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lunabee34So, as you all know, I'm a NOTPer. I don't ship in the classical sense of the word. I am interested in lots of different pairings, and if a writer can sell it (no matter how unconventional the pairing may be), I will totally buy it with glee. I also enjoy writing rare pairs; so, for instance, in SGA, I'm just as likely to write Bates/Kavanagh as I am John/Rodney and to read Teyla/Sora as John/Elizabeth.
All this lead-up to say that I just realized I do kinda ship within the canonicity of the show. Oh, this wine makes the talking to be hard. LOL Let me give you some examples. When I watch episodes of SPN, I think Sam and Dean are totally straight. I don't really see canonical evidence to the contrary, and while I am sitting on my couch watching the show, I am rooting for Dean to figure out some way to be with Lisa and wishing Sam could have totally hot demony sex with Ruby again. But when I read and write fic for the show, I pair the two of them all over the place: with each other, with Castiel, with Ash (heee!). Or take NCIS. While watching the show, I am all about the Tony/Ziva. Love it. I have a hard time shipping Gibbs with anybody. He seems pretty much asexual to me; I think he gave up on that part of his life when his wife died, and any hints that canon gives us for relationships with him are all straight. But I can totally dig some Tony/Gibbs or Tony/Tim or Tony/Abby or whatever. Spander is another good example. I cut my fannish teeth on Spike/Xander, and I adore the pairing, but to me it makes absolutely no sense from a canonical standpoint. Or Harry/Draco. At any given point, I am more likely to be reading a Harry/Draco fic than anything else there is to read, and yet I never ever would have pegged that to be the dominant pairing of the fandom after finishing the series.
Does anybody else do this? Have kind of a disconnect between what seems plausible to you while watching the show or reading the book and what you want to read/write for fanfic? One set of ships for consuming the media and other set of ships for behaving fannishly about them?
(Caveats: Obviously subtext exists to some degree for all the pairings I've mentioned (even if it's just one arch look in one episode and a half season spent sharing a basement sullenly) and YMMV on that; not raining on anybody's subtext parade here. Also not saying that an unconventional ship can't be canonically compatible; in fact, that's the kind I like to read and write the most.)
All this lead-up to say that I just realized I do kinda ship within the canonicity of the show. Oh, this wine makes the talking to be hard. LOL Let me give you some examples. When I watch episodes of SPN, I think Sam and Dean are totally straight. I don't really see canonical evidence to the contrary, and while I am sitting on my couch watching the show, I am rooting for Dean to figure out some way to be with Lisa and wishing Sam could have totally hot demony sex with Ruby again. But when I read and write fic for the show, I pair the two of them all over the place: with each other, with Castiel, with Ash (heee!). Or take NCIS. While watching the show, I am all about the Tony/Ziva. Love it. I have a hard time shipping Gibbs with anybody. He seems pretty much asexual to me; I think he gave up on that part of his life when his wife died, and any hints that canon gives us for relationships with him are all straight. But I can totally dig some Tony/Gibbs or Tony/Tim or Tony/Abby or whatever. Spander is another good example. I cut my fannish teeth on Spike/Xander, and I adore the pairing, but to me it makes absolutely no sense from a canonical standpoint. Or Harry/Draco. At any given point, I am more likely to be reading a Harry/Draco fic than anything else there is to read, and yet I never ever would have pegged that to be the dominant pairing of the fandom after finishing the series.
Does anybody else do this? Have kind of a disconnect between what seems plausible to you while watching the show or reading the book and what you want to read/write for fanfic? One set of ships for consuming the media and other set of ships for behaving fannishly about them?
(Caveats: Obviously subtext exists to some degree for all the pairings I've mentioned (even if it's just one arch look in one episode and a half season spent sharing a basement sullenly) and YMMV on that; not raining on anybody's subtext parade here. Also not saying that an unconventional ship can't be canonically compatible; in fact, that's the kind I like to read and write the most.)
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Date: 2013-10-11 02:42 am (UTC)I'm fannish about Dean/Castiel but I don't really "see" it on the show (although I see Dean as some level of canonically queer)
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:40 am (UTC)That makes sense to me.
(Apparently I have to start watching again?! I have heard from many and disparate sources that this season is shaping up to be rocking.)
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 02:53 am (UTC)The idea of canonical "evidence" is not that important to me b/c hey, all fanfic is AU. There are just differing leveling of handwaving for different noncanonical pairings Of course there is subtext but if you're willing to write a whole other backstory where Dean likes guys and Ruby is married to a woman named JoAnn and they have a farm in Vermont, power to you. It all just comes down to whether you can sell it as an author.
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Date: 2013-10-11 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 03:30 am (UTC)Yay for moms drinking night. LOL
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:43 am (UTC)In complete agreement with everything you're saying here.
I especially have never understood the virulent I-feel-sick-to-my-stomach-if-the-characters-of-my-OTP-are-ever-paired-with-anyone-else-ever version of OTPing. For me, the beauty of fanfic is that you can pair all the characters with all the characters; they can have all the adventures and do all the things and SIMULTANEOUSLY! It's awesome.
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Date: 2013-10-11 03:26 am (UTC)I'm kind of the opposite of this, I think? In that when I watch canon, I'm like a truffle pig looking for evidence of my pairings. If I can't see at least some evidence for a pairing, I'm far less likely to ship them (though that doesn't mean I won't read them). But yeah, I don't generally watch my slashy shows for the canonical romances. And I've discovered an unfortunate tendency to resent love interests that interfere with my ships, despite my best efforts to treat the love interests fairly. /o\ (I suspect this is a personal failing. /o\)
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:49 am (UTC)I think you are hardly alone is approaching it this way; I've heard a lot of people say similar. And it is really fun combing through canon looking for the truffles as it were. LOL
Mixed Truffles
Date: 2013-10-12 02:21 am (UTC)Re: Mixed Truffles
Date: 2013-10-12 03:09 am (UTC)It's Insulting! It's Engraved!
Date: 2013-10-11 04:06 am (UTC)I *want* Mal/Simon to exist because they'd be good for each other, I write a ton of Jayne/Simon because it seems depressingly plausible, when they occasionally have Engine Wine but definitely don't have mulling spices.
PS--"pegged to be the dominant pairing" would have to be Hermione/Draco n'est-ce pas? /12
Re: It's Insulting! It's Engraved!
Date: 2013-10-12 01:51 am (UTC)Ahahahahahahhahahhaah re Hermione/Draco, but I think McGonagal might give him a run for his money in that department. I have read some pretty filthy Hermione/McG stuff.
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Date: 2013-10-11 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-12 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-11 07:40 am (UTC)I love it when they give us lots of wee bits of tasty subtext, salting it here and there with a light touch so we can find it if we're looking for it and delight in what we see -- and, equally, so we can choose not to see subtext for pairings that don't ping us.
Most of the time, NCIS is brilliant at that. They happily sprinkle in tidbits of subtext for every imaginable pairing, and they do it all the time. It's one of the things I love best about the show. They only fail hard when they try to ram a pairing down the viewer's throats (Gibbs/Jenny being the prime example) with all the subtlety of a pile-driver.
I have a theory that Hollywood is so very, very bad at writing het relationships because so few industry writers and show-runners have ever had a good one themselves or have any clue what it would look like.
Similarly, I'm infinitely grateful to SPN because it graciously allows me to choose not to see Wincest since that would take me to an unhappy place, and also allows me to see and delight in Dean/Castiel subtext because that's where I happen to find my happies. Objectively, there's plenty of slash fodder for either ship. But the show, bless it, doesn't force any of it on viewers, and I love that.
So yeah, I'm happiest when I can find subtext if I want to see it, but when the show doesn't try to take it anywhere and leaves it to fandom to take care of the shippy stuff. On the whole, we're much better at it.
Oh, and as for pairings that have no canonical support or subtext at all? People who may never even have met? Crossover pairings? Bring 'em on. Good fic writers can bridge those gaps beautifully, and I will thank them for it. :-)
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:58 am (UTC)And I also agree with you that those subtexty hints are sometimes way preferable to what the show actually does with a pairing.
I never really warmed up to Jenny, and IDK why. I generally like all the characters in shows I like, but I mostly didn't like her. I really think the show had no idea what it wanted to do with her character and so she ended up all over the place. And I always hated her hair. That actor is a beautiful woman and her hair looked like shit in every episode. It boggles the mind.
Honestly, the only person I have ever wanted Gibbs to actually get with on the show is that sheriff lady that was in like one episode who was so shameless when she flirted with him and in how she manipulated the whole investigation to make it seem like she did most of it because it was an election year for her. *loved* that character.
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Date: 2013-10-11 11:35 am (UTC)When I watch or read canon, I tend to accept whatever is presented. I don't necessarily ship it (I don't tend to ship anything), but I don't get upset about what's on the screen or on the page.
Of course, I rarely read anything with a pairing in live action fandoms because I'm not comfortable with sex when thinking of characters played by actors. It emotionally comes too close to RPF for me. It's an idiosyncratic thing.
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Date: 2013-10-12 02:01 am (UTC)I love those never met in canon or only had two seconds of together time on screen pairings. Especially in a fandom like the Gateverse where even though, for instance, we've never seen Ronon interact with Siler, he had to have at some point when he was on Earth.
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Date: 2013-10-11 01:11 pm (UTC)I have to admit, I only realized recently (maybe with Teen Wolf) that there are people who do this, ie, enjoy the pairings that produce good fic fairly independently from how they consume canon.
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Date: 2013-10-12 02:04 am (UTC)For me, SGA is a good example. The show clearly shipped Rodney/Keller; they were a canon romance. But a huge subset of fandom shipped John/Rodney. For me, there was no cognitive dissonance. I was all, "Rodney gets to sleep with Jennifer AND John! Yay!" LOL I do not belong to the mutual exclusivity club with shipping.
I wonder how many of us there are who enjoy fic pairings differently from canon pairings. At least some people are commenting to these posts to say they do, but I wonder if we're the outliers. :)