Let me explain.

What is tumblr.com?

What are ships?

Here‟s the equation:

Fans + unrequited love/lust + Internet = shipping

Glee meets Tumblr!*

*This isn‟t going to be a

presentation about Glee, I

swear.

How I

became

interested

• SCMS

• Fan Casting

• Watching communities

form on tumblr.com

From the mouth of Tumblr user

the-final-point:

“Time for a little confession:

I love faberry so much but I know that is not gonna happen and

Rachel is so codependent of Finn or any guy who tells her that she

is hot or sexy. So I just want for Quinn to come out of the closet

and find herself a nice girl on Yale and be happy. It breaks my

faberry heart but right now I would be happy with that.”

Lingo:

• Shipping

• Canon/non-canon

• OTP

• “Faberry”, “Klaine”,

“Hummelberry”

• Glee: deconstructing and reconstructing the text

• Communities form

• Transmedia

• Marketing

• Simulacra

My Arguments:

Dastiel vs.

Faberry

WAR!

Viewer/User/Player

• Role play

• Fanfic

• Twitter/Tumblr accounts as character

“LOOKING FOR RACHEL BERRY FOR FABERRY IN A GLEE SLAVE RP

RACHEL BERRY || MASTER TO QUINN FABRAY || FABERRY

Bio: n/a

MAIN RP || RULES|| OPEN CHARACTERS || AUDITION | IC INFORMATION”

Research To be a non-canon

shipper is an uphill battle

and Faberry shippers

fight hard on the internet's

biggest fan battleground;

Tumblr.”

Search for Faberry on

Tumblr and you will find a

funhouse mirror version of

Glee. The characters almost

seem the same, but the art

made of them, the stories

told about them, the worlds

built for them to live in are

just slightly skewed.”

To be a non-canon shipper

means having to make the

world fit how you see it.

Glee presents Faberry as

former adversaries and

tentative friends, the

shippers see them as two

people who show they care

through confrontation, who

fight because they are too

scared to admit they love.

For a non-shipper delving into the world of Faberrywould seem alien. References to moments and character traits that have never appeared in the show, but seem commonplace to these fans, would make them unsure that it was the same show they were talking about. But that is because it's not the same show. In fact many Faberry shippers admit to not even watching the show anymore but instead consuming it through the creative work in the Faberry Tumblrfandom. What non-canon shippers truly watch is their version of the show, the version they make from the scraps Glee gives them and the work they create themselves.

“These small moments become the basis for hundreds of ballad backed YouTube videos and novel length works of fiction. Works of fiction so well-liked that original secondary characters created by these authors become recurrent figures in works produced by other fans. However, being a non-canon shipper is more than grasping at the tiny morsels given to you and building around them, it's about manipulating what you are shown to make it what you want to see. Glee has a scene with Finn and Rachel? Fine, Faberry shippers will rip the image, remove Finn and replace him with Quinn. These new versions often become so popular they spawn their own stories and videos, ones now a step even further removed from the original show. Characters become steeped in what's called fanon, that is the fan created version of canon.”

From the mouth of Tumblr user airearthwaterfire:

“Dear people angry that Ryan Murphy had

Cassandra and Brody get together,

obviously he‟s just opening the door for

faberry”

Ryan Murphy might have

his name on this show,

but its most invested fans

aren't buying what he's

selling. Don't tell Murphy

but perhaps Roland

Barthes was right all

along, the author is

dead.”

“So not only do Finchel

shippers watch a totally

different show but they also

don't know how to write..

interesting :P Faberry

5ever!”

Anonymous

Transmedia

“The study of fandom provides a platform from

which to investigate converged-audience

practices such as transmedia storytelling as

well as the dialectic of fan labor=fan agency.”

Marketing

goldmine?

“Occupying the characters

of the show in this way,

transmedia storytelling

becomes less of a

transgressive audience

practice and more of an

unintentional, fan-driven

reinforcement of the aims of

the producers and

advertisers”

Marketing

goldmine?“In essence, the role-

playing „„active‟‟ fan is

engaging in play that

also markets the show,

the narrative, the

advertisers, and, to a

great extent, their own

identity as a „„tweeting‟‟

fan.”

Ultimate simulacra?

• Layers of the text created by viewers

• Takes on new meaning as created by viewers

• Precession

• Author is dead –Barthes