Snapshot of shipping now

[shallowness]

I saw an lj friending meme in passing recently – I didn’t take part, mainly because of my issues of which spoilerphobia is but one. You were meant to present general information about yourself, what TV shows, films, books etc you were interested in and also which ships you were into. I have to admit that that’s where my eyes fell when looking at other people’s answers, because it’s all very well liking the same shows, but someone might well be into a ship that I have zero interest in/am opposed to/don’t see. Ahem.

But I did wonder how I’d accurately represent the ships I’m into at the moment. I could produce a really long list of what occurred to me, but it probably wouldn’t reveal which ships I write most about in my posts or – some future day! – write fic about or hunt down to read about. And what about the ships of my heart that I don’t talk about so much now and don’t read fic for because canon got it mostly right?

And that’s just ships. What about shows, films and books? What about how favourite doesn’t always equate to most likely to talk about?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but a look at my most used tags on Dreamwidth was instructive. After generic tags (I talk about TV shows made in the UK a lot!) The Good Wife comes first, which actually relieved me. I did ship Alicia/Will hard, even through an adultery squick, even though what I watched develop was so fascinating that I got over automatic shipper responses, which speaks to the quality of the show. However Revenge is the show that comes after that, and I want to add disclaimers immediately by saying that that’s mainly talking about the show/complaining about its many faults, except I have written the odd bits of fic also – but not read any.

The Mentalist and The Mindy Project come next, and I’m happy enough to talk about how I ship Jane/Lisbon and Mindy/Danny, which are not that far removed from canon. In the high twenties: Jane Austen (I ship canonically except for Fanny/Henry) and most of those posts would be about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, MCU (deserving of its own post, but I’m OTP about Tony/Pepper and Jane/Thor, hetship Darcy, Steve and Natasha with a lot of people and have recently been persuaded of Sif/Loki). Once Upon a Time was taken off the air in the UK, but in seasons 1 and 2, I loved Snow/Charming, was taken by Rumpelstiltkin/Belle for all its, er, thorniness. Nashville has become all about the Juliette/Avery. There’s also Downton which continues to enthral/madden/amuse me (keep letting Mrs Hughes be awesome, keep churning out excellent hats and I’m sure I’ll get invested in one of the young ladies’ romances. Also, keep trotting out Violet, Isabel and the children and I’ll take all your ridiculousness, show.) And Parks and Rec – and season 3 gave me Leslie/Ben and I hope that it’s never tarnished.

BUT I want to protest that I shipped Lynda/Spike of Press Gang before I knew what shipping was. Bruce/Selina or Batman/Catwoman was also pretty influential and early. John and Aeryn are my all time OTP. I cut my fannish teeth on Wolverine/Rogue (so yes, I do ship Nick/Cassie and a few other ships of that type) and Max/Alec. I haven’t even talked about Harry Potter ships (like with the MCU I’m interested in a lot of ships: Ron/Hermione = OTP, but I ship Luna, Neville, Ginny with lots of people.) Or Layla/Warren from Sky High, which had been my writing OTP for so long...

Mostly, I’m pretty canonical, although I do get antsy where the PTB just won’t own a ship that’s clearly there whilst shilling a ship with less chemistry or interest (they tend to do the latter in TV shows). The longer, deeper I am in a fandom, the more uncanonical my shipping – I’m open to crossover ships! I’m currently reading Sherlock/Molly, even though I know it’s canon-divergent (basically by putting Molly, her feelings and choices front and centre and moulding Sherlock around that).

And I haven’t even had a look at what ships I was talking about when using the ‘shipping’ tag!