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You know what?
I'm gonna come clean: I Am A 'Shipper. ::covers eyes:: I am a pairing 'ho. True, I have a LOT of pairings that I love, but I read fanfic often solely because of the pairings.
This sometimes ashames me, because shouldn't I have outgrown this by now? 'shipping smacks of fangirling, and yet.
And. yet.
What is a 'world' but the space spun between two people? What is a universe but that spun out between several characters?
A world, a fannish universe, is a living backdrop, but inevitably the force of change through the world comes from the characters. By definition, I should say, the forces of change come from the characters; be they animal, human, divine, inanimate, or anthropormorphic.
(This is *me* we're talking about here, objects count as characters too ::winks::)
And thus, if a world, a universe, this setting for whatever story I'm interested in be hinged on the characters, is it entirely degrading or inherently wrong that I'm finding the stories I'm most interested in through the pairings?
I don't quite know myself.
I think, at the heart of the issue, is that this method of finding stories isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time, and that I'm probably missing many stories because of this method of filtering.
But, considering I have a limited amount of time to read fanfic, do I really want to chance how 95% of the stories with pairings I'm uninterested in I won't like, whereas there's maybe only a 10% chance of not liking a fic with a pairing I love? Should I really waste that much time slogging through fic that I *might* like 5% of the time, or instead just read the fic that I'd have a 90% chance of liking, even though I'd be giggling through a lot of bad writing while I'm at it?
I'm a pairing 'ho; and perhaps there a method to this madness...I'm *still* kinda ashamed of this as I think it tho, and trying to justify it to myself.
Then again, could it be compared to how if I don't like Cubism, then the best Picasso will never move me? Not sure.
Not sure.
Perhaps it also has to do with how, I think, it's viscerally hard for me to accept True Death in the fandoms that affect me most? I mean True Death in the sort of death that affects the underpinnings of what the fandom means to me, and this almost never means death literally. In this way, fandoms like Due South and HP have no True Death for me, there's no real way to cripple it in my eyes. But PotC has the freedom issue, or rather the *permanent* loss thereof (again, literal death does not count). OUaTiM's is the concept of leaving Mexico and it's warmth and color, to live stumbling amoung cubicles and faceless laughter. Trigun's the idea that Vash will ever completely give up, that he will not rise with the sun. Smallville's the idea that the Two will get sucked into this whirlpool of pain and misery *and* never grow into the brilliant, mythic legend that they *need* to be. And so on, where True Death means less the death of the characters themselves but rather the foundations and underpinnings of the worlds themselves.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg; the people or the worlds made of love and hate and joy and pain and color and background and noise spun out between them?
I don't quite know.
I'm gonna come clean: I Am A 'Shipper. ::covers eyes:: I am a pairing 'ho. True, I have a LOT of pairings that I love, but I read fanfic often solely because of the pairings.
This sometimes ashames me, because shouldn't I have outgrown this by now? 'shipping smacks of fangirling, and yet.
And. yet.
What is a 'world' but the space spun between two people? What is a universe but that spun out between several characters?
A world, a fannish universe, is a living backdrop, but inevitably the force of change through the world comes from the characters. By definition, I should say, the forces of change come from the characters; be they animal, human, divine, inanimate, or anthropormorphic.
(This is *me* we're talking about here, objects count as characters too ::winks::)
And thus, if a world, a universe, this setting for whatever story I'm interested in be hinged on the characters, is it entirely degrading or inherently wrong that I'm finding the stories I'm most interested in through the pairings?
I don't quite know myself.
I think, at the heart of the issue, is that this method of finding stories isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time, and that I'm probably missing many stories because of this method of filtering.
But, considering I have a limited amount of time to read fanfic, do I really want to chance how 95% of the stories with pairings I'm uninterested in I won't like, whereas there's maybe only a 10% chance of not liking a fic with a pairing I love? Should I really waste that much time slogging through fic that I *might* like 5% of the time, or instead just read the fic that I'd have a 90% chance of liking, even though I'd be giggling through a lot of bad writing while I'm at it?
I'm a pairing 'ho; and perhaps there a method to this madness...I'm *still* kinda ashamed of this as I think it tho, and trying to justify it to myself.
Then again, could it be compared to how if I don't like Cubism, then the best Picasso will never move me? Not sure.
Not sure.
Perhaps it also has to do with how, I think, it's viscerally hard for me to accept True Death in the fandoms that affect me most? I mean True Death in the sort of death that affects the underpinnings of what the fandom means to me, and this almost never means death literally. In this way, fandoms like Due South and HP have no True Death for me, there's no real way to cripple it in my eyes. But PotC has the freedom issue, or rather the *permanent* loss thereof (again, literal death does not count). OUaTiM's is the concept of leaving Mexico and it's warmth and color, to live stumbling amoung cubicles and faceless laughter. Trigun's the idea that Vash will ever completely give up, that he will not rise with the sun. Smallville's the idea that the Two will get sucked into this whirlpool of pain and misery *and* never grow into the brilliant, mythic legend that they *need* to be. And so on, where True Death means less the death of the characters themselves but rather the foundations and underpinnings of the worlds themselves.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg; the people or the worlds made of love and hate and joy and pain and color and background and noise spun out between them?
I don't quite know.
response (part 1)
My tastes in fanfic are much more limited than my tastes in original fiction, and I feel like I'm failing the writers, yes, but also the general standard to which I hold my literary judgment.
Hmmm. Mine are, too, in some ways. But then a lot of things I read in original fiction, I'm deliberately stretching myself, trying things to see what I think, new things, new authors, etc. My reasons for reading original fiction are in most ways very different than my reason for reading fanfiction. I go to fanfiction because I have a pre-existing relationship with particular characters/pairings that makes me want to explore specifically that. The only thing that really approaches that in original fiction is following an established author, with characters I've fallen for, or a particular type of book, because I'm looking for more of the particular type of emotional hit I want.
I guess because of this I really don't feel that it's any lack on my part that I don't care to read so widely in fanfiction, because I don't approach fanfiction in a "see what's out there" kind of way, and I never have. And even with original fiction, much of my appreciation of things outside my favorite authors and genres is often an objective, more detached appreciation, an admiration of ideas, of styles, of world-building, that doesn't necessarily kick me in the gut the way my more "limited" favorites due.
And ultimately... I don't really "get" failing the writers, I think because I don't feel any general obligation to be "fair" to the writers, to try things out on spec, to give them a chance, anymore than I do writers of original fiction, unless something I hear or read intrigues me. Maybe I used to. Maybe I used to feel I should always try something before deciding it wasn't my thing, but that was before I had a well-developed sense of what was my thing -- and it's a pretty broad thing, but it's not all-encompassing. Maybe it's just a difference in personality and character? I dunno. Still not really understanding the guilt thing. *g*
And some of this gets into textual interpretation, because I've seen people let fanon warp their judgment of the original sources, and I ... hope I can separate out something that doesn't fulfill my desires from something that's an artistic failure. I try. I don't know if I always succeed, but I think it's something worth trying to do.
I completely agree. I think some people read/write the fanfiction that represents how they wish canon was; others of us take cues that canon seems to present and want to read what fleshes that out. It can't help but color how you then look back at canon -- but I think everything you take in colors that in one way or another. And I think it's entirely possible to make the separation you state; I think of it as "they aren't writing for me." My not liking something, depending on why I don't, isn't a commentary necessarily on the intrinsic quality of the writing. But that's equally true in reading original fiction.