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

[kavyina]

As a new DW user, YOU CAN MAKE POLLS? This is fantastic.

More on the topic, yeah, if I ship something, I'm shipping it because the dynamic and/or characters are interesting (and attractive) to me, not because I want it to be canon or even think it should be canon. In fact, if my ships were made canon, I probably wouldn't like the canon versions!

[cornerofmadness]

thanks for sharing

[justanorthernlight]

This question is very interesting to me! I'm not very ship or romance focused (when talking about what fandoms I'm in I always feel like I need to disclaim that I am an "indifferent" shipper), and the ambiguity over what people mean by "shipping" isn't something I see discussed much. It kind of ties into the fandom purity debates, with whether a ship needs to be healthy for it to be a true ship, or whether a dynamic that is interesting to explore is enough.

I do think fandom would benefit from bringing the term "darkship" back into vogue to disambiguate things a bit.

[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.

[quailfence]

I don't like the relationship in canon but the fanon/what it could be is great
This option is interesting to me because while I have experienced this before (mostly “a fic that I read for reasons not relating to the ship wrote that ship really well” and now that I think about it a bit more most of those fics were Kirk/Spock/McCoy I think?), more recently I’ve experienced the opposite: I’ve seen a bunch of people say that they like the fanon version of Doctor/Yaz from Doctor Who more than the canon version, whereas I personally like the canon version more than the fanon version

[amado1]

Man, that's a good poll! Even just for myself, I often mean "I ship it" in entirely different ways. Saying I ship Troi/Riker is totally different from saying I ship Worf/Riker or Troi/Crusher... even though I engage with all three ships, enjoy them, see the appeal, and understand the canon roots, it's a totally different flavor of shipping.

[adriennefae]

For me it varies somewhat from ship to ship. It definitely doesn't have to mean that I want it to be canon or think it would be a good idea in real life. It does, however, generally mean that there's something I find interesting about the characters and their dynamic that I want to see more of (or in some cases, that there could be if we ever actually saw them interact), that I think something about them as a couple would be interesting/fun to watch, and that I think about the ship and create and/or engage with content for it in a more than incidental way, as you put it.

Finding at least one of the characters attractive makes me more likely to ship something, but it's neither necessary nor (usually) sufficient.

[lebateleur]

For me it means "I like the idea of exploring these two (or more!) characters in a sexual or romantic relationship via fanworks." There's no expectation that the relationship be any definition of healthy, or value judgment on any creators or consumers if it isn't. But then again, I also don't expect fiction to explore only healthy situations or themes, and think there can be a lot of value in thoughtfully examining ones that aren't and how characters with XYZ characteristics would respond in such situations.