A disclaimer: I am not talking about anyone in particular in this blog entry, nor am I trying to bait or insult shippers, I’m just doing my thing, expressing what’s in my pointy little head. You are responsible for your own reactions. Comment, please, but do not think you will change my mind. Enlightenment and discourse are encouraged. Snark and bashing, doubly so. Hehehe.
Okay, so I haunt the scifi boards, primarily SGA and SG-1. More SG-1 than anything, I am an unabashed Dr. Jackson fan. Hmmm, well, near-unabashed, my geek friends needle me about it. But hey, I embraced my inner fangirl and I’m having some harmless fun.
One of the things which confuses me is the proliferation and tenacity of the shippers. Okay, I can see why the ship is intriguing, I mean, I’ve had the random hook up thought. What would this person doing that person do the the dynamics of the show? Or, hey, they’d be a cute couple matchmakery ideas. For me it is primarily just thinking out loud and wouldn’t it be interesting if sort of mental exercise. I never try to read more into the show than what I see on the screen. If it isn’t there, it isn’t there! I can grasp slash more easily, which is an another entire caselot of cans of worms entirely. On clearance yet.
Yes, wearing the romantically tinged rose colored glasses could be fun. And what little fanfic I’ve read with “explicit sex” scenes has been hot. But I still don’t see why some shippers insist that the pairings exist and cling to them. What is the appeal of finding romance where there is none? Perhaps there is a reason I never took to Harlequin and other assorted bodice-rippers, besides the really bad writing, and lack of plot and character development.
Here’s a chunk of my confusion: why ship? Why not invent yourself into that world or universe and go for it yourself instead? If you’re going to imagine love or sex or simply happy cuddle-puddles, why not picture yourself in the mix? Almost every show, I can see myself, not as one of the characters, and most assuredly not as my old lumpy self, but as my alter ego, interacting and saving the day or being tragic or having really hot sex with the other characters. Or saving the day by having tragically hot sex. Hey, I’ve done it in my head! Could it be other people do not have these ideal alter egos? That this vision departs too widely from the episodes as they exist? Can it be that some shippers lack an imagination of that variety? Does their reality preclude envisioning themselves as fictional characters? Am I mad?
I have a theory. I had invisible friends as a child, but I always had an invisible “me” to talk to and play with. Yes, I was a lonely only girl whose father was in the military. We moved a lot, I had no long-term childhood friends. When I got older, the invisible me was no longer a buddy, but populated my books and movies. She was ten foot tall and bulletproof. As a teenager, I was angsty and a proto-goth. I would have out-gothed the current goths, had there been goths in the 70s. I made do with Tolkien and Edgar Allen Poe. And sometimes I’d talk to myself, we all do, but I had a tall blonde talking back to me. She still hangs around now and then, a vision of lost youth and impossible possibilities. She’s the one who creeps into the shows I watch now, creating fanciful stories which vary widely from what’s been written for the screen. She’s the one having the good hot time with assorted fictional characters. She’s a Very Naughty Girl. (On the other hand, I am a DOLL, a Dirty Old Licentious Lady.)
Yes, I have written a bit of fanfic, primarily to see if I could do better than other fanfics which annoyed the snot outta me. Yes, what got posted was the expunged version, the Lost Chapters were for private consumption. Yes, I may drop it onto fanfiction.net, but maybe not. She’s a personal thing is the Invisible Me.
So, I have to wonder, why picture a character loving another character when you could be right there, virtually speaking, yourself? Sex, romance or cuddle puddles, why them and not you? I don’t get it! As Dr. Phil might say, “This Ship won’t Sail.”
