulder/Scully OTP).

Most of the ones I like are ones that have no canon ship and draw strength from their own actions instead of a canon relationship.

Hmmm - this is true and it isn't, for me. My favorite characters are characters with strong relationships to other characters - but romantic relationships don't interest me much. However, many female characters don't have any strong relationships except their romantic ones - while male characters will have friends and rivals and even nemeses (not a positive relationship, but a powerful one). So I have a harder time liking those female characters, however strong and independent they are otherwise. (This is reversed in certain female-authored, female-audience works - for instance, in Gilmore Girls, or the movie Mamma Mia!, I like the female characters more than the males, because they're the ones with the non-romantic relationships...)

And the female characters brought in to "cure the gay" - oh, yes, that is justifiable outrage; the problem is that it's so hard to prove...

I'm fascinated by fandom reactions myself! Though the divisions are painful when you're on the inside...

[mistress-kabuki.livejournal.com]

Most of the ones I like are ones that have no canon ship and draw strength from their own actions instead of a canon relationship.

Hmmm - this is true and it isn't, for me. My favorite characters are characters with strong relationships to other characters - but romantic relationships don't interest me much.

Sorry about that, I should have been more specific. I meant that the characters I'm interested in tend to be involved in a strong friendship (or even in the case of Pegasus/Kaiba in Yugioh fandom a mentor/apprentice relationship turned rivalry). These characters have strong ties to each other nut bot romantic ones. The canonically romantic ones are usually so over-the-top that I can't write them (Harry/Ginny comes to mind). If the bond is strong or the characters have some reason to plausibly have bonded over an incident, I'm shipping them (Mulder/Scully ftw).

The divisions really are painful for those on the inside, and people can get downright protective. Why that is I really don't know -- it baffled me in the HP fandom because the fanfiction being produced was prolific enough to allow us to practically ignore canon and find anything we wanted for our given ship.

I guess after the fact shipping wars are kind of silly. It's not like any pairing wins a prize in the end, but I suppose the identification with a pairing and as a fan of that pairing is so strong it becomes part of our identities.

Eh, now I'm rambling. Sorry. ^_^;;

[mistress-kabuki.livejournal.com]

I resent the treatment of women as nothing more than a tool to neutralize homoerotic subtext or to be flung into a less-than-developed relationship because heterosexual relationships should be expected or some such.

This, definately, I completely agree with. It's an insidouis form of objectification imho.

It really gets my goat the same way that main male character/main female character almost makes me wary

Yes.