Monday, September 17, 2012

Shipping News: Slash madness is driving me mad, Glee is still Glee and everyone’s craving cookies.



This week in shipping news – the wedding of the decade (the decade being the 1920s), Slash and Femslash madness reach epic finals and Sterek shippers are baking for a cause. Also Glee’s back, new TV = new ships and the earth needs a little romance too. If that doesn’t make sense just click read more and it will all become clear.

*Spoilers for new Downton Abbey (season 3).



It’s finally happened and I’m not talking about Mary and Matthew’s wedding on Downton Abbey (I’ll get to that later). No what I’m talking about is that I am having to choose between to of my fav ships and it’s like what I imagine choosing between children would be like… except way worse (that’s a joke Internet, calm down). That’s right, AfterElton’s slash madness tournament has reached its epic conclusion and I personally am at a loss of who to vote for.

After a nail-biting semi-final, which broke many hearts, Dean and Castiel managed to beat out Sherlock and John… but only just. As you might guess Sterek won over the adorable Merlin and Arthur, but not by as much as I thought they would. So really, this competition is anyone’s to loose. Sterek may be the flavour of the month but Destiel shippers are nothing to be scoffed at, they’ve been fighting the good fight longer remember. And then there’s the fact that many people ship them both and for those people this is a dark dark time.

While I’m pretty sure that Sterek will take the top honour this time (because people always fight harder when the possibility of cannon looms over their head. But don’t expect Destiel to bow out easy, this is going to be a battle to the death and I recommend heading over to AfterElton and checking out all the action as it happens. While you’re there you should check out some of the other articles because it’s a really cool website that you should be visiting all the time anyway – the same goes for AfterEllen.

While we’re on the subject of AfterEllen – femslash madness is in it’s final round as well. Faberry powered their way past the original slash couple Xena and Gabrielle and there was an epic battle between my beloved Swan Queen and Rizzoli & Isles, with the latter just scrapping into first position. So now it’s on between the lovely Quinn and Rachel and Rizzoli & Isles!


Anyway, back to some actual TV because this week we had a wedding… a wedding that was way too long in the making but well worth the wait. This time I actually am talking about Mary and Matthew because seriously those two will be the death of me – I was so sure something would go wrong. You seem shocked, yes that’s right, here at Pop Culture is Not Art we do also ship cannon heterosexual couples and Mary and Matthew is at the very top of the list. Plus I love a wedding! Considering the fact that the whole show has been about getting Matthew and Mary to marry I never thought it would happen... I can't even imagine what horrible things they have in store for us now.

In other news with all the new shows out and about there are a bunch of new ships that have stolen hearts already. Probably the most talked about couple is, The New Normal’s, Bryan and David. They are absolutely adorable (Tumblr seems to think they are the new Klaine but I’m hoping for more)! All right so they fall into the trap of stereotypes a little bit, but that happens in sit coms and I’m hoping for a serious amount of character development… but then again it is Ryan Murphy so I’m probably wrong. There was even a kind of shout out to shippers in episode two of The New Normal, with Bryan (who is apparently a writer) announcing that he was breaking up the most popular couple just to start a Twitter war.

Speaking of Ryan Murphy, Glee’s back and its bought relationship drama for everyone. Anyway, in summary – Mike and Tina broke up, but they’re still friends. Rachel and Finn are apparently still together even though she’s in New York flirting with newbie Brody. Kurt and Blaine have decided to try their hand at the long distance thing, because that always works out so well. Brittana are also working out the long distance thing even though you can’t scissor over Skype. The new Rachel aka Marley looks like she’s heading for romance with Puck the younger although she does have a blonde cheerleader of her very own so you never know. No idea what’s happening with Sam and Mercedes, but that seems to have been left by the wayside. And that’s what you missed on Glee.

Back in the land of the Internet, Jupiter saved Earth from a deadly meteor and if that doesn’t say true love then I don’t know what does – I just really love Tumblr OK. Can I ship me with Tumblr? Is that a thing, can that please be a thing? Also Vhelton (which I told you about last time) had good week with all kinds of fanart and fic, all because of the powerhouse that is Sterek.

Speaking of Sterek and the seriously awesome group of people that love them – Sterek fans are the best and I’m not just saying that because so many of them have been hanging out here. They are my fav shippers at the moment, but that might just be because they are so full of hope and their dreams have not yet been crushed by the powers that be. Which is why they have decided to begin a campaign to show Teen Wolf’s show runner Jeff Davis just how many fans want this couple to become canon.

These kind of shipper campaigns can go incredibly wrong. I normally try to avoid them completely but there is something that is just so nice about the Sterek Campaign that makes it hard to stay away from. It seems to be about the love of the show, not about hate – which is unfortunately usually where these campaigns tend to end up. I’m not completely in the know as to how this campaign started and what exactly the goals are but I do know that there seems to be a large amount of people baking cookies at the moment…  #CookiesforSterek.



As far as I can ascertain there the plan was to get the hashtag #CookiesforSterek trending on Twitter at 6pm EST on Monday 17th September and it seems to have worked. Well it has certainly succeeded in making me crave cookies and some of the baked creations I’ve seen floating around Tumblr have been pretty spectacular. The Teen Wolf Tumblr even posted that they craving cookies – so that’s anawareness win to start with. These Sterek lovers also earned my respect because they made a point to ask people not to tweet Jeff Davis directly so that they didn’t clog up his Twitter. After all, it’s always important for all fans to remember that respect is a two way street.

And it respect wins love because Jeff Davis tweeted this gem –


Well there you have it lonely shipper, that’s another instalment of shipping news down. I hope you enjoyed it and I promise that there will be more variety now that all the TV is returning. But remember, you can always send any shipping news or tips via Facebook or Twitter and I’ll be happy to include them.

Keep on shipping. And remember to keep the discussion going on the Facebook page and in the comments! I love hearing from you because you are my favourite. No not you.