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Fans and Fantasy: Shipping as... Community

Apr 1, 2013

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Hello all!

A bit of a BTW, as a start.

For the past week I've been at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference, learning what academics (and aca-fans) have to say about media today, including the nature of fan culture. As someone without a degree (other than the infamous B.A. in English) or any credentials to speak of, it was interesting to see just how much of the same type of meta and analysis and spirited debate was going on, just with philosophers and theorists as reference points. I was in a Walking Dead panel talking about the treatment of women on the show, and there were a lot of women in the audience who challenged the panel with opposing views -- and honestly, it felt just like a good comment thread on SpoilerTV.

What was remarkable about the conference was how set a language there is about fan culture, including shipping, and what basis there already is for analyzing these parts of fandom and its subcultures. I'm now determined to read everything I can about narrative theory so I can use words like "transgressive readings" and "queering the content" and "resistance narratives" and whatnot, and doubly interested in bringing PCA/ACA participants to this column to give us all a bit of a common base language we can use to discuss the issues that affect us. (If you're out there, drop me a tweet @tiptoe39, would you?)

Next year's PCA/ACA national conference is in Chicago; I recommend it to those of you who have an academic interest in these issues. And you can always check out their website at pcaaca.org.

Now, on to our main topic: Shipping as Community. Of all the "Shipping as..." columns I've done so far, this one has been the hardest for me to get a grip on when it comes to shipping -- versus fandom -- as a creator of community. As far as I can tell, different ships become different sub-villages in the larger community of fandom, and ships put up walls around like-minded people rather than break them down. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- the smaller a community, and the more specifically geared it is toward the things you like, the easier it is to feel at home and comfortable, when a fandom can often overall be so large as to be overwhelming.

So looking at this, and at your survey answers, I've tried to identify the ways in which a ship (as opposed to a fandom writ large) functions as a community. Here's what I've found.

A ship, as a community, acts as:

The bleachers at a ballgame. This is most evident during airings of a show and during "shippy" moments or, conversely, moments that seem to "sink" the ship. Twitter and Tumblr are media of choice during this time, since they will refresh rapidly and can allow people to quickly express and publish their feelings. Everyone lets their pleasure or outrage out, and everyone around you quickly reminds you that you're not the only one feeling this way. It amplifies and validates the reactions.

When new spoilers, information, or images are published between episodes, the result is the same. This is more like hanging out at the bar than the bleachers themselves -- there's more room to talk, and speculation, spinning, discussion, and then anxious hand-holding and clenching of drinks continue until the action starts up again.

Kris says, "Before the episode airs we're often almost giddy, talking and whatnot. I even created a chatroom before the start of this last season, though it's shrunk down to a handful of regular members now. When something positively affects the ship we go into overdrive to incorporate it into our personal headcanons and whatnot. Negative affects are either looked at from every angle to find a new spin on it or worked over with a fix-it fic."

Group therapy. Shipping can feel a lot like abnormal behavior. The average fan doesn't really understand it, but within a ship, your friends "get it." They understand your need to see what you see, the joy it gives you, and they let you know that you're not the only one. Often, contact with other shippers helps construct a new reading of the show or scene being discussed, and that reading is adopted as a group agreement: Yes, this is the way we want to read this, this makes us feel good about what we're watching and what we're feeling.

WeBuiltThePyramids says: "We usually respond to positive news by getting together on a message board, or on Twitter, and, as we put it "flailing in all caps." We post relevant gifs, and we send virtual celebratory hugs. If something negative comes along, we try to spin some sort of positive out of it, or we go and look at character history and try to make sense of why it's happening. Usually we can, and it makes the bad news more tolerable."

An echo chamber. It can sometimes happen that the group-constructed reading or reality veers off the path of what those outside the ship can see. I have seen ships become convinced a speculation or spoiler is evidence of something, only to have the show go in a completely different direction. That can be disheartening, but it happens periodically, and new group-constructed readings arise in the place of the shattered ones -- back to group therapy for all of us, to find a new way to live on with our heads held high.

A hub for action. This can be either ship-related action, charity action, or personal action. I'll let some of my survey respondents speak for themselves here:

@broilthe suspect says, "Last spring, a bunch of Bones fans got together to raise money for NF (neurofibromatosis) to support the daughter of one of the writers on Bones that was diagnosed with NF."

Tom says, "A few months ago there was a young woman and her daughter whose lives were being threatened; over the span of a day and a half the fandom (predominantly of this one group) had raised enough money to move them to a safe location and purchase necessities as well as securing safe transportation. That's something of which I remind myself when the fandom falls into infighting."

An army. Ship wars are everywhere, and they're really rooted -- oddly enough -- in the concept of love. Ships are about loving characters so much that you want happiness for them, and it can feel very personal when you're told your wishes for your beloved character are invalid or lacking. And so, when things get rough, ships band together, raise shields, go on the offense if they need to, and tend to their wounded as needed. And they demonize the enemy as a way of rallying -- talking to each other about how empty their rivals' arguments are, how their rival ships would never work, etc. A common thread received from many respondents in this area is how much better and more maturely each respondent's ship acts than their rivals.

One respondent says his ship treats rival groups "mostly with condescending dismissal. Considering the overwhelming majority of the opposition presented against the pairing is really disgustingly offensive and/or flagrantly illogical and/or hypocritical I see no issue with this."

Crowgirl puts it in perspective: "Shipping communities? Can be vicious. Just like most other communities -- ever seen historians go after each other?"

Which isn't to say there aren't people who happily ship multiple pairings, or that people within a ship aren't able to generally tolerate other ships' existence. But sometimes, people batten down the hatches. It's human nature.

A safe space. I'll go into this more next week, but often among people who ship and think as you ship and think, you can be more vulnerable and free to explain the things that upset you and find solace on personal matters. Just as the conference I went to was a hub for academics not just to talk business but to find new friends (hello, new friends from PCA/ACA!), a shared ship can serve as a peace sign -- I get you, I am your brother, you can trust me.

MoxieGirl44 says, "My dearest friends are those I've connected with on Twitter where we share articles, spoilers, Neilson ratings, pictures, YouTube vids, Tumblr pages, artistic drawings of our celebs, fan fiction - etc. We support each other by commenting on each other's review sites, and by retweeting our friends creativity to our own followers. Our mutual fangirling regularly leads to discussion of just about anything else going on in our lives: our jobs, kids, other shows we like, vacations, illness, love. Everything!"

I'd like to talk more next time about the safe spaces that ships provide. If you have had experience exploring an aspect of yourself -- personal, creative or otherwise -- that you can't do outside your shipping group, I'd like to hear about it. Please fill out the survey here. Thank you!

4 comments:

  1. I think you point out something that I generally don't like about our culture at the moment, as I think you hit the nail on the head with the analogies.

    It's like every kind of category or group created, is created because their is this need to polarize. One will argue that 'everyone should be heard', which it isn't that I don't agree with that, but more over what happens is almost every single person says this at the same time, it promotes arguments and segregational-cults that turn into big wars and it's every single kind from ships against other ships, or anti-ships against ships, as I feel pretty strongly that shipping and fan fiction is often used as way to express social justice concerns and isn't always just about the love or happiness of a character/or enjoyment of writing/entertainment, -but when you think about it this way, an extreme existentialist who says, "I don't have to care about my actions, because there is nothing out there to judge me, but me" vs: a dogmatic Theologian that says, "I must do this in the name of such and such.", both sets could justify "killing" (or whatever action) in the name or lack of name of "something".



    If anything I think it points out how scared we all currently are, and/or we're in some kind of identity crisis mode, because otherwise we wouldn't need to do these things, make these statements, treat others badly to force them to make their own groups, to the degrees we do.


    Another facet is also entertainment and priorities. -Not to begrudge Veronica Mars fans, as I would love their to be more of soem of my favorite series, but the kickstarter situation is amazing as it is shocking. Imagine if kikcstarter would be used to feed starving people, scientific pursuits, and/or help people with disabilities and/or illnesses?! First world is clinging to our films and television like never before...

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  2. I think I agree with you on some issues that have concerned me as well in our multimedia culture as well as in fandom at large. In my corner of fandom there has been a lot of outcry over everything lately to the point it seems ridiculous. There are people who go to fandom to escape drama, people who create drama, and people who want the middle road and will occasionally rant their opinion but who are mostly interested in keeping things positive. What kills me is that some of the people who create drama are doing so under a "social justice" flag and aren't called out for inappropriate/exaggerated use of triggering accusations. If you disagree with them, then the burden of proof falls on you not to be a homophobic, sexist, etc A**hole. That's when fandom communities can be polarizing or alienating.

    The right to speak is not the same as the need to speak. Sometimes, in our very narcissistic society, those things become confused. (I am aware of the irony of someone saying this in a comment section ^ _^ ) Learning to be silent and accepting is as much a skill as arguing and venting. So it is true that when everyone demands to be heard, no one can be listening.

    But, for the most part, I think fandom is a great way to become more aware of social justice issues in a positive environment. Those one or two people who rile everyone up aside, having a diverse group of people who share a love or identification with a particular character can utilize that common ground as a springboard for other issues and learning opportunities. And for those people who are alone in their everyday life, fandom can provide a means for which any of their quirks or other undesirable attributes (according to society) are accepted and maybe even loved. So when people band together to create art, I don't see it so much as lost opportunities for research or helping the poor, but another way people are contributing to their mental health and inspiring creativity. I know that almost nothing makes me happier than to see Star Trek live on under JJ Abrams' direction because I get so much inspiration from Spock and from a future in which these social justice issues have mostly been eradicated. This is huge when the news and most media focus on the negative and the post apocalyptic implications for our future. Fiction inspires us to have hope for the future. It inspires young girls and poc to be astronauts because they saw Uhura in a position of equality on the Enterprise. I do think that entertainment, just like vacations from stressful working environments, are important priorities too (but I understand where you are coming from).

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  3. Excellent article as usual! Community is such a hard word to define and within fandom, there are so many ways to feel either a part or not a part of the community. The internet can be all embracing or very polarizing. Most of the time I feel like it's a community you choose without the confines of location, social class, or age--leading one to feel equal and validated when one might not feel that way in real life. But because of that you can easily fall into the pitfall of accidentally insulting someone with a different life lens or miscommunication occurring over word choice and lack of visual context. I definitely have fallen into all those categories you described at different times and for different reasons. God, you could write multiple books on this subject!


    Thank you for the link to the PCA/ACA! I think we could all benefit from some academic terms and base language as we so often seem to be talking at each other rather than with each other in the shipping community.

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  4. I am so happy to see your name in comments again, sir!

    I think shipping can be both based on character and based on social justice. It doesn't have to be one thing to one person or to all people at any one time. I find myself reblogging social-justice posts as often as I do character love posts, because they are all part of my shipping
    experience. Love of character and ship has led me into communities where I've discovered new aspects of my own love of character and ship, and as in all communities, there's friction. I think the danger is to paint shipping as all one thing rather than all another -- it's perfectly
    possible to seek more representation for non-heteronormative narratives and to still feel as though these specific characters have a very specific chemistry that one likes to imagine realized. I recently ran across a very good post on the subject that looks at it in historical context.

    It's this sort of insight that being part of a shipping community gives me, and that broadens my horizons so that my shipping is no longer about just one thing. It's inclusive and it accepts many opinions and narratives. The one that it does not accept is the one that says "stop doing that, you're not allowed or qualified to feel that way." And that's when the walls go up. Granted, the people who are saying that are often saying it from their own perspective -- "I see the narrative this way" -- "I am right" rather than "you are wrong," but it's hard to hear it that way. Defenses get raised, thus ship wars, thus anti-shippers vs. shippers, etc. I don't have the answer as to how we come into a more inclusive place, but I think dialogues like this help. As long as we keep talking, we can't be completely in our own bunkers, and we may be able to come to a place where we can accept other narratives/interpretations as a part of the overall fan experience.

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