Have you ever looked at two fictional characters and thought to yourself omg they are gay and so in love despite the aggressively platonic or heterosexual relationships they’re shown in? Have you ever been personally victimised by a straight showrunner for 10 seasons of TV? In this episode we discuss shipping and the psychology behind it, as well as queerbaiting and Roland Barthes’ "The Death of the Author." With case-studies from Supernatural and Once Upon a Time, we delve into the ways in which shipping is actually literary criticism and the ways in which queer audiences will, despite the odds, impose queerness on anything they attach themselves to.
Music by Max Elliott
Bibliography
- Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 3rd ed., ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 1268-1271.
- Bendix, Trish. AfterEllen. “‘Once Upon a Time’ creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis answer our SwanQueen questions.” 12 Jan. 2016. https://afterellen.com/upon-time-creators-adam-horowitz-edward-kitsis-answer-swanqueen-questions/.
- Brennan, Joseph. “Queerbaiting: The “Playful” Possibilities of Homoeroticism.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 10 Feb. 2016, pp. 189–206, https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877916631050.
- Falthalla, Judith. “Moriarty’s ghost: or the queer disruption of the BBC’s Sherlock.” Television & New Media, 16(5), 17 July 2014, pp. 490-500. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476414543528?journalCode=tvna
- Fansplaining. Tableau Public. “The Fansplaining Shipping Survey: Results.” 23 Nov. 2022. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/fansplaining/viz/TheFansplainingShippingSurveyResults/SurveyDemographicsGenderandSexuality.
- Owens, Maggie. “The Sweet Science of Shipping.” Fandom, 29 June 2018, www.fandom.com/articles/shipping-characters-sweet-science.
- Romano, Aja. ““Once upon a Time” Fandom in Uproar after Actor Insults Its Biggest Shippers.” The Daily Dot, 24 Dec. 2013, www.dailydot.com/parsec/fandom/ouat-shippers-twitter-fight/.
- “Shipping (Fandom).” Wikipedia, 15 Oct. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom).
- “Shipping.” Shipping Wiki, shipping.fandom.com/wiki/Shipping.
- Steele, Amanda. “Shipping Discourse: Do Ships Need to Be Unproblematic?” The Mary Sue, 15 Apr. 2020, www.themarysue.com/must-ships-not-be-problematic/.
- Stitch. “Shipping Is Supposed to Be Fun, but Ship Wars Ruined It.” Teen Vogue, 25 Feb. 2022, www.teenvogue.com/story/on-shipping-ship-wars-and-the-fight-to-be-right-stitch-fan-service.
- Stitch. “Why We Still Need to Talk about Queerbaiting.” Teen Vogue, 4 May 2022, www.teenvogue.com/story/on-queerbaiting-betrayal-quest-for-better-representation-stitch-fan-service.
