2013-06-19T10:15:36-04:00 Hannah Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=hannah-ellison Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Hannah Ellison Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1803007 2012-08-19T19:00:00-04:00 2012-10-19T05:12:03-04:00

Hannah Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-ellison/ issued a statement on her website decrying her annoyance over how she was being talked about in certain articles.

However, what she did not mention was the recent, and very excited reporting of a supposed relationship between Anderson and former X-Files co-star David Duchovny (a rumour since debunked by representatives from both camps). The moment the rumour surfaced that an on-screen couple from a show that ended a decade ago might have become an off-screen couple it was being covered by news outlets worldwide, from The Guardian to Gawker.

Considering the amount of press attention the story got it seems half of the western world's journalists were big fans of the 90s phenomenon-but more than that they were shippers (shippers, in case you're not sure, are those who invest in relationships rather than narrative when consuming texts both real and fictional). The idea that Mulder and Scully, a couple who barely got to be a couple on the show, might have finally fallen in love was a dream come true. It was a fairy tale, and if shippers deal in anything it's the fairy tale of a love that shouldn't be finally being realised. It's no real surprise that The X-Files managed to cultivate shippers who would still care this much a decade later, after all one of its slogans was "I want to believe".

During the time the show was on air shipping was something rarely talked about, especially outside of fan circles. Articles mentioned 'fans' who liked the idea of Mulder and Scully becoming a couple and jokes were made about the actors, but it was never talked about seriously. Back then that sort of fandom was something nerds did in some place called the World Wide Web, now it's what millions of people do every day. The fact that talk of Mulder and Scully was seamlessly interwoven into pieces about Anderson and Duchovny shows how familiar we are now with the blurred lines being drawn between character and actor. As Jessica Reed's Guardian blog post reads: " Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) of The X-Files are an item. In real life".

In the wake of Robsten and the complexity of Twilight fans' consumption of fictional text and 'real life' relationships as extensions of each other, is it any surprise that people are now more willing to admit to their active role as shippers? What was once the domain of nerds and losers is now the common practice of millions of teen fans. It's still seen as 'uncool' and every article in which the writer admits to being a shipper is couched in language of shame and embarrassment, but the tides are turning. Media outlets are finally clueing into the fact that shippers mean big business. Every year now the major US TV websites (Eonline, TVLine, Zimbio) all hold polls for fans to decide their favourite couples, and the speed with which news outlets grabbed onto the Anderson/Duchovny story just proves that they thought it would bring traffic. Shippers are dedicated and zealous and as the marketing department of Twilight can probably attest, it's good to have them on your side.

The kids of Tumblr are now learning that they were by no means the first people to spend countless hours imagining the lives of couples both 'fictional' and 'real'.

I've written before about the power of, and creativity abundant in, shipping but what's fascinating about this particular moment is the historical context it provides. The extent to which the proliferation of Internet access has effected these kinds of fan practices is immeasurable.

These X-Files fans were shippers before most of the lexicon of shipping had even been invented, practitioners of nascent cultural rituals that would soon be part of the fabric of our understanding of media consumption. The portmanteau name was still a few years off and the idea of sites like fanfiction.net and Tumblr a dream yet to be realised. No wonder the idea of a real life Anderson/Duchovny relationship overjoyed so many; had it not been dismissed so soon it would have given them a chance to actively participate in their fandom in the current golden age of internet fan practices. we have to remember that the people upset by the breakup of Robsten are not doing anything that other fans haven't been doing for decades.

The 'outing' of these fans shows that this ardour doesn't die. It would seem once a shipper, always a shipper.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1592689 2012-06-13T19:00:00-04:00 2012-08-13T05:12:05-04:00

Hannah Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-ellison/ Fanfiction.net enforcing a ratings policy that has been in place since 2002 by deleting thousands of stories.

For those who don't know, fanfiction stories are original works written using already existing characters and situations (think Harry and Hermione get jobs at Disneyland and fall in love. I just made that one up, anyone's welcome to use it). FF.net, as it is usually called, has been the go-to archive for fanfiction for the last few years, housing millions of stories inspired by everything from Buffy to the Bible. Just under two weeks ago users started to notice stories disappearing and some writers reported having their stories deleted and their accounts suspended. On 4 June FF.net published this statement on their front page:

"Please note we would like to clarify the content policy we have in place since 2002. FanFiction.Net follows the Fiction Rating system ranging from Fiction K to Fiction M. Although Fiction Ratings goes up to Fiction MA, FanFiction.Net since 2002 has not allowed Fiction MA rated content which can contain adult/explicit content on the site. FanFiction.Net only accepts content in the Fiction K through Fiction M range. Fiction M can contain adult language, themes and suggestions. Detailed descriptions of physical interaction of sexual or violent nature is considered Fiction MA and has not been allowed on the site since 2002."

The above statement references the fact that in 2002 FF.net removed its NC17 rating, hoping to discourage explicit material from the site. However, it had little effect and sexually explicit and violent fanfiction continued to be posted.

The enforcing of this rule is not what has most FF.net users up in arms, many online reactions agree that much of the content on the site was unsuitable for the M rating and was in violation of terms of service. What does have these people riled is the method by which this sudden enforcement took place. Many are calling the mass deletion a 'purge'. To give a sense of the numbers one user (http://ffdotnetrants.livejournal.com/134901.html) compiled data which showed that as of 4 June the top 20 most popular categories had lost 0.39% of their stories, or about 8,000 works. This number continues to grow. Stories were deleted without warning and with no opportunity for recourse; for many their work was lost for good. Communities began to rally around, anonymous people sharing copies of works they had secretly saved on their hard drives. Conspiracy theories abounded about them only targeting slash fiction (stories involving male homosexual relationships) or that a group of vindictive critics, going by the name Critics United, were to blame. None of this appears to be wholly true. Rather it seems that FF.net has decided that now is the time to have a clear out.

What is of real interest here is not what rules have or have not been broken, but rather a question about the nature of fanfiction. Its very existence is one on the edge of rule breaking, a barely legitimate form of copyright infringement. The characters and situations used by these authors are, for the most part, not owned by them. As authors they have very little right to their work. The real anger seems to come from the enforcement of ostensibly black and white rules in a world governed by grey areas.

These unpaid authors are at the mercy of the sites willing to house their work and as such must adhere to the lines drawn in the very murky sand of copyright law. Some of these authors spent months writing and editing novel length works to then have them deleted entirely, as if they were something with no artistic or cultural worth; artefacts that either follow the rules or don't.

In the wake of 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, a current bestselling novel that started life as Twilight fanfiction, questions about the legitimacy of the format are being asked. If the only difference between a piece of fanfiction and a bestselling novel is the changing of character names and places, then is the mass deletion of thousands of stories without warning something that should be bigger news than a handful of Tumblr posts?

There is a cultural hierarchy of taste at play here, one which places fanfiction as lowbrow geek fodder undeserving of any real attention. Were a library filled with thousands of works of 'legitimate' fiction destroyed, it would make front-page news.

I don't know if the much publicised provenance of 50 Shades of Grey will change anything or if the 'purge' will receive any outside interest, but I think it's time that people other than fans and fan scholars were made aware of one of the most prolific literary sources in recent years. And I can make you one promise, if you can think of it, someone has written fanfiction about it.

NOTE: The figures regarding the number of works lost in this blog post have been amended. The initial research suggested that 3.09% of their stories, or around 62,000 works had been deleted, but the figures have now been revised to a loss of 0.39%, or about 8000 works. The blog has been changed to reflect the new more accurate figures.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1358583 2012-03-19T19:00:00-04:00 2012-05-19T05:12:01-04:00

Hannah Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-ellison/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this landmark got me thinking: Where have all the decent female characters gone?

Buffy was meant to change things. In many ways she was the perfect third wave feminist TV character, strong, capable, independent, and all while choosing how she wanted to express her femininity. For a while things did seem different. Like them or not we had the irrepressible force of the women of Sex and the City, The heartfelt rationalism of Friday Night Lights' Tami Taylor, The West Wing's no nonsense C.J.

But what about now, who can women turn to when they want a female TV character capable of passing the Bechdel test? (For those unaware the test comes from a comic strip by Alison Bechdel from 1985 and states that a narrative worth watching has at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something other than men) It's not that there's a dearth of female characters on TV, it's what they do while they're there.

Grey's Anatomy features one of the most diverse and gender balanced casts on TV, but try finding a female character whose plot does not revolve around her love life or children. Even Christina Yang, a character who started as a strong, ambitious character learning she's also allowed a personal life, last week spent an entire episode in couples' therapy.

Glee, another show that started out focusing on a female character whose career dreams kept her going, is now one of the most anti-female shows airing. The show consistently belittles the role of women, using them as little more than emotional leaning posts for their boyfriends, boyfriends who are always heroic and decent. When Finn outed Santana it was treated as a good thing, Finn helping her come to terms with her sexuality by serenading her with a cover of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. After all, lesbianism is just girls having fun, right? Weeks later when Dave Karofsky suffers similarly by being outed it is shown through an emotionally overwrought montage and makes way for a story about teen suicide.

The imbalance is beguiling. It doesn't end there. NBC's new hopeful Smash spends most of its time on two women fighting each other for male approval, Bones Brennan now does little more than talk about her baby, and a recent episode of The Walking Dead had the few female characters literally giving up their right to vote as part of their group of survivors and deferring to the men.

Those shows that do feature women more prominently and not as an adjunct to a male character, shows like Revenge and Once Upon a Time, instead provide us with women who are conniving, scheming, underhanded and in the case of Once Upon a Time, literally evil. The women of sitcom fair a little better, but rather than evil they tend to be stupid and unable to function in society; though the same could be said for the men of sitcom.

There is one bright hope in the depths of all this gloom: The Good Wife. Interestingly the show that started with a woman whose entire life revolved around her husband and children, just look at the title, is the one show that gives women an independent voice. Each female character is allowed nuances and complexities, motivations that include family and career; very different from those shows which only foreground women as constantly choosing between family or career. The women of The Good Wife are sexually in control (it seems to be an unwritten rule that every character in the show wants to sleep with Kalinda, and she knows it), capable of running businesses and having a work life that is not about romantic relationships, but also does not preclude them. They play with gender bias and stereotyping on a weekly basis, continually making the audience aware of their own gender assumptions.

Despite the critical success of The Good Wife it doesn't look like things are going to improve soon; the current trend in TV is toward martyred males (see new shows like Awake and Touch), shows which feature very few female characters, is disheartening. Buffy fought so that every girl who had the potential could take up the fight, it's time TV producers remembered that and gave us more good wives and fewer bad girlfriends. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1284525 2012-02-17T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-18T05:12:01-04:00

Hannah Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-ellison/ Glee or Supernatural, but I doubt many of you are aware of the war that just recently ended deep in fan-space. A non-canon shipping war. This might sound like something fought in international waters sometime in the 18th Century but it's not. It's a knock-down, drag-out fight that has been raging for weeks between fans, bringing down an eonline.com page because it received more views than any post in the history of the site and causing previously civil TV fans to go out for blood. All in the name of a Valentine's Day poll to determine who voters' favourite TV couple was.

After weeks of voting the final stand-off was between Dastiel and Faberry. "Who are these people?" you ask. These are the portmanteau names of two of TV fandoms biggest non-canon ships Dean/Castiel from Supernatural and Quinn/Rachel (Fabray/Berry) from Glee; ship being short for relationship, shippers those who advocate them and canon meaning something actually depicted on the show. Non-canon ships are those relationships that are entirely subtextual, between characters that never officially show romantic interest in each other. Faberry won (by around 70,000 votes, a vote rate of 228 per minute). Out of a choice between any pairing of characters currently featuring on US TV shows, the most vocal and determined fans were those of a pairing many viewers would not even consider friendly, let alone romantic. Suddenly shippers were big mainstream news and everyone was talking about them.

The actresses who portray the pair (Lea Michele and Dianna Agron) tweeted a picture they took together holding a paper heart. Perez Hilton commented on the win calling the shippers 'fanatics' and Hulu's Morning After even created a fan video dedicated to the pair in a segment about the win. Every review site from Afterellen to Wetpaint was commenting. All this only days after Entertainment Weekly ran a four page spread that tried to explain to its readers the world of shipping.

Suddenly these fans had gone from under the radar and unheard of to the poster children for fan devotion. However, this article did a disservice by ignoring the truly fervent shippers, the non-canon shippers; those who would, by their own admission, go down with their ships. The non-canon shippers are a mostly invisible, much maligned and persecuted group, seen by many as the seedy underbelly of the fan world out to derail the work of TV writers, rather than the innovative and unwavering group they are. To be a non-canon shipper is an uphill battle and Faberry shippers fight hard on the internet's biggest fan battleground; Tumblr.

Search for Faberry on Tumblr and you will find a funhouse mirror version of Glee. The characters almost seem the same, but the art made of them, the stories told about them, the worlds built for them to live in are just slightly skewed. To be a non-canon shipper means having to make the world fit how you see it. Glee presents Faberry as former adversaries and tentative friends, the shippers see them as two people who show they care through confrontation, who fight because they are too scared to admit they love.

These small moments become the basis for hundreds of ballad backed YouTube videos and novel length works of fiction. Works of fiction so well-liked that original secondary characters created by these authors become recurrent figures in works produced by other fans. However, being a non-canon shipper is more than grasping at the tiny morsels given to you and building around them, it's about manipulating what you are shown to make it what you want to see. Glee has a scene with Finn and Rachel? Fine, Faberry shippers will rip the image, remove Finn and replace him with Quinn. These new versions often become so popular they spawn their own stories and videos, ones now a step even further removed from the original show. Characters become steeped in what's called fanon, that is the fan created version of canon.

For a non-shipper delving into the world of Faberry would seem alien. References to moments and character traits that have never appeared in the show, but seem commonplace to these fans, would make them unsure that it was the same show they were talking about. But that is because it's not the same show. In fact many Faberry shippers admit to not even watching the show anymore but instead consuming it through the creative work in the Faberry Tumblr fandom. What non-canon shippers truly watch is their version of the show, the version they make from the scraps Glee gives them and the work they create themselves. Ryan Murphy might have his name on this show, but its most invested fans aren't buying what he's selling. Don't tell Murphy but perhaps Roland Barthes was right all along, the author is dead.]]>