Friday, October 07, 2005

Shippy Fan Fiction. Yeah, Shippy.

I happened to drop by Serebii.net (breaking a pledge I made with Articuno) and decided to visit the Shipping section I had once patronised. When I reviewed the roster for the Shipping fics board, the title 'A Day Inside May' appeared — with, as one would guess, an NC17 disclaimer. Below is some of the actual text of the fan fiction; I'll do this instead of linking to the topic since I'm aware that some little kids may see it if I do.

Joy replied, "Well, I have to be getting back to my work now, you have quite a lot of fanboys lined up for you May, you're winning hearts all over the place."

May felt her cheeks blush deep red. Ash then looked up towards May, he always knew she was cute, but to have a HUGE number of male fans watching her during the Grand Festival? He briefly thought about how long they've been traveling together, until Brock snapped him out of his gaze.

"Hey Ash!" Brock motioned as he moved toward him. "We might as well spend the night here, we could all use some nice beds to sleep in."

Ash replied "Sure thing, my feet were getting tired from all the walking anyway."

May started walking out of the main area of the center, she turned towards her friends as she was walking away and said, "I really need a nice hot shower, see you guys later!"

Scene: We then see an outside view of the Pokemon Center, the sun is setting.

Inside the Center, we see May in the bathroom looking into the mirror. She first untied her bandana and put it on a shelf in the room. Next she began unzipping her shirt. . . .

May thought to herself, with an endless sea of emotions raging through her mind. She was happy that she was being recognized for being a great coordinator, yet for some reason. . .she felt sad. She couldn't figure out why she felt somewhat depressed, until the thought snapped into her head. It was Ash. For all the time they've traveled together, Ash had never expressed any feelings beyond friendship to her. . . .

She had always admired Ash since they met, but now she wanted more than just friendship.

She said out loud, "If I can get Drew and all those other fans expressing attraction towards me, why doesn't Ash?"

She then thought in her head, does he like me? Does he think I'm attractive? Does he like my body? . . .

This story was approved by Kiori.

'A Day Inside May' is not the only story I've seen involve any sexual activity, and some I can't even mention because it's impossible to censor them — the one above was tricky enough to get to just before the trip. This is traced back to one of the more unusual departments of animé that Serebii.net has plenty of (and PKMN.NET retracted after it went boom on them) — 'shipping', a modified diminutive of 'relationship'.

The boys and girls in animé have cleverly been modified for titillation and power in some cases, and it seems that many people have taken the opportunity to pair them together like prom kings and queens. I've heard of matchmaking and forecasts among cliques, but I would never imagine, until I fully understood it whilst I was on PKMN.NET, that this would lead to an international phenomenon. Now we have cliques for all kinds of 'shippings' — Tachishippings, which include Ash, Misty, Brock, and Team Rocket, and Sistershipping (Serebii dubs this Advanceshipping), which involves Ash and May. (The names have been taken from Aurora Moon.) On PKMN.NET, the AAML (Ash And Misty Love) and AAMAYL (Ash and May Love) factions have appeared, warring against each other (in fact, Ragade, a devout AAML supporter, helped found the Misty Army, a team that disappeared shortly after Silver Moon Boarding School's injunction). And where the union comes in, the soppy stories move in and we have a hybrid of Fan Fiction and Shipping. This eventually trips over into some people describing the characters as if they're revamping Eyes Wide Shut.

I have no problem with Shipping, but when it gets to the point when people start expanding on the playground 'sitting-in-a-tree' rhyme, it starts to get annoying. Maybe these kids have been reading too much from Nora Roberts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shipping in any way is awful, people who do it have no lifes....

But this puts it over the edge *barfs*

Anonymous said...

It's not like we're all lifeless. It's just the rabid ones can take it too far. ;/ Nice entry, by the way. It was quite interesting, and food for thought.

Anonymous said...

It's not the fact that there is a 'Rating' to say which age groups should be allowed.. it's the fact that kids will read it no matter what age they are and they shouldn't be!
Kids shouldn't be exposed to it AT ALL
And from a Pokemon site that's terrible..
Lets put it this way, if I was 10 years old and had joined a friendly 'kids site' my mum would keep a careful watch over it to make sure it really IS suitable, if it happened to be Serebii where that fanfic is lying about for anyone to read... she'd be horrified, I would too!!! How dare they put porn on a kids' site!? If they want that sort of thing they should take it to a site specifically for that subject!

Anonymous said...

I don't really see the problem. It's fairly obvious that some characters in anime are gonna get together, such as Kagome and InuYasha on "InuYasha". But still, taking it to such a level as a five year old watching text unveil something like that...*shudder* Oh well. I still like the story.

Anonymous said...

Serebii isn't exactly a kids site. The majority of the users are in their twenties, believe it or not, so it stand to reason that porn would wind up on the site.

And in the actual story (which has since been removed from the site), the moderators determined that as long as there was a warning at the beginning of the story (as well as in the title), it was perfectly acceptable. If a child were to read the story, even after they saw the perfectly clear warning at the beginning, they would have no one to blame but themselves.

But besides which, the story wasn't very good to begin with. It was only popular because it was the first serious porn story on the site.