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selenakThe other day, a friend of mine wondered in which fandom the 'shipper wars started. She brought up the peaceful days of Highlander fandom, until I reminded her that while there were no 'shipper wars per se, there were wars about anything to do with the Horsemen episodes, Methos, Cassandra and Duncan. This didn't illuminate us as to where the 'shipper wars started, though - does anyone have any idea? I know that Voyager fans were dreadfully upset about the never-quite-canon 'ship of J/C, but since I'm mostly a TNG and DS9 fangirl as far as Star Trek is concerned, I'm not sure whether there were ever wars between followers of different relationships.
In the Harry Potter fandom, there are, I believe, wars between Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione believers, but those seem to be confined to the Sugar Quill. Meanwhile, the lj world is more into slash and inflicting Draco Malfoy or Severus Snape (who is fascinating, but really no material for romance, leaving aside the entire student/teacher squick which is a big one for me) on any of the above anyway. And the Remus/Sirius'ship appears to be uncontested, though the imp of the perverse (pace, E.A. Poe) makes me want to point out we have more canon evidence for James/Sirius every time I see someone proclaim that "theirloveissocanon". At any rate, HP isn't old enough as a fandom to have started 'shipper wars.
The reason why there are so many of those in the Jossverse is, imo, that as opposed to, say, Farscape, or Babylon 5 for that matter, the source text itself offers various compelling relationships instead of just one. I mean, season 4 of Farscape might have dillusioned some people about John/Aeryn, but as far as I can see J/A'shippers still dominate the fandom, and why not? Farscape has never offered another romantic relationship for either John or Aeryn with the same kind of build-up and narrative space. And while you might regard, say, John/Chiana or Aeryn/Crais (until the later's death) as possibilities, there never were serious expectations the show would actually go there.
Whereas in BTVS, and to a lesser extend AtS, the shows themselves offer various possibilities. Buffy/Angel might have been the uncontested (by the show's narrative) pairing for these two during the first three seasons, but then first Riley and later Spike got equal screentime to the departed Angel in scenes with Buffy, and at least the Buffy/Spike relationship got a longer, more detailed development. Meanwhile, on AtS, the Angel/Darla relationship was fleshed out via flashbacks and present-day storylines to a degree that enabled viewers to make a plausible argument that, in retrospect, Angel's relationship with Buffy was partly still all about Darla. Xander/Cordy got less screentime than Xander/Anya. Willow/Tara got slightly more than Willow/Oz. And those are only the relationships actually consumated on screen; then there's the entire subtexty fun of Buffy/Faith, for example. Or the relationships presented as strong and close though not romantic, which nonetheless are compelling enough for some viewers to wish for a romantic interpretation as well, such as Willow/Xander or Buffy/Xander, or Anya/Giles. With some many possibilities presented in the primary text, I suppose it was inevitable that conflict would arise in the fandom.
I'm curious how my theory works in other fandoms, though. Can anyone think of a fandom with 'shipper wars, with a movie/show/book as their canon source material which doesn't present various pairings as equally valid to begin with?
Speaking of fannish wars, they have nothing on the decades old-controversy on anything to do with Sylvia Plath. John Brownlow, the scriptwriter of the biopic Sylvia which will open this fall, put it this way in an entertaining article he wrote about the process of creating the script: "The Plathites and the Hughesites were involved in a feud of the order of Godzilla vs Mothra." The entire article, Who's afraid of Sylvia Plath, is here, and the trailer for Sylvia can be seen here.
The marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes does make for a compelling, dramatic story, and I love them both as poets, but watching those first images of the movie, playing out some iconish imagery from their lives (their first meeting which SP described in her journal and TH in one of the Birthday Letters poems, for example), made me feel uneasy in a way I never did with, say, a film about Elizabeth I (though I'm even more interested in and partisan of her). The former feels intrusive in a way the later does not. I wonder whether the temporal distance makes all the difference?
Lastly, for X-Men aficiniados: a superb vignette about Mystique here.
In the Harry Potter fandom, there are, I believe, wars between Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione believers, but those seem to be confined to the Sugar Quill. Meanwhile, the lj world is more into slash and inflicting Draco Malfoy or Severus Snape (who is fascinating, but really no material for romance, leaving aside the entire student/teacher squick which is a big one for me) on any of the above anyway. And the Remus/Sirius'ship appears to be uncontested, though the imp of the perverse (pace, E.A. Poe) makes me want to point out we have more canon evidence for James/Sirius every time I see someone proclaim that "theirloveissocanon". At any rate, HP isn't old enough as a fandom to have started 'shipper wars.
The reason why there are so many of those in the Jossverse is, imo, that as opposed to, say, Farscape, or Babylon 5 for that matter, the source text itself offers various compelling relationships instead of just one. I mean, season 4 of Farscape might have dillusioned some people about John/Aeryn, but as far as I can see J/A'shippers still dominate the fandom, and why not? Farscape has never offered another romantic relationship for either John or Aeryn with the same kind of build-up and narrative space. And while you might regard, say, John/Chiana or Aeryn/Crais (until the later's death) as possibilities, there never were serious expectations the show would actually go there.
Whereas in BTVS, and to a lesser extend AtS, the shows themselves offer various possibilities. Buffy/Angel might have been the uncontested (by the show's narrative) pairing for these two during the first three seasons, but then first Riley and later Spike got equal screentime to the departed Angel in scenes with Buffy, and at least the Buffy/Spike relationship got a longer, more detailed development. Meanwhile, on AtS, the Angel/Darla relationship was fleshed out via flashbacks and present-day storylines to a degree that enabled viewers to make a plausible argument that, in retrospect, Angel's relationship with Buffy was partly still all about Darla. Xander/Cordy got less screentime than Xander/Anya. Willow/Tara got slightly more than Willow/Oz. And those are only the relationships actually consumated on screen; then there's the entire subtexty fun of Buffy/Faith, for example. Or the relationships presented as strong and close though not romantic, which nonetheless are compelling enough for some viewers to wish for a romantic interpretation as well, such as Willow/Xander or Buffy/Xander, or Anya/Giles. With some many possibilities presented in the primary text, I suppose it was inevitable that conflict would arise in the fandom.
I'm curious how my theory works in other fandoms, though. Can anyone think of a fandom with 'shipper wars, with a movie/show/book as their canon source material which doesn't present various pairings as equally valid to begin with?
Speaking of fannish wars, they have nothing on the decades old-controversy on anything to do with Sylvia Plath. John Brownlow, the scriptwriter of the biopic Sylvia which will open this fall, put it this way in an entertaining article he wrote about the process of creating the script: "The Plathites and the Hughesites were involved in a feud of the order of Godzilla vs Mothra." The entire article, Who's afraid of Sylvia Plath, is here, and the trailer for Sylvia can be seen here.
The marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes does make for a compelling, dramatic story, and I love them both as poets, but watching those first images of the movie, playing out some iconish imagery from their lives (their first meeting which SP described in her journal and TH in one of the Birthday Letters poems, for example), made me feel uneasy in a way I never did with, say, a film about Elizabeth I (though I'm even more interested in and partisan of her). The former feels intrusive in a way the later does not. I wonder whether the temporal distance makes all the difference?
Lastly, for X-Men aficiniados: a superb vignette about Mystique here.
