Hello everyone!
So, I wanted to talk about an issue that is important to me as a film lover and an LGBTQ member and ally. Now, some of you may have seen Anthony Mackies recent interview where he mentions about his latest show “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier”, where he plays Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, and the popular ship SamBucky, which is the ship between Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan. Well, he mentioned the ship and said some things that has since divided the internet. While I won’t share my opinions on the interview itself, I do want to comment on something that has bugged me for a while now. Shipping in fandom. Now, for those of you who don’t know what shipping is, it’s basically two (or sometimes more) characters that you see in a relationship, whether it’s actually confirmed in the material or not. While sometimes shipping can be harmless and fun, sometimes shipping can get out of hand. I’m on the internet, I’ve heard of it all. Now, since I’m a Marvel, Star Wars, Supernatural, and Leverage fan, those are the main films I will be talking about, but I will be in general too. Now, in this blog post, I want to talk about three main things: shipping in the fandom, how different important people deal with shipping, and queerbaiting.
First, I’m gonna start with shipping in fandom. Now, most of the time, shipping in fandoms are innocent and there is genuine chemistry between characters. My issue comes when people start fetishizing relationships (I’ve heard of those fanfictions) and start shipping toxic characters, or straight up inappropriate ships. I could list a bunch of ships that I personally know of that fit these categories, but I do want to try to keep this PG-13, so I won’t. My problem is also when people start shipping the actual actors that play those characters, and it also getting weird. Again, I’m on the internet. I see things. While this is most of the time played as a joke, and played for laughs, for example Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins, or Cockles, and Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie with Stackie. They have funny moments and good chemistry and are good friends. But again, people take it too far, and I would understand why it would make the actors uncomfortable. I wouldn’t like it either. I basically have 4 rules when it comes to shipping: All characters can give consent, the relationship isn’t toxic, all characters are legal, and the ship is appropriate. As long as the ship follows these rules, I don’t care whether you ship it or not. However, some toxic fans think that you’re not a fan unless you ship the same ship they do. And that is not cool, cause film is for entertainment, and everyone likes different things. Now, granite, most of the time, fans are respectful of their ships.
Next on the list is how the creators and people involved in film deal with shipping. Now, there’s two ways creators deal with shipping: Positive, and negative. I’m gonna start with the more positive side. Now, I’m a huge fan of the show Leverage! Now there are three main ships in the show. There’s my personal favorite, the Leverage OT3, which is a polyamorous ship between Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, and Parker, the relationship between Parker and Hardison, and the relationship between Nate and Sophie. What I love about how the creators Dean Devlin and John Rodgers dealt with the OT3 ship was they actually made a specific episode that subtly confirmed the ship, “The Rundown Job”, in which the OT3 go to D.C for some time away, but end up in the middle of a dangerous plot when Eliot’s past comes to bite him in the ass. To avoid spoiling the episode, there are a lot of subtle moments that show how much these three characters care about each other. John Rodgers also confirmed the ship was canon on Twitter, when asking if the ending of the show meant to confirm the ship. When the reboot was announced, a lot of shippers, including me, were worried about what would happen to the ship. Luckily, Rodgers tweeted, saying “your OT3 is safe”, easing some minds. Now the Parker and Hardison ship is actually canon in the show, as well as the Nate and Sophie ship. What’s amazing about those ships is how real they feel. Like both characters love each other, and have changed for the better because of them. For Leverage: Redemption, people have been asking for more explicit on screen canon of the OT3, including me, siting that subtly just doesn’t cut it anymore in terms of representation. Now onto the negative side of creators and people involved in film. I’ll start out with the Supernatural example, because I was a fan of Supernatural, and the show caused so many trust issues. So, the most popular ship in Supernatural was Destiel, the ship between Dean Winchester and Castiel. For 11 years, people have shipped those characters together, and multiple times the characters were compared to other straight relationships in the show, seemingly confirming that there was something more than friends happening. Except multiple times the network has suppressed Destiel, even though there was multiple times in the script where they baited fans. I’ll get into that later, but Destiel shippers were ignored, and instead the ending gave us the endings for the characters that they didn’t want, passing it off as that was what it always gonna end, basically ruining all the development of the characters, and making Destiel fans seem crazy. A lot of fans weren’t happy, especially since Castiel’s last scene was him confessing his love to Dean, and then it was never mentioned again, basically erasing the characters sacrifice as it didn’t affect Dean, as his previous deaths had before. There’s also a ship Samleen, which is the ship between Sam Winchester and Eileen Lehey, a deaf hunter played by Shoshanna Stern. Eileen story ended with her getting dusted, and then never mentioned again when everyone came back, even though there was clearly a relationship that would’ve happened, as the last time we actually see Eileen on screen, she left because she didn’t know what was real, but more on that later. And San’s ending involved a blurry woman and a montage of his life, dying of old age with his kid by his side. All of that development for an ending to make a small portion of the fan base happy. Now, onto Marvel. Now, besides the recent thing by Anthony Mackie aside, Marvel has very little to say about noncanon ships, having mostly straight canon relationships. Star Wars is a similar story, with the ships mostly straight canon relationships.
Now onto the segment where I will get angry the most, queerbaiting. Now, I will mostly be talking about Supernatural with this segment, as it’s the best/worst example. Now, there are many examples as to why the Destiel ship was alluded to in the show for evidence. Anything from parallels to straight relationships to my personal favorite, Cas saying how Dean changed him and how he learned to care about the world because of Dean, and Dean telling Cas he didn’t know what was real anymore, with Cas telling him they were, which is later paralleled to Sam and Eileen’s conversation, where Sam kissed her before he said it. Then Cas said, “I love you” to Dean. But not before leaving a bloody handprint on his sleeve just before sacrificing himself, mirroring the scarred handprint on Dean’s shoulder Cas left Dean when he was pulled from Hell. There’s also many scenes that do not have an answer as to why Dean acted the way he did, other than he was bi, also known as the scene where he’s with Lee, played by Christian Kane, in the episode “Last Call”. Even after all this, the writers and CW still say that Dean is straight. Marvel’s latest situation with the SamBucky ship, to me, may or may not be queerbaiting. While there are certain scenes that are a bit ‘fruity’, I’m not sure as it counts as queerbaiting, because the point of the show was Sam Wilson becoming Captain America, and Bucky moving past his Winter Soldier moniker. I think it’s too soon to tell if Sam and Bucky would be in a relationship. People get extremely toxic when it comes to ships, so I’m not surprised that sometimes people just don’t want to talk about it.
That is all I have to talk about today! I know it’s a bit unorthodox, and I may get some slack for it, but these things are important to me, and it’s important to talk about these things. Thank you for reading!
Kaylee
Kaylee Santell's Acting Page and Blog 