Thinking about villains again

[phantomtomato]

I love reading old posts about new-to-me fandoms. It’s the first thing I do when I finish a new canon and have fannish, shippy feelings about it: what have people said in years past? What sorts of fic and art did they make, and what discussions did they have, and what were the disagreements within the fandom? Especially when the fandoms are decades old and there are cycles of this, and enough time has passed for some of those posts to be people reflecting on their experiences of fandom years after they were very active in it. (My meta-fandom is fandom history.)

Anyway, I have been happily doing so this week and thinking again about what attracts me to shipping villains. It’s not the ‘problematic’ nature of the ships, or the ability to write dark tropes like abuse, consent issues, and tragedy. It’s not kinks like age gaps, D/s, possessiveness, or obsession. All of that is fully orthogonal to why I’m into them, often actively squicky, but the villains draw me in over and over again despite what should be a hurdle. (And is a hurdle—wading through fic written to very different ends in order to sate that hunger for the ship isn’t fun.)

I’ve seen a lot of that in the discussions I’ve been reading. To paraphrase some comments:

> A murdered B's family, why would you want fluff for the ship?

> ‘Don’t you know A/B is abusive?’ Yes, that’s why I like it!

I don’t know how to relate to those. I’m reading the same canon, feeling the same chemistry between the characters (or potential, if I attach strongly to only one character). Still, the urge I get is to fix: I don’t believe he’s emotionless, I think he’s repressed and lying to himself; what does it take for him to acknowledge his own feelings? Nothing is unforgivable, because figuring out how to bridge that hurt (including family murder!) with forgiveness and understanding is the appeal of the ship.

I think this is rooted in some of the same interests as those that drive darker explorations of these sorts of characters and ships, but I want to put the effort into writing towards happiness—whatever that looks like for them. It’s not fluff, though it might not be dark in the expected ways. But, then, that’s why I’ve always struggled with these genre distinctions! I still keenly feel the lack of language for categorizing the sort of villain fic I enjoy.

Then again, that’s what makes diving into an older fandom so preferable. It’s old, and dead, and these discussions and disagreements have long since been rendered irrelevant; I don’t need to suffer that ill-fit as an active member of a current fandom.

Comments

[vriddy]

Enjoying villains and villain ships can turn into such an ordeal! You make very good points in favour of dead fandoms haha, maybe something I should consider next time XD

I feel like the "bad guy who's a murderer is (gasp) bad!" discourse is kind of a recent development, but probably I just successfully avoided it until the last few years...

[phantomtomato]

Haha, there’s always next time for making good decisions, right? :D

I feel like the "bad guy who's a murderer is (gasp) bad!" discourse is kind of a recent development

This is what I’m finding so fascinating! There were apparently ship wars that sound so modern—the fandom is Tokyo Babylon and X/1999, and people were discoursing over Seishirou/Subaru vs. rival ship Kamui/Subaru. I’m so amused by people recounting how some fans would be horrified by the concept of the unhealthy, abusive Seishirou/Subaru ship. No one is coming out of TB or X thinking that this is a healthy, fluffy relationship in canon! Of course, some of us also aren’t thinking of it as a chance to write darkfic. *shrug*

[vriddy]

That's so interesting!! I was in those fandoms at the time and remember none of that discourse... but then again, I was 1) just reading fic on archives and chatting with the IRL friend who introduced me both to CLAMP and to fanfic, 2) I didn't speak much English at the time, and I wonder if that kind of discourse is more common in anglophone spheres 🤔 We were reading much darker books in assigned school reading... 😂

[phantomtomato]

I will say, based on how I saw people discussing TB, I expected a much darker canon. I was pleasantly surprised by what it actually was!

Also, yeah, my fandom experiences were so much more peaceful twenty years ago when I didn’t spend too much time socializing online. Ah, the days of printed-out fic and talking with school friends about what we’d read!

[yourlibrarian]

Makes sense about the older fandoms. I tend to enjoy enemies to friends or lovers, but my approach is like yours. I prefer something that can move towards growth and change.

[black_bentley]

This is where I get to pitch the Biggles fandom to you ;) the long-running nemesis gets an actual canon redemption arc which is very satisfying, and there is wonderful fic on AO3 set at all points along the trajectory - from the first meeting, through all the bitter intervening years, to the happy ending.

*whispers* Come join usssssssss

[phantomtomato]

Hahaha perhaps someday! The canon is quite large and a bit overwhelming to a potential reader, but seeing all of your Biggles posts and the great showing of Biggles in exchanges brings me joy. <3

[black_bentley]

It's a great little fandom, and very industrious!

Agreed the canon is huge, but many of the books stand alone so if you ever want a cut-down reading list, let me know ;) philomytha did one specifically for the villain arc, which I could probably dig up :D