In Defense of Shippers
So I’ve always been fascinated by the mind set of those of us who lovingly refer to ourselves as "shippers". We are quite the bunch, aren’t we? And we love our ships. Now when I say love, I mean that in the strongest possible sense of the word. We watch them. We read fanfic about them. We make artwork and videos with their beautiful pictures. We spend hours online posting about them with our fellow shippers. We spend our hard-earned shipper dollars buying their action figures, crappy tabloid magazines with their photos in them, and the Essential Guides to their universe filled with glossy pictures and such must-have information as a character's height and eye color. (Thank you, George Lucas) But in the most recent weeks when one of my oldest and closest to my heart ships (namely Mulder and Scully from The X-Files) is seeing a lot of action due to the new movie, I’ve been asking myself a question. When did shippers get such a bad rap? And for that matter, when did happy endings in general become such a bad thing? Along with loving the angst it should be acceptable to enjoy the happiness. Now I’m not talking riding off into the sunset on a white horse. But a little hand holding and, "If I quit now, they win." shouldn’t be a bad thing. I’ve never been bothered by the debate between those who ship and those who prefer no romance between the characters. Please do not take this as an attack on one group or another. That is in no way my intention in writing this. So some people want two characters to end up a couple, some people don’t. That’s fine. You have your opinion, I have mine. But it’s when my opinion gets bashed and badmouthed that a problem arises for me. And for the most part, people in fandoms are respectful of each other 99% of the time. It's that pesky 1% that bothers me. I think it’s important for those of us in a fandom to remember that we all want the characters to be happy. Right? I mean, if we love these characters, we certainly don’t want them to end up alone, destitute, and cursing the heavens for the day they were born. No matter if you ship or don’t ship, we want our beloved characters to have a somewhat satisfying life. Even those of us who love seeing our favorite characters angsted-out to the max do occasionally want to see a smile on the tear-stained and bruised faces of our heroes. So if we as fans start with that fundamental element - wanting a good life for our characters - we should all be able to get along, right? In the past few weeks as the atmosphere around the XF fandom gets more and more charged and the anticipation grows, I see increasingly more negative posts about us shippers. To read some people’s opinions we are to blame for the last two seasons of the show being sub-par, we are to blame for Scully and Mulder’s characters becoming altered, we will be to blame if IWTB is bad, basically we are to blame for pretty much everything bad in the XF world. We’re like CSM except we squee. Yes, we shippers want romance and love. But we want it within the context of the show. We want it to remain true to the characters. When romance between two characters is done right, it doesn’t have to ruin the show. Not every couple that gets together tanks a show faster than you can say, "Moonlighting". Romance does not have to equal series destruction if the writers do it well. To some people, Mulder and Scully getting together ruined the show for them. I’m not quite sure what pushed people over the edge. Whether it was the poorly lit kisses, or Mulder’s emails to "Dana", or maybe the final straw was the cuddling in bed as the world was about to cave-in around them. I don’t know what ruined the show for people, and I’m sorry that your enjoyment of something was trampled upon. But what I do know with 100% certainty is it wasn’t the shippers’ fault. If you have an issue with any show or fandom being destroyed, your issue lies with the writers, producers and creators of that show. We as fans, do not write the show. And believe me, if we shippers had some sort of vodoo power over Chris Cater we would’ve used it right about the time Fowley showed up. I keep hearing, Chris Carter and company "gave in" to the shippers. Hold the phone. When, in the nine years of the show, did our beloved creator "give in" to us shippers? Was it when he gave Mulder a soulmate that was some character we had never met before? Was it when Diana Fowley and her breasts of evil were brought into the picture? Was it when we had to wait six years for a kiss and even then it was a kiss between Mulder and Not!Scully? I think the claim that CC buckled under to the power of shippers is a claim that is frankly, not true. Chris Carter and the others behind the show, took the characters down their natural path of progression. "Their relationship was a very slow evolution. But that was because we were extremely resistive to the idea of any romantic entanglement. I loved the fact that they were two, smart strong professional people who just loved each other in a platonic sense. They respected each other and worked together, there was no sex in it. I thought that was great and powerful. And we were very protective of that - to the point of it being a huge deal when they actually touched each other's hands at the end of 'Pusher' in season 3. And I think that was the right call [at the time]. No one anticipates that a show is going to go on for six, seven, eight, nine years. And after a certain point, you realize that it's just not like life to keep it at the same state - the relationship has to evolve ."
-Frank Spotnitz I think even noromos would agree that Mulder and Scully love each other. It was a love that went beyond sex. It was a love that transcended what is usually defined as romance. But it was a love that eventually led them down a physical path. I’m always amazed when I see people post, "I don’t want Mulder and Scully to be together, but I don’t want either of them to be with anyone else." Ummm ... yeah. Okay. I’m not trying to convince anyone to become a shipper. If you are 100%, do-or-die opposed to a romance between two characters, that is your right. But you need to realize that as strongly as you feel that two characters do not belong together, there are those of us who feel just as strongly that they do. And those of us that do want them together romantically are not the blithering, bee-hating, giggling idiots that we are being made out to be. As a shipper, I will admit to occasionally indulging in The Fluff. On a dark, stormy night, I have been known to snuggle up with an ice tea and read a fluffy fanfic. Call it a guilty pleasure, call it being a fangirl. There’s just something about Mulder and Scully doing mundane activities that couples like to do that puts a smile on this girl’s face. Now, do I want to see fluff brought to life in front of me for 22 episodes a season? Absolutely not. Because that’s not what the XF is about. And that would make the brief fluffy moments we did get (think the baseball scene in "The Unnatural" or the ending of "Hollywood A.D") not as special. But somewhere along the line some noromos have decided that the fluff is all we shippers want. Forget about the shape-shifting bounty hunters, bring on the candle-lit picnics in a meadow. We shippers are frequently characterized as not being as hard core as noromos. As if wanting Mulder and Scully to kiss makes us somehow lesser fans. We were laughed at and mocked for caring about what happened to William. Yes, the pregnancy storyline had some big issues that fans were unhappy with (even us silly shippers). But it happened, we can’t undo it. So some of us chose to embrace Scully’s pregnancy. There were some shippers who wanted to see Mulder and Scully raise their child. Is that such a horrible offense? Is having a child some horribly clichéd and unacceptable path? Keep in mind, that the character of Scully desperately wanted to become a mother. Does wanting William to live with his parents make you a bad fan? To some it makes you worse than a member of the Syndicate. As a shipper, I never wanted to see Mulder and Scully snuggled up behind their white picket fence without a care in the world and forgetting all they went through during their partnership. I’ve never encountered a Mulder/Scully shipper who wants that. What we as shippers want is to see the stories we love, with moments of tenderness between Mulder and Scully included alongside the flesh-eating mutants. The things that we as shippers love are those moments that seem so small, but speak so loudly. A hand on the small of Scully’s back. Brushing Mulder’s floppy hair out his eyes. Holding hands as Pusher lies in a hospital bed. Those are the moments we shippers obsess over. Yes, we love kissing, but truly, we don’t need it to prove to us that Mulder and Scully are in love. Although, if Mulder and Scully do kiss in IWTB, will someone please turn the damn lights on. We love to sigh and smile over, "Should we be picking out china patterns, or what." We also love to watch Mulder lose his gun and attempt for the 1,000th time to catch a speeding car because Scully is trapped inside it. We live to see Scully kick the shit out of anyone who dares to harm Mulder. And seeing Scully within a second of being lobotomized until Mulder breaks down the door - to us that is a shipper’s paradise. Do any of these moments seem like they don’t belong on the XF? Does Mulder holding Scully after rescuing her from Pfaster make "Irresistible" any less of a kick-ass episode? These are the moments that we shippers love. But aren’t they moments that all fans love? They don’t seem sappy or gag-inducing. But those are words hurled at shippers. So the next time you are upset with the turn of events in the XF, please do not lay the blame at the feet of us shippers. We are not the bad guy. The XF had no shortage of those, so why do you need any more? We love the XF. We love Skinner, we love Krycek, we love the LGM, and we love Mulder and Scully. We are fans of equal stature to those fans who don’t want a romance. If you are angry and disillusioned with the show, I understand your frustration. Believe me, as a shipper, frustration is an emotion I am very familiar with. But do not place us at the bottom of the fan food chain. We would like to be placed right next to every other Phile, eagerly awaiting the second movie. And speaking of IWTB, please don't decide you already hate it before you have even seen it. It makes me sad to read people's dislike of actors cast in the movie or people's perception of what the movie will be based on just a few clips and trailers. Wouldn't we all love, as a fandom, for this movie to just blow us away?
I hope IWTB scares the pants off me. I hope I love the new allies and hate the new villain. I hope we get to see Mulder lose his gun and get roughed up just a tad. I hope we get to see Scully do an autopsy. And I hope that we get to see Mulder place his hand on the small of Scully’s back and completely invade her personal space. Most of all, I hope we get a classic X-File with all the trimmings. I believe all of these elements are what make so many people (shippers and noromos alike) love The X-Files. Don’t you? Good. Then we believe the same thing.
Current Mood:  hopeful
Tags: essay, msr, mulder, scully, shippers, x-files, xf, xfiles
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