Shipping Wars
Mar. 2nd, 2010 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxOld ship wars never die, they just repeat themselves. Endlessly. And in entirely new reiterations (which isn't as much of an oxymoron as you'd think!)
Who knows why we ship certain fictional couples. It has a lot to do with what entertains us, what intrigues us, what we think is hot, what we think could be interesting, what... Actually there are a lot of possible whats. It doesn't really matter what fic kink is the root of our attraction. Everyone is allowed theirs.
Not everyone feels the same way about these things. That's life... and love. It's only when people start to be judgmental about it that ship wars break out. Now, I admit there have been some fics that make me scratch my head and wonder "what the freaking hell?" And there have even been a few fics that make me want to reach for brain bleach to erase the memory of them (one particularly -- epically -- bizarre Supernatural fic I ran into once falls into that category.) But, you know, since they weren't my thing, I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time complaining about them or complaining about the way others spent their free time writing fic about stuff that doesn't happen to interest me. It only needed to interest them to be sufficient reason for the creation of fanfic.
There have been/are some fairly popular ships in many fandoms that I don't 'get.' I remember back in my X-Files fandom days, Krycek/Mulder was a hugely popular ship that I just. did. not. understand (beyond the obvious that Nic Lea and David Duchovny were incredibly, freaking hot. I was perplexed not dead). But I would always return to the sticking point of "Krycek murdered Mulder's father!" Same thing would happen to me when Krycek/Scully fic would pop up. I would wonder, 'but, wait, he murdered Scully's sister...') Still, you know, in all my not feeling the ships, I don't think I ever once wrote a screed saying I was viscerally horrified when Krycek/Mulder smut or Krycek/Scully smut popped up on Gossamer or Ephemeral. I would've thought that it would be pointless, silly, and possibly offensive to some authors if I posited that fans had no businesss writing or at least were morally questionable for writing such fics or how bothered I was to see it show up on general fandom comms! Mainly I didn't write such things because I didn't feel that way. My feelings were more easily categorized as a puzzled head tilt and a 'huh' before moving on to the Scully/Mulder MSR that I was watching the list for. (And I had a serious issues with the now departed fic comm mod (Not Ephemeral or Gossamer) that up and forbade Doggett fic -- not just Doggett/Scully fic but any mention of Doggett at all...because she felt it somehow in some inexplicable way threatened her ship. I thought the attitude was absurd and quit the comm over that display of 'how dare people ship stuff that I don't ship!' entitlement.) People's interests vary. Not everyone likes what I like or vice versa. No one need explain themselves to me.
Why can't it be that simple?
There have been/are canon and fanon ships in a number of fandoms that don't do a damn thing for me. There's a huge shipping faction in True Blood that falls into that category. I understand why some people ship it, but I just... don't. Just today I ran across a post in a Being Human comm of "Why aren't there more Mitchell/Annie fics?" which took me by surprise, not because anything was wrong with it but just because it never crossed my mind to ship Mitchell/Annie in the first place. I have friends that ship couples that I just shake my head, puzzled over what the attraction could be, because it doesn't interest me. Heck, in one (relatively popular) canon/fanon pairing in a non-BtVS fandom, I cannot manage to like the characters individually, making it doubly difficult to understand why there are people who ship them together. But, you know what? It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with either of us. It's just a matter of preference. Not everyone likes the same thing.
Where fic is concerned there are a near endless list of things that can be done with any ship. There are good, thought provoking, and engaging fics that can be constructed out of just about any pairing if the writer is talented and interested enough. And sometimes the writer's preference and the reader's preference hits that sweet spot of perfect agreement. When that happens, whee!!!
But proclaiming "thou shalt not write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) because I don't like it" or that "You are only permitted to write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) under a the conditions I specify and consider to be acceptable" is sadly common and completely ridiculous. Fanfic is made for fans to enjoy. If you aren't a fan of the ship, move the heck along. The fic isn't meant for you. Proclaiming that someone else can't/shouldn't write whatever ship they like because it doesn't float your boat? Out of line.
Now, someone point me to some "how could you write that?!" OTPp penguin fic! Hee! >:)
Who knows why we ship certain fictional couples. It has a lot to do with what entertains us, what intrigues us, what we think is hot, what we think could be interesting, what... Actually there are a lot of possible whats. It doesn't really matter what fic kink is the root of our attraction. Everyone is allowed theirs.
Not everyone feels the same way about these things. That's life... and love. It's only when people start to be judgmental about it that ship wars break out. Now, I admit there have been some fics that make me scratch my head and wonder "what the freaking hell?" And there have even been a few fics that make me want to reach for brain bleach to erase the memory of them (one particularly -- epically -- bizarre Supernatural fic I ran into once falls into that category.) But, you know, since they weren't my thing, I didn't spend a whole heck of a lot of time complaining about them or complaining about the way others spent their free time writing fic about stuff that doesn't happen to interest me. It only needed to interest them to be sufficient reason for the creation of fanfic.
There have been/are some fairly popular ships in many fandoms that I don't 'get.' I remember back in my X-Files fandom days, Krycek/Mulder was a hugely popular ship that I just. did. not. understand (beyond the obvious that Nic Lea and David Duchovny were incredibly, freaking hot. I was perplexed not dead). But I would always return to the sticking point of "Krycek murdered Mulder's father!" Same thing would happen to me when Krycek/Scully fic would pop up. I would wonder, 'but, wait, he murdered Scully's sister...') Still, you know, in all my not feeling the ships, I don't think I ever once wrote a screed saying I was viscerally horrified when Krycek/Mulder smut or Krycek/Scully smut popped up on Gossamer or Ephemeral. I would've thought that it would be pointless, silly, and possibly offensive to some authors if I posited that fans had no businesss writing or at least were morally questionable for writing such fics or how bothered I was to see it show up on general fandom comms! Mainly I didn't write such things because I didn't feel that way. My feelings were more easily categorized as a puzzled head tilt and a 'huh' before moving on to the Scully/Mulder MSR that I was watching the list for. (And I had a serious issues with the now departed fic comm mod (Not Ephemeral or Gossamer) that up and forbade Doggett fic -- not just Doggett/Scully fic but any mention of Doggett at all...because she felt it somehow in some inexplicable way threatened her ship. I thought the attitude was absurd and quit the comm over that display of 'how dare people ship stuff that I don't ship!' entitlement.) People's interests vary. Not everyone likes what I like or vice versa. No one need explain themselves to me.
Why can't it be that simple?
There have been/are canon and fanon ships in a number of fandoms that don't do a damn thing for me. There's a huge shipping faction in True Blood that falls into that category. I understand why some people ship it, but I just... don't. Just today I ran across a post in a Being Human comm of "Why aren't there more Mitchell/Annie fics?" which took me by surprise, not because anything was wrong with it but just because it never crossed my mind to ship Mitchell/Annie in the first place. I have friends that ship couples that I just shake my head, puzzled over what the attraction could be, because it doesn't interest me. Heck, in one (relatively popular) canon/fanon pairing in a non-BtVS fandom, I cannot manage to like the characters individually, making it doubly difficult to understand why there are people who ship them together. But, you know what? It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with either of us. It's just a matter of preference. Not everyone likes the same thing.
Where fic is concerned there are a near endless list of things that can be done with any ship. There are good, thought provoking, and engaging fics that can be constructed out of just about any pairing if the writer is talented and interested enough. And sometimes the writer's preference and the reader's preference hits that sweet spot of perfect agreement. When that happens, whee!!!
But proclaiming "thou shalt not write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) because I don't like it" or that "You are only permitted to write X+Y fic (or X+X or Y+Y) under a the conditions I specify and consider to be acceptable" is sadly common and completely ridiculous. Fanfic is made for fans to enjoy. If you aren't a fan of the ship, move the heck along. The fic isn't meant for you. Proclaiming that someone else can't/shouldn't write whatever ship they like because it doesn't float your boat? Out of line.
Now, someone point me to some "how could you write that?!" OTPp penguin fic! Hee! >:)
