#if it’s a romantic relationship. or at least one that has been deemed unproblematic by fans to theoretically exist as a romance.

[goldensunset]

i understand the sentiment behind ‘i use well-known ship names just to tag character relationships of any nature in general for the sake of organization on here, it doesn’t mean i ship it romantically’ but i for one cannot bear to scroll through a tag that is populated half by art of them casually talking and half by art of them sucking face. i cannot take that risk. there are two very different types of people there using the same tag and it’s messy

[phynali]

Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture

I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words). 

I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.

Under the cut.

Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.

First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.

So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.

Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?

(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)

Why does this matter?

the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars

it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces

Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.

Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.

Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.

It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.

(The irony of this is completely lost on them).

This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).

As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking. 

“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).

(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).

What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic. 

For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.

(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).

On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.

As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.

How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?

For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.

(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).

These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.

But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.

These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”

These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.

Why them?

In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation. 

There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.

Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.

How does this happen?

Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.

As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.

What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.

Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.

Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.

(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)

In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).

Some final notes:

This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.

[rubyleaf]

if someone says tsubamahi is pedophilia they better not ship kuromahi either because kuro is older than even tsubaki is (which is why i personally dont ship them romantically or sexually, since they met while mahiru is still in his mid teens...) but i mean come on in a series full of immortals mingling with humans if youre going to say that you better share the same opinion about EVERY servamp/underage eve

Ahh, an opinion I already expected to hear, buddy, I was almost waiting for this to pop up. I’m still not sure why you’re saying all this to ME when you’re probably talking to that last anon because I’m literally just the mediator here, but you brought it up, so I’m gonna answer. You touched upon a pretty complex subject here, see, and I’d love to elaborate on it… although honestly it’s big enough to write a whole dissertation on it, which I almost feel like doing, but then I also want a full degree in Servampology. Anyway, here go my two cents on the issue. Read under the cut for massive length…

And BTW: If you would all be so kind as to go off anon and take this whole shipping discourse to your own blogs and out of my inbox, I would be much obliged. I have no time to go around explaining back and forth just because you want to share your opinions without admitting who you are, especially not in an issue that requires walls of text on the regular. Thanks for understanding!

First of all, I already said this yesterday, but the word pedophilia isn’t even the issue here, specifically. Excluding Hugh and the subclass kids there are no prepubescent kids in Servamp, and certainly none that get shipped with anyone. I’m aware that some people use it to refer to any relationship between a minor and adult, but according to dictionaries that’s inaccurate, and that would also technically include such examples as, say, an eighteen-year-old dating a sixteen-year-old or my then seventeen-year-old cousin starting to date her early-twenties boyfriend, where no one cried pedophilia or tried to get them to break up for another couple months till she turned 18. They’re still happy, by the way; no power imbalance of any kind. But that’s just a side matter. See the problem here? If you use it to refer to all cases of minor-legal adult relationships, you either include harmless cases (which, in turn, will take the edge and meaning off the word!) or the definition becomes a vague blob of “age difference I deem problematic”. Pedophilia is simply the most severe case of harmful minor-adult relationships, and an adult dating a minor can be bad, dangerous or abusive without it being pedophilia. Keep that in mind.

You see, the trap you fell into, like some other people, is that you’re only looking at the absolute numbers and not at the core issue that can make a relationship problematic or unproblematic – maturity. Because the vampires in Servamp obviously don’t mature the way humans do. Let’s look at the subclass kids at Misono’s, for instance: They all look like elementary schoolers, but we have no idea how old they actually are. Some of them might be a hundred years old, two hundred, three hundred. They just don’t look or act like they’ve lived in this world for centuries because they’re pretty much frozen in time – they don’t age, they don’t grow up, they never have to deal with the toils and responsibilities of growing up, they can always act like kids and keep playing the way they always did, and so they don’t mature. Dating one of those kids, even if they’re older than your great-grandma, would still be pedo – and not just because they have the body of a grade schooler, but because they think and feel like one, too.

And the same thing, although sometimes to a lesser degree, can be applied to all the vamps in the Servampverse. Sakuya fits in perfectly with 15/16-year-old Mahiru, Ryuusei and Koyuki despite probably being at least in his twenties, if not his thirties in reality. Hugh shows glimpses of wisdom but still acts like a child playing make-believe and pretending to be a stereotypical vamp most of the time (excluding [spoilery thing], but that’s a different story).

And Kuro acts like your average relatable depressed eighteen-year-old, but there’s more to that. He’s who knows how old, but Kuro has spent the overwhelming majority of that in isolation, doing literally nothing. We know for a fact that he never had an Eve before Mahiru, and he probably never had much to do with people in general, excluding Sensei, who seems to have had a special bond with him but who, from what we know, likely was some sort of selfish or even abusive parental figure who appears to have used the Servamps for their own unknown purposes. Other than that, he doesn’t even seem to have been close to the other Servamps, having hated his own kind long before the summons from C3. And he avoided responsibilities. He avoided facing things, he pretended they weren’t there, and never learned how to deal with them. In short, he steered clear of anything that could have made him mature and basically froze himself in time as an eternal 18-year-old who never changed and never learned.

Tsubaki, meanwhile, is younger in absolute years but very much different. For one, if we go by the theory that the Servamps were once human too, he was already older and at a later point in life when he was turned. He was already an adult, not like the teenaged Kuro. And also unlike Kuro, he didn’t freeze himself in his 21-year-old human state. He’s an extravert for one, and he surrounded himself with a lot of people; and then he also had Sensei’s task to take care of, whatever exactly that is. In short, he got experiences and he had responsibilities, and both of those made him mature, even if you can’t usually tell from his attitude (that’s the “immortality slows down mental aging” part, I suppose). And he was already at a later starting point when the whole slowed-down maturation kicked in, so there’s that too. It was only a difference of about three years, but at a young age three years are a lot.

And that leads us to the aspect of the power imbalance. If you watch Mahiru and Kuro interact, you can’t usually tell who’s older. In fact, most of the time Mahiru seems more mature than Kuro – not just in terms of responsibility than emotionally too, a field where Kuro is lacking completely. We don’t know how much experience Kuro has with people, but I daresay Mahiru has definitely experienced more stable and functioning relationships in his life than Kuro has. They both have no romantic experience, of course, but if either of them knows how to people properly it’s Mahiru, and Kuro can’t take advantage of the younger and more naïve Mahiru if he has no clue how human relationships work himself. Which presents a ton of other difficulties in turn, but not those generally associated with age differences and adults dating minors.

Mahiru and Tsubaki, though, is another thing entirely. Tsubaki is an adult and knows it, and you can tell that he doesn’t see Mahiru as an equal. Why should he? Mahiru’s just a kid to him, as well as a pawn in whatever screwed-up plan he has in his mind (my main concern with this ship, BTW). Just from the Sakuya arc you can tell Tsubaki has had way more attachments in his life than Mahiru had, or at least has good reason to think so (see him mocking Mahiru for not even finding stuff out about Sakuya even though he says they were friends? Yeah). To the subclasses who are stuck in Mahiru’s age group Tsubaki acts like a parental figure, and that alone should say something about why him dating Mahiru would be moderately creepy. To say nothing of the manipulative chessmaster tendencies he uses against his enemies.

So, at least, goes my reasoning for what ships I find creepy and what ships I don’t, and I’m sure a not insignificant part of the fandom thinks the same. However, since this is a completely hypothetical situation and largely dependent on personal views and opinions, it’s only one out of many acceptable reasonings. We can only go by the rules of the Servampverse and assume because we have no real-life examples to go by, so there’s no clear-cut right and wrong and you can ship or condemn whatever you want. Just remember not to start any witch hunts as long as it’s not a clear-cut case of creepy.