Hmm, I guess crack shipping might be a better example of shipping for community? There's a well-known crack ship in the Sherlock fandom which is just... a character and cake. Because his brother calls him fat. And I think almost zero people who "ship" that character/cake (which is how it gets tagged on ao3) have feederism kinks or are really particularly invested in the meta behind whether that character really has some sort of relationship with cake as a food (although there are fics where that character has an eating disorder, etc, but those aren't the cake ones). It's ultimately just a silly fandom meme that happened, but because people loved the fandom, they enjoyed the meme.
Back in 2012, there was also a meme about shipping two of the republican American presidential candidates, including fic and manips and such. And I definitely don't think the people engaging with that cared about the aesthetics (unless it's an aesthetic of hate? Vicarious hatefucking?) or the compatibility of the two (besides "haha what if homophobes were gay"), or that they really derived enjoyment out of thinking about political homophobia. I mean I guess spite can be a reason to like a ship but that seems like... a really bad outlet for that.
My own example would be that I don't really care for the second most popular ship in the Sherlock fandom, which is between two characters who only ever have one six-second interaction with one another, and that only entered the canon after the relevant time period. That relevant time period would be when I was a part of the setlock community, which was those folks who wanted all the spoilers about season 3, who either went to shooting events or followed those people's live updates closely. I never did and still do not think the ship is remarkable, because I don't think those characters have distinct enough personalities to overcome the fact that there's no real interactions to work off of for meta purposes. I don't think the pairing is very remarkable and I don't go looking for it or reading it, and at best I'm neutral about it. But lots of people in that community shipped it and I greatly enjoyed the community, so I would engage with their role plays and create ship art and stuff because my friends loved that and that was enough justification for me.
I guess what I'm describing is shipping without particular passion in the ship itself, which may or may not seem like a distinct phenomenon. I would imagine that some of these examples might resonate with how antis who have "progressive" ships might feel in relation to their community's Approved woke pairings, but in a more abusive and "I'm doing what I'm told" way.
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Re: +1
Date: 3/11/19 14:04 (UTC)Back in 2012, there was also a meme about shipping two of the republican American presidential candidates, including fic and manips and such. And I definitely don't think the people engaging with that cared about the aesthetics (unless it's an aesthetic of hate? Vicarious hatefucking?) or the compatibility of the two (besides "haha what if homophobes were gay"), or that they really derived enjoyment out of thinking about political homophobia. I mean I guess spite can be a reason to like a ship but that seems like... a really bad outlet for that.
My own example would be that I don't really care for the second most popular ship in the Sherlock fandom, which is between two characters who only ever have one six-second interaction with one another, and that only entered the canon after the relevant time period. That relevant time period would be when I was a part of the setlock community, which was those folks who wanted all the spoilers about season 3, who either went to shooting events or followed those people's live updates closely. I never did and still do not think the ship is remarkable, because I don't think those characters have distinct enough personalities to overcome the fact that there's no real interactions to work off of for meta purposes. I don't think the pairing is very remarkable and I don't go looking for it or reading it, and at best I'm neutral about it. But lots of people in that community shipped it and I greatly enjoyed the community, so I would engage with their role plays and create ship art and stuff because my friends loved that and that was enough justification for me.
I guess what I'm describing is shipping without particular passion in the ship itself, which may or may not seem like a distinct phenomenon. I would imagine that some of these examples might resonate with how antis who have "progressive" ships might feel in relation to their community's Approved woke pairings, but in a more abusive and "I'm doing what I'm told" way.