If You Write It, They Will Come

[elspethdixon]

I've been pondering doing meta on this for a while, and finally decided to write down my observations/ponderings, prompted mostly by the recent waves of slash discussions and a few ship-rivalry style comments I've recently seen people make.

One of the things that been brought up tangentially in the discussions of waves of slash is the evolution of individual ships - from a new, rare pairing, where every fic has to do the leg work of justifying why these people are together, to a commonplace fanon concept, to the kind of over-arching dominant paradigm McShep has become in SGA fandom, where the pairing is so normativised (for lack of a better word) that people can seriously consider McShep fics to be gen (as a sometimes-gen-fan, I boggle at this; I suspect part of the issue there is a lack of understanding of what the term "gen" actually means, as with those people who think non-canonical het can be "slash").

People have been discussing the "how" of ship evolution, and I'm going to go on a slight tangent from this and discuss the "how" of ship formation and ship conversion (i.e. the process by which a pairing becomes accepted, and by which fans begin shipping it).

Obviously, a lot of popular ships are spawned by canon -- not for nothing is Amok Time known as the episode the started slash. Certain kinds of plot developments and character interactions in canon seem to naturally lead to slash, most especially "buddy cop" model-style relationships between two male protagonists. There are also, however, a host of popular ships that don't seem to have a screamingly obvious canonical basis - or a least, don't seem to have any more canon or subtextual support than other potential ships that get less attention, fic, and general love. There are even moderately popular pairings between characters who never actually meet in canon, ships that are entirely fanon, but no less beloved for all of that.

Why does this happen? In my admittedly not all-encompassing experience, it boils down to one basic rule:

If you write it, they will come.
(proviso to rule: unless your writing is really, really bad. If you know the difference between past and present tense and can spell the characters' names properly, you should be set.)

Fans generally acquire ships in one of three ways.

1) We acquire pairing preferences directly from canon because the characters are either obviously meant to be or obviously already getting it on. We watch the show or read the books and, based on the plot arcs, the chemistry between the characters, the kinds of relationships we like, and the moments when we the viewers exclaim aloud, "Oh My God, he's actually licking him. Surely they are doing teh sexx0rs," we decide to start shipping them (Okay, maybe the specific licking example only works for Starsky & Hutch, Gabrielle and Xena, or Picard and Q, but you get my point).

2) We get pairings from the source, but with assistance from fandom. Somehow, we miss the obviousness of two characters' meant-to-be-ness or raging lust for one another while watching the canon for the first time, but the moment we hear another fan mention the possibility it's all so obvious and we slap our foreheads and wonder how on earth we missed it. Ever had one of those moments when you see someone else commenting on the slashiness of a particular book/movie/show and suddenly all the canon details come pouring through your mind once again and you realize, "Oh my God, Robin Hood and Little John/Holmes and Watson/Hawkeye and BJ/[insert pairing here] are incredibly gay for one another"? (for me, at least, this tends to happen a lot with source canons I encountered before I knew about slash. I hear someone mentioning that slash exists for something I read or saw back in elementary school/middle school/high school, and the subtext suddenly seems so obvious in retrospect. Often I don't even need to be told which pair of characters are slashed. Just the conceptual pairing of the source canon and slash will do it).

3) Canon hasn't left us with any strong shipping preferences for a particular character yet (either because it we're just being introduced to the source canon, or because we have seen all or most of the canon but for whatever reason, no particular ship jumped out at us), but another fan or group of fans produces fanworks for a particular ship, and those fanworks convince us of the ship's overwhelming awesomeness (or at least introduce us to the concept and show us that we like it -- there are degrees of shipping preference, from having several pairings one mildly enjoys to die-hard, set-in-stone, the-characters-are-ooc-if-you-don't-include-this-ship OTPs).

The first two options are entirely dependant on our reading of the source text, and other fans have little role in them beyond mentioning ship possibilities to us and getting that "ping" reaction.

Ship-conversion via fanworks, however, happens all over the place in fandom, all the time. Among other things, it's one reason why ship manifestos exist. Vids, fic, art, meta -- all of it encourages our interest in a pairing. The more often we see a ship discussed, written about, drawn, etc., the more likely we are to check the pairing out. That said, not all fanwork is created equal in terms of functioning as ship conversion catalysts.

Speaking from personal experience, every single time I've been converted to a ship via fandom (generally for a show I'm still in the process of watching or for one of the many fandoms where I read the fic but haven't seen the source material or have only seen a couple of episodes, like Weiss Kreuz or Gundam Wing, or a source canon that I discover via fanfic and then go acquire and watch/read the canon for) it's been because of long, plotty ship fic. Sometimes even a single fic.

I was a Trowa/Quatre fan from the first episode of Gundam Wing I saw (until I was spoiled for the end of the series and for Endless waltz, I was actually convinced that the two of them would became canon before the end of the series), but it was Sunhawk's Ion and Roadtrip sagas that made me a Heero/Duo fan. Multiple megabytes of h/c and epic-length slashy angst.

For Weiss, it was BrightAngel's "To Hold the Hands I Love," followed by Yuki Scorpio's "When You Gonna Learn" and Marith's "Games." All long, all with an action/angst plot, and all with h/c. After that, my preferences were set.

For Naruto, I shipped Naruto/Sasuke after seeing about one episode and reading one volume of manga, such was the obviousness of their destined love, but it was "Blood of the Wolf" and "Butterfly in Reverse" that turned me on to Kakashi/Iruka (we're talking novel-length fics of several hundred pages, even if BiR is an unfinished WiP with serious over-the-top melodrama issues).

And so on and so forth. Are you seeing a theme here? (other than that I really like h/c and read a lot of anime fic for series that I've seen about three episodes apiece of?)

In my experience, both personally and through observation, the fic that draws people into a pairing tends to be long (50 pages and up), tends to have some plot or subplot in addition to the emotional plot arc of the romance (to give people not already sold on the ship a reason to read), and tends to be first time ship fic that shows its work -- the sort of thing I've seen referred to recently as "second wave slash." The most successful ship-conversion-catalysts are those wherein the characters realize their feelings for one another, acknowledge the obstacles to their relationship, and then overcome them. The reader gets to see the characters fall in love and convince themselves of the validity of the ship, and if the author is lucky, the reader will be sold on the ship in the process. The more canonical obstacles there are to the ship, the more set-up is generally needed (hence, Wincest fics apparently tending to fall more in the "show your work" camp while fic for some other, non-incestuous, slash pairings may fall closer to the "the pairing is fait accompli" camp). [see awesome diagram here for illustration - the kind of fic I'm talking about is the kind tiptoe39 describes as moving the characters' relationship from canonical point A to desired point B]

Sometimes said fics are NC-17, but they don't have to be. Pr0n is generally agreed to be a Good Thing in fandom, but fans do not live by pr0n alone. What hooks people into a ship is gaining emotional investment in it, and in the emotional investment stakes, one long fic can often be as good or better than a half-dozen short pwps.

To give an example based less on how my own personal preferences formed and more on general fannish behavior: a couple of authors writing good fic of decent length is how Sparrington got started.

I was in on the ground floor of PotC fandom (I joined pirategasm when CotBP had just hit theaters), and in the very early days of the fandom, everybody who didn't write Jack/MarySue het wrote some combination of Will, Jack, and Elizabeth, be it slash, het, or OT3. Then, people like firesignwriter and webcrowmancer wrote a handful of mid-length and long fics pairing Jack and Norrington, and fans slowly started to trickle in. Sparrington was/is a major ship in PotC fandom, but back in the summer of 2003, there were only about four people writing it. OT3 basically sprung fully-formed from the source canon, but Sparrington was built by fans - yet there were points back in PotCs heyday when more Sparrington showed up on pirategasm than OT3 or het fic (this was in the happy days before the more recent Jack/Elizabeth vs. Will/Elizabeth het shipwars that followed the second and third movies).

The same thing happened in Marvel comics fandom vis-à-vis Iron Man and Captain America. Steve/Tony is a relatively small pairing as slash pairings go, and I don't think it's very well known outside of Marvel comics fandom (which is a separate entity from movie-verse fandom, for the most part), but there are around 200 people on the pairing's one active comm, and over a dozen writers regularly producing fic. Last spring, there were approximately three people on the entire internet who shipped Steve and Tony, and no fic for the pairing whatsoever. None. Trust me. I looked. Then the first long Steve/Tony fic came out, and people gradually started joining the fandom (I say fandom, because prior to the formation of the Steve/Tony community there was also next to no Avengers fic and no Iron Man fic to speak of on LJ, so rather than creating a shippy sub-community inside a larger fandom, the fandom was essentially the ship. This was before the movie, obviously).

So, now that I've gone on and on with my "long first-time fics are what convert people to a pairing" theory and my entirely anecdotal evidence for it: Are there any pairings that you've become a fan of based on fic? And if so, was there a particular fic that made you "see the light?" (bonus points if the fic contains h/c and you can provide a link). Don't feel that you have to keep silent about it if it's not an objectively good fic, either. The Weiss fics I linked above, for example, are things I loved when I was 19 and haven't read in years, so they may be brilliant or they may be godawful (Sunhawk's 1x2x1 stuff, however, is gloriously epic h/c that I reread at least once a year).

Comments

[seize.livejournal.com]

I believe it was ladypaperclip's short Ianto/Owens that got me sucked in. I think this might still fit your criterion though for "long first-time" fic because it was the body of work that got me, not an individual piece, and she works all within the same universe (at least that's what I think).

Oh, slash. :)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

It was a combination of shorter fics on worlds_finest that got me into Superman/Batman (keeping in mind that I tend to think of anything under 10,000 words as a "shorter fic") -- well, that and Jeph Loeb's Batman/Superman title (wherein their names were conventiently slasher for you on the cover of the comic, and the blatant gay was up there with, well... let's just say that if I ever learn that Loeb is a closet slasher with a secret file on his hard-drive full of fluffy soulbond fic, I won't be at all surprised.

[runenklinge.livejournal.com]

Um...I don´t want this to sound the wrong way, but it was your (you and seanchai) fic that drew me to Steve/Tony.
After reading RRR I was so ...convinced and immeadiately fell in love with the pairing.
Afterwards when I looked at scans I realized..."OMG...how did I not notice that?"
YOU are responsible for bringing me into this fandom
(I leave it up to you if that´s a good or a bad thing^^)

In my experience, both personally and through observation, the fic that draws people into a pairing tends to be long (50 pages and up), tends to have some plot or subplot in addition to the emotional plot arc of the romance (to give people not already sold on the ship a reason to read), and tends to be first time ship fic that shows its work -- the sort of thing I've seen referred to recently as "second wave slash." The most successful ship-conversion-catalysts are those wherein the characters realize their feelings for one another, acknowledge the obstacles to their relationship, and then overcome them. The reader gets to see the characters fall in love and convince themselves of the validity of the ship, and if the author is lucky, the reader will be sold on the ship in the process
that was exactly what happened to me with your RRR-Verse^^

I think you can forgive me for not including a link to your own stories^^

♥

[axolotl-lan.livejournal.com]

Most of my pairings beside Steve/Tony which is on you two with RRR is entirely Rune's fault.

It wasn't all fic either, Rune does scan posts now and then and is just on a whole very convincing.

I believe it was something as simple as a friending or comment that made me look at her profile and go through her fandoms and when I found all sorts of neat things it stuck.

What can I say but I am extremely open to suggestion.

There is someone else but again I don't know the 'particular' fic but most anything Pervyficgirl writes seems like a pairing I could agree with. ^_^'

[miriel.livejournal.com]

I can definitely get behind the basic logic of the majority of your argument. I was dragged into Due South fandom by d_sudis's Hawks & Hands (http://dira.ficlaundering.com/ds/hockey/), and crimsonquills dragged me kicking and screaming into Avengers Fandom with your ship manifesto & master-work resurrecting Steve from the dead (I really, really didn't need another fandom. Then I got invited to go to the movie premier with her and some friends, and if I was going to see the movie, I was supposed to have background context, right? *Mutters under breath* I still owe her a 10,000 word Steve/Tony birthday fic).

I will admit, I very much prefer the "show your work" style of fic to the "canon is fait accompli" variety. I can, and will, get behind just about any pairing, if an author can prove to me that the characters would enter the relationship and still stay true to their canon selves (I personally tend to write obscure pairings, including a few who have never met in canon, thus pretty much always end up writing longer fic than I intend so that the pairing makes sense to the reader). If a pairing isn't inherently obvious in canon, or there are legitimate in-canon obstacles to said pairing, they need to be addressed realistically or I can't buy it.

BTW, congrats on being one of the people to build Avengers fandom from the ground up. It's a fascinating world to play in, even if deciding *which* branches of canon you want to keep and which you're going to throw out with the bathwater can be a hassle ^_~ I have a feeling my spring term paper is going to be on either Captain America or the Avengers, but that's just a guess.

ETA: On reflection, I think a lot of being introduced to new pairings also comes from having established relationships within fandom. When you've known people through a few fandoms, you get a sense of what their interests are, what they look for in a fandom, so when they go off the deep end about some new pairing, you check it out because they generally have good taste. At least, that's how I've been pulled into a number of pairings. That, or friends know the kind of slant you like in a pairing - I'm an insider/outsider dynamics fan, so relationships emerging within secret organizations due to inability to talk to people on the outside about the day job are a big thing with me. Also, relationships that are functional rather than OMG!TrueLove! - being with someone b/c it's the best option rather than because it was love at first sight. That kind of thing. And people know that, so they rec me things along those lines.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

If a pairing isn't inherently obvious in canon, or there are legitimate in-canon obstacles to said pairing, they need to be addressed realistically or I can't buy it.

Neither can I, often. It doesn't help that I prefer pairings I can see support for in canon, and that if I've already got a ship I prefer, the writer doesn't just have to convince me that A and B like each other, but also justify why A isn't with C, whom A clearly has feelings for in canon and who canonically worships the ground A walks on. And that second part is generally much, much harder to sell me on (hence my essential WTF Does Not Compute response to Rogue/people-who-aren't-Gambit and people who write Captain America fic that doesn't assume Tony's being in love with Steve as a given -- on a very basic level, said writers simply are not reading the same comics I'm reading, right down to the most basic and fundamental aspects of characterization, like people who saw the first two seasons of Smallville and somehow came away not only not shipping Clex, but not even perceiving the massive, massive subtext).

deciding *which* branches of canon you want to keep and which you're going to throw out with the bathwater can be a hassle

We've still got it easier than DC fans, though. Lex Luthor has, like, four different and contradictory backstories, depending on what part of canon you're looking at, and when you throw in pre- and post-crisis bat-clan canon and all the Earth 2 stuff... I've generally seen people agree almost unanimously that everything Marvel published between 1989 and 1996 other than X-Men never happened, though.

[saint-kit.livejournal.com]

Weiss Kreuz? I think I have to go watch that again.

Hm, that was rather insightful. I never really mused on how ships came about, just kind of accepted it. Though, sadly enough, I think a good chunk of my ships started out crack and then slowly made sense in my head. Strange/Pepper, for instance, just clicks. I can't explain why, but the crack de-crackified.

One of my favorite ships happened vaguely like your second option up there, but it was canon that beat me over the head with it. Director's commentary, he pointed out that they were gay for each other. Stupidest I had ever felt was when I watched the characters hug again.

Oh early Steve/Tony. I remember scrounging the internet for scraps. What difference a year makes.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Strange/Pepper, for instance, just clicks. I can't explain why,

I don't think I can, either, but it somehow just does. It may help that his relationship with the Night Nurse in canon has a similar dynamic to the Strange/Pepper in your fic.

Oh early Steve/Tony. I remember scrounging the internet for scraps.

You have no idea how thrilled seanchai and I were when we found your ficlets (which I don't review nearly often enough, because I suck at reviewing things that aren't on comms I regularly frequent, and tend to be very behind on reviews even there). There was somebody else shipping these people! Who wrote fic! We were not alone!

[runenklinge.livejournal.com]

So, I guess I forgot to tell you about how I was dragged into my other fandoms

I come from the manga-corner and what brought me into US comics in general was a bit of Superman/Batman (mostly jen_in_japan with her series "The Music of the Spheres" (http://jen-in-japan.livejournal.com/55427.html)
where I was led to by this (http://syntax-lies.deviantart.com/art/Music-of-Spheres-OJ-glarage-44423225) which I found by browsing deviantart for Batman pictures (Because Batman is cool^^ ...I blame mostly the movies for that...and the series on TV)

So, at that point I knew about livejournal. I was reluctant to get one myself, so I lurked at boostle and scans_daily . (You can´t escape scans_daily^^)

But then I discovered blinkytreefrog. She introduced me to the Rogues and especially Piper/Trickster. (I also blame greenygal )
Her fics include Heat (http://community.livejournal.com/piper_trickster/741.html)
Midnight (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2746163/1/Midnight)
Piper and the Gunsmith (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2343990/1/The_Piper_and_the_Gunsmith)
Then the little triology of
Brief conversation between friends
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/446018/1/A_Brief_Conversation_between_Friends
Longer conversation between friends
(http://www.fanfiction.net/s/839575/1/A_Longer_Conversation_Between_Friends)
Brief conversation between Antagonists
(http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1166152/1/A_Brief_Conversation_Between_Antagonists)

Then piper_trickster was founded and at that point I simply had to get myself a lj. blinky helped me a lot there^^

after reading an unholy lot of comics and with the help of liabrown I´m also a proud member of the Rogues fandom and I´m not going anywhere^^
flash_rogues


So, there I was, brandspanking new lj, boostle and pipster fan...
The came the 52/Countdown comics, got even more hooked into pipster...desperately wanted to resurrect Ted for boostle.
(Btw, for boostle:
doctorv and the mulletverse rock!
http://doctorv.livejournal.com/tag/mulletverse+fic

and while we´re at it, since doctorv and phoenixfire_lia founded nwo_now you can´t get me out of there with a crowbar^^

I forgot exactly how I got into cable_deadpool, but I couldn´t resist Wade^^

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Mullet-verse is totally the reason I ship Ted/Booster, too (well, technically, the reason I ship them is because I read that superlong scans_daily post where you see them being gay for each other again and again, but I read saids post so that I'd have the context to read the fic, because seanchai told me it was awesome and I had to -- and she was right.

For me, the fic that got me into Cable/Deadpool was the comic itself --since Fabian Nicieza was essentially getting paid to write slash fanfic about the two of them. It was such a random, crack pairing, and yet he made it work so well.

[quillori.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom.

I certainly agree about the efficacy of long, plotty fics, but I'm not sure they are the only means of conversion: I think it may depend what type of story you normally like. I mean, I can see the potential of long, plotty fics, but since I generally like 3rd wave stories (and established relationships) and am happy to read in fandoms I don't know, I'm generally converted to a pairing by coming across some story (whether long and plotty or a character-driven vignette) that clearly presents the relationship with the sort of dynamics I particularly like. I'm not too worried about how they got there - I'm prepared to assume the working is there even if not shown.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Good point -- I've also been converted to a ship by established relationship stories as well (one of the Kakashi/Iruka fics was established relationship). The one real hard-and-fast rule in my experience is that it has to be long and melodramatic, preferably with h/c. Then again, I like to to be told stories, preferably ones with h/c and emo-porn and drama. Pr0n is a fairly distant third or fourth on my list of things-I-come-to-fandom-for, while for may people, I know, it's #1. And if your [generic you] primary motivation for reading fic is pr0n, then you probably are more likely to be converted by a handful of scorchingly hot PWPs then something long and plotty. And if asomeone's here for a particular kink, like chan or incest or various kinds of BDSM, than I imagine they'll probably get onboard with a pairing simply because it's chan/incest/etc. or because the people who write it tend to write lots of domestic discipline fic or collaring fic or so on and so forth, rather than because a specific fic convinced them that these two people were Meant To Be.

Plus, the fact that I won't read short fic for things that aren't by people on my flist/about my OTP/in my primary fandoms/yuletide fic probably skews my personal experience. When I search for fic on ff.net, I always set the length limit at "10,000 words and up" so that I don't have to wade through all the short things and ficlets to try and find something substantial to read.

If only I could write longfic.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I did the panel at con_txt on how to make a fandom out of nothing (http://community.livejournal.com/con_txt/43493.html), and I used you and seanchai and Steve/Tony, and lightgetsin and sahiya and Vorkosigan as my two primary examples- two recent cases where one novel-length fic jump-started an entire fandom (including dragging me in.) And yes, I said "write old-fashioned epic slashfic" a lot!

The Vorkosigan one interesting, in that the slash pairing they wrote the long fics in hasn't really become all that popular (possibly because they wrote it as an AU, and the canon relationships are very popular) but it *did* draw in the slashers, which got enough of a fandom going that even people who hate that pairing started drifting in and writing...

Die Hard 4 slash is definitely another recent fandom that's worked this way. Classic, get-the-boys-together OTP slash, and lots of longfic. I think the one that sparked it off was svilleficrecs' "Walking Wounded" (at least, that's the first one I encountered), but she got a lot of her friends into it, and there's been a steady trickle ever since.

Ooh, and Pundit's Round Table is an RPS fandom/pairing/shared AU that started with a series of connected shorts by one author, which her friends picked up, and is now one of the most popular sets of characters in the fandom to write.

There are many other fandoms that *I* got into as a result of one long fic, but those three are the ones where I was there to watch a fandom form around it. ...I've also, though, seen a couple times where a good long slashfic got written, and I was watching hoping a fandom would form, and it *didn't*. I think there's a couple other factors: One of them is don't $%&# lock it down - twice I've seen someone write a wip in a small fandom, and then freak out over how popular it was getting, and lock it. The fans already reading it kept reading it, but nobody wrote anything else and it never grew.

Another is that I think it's important that when that first WIP or two stops posting, there's something else being written, or coming soon, that will keep people coming back. There are plenty of times where someone's written one awesome long slashfic in a small fandom - and then goes back to her large fandoms and ignores it, and that's not going to be enough to jump-start the fandom. And you also have to actively encourage other people to write, or some people will hesitate out of fear that you've claimed it as your territory. -I note that all of the sucessful examples I gave here involved either a pair of co-writers or a tightly-knit clique writing together, or both. Do you think this is something one writer working alone can get started, or does having even one other person around to keep the enthusiasm up make the difference?

Re: If only I could write longfic.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

There is novel-length Vorkosigan fic? Why have I never heard of it?

I think it's important that when that first WIP or two stops posting, there's something else being written, or coming soon, that will keep people coming back. There are plenty of times where someone's written one awesome long slashfic in a small fandom - and then goes back to her large fandoms and ignores it, and that's not going to be enough to jump-start the fandom.

Good point. I of course can't think of any now, but I know there are a few glorious fics out there on the internet that are the only fics in existance for their fandom (like the approximately a dozen Coldfire trilogy fics out there, half of which were written for yuletide - that one's always biggled me, because you'd think fangirls would flock to Gerald Tarrant in screaming hordes, angst-ridden anime bishonen anti-hero that he is).

So, not just a single long ship fic, but multiple ones (or one really, really famous/infamous one by a BNF that's posted in installments over aproximately half of forever, like the first handfull of influential HP fics - I swear the Draco Trilogy and the Paradigm of Uncertainty together bear about half the responsibility for Harry/Hermione).

One of them is don't $%&# lock it down - twice I've seen someone write a wip in a small fandom, and then freak out over how popular it was getting, and lock it

Maybe I should go back and change my "rule" to "If you write it and don't flock it, they will come." I know I'll almost never ask to be friended in order to read something -- it's like asking to be emailed a password to download vids or get into a site; I have to ask a favor from someone I don't know and the leftover shreds of adolescent social anxiety make me completely unable to do it.

[theladyscribe]

I have made it my life goal (for the moment) to promote Dean/Jess (in Supernatural fandom) via my own fic. I am proud to say that it's working. I discovered the pairing not too long after I joined SPN fandom, and now I can't get enough of it. Sadly, I've read (or written) pretty much all of the fic that's out there, so I'm working on converting my friends.

I have to say, though, that I disagree about needing long, plotty fic to convert people. It might depend on the ship and the fandom, but I've only seen a couple Dean/Jess stories over 1000 words.

Pairing conversion also works extremely well in crossover situations - again, within SPN, my OTP is really Dean/female, so I'll take just about anything, but the crossovers that shouldn't work but totally do (Dean/Veronica Mars, Dean/Kaylee Frye, Dean/Hermione, Dean/Velma) are my favorites, all of which, of course, were first introduced to me via fandom, since there's no source canon that would promote the ships.

P.S. Here via metafandom.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Dean/Jess sounds interesting (see, when I heard it, I immediately thought of an AU where Sam was the one who died in the fire, and Jess is seeking vengeance on the demon with crazed-by-grief-suicidal!Dean as her companion, though if there aren't any long Dean/Jess fics, I somehow doubt the epic AU I'm envisioning exists). Does Jess's charcterizartion vary a lot from writer to writer (since we get so little of her in canon), or do Dean/Jess shipper all tend to have a similar idea of what Jess is/was like?

I disagree about needing long, plotty fic to convert people. It might depend on the ship and the fandom, but I've only seen a couple Dean/Jess stories over 1000 words

Well, the discussions of pairing evolution and kinds of fic that are popular at various stages of a fandom that I referenced above all deal with slash -- it could be that het pairings are an easier sell to some fans (Dean/Jess doesn't have the significant stumbling block of taboo to overcome that Wincest does - though on the other hand, it's also practically Dean/OC, given how little development Jess gets in canon, and sometimes those take longer to set up then lead character A/lead character B). Or that they're really good short fics.

Or it could just be that I think long fics arethe be-all and end-all of shipfic because they're what I prefer to read, as has been pointed out to me elsewhere in comments.

Via metafandom

[zulu]

I have only one thing to say: SEE ICON.

I think a big part of building a ship is using all of one's fannish credit to bribe/blackmail/beg others into writing a pairing you want to see. I mean, yes, I've written the novel-length "they get together", and I've written the "and this is why A is with C and not B", and I've written the cracky mpreg AU, and I've written the porny fics and the short gen ficlets. But I think the most important steps have been a) making and advertising the pairing-comm; and b) asking others for their input. Because once other people have done the legwork/thoughtwork on the pairing for themselves, they're more likely to be hooked, I think.

Re: Via metafandom

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

SEE ICON

Icons! I forgot all about icons when I was mentioning methods of ship pimping (meta, vids, fic...). They might be one of the best ways of all, since they're kind of like little personal bits of advertising space.

I think the most important steps have been a) making and advertising the pairing-comm; and b) asking others for their input.

I think you probably have something there -- I know activity picked up for at least one of my small fandoms when we moved from a very "I am the moderator and this comm is my personal possession" environment to a new, more participatory comm where people felt free to run challenges, etc.

[runedgirl.livejournal.com]

(here via metafandom) - In total agreement with your post, which reflects my own experience with the Wincest ship within SPN fandom. I started out not even seeing the possibility of a slash ship within canon, because hello, brothers! Didn't even watch the show closely since I tend to prefer slashable media and didn't categorize this as such. It was the incredible fanfic that opened my eyes to the (unlikely) possibility, since the writers who tackled the built-in challenge of such a relationship seemed to be amongst the most talented I'd ever read. Now it's mostly what I write, and all of it the very long "show your work" variety -- with a relationship like this, that seems the only way to make it believable. Best compliments I've ever gotten are people who say 'I don't usually read Wincest, but...'

Thanks for the thoughtful post!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

In total agreement with your post, which reflects my own experience with the Wincest ship within SPN fandom

Oh good, so my blithe generalization about Wincest fics needing to be longer and put more build-up into the relationship because of the nature of the pairing wasn't completely off-base (I mosty read gen h/c when I read SPN fic, so there was a very good chance someone was going to pop up and say, "You're wrong, Wincest fic is 99% crack PWPs and onyl 1% old-school long first-time fic").

[blktauna.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Interesting...

Well I can honestly say there are no pairings I have been sucked into because of fic. Making me watch a show, yes, and I haven't forgiven my mate Chris for reminding me about the Sweeney. It's a fandom of one for me, I must say, at least slash wise. But the site of screencaps is going down a treat wirt the fanboys.

So no, I don't think long, plotty, first time fics do convert some people, just most people.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I don't think long, plotty, first time fics do convert some people, just most people.

I'm guessing that "some people" ought to be "all people?" No, I agree -- not everyone's going to be sucked in by the same kind of fic for the same pairing, all of the time. Personally, I prefer longer fic and almost never even bother reading short fic unless it's for my primary fandom, by a friend, or about my OTP, so I never even see most fics that not for an pairing I already ship unless it's long.

[dejla.livejournal.com]

Ummm... no. I've never been converted by anyone else's shipping in fandom, whether written or spoken. If I don't see it, I don't see it. I'll nod politely and go on.

I will read fiction with a ship I don't see if there's something else about the story I'm interested in, like a plot. Otherwise, I'm more likely to read gen. I am more likely to read het with a pairing that I can't see in the canon than I am to read slash.

For instance, I can't find any reason to believe in either Steve/Tony or Tony/Rhodey--and so I don't read them.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Ummm... no. I've never been converted by anyone else's shipping in fandom, whether written or spoken. If I don't see it, I don't see it. I'll nod politely and go on.

Well, obviously, fic isn't going to convert everybody, everywhere, everytime, to any and all pairings under the sun. Eeven the most brilliant fic in the world probably couldn't sell me on a pairing that conflicted with one of my OTPs, for example, and pretty much all my OTPs are things there's support for in canon, that I formed from watching/reading canon -- but there are a lot of pairings I like and find enjoyable that I was introduced to via fic.

I am more likely to read het with a pairing that I can't see in the canon than I am to read slash.

Um, why, exactly? I mean, I'd think non-canonical pairings would pretty much be equally not-of-interest to a canon-ships-only reader. The again, that could be me as a bisexual woman projecting.

For instance, I can't find any reason to believe in either Steve/Tony or Tony/Rhodey--and so I don't read them.

And you felt the need to tell me this, knowing they were my OTP and also not the topic of this discussion... why?

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

Interesting observations. Thanks for sharing them.

"If you write it, they will come."

I agree with that, as far as it goes (shipping and all). It certainly can (and does) happen the way you envision it here.

But I can't help but take the broader perspective. Your observation does not apply just to ships and conversion thereof. It's how *all* fan fiction-based fandoms got started. Somebody (or somebodies) starts it off with some fiction (or zines, depending on how historical you're getting) and, by that very act, signal the possibilities to other people. All you need is for someone to point the way and for someone else to find them--thus a fandom is born. :-)

"Are there any pairings that you've become a fan of based on fic? And if so, was there a particular fic that made you 'see the light?'"

Heck, I've been drawn into entirely new fandoms, let alone pairings, based on fan fiction/fanzines/fan art. :-) But as for pairings . . . it has to be a logical and possible extrapolation of the media source product. I can't simply put two (or more) bodies in a bed like so very many slash (and het) fans can. So it isn't really possible for a piece of fan fiction to draw me into a pairing, or convince me of the "rightness" of it, unless it already pings my logical/possible meter. I find I can read in some slash fandoms and enjoy them without that, if the quality of the writing is sufficiently high (and if the characterizations are close enough that I can put my "AU" glasses firmly on my head and enjoy them that way). For example, I consider the idea of "Man from UNCLE" slash to be utterly preposterous--but I have fiction by Elizabeth Urich and Eros that I wouldn't part with for love nor money. (Sorry, can't point you to links, as this work is in zines.)

" . . . I suspect part of the issue there is a lack of understanding of what the term "gen" actually means, as with those people who think non-canonical het can be 'slash')."

There are fans who refer to canonical het as slash as well. As far as I can tell, that seems to be simply because the virgule (slash mark) is used in the pairings (like Jack/Sam of SG-1). But I'll leave the history of the term "slash" for another day. :-)

[thefrogg.livejournal.com]

I'm...kind of odd in that when I get into a fandom that's ensemble, but has one or two MAIN pairings (like McShep), the sheer volume/popularity tends to turn me OFF more than attract me. But that's neither here nor there.

Says she who is writing:
Todd/Lorne
Lorne/Ronon
Lorne/Rodney
Caldwell/Novak
among others.

But the reason I wanted to speak up was that I've actually found that one of the best ways to get other people involved in writing stuff in a fandom or a pairing you like is to prompt on challenges. I'm addicted to Todd-fic (SGA), and prompted like like a crazy mad person in the rounds_of_kink, and there's now a small but growing body of fic. Mostly from the three authors that wrote it to start with, but other people are taking up the gauntlet, too. So it's not just old fashioned long slash fics.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

the sheer volume/popularity tends to turn me OFF more than attract me

I've always been curious about that (speaking as a Rogue/Gambit fan who's seen countless other comics fans announce that they don't like Gambit because "too many fangirls like him"). Is it because there's more badfic when lots of people are writing a pairing? Because large communities (be they fandoms or shippers-within-a-fandom) are less intimate? Because you stand out more writing rare pairings? Something else I haven't thought of?

I've actually found that one of the best ways to get other people involved in writing stuff in a fandom or a pairing you like is to prompt on challenges. I'm addicted to Todd-fic (SGA), and prompted like like a crazy mad person in the rounds_of_kink, and there's now a small but growing body of fic.

I can see how that could work in larger fandoms (obvious, yuletide-sized fandoms aren't going to be much of a presence in fests, except for, well, yuletide, so that would rule them out). It increases the pairing's visibility (since people are going to be reading all of the challenge's results) and encourages new people to try writing it.

[tinx_r]

I became a fan of Starsky and Hutch based on fic. And although the fic was neither long nor first time, it was an emo piece where Starsky thought about his feelings for Hutch followed by a companion piece where Hutch did likewise for Starsky. So it fulfilled these points that you make regarding the characters convincing us of their love for each other.

Wow, such interesting points you've made here! Thanks so much.

[solar-cat.livejournal.com]

turntap2's fanart convinced me of the awesome that is Johnny Storm/Peter Parker. And... well. >.> *glances at johnny_peter * We can all see how that turned out. XD

Great essay!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Do you read Marvel Adventures comics? There's a scene in one issue of Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four wherein it is revealed that Johnny sleeps in Spiderman pajamas. It is the cutest thing ever.

I lean more towards Peter/MJ myself (with occasional detours into Peter/Harry Osborn), but Marvel Adventures Peter & Johnny are definately crushing on each other.

edited to remove spelling errors

[deird1]

Gotta say, one of my main ships is Dawn Summers/Andrew Wells. Which had never even occurred to me as an option when I watched the show.

I was coverted to its wonderful shippiness by a single drabble. And yes - a proper drabble: exactly 100 words convinced me that this ship was just incredible...

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

It's really interesting the variety of things people have been converted to a ship by (long fic, short fic, art, drabbles, vids, etc -- though some people have apparently never had their opinions on shipping affected by other people at all, which is also interesting).

It must have been a really effective drabble. Can you remember who it was by?

edited to remove typos

[sweetcarolanne.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom. I do think it's possible for 'ships to be created by fanfiction - been converted to a pairing more than once by reading something beautiful...

And not trying to blow my own horn here - but I may have spawned interest in a pairing myself simply by writing. When I first got into the Saw fandom, there was no Jigsaw/Zep slash fic anywhere out there and I only knew one other person who liked the pairing (she suggested the idea of the pairing to me, actually). When I posted my first fic, others started coming out of the woodwork and saying they liked the pairing, and now there are others writing amazing Jigsaw/Zep stories!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I may have spawned interest in a pairing myself simply by writing. When I first got into the Saw fandom, there was no Jigsaw/Zep slash fic anywhere out there and I only knew one other person who liked the pairing (she suggested the idea of the pairing to me, actually). When I posted my first fic, others started coming out of the woodwork and saying they liked the pairing, and now there are others writing amazing Jigsaw/Zep stories!

The best thing about sucking other people into your OTP is eventually getting to read fic you didn't write yourself! The "people coming out of the woodwork" thing is something I've seen in fandom before, too, and not just in terms of ships -- every time I see someone agonize over whether to post their fic about X kink, or X thing-they've-never-seen-in-this-fandom-and-are-sure-no-one-else-will-like, they'll get at least one comment going "ZOMG, you too? I thought I was the only one who wanted to see Evil Sentient Armor/Tony Stark non-con, see Mal Reynolds at a drag ball, see all the characters get turned into baby animals, read Sheppard/McKay BDSM, or read [insert fic scenario here]."

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Oh hell yes.

Jossverse- Spike/Connor - no onscreen time together. Tons of fic. A definite ship. And now it's even winked/nodded at in the comics.

Similar notion with various RPS ships in that verse too. And definitely an If You Write it phenomenon.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Spike/Connor - no onscreen time together. Tons of fic. A definite ship. And now it's even winked/nodded at in the comics.

See, my Angel-viewing ended part-way through season three, so Connor is still a baby in my head. That said, the almost-kinda-incest vibes of Spike/Connor would be right in keeping with the tradition Line of Aurelius vamps seem to have of sleeping with their "relatives" left and right (Darla/Angel, Spike/Dru, Darla/Dru, Spike/Angel, etc. Any combination of the above is basically canon in Jossverse). Also, Angel's reaction would be awesome.

I haven't actually read any of the comics (either for Angel or Buffy Season 8), mainly because post-series Angel doesn't have Gunn and Wesley anymore and I have no interest in BtVS stuff that doesn't have Spike in it. I've heard interestings thngs about them, though, and the fact that comics!Xander is a dead ringer for a young Nick Fury is an endless source of amusement to me.

*Here via metafandom*

[carnadosa.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's totally how I get hooked unto a ship (don't get me started how annoyed I am that I imprinted on Jack/Will in POTC instead of OTP3).

Well, it wasn't a long fic but Marry into the Family (http://yearningvoid.net/julad/marry.html) got me into smallville despite the fact that I hate the show (sure, Tom is cute and for some reason I find guys with shaved heads hot but the actual show gives me hives). But Lanning's Identical Series (http://lanning.slashdom.net/) kept me there and convinced me of the innate rightness of Clark/Lex.

Sidelines: A Season in Other Rooms (http://www.drizzle.com/~eliade/xander_spike.html) got me into Spike/Xander and BTVS, again, without actually watching the show. (I've seen the one with the Hansel and Gretal demon twice and that's it.)

Pet Shop of Horrors? Blood (http://www.no-assumptions.com/gundamwing/fics/psh-blood1.htm). Which is not quite to the standards of the first two but I love it anyway. Baby dragon!

You know, I could probably do this for any fandom I read for ever. But I won't because that would be another 20 links (and I don't have time).

Sidelines

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

Was amazing. Thank you for the rec!

without actually seeing the show Yeah, same here, and I think that Xander and Spike offer a set of parameters for exploration that transcend fanficcing. I think that about Sparrington, as well-- I really relish these uneven relationship stories, where the couple have to find some way of either evening out the playing field, or else coming to terms with dominance in the dynamic...

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

I've always and only gotten my pairing preferences from fic. But I'm pretty omnivorous, ship-wise-- which is why I feel so drawn to Jack Sparrow, he's the Universal Solvent! I think I prefer Sparrington if I have any preference at all in the original material, but I am extremely partial to the crossover pairing of Jacks Shaftoe and Sparrow to be found over at impofperversity and that's what I mostly write.

I fell into Harry/Draco via mistful-- but her H/D might as well be completely original characters, and I'm so looking forward to her book!

And lit_gal has me totally hooked on two of her pairings-- Spike/Xander from BTVS, and Ellison/Sandburgh from Sentinel.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Jack Sparrow, he's the Universal Solvent!

The early days of PotC fandom, as I remember them, were kind of a big mashup of het and slash and poly of all kinds, and I lay this squarely at the feet of the fact that Jack Sparrow pretty much has chemistry with everything, including inanimate objects.

Which might be why I can actually read and enjoy Sparrington and other non Jack/Will/Elizabeth-in-some-combination pairings; usually when I ship something enough to really write it (as anything other than a ficlet), I can't read any conflicting ships at all because the characterization will be wrong.

As I understand it, Jim/Blair was pretty much canon on the Sentinel (I've never actually seen the show or read fic for it, but I'm pretty sure people have told me that they had a canonical soulbond or something).

Late to the party

[velithya]

This was a really insightful post. I think you are pretty correct in your statements and reasoning although I will say that when it has been fic that has converted me, it's not generally necessary for it to be long (although I guess the longer the fic is, the more chance it has of imprinting on me with any certainty).

I get into fandoms in one of two ways:

1) I read/watch the source material and go looking for the fandom (and generally, I tend to 'imprint' on the first thing I find that is well-written and plausible)

2) Someone I 'trust' (on my friendslist, or someone rec'd by someone on my friendslist) writes fic that I read, and if it's sufficiently awesome I go look for the source material.

My Steve/Tony is actually a product of number one, hilariously enough. I've been into anime/manga for almost 10 years now but never really made a huge foray into western comics. I started poking at DC last year but never really got into Marvel at all, but then I watched Iron Man. (Four times.) When I went looking on LJ for the fandom comms, I came across cap_ironman as like the second link, poked around, found RR&R and your ship_manifesto and now I am writing fic about kittens. I would like to state for the record that for the last, something like 9 years of my online and fandom presence I have maintained that I do not write fanfic (except for that one DBZ mary sue that I wrote when I was like 13, but everyone has one of those right) because while I am a prolific original fic writer I didn't really feel comfortable playing in other people's universes, and Steve/Tony managed to shatter that in less than two months. I'M JUST SAYING.

My best example of the second one is my other fandom, Supernatural. My friend chaobell kept talking about this show she was watching about these hot brothers and she'd written several (wincest) stories and since I have been known to read anything by good authors even if it's not in fandoms I'm familiar with I checked them out. (can provide links on request, I'd have to go dig them up and it's 3am here :x) And then I went through her memories and checked out other Sam/Dean stories she'd saved from other authors, and it was only after I'd spent a couple days straight reading stories that I managed to emerge from my cocoon and find someone IRL to lend me the first season.

If you are interested I can go through my other fandoms and see if I can work out which category they fall under, and if 2) see if I can dredge up the related stories. Let me know :)

(edited for grammar, 3am hurr)

Re: Late to the party

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I always love hearing about people's experiences in fandoms -- my Supernatural experience was similar to yours minus the Wincest. seanchai and I were seduced into reading SPN gen by big_pink's awesome fics (particularly "Red") and then read a bunch of fic when we discovered that the gen side of the fandom was a treasure trove of casefile-syle H/c fic. Then we finally watched the first season of the show. We're about halfway through the second season now.

Re: Hey

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Deleting the comment so the entire intarwebs won't be able to see your # (I can't lock the post, because it's a public essay). I'm replying by email, though, so check your inbox.

Several Months Later...

[kitacarlsen.livejournal.com]

Sorry if this is weird. I recently started reading Steve/Tony, and followed a link from cap_ironman to your journal, and thought this question was really interesting. So, hi!

I just wanted to say that I nodded along with all of your points but didn't think they applied to me... until I realized that holy shit, they totally did.

That is, one of my hardcore OTPs is Rayne, or Jayne/River from Firefly. I rewatch the series now and can believe that they would have gotten together eventually. They're my second-largest section of shippy bookmarks on delicious. And yet, thinking about it now, the first time I heard about them I thought it was utter immature crack. Like, "Yeah, you're just putting the thirty-five year old pervert mercenary and the seventeen year old crazy girl together so the pairings on the boat are all symetrical. Life doesn't work that way!"

And then I read a long first-time fic. One that, as you say, showed its work. I'm pretty sure it was the Horseshoe Nails series by dyce on ff.net. Anyway, now when I think about the pairing now, I think 1)It happens gradually, and when she's mostly recovered; 2)They relate as fighters and weapons; 3)Neither needs or wants long emotional explanations for their feelings; 4)When Jayne feels something, it is strong and uncomplicated enough to ground River psychically; 5)They are very much attracted to each other; 6)Jayne accepts and values the violence inherent in River's character in a way no other love interest ever could; and 7)No one else understands their relationship, until they do. This is all perfectly obvious to me when I think about them now. But really, none of it comes from the source canon. It all comes from fic.

In short, I came looking for more awesome Steve/Tony (and found it, thank you!) and, upon reexamining my shipping history, totally agree with your theory.

Sorry again for commenting out of the blue. :)

Quotation of Plato

[(Anonymous)]

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
Quotation of Plato