Shameless (US series)

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Fandom
Name: Shameless
Abbreviation(s):
Creator: Paul Abbott, based upon the Shameless (UK) TV series
Date(s): January 9, 2011 – present
Medium: live-action TV series
Country of Origin: United States
External Links: Wikipedia
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Shameless is an American Showtime comedy-drama television series which is a remake of the British series which focuses on the dysfunctional Gallagher family is set in Chicago instead of the UK.

Canon

The series depicts the dysfunctional Gallagher family, a family of six children with an alcoholic father and bipolar missing mother.. While Frank spends his days drunk, his kids learn to take care of themselves with the help of their oldest sister Fiona who raises them all. Season 11 was announced as it's finale season.

Main Characters

Fandom

The Shameless US fandom is much larger than the UK's Shameless, with multiple LiveJournal communities still active today, fanworks being posted to YouTube, Tumblr, FanFiction.net[1], and Archive of Our Own[2]. The fandom’s most popular works surround the relationship between Ian and Mickey. The two most kudos works in the fandom were both written by Shamelessquestions, though The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Ian Gallagher remains the fan favorite despite having lesser number of kudos. TIPDOIG is often considered the Gallavich starter fic for new fans. Although the fandom started appearing on LiveJournal and FanFiction.net in 2011, due the fandom migration most of the fandom activity is now concentrated at Tumblr, Archive of Our Own, and eventually Twitter.

After 5x12, the fandom significantly dropped in size due to the departure of fan favorite Mickey Milkovich. This caused a mass deletion in works that increased after 6x01 aired Mickey's last appearance until 7x11. Many fans felt betrayed due to Noel Fisher's (Mickey Milkovich) sudden and unannounced departure and the break up of Gallavich.

Beginning with season 7, Netflix began to air the show, causing an increase in fans. Season 8 was the first season with a new writing crew behind the scenes, causing a change in tone. Many fans speculate that this change was also due to the show attempting to tone down after Netflix began to air the seasons. Season 10 was the first season since 5 where Mickey returned as a main character. The fandom increased, but overall views decreased due to Fiona leaving at the end of season 9.

Within the fandom, Gallavich has remained the most popular aspect of the online community. Blogs and twitter accounts are dedicated to the pairing. Ironically, the show pushes Frank Gallagher as the main character despite both this and Fiona's overall story and screen time in comparison. The overall image for Frank is negative in the community whereas more casual fans seem to enjoy him.


Shipping

Slash dominates the fandom, with the most popular, and often only actively shipped, pairing by far is Ian/Mickey also known as Gallavich. Occasionally Carl rose in popular amongst fanfiction as appearing to be bisexual due to his younger self canon curious nature wondering often about men. Ian later appeared in relationships before reuniting with Mickey but neither of these were popular amongst fans. Ian and Mickey were married at the end of season 10, after 9 years of building.

However het also appeared throughout the fandom in its early days, especially with pairings: Lip/Mandy, Kev/Veronica, Fiona/Steve (aka Jimmy) and Ian/Mindy. Incest shipping between the Gallagher siblings was also fairly common in the earler seasons, which is not surprising due the strong familiar connection between all of them, the most common Gallaghercest ships are Ian/Lip, Lip/Fiona, Lip/Debbie, and Debbie/Carl. The Milkovich siblings, Mandy/Mickey, were also commonly shipped.

Femslash is popular as background ships in fanfiction in the fandom, the femslash fanworks mainly focus on the pairings Mandy/Karen and Mandy/Svetlana. Later, Fiona's tendancy to be paired up with WLW women caused her popularity in femslah to grow. She can be seen as paired up with Mel from her apartment complex or Angela from her dinner. In later seasons, Debbie came out as a lesbian. She has appeared to be with four women on the show but only her relationship with Sandy caused the ship Sabbie to be formed.

Season 5 helped raise the popularity of the family dynamic of Ian/Mickey/Svetlana/Yevgeny. Fan opinion is divided, but many works of fanfiction were inspired by the four. Beginning in season 6, Svetlana/Veronica/Kevin became a short lived canon threesome ship that divided the fans in terms of popularity but did not add much into the fandom.

As of 2020, Gallavich is one of the only main ships in the fandom that people actively ship. Lip/Tami (Gallietti) and Sandy/Debbie's (Sabbie) canon relationship caused both ships to grow in popularity.

Terminology

Fanworks

Vids

Archives & Fannish Links

Tumblr

LJ Communities

Resources

References

<references>

  1. ^ Compared with the Shameless UK as of July 2016, Shameless US has 881 works at FFN and Shameless UK has 71 works.
  2. ^ At AO3 as of April 27, 2020, Shameless US has 11826 works listed, with only 10 works for Shameless UK
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