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WORK TITLE: Ship It
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.brittalundin.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Reed College, B.A.; the University of Texas at Austin, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, television writer, novelist, and comic book writer. Riverdale, CW, script writer, 2017–. Previously worked as a political organizer for MoveOn.org and other organizations; and as a digital media producer for Geek & Sundry and Nerdist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Originally from a small town in Oregon, Britt Lundin writes for comic books and television. Lundin studied political science as an undergraduate and worked as a political organizer for a time. She earned her master’s degree in film production and also worked as a digital media producer. Lundin is also a novelist whose debut novel, Ship It, is about a 16-year-old fan girl obsessed with the television show Demon Heart and who ends up developing a friendship with one of the actors on the show. The novel’s title is “named after the concept of fans cheering for two characters to get together in some (usually romantic) way,” noted Tasha Cerny writing for the Shondaland website.
Lundin is well known in fan fiction circles and wrote fan fiction herself when she was in middle school, inspired primarily by the television show X-Files. “Fanfic remains the place where you can get some of the most prolific and diverse fiction about queer characters anywhere,” Lundin told Shondaland website contributor Cerny, adding: “‘Ship It is sort of my ode to the wonderful queer writing that happens in fanfic, and a plea for film and TV to follow suit.” Lundin first wrote the story as a television script and did not imagine it as a book until a she was approached by a publisher who read the script and believed it would make a good young adult novel. “I’m so excited it’s coming out as a book because the world of YA is so welcoming,” Lundin told Cerny, adding: “I’ve been able to meet other LGBTQ YA authors and join this community of writers who are all supporting each other.”
In the novel, Claire meets Forest, an actor on Demon Heart, at a local Comic-Con panel. For Claire, it is a dream come true until the question and answer period begins. Claire makes the assertion that Forest’s character in Demon Heart is gay. Forest dismisses the idea, leaving Claire extremely upset since the fan fiction she writes revolves around the idea of a romance between Forest’s character and another male on the show, who is both the friend and enemy of Forest’s character. When Forest calls Claire’s idea about the relationship between the two characters “crazy,” Claire storms out of the gathering in tears. As far as Claire is concerned, Forest is a jerk, and a close-minded one at that. As for Forest, who dreams of getting bigger and better roles, he is not gay and cannot imagine anyone believing his character is gay.
When a video of the Q&A goes viral, Demon Heart’s producers scramble to hand the potential public relations damage. Fearful of alienating the LGBTQ community and their fans in general, the producers convince Claire to sign on and join the cast for the remainder of the show’s publicity tour. During the course of the tour Forest encounters numerous fans at Comic-Con gatherings. The clashes he has with them end up leading Forest to ruminate on his beliefs about sexuality. Meanwhile, Claire begins to grow and come out of her shell, including questioning her own sexual orientation. She has always believed she was straight but finds herself increasingly attracted to Tess, a fanartist she keeps encountering.
However, before either Forest or Claire begin to question themselves about sexuality, the two are at odds on the road. Claire is trying to convince the show’s writer to go ahead and develop a relationship between Forest’s character, Smokey, and the character of Heart. Forest, however, tries to undermine her at every move, fearful that such a portrayal could hurt his career. Ship It “is an examination of what happens when fandom and Hollywood collide,” noted Den of Geek website contributor Katyi Burt, adding: “In Lundin’s imagining, it doesn’t have to be a clash; it can and should be a conversation.”
Told via the alternating perspectives of Claire and Forest, the story reveals how the two initial antagonists began to learn and understand more about each others’ perspectives. The story results “in a nuanced examination of the fan-creator relationship that only someone like Lundin, who understands both the world of fandom and the world of media-making, could have written,” noted Den of Geek website contributor Kayti Burt. Interspersed throughout the novel are segments from Claire’s own fan fiction.
Writing for School Library Journal, Molly Saunders felt that the story’s “ending undermines some of its more complex ethical ambiguities in favor of a feel-good conclusion for Claire and Forrest” but went on to call Ship It “a timely story about fans and fandom.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented: “Skillfully interwoven are explorations of media representation and the line between fan and creator.” Hypable website contributor Natalie Fisher noted that the novel explores the queer experience as the two protagonists explore and change their minds about what they think concerning the LGBT community. Fisher also wrote that Ship It is “about queerbaiting — a commentary on the wide scope of narrative intention, ranging between cruelty and obliviousness, that can lead to a show queerbaiting, or appearing to queerbait, its audience.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Maggie Reagan, review of Ship It, p. 51.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2018, review of Ship It.
Publishers Weekly, March 5, 2018, review of Ship It, p. 74.
School Library Journal, May, 2018, Molly Saunders, review of Ship It, p. 98.
ONLINE
Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, https://amysmartgirls.com/ (May 10, 2018), Heather Mason, “Writer Britta Lundin Talks Ship It and How Fandom Is a Place To Be Yourself.”
Britta Lundin website, http://www.brittalundin.com (August 5, 2018).
Den of Geek, http://www.denofgeek.com/ (May 1, 2018), Kayti Burt, review of Ship It.
Forbes Online, https://www.forbes.com/ (April 30, 2018), Lauren Orsin, “A Q&A With The Author of Ship It, a Debut YA Novel About Queer Fan Fiction.”
Hollywood Reporter Online, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ (May 3, 2018), Michael Waters, “Riverdale Writer Britta Lundin on How Fan Fiction Has Made TV More Diverse.”
Hypable, https://www.hypable.com/ (May 25, 2018), Natalie Fisher, “Britta Lundin’s Ship It Is a Multi-Faceted Validation for Anyone Who’s Ever Had an OTP.”
LGBTQ Reads, https://lgbtqreads.com/ (May 2, 2018), Dahlia Adler, “Amy Spalding Interviews Birtta Lundin about Ship It!”
Shondaland, https://www.shondaland.com/ (May 1, 2018), Tasha Cerny, “Britta Lundin’s Debut Novel, Ship It, Is ‘Really Gay,'” author interview.
ABOUT
Hi, I’m Britta Lundin. Here’s the tl;dr bio for those who want the info stat:
I’m a TV writer, novelist, and comic book writer. I currently write on the show Riverdale on the CW. I’m a longtime fanfiction reader and writer, and can track my life milestones by what I was shipping at the time. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, I now live with my wife and our lime tree in Los Angeles.
Here’s a longer bio in third person for those who need it for professional things or want to bask in the details:
Britta Lundin is a TV writer, author, and comic book writer. She currently writes on the hit CW show Riverdale. Her YA book SHIP IT (out May 1, 2018 from Freeform Books), about a gay teenage fanfiction writer, is described as “the book that fandom has been waiting for, and the lived-in, fleshed-out portrait it deserves.” A longtime fanfiction reader and writer herself, she is still passionate about fan communities and shipping. She was one of a two-person team who made the viral feminist web series A Series of Comebacks, featured in BuzzFeed and Upworthy, among others. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a political organizer for organizations such as MoveOn.org and a digital media producer for Geek & Sundry and Nerdist. She earned a BA in Political Science from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin. When not writing, she spends her time reblogging memes and analyzing the work of One Direction and its members. Originally from a small town on the Oregon coast, she now lives in Los Angeles with her wife.
FUN FACTS:
Pronouns: she/her
Sexuality: you can say lesbian or queer, either is fine
Hogwarts House: Gryffindor
Fandoms: The X-Files, Supernatural, The West Wing, the new Star Warses
Hobbies: petting other people’s dogs, watching cinema on VHS the way it was meant to be experienced, tracking down the best bourbon cocktail in LA
Favorite writing music: Kiwi by Harold Styles on repeat, 90’s alt rock, The Mountain Goats, this cover of If It Makes You Happy by the Screaming Females
Britta Lundin's Debut Novel, 'Ship It,' Is 'Really Gay'
And we are very excited.
BY TASHA CERNY
MAY 1, 2018
BRITTA LUNDIN/BRIANNA ELLIS-MITCHELL
For anyone who loves the show "Riverdale" enough to dive into the world of online fandom – which, let’s be real, is most of "Riverdale"'s following – Britta Lundin is probably a familiar name. She's written on the CW show since 2017, and now, she can add YA author to her resume: Her debut novel "Ship It," named after the concept of fans cheering for two characters to get together in some (usually romantic) way, comes out today. The book follows Forest, an actor on a failing supernatural drama in need of more fans, and Claire, a teen fanfiction writer who desperately wants Forest to unpack and unlearn his assumptions about sexuality — mostly, his own character’s. The story follows their blossoming friendship (and a romance for Claire) as they work together to boost the show’s lagging popularity.
Lundin was already a celebrity in online fanfiction circles, where she'd grown up writing her own "X-Files"-inspired tales. "Some of the first fanfic I wrote was in middle school, about Scully chasing down ghosts and demons," she says. She devoted all that time to existing worlds and characters for a simple reason. "Fanfic remains the place where you can get some of the most prolific and diverse fiction about queer characters anywhere," Lundin says. "'Ship It' is sort of my ode to the wonderful queer writing that happens in fanfic, and a plea for film and TV to follow suit."
I sat down with Britta to discuss "Ship It," her passion for creating queer characters and identities, and what it’s like writing for TV and traditional publishing at the same time.
Tasha Cerny: Congratulations on your first novel! That’s a huge deal — how are you feeling?
Britta Lundin: This book is very personal to me, and for that reason I didn’t think it would ever see the light of day. I thought it was too specific, too gay. (It’s really gay.) But that’s what made me want to write it in the first place, and I just hope it resonates with people.
TC: What do you mean by "too specific?" Who did you feel like you were writing this for?
This book is very personal to me, and I didn’t think it would ever see the light of day.
BL: As someone who is both in fandom and works in the entertainment industry (at the time I started writing it, I was an aspiring TV writer and got staffed [on "Riverdale"] during the writing process), I felt like I could write from both sides of the fandom divide. I wanted to try to explain why in my life, TV shows and specific [relation]ships have had an outsized importance to me. But I also have seen the other side of the coin, where sometimes fans are misunderstood or dismissed by those in the industry, especially when it comes to fans who shipnon-canon queer pairings. So this book came out of a desire to help both sides understand each other a little better.
TC: The book focuses on LGBTQ relationships in a time when the demand for representation is increasing. Do you see a great need for more stories involving LGBTQ youth?
BL: For sure. The good news is we’re seeing wonderful, complex, and fresh LGBTQ stories being told more than ever before, but it’s still not enough. One thing I love about young adult fiction is reading all the different queer books that are coming out right now, from contemporary to fantasy to historical, fluffy to angsty, funny to tragic. I’d love to see the writers and execs of more mainstream movies and broadcast TV shows embrace these stories too, by optioning YA books, or as my character Claire would want me to say, by looking to the characters they previously maybe assumed were straight, and asking themselves whether that character could be queer instead. It’s easier than you think to improve representation in media. Just make ‘em gay, y’all.
TC: "Ship It" originated as a feature script, correct? How did it evolve into the YA novel it is now?
BL: Yeah! I wrote it as a screenplay first, never imagining it could be a book, but then the very cool people at Freeform Books approached me because they had read and loved the script and thought it might make a great YA novel. I had never written fiction before (outside [of] fanfiction) but I loved the idea, so I wrote up the first few chapters for them as a sample. They loved it, so we moved forward. And now, I’m so excited it’s coming out as a book because the world of YA is so welcoming. I’ve been able to meet other LGBTQ YA authors and join this community of writers who are all supporting each other.
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TC: You’re also a staff writer on "Riverdale." What’s it like trying to jump between writing for television and writing a book?
BL: They’re very different experiences. The great part of being in a TV writers’ room is the collaboration, and getting to sit down and figure out problems together instead of being all on your own, banging your head against a wall, like when you’re writing a book. The flip side of that is, when I’m writing my book, I’m the boss in charge of all the decisions, so there’s a lot of fun creative freedom with it that you don’t get when you’re just one person on a bigger team. They’re both fun and satisfying in different ways.
TC: On "Riverdale," you're mainly telling stories from a teenager's perspective – do you prefer to write for a younger audience?
It’s easier than you think to improve representation in media. Just make ‘em gay, y’all.
BL: There’s value in stories about people of all ages, but there is something special about writing about and for teenagers. I remember how difficult and isolating that time in your life can be, and I hope that my work helps teenagers (particularly queer teenagers) feel a little less alone.
TC: Take us through your journey as a writer. How did you go from writing your original "Ship It" script to getting staffed on a show?
BL: I had written a bunch of scripts before "Ship It." And when I started working on "Ship It’" I really had to convince myself it was a good idea. A script about gay fanfiction? Did I really want that to be my calling card? Did I really want to sit down in meetings with old Hollywood execs and agents and start explaining how John and Sherlock (from the BBC’s "Sherlock") are actually in love? But the story spoke to me, so I wrote it. Ironically, it was the script I was most afraid of writing, but it was the one that people responded to the most. "Ship It" was also my writing sample for "Riverdale," and then it sold as a YA novel, all in the space of a few months. It was really an example of how one great script that resonates with people can launch your career. Writing the personal thing that scares you the most is sometimes the best career move you can make.
TC: Do you feel, as a writer, woman, and member of the LGBTQ community, that things are changing or improving on and off screen?
BL: It feels like things are improving sometimes, but then you look at the numbers, and every year it seems like the diversity report comes out and we’ve only made very small gains, if any at all. So there’s still a long way to go.
Writing the thing that scares you the most is sometimes the best career move you can make.
"Ship It" is available in bookstores today.
Tasha Cerny is a writer, social media manager, and contributor to The Tracking Board. Follow her @TLCerny.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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Writer Britta Lundin Talks ‘Ship It’ and How Fandom Is A Place To Be Yourself
Writer Britta Lundin was obsessed with the TV show The West Wing. Between this, and the contentious 2000 election, she decided to go into politics. First majoring in Political Science and then working for political non-profits.
“I eventually realized that it just wasn’t my passion,” she told Smart Girls. “And that maybe I was obsessed with The West Wing not because I wanted to work in the West Wing, but because I wanted to write for the show The West Wing.”
So in her twenties, Britta switched gears.
“What I was interested in doing was taking the people who didn’t already agree with me and figuring out — how do I change their minds? How do I show them a perspective they’ve never seen or thought of before? And it seemed to me that the people who were doing that were the people who were storytellers. People who are shaping our cultural conversation were TV writers and movie writers and authors. And so once I realized that I was like, “Well, I got to go to film school.”
So she did. And after taking screenwriting classes decided TV writer was the job for her. Britta currently writes on The CW’s Riverdale and just published her first book Ship It about a teenage girl struggling to figure out how to unabashedly be herself.
Smart Girls spoke with Britta about Ship It, fandom, and how art can start conversations and impact culture.
Smart Girls: Ship It was a screenplay before it was a novel. Where did the idea come from?
Britta Lundin: I have been in fandom since I was in middle school, so it’s something that’s always been a really big part of my life — reading fanfiction and engaging with other fans on the Internet. And then now I work in the entertainment industry and so I feel like I’ve had the chance to see how the sausage is made from the other side. I’ve wanted to grapple with the idea of like how a fan feels about a show versus how someone on the creator side feels about the show.
Ship It is really told in two perspectives: Claire, who is a teenage girl, and Forest, who is an actor on the show that Claire’s obsessed with. He doesn’t really understand fandom and she kind of has to teach him along the way why it’s important.
That was sort of what I wanted to do with the book — was make it feel accessible to fans and make them feel seen and heard with this story. And also to make it accessible to people who aren’t fans. To make sure that they could read this and come out the other side feeling a little bit more empathy for why fans feel the way they do — why a TV show can have an outsized impact on one person’s life and why these stories really are important. Having been on both sides of the fandom divide feels like I have a little bit of insight into both sides.
The main character Claire’s struggle with defining her sexuality is a major part of the story. Why was that a persepective you wanted to show?
Claire’s main struggle in the book is to figure out what her sexuality is. And along the course of the book, she meets this girl Tess, who’s very confident in her queer sexuality. And that kind of freaks Claire out a little bit because Claire isn’t confident in that. So one of the things I wanted to talk about was how when you’re young, it’s hard to know exactly how you identify just because you haven’t had a ton of experiences yet. Something that freaked Claire out is she’s worried that if she comes out because she meets this one girl and likes her, then what happens if she never meets another girl she likes ever again? Does she have to like “un” come out? Does she have to take it back somehow? Issue a retraction to everyone she knows? It just sounds really scary and a big commitment for her.
So one thing I want to talk about is how intense that process can be when you’re a teenager and how it’s OK to not know your sexuality. Some people know it the moment that they come out of the womb. And then other people like Claire, and like me when I was a teenager, take some time to figure out where they stand. Because sexuality is such a sort of squishy thing that’s hard to define sometimes. One of the things that I wanted to say with Claire was, it’s OK if you don’t know exactly how to identify and it’s OK if your identification changes and if you think you’re lesbian and then later you’re like, ‘No, I think I might be bisexual’ or vice versa, that’s totally fine.
Fandom is often brushed off or not taken seriously. Why did you want to write about it?
It’s weird because pop-culture fandom isn’t really taking seriously, particularly the kinds of fandom popular with women and girls. And that’s like the transformative fandom, meaning like fanfiction, whereas the kinds of fandom that’s slightly more popular with boys, like summarizing trivia, knowing everything there is know about your favorite movie and having read all 800 issues of Spider-Man comics is held in a slightly more sympathetic regard, I think. And so it’s frustrating to see the creative pursuit of women sort of dismissed like this.
“One of the reasons I wrote Ship It is because I wanted to write sort of an ode to the creativity and passion and community of fandom and talk about why it’s such a wonderful place to be and why when I was teenager it felt like one of the only places where I could be myself really.”
I was involved in The X-Files fandom pretty heavily through middle school and high school. And it wasn’t something I talked about high school. But I went home and then I got on the Internet and I had my secret internet persona and that’s where I really felt like I could come alive and talk about the things that excited me. Whereas at high school I had to be cool and pretend to like the things everyone else liked. So that was really challenging.
“I think something fandom provides is a place where girls get to be themselves and love the things they love unabashedly. They don’t have to worry about being too enthusiastic or if they’re gesturing too much or if their clothes aren’t quite cool enough. It’s a wonderful place.”
What are some things you’re a big fan of right now?
I’m a big fan of the show The Bold Type on Freeform. It’s basically just about female friendships. It’s about three women who all work at a magazine that’s in New York City and it has a great female/female relationship on it that blossomed over the course of the first season that I think was wonderful. I’m very much looking forward to Season Two coming out. I’m a fan of the new Star Wars films. I’m still a Stormpilot shipper. I’m a fan of a show, I don’t know if you know it, it’s on The CW on Wednesday nights at 8 pm. It’s called Riverdale.
Who are some women who have influenced you in your life?
My high school theater teacher Jenni Newton was someone who was influential for me when I started doing theater in high school. It was a very scary thing for me because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a performer or I wanted to step on stage and she cast me in shows and really helped nurture my fledgling interest in drama, which at the time I just thought was a hobby. But now looking back on that time, I frequently find myself taking lessons I learned on the stage and backstage and applying them to my career today. It was a very important early step into seeing the importance of storytelling on an audience.
We did a show called The Laramie Project when I was in high school that was about the murder of Matthew Shepard, who’s a young gay kid in Wyoming. And that show was extremely controversial. We barely got permission to do it, but we couldn’t perform it in our high school. We had to perform it off campus, and it caused a minor uproar in our small town when we performed it because there were people who found the show very powerful and enlightening and then there were other people who refused to go see it and thought that the show was going against their religious beliefs. I remember being a part of the show and feeling like doing this one play was bringing up so many gay issues in my town and people were talking about it. People would stop me on the street and say, “I loved you in The Laramie Project.”
“It felt like we were shaping the cultural conversation in our small town just because we put on a play. And that sort of feeling was very powerful and probably shapes a lot of my creative storytelling today.”
Do you have any books you recommend that you think everyone should read?
The first one I’ll recommend is also about fandom. Grace and the Fever by Zan Romanoff is about a girl who is a secret, huge fan of her favorite boy band that all of her friends kind of stopped caring about or listening to back in middle school. But she’s in high school now and she’s still super into them and she feels like she can’t talk about that with her friends. Then one day she bumps into one of the members of the band and kind of gets sucked into their world of music stardom and celebrity. It’s such a fantasy, but it’s also really smart about the way it handles celebrity and fandom. I just thought it was a really great portrait of fandom.
Another book I really like is Dear Rachel Maddow by Adrienne Kisner. It’s told through a series of unsent emails to Rachel Maddow by this lesbian teenager who just loves her. She’s trying to not get involved in this injustice at her school, but she just keeps thinking, “What would Rachel Maddow do? Rachel Maddow would stand up and be a leader.” So it’s really about her learning to become an activist in her high school. Just really smart, thoughtful, very funny and effortlessly gay.
What advice would you give to your 12-year-old self?
I think I would tell her one day the things that make her weird today she’ll love about herself. And to try not to be too embarrassed of the things that make her not quite fit in because it’s what makes you, you. And it’s the stuff that gives you personality and a unique place in the world. So just try to be strong and it’ll get better soon.
Pick up a copy of Ship It today at your local bookstore or on Amazon. You can also follow Britta on Twitter, Instagram, and of course Tumblr.
All images courtesy Britta Lundin. Interview has been edited for clarity and length.
A Q&A With The Author of 'Ship It,' A Debut YA Novel About Queer Fan Fiction
Lauren Orsini
Lauren Orsini
Contributor
i
Apr 30, 2018, 11:00am 408 views #OnTV
'Ship It' is available in bookstores May 1.BRITTA LUNDIN
Author Britta Lundin is taking the old adage to “write what you know” to the next level. A queer woman who grew up writing fan fiction about her favorite TV shows before becoming a TV writer herself, she harnessed elements of both worlds for her debut novel.
Ship It is the story of a teenage girl who discovers her sexual orientation by writing fan fiction that envisions the heroes of her favorite show as lovers. As the plot progresses, protagonist Claire gets to know the actors and director behind the TV show, an unlikely twist that reads true thanks to Lundin’s years of experience in the TV writer’s room.
Lundin is best known for her work on Riverdale, where she most notably penned an episode in which two female characters, Cheryl Blossom and Toni Topaz, share a steamy kiss—something queer fans had been writing hopeful fan fiction about for months. Lundin’s novel merges queer identity, fan identity, and a careful look at behind the scenes TV production for a story that plays to all of her strengths.
Ship It goes on sale May 1, but pre-orders are available now. I read an advanced copy of Ship It before conducting an interview with Lundin about her debut novel:
Britta LundinAYA BURGESS
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Lauren Orsini: Ship It began as a screenplay. Why did it originally take that form, and how and why did it become a book?
Britta Lundin: I’m a screenwriter, so when I first came up with the germ of the idea for Ship It, a book was never part of the equation. I decided the idea would make a great movie, and I started writing the screenplay. I hoped that at best, the script could be produced as a movie—it’s a movie I would like to see in the world—but at the very least, the script would make a great writing sample. What surprised me was how many people responded to the script. I thought that the story was pretty personal and specific—I wasn’t sure that many people would relate to a story about a girl who’s passionate about her gay fan fiction, especially if they weren’t fanfic readers themselves—but the specific is universal, and I think people responded to a story that clearly came from a personal, emotional place. My agent had sent the script out to various places, and it somehow ended up at Freeform Books, which is the publishing arm of Freeform the network [Editor's note: formerly ABC Family]. They read it and saw the young adult novel in it and asked me if I’d like to write a book. I had never written a book before, but I’ve been a fan of YA books since I was young, and I still love reading them so it was basically a no-brainer. I wrote some sample chapters for them, which they loved, and we agreed to do it. And maybe it can still one day be a movie, in which case… I have the screenplay ready!
Orsini: When it ended up in book form, what about the story changed the most?
Lundin: As a screenwriter, there were certain writing muscles I wasn’t used to flexing when it came time to write a book. Movies are very collaborative creative experiences, whereas books need to stand alone on their own. Which means that after I turned in my first draft, my editor had notes for me like, “You need to describe what the character is thinking in this moment.” And I’m like, hey, that’s the actress’ job! Or “You need to describe the room she’s standing in, and what she’s wearing.” And I’m thinking, that’s supposed to be the production designer’s job, and the wardrobe department! But when you’re writing a book, you’re all those things too. You’re the actress and the costumer and the prop builder and the locations manager and the cinematographer. You have to do all the jobs, and you have to do them with words alone. It was a learning curve for me, but a really rewarding one. I feel like I understand my characters and my story better having gone through the process.
Orsini: In the book, Claire navigates her own sexuality through fanfiction. Is this based on a true story?
Lundin: While Claire’s story is entirely fictional, there are certainly pieces of me in her. I grew up with fandom. I became interested in The X-Files in middle school, and when I found an online community of people talking about the show and writing stories about the characters and putting them online, I felt like I had found My People. Shipping and fandom became an escape from the stresses of middle school, and a place where I could go and feel seen and feel like I could be part of something. But I specifically remember the first time I stumbled across slash fanfic. When I discovered that not everyone shipped Mulder and Scully… some people ship Mulder and the evil male agent Alex Krycek. It was sort of a turning point for me. After that I had a whole series of slash ships in all kinds of shows and movies and books. I could read queer characters in fanfic and it was safe. It was a way to explore sexuality without telling anyone else about it. I could read queer characters who were good or evil or morally gray. They had sexy queer characters and nerdy ones and shy ones and funny ones. When I was in high school there were barely any LGBTQ characters on TV. Like, beyond Will and Grace, there was very little. But there was a whole world of queer storytelling happening in fanfic. For a budding lesbian like myself, fanfic was a way to see myself represented in stories that I just wasn’t getting anywhere else.
Orsini: The show at the center of the book, Demon Heart, seems to be an homage to Supernatural. Can you tell me about that connection? Supernatural is famous for queerbaiting, and I'm wondering if the book is a little bit of a "fix-it fic," to use the terminology.
Lundin: Demon Heart is meant to be a stand in for the many, many shows that have found themselves in this position. Supernatural is a prominent one, but there’s also Sherlock, and Teen Wolf, and Once Upon A Time, and honestly the list goes on and on. We see it over and over again—a show develops a fandom that ships a non-canon gay pairing. They advocate for it to go canon, and someone on the cast or the creator side is dismissive of the ship because it’s queer (and therefore not even a considerable option), which then causes the fans to be hurt and upset and angry. Until queer pairings are taken as seriously as straight pairings, I think we’ll continue to see this trend. And Ship It is really about trying to get underneath the emotions on both sides of the fandom curtain. The book is told in dual perspectives between Claire, the fan who wants her ship to go canon, and Forest, the lead actor in the show who thinks Claire’s ideas are absurd. Slowly, over the course of the book, they start to understand each other a little better. I hope that the book serves to humanize fans and explain why they care so much about things like queer representation, and also perhaps helps fans to understand TV production and all of its intricacies that complicate seemingly simple creative decisions.
Orsini: You're a fan who is now a screenwriter for Riverdale. Has becoming an LA insider helped you "see the other side" of the fan/showrunner conflict at the center of the book?
Lundin: Oh for sure. I feel like I have a leg on both sides of this debate. Riverdale has a booming fandom, and I feel like I can understand them and their passionate calls for certain ships better because I’ve been there myself. But on the other hand, seeing how the sausage is made is illuminating. I think fandom tends to assume everything they see on screen is intentional and the pure result of the showrunner’s creative vision. But it’s way too complicated for that. The truth is, every creative decision is affected by scheduling, budgets, locations, weather, notes, and did I mention budgets? So every episode is as good as it can be, given restrictions. But it’s certainly not the purest version of the story if given unlimited time, money, and resources.
Orsini: Who is right and wrong in Ship It isn't always clear-cut. Do you see Ship It as a cautionary tale for showrunners? For "entitled" fans?
Lundin: I bristle at the term “entitled” when it comes to fans. Because we have to remember who holds the power when it comes to storytelling. The fans can shout and advocate and write petitions and launch hashtags, but ultimately they’re not the ones who can actually determine what happens in a TV show. It’s no excuse for them to be abusive, of course, and no writer should have to experience abuse or threats of violence when they go online, but I think there’s a clear difference between fans who are advocating for a ship (especially one that advances a cause of representation) than those who are being abusive. That said, we sometimes assume a showrunner has complete power to make decisions, and that’s not true either. They are subject to notes by the network and the studio and the production company and the logistics of production and the time limit of the episodes and the amount of money they have to spend, and all kinds of restrictions. No one here has complete control over this story, it’s a collaborative medium.
The other thing I’d say is that I think fans would do well to draw a distinction between wanting their specific slash ship to go canon and the overarching goal of achieving more queer representation onscreen. If we get more LGBTQ characters but your favorite ship doesn’t go canon, that’s still a net positive for the community. It’s not all about your OTP.
Orsini: The last notable YA book about fanfiction, Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, was very careful not to include any erotic slash scenes. Ship It doesn't avoid them at all! Do you think this marks a change in popular culture, that readers are "ready" to admit that a lot of fanfic is sexy?
Lundin: Haha I admit I was nervous about including too much sexual content in the book because, after all, it’s a book for teenagers. But then I realized I was reading much more explicit stuff than what’s in the book when I was a teenager! Ship It is very tame in comparison to what you can find online. There is fanfic interspersed throughout the book, but for the most part, you get to read the fic up until the point where it gets really sexy and then we cut away. But if you’re worried about young people reading it, I guarantee you, they have access to much more explicit stuff at their fingertips anytime they log on to the internet. And if a teen is reading the book and feels like, “Ugh why did it cut away?” Well, my friend, google your favorite ship and you can find a wide world out there. Not all fanfiction is sexual, of course, and there is fan fic in the book that’s completely G rated that reflects that. But I didn’t want to shy away from a big part of the fanfic community because I don’t necessarily think the sexy stuff is something to be ashamed of.
Orsini: Which of your characters do you identify with the most and why?
Lundin: I think when I started writing this story I would have said Claire, because I love her determination and her stubbornness and her outspokenness. I love that she believes in this thing so ferociously. But as I get deeper into the story, I think I’ve come to relate most to Caty, who is a secondary character who is the social media manager for the show Demon Heart. You can see her doing her job, but when she gets the chance, she also supports Claire, and nudges Forest in the right direction. She becomes a mentor to Claire, and she is an example to Claire of someone who has grown up to be comfortable in her sexuality, comfortable in her fandom, and successful in her career. I think Caty shows Claire that there’s a way to be an advocate that isn’t just yelling your opinions all the time, there’s a way to be a little more subtle. Both are valid, but Caty is using a carrot, not just a stick. Also I gave Caty the most exciting, extravagant fashion sense, partially maybe because I love her and I a little bit want to be her.
Orsini: What is the message you hope readers walk away with?
Lundin: Claire is a character who is completely comfortable with her fandom, which is something that took me a long time to figure out. I think a lot of people are still uncomfortable with the idea that reading gay fanfiction on the internet is not something to be ashamed of. But Claire is still figuring herself out. When she meets Tess—this cool fan artist who is also going to the conventions—she suddenly has to start questioning how well she understands her own sexuality. Tess represents the other side of the coin. She knows exactly who she is in terms of her sexuality—she describes herself as a homoromantic pansexual, words that freak Claire out because she doesn’t totally understand them—but Tess is still coming to terms with her fandom, and hides that part of herself from her friends back home. I’ve been both Claire and Tess at different times in my life, and I wanted to write a book that helps other teens who are maybe feeling a little bit like one of them. It’s okay to not know your sexuality right away. It’s okay to feel like you need some time to figure that out. It’s also okay to read gay fanfic on the internet. No one should make you feel ashamed for loving the things or the people you love.
I cover fandom and journalism at Otaku Journalist. I tweet @laureninspace. I write books; you can read them here.
MAY 03, 2018
12:07pm PT by Michael Waters
'Riverdale' Writer Britta Lundin on How Fan Fiction Has Made TV More Diverse
In her YA novel 'Ship It,' Lundin explores how viewer-generated stories have increased queer visibility — and why TV actors have fought against it.
Courtesy of Subject
In her YA novel 'Ship It,' Lundin explores how viewer-generated stories have increased queer visibility — and why TV actors have fought against it.
Britta Lundin is channeling her teen TV knowledge into YA fiction. This week, the current Riverdale writer sees the release of her debut novel, Ship It, a lighthearted examination of the intersection of teen TV, queer representation and fan fiction.
In Ship It, Claire, a 16-year-old fan of the fictional TV show Demon Heart, goes viral when she asks the show's lead if his character is gay — and he laughs at her. That Demon Heart's two male protagonists are romantically involved is the central idea behind Claire's popular fan fiction of the show, and when Demon Heart decides it needs to do damage control after the actor's comments create a PR nightmare, they offer Claire a spot on a high-profile publicity tour to bridge the divide.
Though Ship It is not based on any specific real-life event, its premise brings to mind recent examples of actors or showrunners dismissing fan suggestions that onscreen characters might be queer. For instance, in 2013, Supernatural's Jensen Ackles, who plays one of two main male characters that are frequently shipped together, reacted negatively to a fan question about his character's possible bisexuality.
Lundin's book, which features a f/f relationship, also comes not long after TV's "Bury Your Gays" controversy in which internet activists argued that queer teen girl characters — already a television rarity — have been consistently killed off in shows like The 100, The Magicians and more. Below, Lundin weighs in on the controversy, on how TV actors and showrunners should view fan fiction and what's it like inside the Riverdale writers room.
What drove you to write Ship It?
This is a book about both the entertainment industry and fans and fan culture. And as someone who currently works in the entertainment industry as a writer and also has been actively involved in fan culture for most of my life, I felt like I was someone who could tackle this topic.
The book is told in two perspectives between Claire, a teenage fan who writes gay fan fiction about her favorite TV show [Demon Heart], and Forest, who is an actor on the TV show that Claire is obsessed with. He's being shipped with his male co-star, but he doesn't think his character is gay.
So it's about who has control of the character once it's out in the world — who gets to decide which characters on TV are gay or not.
The premise of Ship It feels a lot like the 2013 incident with Jensen Ackles of Supernatural in which he reacted negatively to the suggestion that his character might be bisexual. Did you intend for the premise of Ship It to dovetail so closely with real life?
The fictional show within the book Ship It is not supposed to be precisely one show or another. It could be "homaging" any number of shows where the fans see a gay relationship in a TV show that the creators or actors or writers of that show don't want to pursue. This is something that has come up time and time again and will continue until show creators get more open to the idea that just because we originally thought of a character as straight doesn't mean they have to be straight forever.
Queer representation on TV can come in many forms. It can come in the form of a character who is gay from the moment we meet them, but there is also the perfectly valid method of taking a character who everyone assumes was straight, and then in season four or five or six or 13, saying, "Oh, actually, no, this character has another layer to them — maybe they are bisexual or pansexual."
If we're going to get more queer representation on TV, I think we need both of those things to happen.
As campaigns like "Bury Your Gays" have highlighted, teen TV is not always welcoming to queer teen girls. When you were writing Ship It, how much were you trying to make space for them?
Having been a queer teen girl myself at one point, and watching television and not seeing anyone like me, that was one of the reasons why I turned to fan fiction in the first place when I was in middle school and high school. It's because you weren't seeing any gay characters on TV, but in fan fiction, there's more than you can possibly count. And they're doing all kinds of things, for one. They're falling in love, and they're solving mysteries and they're going on adventures.
I think that's why you see people turning to fan fiction. It's because they feel let down by the current media landscape. Fan fiction is filling a desire in them to see more queer characters.
How inclusive has the Riverdale writers room been for you?
The Riverdale writers room is a very welcoming space. It's really wonderful to have a gay showrunner [Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa], someone who understands these issues and cares about them. Just in season two, we took a character on Riverdale who was maybe assumed straight in season one and we gave her a queer backstory, and we gave her a girlfriend. It's super exciting to be part of the team that's putting more queer girls on TV. It's kind of a dream come true.
Do you think writers, actors or showrunners of TV shows are beginning to respect fan fiction more as a vehicle for fan engagement?
I hope so. I think it still really depends person-to-person. I don't think fans are eager for showrunners to start diving into the fan fiction. That's a recipe for disaster. But I hope there's more of an awareness of fan culture in Hollywood now. There's a lot of talent in fan fiction.
On one hand, I don't want to see fan fiction get commercialized, because it's a wonderful and pure community. But at the same time, there's so much great queer storytelling happening in fan fiction, and I'd love someone to take a look at that and go, "Oh, maybe we can be telling gay rom-coms in Hollywood; look how popular they are in fan fiction," and use fan fiction as a tool for measuring audience demand.
What differences between writing a book for teens versus writing a TV show for teens have stood out to you? Were there moments while writing Ship It where you thought, "Oh god, I wish I were doing television"?
One thing I had to learn when writing the book is, when you're a screenwriter, you're just writing the words and actions of the characters, but when you're writing a book you have to be the costume designer, the art department, the camera department, the lighting, and you have to know what everything looks and sounds and smells like. And you have to be the actors, and you have to feel everything the characters are feeling. [Because I am a first-time novelist,] these were all new things for me. As a screenwriter, you're like, "I don't need to know what they're wearing; the costume department will figure that out." But in a book, you have to be all the departments in one.
It's also great working on a TV show because you get free lunch.
AMY SPALDING INTERVIEWS BRITTA LUNDIN ABOUT SHIP IT!
MAY 2, 2018 DAHLIA ADLER LEAVE A COMMENT
We’re back today with the second part of the conversation between Amy Spalding (author of The Summer of Jordi Perez) and Britta Lundin, whose Ship It just released yesterday! Here’s the scoop on Ship It and where you can buy it:
Ship It by Britta Lundin (1st)
Claire is a sixteen-year-old fangirl obsessed with the show Demon Heart. Forest is an actor on Demon Heart who dreams of bigger roles. When the two meet at a local Comic-Con panel, it’s a dream come true for Claire. Until the Q&A, that is, when Forest laughs off Claire’s assertion that his character is gay. Claire is devastated. After all, every last word of her super-popular fanfic revolves around the romance between Forest’s character and his male frenemy. She can’t believe her hero turned out to be a closed-minded jerk. Forest is mostly confused that anyone would think his character is gay. Because he’s not. Definitely not.
Unfortunately for Demon Heart, when the video of the disastrous Q&A goes viral, the producers have a PR nightmare on their hands. In order to help bolster their image within the LGBTQ+ community-as well as with their fans-they hire Claire to join the cast for the rest of their publicity tour. What ensues is a series of colourful Comic-Con clashes between the fans and the show that lead Forest to question his assumptions about sexuality and help Claire come out of her shell. But how far will Claire go to make her ship canon? To what lengths will Forest go to stop her and protect his career? And will Claire ever get the guts to make a move on Tess, the very cute, extremely cool fanartist she keeps running into?
Buy it: Amazon // Barnes and Noble // IndieBound
And now, let’s get to the interview!
Ship It is your first YA novel – how exciting!! I know that the story was originally a screenplay. How did the journey take it to book form, and what was that whole process like for you?
Yeah! I’m a screenwriter and TV writer (I write on the show Riverdale), so I originally imagined Ship It as a movie, but when the cool people at Freeform Books read the screenplay, they thought it would make a great YA novel. I’ve literally been reading young adult books since, well, BEFORE I was a young adult, so I was stoked for the chance to write a book, even though I had literally never written prose fiction before (aside from fanfic, lol). It’s been scary at times, and other times it’s been, well, really scary. But mostly it’s been a fun, rewarding way to write.
I love that the book is told in two points-of-view. It really gives this great 360 approach to the idea of fandom and what actually goes into a TV show. But what was it like juggling these two POVs, particularly —something that’s always intimidated me —writing from a guy’s perspective??
Ahhh the great unknown: men. Haha, no, I kid. I actually think women can be good at writing men because we’ve been trained from a young age to think about them and consider their feelings, and consume their narratives. So that didn’t intimidate me too much. I come from fandom, and I currently work as a TV writer, so I felt like I was sort of uniquely positioned to write this book with two perspectives, Claire, who operates from inside fandom and Forest, who lives inside the Hollywood machine. I wouldn’t trust that many people to tackle this topic unless they’ve really experienced both sides of the fandom divide.
What are some of your favorite classic ships, and what’s your favorite current ship?
My first ship was Mulder/Scully on THE X-FILES. I discovered the show in 7th grade and loved them hard and quickly. And I remember specifically the day, after reading a hundred Mulder/Scully fics, I stumbled across a Mulder/Krycek fic (Krycek, if you’re not familiar with the show, is another male character) and it was the first time I had read someone writing fic that was a) gay and b) certainly never going to be canon. It was A Moment for young Britta. Since then I’ve had a million favorite ships, but my current one is probably Kat/Adena on The Bold Type. (Bonus: it’s canon!)
I know that when you sold your book that you were just about to begin work writing on the first season of Riverdale, which was your first TV writing gig. Did anything end up changing about Ship It based on actually being in a writers room on an everyday basis?
The broad strokes remained the same, but there are certainly some details that were adjusted based on seeing how the sausage gets made from the inside. I’ve also discussed celebrity, PR, marketing, and TV production with literally dozens of friends in the entertainment industry and a lot of the stories they told me went right in the book. So I’m not saying that Ship It is exactly 100% accurate (there’s still some details that had to be fudged to make the timeline work) but there are a lot of real world details in the book that I hope will be fun for readers to learn about.
One thing I really loved about Ship It is that it does a great job of walking someone inexperienced with fandom, fanfic, convention life, etc., through everything and letting them gain a quick understanding, but it also definitely tackles issues, such as queerbaiting, that are perhaps bigger discussions within fandom right now. How did you juggle keeping the book accessible but making sure hardcore fandom people felt heard and represented as well? (MAGIC??)
Oh, thank you! This was one of my biggest concerns when I started writing. I wanted the book to feel authentic to the fan experience, and so as part of that, Claire uses a lot of slang and inside jokes and jargon that fandom folks will know, but outsiders might not. So I try to balance it out with explanations where possible so that someone who’s coming to the book from outside the fan community will find it approachable. In the first 20 pages, there’s a scene where Claire is explaining what shipping is to her mom. The entire purpose of that scene is to bring people who don’t know anything about fandom up to speed so they can follow the book. It’s helped by the fact that Forest (one of the POV characters, who is an actor being shipped in a gay ship), is also totally new to fandom, so he asks a lot of Fandom 101 questions that the reader may also be asking. The biggest compliment is when friends of mine read it and say, “I didn’t know anything about fandom before I started, and now I feel like I not only understand it, but I respect where they’re coming from.” That’s my goal!
There’s an incredibly sweet queer romance at the heart of this story. What was your favorite part about writing this arc, and how did you make sure it got its attention via only one of the two POVs and with so many other plot points at play? (AGAIN, WAS IT MAGIC?)
Amy, thank you! That was incredibly important to me in writing this book. It’s funny, because there’s also some sexy scenes in the book (nothing too terribly graphic, and most of it is fade-to-black, but it’s hard to write about fanfic and not at least allude to some sexy stuff). I frequently write in public at coffeeshops, and writing the sexy scenes was a very humdrum thing, but writing the first kiss scene had me like, blushing and pulling my hood over my eyes and trying not to let anyone see my screen, haha. I hope that people feel that way reading the scene! The romance isn’t the main plot of the book, it’s more of a subplot, so it doesn’t come up too often in Forest’s POV scenes, but it does get mentioned, and I hope it feels earned when it happens.
What’s next for you? Any spoilers you can reveal?
Riverdale just got picked up for a season three! And that’s super exciting that these stories we’re working on get to continue. On the book side, I never thought I would ever be a YA author, but now that I’ve done it, I kind of rather like it, so maybe you’ll see more from me down the line…
Amy Spalding grew up in St. Louis, but now lives in the better weather of Los Angeles. She has a B.A. in Advertising & Marketing Communications from Webster University, and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School. Amy studied longform improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.
By day, she manages the digital media team for an indie film advertising agency. By later day and night, Amy writes, performs, and pets as many cats as she can. She is the author of five young adult novels, including her latest, The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles).
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Print Marked Items
Ship It
Maggie Reagan
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Ship It.
By Britta Lundin,
May 2018. 384p. Disney/Freeform, $17.99 (9781368003131); e-book, $17.99 (9781368016988). Gr. 8-11.
No one knows Claire in real life, but online she's a pretty big deal. Demon Heart may be a new show, but
Claire is a popular fanfic writer for it. She ships Smokey and Heart, the enemy male leads who have
undeniable, if unacknowledged, chemistry. At a Comic Con Demon Heart panel, Claire goes for broke and
asks Forest and Rico, the actors who play Smokey and Heart, about Smoke-Heart. But this show is Forest's
big break, and he responds less than gracefully. The show's publicity team deals with the PR disaster by
hiring Claire, hoping her online presence will help influence the LGBT fans who now feel alienated. Forest
starts to question some of the assumptions he's made, and more surprisingly, so does Claire. She's always
thought of herself as straight, but there's a girl on the tour she can't stop noticing. In Forests and Claire's
alternating perspectives, this debut charmingly explores fan culture, internalized prejudices, and the
importance of representation. Fandom stories are increasingly popular, and this one has wide appeal.--
Maggie Reagan
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Reagan, Maggie. "Ship It." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 51. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268174/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=efd182df.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268174
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Lundin, Britta: SHIP IT
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lundin, Britta SHIP IT Freeform/Disney (Young Adult Fiction) $17.99 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-368-00313-1
Fandom and creators collide when high schooler Claire attempts to make a popular ship from her favorite
TV show a reality.
When superfan Claire asks a panel of the creators behind Demon Heart (a stand-in for Supernatural and
other shows notorious for queerbaiting) if the male protagonists, Heart and Smokey, will end up together,
she is humiliatingly shut down. Desperate to boost their ratings, the showrunners save face by inviting
Claire along on the rest of their convention tour. What follows is a battle of wills as Claire plots to convince
the show's writer to canonize the "SmokeHeart" ship he's been teasing viewers with, while Forest, one of its
stars, undermines her efforts to avoid a reputation that might hurt his career. Along the way, Claire gets
close with fellow fan Tess--a black, homoromantic pansexual girl--and begins to question her own sexuality.
First-person perspectives switch between Claire and Forest (who is a bit too ideal to be a believable 23-
year-old actor) and are interspersed with Claire's Demon Heart fanfiction. Both characters follow a white
default. In her debut, Lundin--herself a television staff writer--effortlessly speaks the language of
conventions, fandom, and social media. If some plot points are implausibly convenient, it's forgivable for
the sake of escapist fun. Skillfully interwoven are explorations of media representation and the line between
fan and creator.
Despite some shortcomings, this ship does more than just sail--it soars. (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Lundin, Britta: SHIP IT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375174/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=88bfd6a0.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
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Ship It
Publishers Weekly.
265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Ship It
Britta Lundin. Freeform, $17.99 (384p)
ISBN 978-1-368-00313-1
Claire Strupke, a high school junior from Pine Bluff, Idaho, spends her time writing fanfiction reimagining
the relationship of the male leads of her favorite television show, Demon Heart. Claire "ships" Smokey
(played by an actor named Forest) and Heart. Already famous within the fan community, Claire's platform
increases when she and Forest get into an argument at the Boise Comic-Con over whether or not the
Smokey-Heart ship is part of the canon (i.e., the official version) of the show. Concerned over a possible
backlash from the LGBTQ community, and recognizing the power that Claire has among fans, the show's
PR executives create a contest for Claire to win; her prize is to join the cast for the rest of their tour. While
Claire hopes to show the cast what she sees in the program and change the canon, she ultimately learns
about the people behind her favorite characters. Through the alternating perspectives of Claire and Forest,
debut novelist Lundin, a television writer, gives readers a peek into what it's like to be a fan and to have
fans, while underlining what the two characters have in common. Though at times a bit inside-baseball, the
story explores fandom while weaving in themes of first love, sexual identity, and acceptance. Ages 14-up.
Agent: Jim Ehrich, Rothman Brecher Ehrich Livingston. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Ship It." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 74. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430357/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5bc0c020.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430357
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LUNDIN, Britta. Ship It
Molly Saunders
School Library Journal.
64.5 (May 2018): p98.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
LUNDIN, Britta. Ship It. 384p. Freeform. May 2018. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9781368003131.
Gr 9 Up--Claire, a teen fan fiction author, is beyond thrilled when the stars of her favorite TV show, Demon
Heart, come to nearby Boise, ID, for a convention. But when she asks Forrest, the show's star, about the
possibility that his character is gay, he calls her "crazy," and she leaves the room in tears. In an effort to
repair this publicity nightmare, the show sends Claire on the rest of the convention tour, where she goes to
increasingly desperate lengths to make her "ship" a reality. The book alternates between Forrest and Claire's
perspectives, as Forrest confronts some internalized homophobia and Claire begins to explore her own
queer identity through a romance with Tess, a fellow superfan. While the details of the plot are fairly
implausible, this novel raises complicated issues, from the ethics of "real people" fan fiction to questions of
privilege and personal responsibility within social justice movements. The novel's specific critiques of the
Hollywood machine and the lack of diverse representation in popular franchises are especially relevant.
This debut never seems to decide whether it is cynical or optimistic about fans and their influence on
popular culture. However, the book's ending undermines some of its more complex ethical ambiguities in
favor of a feel-good conclusion for Claire and Forrest that doesn't ring quite true. VERDICT A timely story
about fans and fandom, recommended for teens who love Rainbow Rowell, Nina Lacour, Bill Konigsberg,
and Becky Albertalli.--Molly Saunders, Homewood Public Library, AL
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Saunders, Molly. "LUNDIN, Britta. Ship It." School Library Journal, May 2018, p. 98. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536988044/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e4e65adc.
Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536988044
Ship It by Britta Lundin Review
Riverdale writer Britta Lundin makes her YA debut with a story about fandom, the TV industry & the conversations they have with each other.
REVIEW
Kayti Burt
May 1, 2018
0 COMMENTS
When pop culture depicts The Teenage Fangirl, her passion is rarely validated. The footage of girls and young women screaming as The Beatles or One Direction pass by are not so different from the ways we see adult men yell and scream when at a sporting event, but they are treated in very different ways—which is to say one is validated, while the other is often mocked, ridiculed, and challenged. This is the cultural hypocrisy at the heart of Riverdale writer Britta Lundin's new young adult novel, Ship It, the latest in a string of YA books (see also: Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl and Zan Romanoff's Grace and the Fever) that center the kind of fandom that has long served as a community for girls and women looking for a voice in the stories they love.
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Ship It is the story of 16-year-old Claire, a fanfiction writer from a small Midwestern town who is pulled into the world of her favorite TV show, Demon Heart, and Forest, the young man who stars in Demon Heart. Claire "ships" Smoke and Heart, the two male lead characters of Demon Heart, together and Forest does not understand the world of shipping or the fan culture that goes along with it. Thus, when Claire stands up at a Comic-Con panel to ask a question on the subject, he dismisses it, her, and all "SmokeHeart" fans in the kind of rude, culturally tone deaf manner that will probably be familiar to anyone who has ever dared to "ship" two fictional characters of the same sex together in a culture that almost always reinforces heteornormativity.
Enter the show's publicists, who invite Claire along on the rest of Demon Heart's con tour in an effort to repair Forest's relationship with fandom and jumpstart the show's ratings in the process. Though the narrative conceit is a bit hard to swallow, it's worth the suspension of disbelief. Over the course of the novel, Claire and Forest are slowly forced to learn more about the other's perspective, resulting in a nuanced examination of the fan-creator relationship that only someone like Lundin, who understands both the world of fandom and the world of media-making, could have written.
As mainstream stories tend to be overwhelmingly told from the perspective of straight, white cisgender men, it would be understandable if Ship It gave its POV power exclusively to Claire, a teenage girl who, over the course of the book, begins to question how or even if she wants to identify her sexuality. Though the media landscape is beginning to change, we still see far more Forests represented in mainstream storytelling than we do Claires. However, Ship It's decisions to include both Claire and Forest's perspectives complicates this story in some fascinating and ambitious ways.
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Bold, articulate, and passionate, Claire is easy to root for, but not without her flaws. At times, she is singleminded in her fannishness and, in her effort to keep the ridicule of mainstream misogyny at bay, forgets to listen to other marginalized voices. Ship It is more than aware of these shortcomings, giving Claire a journey of self-discovery over the course of the book, most notably in her burgeoning relationship with Tess, a queer, black fangirl who is as open about her pansexual homoromantic identity as Claire is about her Demon Heart fan identity.
As a 23-year-old (i.e. not teen) narrator, Forest's character is a bit of a rule-breaker within the YA world. He's also a pretty unlikeable character when Ship It begins, calling our other POV character "crazy" within the opening act. But Claire, bless her, has empathy for Forest and so does the book, making space for Forest's own journey of self-discovery, which has a lot to do with not only understanding his cultural privilege, but also chipping away at some of the walls of toxic maxculinity (and the homophobia that goes along with it) inside which he has constructed his identity.
I would have liked to see Ship It go even further with Forest's character, but also understand why it didn't. Frankly, it already feels like a fantasy to see a privileged white man entrenched in Hollywood's system of racist, sexist power do any kind of work on himself. This is why the world of fanfiction can be so subversive and cathartic. If slash fanfiction is a way for predominantly girls and women to give male characters the tools and support they need to go about doing their own emotional labor and push past the narrowest confines of masculinity to something freer, then Ship It does the same. Ship It allows Forest the time and space to expand his own understanding of fandom and, with it, his own definition of self.
This is a long way of describing just how empathetic this book is, even to its most unlikeable characters. Demon Heart showrunner Jamie acts as an antagonist in Claire's mission to make "SmokeHeart," the slash ship from Demon Heart that Claire writes fanfiction about, happen. However, at one point in the narrative, Ship It even gives Jamie the floor, letting him explain the many constraints of storytelling within the television industry. Jamie is a dick, unwilling to even engage Claire in honest conversation until she forces him to, but that doesn't mean he doesn't make some relevant points.
Lundin has brought the empathy inherent in the world of fanfiction to the world of this YA novel. It's Ship It's most inspiring element. This book is an examination of what happens when fandom and Hollywood collide. In Lundin's imagining, it doesn't have to be a clash; it can and should be a conversation.
I hope the Claires of the world read this book because they deserve it, but I hope the Forests of the world read this book, too. If you've ever been curious about the worlds of fandom, fanfiction, shipping, or con-going, then Ship It is a great, fictional introduction to those worlds from an author who is in a unique position to understand both fan culture and Hollywood.
Culture has long been obsessed with policing what girls and women care about. Fandom has long been an escape from that lecture, a community that exists outside of a commercial sector largely unconcerned with and inaccessible to those with any identity past straight, white, cisgender man of means. That exclusivity is slowly changing, as people like Britta Lundin break into the industry in greater and more diverse numbers. Books like Ship It are part of the story of that change.
WRITTEN BY NATALIE FISHER | EDITED BY BRANDI DELHAGEN | 9:00 AM EDT, MAY 25, 2018
Britta Lundin’s ‘Ship It’ is a multi-faceted validation for anyone who’s ever had an OTP
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Ship It, the debut YA novel from Riverdale’s Britta Lundin, is the best fable ever told about the realities — from every plausible angle — of fandom.
Every now and then, a piece of media comes along and — for better or worse, loudly or quietly — changes its respective playing field. Ship It, released earlier this month on Freefrom/Disney Publishing, is one such sacred text.
Many have tried, of course, to portray the subculture of fandom — outsiders getting it wrong, insiders dulling it down. Some get really close, some pass it off as a phase. But it was not like this. Never before has it been like this. We are now living in a post-Ship It world, and I, quite frankly, don’t know what to do with that information.
The first thing you need to know about Ship It is that author Britta Lundin, who’s also been a staff writer on The CW’s Riverdale since its first season, is one of a growing tribe of successful mainstream media players who came from fandom.
Many, many leading creators (especially of genre fiction, in all its mediums) have always acknowledged their fannishness, but what we’ve seen historically is a representation of folks who grew out of curative fandom — that is, the kind of fans who express their passion by curating and researching the canon of whatever their special subject is.
This take on fandom is largely, but not entirely, male-dominated — and it’s not all bad, but at their worst, you know the type — they’re your caricature idea of a fanboy, a Comic Book Guy, a Star Wars gatekeeper.
These days, in the circles I run in, when we talk about being “in the fandom” for something — as opposed to being “a fan” — we are talking about something different. We’re talking about transformative fandom — a largely, but again not entirely, female-dominated community who dedicate time to loving their special subject by transforming the canon of the thing. This transformation can take any form, but let’s be real, it’s frequently about transforming repressed boys into boys who kiss.
Transformative fandom is usually where the majority of shipping content comes from, because the most passionate shipper culture – especially for gay ships featuring assumed-straight characters – isn’t precisely canon. Some ships are openly invented by fans, just for kicks, but the more invested stuff — as Ship It differentiates — relies on a mindset of spotting potential or interpreting subtext and running with it. But it’s not always specifically about shipping – it’s really, at its heart, the hunger of just wanting more.
Whether it’s exploring ideas they want to see happen by writing or reading fanfiction (or nonfictional meta analysis,) posting art, making crafts, role-playing, whatever, this is where the difference lies: where curative fandom places value on being an expert in the thing, transformative fandom hinges on creating more of the thing – while also, by nature of the beast, becoming an expert in the thing.
I, myself, am a fan of Brooklyn 99, but I am in the fandom for Supernatural. I can love Brooklyn 99 with all my heart, but I can turn it off and be perfectly fulfilled with the content offered to me. I cannot do the same with Supernatural — no matter how happy I am with a well-executed episode, 40 minutes a week is simply not enough minutes to spend immersed in that universe and feel like I’ve got my fix.
Sometimes, it’s just a matter of wanting to spend extra time with your faves. And sometimes — certainly in the business of shipping — it’s a matter of changing the provided content for the better, finding a way to expand upon what’s canonically offered so that it makes you feel more satisfied or more represented. Choose your own adventure. Ergo, transformative fandom.
That’s the kind of fandom that Britta Lundin comes from. And that is what Ship It is about. As far as putting something as potentially delicate as this book into the world goes, Lundin is uniquely qualified — she may in fact be one of the only people currently working that could offer the same 360 degree perspective on fandom, from both sides of the fence.
She has been down there in the trenches, shipping away. She has been up there in the writers room, privy to the reality of TV production. She knows every side of this story – she’s lived every side of it. And so she wrote it. And what she wrote is a revelation.
In a nutshell, Ship It is a novel about a teenage fan, Claire, who ships Smokey/Heart, or “Smokeheart,” a non-canonical gay male ship on a genre TV show called Demon Heart; and a talented but very green actor, Forest, who plays one of the aforementioned shipped characters. The two have a controversial altercation about shipping at a convention, and to smooth things over, the network’s PR team has Claire join the actors for a number of promotional appearances.
On their journey together, Claire and Forest both learn the truth about what happens on the other side of the fence, both hit rock bottom in terms of irresponsibly single-minded behaviour, and both come out of the experience as better human beings – all while validating the lifestyle of fannish readers, assuring them that no matter how the story plays out on television, no, they are not crazy for feeling the way they feel.
It’s also a book about the queer experience — tangential to the shipping conundrum, Claire and Forest both discover how they individually relate to the LGBT community, and what kind of subconscious influences led them to their respective stances and passions, and it’s a book about queerbaiting — a commentary on the wide scope of narrative intention, ranging between cruelty and obliviousness, that can lead to a show queerbaiting, or appearing to queerbait, its audience.
Demon Heart, a first-season genre TV series on a smaller network — isn’t based on any one show (SmokeHeart is a playfully visible amalgamation of any number of famous ships, with signature jackets, light hair and dark hair, a human and a demon, enemies to brothers in arms, a catchphrase that riffs on “with you ’til the end of the line,”) — but an integral strand of this story’s DNA, a real-life circumstance that reached a controversial boiling-point, is pretty easy to spot, if you know what to look for.
It’s a fandom that Lundin was a part of, and while this book is eminently relatable to anyone who’s ever shipped anything (and hopefully an empathetic door-opening that answers a lot of the hows and whys of those who don’t really “get” the nitty-gritty of fandom — this is, after all, what Claire attempts to teach Forest) it adds an extra-deep layer for those in the know.
If you were there too, you cannot help but read this story with eyes wide open as you spot the references and comparisons to the fever-pitch which came to a head in this particular fandom behemoth a few years back, and just for that, Ship It will likely hold an important place in future studies of the changing landscape of fandom.
But beyond that, this book could have so easily missed the mark. It so easily could have picked a side, been too rose-colored or too critical, too fictionalized to take seriously or too pragmatic to feel immersive. It could have alienated a wider audience by getting too niche, or alienated the core audience by watering the lingo down. It could have gone in too hard, commentating on those past real controversies, or it could have remained too neutral.
It does none of those things. Ship It is both entertaining and educational. It creates natural opportunities for civilian exposition without diluting the fandom experience for the lifers, it is brave, it is careful. But above all, it is pointed, and it is gentle.
Gently, and pointedly, Lundin shows us what to do and what not to do – no matter what side of the fence we’re on. She shows us what true respect, in these circumstances, should look like. She shows us every possible perspective, grounding our consumption of Demon Heart-esque media in reality while also encouraging our dreams.
She shows us the dangers of compulsory heteronormativity, and of celebrity dehumanization. Gently, and pointedly, she shows us – all of us, any of us, fans, civilians, showrunners, actors, parents – why all of this matters, and how to take care of one another’s hearts.
For me, personally? Reading this book felt like standing in the middle of Times Square completely naked. I am torn between wanting to go around and steal every copy out of every store so that no one can ever see it, and shoving a copy into the hand of every person I’ve ever met. It should be banned. It should be required reading for every new hire on a TV set. It should be taught in schools.
Ship It was the single most anxiety-inducing reading experience of my life, and also the most validating. That’s how sharply Lundin nails the subject matter. It is, as the kids say, way too real, and for some reason, that fucking terrifies me.
Why? What am I afraid of people understanding, here? Part of Lundin’s goal in writing this book, she told me prior to publication, was to shine a light on this culture – to remove the embarrassment, the shame. Is the kneejerk vulnerability I feel about Ship It hitting so close to home drawn from shame? I don’t think so, but maybe, like Claire and Forest, that’s my own fandom journey to figure out.
But this is it, guys. This is the definitive novel about ship-based fandom. Maybe one day – when all of the kids growing up in fandom become the powers that be who call the shots, as the book’s dedication promises — Ship It will be but a mere drop in the ocean, but for me, it’ll always be that first drop that made the biggest splash.
Ship It by Britta Lundin is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookstore. Also, don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads “to read” list and follow Britta Lundin on Twitter!