I consider fan fiction as the healing balm of heartaches. I turn to it when my favorite piece of media veers toward a weird plot direction or ends in total catastrophe. Or when, and especially, my ship isn’t the endgame.
What in the World is a Ship?
Asked my 19-year-old self.
Unless you’re a manga fan living under a rock, which is quite impossible, you may have come across people on the internet ‘shipping’ a character with another. You can probably deduce the meaning from that alone — a ‘ship’ is a shorter term for ‘relationship.’ So when you ship fictional characters, you want them to be together romantically.
I didn’t know about the term until I graduated from college.
Yet, even without knowing about the label, I’ve realized that I do ‘ship’ characters, starting from Tohru and Kyo from Fruits Basket to Hinata and Naruto from, well, Naruto (some people will come for me here). I don’t know how many can relate to me, but I love the idea of “will they or won’t they” being integrated into stories in which romantic relationships are not the focus. While it’s a shoujo manga and a love story, Fruits Basket is not just about Tohru letting go and falling in love; it’s also about her being sort of a family therapist. Naruto? I don’t even have to tell you about it. Shinobi wars. The nine-tail fox. Jiraiya dying. Oops.
The ambiguity of endgames in these stories titillates me. I also get a kick every time I ship a certain pair, and they get together in the end. One can’t help but feel smug when proven right.
That said, what does shipping have to do with fan fiction? Well, plenty of fanworks revolve around it.
Let’s Talk About the Shipping Wars
Picture this: You’re scrolling, looking for artworks to like and reading insights about the latest chapters from manga you follow, when an unfamiliar tag catches your attention. That quirky tag? It’s probably a ship name.
(A ship name, by the way, is a term that combines the characters’ names you want to pair up. It’s a lot like how Filipino babies were given their names: Father’s Jun. Mother’s Ela. Baby? Junela.)
The same scenario happened to me. However, the ship I came across baffled me because I didn’t expect people to see them as a romantic pair. Of course, I read what’s in the tags, and it dawned on me that fans do have a way of bending reality (in this case, the canon material) to suit their preferences. Their motto? Canon is just a suggestion.
And, honestly? Fair. Because art is supposed to be like that. We make our interpretations of a creative work and we run with it. As long as we don’t harm anybody, we can enjoy whatever we want.
The downside? Some of these fans focus too much on the ship, failing to absorb the broader message of the work. A few ended up looking into a pinhole where the only thing that matters is the interaction between their two characters, distracting them from the story’s core themes, the characters’ individual growth, and other qualities that would’ve made consuming the material more meaningful.
Worse, they see people online who support a different ship, and they won’t have it. Several times, I have seen strangers use a tag only to demean and curse the ship and the shippers. It only takes one offended shipper to answer back with equal fire for chaos to ensue. And I’m only talking about tame discussions in a relatively ‘quiet’ social media platform. Twitter is much, much worse.
The noise on socials is unbearable, so the next best bet to enjoy one’s ship is fan fiction.
Fan Fiction Celebrate the Ships That Wouldn’t Sail
Shipping discourse on social media can cause stress, even when you’re not engaging in the discussions. Many times, the point of the story is tossed to the side and fans argue over pairs instead.
Amid the dumpster fire shippers are pushing themselves into, reading fan fiction has become a safe space. I can filter stories of my favorite pair and select easy-read fluffs in multiple chapters and slice-of-life one-shots. I can avoid comments after reading a chapter to keep the toxicity away. I cry, giggle, ache, and heal, as I watch my ship fall in love in every universe, alternative or otherwise.
I take comfort in these fan-made stories because even when my ship didn’t end up in canon, I can still read a thousand works that tell me my pair made it.
Maybe the knowledge that the two will be together in the end in these fanworks provides a sense of control and certainty. Especially after the original author of the work cut all speculations by marrying off characters to another.
Maybe it’s about the strong conviction fanfic writers have for the pair — an unwavering belief that when two people are meant to be together, they’re bound to find each other, even in the most out-of-this-world circumstances. A soothing thought, when reality paints a rather disillusioned picture of fates never meeting, of bonds fraying at the edges, of love withering and dying.
A piece of fan fiction may be a derivative work, but it’s just as impactful as the source material, if not more.
So, when your favorite manga ends and your ship fails to ‘sail,’ no worries. Fanfiction got you. The way it did for me.
That’s all for this month’s Fixation Friday. See you!
Leave a Reply