Reflection and Analysis

R. Kelly - How the Documentaries Changed My Stance on Shipping (10/7/2021)

Have you watched the R. Kelly documentaries where victims of his sexual abuse have come forward?

The reason I bring up the documentaries is because R. Kelly was recently convicted of sex trafficking, but I also want to bring up these documentaries because watching them did in fact reshape the way I think about shipping.

Now, the first thing to get off my chest is I wasn't fond of Aang/Katara or Lance/Allura before watching said documentary, but after watching said documentary and actually hearing some of the messages women of color, particularly Black women have to grow up with, its moved beyond simply not being fond of the pairings to something more, something I still can't put into words.

Of course, there are people who say, "let people ship what they want to ship", but I honestly think people have forgotten what that actually means.

When I first came into fandom, there were two things I saw which the above phrase was meant to address.

The first was calling out non-problematic ships as being problematic when they weren't. The second was calling out those who make the conscious decision to write for problematic ships as problematic people and calling for an outright ban of all problematic content in fanfiction. Both are forms of censorship, which is what the phrase actually means – that we shouldn't make an effort to censor what another person writes.

In this same regard, there is an entirely new generation who thinks it means "don't say anything bad about my ship".

I think the majorly funny thing about that concept for me is the fact the second group I mentioned – those who make the conscious decision to write problematic content, never minded people pointing out it was problematic content so long as people didn't call them problematic or tell them not to write what they write. Back then, if you were a newbie with the honest question of why anybody would want to write problematic content you could also ask without getting lambasted, though, mind you, I mean in comment threads and not on people's stories.

They also recognized that there were things you don't do, such as declaring a character in a heterosexual relationship to draw in readers only to turn around and switch to same sex relationships arguing that you left the proper context clues that you would be taking the story in said route.

This was back when LGBT content was considered problematic and I've got to wonder if that the real reason behind the plot twist in the Inuyasha story I read which promised to be a Inuyasha/Kagome story only for him to break up with her to get with a guy after a novels amount of work had been done with the writer using the excuse that it was there in the subtext all along, yet I'm still left with the distinct impression this writer only did this to cause a stir.

Getting back on topic, what is meant by "let people ship what they want to ship" is that spreading of untruths and attempts at censorship aren't allowed, yet the new generation takes it to mean people aren't allowed to talk about the truths if said truth hurts people's feelings.

Like no.

It's not other people's fault you can't handle the truth about your ship, but this has led to us not talking about shipping in a critical manner, and by critical I mean critically thinking about what we do and don't shop along with the whys.

With this idea of hiding the truths, there is also this idea of there being no wrong reason to ship something, yet I'm going to argue that while this might be true when one is simply consuming shipping material, it is not true when one is creating stories for one ship, particularly when what you create for your ship represents your ship to everyone else. The chances of ever creating something well written if you're not thinking about what you ship in a critical manner is horribly slim.