The Shipping News: Vampires, Werewolves and Angels, Oh My!
This week in the Shipping News: a look at the democratically elected slash monarchy, Catherine's public service announcement for overzealous shippers, an introduction to Anne Rice's other pair of vampire lovers, and a much needed discussion on the relevance of fictional couples in real-life activism.
Fandom News
It's ok Dean, just embrace it.
Accidentally Shipping: Captain Kirk/Gorn Captain (Star Trek)
One of the most iconic couples in the realm of science-fiction. If Kirk hadn't died crushed by a bridge in the Nexus, they could have grown old together. What? Spock who? No, I'm talking about Captain Kirk and the Gorn Captain.
I wish I knew how to quit you.
Kirk met this handsome reptilian alien in episode 1.18, "Arena". Their encounter has often been labeled the "worst fight scene ever", but I personally found it very poetic and, dare I say...romantic? As Kirk was gripping the Gorn's shoulders and staring into his eyes, I felt as if he had finally found his soulmate. It was a truly beautiful moment.
And look! With the imminent release of the new Star Trek video game, the marketing team decided to cater to Kirk/Gorn fans like me and offer us an exclusive glimpse at what they could have been:
Alright, fine—I don't seriously ship them...but I did find a Kirk/Gorn poem on Fanfiction.net, so the opportunity was too good to pass up.
Pairing of the Week: Marius/Armand (The Vampire Chronicles)
American author Anne Rice has done a lot of things throughout her career. In 1973, she was publishing a first novel about angsty vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac. In 1983, she started writing a trilogy of erotic BDSM novels based on Sleeping Beauty explicit enough to make the Once Upon a Time writers extremely uncomfortable. In 1998, she became a born-again Christian, and later wrote a series of novels about the life of Christ. In 2010, she wasn't a Christian anymore. A few hours later, she was a Christian again. ('You ok, Anne?) In the slash fandom, she's known for discouraging fanfic authors from writing about her homoerotic vampires, making it virtually impossible for shippers to find any Louis/Lestat stories online for years (that is, until the Internet collectively stopped caring).
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The pairing of the week, however, isn't Louis and his arrogant blond prince with fangs. It's Marius and Armand, the main couple whose story is told in The Vampire Armand (1998). You might remember Armand from the Interview with the Vampire film, in which he was played by Antonio Banderas, or from the Queen of the Damned film, in which he was played by a vampire bobblehead with a blond wig. In the books, however, Armand is described as a small 17-year-old boy with reddish-brown hair, who Marius—his lover and maker—often compares to an angel. Their romance (because it's really what it's written as, canonically) confirmed what Rice's readers always thought: even though vampires technically can't get laid, they can still be erotically and romantically involved. And boy, were they. It's very unfortunate that many readers overlook most vampire books published after the original Lestat-focused trilogy, because The Vampire Armand is a little gem of detailed descriptions and kinky erotica.
Fanart of Marius and Armand is hard to find, fanfiction is even harder—but why bother? For once, the source material leaves very little to be desired. Pay your local library a visit and borrow a copy of The Vampire Armand, and bask in the glory that is poetically written vampire porn.
Slash Discussion: Rally Etiquette
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Unless you live in a metaphorical (or not metaphorical? wasn't there a Jake Gyllenhaal movie about this?) bubble, you know that there was a rally in favor of gay marriage held in San Diego last week. You might also know that 90% of the attention was focused on the funny or witty signs people were carrying around, as rhyming slogans are to rallies what failed arabesques are to figure skating competitions (i.e. the reason most people watch). According to certain pictures that were shared countless times on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, certain participants in last week's rally weren't just fighting for the rights of real, in-the-flesh homosexual couples: they were also supporting their favorite fictional characters.
Wait, did that last sentence sound a little too cynical? Oh. No, you see, I don't condemn the use of fictional characters to bring a serious issue under the spotlight, and I'm all for cute pop culture references, but sometimes it can get a little tricky—like when gay rights are reduced to whether or not Glee's blazer-wearing sweethearts will eventually get to marry. The slash fandom has often been accused of homosexual fetishism and this unfortunately does nothing to disprove it.
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On the other hand, it would be unfair to say that a statement is automatically irrelevant just because it's made with the help of fiction. The Fandoms Against H8 store is still prolific years after its creation, catering exclusively to slash and femslash shippers, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with using beloved characters everyone is familiar with to get the message across. After all, isn't that what a lot of queer inclusion on television tries to achieve?
Gay, bisexual and trans* characters exist not only for the sake of realistic diversity, but to act as reflections of the queer community. Just look at the most common criticism of "mainstream" gay shows like Queer as Folk or, more recently, The New Normal: someone, somewhere, feels like these shows don't accurately represent what it is to be a gay man. We're inherently compelled to judge the few fictional characters who share our identity as ambassadors of the community. So then, by extension, shouldn't we be free to use these same characters as icons for our causes? Does this right extend to our "straight allies"? Ryan Murphy himself was pretty cool with it... but then Ryan Murphy was pretty cool with a lot of disturbing stuff on the last season of American Horror Story, so I'll take his opinion with a grain of salt.
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Now's your turn to tell us what you think: Were those signs funny, or did you find them inappropriate? Does it make a difference if the person holding the sign isn't actually part of the queer community? Would I sound less like the Grinch if fangirls didn't keep forgetting that LGBT is an acronym of four words? Let us know in the comments, and remember that there's no right or wrong opinion.
Parting Gif
Oh look, someone visually represented the agonizing pain non-canon shippers feel on a weekly basis! Come on, don't tell me it's not horribly accurate.
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