Fan Service. · 10:53am Sep 12th, 2015
Let's talk about shipping.
I like shipping. It's where I gravitate towards when it comes to fanworks. It's cute and fluffy and, for all the flak that it gets from vehement anti-shippers, has the potential to be deep and meaningful and reveal a lot about the shipped characters and maybe even touch a little on the human condition... but when it doesn't, it's still cute and fluffy.
I remember distinctly, though, a story from when the Internet was a different place and Fanfiction.net didn't suck nearly as much as it does now. This story had Squall (protagonist of JRPG Final Fantasy VIII) and Seifer (his rival, in an antagonistic-but-not-really-life-threatening sense) baking cookies and calling each other nauseating pet names and playing grabass in the kitchen, and it became my go-to example of Things You Shouldn't Do When Writing Fanfiction. It wasn't because nothing of consequence happened in the story, although that contributed. It wasn't because it was a gay ship of characters who clearly weren't gay (something I have less issue with, and looking back, Seifer does kinda have a love-hate vibe about him that Squall is completely oblivious too). No, it was because Squall is meant to be brooding and taciturn an Seifer is a grandstanding braggart, and instead they were both giggling more than a whole class of anime schoolgirls. They were unrecogniseable, and they're not especially deep characters to begin with. You don't have to do a lot to keep them in character, but somehow, this writer didn't manage it.
It was cute and fluffy, alright. It was nothing but cute and fluffy. But it also did the characters a grave disservice, which is the death of fanfiction.
I say I like shipping, but really what that means is I like having character explored through shipping. Some people like to explore it better through making their characters suffer or having them go on adventures far outside their comfort zone, but I'm fine with having them be awkward and dorky around each other and then kiss. It's not the going through the motions of a relationship that's interesting, but pressing characters against each other to produce situations that aren't covered in canon. That's why we're all here, expanding someone else's world instead of building our own: we like the characters that exist already and we want to see them put into different situations, more than Friendship is Magic could ever possibly cover. Character is the driving force of fanfiction, if you extend it out to cover not just your principal actors but also the world they live in; Middle-Earth, for example, is the most interesting character Tolkien wrote about. If you screw up character -- if you do them a disservice, by not making them recogniseable despite the unusual situations you're putting them in -- then there's very little that's going to fix it in terms of it being a good piece of fanfiction.
I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to shipping; that is to say, I don't have any one true ship and I'm pretty open-minded about every pairing. I have preferences, sure, and there's stuff I need a fair bit of convincing to go along with, but it has happened. I don't really care for Twilight/Celestia, for example, because of the weird power imbalance issues that people often gloss over, or Rarity/Spike because of how many fedora-clad Spike fans insist he deserves Rarity because of various red pill-ish reasons, but I've been won over by individual stories because they take great care in being convincing and staying true to the characters. It's not a matter of how many words are used, or how carefully-orchestrated the situation is, just that you manage to capture the essence of each character and show what happens when they interact that's true to both of them. I mean, I say "just", but that's a pretty difficult thing to do. Most writers can get the characters to stay themselves, but then they end up in a generic relationship, which is where the bulk of complaints about ugh, more shipfics, can't you people not for a change tend to come from. And like, that's fine for a lot of people, especially if they have their ship(s) that they're invested in and all they want is very lightweight interaction between the two characters they like that doesn't really scratch much beneath the surface, and it's harmless and fun and whatever, the romance equivalent of mindless clop (another thing people love to complain about).
Me, I hold myself to a higher standard most of the time, so being unanchored to a single ship comes in handy.
I wrote a story where Twilight experiments with a spell that gives her very detailed memories of being in relationships with all of her friends, and they begin to blend together and she goes a little mad; a big part of that was figuring out how to make each of the five pairings with the rest of the Mane 6 feel different. While I feel I did a good job getting across how she was supportive and nurturing of Fluttershy, trying to unravel the mystery of Pinkie, comfortable with Applejack, and having lots of arguments and make-up sex with Rainbow, because of the way the narrative worked out I didn't get enough time with her and Rarity as I would have liked. I had all these great images of them in fancy clothes at fancy events, being or becoming a couple while the whole world watched, and I never got to use them in the story, which is a shame because Twilight/Rarity is a criminally underwritten pairing. They're very similar in their way of approaching the world -- micromanagement that occasionally leads to stressing over details rather than the big picture -- but different enough in the way it manifests that each of them is distinct and unique. But none of that made it into "Too Much Love Will Kill You", just three or four lines.
I had done these characters a disservice.
So, to rectify that, I wrote almost 40,000 words about how they went from friends to lovers over the course of a weekend. It's finally finished, and tomorrow I'll be posting the first chapter.
Pairing agnosticism is quite fun. You get to enjoy the exploration of all kinds of different character dynamics. Though that relies on the author bothering to explore.
And then you wrote a couple thousand words telling us about it! :D Sweet.
Well, alright then. Plenty good reason for another story from you. Looking forward to it.
This is all well said, and I'M looking forward to the story.
I will show you shipping in a hooffull of dustLooking forward to read it!I agree; I'll read ships of anything, as long as the author makes it convincing. I enjoy a good crackship because of the sheer challenge in pulling it off (Chuckfinley did a marvellous Gilda-Mayor Mare one). Then again, I also totally believe in giving authors enough rope to hang themselves with if there's the potential for a good story in the end, so there's that, too
Given what I've read of those 40K words (with complaints back and forth) I am very, very intrigued as to seeing not only the final product but how that product is received. Hopefully with all the attention it deserves.
Oh, is that where it came from? I thought you just knew Rarity-ships were the best and were working your way through her sexual encounters with the rest of the mane six. Am I not going to get some RariPie and/or RariShy in another year? :(
I agree with your main point, and as usual you present it very wisely, but I think there's a bit of nuance you sweep over. You at least imply that character should always be accurate; and I think that's a dangerous statement, often taken too far. I think there are many, many ways you can intentionally break from canon characterization or truth, but the key points are that by doing that, you are simultaneously still exploring the things you've ignored, and what their effects are; and that by using a character, they are a tool of communication – they call about all their related themes and ideas, and you should be doing something with the rest of those, even if you contradict part of them.
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Well, like, accuracy is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Keeping characters as close to their canonical counterparts as possible doesn't really allow them that much room to grow, you'd just be regurgitating things we've seen them do before; you totally can change them, either by altering their backstory or having your own story push them around a bit, and not lose their essence. Makes me think of Duck Amuck, the Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck is harangued by the animator. From Wikipedia:
I don't do AU much, but the concept really fascinates me. Like, what's the Mane 6 like if they're a rag-tag pirate crew on the high seas? What's Trixie like in a noir universe? If you changed the setting from fantasy to hard sci-fi, what do Celestia and Luna become? What-ifs are neat, but it's tough to get stories that line up with alternate universes that can tell a given story better than the default one can.
Also, I guess all the (serious) Mature stories I've written feature Rarity pretty heavily, huh? I, uh, can't think of how that happened. Coincidence, yep. I can't really picture what Rarity/Pinkie would be like, but who knows what's going to happen in the future?
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Heh. The interesting part of those thought experiments, of course, is that you can change so many different about a character that you can end up with two entirely separate endpoints that have nothing in common, but are still recognizable as variations on the original.
Anyway, that's a shame, there isn't quite enough RariPie out there. To me, I think it's about Delight – both Rarity and Pinkie have a basic, earnest enjoyment of life that I think is more specific to them. They both have a driving passion to elevate the moods of the ponies around them – Pinkie wants everyone to be having fun, and as we just saw, Rarity wants them to feel special and beautiful and bring out the best of them. They both have a tendency – intentionally, I believe – for the dramatic, and playing up their own emotions and situations. Pinkie would make sure that Rarity doesn't trip herself up in second-guesses or social pressures, and Rarity would help Pinkie have more discretion and individuality in dealing with different ponies.
I dunno, the Rariship I never really got was Twilight, and I'm fairly certain you just cleared it up for me. Not sure I can put it into words, though, and that kinda bothers me?
Oh! I wanted to mention I'm not sure how well releasing the fic piece by piece will work out. It's a very, uh, open thing that sets it's own pace anyway, and I don't know it has the kind of tension and suspense that waiting for more to be revealed thrives on. It is a decent marketing tool, though, and I don't think it'll matter much in the long run.
I would say to package the first two chapters together, though, as well as another set of three which should be obvious.