On ships and labels
I saw a post the other day about how shipping Rey with Space Nazi
Kylo was totally wrong but shipping her with Also A Space Nazi Phasma
was totally a-ok because it’s shipped differently! It involves redemption arcs and headcanons that she was brainwashed
into killing all those people! – and it just made me think about how
very, very little ‘shipping’ actually means as a thing.
[It’s probably fair to mention around here that
I’ve actually never been 100% comfortable with calling the First Order
‘space Nazis’, even though everyone does, but that could be a whole
‘nother post]
Anyway, looking at wider fandom, shipping culture is just weird and confusing at best. Like…saying ‘I ship X/Y’ could mean any one (or more) of so many things:
- This ship isn’t canon, but I think it will be in the future. And I love this story’s writers, so I ship whatever they ship!
- This ship is queerbaiting, very blatantly, but it’s the closest thing I have to representation in any of the shows I watch so I’m going to root for them despite knowing doing so is pointless. Thanks, writers.
- I think X could plausibly fall in love with Y. Y loving them back is massively OOC/problematic in general but I’m fascinated at what X’s perspective must be like. I’m a sucker for unrequited love.
- This relationship is abusive and portrayed as a bad thing in canon, but I’m fascinated by it, and write their relationship as abusive in fanfiction. I want to know it could ever have got to that point, y’know?
-
This relationship is abusive and portrayed as a bad thing in canon, but I
shall portray it as something light and fluffy in my fanfiction as a form of wish fulfillment, completely ignoring canon. -
This relationship is abusive and portrayed as a bad thing in canon, but I
shall portray it as something light and fluffy in my fanfiction as a form of wish fulfillment, writing around canon. For example, this abusive husband was only abusive because he was possessed by an alien at the time, see? That’s my headcanon! -
This relationship is abusive and portrayed as a bad thing in canon, but I
shall portray it as something light and fluffy in my fanfiction because I think they’re both smokin’ hot and I want to see them doing it. No story, just sex. -
This relationship is abusive and portrayed as a bad thing in canon, but I
shall portray it as something light and fluffy in my fanfiction because that pisses off people whom I don’t like.
It’s impossible to (for lack of a better word) police any of that! When all of those things fall under the same umbrella, there’s no way of telling Person #4 apart from Person #8. Then there’s all the other questions. Why are you shipping that as a form of wish fulfillment? Oh, it’s none of my business? But ‘I ship X/Y’ is on your blog, it’s my business now. What do you mean, no it isn’t? And so on. Is it okay to ship Rey/Ben Solo if you’ve developed a whole alternative universe where Kylo Ren is actually Ben Solo’s evil clone, Been Solo? (Ahem.) Is it okay to ship Pewey if Major Dewey is a woman now? Enjonine if Eponine is a man? Should I tag this fic [victim’s name]/[abuser’s name] if the story is about how the victim came to terms with their abuse, or is that in some way romanticizing it?
How far does transformative work go when everyone has a right to transform it? What bits have you chosen to transform, and why, and are you sure you’re not influenced in any way by all those various insidious forces in and around society? Did you see the name of an unrealistic, problematic ship and take it as a challenge? Did you want to write this terrible thing well, like the next Vladimir Nabokov?
There aren’t really easy answers (or any answers) to any of those questions. But I do think we could use some more…I don’t know, shipping subgroups, I guess. Like,
you could write a hopelessly OOC Star Wars story where Rey decides what she
really needs in her life is a little more mass murder and she ditches
her friends, swoons into the arms of Kylo Ren without question and never
looks back, or you could write a careful, considered story with a feminist message where Kylo Ren realizes he feels something
for Rey, realizes she’ll never love him back, seeks to turn her to the
dark side, fails, observes her being happy with Finn, ends up stabbing
himself with his lightsaber just as he once stabbed his father, is
remembered by Rey only as a pathetic man whose concept of love, even,
was hopelessly warped…
It’s just that both of those fics would be tagged ‘Reylo’. Which makes NO SENSE.