But what do I know I'm just an aro shipper

[yvannairie]

Reposting some comment I made in the notest of this post about how construing all shipping is amatonormative is not very good because I feel like I'm onto something.

To wit: As things are, the word “shipping” is commonly used to mean (at least) three different things:

1. Constructing a narrative (often but not always an aspirational one) and vicariously experiencing through it what a relationship like that can be like
2. Wanting to see the characters that appeal to you have sex/receive affection/experience emotional catharsis for your gratification
3. The study and analysis of the text of a relationship, just like you’d explore the text of someone’s characterisation or the text of the plot of a story

And to be clear, when people say they “ship” something, it can be any combination of the above. (Arguably the concept of an OTP exists as shorthand for a ship where the speaker experiences it as sitting right in the middle of that triangle.)

This is what leads to the problem of critical analysis becoming impossible in a framework like this. Essentially, both cases 1 and 2 involve some kind of a value judgement – whether something works within the narrative or whether something appeals to the creator – and as such conforming to preference and principle is kind of the entire point, but analysis done in a way that is meant to conform to a preference or a principle… is poorly argued at best, and openly dishonest at worst.

If you point out erotic tension in the text between two characters, that is not actually the same as imagining or enjoying the idea of those characters having sex. If you point out emotional tension from things like miscommunication and how that colours a relationship, that is just pointing out an element of the text, and doesn’t mean the fic you wanna write will deal with that issue. But over and over, simply trying to critically examine the text is labeled as “shipping”, which… well, it does kind of make sense, because we live in a culture that considers “critique” something objective and removed and aimed to “improve” the “product” instead of a form of creative self-expression, but a lot of times it ascribes motivations to the person doing the analysis that they might not have.

As for amatonormativity... I can sort of see where people are coming with it, really? The narrative structures we’ve grown up with insist on amatonormative “love”, no analysis of text is free of cultural baggage, and frankly for a lot of alloromantic people, romance is gratifying. That being said, the criticism that shipping itself is amatonormative because it’s predicated on “needing” to put characters in monogamous pairs only applies to the first of my personal three cases, and even only then if it’s treated as an aspirational fantasy.

At every instance, the shipping can be driven by amatonormative assumptions, but to argue that therefore it inarguably is is some mind-reading bullshit my aro that obsessively analyses the interactions between everything isn’t willing to co-sign.

Comments

Re: +1

[yvannairie]

Yeah, aetheticism makes for a good case 4, although I'm not a 100% sure if it shouldn't go under case 2 as something that is done for the pleasure of the creator. I don't quite get what you mean by "shipping for community", though -- like, if a community brings you into a ship, you'll find your own reasons to find it engaging (like you mentioned, interesting implications or Them Pretty) and the community is just kind of. The space you do the shipping in? I'm also not entirely sure what to make of adversarial shipping b/c it's always felt like "the fen doth protest too much" to me.

Re: +1

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Hmm, I guess crack shipping might be a better example of shipping for community? There's a well-known crack ship in the Sherlock fandom which is just... a character and cake. Because his brother calls him fat. And I think almost zero people who "ship" that character/cake (which is how it gets tagged on ao3) have feederism kinks or are really particularly invested in the meta behind whether that character really has some sort of relationship with cake as a food (although there are fics where that character has an eating disorder, etc, but those aren't the cake ones). It's ultimately just a silly fandom meme that happened, but because people loved the fandom, they enjoyed the meme.

Back in 2012, there was also a meme about shipping two of the republican American presidential candidates, including fic and manips and such. And I definitely don't think the people engaging with that cared about the aesthetics (unless it's an aesthetic of hate? Vicarious hatefucking?) or the compatibility of the two (besides "haha what if homophobes were gay"), or that they really derived enjoyment out of thinking about political homophobia. I mean I guess spite can be a reason to like a ship but that seems like... a really bad outlet for that.

My own example would be that I don't really care for the second most popular ship in the Sherlock fandom, which is between two characters who only ever have one six-second interaction with one another, and that only entered the canon after the relevant time period. That relevant time period would be when I was a part of the setlock community, which was those folks who wanted all the spoilers about season 3, who either went to shooting events or followed those people's live updates closely. I never did and still do not think the ship is remarkable, because I don't think those characters have distinct enough personalities to overcome the fact that there's no real interactions to work off of for meta purposes. I don't think the pairing is very remarkable and I don't go looking for it or reading it, and at best I'm neutral about it. But lots of people in that community shipped it and I greatly enjoyed the community, so I would engage with their role plays and create ship art and stuff because my friends loved that and that was enough justification for me.

I guess what I'm describing is shipping without particular passion in the ship itself, which may or may not seem like a distinct phenomenon. I would imagine that some of these examples might resonate with how antis who have "progressive" ships might feel in relation to their community's Approved woke pairings, but in a more abusive and "I'm doing what I'm told" way.

Re: +1

[yvannairie]

Ohh, I see, I follow what you're talking about better now. If we keep to the cases I lined out, maybe in that case for the aesthetic/for the meme/lmao why not crackships would actually go under case 3 because the motivation isn't necessarily self-gratifying or a part of a narrative design, but rather if there is a motivation, it's using the context of the ship as the primary "meat" of it, so to speak.

Like, not all meta is deep and engaging or even respectful of the source material -- have you seen some of the stuff I write about Cookie Run? x'D -- and just like case 1 going both from "wanting to tell a specific kind of story with some grand design of communicating an important theme" to "I like this trope, let's make it happen" and case 2 going from "I'm exploring my own kinks due to [whatever reason author wants to give]" to "hoho hot fake guy taking it up the bum", case 3 shouldn't be held to a higher standard. Meta writers aren't inherently more dignified than any other kinda writer.

(That's probably something to clarify -- I am definitely coming at this from a writer's perspective that focuses on what people write and why, and what people read and why also. I'm not really someone who knows how to intellectually engage in visual, immediate and memetic fandom, I'm just not, so that means gaps in my understanding of what motivates people to Do The Thing.)