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

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

Il me semble (ou c'est juste moi qui projette XD) que la plupart des gens listent plusieurs pairings dans la catégorie "What's your OTP?" des friending memes. Et même si tu as un fandom dominant à un moment, ce n'est souvent pas le même l'année suivante (bon, OK, j'en suis à 1 an et demi sur Steve/Sam, mais je shippe aussi un paquet d'autres couples/triades/moresomes chez Marvel).

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

C'est pas faux, mais ce qui me gêne c'est plus la présomption que la personne en face a forcément un OTP ou même shippe quelque chose de façon plus investie que "ouais, pourquoi pas *shrug*".

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

Il y a aussi des gens qui listent des amitiés ou précisent qu'ils préfèrent le gen. Les questions des mèmes sont un peu des formules consacrées, pour faire le plus court possible, ne te prends pas trop la tête avec ça. Il me semble que c'est loin d'être une présomption forte et enquiquinante du genre les hétéros qui pensent qu'on est tous hétéros. *rolls eyes*

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

C'est pas un gro problème, c'est juste un peu chiant occasionellement et vu que, comme tu le sais, se plaindre est en France le sport national...