Here's the thing... I have the source material for all the stuff that ISN'T my OTP. I don't need to read gen fic when I have gen show (or gen books, game, movie, etc). When I read and write fic, it's because I want the stuff the show doesn't explore, and YEAH, that usually does mean my ships.
Even when I write fics that are centered on platonic relationships I wish I could have seen explored in canon, my ships are part of it, because if I ship A/B and C/D, and I want to look at what a friendship between B and C looks like, those relationships or those unresolved feelings are still part of the characters' lives *as I write them*.
It's not because I don't think there's good gen fic out there-- it's not even that I make it a point not to read gen fic! In some fandoms, I have.
And, as a rarepair writer... if there's also a more popular ship that I *like*, maybe I write a fic that's about popular A/B and rare C/D and hope that some of the A/B fans come away from it shipping C/D with me. Sometimes I just put my rarepair fics out there with the thought that if *one* other person ships it and finds that fic, then there's two of us, but I couldn't not write the story.
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Even when I write fics that are centered on platonic relationships I wish I could have seen explored in canon, my ships are part of it, because if I ship A/B and C/D, and I want to look at what a friendship between B and C looks like, those relationships or those unresolved feelings are still part of the characters' lives *as I write them*.
It's not because I don't think there's good gen fic out there-- it's not even that I make it a point not to read gen fic! In some fandoms, I have.
And, as a rarepair writer... if there's also a more popular ship that I *like*, maybe I write a fic that's about popular A/B and rare C/D and hope that some of the A/B fans come away from it shipping C/D with me. Sometimes I just put my rarepair fics out there with the thought that if *one* other person ships it and finds that fic, then there's two of us, but I couldn't not write the story.