Snowflake catchup: day 8

[obstinatecondolement]

In your own space, create a quiz or a poll (or tell us your thoughts about answering quizzes/polls)

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine today where we butted up against a difference in understanding we had about what to "ship" something actually meant in practice. Specifically, I was said the following about a ship:

"Yeah, like, I do not ship this! I think it's a fascinating kind of... deconstruction of teen crushes on authority figures? Or people who they think are safe outlets for burgeoning sexual feelings who turn out to be not that? But I think it's repulsive. And my reading of [movie] is that [character 1] had a crush on [character 2] and the betrayal of him turning out to be literally manipulating him as part of an elaborate revenge plot shut down [character 1]'s tentative exploration of bisexuality for years. Also, I have never thought it was reciprocated, lol. Like, I don't get people who ship it in a fluffy consensual way, and I find the way that I think it is actually plausible to be repellent, but I do get it? Idk"

which they found interesting, because their feelings on the ship and reading of the canon was pretty much the same as mine, but they felt that they did ship it. So we clearly meant different things when we said "I ship this" or "I don't ship this" and we teased out what we meant specifically by this shorthand.

I am not aware if there is any agreed upon Definitive™ meaning, but I thought it would be a fun subject for a poll! So, here goes:

Poll #28319 Shipping

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

View Respondents

So like... what does "I ship this" mean to you?

View Answers

I want this to be canon
2 (10.0%)

I think this is an aspirational relationship dynamic
1 (5.0%)

I find this interesting, but I don't necessarily want it to be canon or think it would be a good idea in real life
15 (75.0%)

I find the characters very attractive
5 (25.0%)

I find the dynamic between the characters very attractive
16 (80.0%)

I actively want to engage with this ship (via fanworks, meta, just thinking about them) in a more than incidental way
17 (85.0%)

I think this is a plausible interpretation of their canon relationship
10 (50.0%)

I think this is a plausible extrapolation of their canon relationship's potential evolution
12 (60.0%)

I don't like the relationship in canon but the fanon/what it could be is great
2 (10.0%)

Other I will explain in comments
2 (10.0%)

The responses are check boxes, so tick as many as apply!

Comments

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

I've always been rather given to "this amuses me" shipping. Crackships, as we said, back in the day. But when I seriously "ship" a thing it's usually a mixture of "I enjoy thinking about how these characters relate to each other/might in contexts we haven't seen them in" and "I am interested in exploring how these characters might interact in [context we have not seen them in in canon]." Whether the characters are or will be together in canon doesn't necessarily matter, because what I want to see might still be fanfic-only or just in my brain (like, maybe I really want to see them on a normal date night and canon ends with the first kiss, or maybe I want to see how they got together and they're established at the beginning of the canon story.)

Sometimes I actively don't actually want them to be canon, either because the author wouldn't be able to pull it off — horrible example, but when I was a teenager I was into Harry Potter and "shipped" Snape/Harry's mom and JKR managed to make that "canon" in a way I absolutely hated — or because in the actual context of the story/medium/genre it would cause Problems. Some ships would change the message or tone of the story too much, some would have to be forced in ways that would make other parts of the story less enjoyable, etc. But if I find them compelling in fanfic or speculation I might still say I ship them.

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

As a sidebar, because I'm apparently full of those tonight, I used to know so many teens/young adults whose definition of "ship" was "find sexually exciting" and more recently the same age range seems to default to "believe will happen in canon" which just goes to show.

[obstinatecondolement]

Yes, it's interesting how it can be a generational thing! I feel like there wasn't anything approaching the same focus on "this will/should happen in canon" when I was a baby fan. Although that was also due to mainly being an m/m shipper and not feeling that it was realistic that canon would make their characters queer, so maybe the fact that it's more plausible now has led to more people thinking that shipping something meant that it was going to or should happen in canon.