Hello...? Is this thing on?
Apr. 15th, 2022 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eirenicalI really do want to try to start using my DW journal more again. Starting to feel lately like there are things I just... don't want to discuss on tumblr. Or back off from making that publicly accessible, at least.
So, here goes, I guess?
I've had this realization slowly percolating in the back of my mind over the past year or so and this morning it kind of solidified into a working theory. And it's weirding me out just a little because it's a major change in how I interact with media and I'm still not sure what to think about it.
I will own up to the fact that I am a shipper at heart. My gateway drug into a piece of media is almost always a ship. With The Untamed it was Wangxian. With Guardian it was Weilan. With DMBJ it's Pingxie. And once I settle in, I tend to multi-ship, but there's usually one main ship that's my go-to.
But what I've been noticing lately is that I fall out of love with ships, and that's usually my first step to falling out of love with the entire canon. But it's not quite as simple as that? It isn't even that I fall out of love with the actual ship. I fall out of love with the entire idea of shipping within that piece of media.
As near as I can tell, it's some weird intersection of me being aro/ace and my ADHD hyperfixation tendency that's doing it. I will be full bore hyperfixated on a ship for however long that lasts... but then at some point my brain remembers that I'm aro af and I don't REALLY have an interest in romance. And I start to lose interest in the ship that got me into the canon to begin with. And at that point, one of two things happens: either I find a new (usually minor or secondary) ship to hyperfixate on, or I slip totally to the side and hyperfixate on the character I headcanon as aro/ace. Sometimes this happens in a slow slide from one to the other.
In TUD, I hovered in Nielan for a while, then landed on Jiang Cheng. In Guardian, I slipped almost entirely away from the fandom, then circled back to land on Da Qing. And it's just... really interesting to me that this is how my brain is working right now. Because it never used to work that way before. O_o;;;
So, now there's a part of me that is living in constant fear of the fact that I'm going to fall out of love eventually with a ship that is currently consuming me. And I know it will be OK on the other side, because here I am, a little baffled, but otherwise OK... but there's a part of me that still mourns the love I had for those ships and those canons.
And I'm also realizing that I'm almost better off if I CAN'T hyperfixate and hyper-consume fandom stuff for a ship, or if the fandom isn't big enough to produce enough content that I can binge it like that, or if I land on a character, instead of a ship, and can multi-ship from the get-go. Like, in Les Mis (apart from my e/R phase... come on, most of us had one XD) I landed on Courfeyrac (and then Feuilly) fairly quickly, and multi-shipped them pretty much from the get-go. And even though I'm not really producing Les Mis content anymore, I'm JUST as in love with Courfeyrac and Feuilly as I was before.
So, I don't know what any of this means, really. I don't really think it has to mean anything. But I think I may start trying to pay more attention to loving individual characters and less... ships? Because I know THOSE loves will hold past the point where I lose interest in the ship. And that's reassuring. ^_^
So, here goes, I guess?
I've had this realization slowly percolating in the back of my mind over the past year or so and this morning it kind of solidified into a working theory. And it's weirding me out just a little because it's a major change in how I interact with media and I'm still not sure what to think about it.
I will own up to the fact that I am a shipper at heart. My gateway drug into a piece of media is almost always a ship. With The Untamed it was Wangxian. With Guardian it was Weilan. With DMBJ it's Pingxie. And once I settle in, I tend to multi-ship, but there's usually one main ship that's my go-to.
But what I've been noticing lately is that I fall out of love with ships, and that's usually my first step to falling out of love with the entire canon. But it's not quite as simple as that? It isn't even that I fall out of love with the actual ship. I fall out of love with the entire idea of shipping within that piece of media.
As near as I can tell, it's some weird intersection of me being aro/ace and my ADHD hyperfixation tendency that's doing it. I will be full bore hyperfixated on a ship for however long that lasts... but then at some point my brain remembers that I'm aro af and I don't REALLY have an interest in romance. And I start to lose interest in the ship that got me into the canon to begin with. And at that point, one of two things happens: either I find a new (usually minor or secondary) ship to hyperfixate on, or I slip totally to the side and hyperfixate on the character I headcanon as aro/ace. Sometimes this happens in a slow slide from one to the other.
In TUD, I hovered in Nielan for a while, then landed on Jiang Cheng. In Guardian, I slipped almost entirely away from the fandom, then circled back to land on Da Qing. And it's just... really interesting to me that this is how my brain is working right now. Because it never used to work that way before. O_o;;;
So, now there's a part of me that is living in constant fear of the fact that I'm going to fall out of love eventually with a ship that is currently consuming me. And I know it will be OK on the other side, because here I am, a little baffled, but otherwise OK... but there's a part of me that still mourns the love I had for those ships and those canons.
And I'm also realizing that I'm almost better off if I CAN'T hyperfixate and hyper-consume fandom stuff for a ship, or if the fandom isn't big enough to produce enough content that I can binge it like that, or if I land on a character, instead of a ship, and can multi-ship from the get-go. Like, in Les Mis (apart from my e/R phase... come on, most of us had one XD) I landed on Courfeyrac (and then Feuilly) fairly quickly, and multi-shipped them pretty much from the get-go. And even though I'm not really producing Les Mis content anymore, I'm JUST as in love with Courfeyrac and Feuilly as I was before.
So, I don't know what any of this means, really. I don't really think it has to mean anything. But I think I may start trying to pay more attention to loving individual characters and less... ships? Because I know THOSE loves will hold past the point where I lose interest in the ship. And that's reassuring. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2022-04-19 06:40 am (UTC)With DMBJ I fell in love with Zhang Qiling and obviously Wu Xie is the most invested in him, but I also think Pangzi or Hei Xiazi are a good ship. For Xiaoge, I also love reading him getting cared for by friends/acquaintances because he's had basically so little of that in his long life, I don't even care who does the comfort/caring.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-19 06:13 pm (UTC)And Les Mis fandom for a pretty good long while, and while there were two kind of... juggernaut ships, so to speak (...for given values of juggernaut XD), the fandom was large enough that you could easily avoid them if they didn't interest you or if they ceased to interest you.
But most of the c-drama fandoms I've been in have been small enough on the English speaking side, that if you fall off those juggernaut ships, there are very few other places to GO. Like, Wangxian is the largest ship in The Untamed fandom on AO3 to the tune of 17,000 MORE FIC than the next most popular ship. And in Guardian, Weilan is the most popular ship to the tune of 10x more than the next ship after them (4200 vs. 400). Now, TUD has ballooned so much that it probably IS large enough to support people playing only in the side yards at this point, but it's also become so toxic that I just... don't want anything to do with it anymore, mostly. :P
BUT I'VE WANDERED FAR OFF THE POINT. XD
The point is that I agree. I much prefer it when my fandom love is character driven with shippy things on the side, and I think the fact that falling off the ship made me fall off the fandom entirely not once but TWICE has been enough of a wake up call to hopefully prevent me from doing it again? 🤞 ^_^
no subject
Date: 2022-04-19 06:58 pm (UTC)Yeah I feel that in most of my fandoms gen-fic really doesn‘t get enough love and attention. Think part of it is AO3 and its filters which leads to searching specifically for what you‘re in the mood for as opposed to older Archives (which still had basic search functions) but where I often simply browsed by character or latest story added....