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Monday, May 18, 2015

StarfirexRaven and the worry that I have somehow become trapped in teenage slash

The first time I found Kim Possible I was channel surfing, probably bored, and likely deep in the weeds of untreated depression.  The second time I found it I sort of slid sideways into the fandom and suddenly knew about the children of Shego and Kim and, and who they were shipped, with, and learned the history of the family for three generations (or some such) before I knew what hit me.

If you poke around at stuff eventually you come across a crossover (Magneto and Professor X manipulate Kim and Shego in various directions and then ... wait, wrong crossover) and then suddenly you find yourself sucked into another fandom.

Thus Teen Titans.  The titans of mythology are best known for choosing the sort of leader who would castrate his father and eat his own children, thus Robin leads the title characters of the show Teen Titans.  Teen Titans, which was adapted into a parody comic called, "Teen Titans, Go!" which was adapted into a TV show the kids like to watch all the time in spite of it having very little in the way of redeeming qualities, is about teens.  Half mechanical, half demon, all alien, or shape-shifting teens.  And Robin.

And, of course, it doesn't take much for Starfire/Raven to seem like a totally awesome pair:
At a meeting of the Titans: 
Starfire, full of joy and enthusiasm: Raven and I have something to tell you *pause for deep breath without which the following volume would be impossible* We Are Lesbians! 
*dead silence* 
Robin: Uh... Star, I don't think you're using the right word. 
Raven, her voice flat: Actually, she is. 
Starfire, continuing in enthusiasm and joy and generally gushing with feeling: We are the lovers now!  Are you not all so happy for us?  Is it not wonderful? 
*the other three look at Starfire and Raven in surprise*  
Cyborg: You're . . . 
Raven, voice still completely flat: We are.
But, back up a moment, end of the paragraph about the Teen Titans.  Alien teen.  Half-demon Teen.  I have no objection to demons (or half demons) dating aliens.  These things happen and we should respect the rights of consenting non-humans and semi-humans.  It's the teen part that gets me.

Now a good deal of Kim/Shego fiction takes place after the show, and for good reason.  Kim and Shego are probably five, six, or seven years apart.  No problem when they're in their twenties or thirties, but if you pair a 16 year old Kim with a Shego who just got her college degree the squick factor goes through the roof.

Teen Titans, on the other hand, have an age limit.  Unless it's the Teen Titans reunion attended by the non-teen former-titans, any story that pairs Teen Titans in any permutation is going to be about teen romance.  And there's nothing wrong with that, but (a thousand variations on Twilight might not seem to indicate this but) I'm not actually that interested in teen romance.  (Though I do have a backlog in my head from my time as a teenager who came up with ideas for stories without looking too far beyond present circumstance and apocrypha.)

And yet I've gone from no ships I really care about, to one ship that involves a character who is, in all of her canon appearances, a teen, to now two ships in which three out of four characters are teens (Kim, Raven, Starfire.)  I'm not actively looking for new slash ships to sail on, but I wonder if looking at these ships with teens will suddenly having me stumbling into, and being drawn in by, the world of, say, Jubilee/[some other teen] and so forth the way that looking into Kim Possible fanfic led me to Raven/Starfire.

4 comments:

  1. ...I have to admit, I don't have anything to contribute to this conversation. Almost every ship I've invested myself in has either been canon or heavily suggested by canon.

    The only exception that comes to mind right now is from Fable II, where I think it would be really awesome to ship female!Sparrow/Hammer. Which, for all I know, you can actually do in-game - although one of the things I'd like to do with it is go off the canon rails and get a less stupid ending to the story.

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    1. Yeah, I remember when shipping was something that happened to other people (or involved actual freight.) Then it just, sort of, happened.

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  2. I have the opposite thing. I ship a fair amount of canon, at least recently, but also SO. MUCH. SLASH. Legend of Korra almost knocked my socks right off.

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  3. I have to say StarfirexRaven is probably my favorite pairing in that series (not that I'm a huge fan anymore); I have a faint memory of being an actual kid and liking it when they hung out together and hoping for more episodes about them. Cyborg, Robin, Beast Boy? I always kinda felt like Starfire and Raven had more chemistry together and Cyborg and Beast Boy were more in love with each other than anyone else. Mischievous kid mind. :3

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