Monday, March 4, 2013

Shipping News: What do you do when your ship starts to sink?



Hi guys – sorry I’m a bit late this week but a lot has been happening (most of which I can’t actually tell you yet but you’ll find out soon enough and when you do you’re going to blow chunks). Right so this week: Glee’s major couples, the first ‘real’ Teen Wolf spoilers (including who Danny getting down with) and what to do when your ship starts to sink.



Let’s talk about Glee, baby:

  • Naya Rivera talks Quinntana and Darren Criss talks Klaine over on EOnline. Rivera says she doesn’t see a future for Quinntana and Criss hopes Klaine will get back together… eventually, just not too soon because they both have a lot of growing to do. 
  • Don’t get too sad though Klainers – you can listen to Kurt and Blaine singing “Come What May” here. Considering the fandom has been pushing for the couple to record this song for some time it’s a pretty big deal. Some lovely fan even made a video to go with it:

  • EOnline has written a guide for Glee shippers – the slideshow highlights the three main canon Glee pairings biggest moments (you won’t find the likes of Faberry or Kum there). Includes: Faberry, Klaine and Wemma.


Shipping tib-bits:

  • A rather shippy Iron Man 3 poster leaked via Instagram last week. Does this look like a trashy romance novel cover to anyone else?
  • The Vampire Diaries is heading back to the 1970s and it results in an unlikely pairing hanging out – that’s right Damon meets up with Stefan’s BFF Lexi… that should be interesting (x).
  • The Sterek Campaign has announced its latest call to love: #Meta for Sterek. They are working to compile a database of all the best Sterek meta discussion. Check out the details on their Tumblr.
  • This week in After Elton’s slash column – Catherine highlights a classic Due South pairing and talks about Danny’s new wolfie boyfriend. I’m up next week so if you have any slash news let me know.
  • Unfortunately if you think everything is coming up roses for Destiel shippers after the announcement that Misha Collin’s would be a series regular in season 9 then you obviously haven’t seen the latest Supernatural promo:

Group hug guys – we can make it through this. I’d say it’s not as bad as it looks but this is Supernatural so we all know that would be a lie. Hellatus sucks, but it’s going to worse when this torture device of a television series comes back to break out hearts all over again.


Teen Wolf time:

Last week was a big week for Teen Wolf fans – a bunch of new castings (with a twist) and we are finally getting a feel for what Season 3 will be like and it looks good.

Right so first off they cast a young Derek Hale for the flashback episode, 803, (and they are also looking for Laura and mama Alpha Talia). The big twist with this announcement is that the pre-fire Hales might stick around and become series regulars. This begs a number of questions that are probably not going to be answered until Teen Wolf starts airing but it’s certainly fun to speculate.


To make this news a little more shippy I’m just going to remind you that this charming young jock pictured above is about to be seduced by a beautiful experienced older woman called Kate Argent. Ouch, that hurts.

In happier news Celebuzz gave us what are probably the first real spoilers for Season 3 (everything up until now has been vague and unspecific). As far as the shippy concerns there are a few things that stood out.

Jydia shippers will be happy to know that Lydia is not unaffected by Jackson’s departure. Holland Roden said. “It’s a little bit of a certain… musically talented couple that like to break up and get back together a lot. Maybe he’s not the best for her, but it doesn’t matter because that’s who she loves. I think at the end of the day, whether it’s good or bad, it’s realistic. Jackson might not have treated her right at times, but I think he was the love of her life, and so she’s devastated.”

I know some people had been disappointed by previous rumours that suggested Lydia would be relatively unaffected by losing Jackson. Personally I’m glad they are not simply dismissing the connection between Jackson and Lydia, especially considering it was so important to the season two finale. But I am worried that Lydia is going to have another storyline that revolves around a man (even if that man isn’t around anymore).

Lydia’s not the only one that’s depressed after losing someone – apparently Boyd is “reeling from the loss of Erica” (x). I know it’s a small mercy for Erica/Boyd shippers but it’s something non-the-less. While I am upset that it looks as though Erica has been fridged, I am so excited for Boyd character development I might be able to forgive.

Not really relevant but I like looking at it.
Finally Charlie Carver, who plays Alpha twin Ethan, revealed that he will be setting his sights on everyone’s favourite goalie. It was pretty easy to guess that Danny’s mystery lover would be one of the Alpha twins but it’s nice to have it confirmed. While the news is hardly shocking I was quite intrigued by what Charlie Carver said about the relationship, which he described as blurry. Yes Ethan is going after Danny to get to Derek’s pack but that doesn’t mean he won’t develop real feelings. You can’t blame him really; everybody loves Danny. As there is already a fandom springing up after one announcement I can’t wait to see what happens when next season actually starts airing.


Moving on in this week’s discussion of fandom I want to talk about what happens when your ship sinks. We don’t really talk about this that often because no one really wants to think about the possibility that their OTP could hit an ice-berg but it happens and so we need to think about how we might react.

It takes a lot to sink a ship – most of the time shippers can argue their way out of anything but every so often something happens that shoots down a ship dead in its tracks (cough Dair cough). A good way to do this is to kill of one of the characters… and it’s even better if you can have the other half of the ship do the killing (anyone remember BBC’s Robin Hood – yeah it did not end well for Guy/Marian shippers).


The problem is that lot of the time, if a ship sinks, the fandom decides to blame another part of the fandom for it (or another ship). Then you have a lot of very irrationally angry people yelling at some irrationally defensive people and it’s really very not good. I’m not going to lie having your ship sunk is not fun but that doesn’t give you the right to lash out against other shippers.

So what should you do – well in my experience there are two responses. Either jump ship or ignore the sinking and rewrite the story in fix-it-fics. Seriously since when has canon ever gotten in the way of a good ship? You just have to look at the popularity of slash and femslash to know that canon doesn’t really matter. So if something terrible hits your ship and it starts to go down just plug the holes with fan fiction and sail it into the wonderful world of fanon.

Just, you know, try not to blame other fans for something that was beyond their control… The powers-that-be can be cruel and vengeful gods sometimes.

Right well that concludes the lesson for the week. See you next time.