The Creative Side of Fandom

Sure, toxic fandom is destructive, but let's talk about the other side for a change.
Game Of Thrones Fan Art

The majority of the time, shippers keep things civil, but occasional fights do break out, and sometimes things can get nasty. “It all got really petty and ridiculous, but unfortunately there’s always people in fandom who take shipping very seriously,” Meg says. “And once that happens, it becomes next level bonkers.” She refers to herself as an “anything shipper” and will read basically any pairing if the story’s premise is interesting and the writing is good (although she is partial to Jon/Sansa, Sansa/Margaery, and Arya/Gendry), but found herself dragged into some of the Jonsa vs. Jonerys drama in spite of her efforts, although she quickly extricated herself as much as possible. “Seriously, if you’re waging into shipping, be prepared,” she says. “I have a pretty strict ‘do not engage’ rule with ridiculousness, but my friends don’t and they’ve seen some shit.”

Reina also does her best to stay out of fandom drama and makes a point of trying to keep things positive. “Sure, sometimes I will share a post on my blog about some aspect of the show or book that I don’t like, but there’s a difference between voicing your opinion on a certain matter and actively chasing people to spread hate and just being anti-everything all the time,” she says. “It gets tedious and exhausting for everyone involved when there’s too much negativity.” A Gendry/Arya shipper, she adds that she stopped checking the Gendrya tag on Tumblr after “The Last of the Starks” due to all the negativity being spread around. “For me, the trick is to find the right people in the fandom. If someone I’m following is spreading hate in any form, I’ll just immediately unfollow, doesn’t matter how much I like their blog. For me, real life has enough negativity and hard as it is so I’m looking at my fandom experience as an escape from that.”

While it can get nasty when things go too far, for many fans shipping is a fundamental and rewarding component of the fandom experience. That said, Game of Thrones ultimately proved quite unique in that, unlike the usual series finale, which leaves some shippers happy and others far less so, “The Iron Throne” left basically everyone hoping to see their ship as canon “endgame”—that is, sailing when the end credits roll—sorely disappointed.

“They trashed every couple that existed on the show,” Ashley laments. “With the exception of Sam and Gilly, but he became archmaester, so technically, he can’t have a wife.” As more than one (only half-joking) Tumblr post noted in the days following the finale, in terms of shipping it was Jon and Tormund who won the game of thrones—there were no other survivors.

EsthesiaArt imagines Jon and Tormund after the finale.

While shipper culture is not restricted to fanfiction, it is perhaps most concentrated there. Fanfiction is also the one facet of fandom regarded as predominantly female—in direct contrast to the writers of the canon on which their stories are based, who are overwhelmingly male. All of the fanfiction writers I interviewed think at least two of these three things are related.

Ashley and Frost both note what they see as a dismissal of romance and intimacy in modern popular culture, and make the case that this, in particular, has inspired many female fans to turn to fanfiction. “It’s like, okay, you have a lot of potential with this relationship but you’re either not going to do it at all, or you’re going to do it terribly, so I’m going to do it for you,” Frost explains.

“I don’t want to generalize and say men don’t understand women,” Ashley says, “but let’s face it, men don’t understand women.”

When asked for his take on the situation, Todd, the only male fanfiction writer of the group, has a similar theory. “It’s definitely stereotypical to say that women are going to be more drawn to the romantic fanfiction stories—I don’t have the numbers to back that up at all—but they would also definitely be more willing to admit that they’re going to read that, and they’re going to be more willing to engage and comment,” he says, but also adds that he thinks a lot more people engage with fanfiction than would readily admit it. “There are people who sort of lurk in the background in reading it, and I don’t know, that could be a 50/50 split.”

“I think fanfiction writers are predominantly women because women are usually missing from the story,” Meg says. “The overwhelming majority of show creators, directors, writers, and so on are male.  Even when you encounter a great female character like Buffy Summers or Veronica Mars, there’s a male creator behind it.  No matter how well-executed a story is, I can always tell when there aren’t women in the writers’ room. I also think there are stories that will never be told that we want to see told, so we turn to fanfiction. I’m a lesbian. I know I’m never going to turn on the television and see Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell ride off into the sunset together. I know I’m not going to get a ‘Before Sunrise’-esque episode between two characters. I know I’m not getting a series that spans decades of a single family because it isn’t cost effective. We write the stories we want to see.  Men are already getting the stories they want to see.”


“Logic” is one of the key phrases brought up when the fans discuss their frustrations with Season 8—that is, the absence of it. “If people were upset because their favorite character died, the show wouldn’t be popular. People would have left after Ned and Robb and Oberyn died,” Todd notes, dismissing the notion that the bulk of fans’ anger can be put down to the controversial fates of some fan favorites. “On the flip side, that’s why people enjoy the show. Because it sort of challenges you and respects you.” He brings up Ned Stark’s death as an example of how the show subverted expectations by following a logical, as opposed to narratively cliched, course of action. “He calls the king a bastard and gets his head cut off. That’s what would happen. And that sort of respect for the audience fell apart in a lot of ways in the last season.”

Particularly with showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss all set to make a new Star Wars trilogy, the sentiment that seems most troubling to some fans is the suspicion that the two men at the helm of the show they loved didn’t really care about it in the end—at least, not nearly as much as the fanbase did. “Not only was it rushed, it just felt like they didn’t care. And that’s what I think really pisses people off the most, is it feels like they just didn’t care,” Ashley says. (Admittedly, there are certain flubs, like the “Gendry Rivers” incident, that do give pause in that regard—even after “The Last of the Starks” aired, you’d be hard-pressed to find a fanfiction that doesn’t give Gendry the bastard surname “Waters” that befits his Flea Bottom origin.)

“I think what most casual viewers are failing to understand is that the fandom isn’t asking for an ending that they like, just one that makes sense,” Reina comments.


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Ciara Wardlow: Ciara Wardlow is a human being who writes about movies and other things. Sometimes she tries to be funny on Twitter.