This was a good idea gone bad. Like, really bad. Ship It by Britta Lundin is written as a serious twist on the film industry and what can and can’t be done to a show by the relationship of fans and those who help make the show happen. Something that several fandoms need to learn (you know who you are).
However, this is read as an embarrassing take on the concept of fandom and shipping with a character who is entitled and doesn’t at all get any consequences for her actions. At all. Guys, she hacks someone’s Twitter account and threatens to post things on there without his consent unless he makes her ship in his show canon. She betrays two people’s basic human trust after they talk to her about things that make them uncomfortable in confidence, and she still doesn’t get into trouble.
And yet somehow, I am supposed to be relating to this character or cheering for her by the end of it?
Ship It starts with Claire, one of our protagonists, going to a panel for her favorite show Demon Heart and asking the panel about her ship of the two main character who are men and obviously should be shipped together. The other protagonist, Forest, does not think that they should be or that his character is gay - something that many real life actors and actresses are forced to address in show business. This dismissal of Claire’s question causes her to run from the panel in tears and fling herself onto her hotel bed to cry. I am not kidding.
What follows is a story about Claire being taken along on the convention tour so try and do damage control. Along the way, her goal is to talk to the writer of the show to try and convince him to make her ship canon, and she gets to know Forest, his co-star who plays the character she ships him with, and a fellow fan of the show, POC pansexual Tess who she is totally not gay for - right?
When I first read the blurb, the set up for the story felt like every 2012 fan fiction that began with someone’s drunk/abusive mother waking the narrator up and telling them that they have to pack because they have just been sold to a band. But then I read about Tess’s involvement in the story and how her being there causes Claire to question her sexuality, something that many teens can relate to. I took a breath and grabbed the book, praying that it was at least well written.
Man, oh man, was I wrong.
The entire time I was reading this, I wanted to punch Claire in the face. She represents everything that is wrong with fans who go to extremes for shipping. Granted, her opposite narrator, Forest, can be a bit of an asshole when dodging fans asking about his character’s sexuality, but he does eventually open up to Claire about his life and his own fears for his acting career. That being that his father is sorta thinking this acting thing is a phase and that Forest is scared to give up and become a nobody from a small town in Oklahoma.
Claire is surprised to learn this about forest and she does the most rational thing ever; she turns around and writes RPF about Forest, revealing this new found knowledge by turning his father into an abusive asshole who scarred Forest’s back and a sex scene between him and his co-star. Because, what else are you supposed to do?
Later, she organizes a fan strike from her tumblr to not ask any questions at another panel until the runners for the show agree to start talking about her ship and possibly make it canon. However, Forest gets understandably frustrated and shuts the protest down by calling out the shippers. Claire counts it as a victory when the fans get upset at Forest and thinks that by banning together, she - er, I mean, the fans - may get what they want… even though Forest’s career, as well as the crew and cast, are no doubt under scrutiny now.
However, remember I mentioned a girl named Tess earlier? Tess is actually one of my favorite characters in the book, and personally, I would have enjoyed a book about her instead of Claire. Tess is a curvy black girl who is pansexual and a fan of the show, but she struggles with being an ‘outed’ fan because of how society treats fans and fandom - a good topic to bring up, but the book brushes over it.
Tess points out to Claire that life and fitting in is hard enough for her with her race and sexuality being used against her and she doesn’t want to out herself as a fangirl as well because it would ruin what friendships and relationships she has with people.
This actually causes an argument between the girls, with Tess telling Claire that maybe she should stop trying to push her ship onto the show runners because ultimately, this could hurt the show more than help it. Claire tries to reason that this will help the LGBTQ community and Tess actually gives my favorite quote of the entire novel:
“’I stopped caring what the show runner thinks because a character can be anything in fic. They can be black or queer or fat or whatever the fuck I want and I don’t need anyone’s permission. So just ship what you want to ship and stop caring so much about what Jamie and Forest think!’
‘But they’re wrong,’ I kind of yell. ‘And someone has to tell them that. Why don’t you see that? The world would be a better place if there were more queer characters, more black characters, more of everything that’s not the same old same old.’
‘But you’re not pushing for more black characters, are you? You only care about one thing.’
‘Of course it is! You know how many black characters have been on Demon Heart? Like two, and they were both demons. Now they’re dead. You’ve never mentioned it. You only care about the thing that affects you.’
‘I do care about that. But look, we can still make SmokeHeart queer, but we can’t turn them black. That’s not how it works.’” (238, if you wanna see).
This is actually a good point that is brought up in the book and for one moment, I actually thought something smart was going to come out of the resolution of this book. Tess points out that fans usually freak out over the sexuality of the characters, but right now in media, people aren’t harassing show runners to make POC characters. Claire refuses to acknowledge this, and basically just says it’s more important to make characters gay than it is to push for ALL forms of diversity that there should be in media.
Tess even goes on to admit that Claire isn’t being honest with herself and works it in that Claire is denying her own sexuality as being bisexual/queer (the book never specifies and somehow tries to make this a big deal in the plot) and Claira brushes her off.
After this, the two are tense and Tess tells her that her friends are coming, the ones who don’t know about her being a fangirl.
Claire takes this knowledge, still upset and thinking that Tess is in the wrong for telling her to give up on harassing the Demon Heart crew, and outs Tess as a fangirl in front of all her friends when they are out for sushi, after which her friends are confused and look to Tess a little oddly. Claire even goes as far as trying to play the victim when she leaves, to leave Tess to clean up her mess.
And somehow, I am supposed to be wanting Claire and Tess to be together by the end of this book when Claire chooses a ship over POC representation and then outs her about a secret Tess has every right to keep to her friends?
You know, I’m really not sure.
Claire then hacks the Twitter account of one of the show runners for Demon Heart and basically blackmails him into getting her ship canon but he makes a good point - he doesn’t have that say in the end. It’s the studio who want to appeal to a wide audience, it’s the actors who want their characters to say certain things, it’s the writers who all want to put in their own story. But Jamie, the show runner, is so twisted in Claire’s narration of him that we are led to believe that he is just a horrible person instead of someone who wants to tell his own story but has to go through an insane amount of walls to even tell a small portion of it. Jamie does admit to queer baiting to get people to continue to watch the show, but Claire still plays the victim when he just walks away from her saying that he’s had enough of her (along with something about suing but I don’t really remember).
The show launches the last episode of it’s first season while they are wrapping up the panel tour and in a big ‘twist reveal’ kill Forest’s character on the show, and Jamie says that he has to put an end to Claire’s ship or they will never stop hearing about it. He fires Forest and says he cannot return for a second season, of which Forest is obviously devastated for as his biggest fear of becoming a nobody in the acting world may happen.
Forest, in that fit of anger, goes on Twitter and thanks the fans for their support in his role, but explains he won’t be coming back. He then tweets again, saying to blame Claire. She gets angry over this and goes to confront him, and he tells her that Jamie fired him so that she would stop her pursuit of the ship in the show - and then confronts her about writing RPF of him and his costar having sex in his trailer and twisting everything he told her in confidence to make his dad seem abusive. Claire tries to defend herself, and Forest yells that he isn’t gay. This leads to one of the most frustrating exchanges of dialogue.
Claire insists that Forest is just being homophobic.
Forest says that he isn’t, he’s just straight and she had no right to write that about him.
Claire gets frustrated and yells (and this is actually what she says) “They’re just dicks, you dick!”
Cue me wanting to rip up a book for the first time ever.
From there, things happen and it’s the low for the characters, and so on and so on and they all finally get to talk and make up for their anger. Somehow, Claire’s sexuality is still a big deal and she outs herself to the world at a final Demon Heart panel as queer (again, how is this relevant to the plot?!) and this gives Forest the courage to stand up and make a really big queer bait of him encouraging the shippers and then kissing his co star on stage.
Of which in the next chapter is revealed to be a lie and the two brush it off and say if they see another shipper it will be too soon and it is revealed that Forest is seeing one of the women who works in the PR for the show.
I read all of that for Claire not to actually learn anything from her actions, be entitled and pouty and enabled by terrible characters all throughout the book only for her big moment to be outing herself as queer - when that wasn’t even a good plot thread to the book over all?! The hell!
Ship It is pandering to every fan fiction reader who wants to live out Claire’s chance of making their ship real and not being able to separate shipping from reality.
This author wrote a character who enjoys fandom without realizing what fandom actually is - it’s a space for fans to come together to share how they all interpret this amazing media that they have banded around. In fandom, you can ship what you wanna ship, and you can certainly have power over race and design and so on.
But there comes a line between fan fiction and canon media - and then another between those and reality. Claire is a fan who dangerously mixes all three together and never once gets punished for it. The story we are supposed to focus on, somehow, is Claire struggling with her sexual identity, something that comes up at the weirdest times and is a completely confusing plot point to the entire story with the way that this all came about. If you wanted a story about a girl questioning her sexuality, give her more scenes with Tess that don’t point to a delusional, toxic relationship and maybe, just maybe, don’t have a show panel as your setting for the supposed love story to bloom.
Do not waste your time with this book; I still don’t understand how someone was able to publish this completely. I don’t understand how this got through dozens of people and not one of them said that maybe they should look this over again and try to reorganize everything.
But hey, maybe a book about the evils of queer baiting is a little bit of a queer bait itself.
