Post by BettyNewbie on Jun 11, 2019 20:42:20 GMT -5
This Tumblr post is 7 years old, but it brings up many good and still relevant points:
bookshop.tumblr.com/post/30524274749
I love shipping. I love investing myself into fictional relationships and living vicariously through fictional characters. I love making fanart, creating new stuff for my Sims game, and jotting down story ideas (that may or may not ever get written). Shipping is fun and cathartic.
But, is it always a good thing when a favorite ship becomes canon? I keep thinking about what infamously happened with Olicity on Arrow and how so many people rallied around the ship during the early days, yet everything went to shit the moment it became canon. Some ships are better off left to fanfiction.
What do you all think?
quick eta before plane flies: i absolutely am in favor of (esp slash) ships becoming canon, if it happens naturally and respectfully, & for fans to advocate for those ships. it is just that for me personally there is a huge difference between want and need, and that’s what i’m discussing.
- boundary issues. the longer an open canon continues, the more parameters get placed around characterizations and what’s considered “canonical” or “in-character.” Same with ships. The closer a ship gets to canon, the more restrictions you have around how you can write it, if you care about canonical authenticity and accuracy, as many do.
- narrative. i feel like it’s pretty rare that you find a slash ship like Hikaru and Akira in Hikaru no Go, where the entire narrative arc of the series is focused around the two coming together in the end. Usually, these two points of focus don’t coincide, and often what I want from a narrative and what I want from a ship within that narrative are two totally different things. If a ship becoming canon can change the shape of that narrative, if it would have to be shoehorned in to fit, or if it would somehow alter the point of the narrative, then I don’t want it to happen. Because ideally, I come to my ships through the narrative first, and fall in love with the pairing dynamics as a result of what the narrative gives me.
- if the writers don’t love it / believe in it as much as i do, i don’t want it to happen. remember when Buffy/Spike finally became canon, and all the Buffy/Spike shippers who’d wanted that ship to happen were so long were OUTRAGED, because Marti Noxon hated that ship and wrote it in the unhealthiest way possible? I REMEMBER THAT, and I wasn’t even in that fandom. No, thank you. That kind of approach to a pairing, giving in because it’s what the fans want, is not what I want for my canons.
- and can the writer even write it better than we can, anyway? ahahaha, ask me if Christopher Nolan, who writes all his own movies, could write an A/E sequel to inception. HAHAHAHA, OR NO, DON’T ASK. Or, say, JK Rowling writing Harry/Hermione or Harry/Draco or Harry/Luna. SHE WOULD HAVE DONE A SHIT JOB OF ANY OF THESE THINGS, even though I gleaned all of those ships from her subtext anyway. She was not a very self-aware writer, in the end? And I want my ships to be written with self-awareness, especially in canon.
- validation, who needs it? i don’t believe something being “more” or “less” canon provides more or less validation for my ship as real or special. fandom operates entirely around the assumption that the author is dead, so why do we venerate the idea that the author lending credence to a ship somehow gives that ship a layer of superiority?
- i’ve been burned too many times before to invest in a level of need that may well go unrewarded. This is both about personal ship preferences and about queerbaiting. I don’t get my hopes up. self-preservation, baby.
- i don’t want my desire to read slash into everything to skew my overall view of/objectivity about the ship or the show. If my ship suddenly becomes problematic or unhealthy *cough* sherlock *cough* i don’t want my priority to be SHIPPING IT AT ALL COSTS. I want to be able to say, dude, I love this ship for what it gave me in the beginning, but the way it’s proceeding now? that is not what i want and not what I support.
- i don’t believe that putting all my equality eggs in one slashy basket is the way to proliferate queer relationships on television / in the media / on film / anywhere else. i believe that the way to get equality and representation in the media is to support all sexualities and genders, not to elevate one pairing to the extent of all other characters in my canon of choice. if i’m not invested in my OTP becoming canon, then i’m more able to look for ALL the queer possibilities in a text, and to talk about them, and to support them. For instance, I feel like the attitude towards shipping in fandom these days is so intensely polarized that if Buffy were airing right now, the outrage over Spike/Xander not being canon would drown out ALL of the queer positivity established through Willow/Tara, Buffy/Faith and Spike/Angel subtext, Jonathan/Warren/Andrew, and later Buffy/Slayer chick whose name I forgot. Like, that just makes me want to cry. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS but for me, personally, I don’t ever want those things to be wrapped up in canonicity in order to be important. And I don’t want them to get in the way of all the other things that are important about promoting queer characters in all my media, whether or not they’re my OTP.
- i had more but now i have a plane to catch!
- boundary issues. the longer an open canon continues, the more parameters get placed around characterizations and what’s considered “canonical” or “in-character.” Same with ships. The closer a ship gets to canon, the more restrictions you have around how you can write it, if you care about canonical authenticity and accuracy, as many do.
- narrative. i feel like it’s pretty rare that you find a slash ship like Hikaru and Akira in Hikaru no Go, where the entire narrative arc of the series is focused around the two coming together in the end. Usually, these two points of focus don’t coincide, and often what I want from a narrative and what I want from a ship within that narrative are two totally different things. If a ship becoming canon can change the shape of that narrative, if it would have to be shoehorned in to fit, or if it would somehow alter the point of the narrative, then I don’t want it to happen. Because ideally, I come to my ships through the narrative first, and fall in love with the pairing dynamics as a result of what the narrative gives me.
- if the writers don’t love it / believe in it as much as i do, i don’t want it to happen. remember when Buffy/Spike finally became canon, and all the Buffy/Spike shippers who’d wanted that ship to happen were so long were OUTRAGED, because Marti Noxon hated that ship and wrote it in the unhealthiest way possible? I REMEMBER THAT, and I wasn’t even in that fandom. No, thank you. That kind of approach to a pairing, giving in because it’s what the fans want, is not what I want for my canons.
- and can the writer even write it better than we can, anyway? ahahaha, ask me if Christopher Nolan, who writes all his own movies, could write an A/E sequel to inception. HAHAHAHA, OR NO, DON’T ASK. Or, say, JK Rowling writing Harry/Hermione or Harry/Draco or Harry/Luna. SHE WOULD HAVE DONE A SHIT JOB OF ANY OF THESE THINGS, even though I gleaned all of those ships from her subtext anyway. She was not a very self-aware writer, in the end? And I want my ships to be written with self-awareness, especially in canon.
- validation, who needs it? i don’t believe something being “more” or “less” canon provides more or less validation for my ship as real or special. fandom operates entirely around the assumption that the author is dead, so why do we venerate the idea that the author lending credence to a ship somehow gives that ship a layer of superiority?
- i’ve been burned too many times before to invest in a level of need that may well go unrewarded. This is both about personal ship preferences and about queerbaiting. I don’t get my hopes up. self-preservation, baby.
- i don’t want my desire to read slash into everything to skew my overall view of/objectivity about the ship or the show. If my ship suddenly becomes problematic or unhealthy *cough* sherlock *cough* i don’t want my priority to be SHIPPING IT AT ALL COSTS. I want to be able to say, dude, I love this ship for what it gave me in the beginning, but the way it’s proceeding now? that is not what i want and not what I support.
- i don’t believe that putting all my equality eggs in one slashy basket is the way to proliferate queer relationships on television / in the media / on film / anywhere else. i believe that the way to get equality and representation in the media is to support all sexualities and genders, not to elevate one pairing to the extent of all other characters in my canon of choice. if i’m not invested in my OTP becoming canon, then i’m more able to look for ALL the queer possibilities in a text, and to talk about them, and to support them. For instance, I feel like the attitude towards shipping in fandom these days is so intensely polarized that if Buffy were airing right now, the outrage over Spike/Xander not being canon would drown out ALL of the queer positivity established through Willow/Tara, Buffy/Faith and Spike/Angel subtext, Jonathan/Warren/Andrew, and later Buffy/Slayer chick whose name I forgot. Like, that just makes me want to cry. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS but for me, personally, I don’t ever want those things to be wrapped up in canonicity in order to be important. And I don’t want them to get in the way of all the other things that are important about promoting queer characters in all my media, whether or not they’re my OTP.
- i had more but now i have a plane to catch!
bookshop.tumblr.com/post/30524274749
I love shipping. I love investing myself into fictional relationships and living vicariously through fictional characters. I love making fanart, creating new stuff for my Sims game, and jotting down story ideas (that may or may not ever get written). Shipping is fun and cathartic.
But, is it always a good thing when a favorite ship becomes canon? I keep thinking about what infamously happened with Olicity on Arrow and how so many people rallied around the ship during the early days, yet everything went to shit the moment it became canon. Some ships are better off left to fanfiction.
What do you all think?
