wherein Liz discusses the importance of context and background information when interpreting fiction
I am writing this post because of A History of Handcrafts (Because a Sweater Equals Love), also known as my unexpected remix.
My story is based on Spock's Sweater, a lovely drabble by MelayneSeahawk, which I am going to copy-paste here for analysis purposes. (If you like it, please follow the preceding link and tell her so!)
---------------
"That sweater is horrific," Jim said, pulling on a sweater of his own; malfunctioning environmentals were a bitch. His was a flattering shade of blue. Spock's was...not.
"My mother made it," Spock said, and Jim was sure he wasn't imagining the slightly insulted tilt to his eyebrow. Jim opened his mouth to apologize, but Spock cut him off with a glance. "I have often found it...unwieldy."
Jim reached over to touch the collar-ish part. "Well, this bit could be fixed. Gaila taught me how to knit," he added, blushing.
The corner of Spock's mouth quirked slightly. "That would be acceptable."
---------------
Here is the information that accompanied the story:
1. That it was written in response to the following prompt: "Spock's Grey Lumpen ManSweater of Dubious Fit"
2. This header line: "Spock's Sweater | G | 100 words | complete"
That header line is also the only information provided for the story in MelayneSeahawk's master list of her Star Trek: AOS fanfiction.
So far, so good.
Now we hit the problem area -- namely, I read the story as gen. Because I read it as gen, I wrote a remix that included Spock/Uhura as a background romantic pairing, used Kirk/Gaila as a background sexual pairing, and only had Kirk and Spock interacting as friends. The thing is, MelayneSeahawk wrote the story as shipfic -- I know this because she commented that I had changed the pairing, which cannot happen unless there was a pairing to start with.
How did that miscommunication happen?
There is nothing in the header information to tell me the story is not gen. (In fact, the header doesn't even tell me which characters are in the story, just that presumably there is no graphic sex or violence since it's rated G.) There is nothing in the story to explicitly tell me that Kirk and Spock are meant to be read as a romantic and/or sexual couple, though equally, there is nothing in the story to tell me that they aren't together.
For example, you can read Kirk blushing as a sign that he's embarrassed to admit he knows how to knit -- which is how I read it -- or, to give it a shippy spin, you can read it as a sign that he's embarrassed over talking to his current partner about his past relationship with Gaila. And you can assume they are putting sweaters on during a shift because the environmental controls broke, and Spock is in Kirk's cabin because they're friends -- which is how I read it -- or you can read it as them getting dressed after having sex in their shared cabin.
There are no firm clues either way. The story is too short to give any.
Now, MelayneSeahawk has written a lot of stories wherein Kirk and Spock are explicitly stated or shown to be in (or to have been in, or to be entering into) a romantic and/or sexual relationship. One can relatively safely assume they are something of an OTP for her. I did, in fact, reach that conclusion while reading through her archived stories.
I still read the drabble as gen.
The reason has to do with context, subtext, and my approach to shipping in general.
Subtext: I am pretty much blind to romantic and/or sexual subtext in stories, regardless of what medium I'm dealing with, of whether the stories are original or fanworks, and of whether the subtext is het, slash, femslash, or any other combination.
I have learned, over the years, to work past that blindness if and when I am purposefully looking for subtext. I often do make that effort, usually because people have previously told me that subtext exists in a particular story by writing reviews, meta, or fic that explicitly incorporate it, and I want to see for myself what they're drawing from. Sometimes I can even catch romantic and/or sexual subtext without such specific cues, but in those cases it is either so blatant as to almost be text, or I am relying on a learned cultural familiarity with fandom and society-at-large to predict what other people will read in a story even while I myself remain at a distance. Either way, it's not a reading/viewing pattern that comes naturally to me, and I don't always want to put in the effort.
(I admit that I have more training in working past my blindness to het subtext, simply by living in a culture that eats, breathes, and sleeps heterosexual assumptions, but it still flies right past me unless I am actively looking for it, just like slash and femslash subtext do.)
Shipping: I am not a shipper by temperament. I do have some groupings I like better than others, because I think certain characters could build healthy and interesting relationships (and generally also because I think they are or could be awesome friends); some groupings I am largely indifferent to, either because I don't care about the characters involved or because I don't find those particular characters interesting together; and some groupings I strongly dislike for various reasons, mostly to do with abuse of power. But I don't have OTPs in the classic sense.
I tend to assume, in fact, that characters are all asexual and aromantic until proven otherwise, whether in general by canon or in the specific context of any one fic. In other words, unless you explicitly show or tell me that a pairing exists in your fic, or you are writing about a canon couple, I will assume you are writing gen friendship. If you are writing about a pairing whose members have canon romantic/sexual relationships with other people, I am really never going to assume they're a couple until and unless you tell me flat-out that they're with each other instead of their canon partners, because I also assume canon rules apply until proven otherwise.
Yes, even if you are writing about your OTP.
Context: There are, however, a couple ways to get around making a pairing textually obvious within a story itself. The easiest is to mention the pairing in the summary or other header information; that tells me I am supposed to read those characters' interactions with the assumption that they are together or at least interested in getting together. (I then do so.) The other is by posting the story in a ship-oriented context -- for example, I assume stories posted to a dedicated shipping community are shipfic, because that is what such a community is for.
I will not, however, carry over a writer's prefered pairings from one story to an unrelated story in the same fandom. A series counts as contextual evidence -- if two characters are together in one story, I will assume they are still together in the sequel. An unconnected body of work, on the other hand, is not contextual evidence of anything. Each new story must prove the existence of a pairing anew. Even when I am simultaneously saying, "Oh, this writer tends to pair characters X and Y, so this fic is probably full of romantic/sexual subtext between them," and even if I notice the appearance of background OCs or bits of world-building from other stories, I continue to read each new fic as gen.
I don't know why my brain works that way, but that is how I am wired, and I don't think there's much hope of changing it at this point in my life.
Moving on.
There is, in fact, one small, hidden piece of evidence in MelayneSeahawk's post that her story was intended as shipfic. She gave a link to the post where the sweater prompt originated... which was on kirkspock, a shipping community. The thing is, because she also copied the prompt text in her post, I didn't track the prompt source back until well after I'd written my remix and blithely sent it off to beta, and even then it was by accident. I was thinking of a post someone had made a month or so ago about the etiquette of linking or not linking prompts, as well as quoting or not quoting prompt texts, and happened to hover my mouse over the link long enough to read its address.
Then I spent a couple days metaphorically gnawing my fingernails, because you are not supposed to change pairings when remixing a story, I hadn't meant to change a pairing, and I felt queasy realizing that I accidentally had.
Ultimately I decided to post my story as-is, though prefaced with an apology for adding background het and making Kirk and Spock's relationship explicitly gen. This is because I stand by my original gen reading of MelayneSeahawk's drabble -- there is nothing within her story that is incompatible with gen, and if Kirk and Spock are friends rather than lovers, I then default to canon and assume Spock is still with Uhura. (In this particular case I happen to really like Spock/Uhura, but since I also enjoy Kirk/Spock, it's more about assuming gen and canon until proven otherwise than about ship preferences.)
If MelayneSeahawk had put a pairing label in her header information, I am pretty sure I would have written a completely different third section for my story. (It probably would have been in Spock's POV, despite the melodrama issues I had when trying to draft a version in his voice.) If I had noticed the source of her prompt before I finished writing, I might have tweaked the third section to mention Spock and Uhura breaking up, though I think I'd have remained in Uhura's POV. As it is, she ended up with a remix that made her unhappy and I ended up with a story I love but am conflicted about.
...
In brief, this is why summaries and detailed header information are good and useful things: they will help give people the contextual information to read stories the way you intended them, instead of completely missing what you consider the main point.
Also, gen friendship is awesome and in no way inferior to shipfic, but that is a different argument for another day.
(This post has been edited for clarity since I first posted it, but the gist of the explanation remains the same.)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
My story is based on Spock's Sweater, a lovely drabble by MelayneSeahawk, which I am going to copy-paste here for analysis purposes. (If you like it, please follow the preceding link and tell her so!)
---------------
"That sweater is horrific," Jim said, pulling on a sweater of his own; malfunctioning environmentals were a bitch. His was a flattering shade of blue. Spock's was...not.
"My mother made it," Spock said, and Jim was sure he wasn't imagining the slightly insulted tilt to his eyebrow. Jim opened his mouth to apologize, but Spock cut him off with a glance. "I have often found it...unwieldy."
Jim reached over to touch the collar-ish part. "Well, this bit could be fixed. Gaila taught me how to knit," he added, blushing.
The corner of Spock's mouth quirked slightly. "That would be acceptable."
---------------
Here is the information that accompanied the story:
1. That it was written in response to the following prompt: "Spock's Grey Lumpen ManSweater of Dubious Fit"
2. This header line: "Spock's Sweater | G | 100 words | complete"
That header line is also the only information provided for the story in MelayneSeahawk's master list of her Star Trek: AOS fanfiction.
So far, so good.
Now we hit the problem area -- namely, I read the story as gen. Because I read it as gen, I wrote a remix that included Spock/Uhura as a background romantic pairing, used Kirk/Gaila as a background sexual pairing, and only had Kirk and Spock interacting as friends. The thing is, MelayneSeahawk wrote the story as shipfic -- I know this because she commented that I had changed the pairing, which cannot happen unless there was a pairing to start with.
How did that miscommunication happen?
There is nothing in the header information to tell me the story is not gen. (In fact, the header doesn't even tell me which characters are in the story, just that presumably there is no graphic sex or violence since it's rated G.) There is nothing in the story to explicitly tell me that Kirk and Spock are meant to be read as a romantic and/or sexual couple, though equally, there is nothing in the story to tell me that they aren't together.
For example, you can read Kirk blushing as a sign that he's embarrassed to admit he knows how to knit -- which is how I read it -- or, to give it a shippy spin, you can read it as a sign that he's embarrassed over talking to his current partner about his past relationship with Gaila. And you can assume they are putting sweaters on during a shift because the environmental controls broke, and Spock is in Kirk's cabin because they're friends -- which is how I read it -- or you can read it as them getting dressed after having sex in their shared cabin.
There are no firm clues either way. The story is too short to give any.
Now, MelayneSeahawk has written a lot of stories wherein Kirk and Spock are explicitly stated or shown to be in (or to have been in, or to be entering into) a romantic and/or sexual relationship. One can relatively safely assume they are something of an OTP for her. I did, in fact, reach that conclusion while reading through her archived stories.
I still read the drabble as gen.
The reason has to do with context, subtext, and my approach to shipping in general.
Subtext: I am pretty much blind to romantic and/or sexual subtext in stories, regardless of what medium I'm dealing with, of whether the stories are original or fanworks, and of whether the subtext is het, slash, femslash, or any other combination.
I have learned, over the years, to work past that blindness if and when I am purposefully looking for subtext. I often do make that effort, usually because people have previously told me that subtext exists in a particular story by writing reviews, meta, or fic that explicitly incorporate it, and I want to see for myself what they're drawing from. Sometimes I can even catch romantic and/or sexual subtext without such specific cues, but in those cases it is either so blatant as to almost be text, or I am relying on a learned cultural familiarity with fandom and society-at-large to predict what other people will read in a story even while I myself remain at a distance. Either way, it's not a reading/viewing pattern that comes naturally to me, and I don't always want to put in the effort.
(I admit that I have more training in working past my blindness to het subtext, simply by living in a culture that eats, breathes, and sleeps heterosexual assumptions, but it still flies right past me unless I am actively looking for it, just like slash and femslash subtext do.)
Shipping: I am not a shipper by temperament. I do have some groupings I like better than others, because I think certain characters could build healthy and interesting relationships (and generally also because I think they are or could be awesome friends); some groupings I am largely indifferent to, either because I don't care about the characters involved or because I don't find those particular characters interesting together; and some groupings I strongly dislike for various reasons, mostly to do with abuse of power. But I don't have OTPs in the classic sense.
I tend to assume, in fact, that characters are all asexual and aromantic until proven otherwise, whether in general by canon or in the specific context of any one fic. In other words, unless you explicitly show or tell me that a pairing exists in your fic, or you are writing about a canon couple, I will assume you are writing gen friendship. If you are writing about a pairing whose members have canon romantic/sexual relationships with other people, I am really never going to assume they're a couple until and unless you tell me flat-out that they're with each other instead of their canon partners, because I also assume canon rules apply until proven otherwise.
Yes, even if you are writing about your OTP.
Context: There are, however, a couple ways to get around making a pairing textually obvious within a story itself. The easiest is to mention the pairing in the summary or other header information; that tells me I am supposed to read those characters' interactions with the assumption that they are together or at least interested in getting together. (I then do so.) The other is by posting the story in a ship-oriented context -- for example, I assume stories posted to a dedicated shipping community are shipfic, because that is what such a community is for.
I will not, however, carry over a writer's prefered pairings from one story to an unrelated story in the same fandom. A series counts as contextual evidence -- if two characters are together in one story, I will assume they are still together in the sequel. An unconnected body of work, on the other hand, is not contextual evidence of anything. Each new story must prove the existence of a pairing anew. Even when I am simultaneously saying, "Oh, this writer tends to pair characters X and Y, so this fic is probably full of romantic/sexual subtext between them," and even if I notice the appearance of background OCs or bits of world-building from other stories, I continue to read each new fic as gen.
I don't know why my brain works that way, but that is how I am wired, and I don't think there's much hope of changing it at this point in my life.
Moving on.
There is, in fact, one small, hidden piece of evidence in MelayneSeahawk's post that her story was intended as shipfic. She gave a link to the post where the sweater prompt originated... which was on kirkspock, a shipping community. The thing is, because she also copied the prompt text in her post, I didn't track the prompt source back until well after I'd written my remix and blithely sent it off to beta, and even then it was by accident. I was thinking of a post someone had made a month or so ago about the etiquette of linking or not linking prompts, as well as quoting or not quoting prompt texts, and happened to hover my mouse over the link long enough to read its address.
Then I spent a couple days metaphorically gnawing my fingernails, because you are not supposed to change pairings when remixing a story, I hadn't meant to change a pairing, and I felt queasy realizing that I accidentally had.
Ultimately I decided to post my story as-is, though prefaced with an apology for adding background het and making Kirk and Spock's relationship explicitly gen. This is because I stand by my original gen reading of MelayneSeahawk's drabble -- there is nothing within her story that is incompatible with gen, and if Kirk and Spock are friends rather than lovers, I then default to canon and assume Spock is still with Uhura. (In this particular case I happen to really like Spock/Uhura, but since I also enjoy Kirk/Spock, it's more about assuming gen and canon until proven otherwise than about ship preferences.)
If MelayneSeahawk had put a pairing label in her header information, I am pretty sure I would have written a completely different third section for my story. (It probably would have been in Spock's POV, despite the melodrama issues I had when trying to draft a version in his voice.) If I had noticed the source of her prompt before I finished writing, I might have tweaked the third section to mention Spock and Uhura breaking up, though I think I'd have remained in Uhura's POV. As it is, she ended up with a remix that made her unhappy and I ended up with a story I love but am conflicted about.
...
In brief, this is why summaries and detailed header information are good and useful things: they will help give people the contextual information to read stories the way you intended them, instead of completely missing what you consider the main point.
Also, gen friendship is awesome and in no way inferior to shipfic, but that is a different argument for another day.
(This post has been edited for clarity since I first posted it, but the gist of the explanation remains the same.)
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)