[ SECRET POST #4088 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4088 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 16 secrets from Secret Submission Post #585.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/NSCxRKS.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Is this a thing, people going into ship fics and complaining they're ship fics?

Most of what I see is people who don't like that ship fics are practically all that exist, which is an entirely different complaint.

[(Anonymous)]

I sometimes see people complain about canon love interests not playing a large enough role in fics about noncanon ships. Depending on the ship configuration, it's sometimes spun into an issue of erasure or an -ism of some sort.

[(Anonymous)]

I can see that happening.

I wouldn't place it in the same category as how OP put it though. It's not "ship fic or not ship fic" for someone to want the third party in the canon love triangle to show up and be prominent. Maybe that's how they like their A/B to be shipped.

In that case, it's more an argument over how A/B should be shipped - to stick with canon rivals and interactions or not - instead of whether this is an A/B shipfic or not an A/B shipfic.

[(Anonymous)]

Well it's not always a love triangle situation, is it? Especially if you're dealing with (for example) slash fic where A/B only exists in canon as subtext and A/C are supposedly happily married. A lot of writers and readers in that situations prefer to brush A/C under the rug rather than try and shoehorn in a love triangle when they just want A/B hurt/comfort or whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

Right but again, that gets down to "this is a ship fic that doesn't ship it the way I ship it!" and not "is this an A/B shipfic or not?"

When you say "A/B shipfic" it doesn't automatically mean that all canon is erased, and even that example is a question of how people want the ship to be shipped. Not whether it's a shipfic.

A/B happening where C doesn't exist is a shipfic. A/B happening after A/C divorces and B comforts A over it is also just as much a shipfic. Someone expecting or wanting the latter doesn't mean they want a not-shipfic. They just want a different kind.

[(Anonymous)]

Not necessarily. Someone could be complaining about it because C is their favorite character and they wish there was more fic about C or A/C instead of fic about A/B. It's gauche to beg for fic, so they try and make their complaint more valid by claiming that A/B writers are to blame for the lack of C, or that A/B writers are doing something genuinely wrong by not focusing on C in their fics.

I mean I guess you could boil any complaint about a shipfic to "this doesn't ship it the way I ship it!" whether it's a complaint over the lack of A/C in A/B fic or a complaint about how A is always the designated woobie. But I think that's perhaps a bit reductive.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think your example there counts as "complain[ing] about [A/B] ship-fic being only about the [A/B] ship." That would be "complaining that A/B ship-fic isn't A/C ship-fic." I know it happens, but I don't think that's what OP is talking about.

It sounds more like they think it's weird when people complain that A/B shipfic is missing C, D, and E entirely, because their - reductive, it could be said - definition of shipfic is that nothing else but A/B matters. Even when the exclusion of all else could make the characters OOC or remove large parts of the canon drama.

Granted, A and B in fantasy fairy space where nothing ever happened and everything is a blank slate super-AU, is technically a shipfic. Harry the teenage barista and Hermoine the hipster writer meeting up in a cafe and eloping to go shop for curtains is, technically, a shipfic. To use that as the default definition, or be confused why someone would ask "but where did their major character-altering canon relationships that would normally impact how this ship could happen in big ways, go?", is a bit weird.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. I'll never understand people who are shocked and appalled when a fic doesn't focus on every supporting character who appears. It's a 2,000 word fic about A/B where C shows up to talk to A for one scene, and you expect an in-depth character study of C? Really odd.

[(Anonymous)]

I think people are usually just annoyed about how much more there is of shippy fic versus any other kind of fic

[kaijinscendre]

I have never heard someone say that. Weird.

[(Anonymous)]

I kinda like it when a ship fic has other minor ships in it. Especially if I hadn't explored them before. I found one of my favor slash ships because they popped up in a het fic I was reading and they were so frigging cute.

But I read a ship fic because I like the ship. There are usually plenty of regular fics to read in a fandom unless the fandom is tiny.

[(Anonymous)]

In my *mumblemumble* years in fandom, I have never seen someone who is interested in reading ship fic complain that it's only about the ship. Not once. In my experience, you're more likely to get complaints when a ship fic has too much of side characters.

Certainly people who don't like the ship complain about it, or people who want more gen fic, but who cares? BY DEFINITION ship fic is about the ship, so I really just...do not get this secret.

[feotakahari]

I’d say it’s a function of tagging. If you tag your A/B fic for C/D, C/D fans are going to be disappointed that ship’s background.

[(Anonymous)]

Indeed. In the past, I've had to go through 2 or more pages of AO3 results before finding a summary that suggests the story actually is about the pairing I've filtered the search for.It IS OK not to tag fic with every single pairing and character who shows up for one line!

While I AM going to be annoyed by someone pretending a fic is about A/B when it's really not, I'm not going to complain about anyone writing a C/D fic without A/B, which is what this secret seems to be talking about. So I'm not sure tags are a full explanation.

[(Anonymous)]

The secret never mentions tagging.

[rosehiptea]

This is part of why I read and write short fic. A long saga involving the ship and all their friends and enemies is great but not what I'm most interested in.

[liz_marcs]

I've literally never seen people complain about a ship fic being a ship fic.

I have seen people complain about mistagging a ship fic to sucker people into reading their fic, usually when the rival ship is tagged so they can pull a "Gotchya! It's an anti-ship for you!" on them.

I've also seen people complain about character bashing in ship fic, namely the character(s) that are the canon rivals to their ship becoming reality (no matter how remote).

Those complaints are not the same thing as complaining about the ship fic itself or the fact that ship fic exists for that particular pairing (or any pairing, really).

The closest I've seen to what you're talking about is when people complain there's too much ship fic in a given fandom for one particular pairing.

[(Anonymous)]

Same, although I’d say the closest I’ve seen is when people complain about fic that’s tagged with characters that don’t actually show up in the story but are mentioned once or twice by other characters. Which, yeah. That’s bad tagging manners.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm really surprised that so many commenters have never seen people complaining that it's bad writing when a fic tunnel visions on the main pairing and neglects to write in supporting characters.