Oh, Fandom.
Fandom Mutation of Rule 34: The more character-important and visible a relationship dynamic is, whether friendly or hostile, the more likely the majority of a fandom is to interpret it as romantic/sexual in nature.
First Correlary: For any given fandom, the LESS canonically romantic/sexual and/or hetersexual a relationship dynamic is, the more likely the majority of a fandom is to interpret it as romantic/sexual. Ex: In most fandoms, the most popular ship will not be the main character and a canonical love interest; it will be the main character and their hated rival or childhood non-romantic best friend.
If people that actually read stuff I type under cuts haven't figured it out by now, I don't really delve much into "shipping". I have no interest in porn, fandom or otherwise, and I'm usually mostly interested in character-relationships as part of the character; I might b'aww or fluff at something that I find canonically adorable, or debate how a given relationship dynamic works/what relationships would make more or less sense in what ways, but I don't... really get into stories looking for who's chasing who in the fluffy sense, much less who's borking who. I really also don't see it necessary to try to pair off -everyone- in a given cast; if someone ends a series/game/book/whatever without a romantic interest, it's perfectly normal to me.
(Not that I don't have a few times where I'd say I support "non-canon/counter-to-canon ships", but I'm NOT about to argue "OMG IT WAS MEANT TO BE", so much as "this relationship dynamic interests me/I could logically see it happening".)
I still ... have never really understood fangirl hormones, and probably never will. ._.
Albel and Fayt? ... WTF'ish! I can see Albel half-flirting with Fayt occasionally to watch him twitch, but Albel's fascination with Fayt is canonically "...he's small, he's squishy, he flails easily, and he kicked my ass, how the -hell?-"... .... "I'm going to follow you until I figure out how you keep winning", nevermind that by that point, it's also a self-interest thing.
...We're not going to touch Akabane right now. I can see him half-seriously running with his demented flirting. I can't see most of the objects of such holding still or staying within arm's reach if he did, or Akabane pursuing anything beyond demented-flirting if they weren't.
I still am not sure how Naruto fandom gets NaruSasu, on the same level I've never understood how s-CRY-ed fandom ships the boys with EACH OTHER instead of their canonical vaguely-romantic-fluffy interests. (s-CRY-ed is really special that way. "Oh look! There are girl-things that both of the boys get along with very well that obv. have an interest in them that the boys have emotional attachments to! They tend to end up trying to KILL EACH OTHER! -obviously- the clearest romantic/sexual relationship is Kazuma/Ryuhou and not either one/girl-person that knows them well that they seem to like/listen to more than anyone else would get from them where it's a logical relationship dynamic!")
And I'm ... afraid to ever go NEAR Kuroshitsuji fandom. It's not like the series doesn't have plenty of screwed up as it is, really. (I mean, the closest they get to that sort of relationships between living, on-"camera" characters in currently-fanslated chapters I've found, is two maybe three one-sided unrequited pursuits, an arranged marriage between two kids that's currently a lot of one side being overzealously romantically fluffy and the other side FLAILING, and uh, one case of toying with psychological weaknesses to seduce for information. Which, for the record, caused me to take a long moment to LOOOOOOK back at Sebs-in-my-skull and WONDER about myself.)
I hate to admit this where I know a couple of Grell-players will see it, but I think I would blink a HELL of a lot less at fandom if -GRELL- were who they habitually slashed Sebastian with.
Yes. I can make logical sense out of pairing the poor demon with the only person that consistently gets him to DO NOT WANT traumaface and fluster/lose cool than what fandom does normally, pairing him with the kid he's bound to. (Even though I still sorta edge awaaaay from the idea of Grell and Sebastian if only because there's pretty good odds of it being non-con.) Sebastian is a demon that obviously has a lot of pride and probably doesn't suffer being summoned and bound lightly. (Go read the Key of Solomon - where that pentacle on his hand comes from - and ask how happy YOU'D be, getting yoinked out of wherever-you-are and subjected to that.) Answering to Ciel instead of the people that actually summoned him? Probably a good bit of "mutually beneficial arrangement" there - Ciel gets to live, Sebastian gets...someone that's not a pompous ass treating him like a slave holding the leash. It hurts my head to try to picture that as anything other than a sort of mutual respect relationship.
(I say mutual respect, because as much as it's possible that Sebastian's just playing to the binding, he's probably more than capable of setting up loopholes to get the kid killed, or making some of his incidents of "Oops, did I forget to mention something/letter-of-law-but-not-spirit" incidents a LOOOT worse for Ciel, nevermind that he -doesn't- take shots at psychological nerves etc. when he's obviously capable of it. That and that he does seem to act on-own-volition occasionally on Ciel's behalf, even if he's not really -fluffy- comfort.) Nevermind that Ciel's thirteen, that Sebastian -does- make comments indicating acting to preserve the arranged-marriage, that from-Sebastian's-reactions-to-Ann-and-Grell he'd probably react to unwanted advances/using the binding for such with the burning hatred of a thousand desert suns, that they've only been around each other for a year or less and there's still signs of testing-each-other-occasional-mistrust, or that Sebastian's pretty damn predatory about most things, not human, and may not have a sense of real affection in emotional attachments.
Long story short, edit: YES this was prompted by something, no not going to go into it real much yet since I'm crossing fingers that either it's not going to be as bad as I'm afraid of or won't happen at all, btw, it's apparently not always a good idea to look at userprofiles of OOC journals for possible canon-mates at big RPs! @_@;.
First Correlary: For any given fandom, the LESS canonically romantic/sexual and/or hetersexual a relationship dynamic is, the more likely the majority of a fandom is to interpret it as romantic/sexual. Ex: In most fandoms, the most popular ship will not be the main character and a canonical love interest; it will be the main character and their hated rival or childhood non-romantic best friend.
If people that actually read stuff I type under cuts haven't figured it out by now, I don't really delve much into "shipping". I have no interest in porn, fandom or otherwise, and I'm usually mostly interested in character-relationships as part of the character; I might b'aww or fluff at something that I find canonically adorable, or debate how a given relationship dynamic works/what relationships would make more or less sense in what ways, but I don't... really get into stories looking for who's chasing who in the fluffy sense, much less who's borking who. I really also don't see it necessary to try to pair off -everyone- in a given cast; if someone ends a series/game/book/whatever without a romantic interest, it's perfectly normal to me.
(Not that I don't have a few times where I'd say I support "non-canon/counter-to-canon ships", but I'm NOT about to argue "OMG IT WAS MEANT TO BE", so much as "this relationship dynamic interests me/I could logically see it happening".)
I still ... have never really understood fangirl hormones, and probably never will. ._.
Albel and Fayt? ... WTF'ish! I can see Albel half-flirting with Fayt occasionally to watch him twitch, but Albel's fascination with Fayt is canonically "...he's small, he's squishy, he flails easily, and he kicked my ass, how the -hell?-"... .... "I'm going to follow you until I figure out how you keep winning", nevermind that by that point, it's also a self-interest thing.
...We're not going to touch Akabane right now. I can see him half-seriously running with his demented flirting. I can't see most of the objects of such holding still or staying within arm's reach if he did, or Akabane pursuing anything beyond demented-flirting if they weren't.
I still am not sure how Naruto fandom gets NaruSasu, on the same level I've never understood how s-CRY-ed fandom ships the boys with EACH OTHER instead of their canonical vaguely-romantic-fluffy interests. (s-CRY-ed is really special that way. "Oh look! There are girl-things that both of the boys get along with very well that obv. have an interest in them that the boys have emotional attachments to! They tend to end up trying to KILL EACH OTHER! -obviously- the clearest romantic/sexual relationship is Kazuma/Ryuhou and not either one/girl-person that knows them well that they seem to like/listen to more than anyone else would get from them where it's a logical relationship dynamic!")
And I'm ... afraid to ever go NEAR Kuroshitsuji fandom. It's not like the series doesn't have plenty of screwed up as it is, really. (I mean, the closest they get to that sort of relationships between living, on-"camera" characters in currently-fanslated chapters I've found, is two maybe three one-sided unrequited pursuits, an arranged marriage between two kids that's currently a lot of one side being overzealously romantically fluffy and the other side FLAILING, and uh, one case of toying with psychological weaknesses to seduce for information. Which, for the record, caused me to take a long moment to LOOOOOOK back at Sebs-in-my-skull and WONDER about myself.)
I hate to admit this where I know a couple of Grell-players will see it, but I think I would blink a HELL of a lot less at fandom if -GRELL- were who they habitually slashed Sebastian with.
Yes. I can make logical sense out of pairing the poor demon with the only person that consistently gets him to DO NOT WANT traumaface and fluster/lose cool than what fandom does normally, pairing him with the kid he's bound to. (Even though I still sorta edge awaaaay from the idea of Grell and Sebastian if only because there's pretty good odds of it being non-con.) Sebastian is a demon that obviously has a lot of pride and probably doesn't suffer being summoned and bound lightly. (Go read the Key of Solomon - where that pentacle on his hand comes from - and ask how happy YOU'D be, getting yoinked out of wherever-you-are and subjected to that.) Answering to Ciel instead of the people that actually summoned him? Probably a good bit of "mutually beneficial arrangement" there - Ciel gets to live, Sebastian gets...someone that's not a pompous ass treating him like a slave holding the leash. It hurts my head to try to picture that as anything other than a sort of mutual respect relationship.
(I say mutual respect, because as much as it's possible that Sebastian's just playing to the binding, he's probably more than capable of setting up loopholes to get the kid killed, or making some of his incidents of "Oops, did I forget to mention something/letter-of-law-but-not-spirit" incidents a LOOOT worse for Ciel, nevermind that he -doesn't- take shots at psychological nerves etc. when he's obviously capable of it. That and that he does seem to act on-own-volition occasionally on Ciel's behalf, even if he's not really -fluffy- comfort.) Nevermind that Ciel's thirteen, that Sebastian -does- make comments indicating acting to preserve the arranged-marriage, that from-Sebastian's-reactions-to-Ann-and-Grell he'd probably react to unwanted advances/using the binding for such with the burning hatred of a thousand desert suns, that they've only been around each other for a year or less and there's still signs of testing-each-other-occasional-mistrust, or that Sebastian's pretty damn predatory about most things, not human, and may not have a sense of real affection in emotional attachments.
Long story short, edit: YES this was prompted by something, no not going to go into it real much yet since I'm crossing fingers that either it's not going to be as bad as I'm afraid of or won't happen at all, btw, it's apparently not always a good idea to look at userprofiles of OOC journals for possible canon-mates at big RPs! @_@;.