Why is [blank] Ship So Popular?

Sometimes what seems to you is incredibly popular within the fandom. You personally can't explain it, so here's your opportunity to ask people in the know why that pairing is so popular. This is not a forum for bashing pairings but for those honestly curious as to why a specific pairing is very popular/more popular than others.

Just make sure to list the fandom that it comes from since some names tend to overlap.

For my own: Star Trek (the Alternate Original Movies from 2009+) Khan Noonien Singh/Pavel Chekov and Pavel Chekov/Leonard Mc Coy

I...just have no idea where that came from...

edited 24th Mar '14 1:19:44 PM by Notoyax17

It's really weird for me because in the universe I remain in, Khan hated Chekov for reasons never explained, since they never met.

Interesting. The only reason I could think of for the pairing (at least for the movies) was, you know, tossing what is essentially a dragon and a mouse into a room together and watching the smex play out. Which, admittedly, is really a good enough reason in itself but the logical part of my brain was just trying to find a way to justify it.

"Khan"/Chekov I'd guess is popular because both characters are fandom darlings. Reboot!Chekov in particular is cast as the poor wide-eyed woobie ripe for abuse from an asshole, for fans of that dynamic.

Most non-canon popular ships can be broken down into how the fanbase is showing itself to be incredibly creepy.

Like the Harry/Hermione ship, which exists 'cause the shipper projects himself onto Harry and has the hots for Emma Watson.

Sometimes start as a joke. Mami gets eaten by Charlotte -> let's parody it -> let's make them together -> cognitive dissonance -> let's ship them.

I normally wouldn't agree with this, but the movies didn't help the case. (Also I actually read HP fanfiction and know exactly how many people are powertripping via Harry.)

edited 24th Mar '14 7:01:08 PM by Night

Ha ha, spoilers.

It's pretty much a sled now. Don't lose your head for this.

edited 25th Mar '14 5:50:43 AM by RN452

I have a whole shipping genre that I do not understand:

Twincest. Or, if you will, Twincest and Clone-cest.

I've encountered it in almost every fandom I've been in, any fandom that features twins or magical clones and things that are in between. I really just don't get the idea of it being romantic or sexy for someone to be attracted to someone with identical / near identical DNA. I suppose it is "twice of a character to love and oogle," but there's no variety in it, either in imagining it from fan fiction text or seeing the characters together in fan art. It also usually completely ignores canon as to whom characters are hinted to be attracted to or an established brotherly and/or counterpart relationship.

I actually kind of understand it in one fandom I've been in: Trigun. Knives is a creepy character with an obsession over Vash. I always interpreted it as "elder/stronger twin trying to protect his brother and make him see the light." (They differ on the key issue of whether or not Humanity should be wiped out). Still, some of Knives'... mannerisms... make me able to see why fans used to latch onto it, at least in a one-sided way. I wrote a few fanfics that played with a one-sided lust, myself. However, a friend of mine once said "If Vash knew about Twincest, he'd rethink his position on suicide."

But, other fandoms, I really don't understand it. I'm in Legend of Zelda fandom. Dark Link strikes me as more of a spell than a character, with less personality than even Link is given, and yet... I dare you to find a fanfic which features the two that doesn't turn into sexytimes. (There are a few... ones that focus on battle, but... they're a few). In Kid Icarus fandom, there plenty of people who have the "brothers" mentality for Pit and Pittoo, but there's enough Twincest to baffle me a bit.

If it floats your boat, fine, have fun with it. I just don't get it myself.

I think it often comes from the idea or image that most twins are incredibly close and often know each other better than anyone else. If we were to add on living in close quarters for much of their puberty and (in certain fandoms) the characters being already really affectionate and with have shipping!

Adding Foe yay on top of all that doesn't help.

Agreed. See also: the Kingdom Hearts fandom, and fans of at least two different Tales games.

I have yet to see a fanbase that didn't jump on a situation like that.

edited 25th Mar '14 3:35:59 PM by SapphireBlue

You have to see the Vocaloid fandom: there are over 15k fics in its and, for some reason, the Sturgeon's Law is even narrower (in other words, it's not 90% of vocaloid fics that suck, it's at least 98.47164124%) and when I filter for "most reviewed" or "most favorited", there are twincest fics between Len and Rin Kagamine. The problem is that, since there is no canon in Vocaloid, they don't actually need to be siblings and yet people insist on twincest between them^note This is what a realistic take on it would go, it isn't pretty.

Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones also had really thick Twincest subtext between the two protagonists, Eirika and Ephraim. But then again, Fire Emblem has its own subpage for Brother–Sister Incest....

@12: Foe Yay is one of the Shipping trend I can't get my head around, actually.

Yes, I know that there's a saying that there's a very thin line between love and hate, but just because they're both intense emotions, doesn't mean that people will flip over from one side to the other like a coin (because, seriously, I don't think that's how emotions work). That's how it's frequently manifested in fanworks, though - two characters are canonically enemies and hate each other, but when they are paired together in fanfiction, it's mostly goes as follows: "they met, and suddenly decided that they love each other and have sexytime. The End."

I don't understand Foe Yay either. I mean, if they warm up to each other over time in the source material, that's one thing, but if they never do? People don't just jump from hate to love like that.

If it's some kind of twisted love-hate relationship, then that's one thing...but if the characters just legitimately can't stand each other, then it really doesn't make sense.

I've seen some Foe Yay that seemed at least plausible, but I can't recall where.

Foe Yay typically doesn't work between characters that actually hate each other, since it's usually the same impulses as glad-to-be-alive-sex pushed into a context it's having trouble with.

Regarding the previously mentioned Harry/Hermione ship... Doesn't help that Rowling herself had very recently expressed great regret at pairing Harry with Ginny and Ron with Hermione, at least because she now sincerely believes that Ron and Hermione will quickly end up requiring relationship counselling if we want to be realistic. She now honestly thinks that Harry is a much better choice for Hermione (not sure if she's implying that Ginny is better for Ron too, though; the news article on this was a few months ago, and I don't have a link to it on hand).

I'm prone to take that more as "caved after years of bitching from the worst faction of shippers in the history of fandom."

Because the only real arguments I've heard for "Hermione is a better match for Harry than Ginny" are "I headcanon that Ginny slipped him a love potion" and "I wrote a shitty fanfic where I altered Harry's personality."

edited 26th Mar '14 1:44:09 PM by Pannic

You've both not analyzed what was said by Rowling closely enough.

Harry was better for Hermoine than Ron. This is, insofar as it goes, reasonably true; Harry is more likely to smoothly mesh with Hermonine than Ron is.

What is pointedly not said is that Hermoine was better for Harry than Ginny, because she's not.

A pairing I never understood is Naruto/Tayuya. Was it because she's a redhead in the anime?

I don't think there was really any reason for it other than Author Appeal.

I'm gonna bite: Elsanna, from Frozen.

I'm as big of a fan of lesbians as any other heterosexual male.

Both princesses are friggin' hot.

They have great character relations with each other, yes.

But seriously, fandom...Disney makes this movie that's a deconstruction of all their previous movies' attitudes about love by setting it so that familial love is just as good as romantic love...and your reaction is to turn it back into romantic love?

On a side note, I wonder what it says about me that this bugs me more than the incest part of it.