I’ve been reading the recent discussions in Star Wars fandom about shipping and I realized that the best thing to do is to quantify it. It’s been messy, and there needs to be a system so we know where we stand and where other users stand.
So, nerd that I am, I decided to create a shipping points-based system called the Fandom Point System! I think it would be cool if other fans decide to put their Fandom Point System (FAPS) number in their sidebars or about pages. The graphic above ranks the FAPS numbers from most problematic to least problematic.
The simple breakdown goes like this:
(TOTAL POINTS FROM YOUR SHIP OR SHIPS) / (NUMBER OF YOUR SHIPS)
ADDITION POINTS (ADD THESE)
- Your ship is queer [m/m, f/f, m/m/f, etc] – 15 points
- Your ship is feminist [includes women] – 15 points each
- You identify with your ship [for non-privileged identities only. ex: you’re gay and it’s slash ship; you’re a POC and the ship contains a POC] – 20 points
- Your ship includes POC – 10 points each
- You ship to cope, and you disclose your reasons why – 10 points
- Your ship is poly – 5 points
- You ship your ship in a configuration that gives more addition points [you see a character as demi, for example] – 5 points each
SUBTRACTION POINTS (SUBTRACT THESE)
- Your ship is heteronormative [f/m] – 15 points.
- Your ship is sexist [leaves out women] – 15 points
- You ship to cope, but you don’t disclose your reasons why – 10 points
- You don’t ship to cope – 15 points
- Your ship doesn’t include POC – 20 points
- Your ship includes light-skinned/passing POC – 15 points
- Your identity doesn’t have anything in common with your ship [if your ship includes characters with non-privileged identities] – 20 points
- Your ship includes an abusive character [villain or antagonist] – 20 points
- Your ship is pedophilia [age difference: if the two characters happened to meet when one character was eighteen years old and the other one would have been younger than eighteen] – 15 points
- Your ship is incest [confirmed or implied] – 20 points
EXAMPLE
So, for example, let’s say my ships are Kylo Ren/Poe and Luke/Leia (just two random ones that I picked, I don’t actually ship them).
For Kylo Ren/Poe, the points are:
- Addition: 15 points [queer ship] + 20 [I’m bi and a POC, and so I’d identify with this since it’s a queer ship and Poe is a POC] + 10 [Poe is a POC] = 45
- Subtraction: 45 – 15 [leaves out women] – 15 [don’t have any coping issues, wouldn’t be shipping to cope] – 15 [includes potentially passing POC] – 20 [includes an abusive character] – 15 points [pedophilia; Poe is older than Kylo since he was born before the Battle of Endor and Kylo was born after]
- = -35 points
For Luke/Leia, the points are:
- Addition: 15 [includes women] + 5 [I see Luke as a biromantic ace] = 20
- Subtraction: 20 – 15 [heteronormative] – 15 [don’t have any coping issues, wouldn’t be shipping to cope] – 20 [no POC] – 20 [no non-privileged identities in common] – 20 [incest]
= -70 points
Further Math:
- -20 + -70 = -105
- -105/2 [divided by two ships] = -52.5
In this hypothetical situation, I would have a FAPS number of -52.5 points, which would make me a sith apprentice and pretty problematic tbh.
However, I know this system is flawed because it doesn’t take into account for fans who don’t ship or think of characters as ace or so on. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thoughts? How do your ships fare with the system? Do you think we should adopt it?
Oh my god
I can’t even
Fandom, fandom, we must check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
Among other things, according to this calculator my love of Snape/Hermione is perfectly unproblematic because I happen to be a queer woman married to someone who used to be my professor so I ~identify with it and that makes it ~perfectly OK~. (I do think it’s perfectly OK! But, like, does that not illustrate how weird this concept is? Probably if you don’t like age difference or power difference you don’t want a teenager reading Snape/Hermione and then going on to marry their professor, which I did, so really my whole life is one big ~problematic ship~. But according to this scale it’s nbd. Which I guess means I agree with this scale on some level? But many folks on my dash probably would think that’s horribly wrong?)
I think the real takeaway here is: FAPS numbers.
IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO FIGURE IT OUT
I’m simultaneously relieved, laughing SO HARD, and also even more enraged because I apparently actually believe in my gut that Tumblr discourse could get this bad!
It’s such an elegant little system, though. I feel like we could be looking at the birth of a functional social media metric for smugness.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1RAll02