Want me to write an essay about entitled fans of fanon couples and how annoyed I am? Here I am. I don’t expect anyone to actually read it all or even respond, I just want to vent.
I’ll use “mlw” for any ship that involves a man and a woman to avoid having to specify all possible orientations, wlw for two women and mlm for two men.
And just to be clear, before anyone replies that there isn’t enough lgbt-ness in shows and it must be fought for, I agree. But this is not about them, it’s about entitled fans of all fanon ships who are now following a specific script to get what they want, harassing and hiding behind social justice issues.
The only reason I especially mention shippers who are into 2 famous fanon wlw couples (supercorp and swanqueen) is that it’s the same group of shippers moving from one big show to another, picking over and over the same type of female character to pair with the female hero, and projecting. But this behavior happens with mlw ships as well and mlm ships and it’s not about representation at all. We all know shippers who wanted the guy to get the girl even if she canonically dislikes him, and that meant wanting the good guy she actually loves dead, making up horrible accusations against the canon partner and the writers because the other guy should win. Or those shows were two men are shipped together and therefore the fans call for all the women in their lives to be gone, they are evil, they are badly written, whatever.
I heard a mess happened in Star Wars, people shipping a mlw couple and getting the movie to change, and I have been told 99,99% of Supernatural female characters had to die because the fans hated anyone who took attention away from Dean/Sam and Dean/Castiel, but I don’t know if it’s true and I don’t know enough about those fandoms to speak about it, so I’ll only talk about what I’ve been a part of. I can’t anti-tag properly or it will appear in their ship tag.
Again, I’m not talking about fans advocating for more representation in general, I’m talking about fans who are harassing real people because they want the couple they chose to be canon or to be treated as such no matter what the writers clearly mean to convey and how the show has been written up until then, or even if the show is already very pro-lgbt with non cis and non straight characters in the main cast since it’s all irrelevant to them, because what these fans really want is control over other people and their stories, and to make their fave couple (genders are irrelevant), the couple where they are obviously projecting their feelings and themselves, become canon, and they are using real life issues as a tool to get it because how can ‘silence’ someone fighting against sexism/racism/homophobia etc (and obviously it’s not what’s happening. I’m not talking about people who are right and denuncing racism, for example), because they know that mixing what they want with what is politically correct, even if it’s not true, will give them a platform, an audience of innocent people trying to find out what’s happening there, and may force a show in a different direction. Forget the fact that people who actually fight for social issues will lose credibility and the chance to make a change, the important thing is that they get what they want, how they want it, and because they want it.
If their ship is not made canon everybody will have to pay - and regardless of canon-ness these ships must be always be discussed by writers and cast as ‘equally important to the canon ships’, and these ‘fans’ are blatantly feeling good and cool about being able to harass the cast and other people because they are teaching them a lesson. I mean literally gloating about it in their posts.
And it’s scary that new, young, shippers are join fandoms and to groups where they can start feeling a sense of belonging, and these groups directly and indirectly teach them to be as extreme and rigid as possible in their beliefs, and they lead each member, step by step, into finding these behaviors normal, acceptable, and in fact also lead them to mix their own identity and beliefs with the group’s beliefs. These groups of ‘bad apple’s trajectory is towards becoming more and more extreme because each new person who joins in takes one more step away from what’s acceptable, because they feel that everything that has happened before their arrival is justified and righteous and to them the next step is very small, even if it’s a giant distance from where fandoms were at before.
*note: brief mention of rape/abuse because I mention non-canon accusations that happened in the ouat fandom + the fact that it did happen in the canon show. I mention other issues that are used against/to defend ships as well without getting descriptive, and a mention of suicidal thoughts brought up by antis once.
Honestly I feel like shippers who act entitled on social media became this way because, among other reasons, the writers and casts of tvshows were overly nice to them and not allowed to say ‘enough, I’ll block you if you insult me’ or even a simple ‘we are only celebrating canon couples, fanon combinations are infinite and we can’t address them all, so we won’t be talking about those’. Instead they had to be as nice as possible, whether it was because they didn’t want to alienate fans and lose money or because they genuinely cared doesn’t matter in this context. More often than not it’s just because they are being taught that if they don’t say yes they’ll be ‘cancelled’ by fans who are using real life issues and criminalizing actors, and they also know that nobody will dare backing them up to avoid getting in trouble with the network, or with whoever is telling them that the customer/fan is always right.
You can’t tell a customer to go the hell if you are working at Starbucks and even less so in public, like on twitter, because good luck getting hired if you treat fans like ‘crap’. Doesn’t matter that they deserve it, people in charge want money and the money comes from all people watching the show, nobody should be pushed away by an actor who is trying to protect their mental health by standing up to bullies, the actor has to smile and wish them a nice day like a Starbucks cashier and allow more abuse, so that the customer will return. There are some exceptions, some people are allowed to respond, just like some cashiers can, but it’s not the norm.
The norm is now writers walking on eggshells because how dare them say their story is their damn story. It’s actors not allowed to have an opinion or to explain what they are trying to portray because they will ruffle feathers.
So this teaches these fans to keep going, and the more these fans gain approval the more the writers and cast bend.
I remember Jennifer Morrison during ouat retweeting a fan who made, if I’m not wrong, tea-bags which were dedicated to the canon couple she was part of, and she, as a real person, was accused of supporting rape culture because antis had decided that her character’s canon boyfriend was a rapist, even if it wasn’t shown on screen (but he made references to sex! and is a pirate! so he had to be!) and therefore JMo showing that she liked her canon ship meant that she was pro-rape, not exactly a light accusation. Then they proceded to harass her so she’d say how much she liked the tea dedicated to their fanon couple - (involving a female canon rapist just to add irony). And to be clear given the nature of her job Jen wasn’t allowed to say she didn’t like that ship, because that would hurt their feelings, wasn’t allowed to say it’s a fanon ship and that she wanted to discuss canon things, wasn’t even allowed to ignore it, she’d be attacked even more than she already was.
Hell, she was accused of homophobia (and of gay panic by people who clearly don’t know what that means) because she didn’t pose for photos with the other actress they shipped her with often enough (they shipped her character Emma with Regina, who was played by Lana Parilla, and shipped her with Lana), nor did enough offscreen things with her. It was clear that Jen and Lana weren’t close in real life and that the fans made it worse - but why would it matter how they feel as people, right? They had to dance like moneys for the fans. If Jen didn’t sit close to Lana it had to be because she hated that the fans would ship them or their fanon couple, not because as a human she has preferences. (Btw, if people are being weird about you and your coworker, it’s totally fine to feel uncomfortable and step away).
Sounds familiar, if you are from the Supergirl fandom? It’s the same people, yeah. The ones I mentioned at the beginning of this post. That’s why I said that it’s not ‘lgbt fans’ it’s literally the same people over and over, they just happen to project on wlw couples. But there are other fans like this as well and they have their own mlm and mlw couples to harass people for.
The Supergirl cast was literally harassed by fans who wanted Kara and Lena together. Eventually during a group interview they sang about how Kara and Lena were just friends and had a laugh, which btw is a great way to fight bullies, to let them know their words can’t hurt them and they will be laughed off, and, as far as I know, to this day people who don’t know the behind the scenes will only hear that the cast of Supergirl mocked a lesbian fanon couple and its lgbt fans, cruelly, laughing at them for daring to ship two women. Homophobic monsters. All except the actress who plays Lena who was visibly upset (in the story of course, in reality she laughed too). Several public apologies had to be made to make up for this evil act. They weren’t allowed to explain or defend themselves after (because of the new rule that if someone is hurt by your behavior, explaining yourself means you aren’t apologing and you are abusive).
They had to take in more abuse and shut up. Real life consequences that started from abusive tweets going unpunished and made them risk reputation and jobs, as well as led to actually lgbt people who may have looked up to them being told what ‘they had done’ and be hurt by this. Context didn’t matter, even if it’s al that actually matters because it completely changes what you saw.
People genuinely believed/believe the cast was that horrible and that was cruel out of nowhere, more people have joined the fandom and bought into it, confirming their own bias whenever they watched the show and saw only what they wanted to see.
So these fans got to demand attention and to have the writers change the show for the loudest fanon ships, and to insult anyone who doesn’t feel like doing so. Not only unpunished for this but sorta rewarded for it. Sure, some shows didn’t cave and didn’t make their ships canon, but the cast had to learn how to be submissive or accept online abusive behavior. OR leave social media in a world where you need it to work, like many were forced to do. And these fans got told over and over that their feelings were ‘valid’, their ships amazing, and got even angrier because if that’s the case why not make it canon? Or got told ‘not going to happen’ and started spreading the notion that there was queerbaiting and the show should be boicotted.
This is becoming a common way to react to all shows/movies with sequels, these shows are an example and in a way the place where it started and grew, but now it’s everywhere.
And I want to take the writers and say: just make a ship canon because you want to or tell them it’s not going to happen and stand by it, no more of that ‘equally valid, equally important, have to entertain all shippers’ crap. A fanon ship is not going to be equal to canon ones, it shouldn’t get equally talked about nor be included in every sentence about ships, and there is nothing to apologize for about that. It only exists in these small online places, you go talk to casual viewers and they won’t know of it, it’s not the same. And while we should all have more representation we don’t get to chose which characters get together, we don’t get to write the story.
Shippers should learn to handle the truth if they haven’t yet, learn how to handle disappointment, like get a ‘you can ship who you want, it’s amazing you are so invested in our show! However x and y are the canon ship and we don’t plan on making the other one canon, I’m writing x and y together’ and leave it at that. And it should be more than possible to just say ‘this is not what I’m writing, I’m sorry’ if fans insist they are being baited because two characters look at each other.
“You ship isn’t canon, it will never be canon, they told you this! So no, shippers of that fanon couple don’t matter now, they are talking about canon and your fanon ship shouldn’t be up there with the others’ “Telling me that I don’t matter because I demand to have my fanon ship constantly brought up is triggering me and making me suicidal, everybody matters all the time!’ is a take I actually read and people apologized for how ‘harsh’ they were being.
The concept there was that you can never tell a person they don’t matter in a specific context, they have to matter, in all contexts. You don’t know how much of their identity and will to live a person has attached to a ship or a fandom, and you don’t get to say those words because they may be too fragile to take it (forget the fragility of those bullied every day by these people who can’t take consequences or the truth).
Except that there are plenty situations in life in which you won’t matter, and that doesn’t mean that you don’t matter as a person in general. Your neighbor won’t have to think about your feelings on divorce before getting one, you don’t matter there. You still matter as a human being, in general, your life still has meaning, but you won’t and shouldn’t always be acknowledged in every situation that exists around you. And if you can’t understand this concept, if you think your opinion has to matter in all contexts and you have to be given some kind of shake of hand over it or your entire life won’t matter, because you must be important in every context ever, you shouldn’t be engaging in fandoms, you should be getting medical help asap, not making your ability to exist more fragile because it’s dependent on strangers validating you over a ship. You are putting your entire existence in the hands of a fandom, and that’s not only unhealthy but impossible to end well. Go to therapy and if you can’t afford that yet then don’t become a part of groups that require you to tie your identity to them.
Your feelings matter in the sense that you can ship what you want, not that you have the right to demand a response or approval from other actual human beings.
My feeling that Jemma and Fitz from AoS (super beloved couple by fans and writers) are terrible for each other means a lot to me, I’ve been super invested for years in that show, wrote essays on why I don’t like this couple (and tagged them properly to respect the shippers), but you know what? This means nothing to the writers and that’s okay. I’m not important to them, I should not expect to have my feelings catered to with tweets that mention fanon couples I like and that ‘acknowledge’ flaws I see.
I didn’t harass anyone on twitter, and I certainly don’t think that if I had shipped Jemma with someone else I should have been mentioned in canon-related tweets because ‘every ship is valid’! I didn’t expect fanon couples like Will and Alice or Flynn and Lucy (OUATIW and Timeless) to be mentioned everywhere just because some people loved them and therefore we had to be catered to: I shipped it but I sure as hell didn’t expect to make it real or to change the entire creative process of the people behind the show because I was screaming about it. I don’t expect people to pat my head and tell me what a lovely ship it is and discuss it every time is brought up on twitter.
But the majority of writers/casts is trying to be submissive now so they don’t get in trouble and you can literally see posts of fanon shippers laughing about how they are in the right and they will be able to break them.
And personally I think these shippers deserve actual real life consequences. No attention to your ship, which wasn’t real anyway, less screentime for it, more direct responses with ‘nope not gonna happen’ and ‘I made it, they are not real people, you can read in that scene what you want but know that’s not what I’m making it and therefore it’s not real’. No actors trying to make these people feel better. They don’t need to apologize for ships not happening or for not shipping them or for wanting to talk about their actual work.
People will survive even if the writers don’t tell them just how important and incredible their fanon ship is, even more so because you are not teaching them that this is a correct way to interact with the world and they’ll learn not to expect anything. They have to learn that they may not get what they want even if they ask nicely, and that regardless of that they cannot harass people. They also have to learn that crying wolf by using very real dramatic issues like homophobia and misoginy should have consequences, I’ll say it again: if you publicly accuse me of being pro-rape because I like something made for a fiction couple I get to take you to court.
Also the bullshit of ‘oh my god those mean adult men in the cast are ganging up against a teenager’ said about adult men responding without sugarcoating (but also without insulting) to the hundreth ‘teenager’ who is insulting them, part of a group of people who insults them daily. Teenagers learn how to be adults also by learning consequences to their actions and that they don’t get to say everything they want the way they want, shouldn’t we reinforce this? Or should we let bullies free to online-harass adults every hour of every day?
In the end Supergirl the cast by the end was so blatantly pissed to the point that some of them started snapping again, possibly because a guest star kickstarted it (sometimes you need one person to speak up and then others can), and those shippers didn’t get their ship to be made canon, thankfully, because it was way too unreal, but they still got treated better than they deserved. They learned that they can get something if they behave like that, and have the hope that doing worse will get them more.
And I honestly want to go back to writers and cast interacting less with us, to less twitter, less socials, because even if it sucks to lose that privilege it’s better than to let it become a tool in the hands of abusive people. If people can’t, as a group, learn how to use something responsibly, and the people giving it to them are not allowed to react properly, then that something has to be taken away from them.
It’s ruining shows, literally, because usually these people have misread, willingly or by accident, everything from story to characters, and to cater to them means that whatever you were doing following your instincts and making a linear story will get messed up, the story will get out of track, the characters will be weird.
I just wish that the networks and all people involved realized just how very few these people are, how their behavior pushes away actual viewers, how it’s not necessarity to take it with a smile so they don’t lose money, and instead all agreed that there can be consequences to their actions. Fans make threats or claim that someone is -racist/homophobic/sexist/pro rape- without proof? they get sued for threats/diffamation. Fans gets graphic about their sex fantasies involving two coworkers? They get sued for sexual harassment. Fans bully? they get shut down. They are told the truth.
I’d respect and watch a show more if that was an option.
I have no tolerance for bitter slash fans who use the word “heteronormative”, as if they’re actually smart or aware of actual problematic issues. When the truth is they’re just pissed they’re not getting what they want.
I don’t have time for this delusional nonsense, where all straight women in loving relationships have to be gay just because slash shippers say so. What makes them so special?
The way they act towards canon het ships, it’s a wonder the cast or the writers even acknowledge they exist.
Ya know, I'm not against S-corp staying "just friends". But maybe Kara should blame Lena a little for what happened.
I mean. Those S-corpers talk big when it comes to vilifying Kara’s boyfriend to make their girl look better.
But it wasn’t Mon-El who let Rhea dupe him into bringing an entire armada of Daxamite invaders to Earth. He’s also not responsible for the damage done to the CatCo building or the city. That’s all on the naive rich girl with mommy issues, who let the Daxam Queen manipulate her, only because she wanted to prove something to herself, and was blinded by her own insecurities.
The fact is Kara and Mon-El were perfectly happy before she screwed everything up. Her need to be accepted was her weakness. And it cost Kara dearly. And after she lost “the love of her life” (the producers words) did she make any attempt to talk to Lena or seek comfort from her? The writers didn’t think it was worth throwing that relationship a bone in the finale. I wonder why?
Maybe the cause of Kara’s unhappiness isn’t Mon-El at all. Maybe it’s her best friend, who in the end only did more damage than good. Just what you’d expect from a Luthor.
Haters can say what they want about Mon-El. But their precious Lena Luthor is no saint. Nor is she blameless for the pain Kara is going through right now. Or her apparent decision to abandon her human identity completely.
"Kara Danvers was a mistake." Maybe the real mistake was her friendship with a Luthor.
Ya know what I find most amusing about all this Karamel vs S*percorp silliness?
This ridiculous rivalry and debate over who is better for Kara, or who she should be with, has only ever existed in one place. And that’s online in the fandom, between the shippers themselves. Innocent Karamelers, like me, who just want to enjoy the canon and be left alone. And then there’s the deluded S-corper trolls, who can’t leave well enough alone, or can’t stay in their own tags. That’s the only place where the rivalry between the ships exists.
You know where it never has been though? On THE ACTUAL SHOW. Mon-El and Lena have never been in competition for the role of Kara’s love interest, because Kara and Lena, as the cast have already said, are “just friends”. I know it, Karamelers know it, the cast and the writers all know it.
There’s no contest between the two of them because it’s not in the writing. It doesn’t exist in the context of the show. It’s only in the minds of those foolish enough to start a war in the first place. And for what? To just be proven wrong? To get ignored and blocked by those of us who don’t want to put up with their shit?
I ask you, what is even the point anymore? We know where the wind is blowing. We’ve known for months. Fandom drama is not even a factor in the grand scheme of things. The episodes are filmed way in advanced of any negative or positive post. The writers have already decided what they want to do. It’s television. It’s scripted programming. And if someone doesn’t like what’s in the script, too bad. That’s reality.
Which is why I just don’t care anymore. The show is what it is. It doesn’t matter what any of us wants or thinks. The writers are going to do what they want. Either way we’re screwed. But only the Karamel fans get screwed in a good way. Yes, we get angst, we get drama, we get tearful separations. But in the end we still get our ship. And most importantly we get the support of the writers Melissa and Chris. The people who gave us Karamel in the first place.
So we really should just try to enjoy ourselves and look forward to what’s to come. I certainly intend to. Feel free to join me, guys. It will be worth it in the end. I promise.
Because at the end of the day, fandom and shipping is supposed to be fun. I want the fun back. How about you?
I'm seeing a pattern here with the 100 and Supergirl in their second seasons.
Supporting female character makes the wrong decision, and lead heroine ends up suffering for it. Lexa took the deal with the mountain men. Clarke had to kill all the mountain people to save her friends, and say goodbye to Bellamy. Lena agreed to help Rhea. Rhea invaded Earth. Kara had to send the love of her life away to save everyone. And people actually ship these women together? At least the writers know better.
