fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2342 ]

[ SECRET POST #2342 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2342 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After nearly a decade in fandom, I still don't get this. Why does it matter? You either are going to ship them or you aren't, and canon never seems to get in the way of that. Hell, I thought half the fun of fandom and shipping was that it isn't canon.

This. I can justify my ship 'til the thestrals come home, but at the end of the day, it's not--and never will be--canon. Do I care? Nope. :)

OP here: this is basically my point. I normally just don't care what anyone ships. And most of my fandom ships are non-canon. But these friends of mine are just a little obsessive about finally getting canon for their ship, which to me is ridiculous because I think there's no canon to honestly support it, so I feel like they should just... chill out and enjoy their ship. You can love something that has no basis in canon whatsoever. I do that all the time. But these guys are having mini panic attacks about JKR shutting down Wolfstar and I'm like "SHE ALREADY DID, DEAL WITH IT".

ALL OF THE ABOVE, OH MY GOD.

i do. not. get. why some fans feel the need to perform all kinds of cognitive gymnastics in order to justify why their ship is "canon"

why does it matter? people have shipped characters who don't even INTERACT or aren't even in the same universe.

the thing that bothers me is when some shippers (eg. supernatural fans) insist "IT'S SO CANON U GAIZ LOOK THEIR FINGERTIPS BRUSHED; THEY'RE MARRIED!!!" when it should be fucking obvious that the writers have no intention of including gay makeouts in thier show anytime soon.

you don't need to deny reality in order to ship something jfc.

As a former "canon shipper", I think it was originally just part of the speculation, but then people got defensive and hell broke loose from there. Which I never got - I thought certain ships were probably canon, but I didn't care if other people thought differently. Now I question the term "canon ship", because even if something is canon in that book/season/movie, who's to say something won't happen to change that?

Having your ship be canon is intensely satisfying. It legitimizes your intense feelings for it.

That said, people need to learn that wishful thinking, selective reading, and selective ignoring of the facts will not make your ship canon, so stop claiming it is. If having a canon ship is important to you, you should probably try to find actual canonical ships you like.

I don't get it, either. Well, I get it with things where a ship is heavily teased but not followed through - but that's more "bad writing/annoying showrunners" type of grievance than the ship not being canonized.

I've seen some slashers make the gay representation argument, but most gay people I know would rather just have gay characters be represented as gay from the get-go, instead of having a slash pairing canonized (has that seriously ever happened?), seemingly out of nowhere.

but most gay people I know would rather just have gay characters be represented as gay from the get-go, instead of having a slash pairing canonized (has that seriously ever happened?), seemingly out of nowhere

Actually, there's a significant portion of the queer community--and I'd count myself among them--who's delighted when seemingly straight characters are revealed as queer. It's what happens in life, after all, isn't it? We don't all go around wearing nametags announcing our sexualities, which is why coming out is a lifelong process for all but the most famous of us. (And, to a certain extent, the most stereotypically/visibly queer, but even then...I've known quite a few butch straight women and femme straight men.) There are always new coworkers, friends, etc. who don't know until we or someone else tells them, often months or even years after we've become acquainted.

Which isn't to say that it's not also good to have "gay characters be represented as gay from the get-go"; just that there's plenty of room for both modes of storytelling, and relying exclusively on either is probably less great than being able to draw upon both.

Also, interestingly, the process you describe isn't actually all that different from what happened with Dumbledore, minus the fact that Rowling couldn't bother explicitly confirming his sexuality in text (not that I'm still bitter about that, or anything). But plenty of fannish people read the 7th book and said, "Wow, so Dumbledore/Grindelwald is so far to this side of subtext that it's basically text, right?" And then "seemingly out of nowhere" to the metric ton of readers who hadn't picked up on that dynamic, Rowling did that interview in which she announced that Dumbledore was gay and in love with Grindelwald.

You either are going to ship them or you aren't, and canon never seems to get in the way of that. Hell, I thought half the fun of fandom and shipping was that it isn't canon.

I dunno... as I remember it, a large faction of the HP fandom was actually pretty "canon centric", the idea being that you were supposed to ship things that could plausibly happen. Of course this wasn't really as present on LJ as it was some of the big sites, but they still count.

I know that they are, what boggles my mind is why. (And quite frankly, HP fandom are part of the problem of batshit crazy shippers - iirc, there were once a bunch of Harry/Hermione shippers who tried to 'correct' her book series to be Harry/Hermione instead of Harry/Ginny...while I'm well aware most of that fandom is fairly chill, some of them can get downright rabid when it comes to their ships!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2342 ]

Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?

Re: Why do people obsess over how "canon" their ship is?