It's That Time Again!

[greeneyedlady]

That's right! It's time for my approximately-once-a-year-but-really-whenever-I-feel-like-it Shipping Survey! This is the third time I am posting it and, like the last time, there are a few new questions to keep it interesting. But a lot is the same. So maybe people are sick of this, of answering the same questions yet again, but there are some new

Comments

[qualapec]

What are your ships?

Too many to count.

Do you mostly ship slash? Het? Both equally?

Depends on the series and the fandom. Since becoming involved in the Hetalia fandom, I've shipped more slash- then again, the general level of quality slash fanworks in the LJ Hetalia comm is way higher than other fandoms I've been involved in. The opposite is Dresden Files, where I have almost no slash pairings. I have a couple slash pairings for Resident Evil, but that's mostly het, too. So it depends. However, excessive sexism in a fandom will make me less likely to ship the slash.

Do your ships follow certain patterns or have commonalities?

I mostly like pairings where the characters make each other stronger (so if I think there's a huge disparity between the characters emotionally or in the way they're written, I probably won't like them; SEE: most seme/uke stuff). I also like villain/fallen!hero ships for the sheer twistedness of it (there is a part of me that ships Aizen/Urahara, for example).

Will you pimp this poll out to other people

[greeneyedlady]

Hetalia is actually my biggest foray into the world of slash, being very strongly het-focused in almost all of my other fandoms. There is something unique about Hetalia, I think. The slash doesn't really feel like slash in the way it is described in too many pretentious meta essays about its subversiveness and inherent superiority.

I am glad you said that thing about sexism. I do that too sometimes. I will support the female love interest all the more strongly if the fandom seems to hate her just for having a vagina and getting in the way of the gay. Thank you for contributing!

[qualapec]

The slash doesn't really feel like slash in the way it is described in too many pretentious meta essays about its subversiveness and inherent superiority.

I think it seems subversive and superior to other slash because...well, the fandom actually freaking tries. It's the first fandom I've been in where character is generally more important than teh pretty or making them slide easily into seme/uke stereotypes. There is some of that, but I see less character assassination as a result. It's still slash, it's just mostly the...good kind, for lack of a better term.

Also, I was wondering if you had any links to these pretentious metas? Being extremely over-opinionated myself, I'm interested XD

^_^ It's always nice to encounter people who care about the ladies! Another one I hate is when people automatically call a strong female character "Mary Sue" as a way to imply that a strong female is something bad or undesirable for a writer.

[seatalia]

What are your ships?
Oh god, I have a lot, so I'll try to narrow it down to my current fandoms:

Hetalia: Sweden/Finland + Sealand, Spain/Romano, and Prussia/Hungary
Team Fortress 2: Heavy/Medic, Spy/Scout's Mom, RED Scout/BLU Scout, Soldier/Engineer
Left 4 Dead: Ellis/Zoey, Nick/Ellis
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Kaworu/Shinji
Bill and Ted: Bill/Ted
The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon/Penny
How I Met Your Mother: Barney/Robin, Marshall/Lily

Do you mostly ship slash? Het? Both equally?
I mostly ship slash, though het pairings do catch my interest once in a while, and like alliterations said, some fandoms for me (How I Met Your Mother) are exclusively het. And like Mindy said, for some fandoms (for me it's Hetalia and Team Fortress 2) it's difficult to have an equal ratio of het to slash pairings.

Do your ships follow certain patterns or have commonalities?Aside from being that most of it's slash, I'm not sure. I tend to go for pairings that are either very cute (Marshall/Lily, SuFin, Heavy/Medic) or pairings where they don't always get along all the time

[greeneyedlady]

Thank you so much for contributing! Your response is another support for the theory that het has more prominence in western media fandoms than in anime/manga. Of course, slash is still very popular in western media fandoms, but it seems like the woman-hating and het-hating is a little less rampant. I wonder if it is because the average age (and maturity level) of anime/manga fans is quite a bit younger than western media fans. Or it could even have a little bit to do with how geneder relationships are portrayed through the lens of Japanese social norms in manga/anime. It is definitely a lot to think about.

[sodomites]

What are your ships?
left4dead: nick/ellis & semi hints of nick/rochelle
team fortress 2: sniper/sniper, soldier/engineer, heavy/medic, engineer/spy & pretty much open to all pairings.

Do you mostly ship slash? Het? Both equally?
A majority of the time I tend to ship slash and rare occasions it'll be het.

Do your ships follow certain patterns or have commonalities?
It's a repetitive cycle of love/hate and personalities that clash.

Will you pimp this poll out to other people so I can get more feedback? Pretty please?
maybe

driveby

[seatalia]

tyler did you get a new LJ

Re: driveby

[sodomites]

I have multiple ljs because I like to change classes at a drop of a dime.

GOD AM I THAT OBVIOUS?!

Re: driveby

[seatalia]

i saw sniper/sniper and i was like YEP THAT'S TYLER

brb adding you again is that ok

[kasumicc]

About the Has shipping ever affected a friendship or relationship, my answer goes like this. Yes, it did. I never liked yaoi until recently, and a friend I had, who's very homophobic and anti-yaoi, wasn't amused with this. She gave me a really nasty teasing, she would look down to my OTP...I got mad, I stopped talking to her, and everything went downhill from there. I ended losing a whole bunch of friends because of this.
I don't regret it. I can't stand intolerant people.

Now the questions:

What are your ships? 90% of times I'll ship the main canon pairing, especially in shoujo anime/manga. Since I ship in every single series it would be hard to list them all, but some heavy ships of mine would include America/England from Hetalia, Ed/Winry from FMA, Usagi/Mamoru from Sailor Moon and Nodame/Chiaki from Nodame Cantabile...

Do you mostly ship slash? Het? Both equally? Mostly het, with the sole exceptions of CLAMP works, and Hetalia. In Hetalia's case, I ship both slash and het the same way.

Do your ships follow certain patterns or

[greeneyedlady]

Thanks for contributing! Good answers! I am actually one of those rare people who refuses to ship most of the heavily implied slash in CLAMP works. I think the only slash pairing I like by CLAMP is the guys from Legal Drug. But ships like Doumeki/Watanuki and Kurogane/Fay I tend to despise because they all follow the same "Let's jam in as much of our usual eye-gouging 'subtext' as possible without any definitive evidence as possible" pattern. So I react by saying, "If you aren't going to actually make them gay, I am not going to read them as such." It is sort of a defiant attitude of mine. I also refuse to ship any slash in Reborn! I think it comes down to me rejecting what I perceive as pandering to fujoshi in shounen manga. Yes, that is definitely it.

My CLAMP OTP has always been Sorata/Arashi from X.

[nupinoop296]

What are your ships?
I'll just list OTPS from three fandoms:
Kingdom Hearts: Sora/Kairi, Roxas/Namine
Yugioh!: Yugi/Anzu, Joey(Jounouchi)/Mai
Hetalia: Canada/Ukraine, America/Belarus

Do you mostly ship slash? Het? Both equally?
I only ship het. Slash is against my beliefs and squicks me out.

Do your ships follow certain patterns or have commonalities?
I've noticed that I seem to like "Shy/Dopey GuyxIndependent Girl" ships in several cases.

Will you pimp this poll out to other people so I can get more feedback? Pretty please?
Sure. :)

[greeneyedlady]

It's nice to hear from a fellow het-lover (though Hetalia is my exception to the pattern). For me it is not about any sort or moral beliefs but about loving the female characters and relating to them and wanting to see them get the love stories they deserve.

Shy/Dopey Guy x Independent Girl is a nice pattern. I definitely like it more than a romance where the girl is too shy and demure and "yamato nadeshiko." My favorite het-ships in Hetalia are Hungary/Prussia and Russia/girl!America, and while those guys aren't exactly shy or dopey, the feisty nature of the girls is key.