I'm kind of surprised that a thread like this hadn't been started before, with all of the... stuff happening in the LP subforum recently. Everyone being crazy made me curious about peoples' thoughts on shipping in general. So, shipping! Most people in the LP subforum will probably know what it is: you enjoy the way two (or more) characters look/act together, so you want them to be in a relationship; you ship them. This can range from just passively shipping characters (you think they'd be good together, but you're not too invested) to actively shipping them (you really want them to get together). Personally, I'm not too invested in shipping--I only have one pairing I'd consider my "OTP*" and for (mostly) everything else I don't really care one way or another. I tend to prefer platonic interactions between characters for the most part, and since shipping mostly leads up to porn, it's hard for me to care about most of it. (Also, shipping wars are completely insane. Harry Potter was(/is?) one of the most notorious fandoms as far as shipping wars go; anime fandoms tend to be ridiculous if the series is popular enough.) But a lot of people here seem to enjoy it, so I thought a thread to talk about it might be interesting! If you need/want some questions to start with: do you tend to ship things? Are there common traits in the pairings you tend to like best? Why do you think there's such a big focus on shipping/pairings (jokingly or not) in fandom-dominated spaces? (Obviously you're free to completely ignore these; I figured this thread could be used for any kind of shipping/pairing talk.) * OTP = "one true pairing", which you'd assume means people only have one, but people tend to have one for each fandom they're in (at the least). Also, some people have "OT3s" and "OT4s" (etc.), which are for threesome/foursome/moresome pairings. It mostly just indicates a person's favoured pairings. Mine is a (poorly-kept, easily guessable) secret.
But if I created it, doesn't that make me its parent? Or would this be more of a Frankenstein's monster situation...?
I tend not to get very invested in shipping as a general rule. There are pairings of characters whose romances I enjoy watching play out for various reasons, but I can't think of a time when I've ever felt like these two characters should only be paired with each other and I almost never get very worked up about the idea that two characters who have no romantic connection in their source material should be paired up romantically somehow. The romantic pairings I get particularly interested in are almost always canon, and normally involve an emotionally stunted/repressed character awakening to and struggling to deal with new and unfamiliar feelings and/or some kind of interesting balance of power between the two characters involved. Interesting contrasts are also a plus. And then every now and again where those emotional repression cases are involved I also end up crackshipping that particular character around the rest of their canon in various messed-up ways that are usually horrible and wrong and completely inexplicable and just generally in defiance of my usual preference for sticking with canon pairings. I don't get serious about this sort of thing at all, I just find it interesting to contemplate the ways that type of characters' relationship dynamics with the people around them can be sliced, since they're inevitably not very good at falling into typical roles no matter what. I really, really do not understand shipping wars. There are pairings I dislike and don't see any possible basis for, but I don't see a point in preaching at the people who ship those pairings since, you know, preaching at people rarely if ever accomplishes a damn thing and it's not like they're hurting me by shipping things I don't like.
I am such a shipper. I ship mostly non-canon pairings in part because no one else is and therefore it must be awesome (/hipster glasses), and partly because you sometimes have to work hard to make the pairing make sense, and I find that effort rewarding. I go through stages in my shipping and my fandoms; actually I haven't really been involved in fandom much over the past two years. Thinking back to the last few fandoms I was involved in, some of my favorite non-canon ships are Sam/anyone but Jack (but particularly Jonas, Daniel, or Barrett) in Stargate SG-1, Jacqueline/Siroc in Young Blades, and Kyp/Jaina in Star Wars. I'm sure there's more that'll come to me eventually. Sometimes I ship canon pairings if they have mad chemistry that isn't resolved onscreen, particularly if the canon doesn't go on long enough to drag out the romance and completely ruin it. A few I can think of are Tessa/Helm in Queen of Swords, Jacqueline/d'Artagnan in Young Blades and Vicki/Henry in Blood Ties. (Why are all my fandoms so tiny.) Sometimes even if I don't seriously ship a particular pairing, I'll read something that totally makes sense in character and convinces me that the pairing could work. For example: Just Another Lonely Knight (Jaheira/Anomen, Baldur's Gate II) Necromantic Investigations R Us (Xzar/CHARNAME, Baldur's Gate II) The Phoenix (Natalie/Vachon, Forever Knight, warning for major spoilers and a little smut) ...and damn, this list was going to be longer but I realized my fanfic bookmarks folder is terribly disorganized. There was one I read ages ago that was a crossover shipping fic between McKay from Stargate Atlantis and Willow from Buffy that was absolutely marvelous, but I have no idea what the title was. I'll probably dig up some more later.
x2, particularly when the war is over trying to force a pairing to become canon, or insisting that it is when the evidence is clearly not on your side. For me a lot of the fun of shipping comes from the fact that it's apart from canon, and you can just do your own thing; you don't have to deal with whatever constraints the canon would put on a romance. Other thing I do not understand: portmanteau pairing names. Some of them are cute and funny, but if you force them they just sound awful.
Seriously. I'm not a fan of cutesy ship names in general, but approximately 99% of portmanteau ship names just sound completely ridiculous. Especially in fandoms like Final Fantasy VIII. There is no portmanteau involving Squall's name that does not sound like a horrible disease.
Bringing in a manga, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, in which Yamaken x Shizuku should happen but is not. Their relationship dynamic is a lot more interesting than the canon Shizuku couple and I think the mangaka might have been shipping it for awhile too because we got like 10 chapters of Yamaken x Shizuku events at one point. It was so wonderful. Yamaken is a tsundere but in an amusing, understandable way and adorable. Shizuku is a ''study bug'', serious, practical, and many other qualities you wish otome protagonists had. Basically, I just like both characters a lot and they are kind of a thing in canon. <--basis of any of my shippings (BF example, John and Ozzo flirt with each other (and then Ozzo complains about in familiar tsun fashion) ) I find non canon pairings kind of out there. Where is the basis for this pairing? Oftentimes, I won't notice any sexual tension between characters unless the author points it out (but this is never a problem in fanfiction. Never.). For instance, there are pairings for Artemis Fowl x Juliet (and those sick people who create explicit content involving Artemis, Butler, and lollipops).
I didn't. That's just from browsing fanfiction summaries looking for non romantic Artemis Fowl adventures.
For me, most of the time it's that the characters have a dynamic that, even if it's not necessarily sexual, plays well off of each other. From there it's just a few interesting what-ifs: what in the canon would have to change for this relationship to work? It's probably odd for me to say this, but IRL I don't think I'm a terribly romantic person. I don't think you have a soulmate or "the one" or whatever; I think there's a lot of people on earth that you could have a happy and successful relationship with, and whether it works out and who it works out with mostly depends on accidents of timing. I know there are other people in my life I could have ended up with, that we've fallen in and out of love with each other, but it happened at a time when things just couldn't have worked out, and I don't lose any sleep over it or anything. In terms of fiction, though, what little chance action might have pushed characters in a different direction so that they started to fall in love? For Sam/Barrett in SG-1, for instance, whenever they met she was already in a relationship; but what could have happened if she wasn't? For Jacqueline/Siroc in Young Blades (context: she is a woman disguised as a man to join the Musketeers), what if he knew she was a woman? Particularly with characters who have a strong friendship in the canon (e.g. Sam/Daniel), what would have to be different in their early relationship for them to start seeing each other as possible love interests before they settled into a friendship dynamic where trying to date would just get weird and awkward? Of course, sometimes with non-canon (or canon) pairings you just want to leave all that behind and say, "You don't have to explain how they get together; they're hot so I'll accept that it works." And that's OK, too.
Oh god, I don't even want to think about Artemis Fowl smut fic. That series was my childhood, man. Don't take that away from me. ;_; Speaking of Artemis Fowl, I think that was the series I first started shipping for. I remember reading the books when I was 9 or 10 and thinking, "Artemis and Holly would be really cute together. It'll never happen, though. She's 80-something years old and a different species." Cut to years later when The Lost Colony was released and Minerva was introduced. I was actually pretty upset at monsieur Colfer for sinking my ship in favour of such a loathsome Mary Sue (I know I'm biased, but I just hated the character). I mean, I never actually thought that Artemis and Holly would be canon, but I didn't want Arty to settle, either. Then came The Time Paradox and...yeah. I think I actually yelled "I KNEW IT!" when I got to the kiss scene. Nowadays I don't really go in for shipping too much. Or, at least, I don't go in for shipping that's dubiously canon. I prefer to know what I'm getting into ahead of time, so I don't break my heart. I have a handful of OTPs that I will never ever stop gushing about (and if you want to know what they are then you only have to ask, but beware, great big walls o' text are sure to follow).
Oh, you like the circumstantial or accidental development? My view on a successful relationship in real life would be that out of all those people you could have ended up with, you found the one most/more compatible with you. Soulmates don't cut it for me either especially what with the supernatural fantasy books these days not bothering with actually developing relationships and just going with "it's fate, not going to explain nothing." Or "He was so beautiful, I fell in love". I usually just let my romantic side loose in fiction so side side plot romances, if not shoujo or something because those are just sweet nothings, bother me greatly. If this plot could function well without this poorly developed romance, I don't even want it in there. It just makes me anticipate things with no result. Which is also partially why non canon pairings take me by surprise.
Of course I want to know! =D Argh, yes, that annoys me. I find the idea of soulmates interesting if it's examined or subverted a little, delving into the actual emotional impact of being fated to be with someone when you don't know if you're really compatible. But it shouldn't be an excuse for skipping over writing actual romance.
Ha, I hate Holly x Artemis. I love Minerva. I was so disappointed when she was never mentioned again. Colfer has a bad case of introducing characters he doesn't want to use later and tossing them aside until convenient. I still love his series though. The thing about Holly and Artemis is; I like their relationship dynamic so much more as just close friends. The awkwardness of a friends>romantic situation sits uncomfortably with me sometimes. I just like it a lot more as a friendship deal between these characters. I don't think their personalities suit each other for a romantic relationship. But Minerva had a bit of foe yay going on since the beginning which is pretty fun. I like their joking, mildly flirtatious (because Artemis can't quite manage that) air.
Yeah, although I don't do a lot of non-canon shipping, when I do, it's because the two characters have a dynamic that I can easily see turning romantic in some fashion. For example, one of my favorite pairings is Luck Gandor and Eve Genoard from Baccano!. It has no basis whatsoever in the anime, where the characters barely ever interact, but they play off of each other a lot in the fourth light novel and it's just really, really interesting to me, because they have this complicated interaction colored heavily by the fact that her brother killed some of his men and therefore he hates her brother with a deep, implacable hatey hate not satisfied even by the fact that he stuffed her brother in an oil drum with some wet cement and dropped him into the Hudson. And yet both of them are, over the course of the novel, able to recognize that - even though he's a ruthless Mafia executive and she's an innocent young ingenue and she's trying to rescue her brother who he hates with a deep implacable hatey hate - they actually have a lot in common, because he secretly has a heart of pure marshmallow, she actually has a spine of cold steel, and they both value family over everything else. So especially given the scene earlier in the novel in which both of Luck's older brothers gang up on him to nag him about when he's going to find himself a girl and settle down and get married, it's not hard for me to see fertile ground for an interesting romance there. (And naturally I cannot let this topic pass without shamelessly pimping "While Recognizing the Importance of Luck in Certain Situations, Eve Genoard Continues to Disapprove of Gambling" by ryfkah, which doesn't ever make their dynamic romantic either but hits all the same notes that interest me in the pairing as well as being generally an awesome piece of fiction.)
I believe this is the equivalent to the problem of: 0 divided by 0 = ? Or as mathisfun put it: which I believe is a sufficient conclusion for many ships, especially of the BF variety.
XD And now I feel bad for calling Minerva a Mary Sue. This is what shipping does to you, people! I was perhaps exaggerating a tad. I don't mind Minerva, but she just seemed like an opposite-gendered Artemis clone. She's an evil kid genius who is haughty and likes to steal things but is actually quite lonely. She even had a Greek mythology name, for god's sake. That and the fact that she was obviously custom-built to be Artemis' love interest really got on my nerves. I still don't like how Eoin Colfer handled her, including how he put her on a bus and pretended she never existed. As for Artemis x Holly, the friendship dynamic is what I adored about them. I loved the evolution they took from enemies to friends to more than friends. By the end of the series, they had each other's wholehearted trust and devotion. It's those kinds of relationships, the ones that are founded in unconditional love and camaraderie, which are the most rewarding for me. Ask and ye shall receive. ;) I'll take a bit to type something up.
Oh, shipping. Oh, shipping. I ship Eboby/everyone. Though for real I only ship a few things, all of them robots, none of them canon though we did just get our first technically-gay relationship in Transformers ever recently, so yay for that and all of them probably counted as crack. Don't get me started on them.
I loved enemies to friends to best friends but wanted it to stay there. I don't know. Minerva is kind of a Arty clone which I must admit is why I like her. I mean, come on, two Artemis Fowls twice in a series? So fun~ I've mentioned this before but I am such a sucker for the lonely prodigy reagrdless of gender. Minerva is significantly more Sue than Artemis is a Stu but it's hard not to be when the characters has 'highly skilled in general' as one of their characteristics. I really don't like how he concluded the series. A lot of things didn't get wrapped up, most of the secondary characters didn't even show up (Minerva, his parents for goodness sake, etc), that ending flew out of nowhere (and it felt kind of preachy but in a children friendly way), Opal lost some of her brilliance; it seemed written more for a movie then a book at times. Like the villains--that would have been hilarious the entire time if we could see the visuals. Especially the lethal crickets and bunnies. That loophole was still just wow, how many ways can you cheat death to the extreme.
I am a shipper! I ship. Things are shipped by me. Canon, slash, crack, it's all good. I mean, I don't know, it's just fun? I've never been rabid about it, it's just sometimes you watch or read or play something and then you're like "These fictional characters NEED to be together RIGHT NOW." I think this might have originated from the books I read as a kid (GOOSEBUMPS ermagerd) where there would always be platonic best friends that you could tell the writer wanted to be dating but someone said "No, kids that age don't read kissing books!" Sometimes the UST is just too overpowering, y'know?
I don't think he knew how to end it. And I'd probably be more dissatisfied in the last few books if Mr. Colfer hadn't included so much ArtyxHolly fluff to distract me, the sneaky bastard. The first few are definitely the best, but I'm glad he didn't end it at The Eternity Code like he was planning to. Also, to anyone who has no idea what Artemis Fowl is, the author describes it as, "Die Hard with fairies" which is quite accurate.
Colfer is brilliant and hilarious in writing but as far as plot goes... I spent a few minutes going over Orion quotes. I love this man.
*shrug* Shipping to me is something that I treat kind of casually. I mean, with Dangan Ronpa, I really like Ishimaru/Mondo, but I'm not going to get a hernia over Ishimaru/Naegi or Mondo/Chihiro fanart. I'm pretty much fine with anything as long as it's cute and full of moemoekyuuns.
Joie once again for the most part speaks my mind with far more eloquence than I ever could. I should probably just add it's presumably all to do with my horrifically unromantic nature, which is also why I don't tend to write romances all that much. I have too much moe in my writing to fit in anything else.
Okay, serious question time: Why is there such a stigma surrounding shipping? Yes, I get that apparently some people get too worked up about their favoured pairings, but really, we're fans. We get worked up about all kinds of stupid shit. What the fuck is wrong with thinking two (or more) people would be cute together? That's all I usually mean when I say I ship people, why does it make certain other places on the internet look at me like I'm some kind of monster?
That's actually a very good question. I suppose it might be some really obnoxious people colouring people's perceptions? I've never really seen a shipping war because I don't internet all that much (apart from BF my rounds is deviantart because I follow a comic there, a newspaper site, a site about the football team I follow, Dragon Age Nexus, done), but that's usually where a stigma comes from, people associating the object in question with a negative experience. Same as how prejudices compute, really. I don't actually know what I'm talking about, mind you. I'm taking guesses. As I said, I live in an internet bubble and I didn't even know what a ship was until I got there.
Aside from the problems with some fans getting too worked up about it, IME the stigma is "silly ladies always have to stick their romance in everything lol."
Shipping isn't a big deal for me, and I enjoy shipping weird things for fun, but FUUKA/NATSUKI THAT IS ALL.
Yeah, pretty sure that's it. Anyway, I love very low-key shipping. "Hey, those folks are neat together! I'd love to see them interact more!" is one of the things I think a lot when watching/reading/playing various forms of stories. The closest I get to OTP stuff is my defensive claims of OT3 when people are hating on some favorite character who's "getting in the way" of their favorite pairing. (Sora/Kairi/Riku forever!) One of the reasons I get so into shipping is because so much of the stuff I read/watch/play is so damn heterosexual, shipping is a way for me to get some less straight relationships into the series, if only in my head. "Wow, Tony and Gene have a lot of chemistry in this Iron Man cartoon." Or, y'know, "What if <spoiler> wasn't just 'dressing as a boy' for Reasons, but was actually transgender? That would make his relationship with <spoiler> a lot more interesting, given the issues there." I don't tend to ship straight relationships nearly so much, unless there's some really interesting hook to think about there, because they're...well. They're already in the text, most of the time. No need for me to add anything in head canon or speculation.
Oh, I ship. Why not? I'm pretty casual about it too, it's not like I'll die if X doesn't do Y. Though I can get a little bit worked up over a certain FE4 pairing but that's a whole 'nother deal and has less to do with the characters and more to do with an old rivalry. There are some fans that think that romance cheapens shows, and dislike shippers because of that. Also, the image people have of shippers is the hormonally crazy female teenager who refuses to recognize the subjectivity of "who looks best with who" and actually acts aggresive towards the rest over it. And it's not far from the truth that a big chunk of the shipping population is like that, you just have to take a look at FF.net. As for what I ship, I tend to like pairings with UST which is why I dig tsunderes (type B tsunderes at least, the deredere kind that isn't a bitch for absolutely no reason). Aside from that I don't know, just people that have a good chemistry going on or who seem "fitting" together I guess. *shrug*
I tend to get wrapped up in an existing romantic plot, rather than pulling for a non-canon pairing. There have been exceptions (Kanji and Naoto, just date already!), but by and large I pull for couples that the plot is clearly steering together, and I have my favorites among these. Interestingly, there's something of a ship war going on in our tabletop RPG - my character has been in a committed relationship for almost a year with an NPC, and now, because of reasons that the GM hasn't given yet, she's in some kind of alternate-reality hallucination where her boyfriend is engaged to someone else. But, within this alternate reality, another NPC who she's always been buddies with has started to fall for her. She has no idea how to handle this. It's GREAT. And the other players are taking sides. It's SO GREAT YOU GUYS.
I ship a lot. *points at avatar* I love my OTPs to bits and I would have been heartbroken if Ron and Hermione hadn't hook up at the end. It's just part of the fun. Ship wars are horrible and can really make you leave a fandom for good - amongst other things - but I'm pretty fine with just discussing ships. I gladly appreciate the canon romantic relationships, sometimes I just ship other things for fun or because the entire shipping part started before there anything canon happened. Because we are disrespectful to the source material! I thought it was mostly a matter of "silly girls and their silly romance" until The Avengers came. Then there were entire flamewars revolved around how offensive was shipping Iron Man with Capitan America and how fangirls ruin everything. (And of course, if you're just a fangirl, they don't have to listen to you when you're talking about anything else.) But she belongs to Poison Ivy! At least, that's what my friend told me for months, so it must be true!
