#shipper fans

[resonancewitness]

The gossip-mongering machinery, revisited

So when I thought about the fact that gossip-mongering machinery in the “Untamed” works no matter what is thrown into it, and produces the same thing as a result, it made me think long and hard about the fan conflicts in real people fandoms. 

The main difference between solos and shippers are assumptions. One group assumes that their star is single, the other group assumes that their star is in a relationship with a certain other person. The truth is unavailable (...and, in my opinion, not anybody else’s business than the people in question). 

But each group feels the need to prove that their assumption is correct, and the other group’s is incorrect. And it has been going on for years, so each group’s understanding solidifies, they are now deeply entrenched in their belief system. Some people in each group become voluntary detectives, that use anything they can to find “proof” for their theories. And the end feels so important to them that it seems to justify any means; people engage in activities that they would find offensive, if they themselves or their relatives were subjected to them. 

This is the mechanism of the gossip-mongering machinery, in broad strokes. 

And the output it generates is gossip. 

What it generates gossip from? 

Anything. Including nothing. The absence of any information can be also overinterpreted. 

Because it seems that the gossip-mongering machinery of war can generate nothing else but gossip. 

No matter what the stars say, do, don’t say, don’t do — the result may be the same. Because at this moment it is not about the truth anymore. It is about proving that "our" group’s interpretation is right, and other’s is wrong. 

Which brings me back to the impossible triple bind.

Each of the prerequisites, taken individually, is unfair, if we think not of somebody’s profit (production companies’, first of all), but of the right of human beings to choose what to do with their private lives, the right to have friends, to experience connection and belonging, to be understood. 

Together, these prerequisites create a triple-bind. And the gossip-mongering machinery perpetuates its result. 

The question is: if anything (or nothing) that the stars do will be just turned into gossip, how to stop the fan wars? 

If the machinery operates independently of truth/evidence, then the solution must address the machinery itself.

PS: This analysis isn't questioning the genuine love and concern fans feel — it's examining how well-intentioned enthusiasm can be channeled into harmful systems.

[resonancewitness]

An impossible triple bind

I was thinking about my personal journey as a fan, and how shippers are "made", and what happens when the public connection between the stars ceases to exist after the end of the promotional period. And then it hit me: how simple is actually to set prerequisites for fan conflicts that would last for years. Only three ingredients are needed:

The requirement for the star to be (or convincingly present as) single.

The CP (shipping) as a promotional strategy for a joint production.

The complete severing of public communication after the end of the promotional period.

Voila! We are all set for ongoing conflict. The combination of 2 and 3 will create a shipping “lore”: “Their love has been real, but they are forced into hiding and invisibility, and they need us to confirm to them that we care for their love as an important truth about who they are”.

And the solos will protect the "face", the honor of their star, as they perceive it, by attacking the shippers. And both groups are going to try to prove the "other side" wrong.

Notice what is missing here? Who the stars are doesn’t matter. Their gender doesn’t matter. Whether the relationship was or is real or not doesn’t matter. Set up the three prerequisites, and you will have ongoing conflict.

On one condition: if fans are willing to participate in it.

I am always thinking of damages these ongoing conflicts create. Can fan peace be possible?

[resonancewitness]

Reflection on my journey as a fan

In the previous incarnation of my fan engagement, I used to be a shipper fan. And when I took my “sabbatical” from fandom, I thought a lot what actually I was seeing and celebrating and responding to. 

As many other shipper fans in the Yizhan fandom, my journey started from seeing some behind-the-scenes footage from the filming of “The Untamed” in 2018 and from the footage of the promotional materials in 2019

— often several second-long very emotionally-laden clips, without a beginning or an end, showing two people delighting in each others company, being playful, attentive, caring, joyful. Their happiness was literally contagious. What I was seeing and responding to is what in positive psychology is called positive resonance — two people synchronised in co-experiencing a positive emotion together. As a witness of this, I experience a flash of vicarious happiness, because that’s what humans do, mirror neurons and all that. I do need more happiness in my life in this turbulent and often dark world of ours. I like seeing other people being happy, it makes me happy. 

The clips from the behind-the-scenes footage were selected, I suppose, initially, to “heat up” engagement with the upcoming production, controversial in its depiction of a same-sex relationship, however you call it, social brotherhood or whatever. They were cut in such a precise way that would trigger maximum engagement of human need to make sense of what we are seeing. Humans make meaning by telling stories. Throw an intense or puzzling fragment at an audience, and everyone becomes to construct a story into which this episode will fit. I was no exception. “What in blazes was that?” thought I, “that must have been such a wild thing to do, to say, if it was by any chance real and not staged for the bts cameraman who was following them everywhere…”

What comes next is looking for other dots to connect, looking for patterns. Order feels better than chaos for a human mind. Ordering events into a storyline is a calming activity, of sorts, if our tolerance of uncertainty has certain limits. 

And another massive dot that I have come across is the fact that the public connection between stars ceased to exist after a certain point, and was never so far rekindled. 

What a story this makes for the mind! “Their love was real, but they were forced to part.” Add to this “but we believe they are still together (against all odds)”, and this creates such a fertile place for engaging with a story about commitment under duress. This story resonates a lot with my personal values. 

But what has happened next, during the next years, in the shippers fandom, was so bewildering to me that I lost my bearings for a while, and had to disengage from fandom because of the internal conflict I was feeling.

That eventually led me to thinking whether it is possible to be a real person fan without identifying as a solo or a shipper. I would prefer to identify as "other people's private life is not my flipping business" fan.

(tbc)

[resonancewitness]

Beyond the solo vs shipper binary

One of the things that I thought about, when I thought about fandom rivalries, and a place to be in fandom, that there seems to be a binary division: either you are a solo fan, or a shipper (CP) fan. What struck me there was that it was a division based on an assumption. The stars themselves have not openly stated their status, so their truth is unknown to us fans. We are choosing to believe in an assumption. Solos believe in the assumption that their star is single, shippers believe in the assumption that their stars are in a relationship. Both sides are convinced that their assumption is the very truth, and some of them go and fight each other to prove the other side wrong. And some of them go to amazing lengths in their quest for truth (… and amazingly invasive in their detective dedication). 

But what if I don’t want to subscribe to the idea that only this binary is possible? What if I think that other people’s private lives are not my business, and I don’t really need to know the details to be able to appreciate and celebrate them as astoundingly talented and hard-working people, people whose character strengths and values they espouse I can relate to and want to cultivate more in my life? Is there a place for “not a solo, not a shipper, other people’s private lives are not my flipping business” fan? Is there a name for this?