Where did that ship come from?

[sistermagpie]

Recently I’ve read a couple of conversations that made me think about shipping. Specifically I've been thinking about the criticism: Why does s/he like her/him? As in: We don't understand why s/he likes her/him. The sudden attraction comes out of nowhere. If we don't understand that it's not realistic/it's badly written or whatever.

I'm going to use actual ships to talk about this, but hopefully this will not set off a ship argument or make anybody feel criticized for liking or not liking a ship. One of the ships I'm going to talk about I don't like (Harry/Ginny from HP) and one I do (Zuko/Mai from Avatar), so hopefully that separates it from liking or not liking the ship straight off.



Both these ships have gotten this criticism. In both cases, some people felt like the part where the guy (who in both cases was more our pov character) started to like this girl just happened, and that the relationship happened off-page. To give more of an idea of where I'm coming from, here's why I was surprised to hear this. In the exchange I was reading someone had criticized Zutarians for "making up meanings" for Zuko/Katara interactions--iow, writing in an off-page romance. The Zutarian countered back that it was hypocritical for the person to have a problem with off-page Zuko/Katara when they defended off-screen Zuko/Mai.

That made me say...whoa. That's two different definition of "off-screen/off-page" here. Zuko/Mai happens onscreen. The two express attraction to each other. They kiss. They refer to each other as boyfriend/girlfriend. They tell other people they like/love each other. They kiss some more. That was the definition of "onscreen" the Maiko person was using.

What the other person was saying was that s/he never saw *why* these characters liked each other, and if that wasn't argued convincingly and we just had to make up the reasons they clicked, how was that any different from Zuko/Katara, especially since presumably this person could argue why those two characters should be attracted to each other.

I hate to drag Harry/Hermione into this because they shouldn't automatically be defined as the anti-Harry/Ginny ship, but I know some of the feelings there are similar. Even more so than Zuko/Katara, Harry and Hermione are friends. We know what they like about each other in a far more detailed and less superficial ways than we know why Harry and Ginny think each other is awesome.

But these couples--H/G and M/Z--were described as *unrealistic* because of this. The couples aren't convincing, it "makes no sense," it just comes out of nowhere.

But the thing is, in real life, isn't that just as often how it happens? Especially if you're a teenager who's therefore only recently developed a consistent sexual desire? (Consistent meaning that it's always part of your pov, not consistent meaning you always like one person, gender or type.) When I think back on high school romances at my school that's actually the way it always seemed to play out to me. More often than not somebody liking somebody else made no particular sense whatsoever. Sure you expected a popular girl to date a popular boy in her group or whatever, but my friends more often seemed to like totally random people. Could any of them have given me a convincing meta-reason for why they focused on these random girls or boys? Probably not. I can think of a couple of fairly long-relationship where people never stopped asking what they were doing together.

Of course we accept things in reality that make bad writing in fiction. I don't consider "but that's the way it happens sometimes in real life!" as any kind of defense of something that doesn't work in fiction. But in this case I think there is a defense here. Romance fiction is very concerned with why people like other people, why the hero is the best man for the girl (or in general), why the heroine should get the guy over any other girl. But in a story about something else, like HP and A:TLA both are, I don't think it's odd to throw in random sexual attraction from one teenager to another as just another obstacle. It's not the reasons for Harry liking Ginny that are important, it's that he thinks she's hot and that gives him something he wants that he has to do something to have. (Okay, he doesn’t have to do much—it’s Harry Potter, after all!) Or even more with Zuko and Mai, their attraction for each other creates a relationship that will then have an effect on things. It's not that Zuko and Mai see that the other has X qualities and therefore fall in love, it's that Zuko and Mai have a long-running attraction to each other, which leads them to date, and once they date they like each other even better and discover things about each other. The stiltedness of their overtly romantic scenes makes sense given their lack of experience and discomfort with affection in general. Trying and failing to do what you think a boyfriend is supposed to do or say isn’t a sign Zuko doesn’t like Mai, imo, but that he wants Mai to like him because he likes her and doesn’t know how to do that.

In a way, in these cases it would almost be less realistic to me to get careful scenes that explained exactly what they were supposed to be attracted to in the other. Sometimes romance works backwards; you see who the person is attracted to and then you can work that back to the way they are in other ways. Their attraction says something about them, not the other way around. HP takes this even further with the idea of love potions that give you a scent to follow to your True Love For Life and as romances go that's not as interesting as a sophisticated fic that dives into what makes Harry and Hermione or Harry and Draco or Harry and Luna tick and how their two psychologies attract each other. But that doesn't, imo, make the other way badly or underwritten necessarily.

That sounds like a long-winded way of just saying "they're not writing a romance!" which of course gets countered with "that doesn't mean the romance in it should suck!" and that's not what I mean. These shows are writing romance, obviously. Romance is part of the plot (the gay romance just as much as the het romance--I'm looking at you, DD/GG!). It makes things happen, gives people motivations, is part of what people want. What I'm saying is that there's a valid tradition of presenting attraction as a done deal that doesn't have to be defended or explained for a reason. Someone pushing another person's sexual buttons, just striking someone else as physically attractive even if that person is bad for them or has other qualities they normally wouldn't like, is also part of life so shouldn't be automatically discounted in fiction.

With both these couples I have no problem in the end finding reasons why they work for the characters. I can see reasons why each would find the other superior to other people, and choose to spend their time with him/her, to get married and have kids once the initial sexual curiosity has been satisfied. I don't mind that I don’t relate to the feeling of attraction that strikes the characters but instead just know that Mai has a crush on Zuko already and Zuko is very okay with that, or know that Ginny has always crushed on Harry and Harry is now going to think she's the girl he wants as a girlfriend because she's better than other girls that way. That doesn't strike me as unrealistic or badly written given what came before, and it makes sense to me that two boys who have previously been focused on other things (or in Harry's case a different girl) would now find their attention wandering to this girl.

Really, any ship needs that spark of “and then sexual attraction arbitrarily happened.” Even in a story where you ship the two main characters and understand their relationship inside and out and see just how good they are for each other and how they hurt each other and why they need each other, if you don’t have that moment of OMG, WANT! there’s no romance. Though ships can still be criticized or disliked, both for reasons outside the text (not liking what that romance seems to "say" in the context of the story) or inside (not seeing chemistry, finding it squicky, not buying it, finding the characters annoying together, feeling like the writer is just writing their own fantasy without communicating it to the audience etc.).

Comments

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Fiction, unlike reality, has to make sense. ;) The reader knows it's fiction, so it has to be extra-convincing for that purpose alone. Even if you're writing about purple flying unicorns, you have to set up the story so the the unicorns make sense in that universe. Same with romance, I guess.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Really, any ship needs that spark of “and then sexual attraction ARBITRARILY happened.”
Very good point - and I'd like to say that's something I found annoying in quite a lot of Ginny-bashing posts (as much as I dislike the girl myself): the reasoning that it's not o.k. for a boy to fall in love with a girl because of her looks, but he should do so because of her niceness or intelligence or whatever. Intelligence is just as arbitrary a quality as beauty and in neither case does it "make" love, so to speak. It may facilitate the relationship in the long run, but so does beauty sometimes.
As for the H/G pairing in canon: I still maintain it is awful writing but not for the lack of deep meaningful conversations between the two. I would have been perfectly o.k. if all there was to it was Ginny being attracted to his star status and him getting off on her long hair. Provided two things:
- I was not asked to believe it was anything in the realm of true deep everlasting love (at least for the moment)
- the mainly hormon based relationship was presented as such and presented well.
H/G did neither. We are told Ginny is Harry's true love and never see it. And the sexual attraction fizzles like a wet fire cracker - and fanfiction is proof you don't need a R rating to do better than that.
As for fanfiction - provided the above criteria are met, there is nothing that'd draw me away from reading and enjoying this pairing.

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

I think I get what you're saying here, and it does make sense, especially when, like you said, the story isn't supposed to be about romance but the author wanted to include romance anyway. I think it's probably why I never got Harry/Hermione despite the fact that, technically, that would have made more sense. Or Harry/Luna, to be honest, though that, again, technically would have made more sense. Like, it's pretty much the cornerstone of Darcy and Elizabeth in P&P, the attraction not necessarily being explained but just being there, since Darcy and Elizabeth almost never speak to each other.

And I get the backtracking idea, too, I think it actually worked really well in the case of James and Lily. I just think the problem was that Harry had been so built up as a character that in order for it to really work, Ginny had to kind of have been that built up, too, or else she just becomes a handful of convenient personality traits Harry gets as a reward for saving the world. Like I never got the whole 'want' thing from Ginny's side, just that she'd had a crush on a boy she didn't know when she was 11 and somehow, conveniently, still liked him four books later. Like, it was just kind of assumed that you would get why she'd want Harry, but there wasn't enough to back up that assumption or that want. I think that you can see and understand so much more of a character's personality and motivation than a RL person's that you kind of need a greater understanding of that in a book than you do in RL. Like, that's the thing about H/D; there's a spark and then, in the ensuing relationship, neither Draco nor Harry loses any of their personality, more is just uncovered. Ginny kind of goes from one polarity to another when she gets with Harry.

Uh, but yeah, in general, I think that's a problem people have when writing LI for heroes who have to sacrifice a lot, etc., the girl becomes kind of a gift. They did the same thing in SPN, though at least there they admitted that she was just a fantasy, not something that could ever be real.

[atair.livejournal.com]

Hi! this was really interesting. It made me think about why I prefer Zuko/Mai to Harry/Ginny. (I'm not anti H/G, I'm just very indifferent to it and found it somewhat awkwardly written.)

Firstly, I think it helps that we're introduced to Mai independently of Zuko, so I have a clear idea of who she is uninfluenced by the way Zuko sees her - so I like her more, feel more of a connection to her. Secondly, we're much more inside Harry's head than we are inside Zuko's; we're doing a fair amount of guesswork interpreting everything Zuko does, so it's not too disconcerting to deal with his feelings for Mai the same way. With Harry, we have more access to his thoughts and feelings, which makes not being told much about how he feels about Ginny beyond the physical attraction seem weird.

[godspoodle.livejournal.com]

Haha yeah. I find it pretty amusing to see you sort-of-defending H/G, and me in a position of sort-of-accepting Z/M :D I didn't really ever think Zuko/Mai was 'problematic' so much as it left me cold... or at least cool. I know myself well enough to separate the feeling from 'omg! they shouldn't have written it!', heh. In Zuko/Mai's favor, it was more subtle/'realistic' (more of a teenage relationship) than H/G, and less anvily. Really, the only valid argument against a canon ship (and specifically H/G) is that it's badly written. Stuff like 'they're not suited' is beside the point, 'cause being suited doesn't guarantee or rule attraction and relationships, haha, and really, what's 'suited' is pretty subjective & depends on your value system and on the characters specific circumstances at that time in their life (vs another).

Sometimes people project a little too much. Hm. Like, for instance, we know Harry thought Ginny's smell = happiness, and we know he married her happily, but this doesn't in itself prove the relationship was meant to be written as Grand Romance and Everlasting Love; even R/Hr wasn't written that way. Only James/Lily really was (I think), and that sort of off-stage and by implication. I don't see the implication with H/G, really; whether I choose not to see it or not, I don't know, but while the text is anvily in regards to H/G being 'right', it's not the same as saying they're Omg Epic True Love or whatever. I still don't know if Zuko/Mai is Omg Epic True Love, but I suspect the anvils can't be that bad in Avatar; as is, it's not such a huge leap given Mai's crush as a back-story. Probably the biggest problem people have is thinking too much of Zuko (like, he's too good for her and/or needs a different type of girl), just as people think too little of Ginny (and think naturally Harry 'needs' a different type of girl... though I myself apply the argument to Harry/Luna, but at least canon backs me up, haha).

You're totally right with it often working best to work backward in terms of character to explain attraction; I do that all the time, with myself & characters (which is why I get to be a canon whore, I guess, because 'backwards' means canon). I tend to take attraction for granted and work to explain how it happened and why using a 'history of how' as its base; there's a narrative there. Usually there's several possible narratives (depends whether you still like the relationship or not; you can easily make a narrative that glorifies it or makes it a mistake, whether it was happy or broke up). Love depends on narratives a lot in general, not just in fiction, but when we're trying to discuss it. On the other hand, in terms of present feeling, it paradoxically has no narrative or rhyme or reason and 'just happens' (blink and you'll miss it). It's a funny thing, love :>

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

In some ways, I think this is an area where fandom itself makes a difference. Because so much thought and analysis goes into the various characters and especially as these are often "series" stories where the conversations are going on while the story is developing, there's a deeper investment. So I think a big change, like a romance, is felt to need a bigger sell by the audience. Whereas the author or creator of this non-romance based world, sort of feels like the sell doesn't need to be that hard. Does that make sense?

I don't think the audience's request for a harder sell is a bad thing, necessarily. Anything that demands a better told tale is good. But I think sometimes it means fans are asking for something almost unrealistically detailed. They're not allowing the story to flow. Or, maybe more accurately, by predicting the story is going to flow in one direction and arguing that view point against others, instead of just allowing the story flow, they need an actual argument for this choice specifically lined up against another story-telling choice. Which, that's not how stories are told.

Heh. I'm not sure I'm making sense at all, but I'll send it on through. ;)

[ginzai.livejournal.com]

I dislike Harry/Ginny to a huge extent. (This is a huge shocker, I know.) I think it was shoehorned in and I hated that the changes in Ginny's character felt like they were done entirely to explain Harry's sudden interest in her (and far more so that we were told about them, rather than seeing them develop over time). On the other hand, I think Zuko/Mai is rather sweet - I just think it was handled in an extremely poor fashion, particularly at the start of season three. If they had animated their "date" in the comic book, I doubt there would have been as vehement reaction against the pairing. It was (again) the randomness of it that drove watchers crazy, especially when they felt so awkward together. I think that comes too close to reality for some viewers. They want to live vicariously through these characters, not watch and remember all of their own teenage awkwardness and angst.

Personally, I like Zuko/Mai in huge part because of that. I think they're refreshing, and as others have mentioned, the pairing feels very honest and realistic, especially after the initial 'when did that happen?' sensation passed. Then again, I don't view romantic couplings as a way to view myself with either character; I don't put myself into Mai's role, nor do I think that Zuko is sex incarnate. Like with most of my favorite characters, I'd rather sit the boy down and give him tea and a hot meal and tell him he needs to cut his hair rather than make out with him. This might be why I can enjoy their awkwardness, rather than be repelled by it.

I've the same issues with Katara and Aang as I do Harry and Ginny. It's partially that the girl is being viewed as a prize whose love is guaranteed following the major victory (as someone else pointed out above), but also that I see very few hints that Katara is in love with Aang before they get together. I see a lot made of their dance in the Footloose episode, but that seemed far more like girls that I knew who would flirt with their friends' little brothers because they were safe targets to practice on. I see far more hints that she's uncomfortable with the situation, especially in season three, after she finally realizes that Aang has feelings for her. She goes from literally pushing him away and being angry that he kisses her to embracing him in the moonlight, with no resolution of her internal conflict and concerns. It's taking short-cuts in the storytelling, and that just cheapens the experience.

(Please, btw, don't take my opinion as that of a jilted Katara/Zuko shipper. I do like them together and think that there's a valid basis for the couple in canon, but I also like Zuko/Mai a lot and I hate it when people dismiss Mai as a serious romantic interest. Her relationship with Zuko feels significantly more real to me than Katara's with Aang, which is why I can happily read fic with K/Z or M/Z but find that K/A leaves me cold.)

The long and short of it is that I've issues with any characterization that is driven by the plot, rather than the other way around, and I tie romance into this just as much as I do character growth and action. It's sloppy writing, and it's annoying because the actions of the characters just ring false. It's not just that two characters are attracted to each other and want to make out (I've no issues with that), it's that there's no build up to make me suspect that they are attracted to each other. For that matter, if it were just a teenage romance presented to me, I'd be all for it - even Harry/Ginny. But it's not presented as casual, or even a melodramatic teenage love affair; it's True Love and Soulmates and OTPs and all the rest, and to me, if you want to write such a serious relationship, you need serious development to back it up.

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

I don't know. On the one hand, of course it's realistic for teenage boys to suddenly crush on hot girls. On the other hand, like aasylva, I'll buy that as long as I don't have to believe it's True Love. Sudden attraction does build up to true love but when both are presented as occuring at the same time (or as identical!) with the argument of adolescent hormones to explain the suddeness, it contradicts itself and falls flat.

The story never communicates how Harry's feelings for Ginny were more profound for the identical ones he once had for Cho - attraction, jealousy towards suitors, awkwardness and the desire to impress, joy when she takes his side, then triumph when he gets her. Ginny would have been the 'truer' love if a friendship had been established between her and Harry first - something lacking in the Cho affair - but the book that sets them up as friends overshadows that relationship with the bond he forms with Luna Lovegood.

It'll always be a bit disturbing the way Ginny has to transform herself to a meaner version of her boyfriend's ex to get him. Now that is perfectly realistic in terms of teenage dynamics. However it is never treated as such. Instead we're expected to take Ginny's behaviour, which goes against every "Don't Change Yourself for a Man" rule in the book, as a necessary ingredient to achieve True Love. *mind boggles*

Re: Avatar. Perhaps the Zutharan was arguing about the fact that Maiko began offscreen? The comic strip on the website should not have been the vehicle to launch that romance. There was a missing bridge showing how the romance progressed from Mai blushing at Zuko when they're itty and a grown Zuko not knowing what to do on a date to easy going Maikouts on ship decks and picnic dates. Even Harry got the Chest Monster of Lovestruckdom. Maiko is rather like H/G that jumps from page 55 where Ginny gives a Harry singing Get Well card that he chucks in irritation to page 56 where Harry has sunshiny days by the lake with said girl. It works for me because I've read the strip but before I did, it just read like M&B trying to shut up Zutharans as quickly as possible.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I know, finally! But yesterday afternoon was surprisingly busy at work.

I think the problem is that Mai/Zuko doesn't exactly happen "offstage" and that's why the parallel doesn't work. I suppose if you posit that they were not dating pre-banishment but were only sort of interested in each other, so they don't really "get together" until after that, you can say it, but in a way that doesn't really work--how can Mai work up that much love for Zuko when she's dated him for at most a few months after he's been gone for over a year before that?

Really, the problem with M/Z is that Mai as a character and Mai/Zuko as an established relationship is introduced so late in the show. And the "this is why I love her" stuff from Zuko to Mai doesn't really become explicit until Boiling Rock. (Her to him is clearer in The Beach, but it's played rather subtly while many other loud things are going on.) So by the time you get the explanation, it's later than one had hoped for the viewers to really be invested in this relationship. It's why I sometimes say that those early M/Z shippers got lucky, because they liked Mai, and while you can see that narratively there isn't much other reason for her to be there, we all know that most TV show romances don't hang together that well.

As for H/G, if we had seen even one of those "several sunlit days" in HBP the whole thing would have been more convincing. Also, and this may be very pumpkin pie-ish of me, but I really do feel like any girl that was made for Harry wouldn't have let him pull that silly breaking up with her stunt at the end of HBP. The larger problem with H/G, it seems to me, is that JKR sets up a universe in which girls do things, and then gives Harry a girl who is a cliched narrative prize who doesn't do much of anything at all. It's very Amy/Laurie in a lot of ways--a boy (Harry/Laurie) might be close friends with a girl that is clever and capable (Hermione/Jo), but he wants a traditional girl (Ginny/Amy) when it's time to take a wife. It's no shock that a crazy large percentage of H/H shippers were disappointed Jo/Laurie shippers back in the day--or Anne/Gilbert lovers.

Mai/Zuko is very different, and really so is Aang/Katara and Sokka/Suki. All three of those boys like that their girls can kick a lot of ass, and both Sokka and Zuko say so specifically; Sokka and Katara's father openly admires Suki's skills and praises his daughter, so this is a whole "girls kicking ass is awesome and also hot" universe.

But setting that aside, I think it's much tougher to put forth the arbitrary sex part in a teen romance than in a more adult one, not because oh, think of the children, but because adults can be more knowing about sex--instead of being all, "omg, what is this?" they can be "I am clearly hot for you." And in a sense, M/Z is more of an adult relationship, more openly "I am hot for you." And Aang's feelings about Katara are clearly sexual, as Aang keeps staring at the super hot Katara. (One other problem is that in having Aang as the youngish star of a Nick show is that Katara couldn't really do the same, and I can't decide if that was the fault of Nick or Mike and Bryan being boys and not getting it.) Harry doesn't really understand his chest monster; Aang really understands his. Aang knows exactly what he wants. But Harry as a character is so much less in touch with his emotions and his instincts, is so much less intellectual and wise than Aang, that he never knows what he's doing, and that also makes the romance really unsatisfying.

So, I would say that these two ships do not happen offstage in the same ways, and that's your parallel problem right there.