Greetings and Shipping

[pokestine]

Hello I found this community just now and decided the correct response was to stalk it and post all the FF thoughts! I just started FFIX for the first time so I've been in an FF headspace for a while now.

I think before I start I should say I am an enthusiastic multishipper who solves love triangles with threesomes and who ships all the ships forever and approaches fanfic as a way to explore character interpretations and dynamics.

I've been thinking about shipping, more specifically how shipping tends to villainise female characters. Those that have been in fandom for a while will remember the epic Aerith vs Tifa shipping wars not to mention the more recent Rydia vs Rosa debate¹. It seems when the fandom dislikes the canon pairing this dislike transfers to the female character, Yuna and Rinoa are great examples of this. If she's not hated, she's ignored. I've yet to find anything much about Garnet despite the fact that she's more relevant to the story than Zidane for most of the game.

I think part of this is because most of the fans in question were teenagers at the time and that fanfiction is a very shipping based pursuit. When the most common ships were main male character/ someone other than the main love interest² the main couple had to be broken up. I think the authors may have felt they had to justify the break up, this combined with lazy writing and a very simple view on relationships led to the female getting painted in a very negative light.

I know this isn't something that only happens in the FF fandom but it is the first place I encountered it. What does everyone else think? Have I got this right? Am I way off track? Do you just wish there was more love for your OTP Zidane/Quina?<sup>3


1</sup> I don't know much about this one except that it exists so it may not actually be ship based I'm just guessing.

² In my experience it's usually the prettiest male villain.

³ If anyone does know of anything shipping related to do with Quina, I would love to hear about it because that sounds hilarious.

Comments

[anon_jrpg_fangirl]

Having been a person who a long time ago wrote a fic where I ended up bashing Rinoa a bit so I could put my preferred couple together, I have to agree that many people use bashing as the easy way out of justifying why their ship would work and the canon one would not. However, being someone who doesn't particularly care for Rinoa in the first place (and at the time thought she was a super annoying character), I think I would have bashed her anyway. So while shipping can lead to bashing in fic, I think the bashing would exist without the fic/ship wars. [Who's out there bashing Rydia? I need to give him/her a whack on the head! :)]

I may be totally off on this part, but I think we see more female bashing in fanfics for a few reasons. First off, a majority of fanfic writers is female and people tend to judge their own sex more harshly than the opposite. Secondly, a lot of games have female characters that are underdeveloped character-wise and serve "roles" rather than act like real people. Especially since there are more male MCs than female ones, some female characters are just put there to be the "love interest" or the "let's put a female in this party just because". A lot of times, the romance that is scripted doesn't feel "genuine" to a lot of the fans. Thirdly there is a lot more yaoi than yuri so the females are considered "in the way" more than the males.

Those are just my thoughts. And I don't think canon Zidane would want to be paired up with Quina, but that's just how I saw it when I played the game.

[pokestine]

Yeah I agree with pretty much everything you say.
I do think internalised misogyny is a big contributing factor to female bashing in fic. This is especially noticable with the 'in the way' mentality.

Like I said in the OP I don't know much about the Rydia vs Rosa thing but I'm guessing it's probably a case of Rydia/Cecil fans bashing Rosa as the canon love interest so I have no idea if anyone is bashing Rydia.

I think any Quina pairing would have to be crack OOC because nothing could get in the way of the canon pair of Quina/Food.

[lindorie]

ack, apologies for getting to this so late! >.> thank you for posting! this is wonderful

and I can't think of anything else to say beyond you're on to something and from here on out I will ineloquently talk out of my butt. I think, and this is as far as het pairings go (I admit I haven't been flailing for very long in slash land), I want to say that sometimes the teenage author identifies with a particular female character, and finds the main male character attractive; particular female character becomes a vehicle for wish fulfillment? askjd;lkadsjf;lkd not a coherent thought in my brain

Yes, I wish that there was a little more Zidane/Quina in the world! Now that you mention it, there should be more Quina!fic in the world. If I ever get around to it I think Zidane/Quina is next on my crack porn list and I will totally send it to you

because

Zidane/QUINA

tgOuPHiLPWdnia

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad you had lots of takers for your books. They were VERY tipmteng. But I'm trying hard to divest myself of paper, and I have already replaced those books with bits and sold off my paper copies. So sad to see the shelves empty! So happy to have the books with me everywhere I go!

GxTcRBEnrAeJNoWB

[(Anonymous)]

Do you remember the full metal jeackt movie? I would love a custom T-shirt with the rifle prayer. Shortened of course. With beard instead of rifle.! Hot damn! Hahaha. Email me and let me know what you think. Unless you think it would be copyright infringement which would suck.