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mark_asphodelI changed my mind. This is another installment of Part Two, When Pairings Eat a Fandom. It does not focus on Fire Emblem.
I’ve said it before, but there is no fandom pairing on earth that I’d be interesting in sustaining over the course of a “30 Kisses” challenge or an A-Z challenge. I’m just not into ‘shipping that much. Yeah, I like some pairings because I’m interested in characters and want to explore relationships that would be good for them (Alm/Cellica)... or bad for them (Marth/Nyna). Some go both ways (Innes/Vanessa and Innes/Eirika have their debatable points). The romance angle, or the power angle, or the sex angle, is a means of exploring the characters. If all I wanted was a rush of cute, I’d dig up some fan art.
Besides, IMO overemphasis on ‘shipping kills a fandom dead. At least it sure kills my interest.
A long time ago, in another era, there was a little corner of the ‘Net dedicated to a show about crime-fighting rodents. Disney rodents. The show in question was Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, which for some reason had a remarkable mature fandom flourishing in the late 1990s-- a real case of “light canon, dark fandom,” which peaked in the multi-part epics of John Nowak and Jeff Wikstrom.
Part of the reason was that Gadget Hackwrench, the blonde mouse inventor in the purple jumpsuit and goggles, was a revelatory character for young fans in the early 1990s. Gadget was pretty and cute and smart and nice and wasn’t there just to be The Chick, and a lot of fans either crushed on her or wanted to be her. And I’m pretty sure those desires crossed gender lines. Also-- key thing here-- Gadget wasn’t a love interest. Sure, it was apparent that Chip and Dale both had a crush on her, and Gadget used this to her advantage at least once that I recall, but romance wasn’t a focus and Gadget never chose between them. She was a brainy girl without being a “nerdy” one, an attractive girl without being a sex object... damn, she was just about perfect.
So, when fandom took off, a lot of people couldn’t resist going where canon feared to tread. It was the great dividing line of the CNDRR fandom-- did you ship Gadget with Chip or with Dale? With the sharp and aggressive-- but arguably better-looking-- leader/hero, or with the dippy, amiable, and rather less violence-prone sidekick? I supported Chip/Gadget (I’ll take “smart and ambitious” over “lazy slacker” any day, thanks), but I’d read the Dale/Gadget stuff now and again, and to be honest I wasn’t even bothered when people paired Gadget with Sparky the Lab Rat. (I drew the line with OCs and with escapees from NIHM, though.) And I was absolutely happy with tales that stayed within the bounds of canon and didn’t pair Gadget with anyone.
But the issue didn’t go away. Most of the “serious” writers, like the above-mentioned Messrs. Nowak and Wikstrom (and Matt Plotecher, and Michael Demcio) skewed towards Chip/Gadget. On the opposite side was this female writer who hated Chip and constructed this whole ‘fic universe where Gadget was into theatre and everyone was vaguely Wiccan and eventually Gadget hooked up with this female OC and they were arty lesbians together. I’m dead serious... some of the ‘fics in that series were really excellent but eventually the whole project broke my suspension of disbelief so hard--
*Cough*
Moving on.
I don’t know when or where it happened, but at some point, someone wrote a story involving a one-shot character named Foxglove, a little pink bat who had a crush on Dale in one episode. One. And somehow, the concept that Foxglove was “just right” for Dale caught on. Chip/Gadget fans were happy to embrace it as an easy way of solving the ‘shipping issue-- if Dale was happy with his Foxy, there wasn’t any need for hard feelings about Gadget. And most Dale fans took up the pink banner. First you had genfic with Foxglove in the background, then Chip/Gadget stories with Dale/Foxglove in the background, and then suddenly all this Dale/Foxglove stuff standing by itself. Epics dedicated to it. Websites dedicated to it. When Deborah Walley, Foxglove’s VA, fell ill, there was a letter-writing campaign or some other show of fan support for her.
That little pink bat sucked the life right out of fandom, I’ll tell you. I didn’t even much like or remember the one episode she was in, and suddenly she’s the Sixth Ranger and living at Ranger HQ and all the rest of it. And since it was a nicey-nicey fandom, telling someone who'd just published a 32-chapter bilingual Dale/Foxglove epic complete with art and musical numbers that they were off-base just wasn't cricket.
[I am not making this up. The story in question was "The Death of a Comedian" by The J.A.M.]
Apparently the irony of foxglove being a lethal poison was lost on everyone. If I'd been older, bolder, and more confrontational, I'd have retaliated with some stories about Chip and Tammy the Squirrel, but as it was... I just moved on. There just wasn't much left for a fan unwilling to drink the pink Kool-Aid.
Whew. That was good to get off my chest after ten long years. Next time we'll cover Part III: Canon, What Canon?
I’ve said it before, but there is no fandom pairing on earth that I’d be interesting in sustaining over the course of a “30 Kisses” challenge or an A-Z challenge. I’m just not into ‘shipping that much. Yeah, I like some pairings because I’m interested in characters and want to explore relationships that would be good for them (Alm/Cellica)... or bad for them (Marth/Nyna). Some go both ways (Innes/Vanessa and Innes/Eirika have their debatable points). The romance angle, or the power angle, or the sex angle, is a means of exploring the characters. If all I wanted was a rush of cute, I’d dig up some fan art.
Besides, IMO overemphasis on ‘shipping kills a fandom dead. At least it sure kills my interest.
A long time ago, in another era, there was a little corner of the ‘Net dedicated to a show about crime-fighting rodents. Disney rodents. The show in question was Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, which for some reason had a remarkable mature fandom flourishing in the late 1990s-- a real case of “light canon, dark fandom,” which peaked in the multi-part epics of John Nowak and Jeff Wikstrom.
Part of the reason was that Gadget Hackwrench, the blonde mouse inventor in the purple jumpsuit and goggles, was a revelatory character for young fans in the early 1990s. Gadget was pretty and cute and smart and nice and wasn’t there just to be The Chick, and a lot of fans either crushed on her or wanted to be her. And I’m pretty sure those desires crossed gender lines. Also-- key thing here-- Gadget wasn’t a love interest. Sure, it was apparent that Chip and Dale both had a crush on her, and Gadget used this to her advantage at least once that I recall, but romance wasn’t a focus and Gadget never chose between them. She was a brainy girl without being a “nerdy” one, an attractive girl without being a sex object... damn, she was just about perfect.
So, when fandom took off, a lot of people couldn’t resist going where canon feared to tread. It was the great dividing line of the CNDRR fandom-- did you ship Gadget with Chip or with Dale? With the sharp and aggressive-- but arguably better-looking-- leader/hero, or with the dippy, amiable, and rather less violence-prone sidekick? I supported Chip/Gadget (I’ll take “smart and ambitious” over “lazy slacker” any day, thanks), but I’d read the Dale/Gadget stuff now and again, and to be honest I wasn’t even bothered when people paired Gadget with Sparky the Lab Rat. (I drew the line with OCs and with escapees from NIHM, though.) And I was absolutely happy with tales that stayed within the bounds of canon and didn’t pair Gadget with anyone.
But the issue didn’t go away. Most of the “serious” writers, like the above-mentioned Messrs. Nowak and Wikstrom (and Matt Plotecher, and Michael Demcio) skewed towards Chip/Gadget. On the opposite side was this female writer who hated Chip and constructed this whole ‘fic universe where Gadget was into theatre and everyone was vaguely Wiccan and eventually Gadget hooked up with this female OC and they were arty lesbians together. I’m dead serious... some of the ‘fics in that series were really excellent but eventually the whole project broke my suspension of disbelief so hard--
*Cough*
Moving on.
I don’t know when or where it happened, but at some point, someone wrote a story involving a one-shot character named Foxglove, a little pink bat who had a crush on Dale in one episode. One. And somehow, the concept that Foxglove was “just right” for Dale caught on. Chip/Gadget fans were happy to embrace it as an easy way of solving the ‘shipping issue-- if Dale was happy with his Foxy, there wasn’t any need for hard feelings about Gadget. And most Dale fans took up the pink banner. First you had genfic with Foxglove in the background, then Chip/Gadget stories with Dale/Foxglove in the background, and then suddenly all this Dale/Foxglove stuff standing by itself. Epics dedicated to it. Websites dedicated to it. When Deborah Walley, Foxglove’s VA, fell ill, there was a letter-writing campaign or some other show of fan support for her.
That little pink bat sucked the life right out of fandom, I’ll tell you. I didn’t even much like or remember the one episode she was in, and suddenly she’s the Sixth Ranger and living at Ranger HQ and all the rest of it. And since it was a nicey-nicey fandom, telling someone who'd just published a 32-chapter bilingual Dale/Foxglove epic complete with art and musical numbers that they were off-base just wasn't cricket.
[I am not making this up. The story in question was "The Death of a Comedian" by The J.A.M.]
Apparently the irony of foxglove being a lethal poison was lost on everyone. If I'd been older, bolder, and more confrontational, I'd have retaliated with some stories about Chip and Tammy the Squirrel, but as it was... I just moved on. There just wasn't much left for a fan unwilling to drink the pink Kool-Aid.
Whew. That was good to get off my chest after ten long years. Next time we'll cover Part III: Canon, What Canon?
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 02:37 pm (UTC)This is also a good description of Sailor Moon fandom in the '90s: a handful of top-shelf genners (e.g. John Biles, Doug Helm, Tim Nolan, etc.) that came to be supplanted by a whole generation of pairing 'ficcers (e.g. the entire Usa-Mamo army). Granted, pairing 'fics existed before then (Alicia Blade, Badgerman, Sexylyon, etc.), but they featured plot, characterization, all the bells and whistles. In other words, they had maturity. That disappeared early in the '00s.
(If one felt like taking a risk, one might contemplate how this shift occurred at the same time fandom flipped from being overwhelmingly male to overwhelmingly female, but that is for another time.)
The model I use for myself from Sailor Moon fandom is Troy "Silver" Stanton, a pairing 'ficcer who was – and is, since his story has been ongoing for almost two decades now – able to take all the pairings he wrote and roll them together in a single epic story that was all the better for featuring the emotional content on top of the meaty plot. Granted, he was never a part of the community the way the old genners were, but he never stopped writing, either.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:42 pm (UTC)Yeah. Though I was often in weirder corners of fandom-- Dark Kingdom fiction, Dead Moon Circus Fiction, Outer Senshi fiction. I recall a good many rabid Seiya/Usa fans and not so much the Usa/Mamo backlash.
If one felt like taking a risk, one might contemplate how this shift occurred at the same time fandom flipped from being overwhelmingly male to overwhelmingly female, but that is for another time.
I am not afraid of such speculation. It might not belong in this thread today, but I don't think gender trends in fan communities should be ignored simply because some might take offense.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:56 pm (UTC)Sup fellow DK-er. =)