When did you realize you were a shipper?

[gmrm4n]

Sometimes, some things just sneak up on you and you don't realize it. Or maybe they've always been there, and, like a fish, you don't really notice the water. For certain Shippers like me, that's kind of what happened.

I always have kind of had a thing about wanting the lonely and somewhat sympathetic characters, and would usually end up rooting for them to get a significant other out of the logic that, "If I can't have a relationship, at least I can root for these fictional people." (I'm also the kind of person who likes it when villains redeem themselves.)

This should have been a hint.

Recently (recently=August,) I started writing a script for a comic where all the villains in fiction were copied and put into this weird universe. Why? Partly because it would be cool to see a world where the only "heroes" were people who were slightly less evil than everyone else around them. Mostly because I thought Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and Skitter (Worm, http://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-1-10/arc-1-gestation/1-01/ ) would make an interesting couple.

This should have been a major tip-off.

I finally realized it a few weeks ago when I was talking to a friend on Steam about sexuality and Borderlands. After one of us mentioned how Axton was bi, I jokingly shipped him and Salvador. My friend then immeadiately tried to save me from the shipping virus.

It was then that I realized he was too late.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I didn't. I always thought writing about characters I didn't create in a story that isn't canon for a book I cannot legally publish is a waste of time and an exercize in futility.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

When the myth, the legend, the solemn outcast Yahtzee came into close, tempting contact with our Sterling Lord.

"Shipping" as I understand it means nothing more than romantically pairing off characters (or more than a pair. Giggity). For that reason, I'm a shipper of Hicks and Ripley from Aliens with Newt as their adopted daughter. So many were that the opening of Alien 3 was enough to kill the franchise for them.

 

[Frission]

Well when I was my teens I started to take up sailing like everyone else did, but the fact truly struck me when I ...

Oh wait, wrong shipper. Well it's an interesting term, but I guess it just means anyone who is interested in romantic pairings right?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

When the myth, the legend, the solemn outcast Yahtzee came into close, tempting contact with our Sterling Lord.

"Shipping" as I understand it means nothing more than romantically pairing off characters (or more than a pair. Giggity). For that reason, I'm a shipper of Hicks and Ripley from Aliens with Newt as their adopted daughter. So many were that the opening of Alien 3 was enough to kill the franchise for them.

Fuck Alien3!


As for me, I can't remember when the goggles slipped on, but I dare say they're fused to my optic nerves so I still 'see' the ships, even if they make no sense. If nothing else, when I find one that baffles me, for example Elsa/Jack Frost, my brain tries to create one that I think works better - such as Elsa/Captain America.

It's all in good fun, but I was bitterly disappointed that O'Neill and Carter from SG1 never managed to make it work, 'cos they had such wonderful chemistry and it never really went anywhere.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I always thought writing about characters I didn't create in a story that isn't canon for a book I cannot legally publish is a waste of time and an exercise in futility.

Most fun activities that don't pay are futile.

OT: I don't consider myself a shipper but I do see the appeal of putting characters together who normally would never interact, romantically or otherwise. I've imagined characters getting together but I've yet to put ink to a page over it so to speak.

 

[Tiger King]

uhhm what's a shipper?

sorry guys

 

[DementedSheep]

I'm not. More often than not it annoys the shit out me. A lot of media would be better if they stopped shoving in romances even before the fans get to paring everyone up. It's especially annoying since most the of shipping tends to be between characters who hate each other or where one would be abusive to other and I hate the trope of a villain falling in love with someone and completely changing their outlook or being nice for them and them alone.

 

[Dimitriov]

Yeah, I'm not. At all. It's really dumb, and almost always really poorly done.

Seriously, the pairings almost never make any sense.

 

[waj9876]

When I learned what shipping was, because I was guilty of it from before even learning about it.

Back when I was a young teenager, about pre-teen age, I always wanted Ranma and Shampoo from Ranma1/2 to get together.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I always thought writing about characters I didn't create in a story that isn't canon for a book I cannot legally publish is a waste of time and an exercise in futility.

Most fun activities that don't pay are futile.

There's some truth in that but I always saw fanfics as particularly futile. I see them as a (poor) means to an end you can never truly achieve. Unless you do Ctrl + B, change every name in the manuscript and re-title it "Fifty Shades of Grey".

 

[Ferisar]

I always thought writing about characters I didn't create in a story that isn't canon for a book I cannot legally publish is a waste of time and an exercise in futility.

Most fun activities that don't pay are futile.

There's some truth in that but I always saw fanfics as particularly futile. I see them as a (poor) means to an end you can never truly achieve. Unless you do Ctrl + B, change every name in the manuscript and re-title it "Fifty Shades of Grey".

They're not only futile, but they don't really do a whole lot for your entertainment. It's self-fulfilling except through someone else's work. It's like watching someone eat and dictating what they put in their mouth first.

I don't really have anything against shippers/fanfic writers or other assortments of individuals that enjoy running around other people's creative works, but it's just not for me.

EDIT:
Also, after some thought, what I say isn't true for all works of fiction. Ones that support a massive setting and enjoy the freedom of having a fairly good set of rules can be treated as an interactive experience for the purposes of entertainment. However, I can't extend that to "shipping" on the grounds of using existing characters as the primary source for it.

 

[Saetha]

I'll happily admit to being a hopeless romantic, but I'm not really a shipper. Mostly because being a shipper means that A) I have a tendency to ship couples that will obviously never get together, and B) I'm obsessively invested in these couples to the point of frequent and fervent arguments on the internet and/or threatening to stop watching if they don't get together. I don't do either of those things, so...

I guess I associate the term "shipper" with "obsessive, delusional fan who pairs characters that will never actually get together, and then rants about 'raining on their parade' when you attempt to point this out," just a little bit. I prefer the term "romantic," since it is accurate, and implies a far more... general interest in shipping, rather than an intense investment in a few particular couples.

That and the only fanfiction I've read is video game fanfic, because I find that the games themselves often waste their plots and characters but fanfic writers are happy to expand upon them. But that's more worldbuilding than romance.

I'm not. More often than not it annoys the shit out me. A lot of media would be better if they stopped shoving in romances even before the fans get paring everyone up. It's especially annoying since most the of shipping tends to be between characters who hate each other or where one would be abusive to other and I hate the trope of a villain falling in love with someone and completely changing their outlook or being nice for them and them alone.

This too. I absolutely hate the "They bicker and hate each other! They MUST be in love!" trope, but it's one that shippers can't seem to dispense with. Yeah, yeah, hate's better than apathy, it's not hatred it's sexual tension, blah blah blah. I don't care how much evidence one can dig up about how "It's totally gonna be canon, guys!" any relationship that's built on how the involved parties hate each other is doomed to fail sooner or later.

 

[jademunky]

Oddly enough, it probably happened to me for the first time several weeks ago in Spider-Man comics when the truth slowly dawned on me that

Spoiler

Peter Parker and Anna Maria were not going to get together after all. Instead, the poor woman has to pretend to be Peter's girlfriend while he lives in her apartment and runs their business partnership into the ground because he spends all day being spider-man.

 

[Avalanche91]

Sigh.... It must have been about two years ago. I was reading homestuck and figured that yes, the two snarky women should definitely hook up. One is a chainsaw wielding alien vampire from a completely bisexual race, while the other is a sarcastic blonde a little too into cosmic monstrosities. It just made sense.

Then the pairing became canon and thus were revealed my powers... I mean calling.... I mean powers.

For my next trick, I'll hook up Korra and Asami. I may have become too invested in fictional lesbians. Send help.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

For my next trick, I'll hook up Korra and Asami. I may have become too invested in fictional lesbians. Send help.

Hey man, at least Korra and Asami would treat each other better than Mako ever treated both of them.

 

[Johnny Impact]

At PAX this year there was a card game called Slash. Everyone has a hand of fictional characters. Player puts down one, all other players put down their "one true match" for the character played. Usually thought of in romantic terms, but it can also take the form of a supervillain team-up or buddy-cop movie. Scoring is based on obscurity, with characters ranging from globally famous, instantly identifiable personas like Superman to minor characters from some obscure manga from thirty years ago. For example, one round saw Wolverine paired with Molly Millions. Everyone knows who Wolverine is, but almost nobody knows Molly. We had a good laugh matching Gandalf with Daenerys Targaryen, Darth Vader with the Terminator, and so forth.

That was going to be a side note to my main thought, then I realized it's 4am and I don't really have a main thought.

 

[Hazy992]

I don't ship. I find it pretty dumb and TBH kinda weird.

But whatever floats your boat I suppose.

 

[rorychief]

I never understood shipping. It seems like another version of 'who would winin a fight?' only a basic grasp of the character's personalities is sometimes required to ship. It's great that someone can connect to characters to the point that they want them to be happy with a partner, that shows the character is engaging and sympathetic. But the engaging sympathetic part is not an invitation to 'fix' a character, it's a key component of how the author builds interest in the character and makes the audience invested in their motivations and relationship with their world.
The fact that the character isn't content or at peace is everything to do with why we're reading about them. I would argue that wanting to contrive an artificial means of making a complex character happy through pacifying them with a relationship is to deliberately miss the point. Like treating a static rollercoaster as the ideal state for a rollercoaster, the point isn't that the rollercoaster is striving to reach the end again and stop, its the ride and the ups and downs and thrills and spills in between. A rollercoaster car is only still to let an audience on and get them involved, so why would you then feel guilty or uncomfortable about the rollercoaster being outside its most inert and stable state when its purpose was to leave that state and return to it on its own for your amusement?

Also. The 'problems' aren't yours to fix, and to make as though a lack of sex and companionship is the root of all dysfunction and dissatisfaction is enormously telling of the shipper's own neuroses. But I'm sure shippers will be the first to admit this. I could only imagine a genre of fanfiction where people rewrite stories where the protagonist is driven by a dead or disapproving parent, and page one is just the parent breaking down about how wonderful and under-appreciated the son or daughter is. Cathartic for some writer with mommy/daddy issues yes, but in solving a perceived problem the dramatic nuance of the characterization and plot is diminished and so too the characters impact, up to and including the aspects that endeared the character to the reader in the first place.

Like a grandfather paradox of giving a shit. I only cared because you had a problem and I rewrote history to solve the problem so I would never care enough to want to change reality to solve the problem. I think I might write a fanfiction of my own now. An evil demon invades Westeros shortly before Robert's rebellion, proceeds to play grandmotherly matchmaker so everyone is perfectly happy and fulfilled, followed by seven volumes of peace, prosperity and matching up their various children.

Edit* their and they're