Entry tags:
Meme time!
Fandom Tennis Match Meme:
Okay, here's how this is going to work. You comment with a fandom question. I answer it and then ask you a question that has some thematic relevance to the question you asked me.
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redbrunja asked me: "You can make three pairings disappear from fandom with a snap of your fingers. What are they?"
I've actually never found myself in a position of wishing for a pairing to go away, given that I've always found it easy to just plain avoid/scroll past pairings that I don't personally ship in all of my fandoms. So my honest answer is: None. I'm serious. This isn't just me being nicey-nice, because I literally do not understand why anybody would begrudge anybody else shipping what they ship. I can understand wanting to defend why Pairing AxB is an awesome pairing when it comes to ship wars, but I've never really understood the opposite mindset, actually caring about the fact that somebody else ships Pairing YxZ when I personally don't. Even when there are squicks involved. There are a lot of pairings in my fandoms that I just can't ship because of squick-related reasons (incest and teacher/pupil relationships being the biggest squicks that I have), but then again, I know that I ship a lot of things that squick other people (especially since I definitely have a kink for unhealthy and abusive relationships), so it's not like I have any right or reason to judge what other people ship, period. I just avoid the ships that I don't like and that's that.
So because that's a total cop-out answer, here are three pairings that I just plain don't like and avoid like the plague. I don't wish for these pairings to cease to exist or anything, but I don't ship them, I don't like them, and I avoid them as much as possible.
1. Smash: Michael/Julia. This has got to be one of the most simultaneously horrifically boring and uncomfortably creepy canon pairings I've ever suffered through. And I do mean suffered through - I almost stopped watching Smash altogether because this goddamn pairing was taking up so much screen time. (Thank God the writers finally killed it.) Michael was creepy, domineering, and invasive; Julia's angst was insufferably boring and repetitive; for a pairing based around the concept that these two people felt such an overwhelming physical attraction to each other they literally could not control themselves around each other there was practically zero onscreen chemistry between the two characters, even during the supposed "hot" sex scenes. Smash has a lot of issues with the way that it writes women and the way that it portrays relationships, and the Michael/Julia ship encapsulates the worst of it. Personally, I find it very hard to believe that a grown woman would be so overwhelmed with lust at the sight of a douchebro like Michael that she would constantly be rendered flustered to the point of speechlessness. Furthermore, I find it very insulting that the writers apparently think that Michael's creepy HEY JULIA YOU SMELL GOOD and IT'S ROMANTIC WHEN I INVADE YOUR PERSONAL SPACE and EVEN IF YOU TELL ME THAT YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED IN ME I'M NOT TAKING 'NO' FOR AN ANSWER BECAUSE DEEP DOWN I KNOW YOU WANT ME behavior to be the sort of shit that women actually swoon for. Literally swoon for. What's worse is that given all of the above I should probably have felt more angry and creeped-out about this ship than I actually did, because mostly I just felt bored by it. Painfully bored. Again, it was that fatal lack of chemistry between the two characters. Any chemistry at all. Boring, boring, awful ship. And yet there's somehow a fandom for it. I can get why there's a fandom for it - the taboo "forbidden love" factor plus the supposedly sizzling chemistry that I guess I never saw - but I got enough of this awful ship in the source material, so I just avoid it in the fandom as much as possible. This isn't always easy, though, because Smash is kind of a miniscule fandom right now.
2. X-Men: Logan/Mariko. Definitely my least-favorite X-Men ship of all time. Zero chemistry, existed only to provide Logan with more boring repetitive angst, and culminating in one of most obvious (and predictable) fridgings in X-Men canon. Even as a kid, before I even knew what a "fridging" was, I could see Mariko's death being broadcast from miles away: because she was a Beautiful Asian Woman With a Tragic Past, and therefore I knew that her story was going to end with some sort of Gruesome Self-Sacrifice For Honor (and it did), and also because she was Logan's love interest, and it was obvious even back in the 80's that comic writers were determined that Logan should never have a happy ending in any of his relationships EVER. So from the minute Mariko was first introduced I knew that it was only a matter of time before she died just so that Logan could have EVEN MORE TRAGEDY to angst over. I was right. What surprises me, however, is that to this day there's still a fandom for this pairing. Of all the bajillion Marvel characters that you could pair Logan with, people still choose Mariko?
3. 30 Rock: Jack/Liz. I just cannot get behind the idea of Jack and Liz in a romantic relationship. I just can't. I hate to be one of Those Fans, but shipping these two romantically feels (to me at least) incredibly untrue to the characters and their canon relationship. Normally I'm not opposed to the idea of characters who are close friends or partners in canon being shipped in the fandom, but the thing is, Jack and Liz aren't just "friends" in canon - they have a very different type of relationship, a mentor/mentee relationship. Also, even though they make great foils for each other in the workplace and even in each others' personal lives, they would still be completely horrible as romantic partners for each other. Sometimes your best friend is NOT the person that you want to wake up next to in bed every morning. Some people NEED for their best friend to be completely the opposite of what they would want in a romantic partner. Jack and Liz both exemplify those types of characters, and that is exactly why I just can't see them being shipped together.
Okay, so, those are my picks for the top three ships that I just avoid in the fandom as much as possible. It's not really the question that I was asked, but it's the question that I ended up answering. ^^;;
Ask me questions!
Okay, here's how this is going to work. You comment with a fandom question. I answer it and then ask you a question that has some thematic relevance to the question you asked me.
redbrunja asked me: "You can make three pairings disappear from fandom with a snap of your fingers. What are they?"I've actually never found myself in a position of wishing for a pairing to go away, given that I've always found it easy to just plain avoid/scroll past pairings that I don't personally ship in all of my fandoms. So my honest answer is: None. I'm serious. This isn't just me being nicey-nice, because I literally do not understand why anybody would begrudge anybody else shipping what they ship. I can understand wanting to defend why Pairing AxB is an awesome pairing when it comes to ship wars, but I've never really understood the opposite mindset, actually caring about the fact that somebody else ships Pairing YxZ when I personally don't. Even when there are squicks involved. There are a lot of pairings in my fandoms that I just can't ship because of squick-related reasons (incest and teacher/pupil relationships being the biggest squicks that I have), but then again, I know that I ship a lot of things that squick other people (especially since I definitely have a kink for unhealthy and abusive relationships), so it's not like I have any right or reason to judge what other people ship, period. I just avoid the ships that I don't like and that's that.
So because that's a total cop-out answer, here are three pairings that I just plain don't like and avoid like the plague. I don't wish for these pairings to cease to exist or anything, but I don't ship them, I don't like them, and I avoid them as much as possible.
1. Smash: Michael/Julia. This has got to be one of the most simultaneously horrifically boring and uncomfortably creepy canon pairings I've ever suffered through. And I do mean suffered through - I almost stopped watching Smash altogether because this goddamn pairing was taking up so much screen time. (Thank God the writers finally killed it.) Michael was creepy, domineering, and invasive; Julia's angst was insufferably boring and repetitive; for a pairing based around the concept that these two people felt such an overwhelming physical attraction to each other they literally could not control themselves around each other there was practically zero onscreen chemistry between the two characters, even during the supposed "hot" sex scenes. Smash has a lot of issues with the way that it writes women and the way that it portrays relationships, and the Michael/Julia ship encapsulates the worst of it. Personally, I find it very hard to believe that a grown woman would be so overwhelmed with lust at the sight of a douchebro like Michael that she would constantly be rendered flustered to the point of speechlessness. Furthermore, I find it very insulting that the writers apparently think that Michael's creepy HEY JULIA YOU SMELL GOOD and IT'S ROMANTIC WHEN I INVADE YOUR PERSONAL SPACE and EVEN IF YOU TELL ME THAT YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED IN ME I'M NOT TAKING 'NO' FOR AN ANSWER BECAUSE DEEP DOWN I KNOW YOU WANT ME behavior to be the sort of shit that women actually swoon for. Literally swoon for. What's worse is that given all of the above I should probably have felt more angry and creeped-out about this ship than I actually did, because mostly I just felt bored by it. Painfully bored. Again, it was that fatal lack of chemistry between the two characters. Any chemistry at all. Boring, boring, awful ship. And yet there's somehow a fandom for it. I can get why there's a fandom for it - the taboo "forbidden love" factor plus the supposedly sizzling chemistry that I guess I never saw - but I got enough of this awful ship in the source material, so I just avoid it in the fandom as much as possible. This isn't always easy, though, because Smash is kind of a miniscule fandom right now.
2. X-Men: Logan/Mariko. Definitely my least-favorite X-Men ship of all time. Zero chemistry, existed only to provide Logan with more boring repetitive angst, and culminating in one of most obvious (and predictable) fridgings in X-Men canon. Even as a kid, before I even knew what a "fridging" was, I could see Mariko's death being broadcast from miles away: because she was a Beautiful Asian Woman With a Tragic Past, and therefore I knew that her story was going to end with some sort of Gruesome Self-Sacrifice For Honor (and it did), and also because she was Logan's love interest, and it was obvious even back in the 80's that comic writers were determined that Logan should never have a happy ending in any of his relationships EVER. So from the minute Mariko was first introduced I knew that it was only a matter of time before she died just so that Logan could have EVEN MORE TRAGEDY to angst over. I was right. What surprises me, however, is that to this day there's still a fandom for this pairing. Of all the bajillion Marvel characters that you could pair Logan with, people still choose Mariko?
3. 30 Rock: Jack/Liz. I just cannot get behind the idea of Jack and Liz in a romantic relationship. I just can't. I hate to be one of Those Fans, but shipping these two romantically feels (to me at least) incredibly untrue to the characters and their canon relationship. Normally I'm not opposed to the idea of characters who are close friends or partners in canon being shipped in the fandom, but the thing is, Jack and Liz aren't just "friends" in canon - they have a very different type of relationship, a mentor/mentee relationship. Also, even though they make great foils for each other in the workplace and even in each others' personal lives, they would still be completely horrible as romantic partners for each other. Sometimes your best friend is NOT the person that you want to wake up next to in bed every morning. Some people NEED for their best friend to be completely the opposite of what they would want in a romantic partner. Jack and Liz both exemplify those types of characters, and that is exactly why I just can't see them being shipped together.
Okay, so, those are my picks for the top three ships that I just avoid in the fandom as much as possible. It's not really the question that I was asked, but it's the question that I ended up answering. ^^;;
Ask me questions!