Your Guide To Fandom Ships and New Characters That Interfere With Them

[obsession_inc]

Some times, when one main character and another main character keep looking at each other intensely, and get scared for each other's safety, and each finds the other's company and opinions more valuable than anyone else's, and both main characters are pretty hot and they have chemistry like WHOA, a ship is born.  And shippers board this ship and

Comments

[shaggydogstail]

You speak much truthiness.

It seems that whatever shipping combinations are going on, there's always going to be a woman somewhere who is somehow to blame. Male characters are always judged less harshly than female ones - it's natural and understandable for men to persue women, but a lady should guard her modesty. The double-standard isn't limited to minor characters either - a significant male character with multiple potential love-interests is generally blameless, while a female lead is a filthy whore if she so much as smiles at another man.

[swordygardener]

It's interesting what happens when you examine similar things happening with F/F fandoms.

Examples:
-Xena(male sidecharacter threatens main F/F ship, gets bashed a lot)
-Aria the Origination(faceless, nameless male character marries one of the two characters in the main F/F pairing. Loathing for him started immediately. No similar loathing exists for other possible F/F ships involving the married woman)
-Nanoha fandom(a minor male character sometimes gets minor romantic scenes with one character of the main F/F ship of the leads. Ferret is one of the nicest nicknames he gets, some fans declared their wish to set him on fire)
-Girlfriends (there was a male character who is used by one of the girls as a 'boyfriend' to prove her supposed straightness. When the chapter this happened in came out, vocal hate for him was rampant, while the girl got excused. There were a ton of theories that he wanted to abuse her, was a horrible monster, and such. Until it turned out that she dropped him shortly after, after which fandom completely forgot

[zahrawithaz]

Despite the similarities you describe, I think there's a different dynamic in these f/f ships. The bashing of the male characters may be problematic in a variety of ways, but it doesn't mesh with a larger cultural message that women are worth less than men, and so it doesn't do the same types of damage.

Commentators above talk about how the massive fan hatred for female characters on Supernatural increased the misogyny on the show. Whether the showrunners actually went in a more misogynistic direction because of fan input or were just given cover to enact misogynistic ideas they already had is irrelevent; it affects the images of women that are put out into the media, and so the cycle continues...

FWIW, I haven't been part of the fandoms you describe; I have been part of fandoms, like the L Word, in which the appearance of a male character who threatens a f/f ship results in the bashing of the main female character who shows interest in the man.

[swordygardener]

I never claimed for the bashing to be particularly problematic when it hit the male characters, please do not put arguments in my mouth. :P

[zahrawithaz]

Um, I didn't think you did say that. I thought your point was that the same dynamic noted in the post re m/m fandoms was happening with f/f fandoms, and my point was simply that yes, they may be similar, but I also think there's a difference.

Re Supernatural, I can well believe the show couldn't get more misogynistic, but I think the point about coverage still stands--that this is a case where creator and fan misogyny reinforce each other.

I can't comment on media fandoms v. other ones, but I would argue that with the L Word the difference is more likely to be the overlap between lesbian and bisexual women's communities and the fandom and problems with biphobia and the policing of lesbian identity within communities.

[astridv]

Here is what happens in fandom if the major ship is slash and a minor female character arrives to make the moves on either of the major male characters:

Wow. I just had to witness that in my fandom, and your bullet-point description is so spot on it's scary.

[zahrawithaz]

Here via heather11483's rec. Thank you for writing this.

[venilia]

WORD to... everything. Absolutely all of it.