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cherrybina on the definition of shipping:
I've seen this before, to a lesser degree, in another young fandom filled with people new to social fannishness: Harry Potter. In the vicious het shipping wars between Harry/Hermione and Harry/Ginny shippers, fans believed that their ship was always intended by the author... and they believed it would become canon. Other fans called the most out-of-touch Harry/Hermione shippers "Harmonians" to distinguish their assertion that Harry/Hermione was and had to be canon from regular shipping. But if you'd asked me, I would've said that what they were doing was simply the most extreme form of shipping.
I see where people are coming from when they say that "hard core shipping" is believing the relationships to be real. It's a dilution of terms, yes, especially when we have "tinhatting" as a perfectly good term for RPS shippers who go beyond wanting their ship to be real to believing it is. But it's a spectrum. Most slashers think that our ships weren't intended by the creators, and even when they are, we know that they'll never be canon. But there are the shippers who believe the creators do intend a ship, whether it's a coming het ship or a slash ship that's more "real" because the subtext was intentionally inserted to circumvent the mores of The Powers That Be.
Whenever there's a large influx of new fans, they develop their own language. Lacking full knowledge of existing fandom, we get overlapping terms, even redefinition. I don't think new 1D fans are going to be able to change the meaning of the term for the rest of fandom. Maybe for 1D fandom, or even music slash -- but fandom as a whole is so large that it would take more than one big batch of newbies to move the center.
This entry was originally posted at http://krytella.dreamwidth.org/21951.html. Comment wherever.
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cherrybina on the definition of shipping:
In the vast majority of fannish spaces I’ve been a part of over the years, the word “shipping” does not imply anything about whether or not a couple is actually together, both for fictional and real-person fandoms. It could refer to a real relationship (either in canon or real life) but it could also refer to something completely outside the realm of possibility. There is (what seems to be) a very large part of 1D fandom that uses the word “shipping” to refer to relationships they believe to be real. Without assigning any value judgments to either of these positions, this is a potential problem because it is very hard to have any kind of meaningful exchange when one word has different meanings to different people.
I've seen this before, to a lesser degree, in another young fandom filled with people new to social fannishness: Harry Potter. In the vicious het shipping wars between Harry/Hermione and Harry/Ginny shippers, fans believed that their ship was always intended by the author... and they believed it would become canon. Other fans called the most out-of-touch Harry/Hermione shippers "Harmonians" to distinguish their assertion that Harry/Hermione was and had to be canon from regular shipping. But if you'd asked me, I would've said that what they were doing was simply the most extreme form of shipping.
I see where people are coming from when they say that "hard core shipping" is believing the relationships to be real. It's a dilution of terms, yes, especially when we have "tinhatting" as a perfectly good term for RPS shippers who go beyond wanting their ship to be real to believing it is. But it's a spectrum. Most slashers think that our ships weren't intended by the creators, and even when they are, we know that they'll never be canon. But there are the shippers who believe the creators do intend a ship, whether it's a coming het ship or a slash ship that's more "real" because the subtext was intentionally inserted to circumvent the mores of The Powers That Be.
Whenever there's a large influx of new fans, they develop their own language. Lacking full knowledge of existing fandom, we get overlapping terms, even redefinition. I don't think new 1D fans are going to be able to change the meaning of the term for the rest of fandom. Maybe for 1D fandom, or even music slash -- but fandom as a whole is so large that it would take more than one big batch of newbies to move the center.
This entry was originally posted at http://krytella.dreamwidth.org/21951.html. Comment wherever.