On “shipping”: When fandom becomes a crusade, things get ugly
G-rated Johnlock fanart
Shipping is as old as fandom itself. But traditionally, fans never expected their particular pairing to “become canon” — that is, to officially happen on a show or in a storyline. In modern fandoms, however, fans of movies and TV shows often root for their ships to become canon the way sports fans root for their teams. If the football fans’ goal is to see their team win the Super Bowl, the shipper’s goal is to see their ship “win” by entering the narrative as an official storyline.
These shippers collectively form group narratives about their favorite ship. More and more, these group narratives are evolving into unshakable belief systems that usually take one of three increasingly common forms:
1) The belief that the ship in question is unquestionably going to become canon
Historically in fandom, liking a ship meant just that: You liked a ship. Anything more than that would get you a lot of side-eyeing. In the Harry Potter fandom, the advent of Ron and Hermione becoming a couple in the sixth book led to a very famous (and still ongoing) meltdown among Harry/Hermione shippers.
At the time — fandom in 2005 — their unwavering faith that Harry/Hermione would eventually become canon was widely seen by fandom at large as extreme, because shipping was typically viewed as something that existed outside of canon and generally had no particular relationship to the course of canon at all.
Today, expecting your ship to become canon is more or less the norm. But there are lots of complications with this line of thinking. Even if a ship does become canon, it might not become canon in a way that fans like — Buffy/Spike, anyone? And of course it might not be guaranteed to remain canon. Breakups happen, actors leave shows, and, as The 100 fans were brutally reminded earlier this spring, characters die.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 15th, 2016 at 17:58
There are ships also that involve fans wishing the lead actor and actress of a fandom end up in a real life romantic relationship. Take Outlander, for example. The actors and the production team themselves are telling everyone that nothing of the sort is happening between Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan. Yet these shippers are making up stories about them. This has created an anti-shipper (AS) group that are constantly berating the pro-shippers (PS) for being delusional. The AS group has resorted to stalking the actors to give proof that they are dating other people and not each other. Everything is a big mess and hugely uncomfortable to the parties involved. I suffer second-hand embarrassment for these shippers (pro and anti) because they are adults with lives to live who have nothing else to do but obsess about the most shallow of things. It is greatly off-putting.
August 15th, 2016 at 23:19
It’s interesting that this very mindset is what drives populist politics worldwide as well, whether it would be Duterte, Trump, or Brexit.
August 15th, 2016 at 23:41
butoygirl: Ayyyy inability to distinguish between the actual and the fictional. Living in the virtual world does that. Then again, this has probably been common fan behavior for ages, but until recently there was no social media to give them the power of sheer number.
August 15th, 2016 at 23:42
volume-addict: Exactamundo.
August 17th, 2016 at 12:50
I’ve left tumblr because of this! There was a time when the fans kept harassing Martin Freeman’s wife kasi he “can’t marry Benedict.” And a lot of girls kept imagining themselves as Tom Hiddleston’s girlfriend, so imagine the drama when he started dating Taylor Swift.
August 18th, 2016 at 08:50
I wonder how Johnlock shippers would react if Sherlock ends up still a bachelor. Ok with me, sounds very ‘canon’. (But I definitely would love some Sherlolly moments.)