Oh dear. Is this what I think it is? Why, yes. It’s another rant! I haven’t done one of these in quite a while. So what am I taking up torch and pitchfork against today? None other than perhaps the sharpest of all double-edged swords to ever grace the worldwide web: fandom.
Well, not the concept of fandom as a whole, no. As a whole, I think they’re generally pretty fantastic. This purpose of this rant is not to target any single fandom either, so if you came to hear more about how Twilight is painfully and singlehandedly killing the vampire genre as we know it, kindly go anywhere else on the internet because that dead horse has been so thoroughly beaten it’s actually holding a Twilight book together. I will, however, mention that the catalyst for this rant was a question asked to fans of the recent incarnation of My Little Pony. Simply put, the question was “what are your opinions on shipping?” My personal response was initially rather brief, simply stating that I don’t particularly care for it. I later went back to edit my comment and expand on my remarks, and shortly afterward did so again. It occurred to me that I have a lot more to say on the subject- and related subjects- than anyone would want to read in a single Reddit comment. So here we go.
For those so fortunate as to be unaware, “shipping” refers to the often non-canonical romantic pairing of characters in a given series. It’s short for “relationship,” and that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. So what do I think of shipping? And by extension fan fiction, since that seems to be where the concept is most heavily used? (Fan art being a close contender, but more- much more- on that later.) Well, I don’t particularly care for it. The cornerstone of all shipping appears to be “the less probable the relationship is, the more romantic it is, and therefore the better my version of the story is.” It is THIS notion that gives shipping the bad reputation it inevitably gets. The pairings almost NEVER make even the smallest measurable amount of sense, and the authors simply ignore any canonically established character traits that might make the situation less convenient to write about, which is typically most –if not all- of them.
I have nothing against fan ficeidjkj
Sorry. As I was saying: I have nothing against fan fictiefkiohgh
Huh. I can’t seem to force my hands to finish typing that thought. I guess I’ll have to be honest, then. I pretty much hate fan fiction, so I have a lot against it. I’ll just say this to start: There is a reason the producers of the story (writers, artists, directors, developers, etc.) get paid shitloads of money to do what they do: THEY’RE ACTUALLY GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO. They understand their characters and how the universes they create work, they know how the characters would act in a given situation, and they know how likely they are to BE in that situation in the first place. THEY ARE PROFESSIONALS. THEY CREATED THE FUCKING CHARACTERS.
Now, regardless of my personal, highly biased opinions on the matter, there IS a right way to write a story using someone else’s material. Good fan fic-
Oh, for fuck’s sake, not again. Good fan fi-i-ic…t…
Come on, hands! It’s a legitimate concept!
GOOD FAN FICTION depicts the characters and universe of the story as closely to that written by the original creator as possible. Perhaps one in ten thousand fan-created stories actually accomplish some semblance of this, but it’s really not the fans’ fault the other thousands are terribly written. It’s just not possible to properly use somebody else’s characters the way they do. Look at any episodic (non story arc based) television series that has more than one writer. Doctor Who, for example. Ever notice how the main characters always seem to react somewhat differently to similar situations? That’s what happens when a writer has to try and match someone else’s established style. It might work, it might fool the majority of the audience, but there will be noticeable inconsistencies regardless.
Now put this power into the hands of somebody who ISN’T a professional writer, and DOESN’T understand even the characters’ most basic motivations. Most likely you will end up with a dozen or so pages of poorly set up and increasingly bland descriptions of Harry Potter making out with Draco Malfoy. In other words, you get bad shipping. "Oh, it's a fictional story. Stop taking it so seriously and insisting everything be realistic," you might say. Bullshit. It’s lazy, it’s insulting to the original writers, it’s insulting to the audience, and it’s insulting to the concept of fan fiction altogether because it IS. POSSIBLE. TO. WRITE. GOOD. FAN. FICTION. AND. THESE. PEOPLE. DON’T. EVEN. TRY.
If you’re going to ship two- or three, hell, any number of- characters who have no canonical business being together, you better have a DAMN GOOD and believable in-story justification for it. “Character X was secretly in love with Character Y the whole time but too afraid to show it,” DOES. NOT. COUNT. Has it ever been even SUGGESTED that it might be remotely PLAUSIBLE for these characters to suddenly fall in love with each other? If you can't honestly answer "yes" to that question, then your shipping is bad and you should feel bad. Just because it’s implausible doesn’t make it better.
Do you know why everyone makes fun of romance novels? It’s because they’re usually terribly written, full of clichéd, underdeveloped characters, and little more than vehicles for the sex scenes and fantasies the author really wanted to write about. And those are the ones that get published. Now think about that. The romance genre is subject to ruthless ridicule even when it’s considered good enough to try SELLING to people. What does that say about the quality of the material people on the internet write by the gigabyte for FREE, and base entirely on OTHER PEOPLE’S characters?
This may sound completely insane, but I’ve long believed that the best way to write fan fiction- aside from avoiding romance as a driving plot device like a plague- is by using original characters. That’s right, OCs. Before you start throwing things at me for encouraging this practice, hear me out. By creating original characters based on the rules of an existing story universe, you get the benefit of complete control over those characters’ motivations, actions and- most importantly- development, without having to worry about matching the style of the original writers. Not only can this make for a much more interesting story in general, it makes the universe of the story seem that much bigger by revolving around different characters doing different things, but still being affected by major events from the original story.
Hogwarts has hundreds of students learning to perform feats of magic. What were they all doing while Harry was out fighting Voldemort? What about all the Jedi who survived Order 66 and went into hiding when the Empire took over? What have they been up to in the 20 years between Episodes 3 and 4? (It’s actually really easy to forget this, but almost the entire Expanded Universe canon of Star Wars is essentially published fan fiction.) What’s going on everywhere else in the world while Aang and his friends are battling the Fire Nation? For that matter, what happened years before these stories began? What might happen years later? There is so much potential for creativity that is being wasted on trying to tell a story about characters who don’t fit into it, and the best solution is to make up your own.
Obviously this not only opens the city gates, but completely blows them off their hinges to make way for the invading armies of badly written OCs, but as long as nobody’s shipping them with main characters from the original story I consider this an acceptable compromise. (In fact, that alone is pretty much an outright death sentence for any semblance of credibility your OC may have.) I won’t go into too much more detail on OCs because there are pages and pages on this subject elsewhere and I don’t feel like going that far off track of the original subject of my ranting, but I stand by my assertion that they’re the best way to go about writing fan fiction. OCs and shipping are both terrible, but of the two, OCs are less so and can even be GOOD if properly utilized.
TL;DR: Shipping sucks, romance plots are only good for being mocked, and it's better to write an OC than make a half-assed justification for out-of-character behavior of an established character.
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