on ship-shaming and watching things wrong

[allchildren]

[please do not link in comms/newsletters]

Ship-shaming (and the larger issue of You're Watching It Wrong) comes in many forms. Serious/true/adult/smart/rightheaded/unentitled[/ungirly?] fans don't ship, or ship contrarily to canon. As we proceed please watch out for falling blocks of sarcastic rage.

There was my favorite in Harry Potter and later Battlestar Galactica fandoms: "I don't care who ends up with who because I care about the plot." Because one element of an imaginary narrative deliberately invented for entertainment is naturally MORE WORTHY than another. Because emotional arcs are unaffected by who ends up with who. (Because all shipping is indeed about who ends up with who, and all any shipper wants is for any ship she ships to get married and have babies. Because she couldn't possibly have other desires, or contradictory desires, or no desires but simply an enjoyment of a dynamic. Or if she does desire them to get married and have babies, that's just unforgivably boring/childish/silly[/girly].) Because relationships are unrelated to characterization. (Because relationships are not part of a plot?) Because the only real question of a children's fantasy series is whether the cartoonish bad guy will be defeated, not how the abused and emotionally starved hero will reach a state of healing.

And there is my newer favorite, championed heartily by certain factions of the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles fandom and Doctor Who fandom. Which is even better because now it's not just that your narrative priorities are bad and you should feel bad, but you're actually MAKING IT UP. (Again, because making shit up in fandom would certainly be unheard of and immorally stupid.) Oh, you deluded little fanpoodles/twits/teenies/GIRLS. Sure it's canon that she just unequivocally declared her love for him, sure it's canon that she takes off clothing before going to lie down on his bed with him, and sure, the blocking of this scene deliberately mirrors SEX, but for you to infer any subtext from the myriad incidents and character choices stemming from them is laughable and wrong! Also the thing from above about how you probably just don't understand the ramifications of string theory and time travel and are caring about the wrong thing! And DW fandom, well, it's just the tip of the doing it wrong iceberg, but let us all agree on one thing and that is that Amy Pond getting extreme enjoyment out of watching the Doctor undress, of having made her boyfriend roleplay as the Doctor, of skipping out on her wedding to be with him, should obviously be taken in the most gen way possible. Which, although I am not actually certain what that gen way is, is doubtlessly super duper unambiguously gen.

Oh, and clearly, there is no way a fan could possibly be interested or invested in multiple elements of a narrative, because it is a zero sum game, and did we cover yet how wrong/immature/stupid/emotional/entitled[/probably girly] you are?

Now, sarcasm time is over. And let me tell you: I am not that easily shamed a person! I own my sense of entitlement to engage with a text (a TEXT, which does not have feelings, which supports multiple interpretations) any old way I want. And to that end I have long since heavily filtered my fannish experience to minimize my contact with Fandom Establishments (such as hublike comms and forums) and their opinions. So, in some ways, this is not that big a problem for me. It's really just an annoying fact of existence, much like the Tea Party and people who make fun of little dogs. I cannot "leave fandom" because I am unavoidably a fan and part of that is enjoying interaction with other fans, but I can certainly go to the fringes and conduct my fandom with individuals who, whether we agree on anything or not, I don't find to be pompous superior assholes. (I recommend it!) I am not twenty anymore; I don't need to engage with jerks or jerkish communities; I do very much need to conserve my energy. So I'm not even sure why I expended the energy here.

But I have been seeing it going around again, and it raises my hackles, and I guess I am just ... still tired of it! Still sick of your shit! There is no fucking one right way to be a fan. To watch a show. To engage with a narrative. Brainless shippers are not unlike those other ghouls of jerk-ass fandom, "real fans" and "haters": all pretty much your projections on how other people should react to a story. (I'm thinking a word, it begins with an E...) And which, by the way, was created by real people with the real purpose of sparking emotional reactions. Who are as responsible for their subtext as their text. Whose intentions beyond what shows up on the screen or page don't mean much to me, but if they matter to you like you frequently claim they do (because how often are the ship shamers the ones who call themselves canon thumpers and accuse everyone else of being entitled and ungrateful to the creator? A LOT OFTEN is the answer), maybe you should give them an actual non-pick-and-choosing listen because quite fucking rarely are the people in charge of these stories ashamed or unaware of the fact that their stories contain shippiness.

Now, I don't want to pull a These Jerks and tell them they're all Doing It Wrong. After all, my whole point is that without diversity of opinion and behavior and creation and engagement, there would be no fandom. And then who would talk with me about the mechanics of time travel AND hot time travelers doin' it? So I'm not gonna be a hypocrite and say that. I'm just going to think it really loudly.

Comments

[lizbee]

Oh hey, I have half a post written up that includes a link to this one. Is it just comm links you're trying to avoid? Are personal journals okay?

ETA: I did post the post with the link, but it's locked, so I hope it doesn't bring a wave of wank crashing down.

[allchildren]

That's fine! One does fear the wanky wrath of Who fandom, but in sad fact those recent Whoish culprits are merely the latest in a years-long line of Annoying Me With This.

[lizbee]

Oh, good. It is an excellent post, and has made me think of some of my preconceptions and prejudices.

[sohotrightnow]

This is a Very Good post and I am grateful to you for making it. I keep trying to pull out specific points I like, but I basically really like all of it and there's no point me quoting the entire thing back at you.

[allchildren]

I am glad it resonates with you!

[nextian]

Um, YUP. I don't ship Doctor/Amy (in the sense of, don't necessarily want it to happen within the confines of this season, not in the sense of, wouldn't read fic for it like a delicious hot as burning sundae) and, like, are you fucking kidding me? BELIEVE ME, I WANT THOSE EYES TO BE PLATONIC, AND THOSE ARE NOT PLATONIC EYES. The showrunners are making DELIBERATE CHOICES, fanservicey choices, to make every new Who Doctor/Companion relationship sexualized, even or perhaps especially Doctor/Amy because it's clearly not unrequited if it exists, and to deny those in the name of some asexual directive from the fucking Nathan Turner period is just wrong! And it's part of the larger culture of fangirl shaming, and part of this idea that people who liked Rose first season are dreadful, shallow people who just like the makeouts.

Gen is great, but it is definitely not more supported by the text here, and if it was, it wouldn't make shipping a bad thing, because shipping is, like fanfic, a hoax and an imaginary story! And that is FINE.

(And of course in a show with two pretty boys to ship, then you're doing it wrong if you give a shit about gen at all, but that is another story.)

[wordsatourbacks]

I AGREE WITH THIS COMMENT BEGINNING TO END. And I am most often actively uninterested in major canonical romantic or sexual relationships in what I watch, but I'm glad you made this post, allchildren, and in my head it's filed as a companion both to the general mission of where_no_woman and chaila's post on problematic issues with respect to fandom and 'shipping (plus these two comments to the same post: 1, 2). Doctor Who fandom does seem a lot more inclined to 'ship-shame-to-blame-female-fans despite the huge aggregate of 'shippers there than other fandoms I've encountered, that is for sure.

[allchildren]

Alas, that post is locked! I can't say that the feelings that went into writing this post and creating Where No Woman were exactly similar -- but I think there is a certain overarching mission to bang on about the worth of lady characters, lady fans, and lady-involving ships THAT EVEN HAVE BEARING ON THE PLOT that informs my general fannish attitude in all things.

[wordsatourbacks]

Oh, whoops! But yes, I endorse "the worth of lady characters, lady fans, and lady-involving ships THAT EVEN HAVE BEARING ON THE PLOT"! Good post at sainfoin_fields, too.

[chaila]

Hey, just surfing around DW from wordsatourbacks' and thought I'd drop a comment that I unlocked that post. Not that it is groundbreaking but I'd locked it in a pique of fear of wank but I'm pretty sure that threat was never really real. :)

[Whoops, html fail.]

[allchildren]

A WHOLE LOTTA THIS. And again -- I would never expect ANYBODY to ship anything that doesn't rev their personal engines. If I wanted to only discourse with people who agree with me on all shipping I would have precisely zero friends. Just, don't tell me I'm a worse fan than you are because I happen to enjoy it (and the leftover baggage from past seasons is so extreme in Who fandom, which is just... that's what I'm trying to get away FROM! GUYS.)

(I leave the slasher-poking to the younger and more incendiary; I did far too much of that in my younger, unwiser days. But it is quite the other story indeed.)

[wordsatourbacks]

Also, it kind of stuns me that people are saying John/Cameron UST is totes extratextual - I mean, I thought by the end of the series it was clear that their relationship was way more than platonic in both directions! I might not have believed it in 2x01, but I definitely did by the end of the season! I thought that was basically an objective fact! Whatever happens or whatever shape it takes offscreen or post-series, I thought the text was already clear! I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that people are denying it is and jumping straight into sexism directed toward female fans, but somehow I am because I'd literally never encountered someone who did take that position in SCC fandom. I guess I should be glad I haven't ventured very much into the fandom in S2 and after the show was cancelled, though granted that was mostly because I was afraid of haters re: Ellison and Jesse and Riley and Sarah, and already confirmed on that impression of quite a lot of the fandom.

[allchildren]

SCC fandom -- I guess got off on the wrong foot with the nerd base (LINDA HAMILTON OMG!!1 there was some amazing misogyny there) and never recovered, is my theory. I don't think the fandom ever galvanized as any kind of collective with various spokes of interest, or if it did, I literally could not locate it. But then I'd run across pockets, like on the official writers' blog, of people roaring over Cameron -- and in this case sometimes the gendering of fannish inferiority went the other way, because obviously only heterosexual fanboys could love a sexy lady robot -- and how "JAMERON" fans simply Did Not Get Anything. ... Okay then.

I'm not sure if Ellison and Jesse and Riley even got enough attention to have haters. I tend to judge a fandom's interests, when I don't have their words, by the icons they make, and found about ten total of all three of them. >:(

[wordsatourbacks]

LINDA HAMILTON OMG!!1 there was some amazing misogyny there

RRRRGH.

people roaring over Cameron

srsly, fans? SRSLY?

sometimes the gendering of fannish inferiority went the other way, because obviously only heterosexual fanboys could love a sexy lady robot

*slaps forehead*

Sadly, with respect to episode reviews I did find that referred to Ellison, Jesse, or Riley in any detail, most of those reviews went like this:

ELLISON: boring, stoopid, should totally die / should have died, waste of narrative space

JESSE: boring, probably EVOL, SHOULD DIE she's getting in the way of DEREK/SARAH OTP!!1, crazy BITCH, EVOL, one-dimensional waste of narrative space. Who, according to most of fandom I've seen have an opinion on her, irrationally hates everyone and everything and she can't catch a break even in most fanfic AUs. My soul died a little when I saw one of the writers on the official writers' blog refer to her as Evil Jesse in their post - if even they didn't think she was much more than that, how could I hope for more from other people?

RILEY: boring, whiny ENTITLED BITCH, SHOULD DIE she's getting in the way of JOHN/CAMERON OTP!!1, treacherous BITCH, FAT BITCH, waste of narrative space. It made me sad when I read Levin Ramblin's goodbye post to the show and it referred to how fans kept calling her fat and how disliked the character had largely been throughout Riley's character arc, because it confirmed stuff I had already seen in episode reviews. On the other hand, I think some of those fans came around to admire Riley with her final episode, even as they kept on deploring Jesse as one-dimensional evil bitch.

I tend to judge a fandom's interests, when I don't have their words, by the icons they make, and found about ten total of all three of them. >:(

Yeah, I had to look reeeeally hard for icons of them - now that the show's over, a few more are popping up in icontests and so on, but still very disproportionately to their respective amounts of screen time. >:(

[allchildren]

RRRRGH.

Oy. And I love Linda's Sarah too, but -- There was this one comm called, I think, Sarah Connor Charm School? Devoted to "physical feminism" as defined by Linda being tough and muscular in T2, upon which principle Lena Headey was weak and horrible and destroyed everything Linda had ever done. Which, MASSIVE INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY aside, and basic misunderstanding of the concept of sequels/reboots aside, also fails to take into account the fact that Linda Hamilton was more or less tortured by James Cameron for over a year to reach the state she was in for T2. SO FEMINIST, JC

I should really write that Jesse/Riley story I've been wanting for a year, eh.

[wordsatourbacks]

I love Linda's Sarah too

Me too!

There was this one comm called, I think, Sarah Connor Charm School? Devoted to "physical feminism" as defined by Linda being tough and muscular in T2, upon which principle Lena Headey was weak and horrible and destroyed everything Linda had ever done. Which, MASSIVE INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY aside, and basic misunderstanding of the concept of sequels/reboots aside, also fails to take into account the fact that Linda Hamilton was more or less tortured by James Cameron for over a year to reach the state she was in for T2. SO FEMINIST, JC

D: ... there is nothing I could say about that that you haven't already covered. Sometimes, I hate fandom. Also James Cameron.

I should really write that Jesse/Riley story I've been wanting for a year, eh.

I would be ONE HUNDRED PERCENT behind that.