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After everything blew up on [livejournal.com profile] mrv3000’s post yesterday, I’m going to temp fate with my own talk about OTP shipping. But I’m pretty sure a lot fewer people in fandom know who I am so we’ll if the wankers find me.


Okay, I use the terms OTP fairly loosely, but it still first it has to mean two things:
-That I feel invested in the relationship.
-That I decidedly prefer the two characters together over any other pairing involving them.

There are plenty of ships I enjoy but don’t feel invested in. They work out or they don’t but I don’t really spend much time away from the show caring about that relationship.

The second qualification does not mean I don’t respect, and sometimes even like, other options for shipping the characters, but it does mean that I can clearly tell that one of them is a favorite.

Neither of these mean that I don’t respect that other people have different opinions. Neither of these mean that I don’t sometimes dabble in other ships from the show, sometimes even involving my OTP. It just means that *to me* there is a pairing that I enjoy a lot and prefer over other options.

I’m not even going into any specific fandom examples. Ask away about them, but for the main post I’m keeping it fandom-neutral.

But to get back to [livejournal.com profile] mrv3000’s original point, why does fandom see to think it’s “wrong” to have a favorite? And to have a strong opinion about why they are your favorite? And to have opinions about others ships (though not the shippers mind you) that may or may not be influenced by they ship you like best? Or just to not ship anyone/everyone?

Go ahead and approach fandom and shipping however *you* want. But seriously, be respectful to people with other opinions and approaches, especially when you enter their space.

Date: 2010-07-10 06:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrv3000.livejournal.com
It seemed to get off the rails when people wandered in who were convinced that if someone had an OTP, they were unable to respect any other ships. And while it's true that personally I don't believe there was ever any kind of romantic relationship between Two and Jamie, why wouldn't I leave a Two/Jamie shipper to their shipping? Am I actually expected to change my mind about the pairing, just so some other person can ship that? Why exactly is my thinking given so much importance?

Date: 2010-07-10 06:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrv3000.livejournal.com
I've seen the attitude before, but nothing like in DW.

Date: 2010-07-10 08:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karenor.livejournal.com
What really got my goat (I just spent a long while not paying attention to Germany/Uraguay and reading the comments there) is that not only were people coming in saying "I'm so oppressed by you and how could you think the Doctor wasn't shagging everyone he ever met" (oh noes, hyperbole!) but they were saying "how DARE you say 'live and let live!!! How INSULTING!"

Which made me make emoticon faces at my BlackBerry.

Date: 2010-07-10 09:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mrv3000.livejournal.com
There really was no winning. :-\

Date: 2010-07-10 08:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shinyopals.livejournal.com
YOU'RE A TRAITOR TO THE FANDOM. HOW CAN YOU GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT WHEN INNOCENT PEOPLE SHIP DIFFERENTLY TO YOU?

Date: 2010-07-10 10:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moon-blitz.livejournal.com
I'm not sure if I even have an OTP for Doctor Who. I mean, there are a ton of pairings that I enjoy and like to read (as insane as they are), but none that I'd insist on loving more than any else.

Actually, I don't seem to have an OTP for most shows I watch, just because I don't go crazy where shipping is concerned. I suppose it depends on the characters and the show itself. Does that make any sense?

Date: 2010-07-13 03:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] moon-blitz.livejournal.com
No, no, absolutely not! I don't mind if someone has an OTP (or OT3/4), and most times I can even see the logic behind the pairing. Everyone is allowed to enjoy a show in their own special way, whether it be by theorizing about what will happen in the episodes to come, or by writing fanfiction about their favourite pairing.

And those crazies are obviously that: crazy. OTP shippers are not doing the fandom wrong by only focusing on two characters. In fact, they are adding to the fandom by expressing their love for the show in their own unique way.

I never got too involved with the Heroes fandom (haven't seen anything past S2, not sure if I should), but I do have a few favourite ships of my own. If there is a pairing in any fandom that I dislike or can't get (Zuko/Katara being one), I just avoid it and let those people who enjoy that pairing do their own thing.

Date: 2010-07-11 12:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] principia.livejournal.com
I don't know WTF people's problem is. The person who was coming in wielding the "girl cooties" icon when she was talking to OTHER WOMEN WHO ALSO SHIP was the stupidest fandom thing I may ever have seen in my life.

Okay, scratch that: Series Three shipwars. Stupidest thing I've seen this year, then.

Nos and her crew have been trying to make anyone who doesn't hate Rose lives miserable for years. They were at their worst just before I got into the online fandom during Series Three, and that's why I've always left my journal heavily filtered and actively block anyone whose shite I don't ever want to have to read. No anons either.

Date: 2010-07-12 02:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
I was actually thinking about this same thing last night, though I don't think I mentioned it to you, if from a different angle.

The problem I keep having is that ever since I started getting at all into slash-shipping, which is lots of fun in itself, I keep having the unfortunate experience of running into people and befriending people who end up being virtually slashers-only, in practice if not in theory.

I just wrote about this on my own LJ, kind of, but I keep having this issue lately where, on top of some other rather wonky emotions, I keep having these incredible feelings of guilt about being torn about OTPs. It's gotten so that I usually have two (usually no more and no less) major, functioning, invested ships in a show. I'm not really sure what caused this change in my attitude toward shipping, but I'm guessing it was likely something to do with a survival mechanism after the initial heartbreak of not having Rose around anymore.

That said, I still ship Doctor/Rose very, very much, but I've also become interested in other Doctor Who ships, some of which include the Doctor, and I cannot escape the guilt even though no one that is actually my friend that I bother talking to more than once actually tries to make me feel bad about it.

If I have any issue with OTPs, it's this resulting guilt that happens when you have an OTP and it begins to wander into not-so-entirely-the-O-part-of-that territory in spite of retaining the last two letters in the acronym for me... But, of course, this is entirely my fault...

I guess the fact that you brought this up is just giving me a chance to vent this, so sorry for this being long.

I have a very dear friend who is a multi-shipper like I've become, but last night she (very, very unintentionally and I'm not upset with her really) basically made something akin to the argument that Doctor/Rose wasn't really all that special or important because it was actually, apparently, unrealistic that the Doctor in any way loved Rose more than the others and that his grief following her departure could only have been related to the true reality of the Time War and his subsequent, unavoidable solitude setting in, rather than all of it being about her due to the fact that he'd left plenty of people behind before. While I will admit that I think he loves all of them, I do think that he loved Rose in a very different and special manner and who cares if it was centered around circumstance? We all love people based on circumstance, and the fact that he so happened to be in a situation where he was more likely to let himself open up to a human doesn't mean it's less special that he did.

I do agree that some of his major and kind of psychologically cracked depression over her had to do with the aftermath of the Time War, but it wasn't as if she was just a tool for coping with it, in my opinion. Rose had (along with her family) become a surrogate to the Doctor for where he belonged, and yes, that was indeed related to the lack of Time Lords and the fact that Rose (via Bad Wolf) was the closest thing to another Time Lord in existence for about five minutes, but that doesn't somehow negate the rest of their chemistry. In fact, that makes it more special to me.

...argh, etc.

Respect. Yes, respect.

Date: 2010-07-12 08:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
Agree with absolutely everything you said, I think, except this:

...it's still the Doctor I can't picture with anyone else.

The reason I cannot, even if I tried, jump on this bandwagon is that I cannot come to grips with the idea of someone who has lived more than 900 years only ever loving one person. The Doctor Dances more or less alludes to the fact that the Doctor had had romantic entanglements in the past and he refers to weddings that he was a part of several times, and regardless of who penned those particular lines, I've come to the point that I can't just ignore them as a part of the body of the canon. Sure, I can accept certain sort of romantic whimsies about Rose being the first and only of a certain sort, but over all, I just don't see it as realistic, especially long before the Doctor met her and quite some many years after she was gone in his personal time line. I just find it cripplingly unfair to trap him like that.

It'd be like saying that Daniel could never be with anyone else because he was so obviously in love with Sha're and they were the OTP in Stargate canon pre-SG-1, and in that time line, they were together for a year. Rose traveled with the Doctor for not more than five years in her personal time line, if that, and therefore, it's sort of a similar situation, I think, only the Doctor's going to have to outlive that love and loss a lot longer than Daniel will, just by nature of their species...

I don't tend to ship the Doctor with any of the other humans he's traveled with (though I occasionally wander into Doctor/Rose/Jack OT3 area), but having tried to read up on things and having watched clips here or there, though not quite full episodes yet, of old Who, I find the idea that he'd never loved anyone before Rose rather unlikely. I think there was something childlike and innocent and wide-eyed about his love for Rose, because he'd washed away (or repressed as later canon seems to imply) much of the bitterness that Nine had harbored, and with Rose (and with the acceptance of being without other Time Lords), the world, the Universe, was new and he was willing to give it a chance in a way that Nine rather refused to do, quite understandably.

However, while I know there is some strange sort of canon about how Time Lords reproduce, the Doctor had had children before and referred to a family unit. The Master, later, refers to having a relationship with a father of some sort. Therefore, one can reasonably assume just from New Who canon that Time Lords did have a concept of nuclear families, even if they were not what we'd recognize exactly. Therefore, whomever his mate was, I imagine he loved her [or since Time Lord DNA has to have coding to be both male and female within the same entity due to some various remarks on the show him as the case may be, though that's an entirely other can of worms].

Then there's Romana, who went from hating the Doctor's methods to eventually virtually mirroring his appearance, which seemed to be an allusion to the sort of relationship they had. I'm of the opinion that it never met the romantic potential it may have had and do take that particular relationship with a grain of salt due to the actors wanting to jump each other, apparently.

And then there's the Rani, with whom the Doctor was vaguely implied to have a relationship with in Old Who-proper, although it was never elaborated upon. She went to school with the Doctor and the Master and there's a bunch of canon about the three of them also being part of a social clique called the Deca and blahblahblah this-is-what-would-have-happened-if-they'd-done-Teenage-Time-Lords-the-Show.

Then there's the Master, and I've discussed that whole issue with you.

cont.

Date: 2010-07-12 08:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
And the Doctor has, obviously, in newer canon, at least been attracted to other people.

However, I am going to give myself and you the benefit of knowing that I think the Doctor is very, very reluctant toward relationships, particularly with humans due to the reasons that he told Rose in School Reunion. In spite of his implied feelings for Sarah Jane, he'd left her behind because of all of that.

...but then he continued to get closer to Rose, anyway.

So this is a case of it's better to have loved and lost, and in the end, he was always going to lose her, it's just really sad that it was cut so short. I'll admit that Rose was probably the first human he'd really let himself properly fall in love with, but whether it be human or whatever-alien in the future, I just cannot accept that the Doctor is now going to be lonely forever in that way, as much as I think he still loves and will always be affected by Rose.

Again, think Daniel and Sha're.

/rant the first




On a much shorter note:

...whenever I see a comment like "this is the only het ship I actually enjoy" I balk because...really? I often feel like slashers are more in love with slashing than the pairings they slash.

This drives me insane, too. I think that this is a symptom of a bunch of things that have more to do with social dynamic than anything people have actually thought about in terms of the characters. There are many different kinds of slashers, and certainly the following aren't the only ones, but those who seem to take slash as their flagship, rather than actually really deciding anything about the characters, what they would or wouldn't do, and what they would want *cough*Sam/Gene*cough* are:

Very insecure heterosexual girls who enjoy the porn aspect of shipping but who, for some reason, are squicked by sexual descriptions of women even though they are women and therefore, heterosexual or no, I'm confused about what the embarrassment is. It almost seems like a kind of self-sexism: Women are annoying and flabby and unattractive! Therefore, all women should GTFO while all the men oil each other up and go at it like rabbits and HATE THE WOMEN. This is not Ancient Greece.

People who, regardless of their own sexual identity think that it's somehow PC or like... fandom affirmative action... to be slashers exclusively. I see this especially in SG-1/SGA (though I haven't yet watched SGA) fandom. It seems to go something like this: The person is a big proponent of LGBT rights (I am, too, just clarifying) and somehow this gets translated into the fact that, apparently, if they're going to look at romantic relationships for fun, they have to be homosexual or otherwise the kinds of relationships that would be looked down upon by "heteronormative society". Then they'll jump on some other bandwagon, such as how wrong the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is on the part of the US military. So they decide that they ship Jack/Daniel or McShep, not actually so much because they like the pairing (as I do in the case of J/D) but because it's an opportunity to write fics about the horrors of what happens when people find out or fics about their chosen slash pair somehow speaking out for gay rights and causing a revolution, at least on base. While I think that the points that these fans are trying to make are usually quite commendable, I do not understand their desire to make their fics into PSAs or why this somehow demonizes people who just happen to be heterosexual and fall in love within fandom.... I mean, do they go around angry at all heterosexuals in real life?

I will say that I can understand, within the realm of reading or writing or enjoying NC17 sorts of things, I can understand how aesthetic preference or gender preference or any other number of various preferences could play into what a person prefers. However, this particular bit of fandom is like real life: If you don't like seeing what a certain couple does to and with each other, don't follow them into their bedroom. This is simple.

...so why are these people angry that these people have relationships at all???

I am a slasher, but I am not an exclusive one.

Re: cont.

Date: 2010-07-12 09:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
And then going forward, all those issues that impacted even his relationship with her (no matter all he let himself feel, the issues cropped up) are still there. He hasn't grown past them (Moffat's just taken over the writing), he's just added new ones on top of those old ones. Plus his feelings for *her* specifically are still there, making it really hard for me top see him romantically interested in someone else for a long time. I'm not denying that one day he could, just he needs time.

This is actually something I know I have different thoughts on than a lot of fandom, even Doctor/Rose shippers, but when people use that he's a Time Lord and eventually he'll have to move on I...don't agree exactly. I think he could given time yeah, but I think being a Time Lord is the reason I have a hard time seeing him doing it. All of his issues about relationships and the length of time they might last are there because of the Time Lord factor, humans might have some level of it but not to the level he does, especially now.


I agree, but really the only other ship I see being viable for the Doctor, given all the reasons that you have stated, is more along the lines of a What-Could-Have-Been with the Master. I know this isn't your cuppa, but I'm just saying that my Doctor/Master shipping is something much more along the lines of Daniel/Rose than you'd think, in that I consider it a sort of AU way to reconcile a lot of the feelings I have about all of that.

Not only that, but the Master was a part of his life long before Rose was, and while a very large part of it for the last several centuries in his time line, at least, has been a negative relationship, there are many, many things in Old Who canon that would tend toward supporting chemistry between them, even beyond the chemistry that RTD himself inserted as a result of his being a fan of the idea. RTD has said both at different points in time that Rose was the Doctor's soulmate and that the Master was "so very close to being" his soulmate. And I have to admit that I'm very much on that wavelength at this point.

While I also continue to hold a bunch of ideas about a negating Ten II and giving Rose her happy-for-her-ever-after ending with the Doctor, and having Ten not repeatedly shoot himself in the foot, I also for a bunch of Old Series reasons and based upon EoT kind of want to also have an AU where the Master doesn't die and he and the Doctor get to go and live in peace and have what the Doctor briefly offered in EoT2, whether it ever actually took on its slashy subtext in true form or not. Although, this comes as much from my feelings about the Master as a character as about the Doctor, though I like to think I'm being fair to both of them in my fanon/assessment.

In fact, something like this used to be canon.

Also, it is to be said that you may have a point on the nature of his relationship with Rose being very different and unique and special, because while Time Lords are capable of sexuality (and indeed the Master and the Rani both seem to exhibit a kind of hypersexuality that's related to their respective mental problems), it's sort of my personal fanon that intimate relationships between Time Lords were unnecessary as a result of their means of reproduction and with the kind of society we see the Time Lords to have had, I actually imagine that being too intimate, even with a spouse-like-partner/mate/whatever, would have been frowned upon, since the Time Lords were kind of like an entire race of even odder Jedi, except for renegades like the Doctor and his rivals and enemy-Time Lords. Therefore, even if two Time Lords were arguably what we'd call in love with each other, such a relationship probably wouldn't entirely resemble what we think of when we think of relationships, at least not at very first, due to a long line of strict tradition and the things you were saying about their lifespans and emotional issues.

I digress again.

Hope I'm not annoying you. <3 If I am just tell me to shush.

Re: cont.

Date: 2010-07-12 10:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
Shmoopy and happy is good!

...but for some reason my ships never turn out that way in the end, so I kind of gave up to the morbid, lol.

Just the few things I've read in the past seemed comical, naive, underdeveloped, or just for the sex (or, of course, a combination of any or all of the above).

...oh my, yes, and this is the painful part of that little niche of the fandom. There are the people who have been Doctor/Master shippers (and usually Kirk/Spock shippers coincide, haha) since the dawn of the Master's existence who are appalled by the fact that there are people under 30 in their fandom. And then there are fourteen-year-old slashers who write IKEA porn about them with a few idioms they've learned, obviously, only through reading other slash porn that doesn't even take into consideration the several thousand metric tons of baggage that both of them would have about each other and the lives they've led at this point.

That said, I think my RP partner and I might make it a bit easier than it actually would be when we RP them, just for the sake of the amount of time we cover in our RPs to actually get to RP anything except angst, but that aside, I'd like to think we try to deal with that sort of thing and we also have them addressing Rose and the way that's affected everything (and even Lucy from time to time).

I really don't understand people who ship the Doctor and the Master just because they think David Tennant/John Simm RPS would be hot, or something... Like I said: baggage. And really, with a ship like that, that's actually the fun bit... but not happy shmoopy fun, to be very much attested to.

...and yeah, that Academy days stuff is what's got me with all these Teenage Time Lords bunnies frolicking around in my head. It's... very hard to resist, but I'm terrified of them. I think they grow fangs at night. Although, to be said, a long time ago before many shows had even thought of spin-offs, there was talked about a spin-off that was actually about the Time Lord Academy and the younger!Doctor but they decided against it because it would have taken away from some of the Doctor's mystique.

...but that would have been right hilarious.

Addendum about Moffat that I meant to address:

Date: 2010-07-12 09:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
You were saying about Moffat having taken over the writing and this not meaning that he'd grown past the issues he has about what happened with Rose.

In fact, in spite of my other small laundry list of complaints about Moffat/why RTD was better, he actually hasn't done this, surprisingly.

I'm not gonna go into a long, spoilerific rant about this particular issue, in order not to bore you, push your Moffat!squick button, or to spoil you in case you do eventually give S5 a go, but I will say that if you look at Eleven's relationship with Amy you see definite responses that have to involve Eleven's feelings on Rose and that issue and I'd almost go so far as to say that a lot of the way Eleven treats Amy have to do with him missing Rose and not wanting to break someone else's heart(s) or his own, again.

ETA: Though I gotta wonder if this might actually be Matt Smith and Karen Gillan's influence, inasmuch as they have any, in character interpretation since Karen definitely liked Rose and all the RTD-companions and knew a fair bit about them and the fact that Matt Smith filmed with Billie Piper and knows about Doctor Who a fair bit, obviously. Because a lot of what I'm talking about is there in the lines but is there as much by what they say as how they say it...
Edited Date: 2010-07-12 09:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clockwork-sky.livejournal.com
Listen to Amy's backstory for five minutes and you immediately know that Moffat is, strangely enough, actually sort of cosmically trying to have Eleven have to continue to deal with both his Rose-issues and his Donna-issues, even though he can't reach either of them anymore. It's... actually one of the more well-done subtext things in the series, I think.

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