A mechanism or tactic · 1990 · Fandom
Shipping
Fans insisting two characters should be together, and treating the show as withholding rather than as finished.
The clearest example of a parasocial bond that runs in the opposite direction to the intended one. The audience is not consuming the story, it is running a parallel production about two people who do not exist and are not allowed to.
Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Where it sits
1950 1950-1999 · 1990 1999
Provenance · 2 source record(s)
- unverifiedThe practice has its own scholarship and its own naming: pairing characters in the fandom rather than with a real performer is treated as a distinct analytic object, not as fan 'confusion' about which is realHills, A. (2014). There's no place for a loli like me in the PLURD community: The liminality of fictional characters and fan identity.
- unverifiedThe mechanism is that characters are licensed: a fictional figure can be assigned traits the performer never had, so the attachment does not require the object to behave wellHills (2014).
CHARACTER The written character
Connected · 2 out, 0 in
It sits in