i always come back to this point
[The day you google “[name of the couple ] fanfiction”, the game is over. You don’t get off the Fanfiction Train, full stop. It’s like in those nightmares where you try to run away from horrid monsters, but you just cannot run fast enough-and then you wake up panting and scared to death because they ate you. Now, can you picture Jack Dawson in your mind? Jack being dragged down along with the Titanic while fat-ass-Rose has her life vest to keep her head above water? Good. Because you are Jack. And it’s not like you read one fanfiction, no-you read tons of them. In a row. Overnight, generally. But it’s still a fresh new obsession, you know, so you try your best in order to avoid the hardcore. You choose painful stories where they both die rather over gay smut, basically, because you know, you know that the smut is the final step towards damnation.]
There are several levels in shipping. For those who do not know the terminology shame on you, or do not get along with the dictionary of the fangirls, you are to know that shipping is, in other words, to support a real or fictional couple. Any couple, literally, regardless of the chances of it being real or not, likely to become or be a real thing or, on the contrary, impossible even in an alternative universe where British people loathe tea and have voluntary eye contact with strangers on the Tube; in the big realm of fandoms is indeed even possible to ship David Cameron with Queen Elizabeth or Jared Leto with Silvio Berlusconi: the truth is that there is always someone with a weirder and more twisted ship than yours-unless you’re into, say, necrophilia or zoophilia, in which case, ugh. (There are people who ship Hagrid with Buckbeak, so, yes. No reason to feel uncomfortable if you occasionally fantasize about Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter.)
Now, to get to the heart of the matter, you can start shipping at any age. In my case, I was twelve years old when I fell in love with the idea of Gerard and Frank from My Chemical Romance being a couple, so not only did I start my long career as a fangirl quite early, but also freaking out about a gay ship that liked to engage in not-so-subtle, mildly inappropriate touches during concerts and other stuff, which may or not may have resulted in my preference for yaoi (the gay, basically) in almost every fandom I joined in the following years. (Harry Potter taking the lead.) On a side note: a true fangirl can find gay couples everywhere. It does not matter that they are in fact straight as a raw spaghetti-what makes a true fangirl is the ability to picture them in any kamasutra position that comes to her mind.
Drarry, Sterek, Larry, Crisscolfer, Ziam, Malec, Farrelleto, Thorki, Destiel-I’m looking at you.
Now, as mentioned, there are different levels in shipping. OTPs are like drugs: when you realize that you’re way too far into the tunnel, it’s already too late.
It begins subtly. You see these two guys, these two characters, it doesn’t matter if they’re gay, straight or bi, and you think: “Oh, they’re cute. They would look good together.” If, in the series/tv show/film/whatever in consideration, they actually hate, loathe, repulse each other, never mind: it’s sexual tension. It’s even better, see. Fresh meat for the shipping. The short path from burning hate to angry sex consumed in the toilets of a pub is basically the only straight thing in their relationship.
This state of mind is usually the moment when you casually think: “Let’s look for some cute fan arts.” Just because. You know. You have time to spare. (You don’t. You have home works and deadlines and things to do and God knows what, but this is the time to show off your skills in procrastination.)
Oh, that’s cute, that sketch. The anatomy looks SO real. THE DETAILS ARE SO PERFECT AND ACCURATE. One again, the path from innocent drawings to NSFW sketches that would look good hung on the walls of the apartment of a porn movie director is horrendously short.
Then, videos happen. You move to Youtube-to “get to know them better”, that’s your poor excuse, when really, all you’re looking for is AMVs. Yeah, exactly those videos in which (in the case of books) actors who have never done anything together in real life but look like the characters so who cares really are chosen to interact with each other thanks to a perfect Hollywood-style editing-or, in the case of a ship based on either real people, movies or TV shows, those videos made by a smart combination of interviews and various shoots where the two of them fondly glance at each other or, better, exchange looks of burning desire that would burn the whole Rainforest, worsen the global warming and make Angela Merkel flush in embarrassment. A lot of times, though, these vids are depressing. Dreadfully depressing. Because fangirls, you know, are masochistic by nature. At priori. Therefore, most of the background songs in said videos are so sad that by minute 1:03 you want to rip off your heart, punch yourself in the face, cry over someone’s shoulder and then jump off a bridge with a rock tied to your ankle. Behold, this is the first point of no return. Because, eventually, videos are no longer enough. No. You need more, much like drugs.
FANFICTIONS.
The day you google “[name of the couple ] fanfiction”, the game is over. You don’t get off the Fanfiction Train, full stop. It’s like in those nightmares where you try to run away from horrid monsters, but you just cannot run fast enough-and then you wake up panting and scared to death because they ate you. Now, can you picture Jack Dawson in your mind? Jack being dragged down along with the Titanic while fat-ass-Rose has her life vest to keep her head above water? Good. Because you are Jack. And it’s not like you read one fanfiction, no-you read tons of them. In a row. Overnight, generally. But it’s still a fresh new obsession, you know, so you try your best in order to avoid the hardcore. You choose painful stories where they both die rather over gay smut, basically, because you know, you know that the smut is the final step towards damnation.
But then you do it.
You do it, dammit .
You sell your soul to Satan.
You track their tag on Tumblr.
They make masterposts, AU memes, more fanarts, fan fictions, gifs. Millions of gifs. Billions of gifs. The light at the end of the tunnel is not an exit, it’s a computer screen. This is the fifth stage, called the “Compulsive Reblogging Phase”. Hours and hours spent laughing like a moron on acid or sobbing your eyes out because “they are so beautiful omg and its so sad cuz they’re either fictional and NOT FUCKING CANON YET or real people and still so far in the closet they basically live in Narnia /loud sobs/.” Before you realize it, you’re twenty and you’re spending your days and nights dwelling on the imaginary sexual lives of two strangers/two fictional characters while your sexual life is the fucking Sahara.
(If you can see yourself in this description, welcome to Hell. Straight on and then turn right for the bedrooms. Say goodbye to the infamous light at the end of the tunnel and start filling the papers to take up residency.)
So. Here we are. The penultimate phase. The smut. ESPECIALLY GAY SMUT, though no one would admit it out loud for, er, obvious reasons. It’s not, like, socially acceptable. Yet. You want your mum to think that you text all day long rather than to find out that you’re stuck with a +70000 words long fan fiction with a plot thinner than Dita Von Teese’s waist and a list of warnings that includes the letters B D S and M in various combinations. You leave fanfiction.net to sail with your armada (pun intended) in the quest for NC17-friendly shores like livejournal, Tumblr and archiveofourown, where tags like “rimming”, “D/s”, and “PWP” (plot without plot, and that’s saying something) or even “butts getting fucked what else would you ask for really” are an everyday thing and no one has any kind of restrain in matters of unutterable fantasies.
No matter how many times you tell youself: “I won’t obsess this time, I won’t exaggerate, I won’t get emotional over this”-it’s useless. You will.
We finally get to the last phase. The one where you start to feel like writing about the couple. At this point yuou’re not in hell-you sit next to Satan. Forever. Final note: if a fangirl denies spending AT LEAST one night per month curled up under the sheets with bloodshot eyes as she’s too absorbed by reading some PWP fanfiction on the screen of her smartphone to go to sleep-incidentally too terrified by the thought of being caught reading smut in the middle of the night by her parents to actually use the laptop and preserve her sight, as it would make her burn said laptop, change her name to Pepito and move to Mexico-she is lying.
Because that’s how it goes.
That’s the utter truth.
Fangirl stuff.
Dearest reader, if you recognize yourself in one of the first few points, please, please run while you still can. Save yourself. If you do not want to, if you think you’re stronger than this, stronger than an OTP, okay. It’s your decision. It’s your will. You are already in the tunnel, anyway. Sorry to tell you. You will find out soon enough and resign yourself to this truth.
You. Will. Not. Stop.
You will go down with your ship.
- From Story of a shipping, that is: entering the circle of the OTPs. Phenomenology of a fandom.
i just copied this for posterity