Meta Monday: Just in time to talk about DEAD PEOPLE

[dhampyresa]

yuuago : Hannibal/Scipio

Well, I think my feelings about the good ship Hannibal/Scipio are pretty well documented at this pint, but just in case, there's now a whole new tag for these two.

So I'm going to talk about something slightly different. I'm going to talk about how shipping dudes two thousand years dead helped me feel like I was finally doing fandom right.

In the parts of fandom I run in, not a friending meme goes by without the dreaded "What's your OTP?" question. I'm a gen person by nature and even worse, I tend to multiship. I never knew what to say to that question. Seeing everyone else come up with effortless answers made it feel like the unspoken assumption of the question (that everyone had to have an OTP) was true.

Now I know what to say!

(I still don't define OTP the way a lo of people seem to, though. For me it is a pairing I will always ship, not one I ship exclusively. Afaik, no one's written Hannibal/Maharbal or Aemilia/Scipio yet, but man I will be first in line to read it if they do.)

Honstely, though? There are SO MANY places where the assumption of 'everyone has an OTP' crops up. It's fucking EVERYWHERE. "The most trope-tastic fic about your OTP" Define OTP. "What would your OTP do?" How the fuck would I know. "Imagine your OTP" I DON'T HAVE ONE.

It gets tiring, after a while. It's a bunch of tiny reminders that you, personally, are Doing Fandom Wrong. (This is bullshit. There's no way to do fandom wrong, unless you hurt people, but that's not what it feels like.)

I wish people would be more open to people doing fandom differently. Not everyone has an OTP. Not everyone changes fandom every few months. Not everyone sticks with a single fandom for decades.

So now I'm a genficcer with a badly defined OTP. I'm still doing fandom wrong. I've stopped caring. You do you. I do me. Hannibal and Scipio can do each other.

Next time, I'll be talking about Greek mythology. (The Meta Monday Masterpost is here. If you want me to talk about anything, let me know over there.)

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't really do OTPs in the traditional sense either. For those sorts of memes, I tend to put my "favorite" ship of the moment, but even if I do have a favorite to point to, I never mind reading fics or meta that pair up one of the characters with someone else. And in some fandoms I haven't even had that much; quite often I've had an OTC (One True Character) instead, and will read any fic that focuses on them, regardless of gen or pairing.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I don't really have a favourite ship a lot of the time? My usual reaction is the same level of "why not" for almost every ship.

OTC! That's a nice concept. I do that a lot too.