"Whatever the orientation, fans are passionate about their ships"
December 27, 2014 8:02 AM   Subscribe

"Perhaps shipping also reflects the yearning for a small moment of control in a chaotic world. Children often react to their inherent powerlessness by retreating to the wide-open spaces of their imagination. They make their dolls kiss (or fight), and feel a sense of control that they lack in the real world. As fans, people may not be the author of the fictional worlds they love to inhabit, but when they ship, they can momentarily grab the wheel in the most exhilarating of ways — envisioning and championing relationships that demonstrate their own mastery of a created universe, and their true feelings about how love should exist in that world, if not indeed in their own." [via mefi projects; single-page format]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (90 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Shipping is, when well done, fun character studies—an opportunity to explore the fictional world in ways that mayhap are not open to the show writers. Before I discovered MLP:FiM I had not read any fanfic at all, but since then I have read plenty, and there are some excellent works in the shipping genre. When it comes to ponies I'll take a fluffy piece of romance over grimdark any day of the week (and twice on Sundays). As a sub genre of fan fiction it also has an advantage as where, say, a world building story can be gainsaid by the very next episode, shipping is safer because romances between main characters are typically not going to happen in the show proper.

Some ships are stranger than others—it was only a few days ago I, while merrily randomly making my way across Reddit, discovered that Elsanna has a devoted community (some links marked NSFW). How knew?

(RariPie4Lyfe! Even if White Diamonds makes a compelling argument).
posted by bouvin at 8:41 AM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Came for sailing. Disappointed.
posted by Splunge at 8:44 AM on December 27, 2014 [16 favorites]


Based on the first sentence of the pull quote I was afraid this was going to be another "Why are female fans so deranged, it must be because they are pathologically immature" article, but I was pleasantly surprised.
posted by wrabbit at 9:15 AM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Shipping
posted by Nevin at 9:18 AM on December 27, 2014


Agh! Nevin, why did I click.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:21 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's the moment when you see the FedEx arrow that changes everything.
posted by angerbot at 9:31 AM on December 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


This is one of those topics that makes me suspicious I am an alien, because I do not understand this even one little bit. But hey, ship away if'n it makes you feel warm fuzzies.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 9:36 AM on December 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


More shipping talk, less "I don't get this!/ this is considered weird by some people." talk!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:39 AM on December 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


I always thought it was the moment right before you shout "NOW KISS" at the screen/page that inspires the feeling. Also for slash pairings, it's a bit of a representation issue : not a whole lot of romantic gay couples out there in mainstream scree land but with a little creative hand waving they all can be.
posted by The Whelk at 9:45 AM on December 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


The first time I heard this term was in the context of Larryshippers.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:54 AM on December 27, 2014


I was thinking this would involve beautiful letters and packaging and instead found an over analysis of team Edward vs team whatever the other guy's name was. Then I realized all this is is the precursor to writing slash fiction.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:56 AM on December 27, 2014


More shipping talk, less "I don't get this!/ this is considered weird by some people."

Choosing a quote that compares shippers to children isn't the best way of bringing Team Fandom to the conversation.

Anyway, baking incredibly fussy things is a much better way of maintaining a feeling of control in a mad & chaotic world.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:09 AM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Not a bad way for young folks to get into literary/cultural criticism. Start with the accessible and maybe in a decade we'll have a new army of Zizeks bringing us untold insight.
posted by The White Hat at 10:29 AM on December 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


Choosing a quote that compares shippers to children isn't the best way of bringing Team Fandom to the conversation.

An incredibly apt comparison, and to my mind, not a put-down (or distasteful in any way)! It's imaginative play for adults (and uh - teens and pre-teens, I guess - everybody). Everyone has shipped or will ship - it's simply using your imagination to extend (or dramatically alter as in two enemy characters), sexualize or romanticize, dynamics already at play between characters in any media (books, film, short stories - even commercials for God's sake).

The term "ship" seems to be a hiccup for some, it may have negative connotations but really it's just using your head to release tension that you already see as naturally occuring between two characters. Or something.

Actually I don't really know what it is. Shipping is like porn - hard to define but you know it when you see it.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:33 AM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Here's the page from TV Tropes with a clean, simple definition: "Rooting for fictional romance to happen."

(I'm going to bow out now because I think I've become overly invested in my shipping fpp, apologies; I'll let the conversation flow the way it wants to.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:36 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm def with team noromo for X Files though.
posted by Artw at 10:40 AM on December 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


Nobody should have to deal with Mulder in a non professional capacity.
posted by The Whelk at 10:56 AM on December 27, 2014 [21 favorites]


Came for sailing. Disappointed

Have I got an Aubrey and Maturin scene for you!
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:05 AM on December 27, 2014 [26 favorites]


Nobody should have to deal with Mulder in a non professional capacity.

He's very self sufficient.
posted by Artw at 11:06 AM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


The most recent episode of Reply All (the new podcast done by the guys who used to host TLDR from WNYC's On the Media) talked about Larry shippers. It's an interesting and fairly quick listen.
posted by naturalog at 11:12 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Shipping just made perfect sense for me last night as I was watching the TV reboot of Fargo and I really wanted to see two characters come together badly and it's almost like the writers of the show knew it, and didn't let it happen. :(
posted by mathowie at 11:30 AM on December 27, 2014


jcifa/shipping fpp is my new OTP
posted by corvine at 11:30 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


One of the interesting things about shipping to me, as someone who doesn't read or write fan fiction, is the formation of communities around specific pairings -- the OTPs, team This Person and team That Person. I'd be interested to read more of the talk that occurs between the people who feel strongly about those relationships.
posted by clockzero at 11:31 AM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Choosing a quote that compares shippers to children isn't the best way of bringing Team Fandom to the conversation.

Team Fandom really does get defensive whenever anyone brings up the reality principle, though. It doesn't take a Freudian (though it helps) to see the kind of pleasure the shippers seek as a fundamentally childish one. Nor ought that to be seen as invalidating that pleasure, for anyone who wants it — if you can acknowledge, while eating a chocolate cake, that at best you'll be able to feel as happy as a child getting to eat that cake, or as your own child-self when you once ate such a cake, then this really ought not to seem so different. The perception that there's something shameful or unsophisticated or uncritical, something that needs to be apologized for about the fantasy/wish-fulfillment aspects of fanfic rather than unapologetically embraced, is the real problem.
posted by RogerB at 11:36 AM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Though I loathe the term itself (inasmuch as I dislike almost all internet slang which assigns a false newness to preexisting behavior patterns) the concept is in total harmony with the escapist pleasure of fictional narratives, in which the audience's empathy for and emotional investment in the characters and their love lives is natural and a sign of successful execution.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:48 AM on December 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yeah, how much of TV is wish full-fillment for tight knit workplaces or Jobs That Matter or tidy endings to crimes?

It does strike me how much shipping is just scratching the gossip itch but for fictional characters ( who are sooo made for each other!)
posted by The Whelk at 11:59 AM on December 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


It doesn't take a Freudian (though it helps) to see the kind of pleasure the shippers seek as a fundamentally childish one.

Yeah, but that's a pseudomaturity that's inherently false, just as false as Freud's long disproven but inexplicably popular amongst (always unsound on proper science) lit crit types theories.

Going shipping, writing fanfiction is partaking in humanity's oldest rituals and narrative performances, going back to Homer and beyond, taking control of the story rather than letting a self established priest caste do it for you.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:05 PM on December 27, 2014 [14 favorites]


korrasami
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:09 PM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


And of course you cannot ignore the gendered aspects of criticism of shipping and fanfic in general, as it does revolve around supposedly female interest of romance and friendship which is naturally less mature or interesting than proper masculine interests.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:09 PM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


So I kind of get what shipping is now after skimming the article, but where does this word come from? When I think of shipping, I think of mailing letters and version control. But this semi-vicarious romance thing? Huh? Why is it called that?
posted by oceanjesse at 12:26 PM on December 27, 2014


The pull quote could also be used to explain people's fondness for the most baffling game in (barely qualifying as) existence, Star Citizen.
posted by Reyturner at 12:32 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Why is it called that?

"relationship"-ing.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:33 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's the doctors on Sex Hospital having sex that keeps the saucer section of the hospital spinning - if they stop it will become unstable and fall off of the space needle into Puget Sound.
posted by Artw at 12:35 PM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


sometimes the sex doctors have to call on the fashion lawyers in a case against the whiskey detectives
posted by The Whelk at 12:39 PM on December 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


I have two issues with shipping, one minor and one less so.

1. SO MUCH ENERGY going into creating stuff set in somebody else's universe. I've known people who wrote some very good fan fiction, good enough that they could have done interesting things of their own. But you suggest that they try to create their own, fully original work, and it's like it just does not compute somehow. This is the minor one, because if people are having fun and they're content to play with somebody else's toys, that's their business I suppose.

2. The whole "slash" thing often plays into the idea that men can't be close friends without them secretly being gay for each other, which in our still-homophobic and f'ed-up culture helps make straight menfolk even more squeamish about expressing feelings for each other or emotion of any kind. (See, Kirk and Spock can't love each other as friends, it's REALLY that they secretly wanna bang! Frodo and Sam can't just care deeply about each other, they're ACTUALLY secret butt bodies! Sam and Dean can't just be brothers with a complex, troubled history based on years of mutual disappointment and mutual self-sacrifice... Wincest!) Dudes banging is great, but slash fiction frustrates me the same way that it frustrates me that strong, platonic male/female friendships are so rare in fiction. It normalizes the idea that people can't just love each other without wanting to get all up in each other's mess. (Not that there's anything wrong with people getting all up in each other's messes! I'm a big fan of that too.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:44 PM on December 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


Metafilter: I've become overly invested in my shipping fpp.

I think people who are put off by fan fiction are failing to understand the perverse, incestuous, promiscuous nature of creativity. Approved sequels, commentaries, or revisions are just fan fiction done well and in its dressy clothes. Before literature was written down, you can be sure individual storytellers revised, gender-swapped, shipped previously unshipped characters changed the endings, and added characters to existing stories as a matter of course, to please themselves or their audiences.

I really enjoyed learning about Ms. Brinton's 1913 Austen fanfic. JCIFA, did you read it? Is it...terrible?
posted by emjaybee at 12:52 PM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


That's an interesting take. I've read some (classic) Kirk/Spock, and it's fun, but honestly, I can't see it. What I know of the canon strongly supports the "best friends who love each other" interpretation, instead. The slash angle never resonated for me with those two. Same for Aubrey/Maturin, Logan/Scott and a host of other pairings.

However, the rebooted Kirk/Spock (Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto)?

Yeah...I could totally get behind that...
posted by darkstar at 1:00 PM on December 27, 2014


Well, for one it can be easier to use already existing characters and setting just cause they're allready established, you know how they "should" act so half the work is done for you - it's like getting to play with someone else's dolls for a bit. Writing is a hobby for most people (have you ever tried to get a novel length manuscript published? It's HARD.) and the collaborative, feedback heavy nature of a lot of fanfic helps alleviate the fact that writing is an intensely boring solitary pursuit with no way to tell if you're doing it right. I've been trying to come up with a system that mimics the more lively and social feeling of fanfic writing for my own projects and so far have failed. Although writing a bunch of increasingly longer stuff did give me the confidence to peruse writing as vocation and that's going well so far.

As for the classic ships, I usually don't see them either except in the "this is not even subtext" ones.
posted by The Whelk at 1:12 PM on December 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


Also, concerning the article directly, when I was having a catastrophic life collapse I basically fell face first into a lot of this cause it was much easier to obsesses over the nuances of fictional people possibly kissing and finding happiness then dealing with my life sprawling out of control for a few months.
posted by The Whelk at 1:25 PM on December 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


Also
posted by The Whelk at 1:25 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yeah, when I started writing original fiction regularly that did not mean I lost interest in writing fanfiction. Writing is writing. Slightly different muscles are getting used, but frankly I would be a much worse writer of original fiction if I hadn't spent so much time reading and writing fanfiction.

I can enjoy worldbuilding and character creation for my original stuff while still having a lot of passionate feelings about Steve/Bucky.
posted by nonasuch at 1:44 PM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm writing stuff based in other peoples universes so much these days I feel a little guilty I'm neglecting developing my own stuff. Still, it's been a lot of fun.
posted by Artw at 1:51 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I had a shipper tell me once that she felt sorry for me because if I couldn't see the same thing she saw between the two characters in question, then I must not have ever experienced love in my life. I stopped going to that particular forum.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:53 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Writing fan fiction is a hobby. Not everyone wants to monetize their hobby or become a pro at it. Like, people who play soccer in their neighborhood intramural league aren't in it to become pros. The guy with the fantasy football team isn't angling to become a manager of a sport team. Fan fiction writers don't all want to become published authors.

Not a bad way for young folks to get into literary/cultural criticism

My first foray into real shipping was in Harry Potter fandom, and a) shipping wars got intense in that fandom, and b) my investment in shipping in that fandom was less about the relationships themselves and more about BEING RIGHT and interrogating the text from the right perspective. Hundreds of thousands of words were written about whether Harry/Ginny or Harry/Hermione or Ron/Hermione would be canon, so much literary theory and analysis happened. Every single interaction was analyzed, every word choice, every possible bit of symbolism or foreshadowing. Harry Potter fandom analyzed the shit out of those books. I legit learned a lot about literary analysis and criticism from that fandom.

Nowadays the way I ship is basically to reblog gifsets and read fanfiction and weep. Thanks Steve/Bucky!
posted by yasaman at 2:24 PM on December 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


I once managed to get paid for basically making a fanvid so long as I dressed it up like an ...academic bit of analysis. (What else do we do down in the fan mines then do unpaid graduate student work?)
posted by The Whelk at 2:28 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Came for sailing. Disappointed.

Well there's always Kancolle, where you will encounter both literal and figurative shipping.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:29 PM on December 27, 2014


Also, fanfiction is great. It's tremendous fun where you can usually skip things like back story and character development, because your audience already knows the characters' histories, and put all your attention into world building. At the same time, it can teach you to observe strict consistency, because if you get canon wrong you better believe your readers will let you know!

It's a pleasant exercise for writing, and can sometimes make for great writing in its own right.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:35 PM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


The problem is no one is going to come up with a better backstory for Bob Benson then "gold digger turned heart of gold serial murderer" so I'm bound to be disappointed if we ever see canon backstory.
posted by The Whelk at 2:41 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


True Tales of the League of Fancy Serial Killers.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Everyone is a fancy serial killer Art, everyone.
posted by The Whelk at 2:58 PM on December 27, 2014


/looks in horror at ham sandwich.
posted by Artw at 2:59 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Everyone has shipped or will ship

No,never. Why? I will never take a vested interest in someone's creative output to the point that i would root for two random people to get together. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Let an auteur take you where they want to take you. Who cares where you think it should go, its not your story. Thats why i partake in books, music, art, and films, to jump into some one elses construction/expression and see what it is they're yearning to express, what they have to say themselves.
Wanting someone to say what i want them to say rather than whatever it is that they want to say is (i think ) selfish, grossly relativistic, and disrespectful of the effort and urges that drove them to create and share.

I dont expect art to conform to me. I dont eant it to. Echo chambers are boring and full of noise.
posted by blackfly at 3:10 PM on December 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


I posted what I posted and then regretted it two minutes after it was too late to delete it. This is exactly the kind of Metafilter discussion I need to avoid for the sake of my sanity and posting anything here was a mistake on my part. I'm not reading any replies and I'd take back my original post if I could.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:13 PM on December 27, 2014


I will never take a vested interest in someone's creative output to the point that i would root for two random people to get together. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Let an auteur take you where they want to take you.

You can ship a canon couple though? I'm not saying you're doing it wrong or anything, engage with media however you want. But I'm guessing that the vast majority of people have at one point or another been invested in a fictional couple in some way: rooting for them to get together, being interested in their story, being upset when the show broke them up, wanting more focus on their relationship, etc. Shipping isn't always against canon, and when a fan ships a canon couple and writes fic about them or draws fanart or spills digital ink analyzing their relationship, they're directly engaging with the text in a way that says "I want more of this thing." If you think even that's disrespectful or selfish, then I'm afraid you have a vastly more passive expectation of media consumption than has historically been common. Go all the way back to the Greek playwrights and beyond and you'll see that people don't just passively consume art without changing it in the process.
posted by yasaman at 3:30 PM on December 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'll admit it, I posted my follow-up and then couldn't resist going back and reading the other comments. (Where is my WILL?) I'm pleased to see that nobody came after me with the nasty sharp knives, which is what I expected would happen.

My third problem with shipping is that I am much more likely to be squicked than aroused, even when the writing is good. But I feel like that's more MY problem than the shippers. When Buffy and Spike gave in to their passion and destroyed an entire building with their furious banging, that was great fun but it was all I needed to see of it. Loving descriptions of Buffy's supple boobs and Spike's turgid manroot just feel invasive to me somehow, almost like reading erotic fiction somebody wrote about my friends.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:39 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


GenjiandProust: "Came for sailing. Disappointed

Have I got an Aubrey and Maturin scene for you!
"

Since I'm now reading Post Captain I have to tell you that I have already been there and earned the tee-shirt.
posted by Splunge at 3:41 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


I would go as far as to say that the Aubrey/Maturin books are low hanging fruit as far as 'shipping' is concerned.
posted by Splunge at 3:43 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I dunno; I always found the Aubrey/Maturin relationship to be very much the epitome of close -- and loving, yes -- but platonic male friendship. Almost a companionate marriage; each is sometimes exasperated by the other's foibles, but both recognize that they're better together than apart.

They do very much have an "I hate you! No I hate you! ... wait actually maybe you're not so bad" meet-cute in Book 1, though...
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:17 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


I've known people who wrote some very good fan fiction, good enough that they could have done interesting things of their own. But you suggest that they try to create their own, fully original work, and it's like it just does not compute somehow.

This observation is so unfamiliar to me, because most of the people that I know who have written fanfiction have also written original work.

But it is also strange, because of the unexamined assumption that "fully original work" exists and that writing it is somehow better than writing fanfiction. By what value system is it better? It's not better because you "own" an original work; many people are not interested in ownership. It's not better because it has a wider audience; most original work will never see the light of day, while fanfiction comes with a built-in audience. It's not because it takes more skill; fanfiction can be just as challenging as original work. It's not better because it's more creative; original novels can be incredibly bland and derivative, and fanfiction can be very creative.

So why should they try to create their own "fully original" work, assuming that they haven't already?

The whole "slash" thing often plays into the idea that men can't be close friends without them secretly being gay for each other, which in our still-homophobic and f'ed-up culture helps make straight menfolk even more squeamish about expressing feelings for each other or emotion of any kind.

That's a lot to lay at slash writers' feet.

This is a criticism that they've been fielding for decades; it's not new to them. There has been a tremendous amount of discussion of this point. Sure, there are some fans that are way too invested in their personal interpretations of a show, but writing (for example) Kirk and Spock as a couple doesn't mean you believe men can't be close friends--or even that Kirk and Spock aren't close friends. It means you want to write a story where they're more. There are a lot of reasons why you might want to do that, but the belief that because they showed each other affection they must totally want to bone is not a common one.

And I don't think straight menfolk being afraid of showing emotions can be blamed on slash writers--whose existence was until recently largely unknown outside those circles.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:32 PM on December 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


My first foray into real shipping was in Harry Potter fandom, and a) shipping wars got intense in that fandom, and b) my investment in shipping in that fandom was less about the relationships themselves and more about BEING RIGHT and interrogating the text from the right perspective.

I was so deep into those troubled times, and oh god yes that is what happened. I'd click around Ron/Hermione fanfiction and discussion sites (thinking that I actually gave a damn), but I could never get into it in an actual way. Really, I was just running on fumes of contempt for Harry/Hermione shippers, who couldn't pick up on straightforward children's lit foreshadowing that had all the subtlety of a sequined slap on the bottom, and who further offended by insisting on being wrong about it all on the internet. I was 12 years old and extremely crotchety and I had to have a word with those people. It was wonderful, though, and absolutely formative. There was just so much for a little girl to learn about close reading, debate, and the futility of all human endeavour.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 5:23 PM on December 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


almost like reading erotic fiction somebody wrote about my friends.

Same. I can't read any fanfiction until I've finished with the original show/book and had a break. 'Finished' not always being the end of the series, but just where I don't feel like keeping up with the original anymore. Then the fandom-version takes a life of its own and it's fun. I'm mainly interested in alternate universe type of fan works, so canon is just.. take it or leave it. If we're going with the child-like freedom/fun thing, I'd say fanfiction is more like bedtime stories than it is say a bible. Collective storytelling.

I'm not sure what exactly it is that makes a show feel done vs. compelling to rewrite.
I think it's something about relationships (platonic or not) which have to go unexplored for the sake of the plot.
posted by ana scoot at 5:33 PM on December 27, 2014


Go all the way back to the Greek playwrights and beyond and you'll see that people don't just passively consume art without changing it in the process.

Exactly. I mean, I think it's fine to accept artistic works as is and change nothing about them, but I also see absolutely no harm to no one in playing around with different combinations to see what you could come up with yourself. You're not degrading art or the artist through this; you're playing with multiverses from less to more serious degrees. Think Dee from Battlestar Galactica would be better off with ... anyone other than the generic alpha bro she was paired with? Go for it then, the world will keep turning.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:04 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


My first fandom was Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day - fanfiction was so underground at the time, with the internet still being what it was. It was all about yahoo groups and livejournal. I wasn't much of a shipper - no pairings grabbed my attention. I was more into character studies and darkfic and such. Those days definitely led me to be much more understanding of literary crit, subtext, and good writing in general.

And now, for the first time in 15 years or so (god, it's been that long?!), I find myself totally pulled into another fandom - Sherlock. And oh my god, do I ship Sherlock and John. SO HARD. My first true OTP! There's no question, historically, that they are a True Best Friendship, but I love the exploration of them as more than friends. I get tired of the argument of 'can't guys just be good friends?' because, yeah, it's not exactly like we don't have endless portrayals of that in pop culture. Such an under-served segment!

The writing and portrayal by the actors makes it all too easy. Now, some people think that the writers are really truly going to take them in that direction. I doubt it, and that's where the enjoyment of Sherlock fanfiction comes through.
posted by Windigo at 6:16 PM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Writing fanfiction is the reason I now write for a living and the reason I have the education I have. Literally, falling into Harry Potter fandom face-first as a seventh grader, and meeting tons of amazing women (like, 99.7% of the friends I made through fandom were women) who were patient and kind and willing to walk an eager, immature 11 year old through years worth of writing and learning and experimenting absolutely changed my life, and despite the fact that the only fanfiction I write nowadays is usually something small for Yuletide once a year, lots of these women remain my close friends.

And shipping is just such a huge part of the fanfiction-writing side of fandom. Getting into slash fanfiction as a teenager probably made my own self-acceptance as a big ol' queer a lot easier, because I'd had years of reading about these normalized gay relationships between characters who were almost never canonically gay, and if they were it wasn't the ONLY thing about that character.

Thanks for this FPP. I think of my years in spent writing in fandom very fondly, and honestly, I miss the days of Livejournal sometimes.

Sirius/Remus 4 lyfe
posted by none of these will bring disaster at 6:29 PM on December 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


korrasami and sailor neptune/uranus, and luna/harry forever. Also, the same to those good old days of Livejournal communities. I think that was pretty much my childhood, older peers being so loving and kind and full of good constructive criticism was so helpful :)
posted by yueliang at 6:47 PM on December 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Loving descriptions of Buffy's supple boobs and Spike's turgid manroot just feel invasive to me somehow, almost like reading erotic fiction somebody wrote about my friends.

You've just put a thing I didn't know I had into words. Thank you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 PM on December 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


The whole "slash" thing often plays into the idea that men can't be close friends without them secretly being gay for each other, which in our still-homophobic and f'ed-up culture helps make straight menfolk even more squeamish about expressing feelings for each other or emotion of any kind.

I've seen the same argument made a lot in the last week by anti-korrasami people: that close friendships between women aren't well represented in media not aimed solely at a female audience, so pairing Korra and Asami together at the end is, at best, swapping one kind of representation for another. I am not terribly sympathetic to this argument in this case.

In the general case, I think you're overstating the cultural influence of slash fanfic on the internet. It might be a symptom of what you're describing, in part, but I don't think it's driving much.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:03 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sit back and enjoy the ride. Let an auteur take you where they want to take you. Who cares where you think it should go, its not your story. Thats why i partake in books, music, art, and films, to jump into some one elses construction/expression and see what it is they're yearning to express, what they have to say themselves.

This. So much this. I consume a lot of media I don't even like just so I can better understand what people who are different than me are thinking about, dreaming, wishing. (I've been following Slacktivist's takedown of the World's Worst Books for years. I have read perhaps 12 Anita Blake books and I hate her so much... but vampires sell, and I wanted to understand *why*.)

You can ship a canon couple though?

My first thought is "why in the world would I want to do that?" Getting a little more nuanced than knee-jerk 'you are wrong on the Internet' stuff though:

I think the divide here is that some people get invested in a small subset of characters. Like, you watch Buffy, but you *love* Buffy or Spike or Willow or maybe somehow Jonathan.. and so you get invested in *those* characters, and play out scenarios in your head like you might make your favorite Barbies kiss. This is certainly a way to approach art. It is likely the most common way to approach art. Anecdotally, most people that I know seem to think about media franchises in these terms, and it seems like the most common approach to my in no way scientific observation online.

However, some of us enjoy the story itself as a whole living, breathing thing. I don't tend to think about one part of a story without thinking about all the parts. Buffy isn't a person to me, Buffy's an element in the whole experience that is BtVS, and is to be approached that way. When the character does something I do or do not like, I'm curious about the writers, not her as an imagined presence. This informs how I write fiction for my own profit - a story is a tapestry, and tugging it certain ways doesn't result in hotness, it results in an unraveling of things.

I'll admit it, I posted my follow-up and then couldn't resist going back and reading the other comments. (Where is my WILL?) I'm pleased to see that nobody came after me with the nasty sharp knives, which is what I expected would happen.

If the knives come out, I've got your back. I've said many similar things in the past.
posted by mordax at 9:49 PM on December 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


But it is also strange, because of the unexamined assumption that "fully original work" exists and that writing it is somehow better than writing fanfiction. By what value system is it better?

It's the difference between a box of Kraft mac'n'cheese and a home cooked meal, all from scratch. For the most part, the quality of either is highly dependent upon the cook. Like, within the middle portion of the bell curve of cooks, a lot of folks might actually be better off with the box. A clumsy hand will fail at either, and a master will make either sublime.

At the upper end though? There's a limit to the number of different things a cook might do with the Kraft regardless of their personal skill, and it is always going to be smaller than what they might do with unfettered play in a well stocked kitchen. When I see someone talented writing fanfiction, there's nothing *wrong* with them doing that or anything. I actually read a pretty brilliant Power Rangers fanfic one time, even. It's fine, really...

But I'd rather see what more someone who can do that is capable of. After all, who wants mac'n'cheese every night, no matter how good it is? Ditto Harry Potter or Buffy or whatever: these are cute universes, but I'd often rather have something new, even if it isn't as good.

Novelty over comfort food.

That said, it isn't an attempt at an objective value judgment, it's a personal preference. I'm the same way about food: kangaroo jerky was horrible, but I'm delighted I had it anyway. I get that most people don't feel that way, and they're not wrong, they're just different.

I do take umbrage at the implication that those of us who look at this a bit sideways are hidebound or something though. It's not about the passive consumption of art, it's about engaging with it in a fundamentally different way. I promise I've spent as much time thinking about what I'd do differently from Joss Whedon or Brannon Braga or whomever as any fanfic author, I just took those observations in a different direction.

... anyway, I have definitely talked about this too much. Steppin' back so someone else can have a turn with this plate of beans.
posted by mordax at 10:43 PM on December 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sorry, isn't expanded universes (star trek, star wars...) basicaly fanfictions with an editor?
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 2:43 AM on December 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've read quite a bit of fanfiction in my time (mostly Buffy, a little bit The West Wing), with one memorable attempt to write some (about Quantum Leap), back in the day. But I really never got the appeal of the "shipping" or "slash" stories... Until Femslash Fridays started at the Toast. Rory and Paris? It makes so much sense! The very idea makes me like Rory, and thus the show, better! (And I already liked it a whole lot.) Inara and Kaylee? Well, of course. Buffy and Faith -- well, it's a harder sell with me, but you know? I can see it.

Anyway, no one had mentioned Femslash Friday and someone should, on this post. That's all I'm saying.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:17 AM on December 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


However, some of us enjoy the story itself as a whole living, breathing thing.

Yeah, as do a lot of people who write fan fiction. Forgive me for arguing the example, but to go with the food metaphor, I think fanfiction is less like Kraft mac 'n' cheese vs. a homecooked meal and more tweaking an existing recipe vs. inventing one of your own. In writing a fanfic, you have to be able to see all the story elements as a whole, and take care that the elements you change "fit" with the whole on some level.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:34 AM on December 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


re: the food metaphor, I'd say fanfic was less like Kraft mac and cheese vs a homecooked meal and more like a homecooked meal vs writing your own recipe, making your own pasta (including growing your own grain and grinding it into flour and so on), making your own cheese out of milk that you milked from a cow yourself, et cetera et cetera.

Writing from scratch is *really hard*. Incidentally I don't think there's an upper limit to what you can do with a fanfiction - I've seen some truly incredible things. If you like Homestuck I could show you a couple.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 6:07 AM on December 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


I posted what I posted and then regretted it two minutes after it was too late to delete it. This is exactly the kind of Metafilter discussion I need to avoid for the sake of my sanity and posting anything here was a mistake on my part. I'm not reading any replies and I'd take back my original post if I could.

Oh, I hope you will keep posting in these threads! I love shipping but I don't come to Metafilter for an echo chamber.

This comment is probably going to be more honest and open than I am in real life about my fanfic love, but screw it, this is the Internet, so . . . Slash fanfic is an enormous part of how I am making sense of and coming to terms with my sexuality, and I don't know that the process would be going as smooth or as non-frightening without it. It's a safe space, and it's easy to find or chase down or even pinpoint what you like (thank God for tagging), and it's made the part where I talk to my partner about it a lot easier and more nuanced than "Uhhhh, I don't even know man, I just, buh."
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:33 AM on December 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Thanks for this post. I was unaware of this term, and now understand better my unrealized obsession with starting a grassroots movement to get Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono together.
posted by neutralmojo at 7:30 AM on December 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Writing from scratch is *really hard*.

Writing at all is really hard, which is one of the reasons I think it's amazing that there are so many people writing for fun, talking about writing for fun, analyzing writing for fun, in these supportive communities. Some people might look down on the kind of writing that they do, but isn't that cool? On one hand, people are worried about how kids these days can't write, won't write, and are too distracted by modern electronics to be able to spell--and on the other, there are hordes of teenagers reading and reviewing fiction they wrote for each other for fun.

(Of course not all fanficcers are teenagers, but many are.)

Incidentally, I always found writing fanfiction to be harder than writing original work. I think whether you find fanfiction or writing "from scratch" to be harder depends a lot on the individual.

'd say fanfic was less like Kraft mac and cheese vs a homecooked meal and more like a homecooked meal vs writing your own recipe,

If we're going to use food analogies at all, I think this one is more accurate and less dismissive.

Of course some people are going to want to try something completely new. Of course there is no completely new, and even the most avante-garde restaurant's dishes will be informed by cuisine that came before, but let's say that on the scale of something more novel to a perfect copy, they want something more novel. I'm like that too. I'm the one who always orders something that I haven't tried yet. But then sometimes I want a lasagna, a dish that has many different interpretations but is familiar all the same.

(I think that saying that fanfiction writers aren't interested in novel experiences is oversimplifying it because everyone wants different things at different times. Me, I'm really interested in novel fiction--but I find myself disappointed by a great deal of it, because I almost never find it as novel and groundbreaking as it's hyped to be. Ask me about Black Mirror. A story that doesn't even pretend to novelty on the other hand, doesn't disappoint me in the same way.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:48 PM on December 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Fanfiction is hella hard, if it's written well.

Sure, you can write an AU (alternative universe) that hand-waves away much of the canon backstory that has been put forth, but even so you still have to have the characters be recognizably themselves. Capturing a spot-on speaking voice is paramount of course, and capturing the inner one even more difficult as that's an aspect you often don't get from TV or film fandoms. So the writers are playing with thought processes of characters based purely on the actions they're shown on the screen. And if the character is a secondary one or not well-fleshed out, that often allows for even more interesting explorations of the universe you're dabbling in.

And if you are trying to fit your story into canon - either as a slash pairing, or a missing scene, or an imagined future/past, or a character study - it takes skill to keep on top of all the data points of the world you're playing with. As pointed out, you will be brought to task if you get minutiae wrong.

Different fandoms have different difficulties, of course. For example, in you're going to write a mystery for the Sherlock fandom, well, then you need to have the skill to come up with a mystery and be able to pace it out in a satisfactory, suspenseful way. And if you're writing sex? That's certainly a skillset that writers who do it well don't get enough credit for. It's easy to write crappy, florid smut. Much harder to write anything believable yet exciting.

And on top of all this, there's the simple task of trying to write well. Which is anything but simple, of course.

Basically, I have always thought that writing good fanfiction is just as difficult as writing good original fiction. Good fanfiction can help you understand the source materials better than you did before or allows you to experience it through other peoples' viewpoint. It lets you feel catharsis from bad writing or missed opportunities in the source material. It allows you to feel connected to other people who enjoy the fandom, and elevates the source material to folklore where anyone can place their mark if they so want to.
posted by Windigo at 1:16 PM on December 28, 2014 [5 favorites]




The article mentioned Charles & Diana, I forgot all about that. Or perhaps I tried to forget it. Back when all that adulation of the royals was going on, my girlfriend was named Diane, so you can imagine how many Charles & Diana comments we heard. I never heard of anything like shipping back then, but it makes sense. We met a few people that seemed strangely excited about us being some sort of local embodiment of the royal couple.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:23 PM on December 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Even famous novelists feel the urge to ship. Witness W. M. Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena (a "fixfic" for Ivanhoe, published under Thackeray's Michael Angelo Titmarsh pseudonym).
posted by thomas j wise at 7:36 PM on December 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Disney's Maleficent was completely fanfiction.
posted by Windigo at 11:59 AM on December 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Disney's Maleficent was completely fanfiction.

Really, so was Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Put another way, the only differences between fanfiction and sequels are copyright and payment. The Star Wars Extended Universe? Totally fanfiction, but more so now that the official sanction has been withdrawn.
posted by JHarris at 12:36 PM on December 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yes - though Maleficent was a darkfic AU, not a sequel.
posted by Windigo at 3:07 PM on December 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


[As an aside, if anyone here is confused by some of the fandom jargon used here, memail me/ask and one of us can explain it. I think a lot of us forget just how opaque some of this is, it used to baffle the hell out of me at the start.]

One thing that goes overlooked a lot of the time is the tiny, niche sections of fandom and fic-writing. A lot of attention is paid to the bigger, splashier stuff - your Sherlocks, Supernatural, slash, smutty stuff, etc. The things that get mentions in articles about fanfic, basically.

But i've had a delightful time over the past few years reading some really unexpected little fics.

I read a cute Nick & Nora Charles from The Thin Man snippet a few days ago. There's a bunch of great or hilarious Miss Marple fics out there. I've read some absolutely stunning, gutting mythology character studies, and a lot of silly, fun ones (Trickster deities poker night!). There was an Archer fic that made me cackle out loud, so spot on were the character voices and beats.

(All of those are short, I won't throw you into a novel-length read without warning, promise.)

On shitty days, one of my go-to cheering up activities is searching for G and Teen-rated Avengers fics and reading through the hilarious, sweet, silly stories that often throws up. Here, go read about a recovering Bucky engaging in a nerf war with Clint. You want to, even if you think you don't want to.

So often, when people who don't read it talk about fanfic, it's all the dude-on-dude slashfic and it's spoken about with a certain disdain and condescension. I've read a lot of that too, some of it clearly written just for the sake of porn (not a bad thing!), some of it embedded in 70k-words-long, intricately plotted world-building marathons.

But there's a hell of a lot of stuff out there that never gets talked about outside fandom, and should be considered as part of the whole. The existence of this sort of stuff is part of why people who read it get so irritated with the sniffy reactions from the outside world.
posted by pseudonymph at 3:55 AM on December 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


So often, when people who don't read it talk about fanfic, it's all the dude-on-dude slashfic and it's spoken about with a certain disdain and condescension. I've read a lot of that too, some of it clearly written just for the sake of porn (not a bad thing!), some of it embedded in 70k-words-long, intricately plotted world-building marathons.

Yep. I was really caught up in X-Files fanfic when the show was still on - there was, unsurprisingly, a crapton of Mulder-and-Scully-finally-hook-up fic, as well as stories about:
Mulder hooking up with Skinner
Scully hooking up with Skinner
Mulder, Scully, and Skinner in a threesome
Scully hooking up with Krycek
Mulder hooking up with Krycek
Skinner hooking up with Krycek
Mulder, Scully, and Krycek in a threesome
Mulder, Skinner and Krycek in a threesome
Scully hooking up with Cancer Man
Skinner and Dogget falling in love, quitting the FBI, and retiring to Vermont where they open a B&B called "The House Of Pies"
As well as a number of fics that were meant to Conclusively Prove That Mulder And Scully Really Hate Each Other I Swear.

And yet - every so often you'd come across something that could have been an actual episode. One woman I finally just flat-out bookmarked wrote three novella-length pieces that all could have been filmed on the show and stood up to some of the better episodes. Another guy's forte was funky crossovers (Mulder and Scully meet John Constantine, Mulder and Scully meet Morpheus) but my favorite of his was a comedic riff on the episode Hollywood A.D., which assumes Mulder and Scully get caught up in the moviemaking entertaiment-news gossip buzz surrounding the film's release, and have to go on various late-night talk shows and such. (Scully, delightfully, beats the crap out of Jay Leno.)

I've actually gotten a little too uncomfortable to read any of the sexual fanfic any more; it feels a little too much like voyeurism. But some of the other stuff, sure, on occasion; it shouldn't be surprising to read a different writer's take on existing characters and a different world, because hell, the shows themselves employ a host of different writers all the time, and invite guest writers onto the show sometimes, even. (Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episodes and Stephen King's X-Files episode spring to mind.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:02 AM on December 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


You know, it's a shake they never combined Mulder's interests and took a case on a porn set. Mulder could do that flat-voiced human wikipedia act of his but instead of explaining the latest theory on Sasquatch or how cyclotrons work he's be explaining DPs or brimping or whatever.
posted by Artw at 7:56 AM on December 30, 2014


....."brimping"?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:46 AM on December 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't know these things, you'd have to get Mulder to explain it.
posted by Artw at 8:47 AM on December 30, 2014


Brimping is shrimping done in public.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:59 AM on December 30, 2014


Not for nothing but I was on the L train last night standing next to a woman with a Steve Loves Bucky pin on her jacket.
posted by The Whelk at 11:25 AM on December 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


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