on shipping

[snick_backup]

Sometimes, I really hate that all purpose '/' symbol. We mean so many different things by it and read so many different things into it. Like, when I see Dean/OFC on a fic, I assume it's a fic with happily-ever-after curtainfic tendencies featuring a particular bland sort of female character with a whiff of self-insertion about her. This is absolutely not fair, because Dean/OFC does not necessarily imply either curtainfic or bland female character, and anyway sometimes self-insert fics are freaking amazing. Dean/OFC doesn't necessarily even imply shippiness as such. That slash doesn't have to imply that the pairing it glues together is endgame or that the author has any particular investment in the pairing's longevity. In Dean's case, it might just mean sex; while my life is a genfic, Dean's is very much not.

I've been worrying at this notion recently because I have a Dean-centric longfic I've been poking at for probably a year now which may or may not involve some Dean/OFC. I am thus far undecided. This OFC is, behind Sam and Dean, the most important character in the fic, and on top of that I'm kind of in love with her (always risky). The question is, will there be sex or will there not be sex? Clearly if the inclusion of the '/' depends on one sex scene, then we know this is not a shippy fic. It does not end shippily. Yet, do I want to sink the fic and drive away a significant portion of the readership by giving Dean a one-night stand worth noting in the pairing column? After all, I have those assumptions about Dean/OFC, and I LIKE het fic, which cannot be assumed in this fandom.

Over at seasonal_spuffy the mods have always been very relaxed about what Spike/Buffy means, exactly; when I was on the mod team, we let everyone self-regulate, and that seemed to work fine. If it had Spike and Buffy, or it had Spike thinking about Buffy or Buffy thinking about Spike, or some third party thinking about Spike and Buffy together in pretty much any context, well, we were cool. Presumably the authors liked Spuffy, or they wouldn't be there, and what more could we ask?

For that matter, when I say "I ship so-and-so," what do I even mean? Is that pairing an OTP for me? Is it one of many pairings for those characters which I will happily read? Do I require that pairing get a happy ending in all fic I read featuring the pairing? Do I consider the relationship between these characters to be healthy or functional? Do I just like slamming those two characters together in any scenario I darned well please, regardless of outcome? WHO KNOWS.

Finally, have a list of ways to mean/interpret the pesky 'A/B':

• A and B will live happily ever following this fic
  
• A and B flirt in this fic
  
• A and B have some form of sexual encounter in this fic, possibly including non-con
  
• A thinks about B and/or B thinks about A in some kind of romantic/sexual fashion in this fic
  
• The relationship between A and B is the entire point of this fic
  
• A and B are in a relationship in this fic, which fact has no effect on any of the action or themes discussed
  
• A and B have Repressed! Feelings! for each other in this fic which are never explicitly expressed in the text (I suspect this includes a lot of Sam/Dean fic, especially moody short pieces)
  
• I ship this characters, so obviously any interaction they have is shippy (seriously, is it possible for Spuffyites to write Spike+Buffy gen? I'm not sure it is)
  
• These characters have so much history that all interaction between them is necessarily sexually/romantically charged (think Angel/Darla or Damon/Katherine)
  
• At some point following the end of this fic, A and B will engage in a romantic/sexual relationship, even though there is no direct indication of this in the fic (often colloquially referred to as 'pre-slash' on that side of fandom)

I know I do not have them all, but there's a start. Additions?

Original entry posted at Dreamwidth. Feel free to reply here or there. ( DW replies)

Comments

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

OH MY LORD I COULD NEVER WRITE SPIKE + BUFFY GEN. Um... godspeed to anyone who can?

On the other hand, I would have no problem writing Buffy and Angel gen...

[snickfic]

See? I think it's largely in the author's head, often based on factors that having to do with the actual contents of the story. Which makes it hard to know for certain whether the Spike/Buffy, Buffy/Angel fic by the unknown author is a Spuffy fic with references to Bangel, or the other way around. And that's an important distinction!

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think I write Spike + Buffy gen almost exclusively. Except for that pesky flirting and repressed feeling and thinking part. 'Cos that's just part of their deal. I find their years-long slow burn compelling.

My first fic was post-S2, and it might just qualify as actual gen. That doesn't mean it's any good, though. ;-)

I have to say that it wouldn't have occurred to me to assume that Dean/OFC meant the story was going to end happily. Like, ever. Not that I know much about SPN fic, but still!

[snickfic]

Now that I think about it, yeah, I think your post-S2 fic might qualify. Definitely I've seen much more shippy takes on that scenario.

I have to say that it wouldn't have occurred to me to assume that Dean/OFC meant the story was going to end happily. Like, ever.

LOL. I assume this based mostly on having read a fair few Dean/OFC fics that went exactly that way.

[ruuger]

And suddenly I want to try to write Spike + Buffy gen... ;)

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

LOL. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had this reaction.

[snickfic]

Hey, as long as it's Spike and Buffy, you know we'll read it. :)

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I guess I use "A/B" when there's a sexual or romantic interaction between the two characters... For gen, I just write "A, B" (though I might also write "A/B!friendship" if it's specifically meant as a friendship fic). But you're right, it's all ambiguous, and I often don't get it. As I don't get rating. Seriously, why do we have ratings if I've seen "T" fics that were more explicit than some "M" fics?

[snickfic]

Seriously, why do we have ratings if I've seen "T" fics that were more explicit than some "M" fics?

I think some people just don't understand the concept of ratings. Like, maybe this is an AO3-specific problem, but I ran across this one author who marked one-shots composed mostly of explicit sex as "all audiences." And I was like, "I clicked on this story specifically to avoid accidentally reading porn at work! Stop it!"

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I tend to not care about the rating, because I generally judge whether or not I'll read by the pairings/relationships and the summary. I think there's a fine line between NC-17 and R sometimes, but not so much with NC-17 and PG-13.

Mostly, I like having AO3, but get very grumpy at it whenever attempting to look for anything. I think no one there understands what the ratings are (and then there's the usual amount of authorial interpretation). :/

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

I think some people just don't understand the concept of ratings.

That's no excuse :(. I'm sorry, but. I spent my entire fandom life in a place that didn't use ratings or warnings, but when I started writing in English and noticed that people DO use them here, I just bloody LEARNED. And asked for advice the first few times. I'm still a bit fuzzy on details, and sometimes I might rate higher just in case, but still. You come to a new place, you learn the rules.

(I'm sorry, I have strong feelings about this... Mostly because I really just learned to use ratings and warnings a few months ago, and I know that it's hardly rocket science.)

[rahirah]

I could write Spike & Buffy gen, but what would be the point? Unless I were writing it in a totally canon-compliant scenario, I guess...

[snickfic]

*scratches head* I guess the point would be the same as writing gen for any other pair of characters? I mean, it'd maybe make less sense for you specifically, since your fic is all in one 'verse. But in general, I don't see why Spuffy genfic requires any more justification than any other genre.

[rahirah]

I didn't mean 'what is the point of writing Spike and Buffy gen,' but 'what would be the motivation for a shipper to write Spike and Buffy gen?' It seems to me that if you ship characters, you see them in a specific way, even if they aren't actually in a relationship in the story you're writing. You see them as having the potential for a relationship, even if they don't actually have one. Whereas if you're writing gen it seems that you'd be... denying that that possibility exists, I guess? Or not even aware that the possibility exists would be closer to the mark, I suppose.

I guess this gets into the question of what is gen, because the definitions of that vary pretty widely. I could absolutely write a story where Buffy and Spike are not in a relationship, that didn't even mention relationships, but I suspect it would still be informed by my belief that they could be in a relationship. Writing a story which was totally neutral/indifferent to the possibility they might be in a relationship someday is probably something I could also do, if I worked at it, but the whole reason i wanted to write about them in the first place was that I thought a relationship between the two of them would be interesting. Take that away, and I lose much of my impetus to write about them.

[samsom.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that if you ship characters, you see them in a specific way, even if they aren't actually in a relationship in the story you're writing. You see them as having the potential for a relationship, even if they don't actually have one. Whereas if you're writing gen it seems that you'd be... denying that that possibility exists, I guess?

Yes. Exactly.

I could absolutely write a story where Buffy and Spike are not in a relationship, that didn't even mention relationships, but I suspect it would still be informed by my belief that they could be in a relationship.

And yes again. I've written plenty where Angel and Cordelia aren't in a relationship, mostly during BtVS, but there's always some sort of tension in the way they deal with each other. To not do that would be...contrary to how I see the two characters. And how I see them is the foundation of how I see the shows and fandom.

Very well said.

[snickfic]

Ah, I see. So you follow more the "If you're a shipper, everything you write is shippy" train of thought.

I think this question of "what is gen" is the complement to "what does shipping mean."

SPN fandom has spent a lot of time (also vitriol and hurt feelings) trying to hash this out over the question of Sam-Dean vs. Sam/Dean. Most folks in the fandom are in it for Sam and Dean but also have very strong feelings about the '&' vs. the '/' - comparable, I suppose, to people who love Spike&Xander gen vs. people who ship Spander. And yet, I (who prefer the '&') can often comfortably read fics marked Sam/Dean because the shippiness is more in the author's intent than in the text; they see canon as shippy and write their fic the same, and I don't see canon as shippy and so can happily read their "shippy" fics as gen.

Take that away, and I lose much of my impetus to write about them.

Fair enough. I think that's another aspect of shippiness that people differ on. I have pairings I 'ship,' but really I just want them to spend lots of time together in any context, romantic or not. (There's a Vampire Diaries ship that's my best example for this.)

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

And here's where not being a shipper helps so much. I don't have a preconception about what a fic should contain, / or no /. I'd read any of those versions of / that you suggest, for pairings I really like, but also with a whole mix of characters. And always with OC pairings (if I like the author anyway and trust them to write an interesting OC). OC pairings are the least threatening to me - there's no head-canon rewrite going on if one party is outside canon.

It's a little different in SPN/RPF where I do have strong pairing preferences for reasons which have nothing to do with literary merit. But even there, I'd be much more likely to read /OC than /Castiel or /JDM.

But I think I'm odd that way.

(I don't think I've written Spike&Buffy gen btw, but only for lack of reason to do so. I churn out loads of Spuffy because it's the part of the fandom that's most alive and I happen to have a lot of friends in that shippy area, so I've written for Fag Ends and Seasonal Spuffy when the prompts pleased me. Plus the Rulesverse, where I added a B plot in Spuffydom after a while because it seemed interesting. I am *not* a Spuffy shipper as such, though it seems quite hard to convince people of that...)

[snickfic]

It's a little different in SPN/RPF where I do have strong pairing preferences for reasons which have nothing to do with literary merit. But even there, I'd be much more likely to read /OC than /Castiel or /JDM.

But the disinterest in Castiel has to do with characterization, right? You don't see him as shippable? Or do his very blue orbs just not appeal to you? (A bunch of us were talking fic eyeball descriptions the other day; don't mind me.)

I am *not* a Spuffy shipper as such, though it seems quite hard to convince people of that...

You just keep telling us that. Maybe we'll believe you someday. :D

[pocochina.livejournal.com]

That, or sometimes people use the / to denote all interactions between characters, even non-romantic ones, and then I'm totally lost! Especially if it's two characters that have an interesting dynamic but would squick me as a pairing. People, use the dash, please!

[snickfic]

Yes! I have learned to assume nothing with petzipellepingo's link roundups, for example. Except sometimes I assume a certain pairing must be gen, and then follow the link and am startled.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of "/" as indicating a romantic pairing, but not necessarily a sexual one? Though, of course, those are often the same thing, and there is not actually a whole lot of difference between my Spuffy and my gen, except the Spuffy comes from a place of 'the characters have obvious romancy feelings,' because I don't think I wrote anything pre-S6.

[snickfic]

But then there's all those highly unromantic prompts on the kink meme - the noncon and the slavefic, etc.

[ghostyouknow27.livejournal.com]

I have definitely read slavefic that *thought* it was romantic, lol. But also, those are the sexy ones. Clearly sex warrants an '/'.

I should have said, "sexual and/or romantic behavior/situations and/or authorial intent."

[quinara]

Yeah, I agree with ghostyouknow27 - I take '/' to mean that there's a romantic slant to the relationship, if only in the author's head. To me, it's just another label for how the fic is intended, so I take it like any other genre marking. Since my reading of the show is fairly stable, I find knowing which characters the author thinks are romantically inclined towards one another to often be a useful way of telling if I'm going to get along with the characterisation in the fic. For example, the only Spike-Buffy gen I've seen was of the 'I'm so glad you think the feelings have fizzled out too - thanks for being so supportive about my new relationship with [random character], Spike/(as in alternatively)Buffy' type. Which... Simply doesn't depict the characters I'm interested in reading about.

Having said that, it is often the case that I like my Spuffy shippiness to be the not-very-conflict-heavy subplot to a much more 'gen style' action/adventure business, but I really tend to find my characters '/' vs. '&' status more about characterisation than anything else.

[snickfic]

To me, it's just another label for how the fic is intended, so I take it like any other genre marking. Since my reading of the show is fairly stable, I find knowing which characters the author thinks are romantically inclined towards one another to often be a useful way of telling if I'm going to get along with the characterisation in the fic.

*nod* That's an excellent point. I think it possibly tends to be more true with Spuffy than with other ships, though? I mean, people will write, say, Tara/Oz just because it sounds like fun, whereas it seems most people who write Spuffy have strong feelings about it. (Or else they don't care for Spuffy but want to try their hand at angsty explicit sex, in which case they write an S6 Spuffy one-shot. I can think of at least three Spuffy non-shippers for whom this is the case.)

I guess what I'm saying is, I suspect less polarizing ships tend to have a wider range of possible characterizations associated with them. Faith/Giles, for example - I've read everything from happy functional domesticity to things where they're sleeping with each other because they're both hung up on Buffy.

[quinara]

Well, obviously it's about individual impressions! For me personally, I don't tend to read that many random!ship fics... To take Tara/Oz as an example, that wouldn't really appeal to me, if only because I'm not that interested in a Tara who is for whatever reason attracted to men.

I'm not saying it tells me everything about the characterisation, otherwise, though, which seems to be how you're taking me - and certainly not the shape of how that relationship will manifest. There's still everything else you get in a fic header to help me judge. I don't think the purpose of A/B is to tell you exactly how A and B are going to relate to each other, just that the fic is going to be based on the idea that some way some how the two characters could be romantically inclined towards each other, which could manifest in any number of different ways. For some characters that's enough to make me think I don't want to read a fic - for others it's compatible enough with my understanding to make me think I'll give it a go if the rest of the header interests me - for Spuffy it's a necessity if I'm reading a fic about the pair of them (because experience tells me I've found all Spike&Buffy irritating).

[rahirah]

I did read a story by Yahtzee which would qualify as Spike and Buffy gen, I guess - it was set in S4, and the two of them interacted quite a lot, and it was very good and quite funny, but not relationshippy in the slightest. It's a pity she hated Spike's S5 storyline to the point that it made her leave Buffy fandom, because she wrote him very well.

[snickfic]

Is this on her website? I don't remember this one. I've always assumed she hated Spike because he's so non-existent in her fics.

I didn't know it was his S5 storyline that pushed her out of the fandom, either. I knew Something Big happened, but I've never seen details.

[rahirah]

It used to be on her website. I think she was OK with evil!Spike, but despite claiming to be a gen writer, she was a B/A shipper at heart, and she hated Spike's redemption plotline and the affair with Buffy. She tried just leaving him out of her stories for a little, but I guess it didn't work. (One of the last things she wrote was a Buffy/Giles story that was possibly the most tepid endorsement of that ship I've ever read, reeking of "Dear God, pair her up with ANYONE but Spike!")

[samsom.livejournal.com]

Buh? I've read quite a few of Yahtzee's AtS fic, and kind of thought of her as a C/A shipper, even though she was seriously canon-compliant about the shippiness between them. She wrote straight up C/A fic under the name Dazzle, though.

And her breakup with the Whedonverse was a combination of Cordelia's s4 storyline and Spike's entry into AtS in s5.

Here's a link to her AtS-fic:

http://www.thechicagoloop.net/yahtzee/chivalry/index.htm

(yep, I'm a fangirl)

[rahirah]

Oh, man, she wrote Phoenix Burning, THE long plotty B/A futurefic epic. I think she honestly liked C/A too - her thing was, she claimed to be a canon writer, so she'd write whatever was canon. But when canon had Spike fall for Buffy... she couldn't hack that, and gave up. (I can't blame her for giving up over Cordelia's S4 plot, though.)

[quinara]

See, I never much like Yahtzee's stuff, which was always a pain because she was recced everywhere in the early days. I can't really remember her Spike, but I think he got categorised in my head as 'too brittle for me', like quite a few other Spikes were in the day and have been since.

[rahirah]

Too brittle? :is curious:

I found it hard to get into a number of her BtVS stories. I tried to read Phoenix Burning just because it was this massively-recced classic, but it just didn't grab me. Maybe because she did try to stick strickly to canon, her work lacked that... visceral quality that a lot of fanfiction has. They seemed more like Official Tie-In Novels (though vastly better-written than most OTINs.) I think perhaps the reason I ended up liking that S4 one with Spike better was because there seemed to be some authorial passion invested in it, even if it was on a subject I didn't agree with. (Spike's character arc in that one was "I may have a chip in my head, but I'm still evil, gosh darn it!")

Weirdly, I didn't find that problem as much with her AtS stuff.

[quinara]

Oh dear, I'm going to make some sweeping generalisations now and I can't even remember if Yahtzee's Spike did fall into this category... But I'll try to explain, if only because 'I may have a chip in my head, but I'm still evil, gosh darn it!' makes me think that it might well have fitted.

Basically, you don't see it much these days, but in my head there was always a category of Spike characterisation that usually came from people who saw S2 as the glory days and who (though this is entirely presumption on my part) didn't have the sensibility for bad guys that tallied with the Blackadder-type tradition of anti-heroes I was much more accustomed to. These stories seemed to go for Spike as a a blunt (and therefore brittle) instrument of crudity and crassness, without much agenda other than that he's a jerk who likes being a jerk, who the writers like because jerks are fun(?). I, on the other hand, preferred Spike as an evil-going-on-smudgy character who (as I could perceive) was slightly more witty and subtle and who did things not because he was intrinsically a jerk, but because he was having fun playing with people, or else because he wanted something - ie. a much more Blackadder-like figure (and I cannot recall if you've seen Blackadder at all, but I'm hoping it's a common enough reference even across the pond? Blackadder II with maybe a dash of III is what I'm thinking of mostly). To be fair, as far as canon is concerned there's a lot of leeway in both directions about Spike's intelligence and general dickishness, but in general I like stories that are full of clever people with subtle agendas, rather than people who stomp around making offensive remarks.

It's sort of like the inverse of woobie!Spike, for me: while there's one cuddly strand of characterisation that assumes Spike cries at every minute turn of emotional upheaval, is completely misunderstood and never bites back at any of the harshness done to him, and generally only wants to curl up in fluffy cushions with some chocolate and an episode of Passions - there's also the brittle opposite who has little to no emotional agenda at all, offends people pretty much joylessly and who would set the world on fire just to sit at the centre unaffected and bored by the screams. Those are both caricatures, obviously, but I get impatient if Spike goes too far in either direction without anything to compensate (and I end up reading much more that's closer to the former just because it usually comes attached to lengthy Spuffy fic, which is usually the compensation I'm looking for).

ETA: I forgot to add the important bit of backlash to that thought, which is that I wouldn't be surprised if most people think this way and what you actually get between readers and writers is differences in calibration rather than people sitting down and thinking 'I only think Spike is a jerk' or 'I just think Spike is a fluffy woobie'. My sense of brittle!Spike in stories is my own perception in relation to what I see as the nebulous perfect balance of characterisation and everybody else probably has a spectrum that they think (as writers) that they're in the middle of as well. And that's probably self-evident but it seemed to me worth saying anyway, just to be clear, so I did!

Anyway, I can't say I've much encountered her AtS stuff, so I couldn't comment on that! (And probably haven't commented accurately on her BtVS stuff either.)

[rahirah]

Ah, I see. Hmmm. Her Spike definitely had more nuance than that, and the Blackadder comparison is actually a pretty decent comparision. In a way, the story had a lot in common with "Lovers Walk," with Spike undergoing a sort of emotional crisis and then having an epiphany. It was agendafic, but some of the better-written agendafic I've seen (and I am hardly guiltless of writing agendafic myself.)

[quinara]

Oh, I don't think there's anything wrong with agenda fic. Maybe my dislike was less a characterisation issue and more the issue that by S4 I wasn't interested in any agenda that wasn't 'enable Spike to have more japes with Giles and Xander' and by S5 'enable Spike to interact with Buffy in the style of FFL and Blood Ties (with japes on the side)' and then at some point there was shipping. :D

[silverusagi]

Shipping is hard. Because everyone's definition is different.

[snickfic]

*nod*

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

For that matter, when I say "I ship so-and-so," what do I even mean?

AN EXCELLENT QUESTION

Yeah, IDK. I've resigned myself to the fact that despite shipping 79284092 ships, I still don't understand shipping. Particularly, I don't understand OTP-shipping. In a monogamous sense. I have various conflicting "OTP"s at the same time. Apparently this is strange.

I think the "/" to me just means a relationship dynamic involving a romantic/sexual element. And some dynamics are just better suited to gen than others. Like, Damon-Elena gen is far closer to canon than Damon-Katherine gen. Ditto for, like, Angel-Cordelia and Angel-Darla (respectively).

It makes sense in my head.

[snickfic]

I won't lie, I was definitely thinking of you when I wrote this post. You and shipping have a complicated relationship. *g*

Yeah, Katherine-Damon gen. I can't see that. Ditto Angel-Darla gen, which in retrospect I think annoyed me a lot when she returns in S3 - Angel/the writers tried to treat their relationship as, uh, gen, and it so wasn't.