Ships and Fanfiction - a discussion

[alla]

[Trialia]

As someone who writes more fanfiction for this fandom than most people, I'm going to refrain from joining in this discussion further than this one post, because the angle from which you're approaching it to begin with makes me think that it would be unlikely I could avoid getting offended.

But, as far as the 'ship thing goes: I don't just write pairing fanfiction, but I enjoy exploring the dynamics between people, and leaving romance out of the picture completely would mean not exploring the full spectrum of what those relationships can be (and yes, I know what asexuality is and I identify that way - I'm talking about something even more profound than sexuality). I try not to go out of character with existing characters when I write them.

Where have you actually looked for fanfiction, Alla? I would recommend the myriadwords community on LiveJournal or the Yuletide stories in archiveofourown.org - a generally higher quality of work than is usually found at fanfiction.net.

[Priellan]

I don't really get into pairings either, personally, unless I'm just screwing around and bored and feel like making crack pairings for laughs. So I agree with you on that, alla, I guess. I don't see anything wrong with it unless it leads to arguments and flame wars and general stupidity, but I don't understand the appeal, either.

As far as fanfiction goes, I used to write it. A lot of the appeal that I see is that here are the characters you already know and love with a backdrop you already know and love, and you have ideas - why not see how they interact? It's also a way to explore things in the subject you're writing about that the author hasn't gone into - such as pairings. Maybe this is just me, but that's how I see it.

[SilveredBlue]

The reason I think people write fanfic is one that DD said herself, in one of her podcasts. When a universe is written well, a lot of people have the desire to get into that universe and 'play' there- and one of the ways to do that is fanfic.

Remember, DD herself wrote fanfic in the Star Trek universe for a very long time before YW. Professional fanfic it may have been, but it was fanfic none the less. (And I am quoting here.)

I think the line between the 'good' fic and the 'bad' fic is the level of 'sharing' inherent in the fic. If it is written purely for the writer to have fun and is uneditted, etc, then it has a high chance of being 'bad'. If, however, it's written with the idea of someone else reading it as well, then it will be edited and 'good'.

That is why, IMO, Yuletide is so consistantly good. When you're writing as a gift for someone else, you tend to do a lot more editing and thinking than you do when you write for pure play purposes.

Thus, I avoid fanfic.com (because of the high garbage level) and other purely 'play' fic sites and use Yuletide and the websites Triala mentioned.


As for ships-

I don't have a giant thesis. It's a way of passing the time between books, and most everyone loves romance, so it's just for fun.

[Birdhead]

I think Trialia hit it on the head, and it's applicable to both your questions (why write or read fanfiction, and why write or read romantic fanfiction.) Fanfiction is a chance to explore more fully the universe set out in books, or TV shows, and the beloved characters that inhabit those universes. One of the most interesting things about people is their relationships - with their siblings, with their friends, with their lovers. That's where the desire to explore those aspects come from: not to do so would be to ignore a part of the spectrum of human experience. Sometimes you want to see something that happens outside of canon, too. Or you want to answer a question, like, what if Dairine met the current Doctor (who)? What if Carmela became a wizard, why might she do that? What do Tom and Carl do when they're not fussing about Nita and Kit? What happened to them during Wizards at War when they lose their wizardry? Why does Joanne hate Nita so much? What if Nita, Kit, Dairine, and Carmela were all in a rock band together? Sometimes answering those questions means including romantic relationships, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it means writing something silly about Nita learning to play the drums (listen, Nita's dependable and the foundation of the series, obviously she's the rhythm section...)

Also, Alla, and I say this only because we've known each other for awhile, a lot of the tone of your post is a bit like "Ooh, look at the freaks, why are you guys so *weird*?" I know that wasn't intentional, but it's still a bit upsetting. People who write fanfiction (or eat mushrooms, or run marathons, or whatever unusual behaviour) are not required to explain or defend themselves to you.

[Silverclaw]

Why do people like "shipping"? Well, it can be lots of fun, especially if you have nothing to do. Obviously, most people don't really think their insane pairings will happen, but theorizing can be amusing. As for characters not belonging together, that's really a matter of opinion isn't it? There may be some fan out there who truly believes that Nita is destined to fall in love with Spot, (or something random like that), and they are as entitled to their opinion as anyone else. As for fanfiction, working with characters you didn't create can be a great writing exercise, even if nothing you come up with is fit to be read by anyone else. Also, there will always be "gaps" in books, where the writer left out information that wasn't that important, we can't ever know everything about the characters. People like to fill those gaps with their version of what happened.

[burningbright]

Personally, I tend to see relationships everywhere. I sort of 'ship by default, rather than intentionally. Ideas like "don't belong together" or "secondary to the story" are really just a matter of opinion. Characters are, in the end, dependent upon the interpretation of the reader, and characters one person feels don't belong together may seem like a very interesting couple to someone else. The pairing which springs most immediately to mind is Rayne (River/Jayne) from Firefly. There are all sorts of arguments for and against. I think it's interesting to take two characters who seem to have very little common and digging into the things that tie them together.

In the YW universe, relationships are pretty ambiguous, and that gets the wheels turning. Is Nita still interested in Ronan? If she is, is Kit jealous? Are Dairine and Roshaun really "just friends"? And what about Tom and Carl? It all depends on how you interpret the texts. I've found that the audiobooks weight it pretty heavily towards Nita/Kit and Dairine/Roshaun in my head, while the books themselves are a little more neutral.

Shipping battles are a whole 'nother planet--that's the point where I think people tend to get excessively overwrought, and it's why I tend to not participate in strongly polarized fandoms. To me, the fun is in figuring out what's going on inside the characters' heads, and thinking about where the author might go with their relationships.

I like fanfiction for pretty much the same reason--it's a chance to explore, to fill in the blanks. I only dipped a toe into YW fanfic recently, when I was thinking about what might have happened on the moon between Dairine and Roshaun during Wizard's Holiday. I really enjoyed the chance to theorize about what might have happened, given the few references we had and their individual characters. I have the same complaint about fanfic that you do--that most choosy readers have, I think--which is that a lot of it is just bad. No two ways about it, a lot of it is either badly spelled, poorly punctuated, sloppily plotted, totally untrue to the characters, or any combination of the above. There's a lot of separating wheat from chaff in reading fanfiction. The good ones can be really good--someone who captures the voice and style of the author, and who really puts effort into maintaining the integrity of the characters (and proofs and edits) can create a very enjoyable story. For those who aspire to be professional authors, fanfiction can be a very useful exercise in exploring the styles of professionals they admire and would like to emulate.

There are a lot of reasons to enjoy 'shipping and fanfiction, but they just depend on mindset. If you're very set on canon, they probably won't do much for you. If you want to read between the lines (and the chapters and the books), they can be a lot of fun.

[FragmentsofReality]

I will freely admit that I am a fanfiction addict. I've been registered on ff.net (fanfiction.net) for almost 3 years now, and I was knocking about the site long before registering, another 2 or 3 years before that. I just...love it. It's a chance to take characters and settings you've long been attached to and filling in the gaps in the story, or changing elements to form other possible branches the stories could have pursued, or just throwing people and things together to see what happens.

I could no more deny there is bad fanfiction out there than I could deny there are stars in the sky, but being out of character does not necessarily for a bad story make. Holding too tightly to canon when exploring a world of fanon will do nothing but give you a headache. Using Harry Potter as the most obvious and readily available example - canon Harry is not dark in the slightest, right? But I have read fics where he is - where he took offense to the fact that the Wizarding World was trying to force him to face an evil wizard because of a prophecy when he was no more than eleven, so he decides to do the Wizarding World no favors and sometimes even turns his back on the whole conflict. This is not canon!Harry, but the story itself, when read, is not horrible. Alternate universes are not necessarily bad, or genderbenders, timetravel, etc. Bad fanfiction stems from poor writing ability, not the scenarioes, characters, or behaviors displayed in the story. One doesn't have to emulte the writing style of an author exactly to produce good stories with his or her characters.

As far as shipping goes...I'm an avid shipper. Like burningbright, I have the kind of mind that sees ships in everything I see or watch. I operate by "don't knock it 'til you try it." I will read canon, slash, femmeslash, timetravel-esque, generation gap, crack, and occasionally cross-species. Some things do squick me - Hedwig/Voldemort comes to mind - but overall I'll go with anything as long as the writing's decent. I do prefer some pairings over others and will occasionally debate the merits of pairings with people who try to bash my stuff, but overall shipping wars are pointless. Pairings are in the eye of the beholder, and no matter how much you believe X belongs with Y, someone else believes Y belongs with Z, and that's perfectly okay. Just XY was in the books or YZ makes sense, doesn't mean you can't throw Cand z together wither, just to see what happens and if it would work.

It sounds like what you're looking for is a continuation of your series, not fanfiction. Fanfiction is not SUPPOSED to be canon - it's a world here anyone can take characters they love and do with them what they will, to fulfill all the dreams and 'happily-ever-afters" or to explore possibilities that were never covered in the original material.

So while you may not find much worth in non-canon writing, know that there are several million, possibly billion people who do enjoy the realm of fanfiction.

Also, for anyone who may have been turned off of ff.net by earlier comments - while a lot of garbage is present among ff.net, true, it is also the single largest collective fanfiction site, with some real gems that often can't be found anywhere else. The sorting may require a bit more effort, but the site is very organized and provides nothing if not variety.

[SilveredBlue]

It's a chance to take characters and settings you've long been attached to and filling in the gaps in the story, or changing elements to form other possible branches the stories could have pursued, or just throwing people and things together to see what happens.

Exactly. Putting aside the shipping aspect, the idea of playing in a universe is very appealing. It's there, fully formed, with characters and and a plotline and a setting, and you get to tell the story the way you want it to go, or explore character dynamics that aren't fully fleshed out, or even transplant the characters and plot into an alternate universe- one of my personal favorites. ^.^ For example, I know a wonderful fanfiction author (ncfan on FF.net, if anyone is interested) who devotes her writing to short, poignant "one-shots" that focus on minor characters, backstories, and the emotions of characters during certain scenes. It's fascinating to see the tiny moments that the author or mangaka could not spend time on due to space constraints.

(Oh, and hello, Fragments of Reality! I'm an old member who went on hiatus and is back now. Nice to meet you!)

As for shipping itself, I agree with Tria. It's again a lot of fun to imagine a dynamic between characters, and even if it's "crack" or very non-canon- say, Lone Power/Nita- getting characters into a situation where they might fall in love is both amusing and a mental exercise. Also, some people love to play matchmaker- myself included.

Shipping battles, though, are another thing entirely. People can get very involved with their 'ship, and it turns into almost a turf war. I don't condone shipping battles at all unless it's a friendly debate, because it just ends up in hurt feelings on both sides. I know from personal experience how scary they can get, because one of my favorite 'ships has a comparatively small but rabid opposite ship, and the two tend to butt heads often. It's not very pleasant, and I try to stay far, far away from it all. -_-