Ship It by Britta Lundin: a review

Alright, so we’re back on essay writing. I’m guessing that this book is going to bring that out of me again. This didn’t quite bring out the same level of seething resentment that Onision’s book did, but that’s only because this book actually had a plot and some form of character development.

            Quick background for this book. First off, some background about me. I get the fandom stuff about this. I don’t quite exist in the same level of fandom culture that I used to but from about 12–16 I was heavily involved in multiple fandoms. This includes the Supernatural fandom. That’s only significant because the show Demon Heart, that features in Britta Lundin’s Ship It is very clearly based around Supernatural. There’s a specific moment in 2013 that this book is based around. In 2013, at a convention in New Jersey, somebody asked a question to the Supernatural cast about a “ship” between Dean Winchester and Castiel, who are two of the main characters in the show. Jensen Ackles (who plays Dean) brushed the question off, saying that they shouldn’t “ruin it for everyone”. Every part of this made somebody angry. Half were angry that Ackles brushed it off, claiming that he was homophobic. The other half were angry at the person asking the question, saying that shipping, fanfiction, etc. have no place in a convention setting. Personally, I stand with the latter. It can often lead to everybody feeling uncomfortable, both on the stage, and in the audience. This book is based around that moment in the convention. It’s a fan’s hope for what could have happened. It’s a fanfiction of the events and what follows.

            As with Stones to Abbigale, I’ll be going through the plot, reviewing as I go along. I also want to give you a head’s up that, in this book, there are three kinds of chapters:

1.      From Claire’s point of view.

2.      From Forest’s point of view.

3.      Claire’s fanfiction.

I don’t mind this range of chapters, because it means that Lundin was able to explore more about the scenes that she’s written.

            The book opens with one of Claire’s fanfictions. These are my least favourite chapters. The book is riddled with typical fanfiction tropes anyway, but these chapters really highlight it. I don’t have any issues with fanfiction, but its tropes are grating. Even lovers of the form have issues with them. People don’t act and talk like that. It’s generally grating when its fanfiction, but those writers don’t have editors and they publish their own work for free. I paid for a book where Lundin was allowed by her editor and publisher to write like this. I’m not going to focus too much on the fanfiction chapters. For the most part, they don’t hold any significance, but the first was worth mentioning.

            The actual story begins with Claire sat in the library trying to figure out what a reacharound is. She searches it and accidentally leaves her volume on. It’s a pretty funny scene, and it did get a little laugh out of me. It then returns to its usual weird fanfic type talk when she talks about the two men in the video and how they are “not two separate people anymore but one, connected, a unit”. I can’t say I’ve heard many people describe porn like that. It’s porn, Britta, so it’s not that poetic and deep.

            While she’s writing, she sees generic popular girl, Andrea Garcia, and generic jock, Kyle Cunningham interrupt her. I think that many of the characters in this book that only appear briefly can only be described as absolute stereotypes. The interactions are insignificant, but they happen anyway. I don’t know how this book was written, but I get the feeling it was written as fanfics are. Fanfics are serialised, so there are often characters that just appear briefly to further the story for a bit, and because they’re only there to fill time while the story moves forward, there’s little to them. I don’t want their entire backstory, but I wold like them to be a little more interesting. Even Claire is a stereotype, but I know so many people like her. I think that being British means that I just don’t get the whole cheerleader and jock thing that seems so prevalent in American fiction. The two NPC popular kids question Claire about Demon Heart, and it brings to light that she’s basically the only Tumblr kid in the entire school. This could be set from anything from 2013 up to 2018. There is no way that there is only one kid in an entire school that is into fandom culture, but we’ll have to look past it.

            The formatting of this gets under my skin. There are points where it’s written how I text people. There are capitalisations where they aren’t necessary, italics where they don’t belong, and the way she writes text messages is terrible. I’ll forgive her for the text message formatting. I’ve never seen it done well. The problem is that it cements many of the issues I have with fanfic; the formatting should not be transferred to novels. It looks unprofessional. I get that I sound like a snob, but my issue is not with fanfic. I know that plenty of brilliant works are basically fanfiction, but they still managed to be properly formatted and well written.

            A few days later, Claire goes to a comic con in Boise, Idaho. /two things happen here: first up, she meets Tess, a fellow Demon Heart fan, and then she goes to a panel and recreates the New Jersey Supernatural incident. Tess and Claire have immediate chemistry. It’s awkward and a little uncomfortable, but it’s not far from what I’d expect two quiet nerdy types to be like when attempting to make a good impression. Just before the panel we also get a chapter from Forest’s point of view. We see Caty, a social media manager, and Ms, Greenhill who is some kind of manager too. She makes sure everything runs smoothly. They don’t seem all too important before the panel, but afterwards they become more so. At the panel, my sympathy lies with Forest Reed, the Demon Heart actor to whom Claire asked the question. I just don’t feel like shipping has a place at panels. It’s something for fans, unless a romance is explicit in the show, or if the actors and creators talk in depth about it; even then, it’s still something to tread carefully with.

            After the panel, we meet Ms. Greenhill again and she’s annoyed at how the whole thing played out. The convention tour that the Demon Heart cast and director are going on is an attempt to get ratings up, and this doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would help out. She has to do something. I must say, what she decides to do is ridiculous, but here we are. There’s a Demon Heart prize giveaway at the convention centre, and she uses this to her advantage. It’s revealed here that one lucky fan will get to travel with the Demon Heart cast on the rest of their convention tour. Claire, of course is the name picked out of the bowl, and she susses out pretty quick that this is all on purpose. She’s picked because she has some sort of influence because of her online presence as a fanfic writer. This all just sounds like the sort of thing that a fan would have a little fantasy about, and that’s fine, but on paper it sounds absolutely ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my little fantasies like this, but I’d never think of publishing something like this at all. It’s all just so contrived. Contrived is okay if it only exists in your own head but it just feels cheap when it’s in a published work.

            Though I don’t enjoy much of the contents of the book, there are little things about it that I like. When chapters switch between perspectives, and the characters are in the same room, we get an overlap of plot to give us different perspectives. It’s a simple technique, but I like it.

            Claire decides that this trip is the perfect opportunity to try to make her ship, SmokeHeart, canon within the show. She thinks that she can convince Jamie, the show runner, to make it happen. See what I mean about this while thing sounding like a fan’s fantasy?

            She sees Tess again and finds out that Tess is also travelling on the convention tour, though she’s driving herself about. We learn that Tess is sensible enough to realise that it’s fine if fandom stays with the fans. This interaction is one of those early signs that Claire and Tess are very different. Most of their interactions end up with Claire getting annoyed at Tess for something that’s usually insignificant.

            At the next comic con in Portland, Claire meets up with Tess again, and they set up a meeting at a restaurant the next night. Claire isn’t entirely sure if she just agreed to go on a date, despite the fact that Tess says, “it doesn’t have to be a date”. I get being awkward in the face of prospective romance, but sometimes the interactions between these two can be tiresome. Whenever it starts to get slightly awkward, I just want it to be over. It’s only cute up to a point.

            Next up at Portland Comic Con is a Q&A panel, like the one in Boise. This time Claire is watching from the side of the stage. Here we have a brief interaction between Claire and the social media manager, Caty. It’s not entirely significant, but we do get a corker of a line from Caty when se says, “you were always one of the tastemakers in the fandom”. I don’t know if “tastemakers” is a common word that I’ve just never come across, but that phrase just stuck out from the page. It was ridiculous. Caty also tells Claire that she should live-blog the panel. As she’s doing so, she notices that a moderator has been added to the audience section of the Q&A. This annoys Claire, but moderators are on panels all the time. Also, she should know that they don’t want another incident like what happened with her in Boise. They need to keep their ratings high. However, Claire voices her issues on this on her blog. This doesn’t actually affect anything for Demon Heart, but whenever they talk about it, they always make it seem like she’s a major influencer. Maybe I’m just too sceptical for a book like this.

            Claire goes out with Tess to a restaurant. It’s a gay restaurant called Roxy, and Claire thinks that the fact that she’s been taken to a gay venue cements the fact that Tess thinks that this is a date. They have another tiff over fandom and how much of it matters in the world of canon. Once done in the restaurant, they walk by the river and discuss fanfic. I know a lot of people in the fandom world, and I know that they talk about it a lot, but they do have the ability to talk about other things. By this point, I am bored of hearing about the world of fandom. It gets dull after a while. There’s nothing wrong with fandom, I’ve been a part of that world myself, and I still do sort of exist within it. It’s a happy place, I get that, but there’s more to life than just this. They barely even talk about their normal life. Even if most of their conversations are fandom because that’s what they have in common, they surely want to find as much out about each other as possible. They don’t even really talk about school. The closest they get to that is when we meet Tess’ friends later, and, as you’ll see, it still revolves around the world of fandom.

            Rather than write a review of this next bit, I’ll just give you context that Tess has gone back to Claire’s, and give you the response of my flatmates:

I think that tells you everything you need to know. Oh, I should say, there’s nothing more than making out. I’m so thankful for that, because I don’t want a repeat of Stones to Abbigale.

            Before Claire heads off to the next convention location, she bumps into Forest while she’s with Tess. We get a cookware joke about pansexuals, which we all love (don’t worry, I am being sarcastic). It’s a Woke™ person trying to laugh at those who aren’t. Making the joke ironically is just as dull as making it unironically. Stop it. Tess also hints to Forest that she and Claire got up to something the night before and this gets under Claire’s skin, which is understandable. It’s not quite outing her (Claire is still coming to terms with her sexuality) but it’s close enough.

            While on the bus to Seattle, Caty and Claire set the wheels in motion for a plan to change Jamie’s mind about sexuality on his show. You don’t find out what it is yet, but when we get there, you’ll see that it’s truly ridiculous and another clear sign that this is just the fantasy of an embittered fan.

            In Seattle, Claire and Tess meet up. Claire reveals that she doesn’t have any friends back home. Tess does, but they don’t know anything about her love of Demon Heart. This becomes significant when her friends arrive later. Here, Tess invites Claire out for sushi.

            When they go out for sushi, they are met by Tess’ friends. These are the friends that are unaware of her love of Demon Heart. Claire decides to tell the friends everything, and Tess gets annoyed at her for it. In retaliation, she outs Claire to her mother. Looking at positive reviews, people love the relationship. I don’t get it. There are few outwardly sweet moments, the romance is non-existent, and they are always bickering. They aren’t cute, and this incident really typifies why. Never, no matter how angry someone is, is outing somebody okay.

            Forest finds out that Claire has written a fanfic about him, using information that he gave to her in a private conversation. It even insinuates that his father was abusive, despite this being false. He’s rightfully angry with her. Writing fanfic about fictional characters is fine, but writing about real life people is wrong. I know this is a controversial topic, but I do not care. Leave real people out of your fanfiction. Or, if you insist on writing about real people, change their names. People do not deserve to have their name played about with just so people can have their fantasies. Fanfiction is for fictional characters, not real people.

            After this, we get to the result of Caty and Claire’s plan for Jamie. She gets him into a room in the hotel and blackmails him using his Twitter—Caty had given the password to Claire. She gives her pitch as to why she thinks the two leads should be gay and in a relationship. He points out all the reasons that it isn’t possible, and every one of them actually makes sense. I feel like Lundin was trying to make Jamie look like a dick, and she succeeds everywhere else, but here I’m absolutely on his side.

            There’s just less than 100 pages left, but only one memorable thing happens. After a lot of drama, Claire ends up moderating a panel and comes out as queer. She basically takes over the panel, and if I was there as a Demon Heart fan, I’d be really annoyed because I’d have to sit through some girl talking when I wanted to listen to some actors that I like.

            There are plenty of enjoyable books about fandom. I’ve heard Rainbow Rowell writes really well on the topic, but I’m unlikely to pick up any of her books myself. I’m not able to recommend this book. I know who it’s marketed to, and I know these people are probably reading this. There are better books for you out there, find them.