FanPreferredCouple Cleanup

I probably should not have said it matched Eddie/Steve ship I apologise (though Steddie stans find it threatening enough to harass poor Grace Van Dien over it), it is still ridiculous popular pairing though and clearly more popular than Chrissy’s actual canon relationship with Jason which is what the Fan-Preferred Couple trope is all about.

I am totally fine with being removed or changed, but just don’t see quite why it is any less worthy of being there than the other examples.

Y.20

No one is saying that it it is any less worthy or doubting but it takes more than just being popular. Also the thing with her and Jason runs into a problem. Can we look at the season and all of the comments from the creators say that they preferred the Chrissy and Jason pairing. That is where I am unsure. You see while an official couple is usually enough there are expectations. Like when we discussed Ready or Not and the fact that the creators clearly didn't want us to ship the married couple.

Edited by Bullman on Jan 19th 2023 at 12:06:31 PM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Except their relationship was toxic—or at least superficial—clearly and presented as such, regardless of Jason legit caring and wanting to avenge her—without ever having truly known her in a healthy way. The creators also made it clear they wished they hadn't killed Chrissy—at least so soon—so that she and Eddie could've had more time. Pertaining to Eddie and Chrissy, that screams canon to me.

Okay I removed the Eddie/Chrissy for now with a link to this discussion, since most of the responses seemed to be that her and Jason don't count as creator preferred. I'm opinion to discussing adding it back.

Edited by Bullman on Jan 19th 2023 at 12:19:23 PM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

So on, FanPreferredCouple.Western Animation the Voltron entry was changed from this:

• Voltron: Legendary Defender has Keith/Lance and Keith/Shiro competing for the place as biggest ship depending on what part of the world you live in:
  • In the western world, Keith and Lance is the most popular, and far more so than the canon Lance/Allura. Most of the shows fics on AO3 are Keith/Lance. They've had varying levels of Ho Yay throughout the show, including later seasons with the lion switch, where Keith becomes the leader and Lance becomes his right hand man.
  • In the eastern parts of the fandom, the most popular ship is Shiro/Keith, and even in the west is still easily Shiro's biggest ship. The pairing is also far bigger than Shiro's endgame one with Curtis. It helps that Shiro is, unlike Lance, is actually gay and the two are the closest pair out of the whole group. The two also have a massive case of Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading that often leads to fans seeing them as more romantic than the creators meant them to.

To this:

• Voltron: Legendary Defender has Keith/Lance and Keith/Shiro competing for the place as biggest ship in the fandom depending on what part of the world you live in (Western fans tend to prefer the former, while Eastern fans the latter). In canon, Lance is perpetually smitten with Allura and the two date in the final season, up until her death. Meanwhile, though Shiro is explicitly noted to be gay, it's later learned that he had a fiancée named Adam who died during Sendak's invasion of Earth, and he ends the series marrying Curtis.

I don't know which version I prefer honestly. I am not sure they needed to be combined, but I prefer shorter entries in general.

Edited by Bullman on Jan 19th 2023 at 4:00:26 AM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

I'm good either way. I think the one entry version helps better truncate it though.

Yeah, it's different but otherwise accurate enough. Got no problem with the new one. I do like how the new one concisely combines the two to reflect how both ships are intimately linked whether their fans like it or not, but I did like how the old one explains why the two ships are so popular. Maybe modify it slightly:

• Voltron: Legendary Defender has Keith/Lance and Keith/Shiro competing for the place as biggest ship in the fandom depending on what part of the world you live in (Western fans tend to prefer the former, while Eastern fans the latter). While Lance is Vitriolic Best Buds with Keith in a way that can be interpreted as Belligerent Sexual Tension, in canon he is perpetually smitten with Allura and the two date in the final season, up until her death. Meanwhile, Keith and Shiro are extremely close, with Shiro being explicitly described as gay and Keith lacking any interest in women, but it's later learned that Shiro had a fiancé named Adam who died during Sendak's invasion of Earth, and he ends the series marrying Curtis.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 19th 2023 at 4:32:36 AM

Oh I like that version a lot and say we go with it.

Edited by Bullman on Jan 19th 2023 at 5:02:59 AM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Like Alley's version.

(x3) Your version looks great to me.

So someone changed Buffy and Spike's entry from this

• Right from Spike's introduction in season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the at the time Crack Pairing of Buffy/Spike had its fans, but its popularity as a ship really picked up when season four aired and Spike joined the main cast. And though they only really had an affair and plenty of Ship Tease rather than a true relationship (on the show), they still have a very active fanbase even twenty years after the show wrapped up and remain the pairing wi th the highest number of fanfiction on Archive of Our Own—beating out even Buffy/Angel by a rather large margin of a couple thousand.

To this:

• Right from Spike's introduction in season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the at the time Crack Pairing of Buffy/Spike had its fans, but its popularity as a ship really picked up when season four aired and Spike joined the main cast. They would later be upgraded to an Official Couple in season 6.

Now it no longer mentions a creator preferred pairing.

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Go ahead and revert it - the main reason why that entry is even valid in the first place is because they never actually dated on the show (in fact, the entire point of their sexual relationship in season six is to highlight how toxic it is), so they were never an Official Couple.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Jan 25th 2023 at 3:30:56 PM

I removed it because I think the idea that a pairing who had sex, kissed, etc. multiple times, and eventually had a love confession, don't count as "canon" just because it wasn't healthy or didn't fit someone's personal standards of "romance" doesn't make a lot of sense (does not fit the way that "canon" is generally used, which is usually more about acts than the health/quality of a relationship), and the entry felt like someone injecting their subjective judgment on the ship in there. Buffy/Spike is generally talked within the Buffy fandom as being one of Buffy's three major "canon" romances along with Angel and Riley. And Fan-Preferred Couple is specifically for non-canon ships that are more popular than a canon one, not a competing canon couple, so I changed the entry to focus on how the relationship started out as fan-preferred before becoming canon. If that means it shouldn't be included, then I support just deleting the entry entirely. I don't think it makes sense for this to include a definition of "canon" that goes against how the vast majority of discussion on this show frames the relationship.

Edited by AnneOfCleves on Jan 25th 2023 at 4:37:45 AM

Yeah. A hook-up unless it leads to an actual canon pairing doesn't count.

But that's exactly my point; it did lead to a "canon relationship." It started with hook-ups, but it turned into an ongoing relationship that became one of the major plot threads in the last two seasons of the show, again, including love confessions. For those who aren't familiar with Buffy, I'll just link to the applicable entry from the Buffyverse wiki (where Spike's relationship with Buffy is under the "romantic" heading). So going back to the idea that an ongoing relationship doesn't count just because it's "toxic," that would invalidate everything from the central couples of Hannibal and Killing Eve to the main romantic plots of multiple gothic novels as "no longer canon." That's just not a standard that makes any sense.

Edited by AnneOfCleves on Jan 25th 2023 at 4:42:52 AM

Okay. So now we have a problem. If they are canon then they don't count. I remember being told that the creators preferred her with Angel per Word of God. If that is not true and they are canon then we cut them. For the same reason we cut the Killing Eve.

The toxicity is all how it is presented. If the show ultimately says that they shouldn't be together then we can't say that they are creator preferred. For instance the Ready or Not example that was cut because the creators clearly didn't. Prefer the married couple.

Edited by Bullman on Jan 25th 2023 at 3:46:09 AM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Then I vote for eliminating the example. The idea that Buffy/Spike is not canon is a minority opinion at best (and I think the Buffyverse wiki link I provided explains why), and one that seems to come from people thinking it shouldn't be. What the writers said they meant to do doesn't matter as much as what they put in the show, and they depicted Buffy as in romantic and sexual relationships with both Angel and Spike at different points. The example fits more in Ship-to-Ship Combat (where it already has an entry). At best this is a "debate" about whether it counts as canon or not (and it's one I've literally never seen anywhere else after years in Buffy fandom, ftr), and I think that alone is reason enough for eliminating it. This page should be for examples where the concept of "canon" and "non-canon" is pretty straightforward and widely-agreed-upon, otherwise there's not much point in separating it out from Ship-to-Ship Combat.

Edited by AnneOfCleves on Jan 25th 2023 at 5:06:12 AM

What I was saying is if nothing leads to it, it's not canon and if it does lead to something, it is.

With Eddie and Chrissy as we recently discuss, while she hadn't gotten the chance to leave Jason for him before she was killed, it was heavily implied that that would've been where the Creators brought things and thus, canon. Buffy and Angel sound like they were meant to be canon and therefore, can't be an FPC.

@futuremoviewriter I get what you're saying, but the point of my penultimate comment was that it does in fact lead to a relationship, one that's one of the last few seasons' major story arcs. Therefore by your definition it's clearly "canon."

I get the sense from your comments you haven't seen the show, which is fine, but the comments of people who have should probably hold more weight here since we can speak more to the nature of the relationship in it. I'd also recommend reading the wiki entry I provided, since I think it illustrates (or at least, as well as you can to someone who hasn't seen Buffy) why it should count as "canon."

Edited by AnneOfCleves on Jan 25th 2023 at 6:18:24 AM

Do wanna say that they reason we don't only count between canon relationships and relationships that are completely non-canon is because there are plenty of cases where a relationship is "canon" but it involves an obvious Romantic False Lead that's meant to be a stepping stone to the endgame pairing but fans prefer the character with said Romantic False Lead. Usually we can denote between canon relationships by what the endgame pairing is, though I'll admit there's a lot of nuance to what counts as "canon" so things can be difficult and not every work has an endgame pairing, either.

Also, in terms of what counts as a "toxic" pairing, it's mostly to avoid counting works where a pairing is "canon" but the point of the work is the person realizing the relationship or the person they're with sucks and they want out of it. Which can usually be indicated by them not ending up together. I think that's different than something like Hannibal or Killing Eve where the relationships are toxic or dysfunctional but they're still basically their endgame relationships that the works supports ultimately happening even if it's not supposed to be healthy. It's complicated and there's definitely nuance to it.

Now, I will say we do have, as per the trope description, 3 main criteria for indicating what a creator-preferred couple is:

1. An Official Couple

2. A Maybe Ever After

3. Word of God indicating that they wanted that couple to be a thing or that they believe they eventually got together.

Now, once again, there's definitely some nuance in there, but from what I know of Buffy she doesn't end up with anyone, right? So multiple Official Couples but no endgame pairing makes it harder to compare with each other. However, based on our standards here, if there is Word of God indicating they wanted her to end up with Angel, I would count it as the creator-preferred ship if there's a source on it. If not, I would say just delete the entry, it sounds like they were all canon at some point.

"Let’s see who’s stronger: someone that has something to protect, or someone that has nothing to lose."

I've never watched the series myself, but as far as I've understood it, Buffy was treated as Angel's true love, to the point that his Angelus form is all about this fact.

Seconding what Oshawott 337 says that FPC can encompass fan-preferred canon couples in situations where the same character has multiple partners where one partner is clearly portrayed as the more "favored" than the other, but the fandom had different ideas about the character's relationship with them. "Toxic" isn't about enforcing that only morally pure ships can be written about, but that some canon ships are deliberately set up to fail with one of the characters being an obvious Romantic False Lead (but the fandom may nevertheless embrace them, or feel the relationship failure was a result of Derailing Love Interests).

So am I cutting or reverting the Buffy entry.

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

I think it can be reverted.

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I want to note the preexisting Korean Drama fandom term "second lead syndrome" (examples of offsite use: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), where fans prefer the Romantic Runner-Up over the main romantic lead, somewhere in the description of Fan-Preferred Couple. Would that be acceptable, or is there another trope that would fit that better?

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 27th 2023 at 11:02:06 AM

I think that would be worth noting.

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Might be worth noting in the page description as a particularly common subcategory of the phenomenon.