Fandom

So Kat and I were discussing fandom the other day, and she asked me that if I ever did get around to publishing something how would I feel about people writing fanfiction of my stuff. As someone who really got my legs in fandom, I found the question to be funny. I would be eternally flattered if people wrote fandom about my stuff. But the reason it came up was because she had been reading about authors who don't want fanfiction of their stuff put up on the web.

One of them equated writing fanfiction to her neighbor sleeping with her daughter. It was not a good comparision, but the point was that characters are like children in some ways. I get this, I really do. My characters are, in some ways, like children. You don't want to hear negative things about them, and you don't want them to be ruined, but to be honest, the scariest thing about fandom to me is that there is such bad writing of these characters without thought for how to capture their voices and personalities.

Um, where was I going with this. I got distracted because I started thinking about if there was any ship in my canons that would freak me out (my initial 'that would be weird' was Alice/Molly, but unfortunately, they have a very slashable relationship. I suppose Cassandra and Jon would freak me out because they are siblings, but even that I would just skip over it, rather then freak out about it). OH I REMEMBER.

So, anyways, I was thinking about fandom after that and it mostly came down to pairings. I am a very cannon kind of girl. I always shipped Ron/Hermione, I love Laurie/Amy, George/Alanna made the most sense to me, and Monica/Chandler were my favorite couple for a long time; in general, when a couple are meant to be I ship them. Its only been recently that I've branched out a bit. There are a couple of fandoms where I like character pairings that aren't the official OTP.

Legend of the Seeker for example, was the first show I watched where I was like "I like Cara/Kahlan better together then Richard/Kahlan." I think it was more about the dynamic of their relationship, as Richard and Kahlan are ridiculously cute, but anyways. In Big Bang Theory I kind of have a thing for Sheldon/Penny -- but as Sheldon becomes more and more asexual, there is a certain amount of, "That would be weird".

I was thinking about my propensity towards the cannon couples though today when I was making icons. I recently got distracted by lj icons all over the place and I decided to make some of my own. I was going through Buffy stuff and I realized suddenly that I didn't know who I shipped -- Angel/Buffy or Spike/Buffy. There are certain parts of both relationships that I really enjoy, and I could see Buffy with either of them, but there is something to be said to the fact that at the end of the series she is supposed to be 22. How many people knew who they were supposed to be with forever at that point.

One of the things that keeps occurring to me is the fact that a lot of these characters that you ship, sometimes they aren't forever ships, they are right now ships. You can love them dearly, but relationships do fall apart, and its about the right person (oh dear, I'm talking myself into a corner in regards to Barney/Robin) at the time. I like that it reflects real life. Very few people have epic love stories.

When it comes to my own writing, I do think about ships and what could happen from the characters and their relations to one another. In the novel with Alice, Ian and Molly, there is a huge potential for shipping Ian/Molly (which a little squicks me, but only in their adamance that its just too weird for them). In the end though, I don't even know if the main pairing (Alice/Ian) will end up together because of the issue of -- they are all quite young. People change, and demanding two characters that have diverged remain together is forcing things that shouldn't be forced.

Wow, so that got rambly.

Um. I'll come clean it up later. Or not.