Can someone explain shipping’s huge role in fandoms to me?
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  Can someone explain shipping’s huge role in fandoms to me?
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Author Topic: Can someone explain shipping’s huge role in fandoms to me?  (Read 381 times)
PSOL
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« on: June 20, 2021, 05:40:20 PM »

I seriously don’t get shipping in the western cartoons enthusiast scene in particular, but this expands across like any other medium. It feels like almost any and all conversation revolving a given medium in famous serious gets monopolized by people who want to see x character date/have sex with y character. Very little conversation occurs about the plot, the animation/screentography, special effects, or themes in a given medium for modern series.

I understand human relationship is a very big deal about the human experience, but it’s almost always going to revolve around intimate relationships with some sexual connotations and none about colleagues or close friends.

What is the reason for shipping having a huge monopolization of online fan discourse? Why is it more appealing than other topics on a given medium?
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John Dule
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« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2021, 08:13:18 PM »

without shipping it would be hard to get bulk fandom from one place to another
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Crane
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« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2021, 08:24:47 PM »

Emotional stunting.
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Alben Barkley
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« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2021, 08:43:41 PM »

Living vicariously through fiction?

Idk.
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« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2021, 09:53:42 PM »

Isn't getting horny the whole point of fanfiction in 90% of cases?
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beesley
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« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2021, 02:31:53 AM »

I don't really follow cartoons but respectfully there might be overlap between adults who watch certain non-mainstream cartoons and this sort of behaviour.
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wimp
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« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2021, 03:21:36 AM »

I seriously don’t get shipping in the western cartoons enthusiast scene in particular, but this expands across like any other medium. It feels like almost any and all conversation revolving a given medium in famous serious gets monopolized by people who want to see x character date/have sex with y character. Very little conversation occurs about the plot, the animation/screentography, special effects, or themes in a given medium for modern series.

I understand human relationship is a very big deal about the human experience, but it’s almost always going to revolve around intimate relationships with some sexual connotations and none about colleagues or close friends.

What is the reason for shipping having a huge monopolization of online fan discourse? Why is it more appealing than other topics on a given medium?

If you're talking specifically about western cartoons, probably due to the target demographic having no prior experience with romantic relationships, and/or just experiencing romantic feelings for the first time.

As for older fans, using their favorite characters as surrogate family.
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Samof94
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« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2021, 05:08:28 AM »

Isn't getting horny the whole point of fanfiction in 90% of cases?
Yeah. Like how most Wynonna Earp fanfic is just about the gay couple of Waverly and Nicole???
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2021, 08:40:24 AM »
« Edited: June 21, 2021, 09:43:38 PM by True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자) »

Two reasons.

1. It's reasonably common for many continuing series to hint at potential romantic liaisons, with those hints serving as a starting point for many ships.

2. Often the only detailed information we have of a series background is character information, so a fanfic based on extrapolating known information is going to more likely go into interpersonal relationships, of which romantic relationships are typically the most dramatic.
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Ferguson97
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« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2021, 10:19:44 AM »

Because it’s fun to imagine characters your like dating in the show
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Torrain
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« Reply #10 on: June 21, 2021, 06:31:00 PM »

In the real world, I’ve celebrated when two of my friends, who seemed well-suited, were honest about their feelings and coupled up. Once or twice, when I’ve been sufficiently invested in two well-developed characters with decent chemistry, I’ve felt a strange facsimile of the same feeling.

Based on that experience, I think that shipping is a parasocial version of a desire for your ‘friends’ to be happy. It can easily become wildly unhealthy (see the novel-length smut fan fiction that teenagers produce in their spare time), especially if your attachment to actors or fictional characters comes at the expense of human relationships.

Some of it is LGBT teenagers looking for representation (much of the Sherlock-Watson shipping was kids looking for more MLM representation in tv).

Strangely though, the largest group of ‘shippers’ online are heterosexual female teenagers and adult woman shipping male characters together (based on author/reader/fiction tags on AO3, a major fan-fiction website). I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s harmless curiosity, maybe it crosses the line into a sort of fetishism.

It’s a strange phenomenon, and one that’s been covered extensively on sites like YouTube and in some mainstream outlets. If you want a more in-depth look at specific examples, the YouTuber Sarah Z has produced a few video essays on the subject (focusing on LGBT shipping, Sherlock truthers (it’s complicated) and the sense of entitlement that fans begin to accrue as a show drags on for years).
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #11 on: June 22, 2021, 12:15:47 PM »

The more passive "I think x and y would be good together" kind of thing doesn't really bother me. When it gets really toxic and people attacking each other bc they agree with a ship or don't agree with a ship, that is terrible.
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Motorcity
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« Reply #12 on: June 22, 2021, 05:37:41 PM »

For most people, their first experience viewing romance are from cartoons. Kids and later adults feel invested in knowing rather a relationship were to happen

I remember being a very young child and watching Scooby Doo (2002 show). As a toddler, the only couple I knew was my parents. Seeing Fred and Daphne flirt made me want them to be a couple like my parents.
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