Shipping Meme: Day 12 & 13
Day 12: Character you don't like seeing paired with anyone else
I went through a whole lengthy spiel on various exclusive OTPs before I realized I was perhaps misunderstanding the topic: not a character I liked to see only paired with one person, but a character I don't want to see anyone with.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, I was quite content that Luke didn't end the series paired off with anyone. I'm not opposed to the idea of him eventually marrying (except to a certain redhead, at least the way it ended up in the novels), but I don't see it as necessary to his main arc. In fact, I think it would probably have detracted from it. Ditto the girls from Disney's "Frozen," especially Elsa.
Characters I have no desire to see paired off, period? Well, there's the obvious non-aesthetically-pleasing uber-evil characters like Voldemort or Palpatine. (I know some people ship the latter with Anakin, and while I sort of get it, still, ew.) And aestheticness aside, those particular characters have always struck me somewhat as asexual - at the very least, the great love of their life is their quest for power/order, not any particular individual person.
One character I never really understood the mad urge to ship people with? Severus Snape. Okay, he's dark and his motives are mysterious - but he's still a cruel, bullying asshole with greasy hair, played by Alan Rickman or not. No desire to see him paired with anyone, including Lily Potter.
Day 13: Couple you ship that causes intense feelings in its fandom (read: flamewars and the like)
I think this question must have been specifically designed for Harry/Hermione. ;) Has there ever been a more epic ship war than the "canon validity" one between H/Hr and its two main "rival" ships, Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione? I never really understood why, of all the vast multitude of ships in Harry Potter fandom, H/Hr's shippers got singled out for "misreading the text" or "not understanding properly," and far more vicious labels. After all, if the purported canon pairings were so "obvious," why was H/Hr that much more offensive than, say, any of the Draco or slash pairings that no one really expected to happen? Why not just leave those shippers be, too?
All I can think of is maybe there was some subconscious fear on the part of some R/Hr or H/G shippers that, unlike the Draco or slash pairings, there was some possibility that H/Hr wasn't, well, impossible. The recent JK Rowling interview where she spoke positively on the canon potential of a H/Hr romantic pairing seems to bolster this. Still, there were plenty of H/Hr shippers, like me, who didn't expect them to happen in canon - but still got flamed as, perhaps most infamously, "delusional." Again, I don't really understand. After all - look at Star Wars. After Anakin/Padmé reached full canon status in AOTC, I don't remember anyone who preferred Obidala getting labeled as "delusional," at least not nearly to the full vitriolic extent that Harry/Hermione shippers were. Alternate Universe ship, nothing to see here, move along.
Though that's not to say that the flaming only came from the R/Hr and H/G side: as a H/Hr shipper who fully believed Ron/Hermione would happen, I had some nasty accusations leveled at me from both camps as being, to put it nicely, misguided in my interpretations of the text. One notable incident came at the Portkey forums, where I countered one H/Hr poster's assertion that Hermione had shown no sign of interest in Ron, by saying "well, there WAS her reaction to him at the Yule Ball." I was instantly accused, based on this one example, of asserting that Hermione was constantly "throwing herself" at Ron, and how DARE I accuse her of demeaning herself like that. BWUH? So both sides could be equally prickly and vicious in their own way. Hell, I know I was once or twice.
I went through a whole lengthy spiel on various exclusive OTPs before I realized I was perhaps misunderstanding the topic: not a character I liked to see only paired with one person, but a character I don't want to see anyone with.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, I was quite content that Luke didn't end the series paired off with anyone. I'm not opposed to the idea of him eventually marrying (except to a certain redhead, at least the way it ended up in the novels), but I don't see it as necessary to his main arc. In fact, I think it would probably have detracted from it. Ditto the girls from Disney's "Frozen," especially Elsa.
Characters I have no desire to see paired off, period? Well, there's the obvious non-aesthetically-pleasing uber-evil characters like Voldemort or Palpatine. (I know some people ship the latter with Anakin, and while I sort of get it, still, ew.) And aestheticness aside, those particular characters have always struck me somewhat as asexual - at the very least, the great love of their life is their quest for power/order, not any particular individual person.
One character I never really understood the mad urge to ship people with? Severus Snape. Okay, he's dark and his motives are mysterious - but he's still a cruel, bullying asshole with greasy hair, played by Alan Rickman or not. No desire to see him paired with anyone, including Lily Potter.
Day 13: Couple you ship that causes intense feelings in its fandom (read: flamewars and the like)
I think this question must have been specifically designed for Harry/Hermione. ;) Has there ever been a more epic ship war than the "canon validity" one between H/Hr and its two main "rival" ships, Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione? I never really understood why, of all the vast multitude of ships in Harry Potter fandom, H/Hr's shippers got singled out for "misreading the text" or "not understanding properly," and far more vicious labels. After all, if the purported canon pairings were so "obvious," why was H/Hr that much more offensive than, say, any of the Draco or slash pairings that no one really expected to happen? Why not just leave those shippers be, too?
All I can think of is maybe there was some subconscious fear on the part of some R/Hr or H/G shippers that, unlike the Draco or slash pairings, there was some possibility that H/Hr wasn't, well, impossible. The recent JK Rowling interview where she spoke positively on the canon potential of a H/Hr romantic pairing seems to bolster this. Still, there were plenty of H/Hr shippers, like me, who didn't expect them to happen in canon - but still got flamed as, perhaps most infamously, "delusional." Again, I don't really understand. After all - look at Star Wars. After Anakin/Padmé reached full canon status in AOTC, I don't remember anyone who preferred Obidala getting labeled as "delusional," at least not nearly to the full vitriolic extent that Harry/Hermione shippers were. Alternate Universe ship, nothing to see here, move along.
Though that's not to say that the flaming only came from the R/Hr and H/G side: as a H/Hr shipper who fully believed Ron/Hermione would happen, I had some nasty accusations leveled at me from both camps as being, to put it nicely, misguided in my interpretations of the text. One notable incident came at the Portkey forums, where I countered one H/Hr poster's assertion that Hermione had shown no sign of interest in Ron, by saying "well, there WAS her reaction to him at the Yule Ball." I was instantly accused, based on this one example, of asserting that Hermione was constantly "throwing herself" at Ron, and how DARE I accuse her of demeaning herself like that. BWUH? So both sides could be equally prickly and vicious in their own way. Hell, I know I was once or twice.