I know what shipping is - I'm more about asking everyone willing to answer what their personal definition/thresold for shipping is.
When I was a teenager I named "shipping" the warm and fuzzy feeling of me appreciating seeing two characters being sweet/caring towards each other. I always defined it as something unpredictable. It was like the magic wands in Harry Potter lore - you can't choose what to ship, it's the ships that choosee you, in a sense. Recently I tried to put some sense on why I shipped the pairings I shipped. I can see some patterns, and if someone told me the summary of a movie, I could probably tell you what I am or am not going to ship, but it's never going to be set in stone until I actually experience the content.
Now to my point - I thought it was like that for everyone, but sometimes I see messages on communities, blogs, that are like "This is why I always ship the canon ships" or "why do you ship this when you can ship this other thing?" or even "I used to ship this and that, but the fanwork for this is better than the fanwork for that so now, I only ship this." This completely baffles me. I understand fanwork making you see two characters in a new light so you end up shipping them, I understand shipping only fanon versions of characters, I understand falling out of love with a pairing. But this idea of consciously being able to choose what you ship seem very strange to me. I understand choosing to engage in active fandom behavior about your ship - or choosing not to. But for me, it's impossible for anyone to choose what they ship.
Is this a language thing? Do people define "shipping" as "doing fanwork for this pairing?" Do you feel like you have always chosen your ships or it's kind of a struck-by-lightning deal like it is for me?
What is shipping?
When I was a teenager I named "shipping" the warm and fuzzy feeling of me appreciating seeing two characters being sweet/caring towards each other. I always defined it as something unpredictable. It was like the magic wands in Harry Potter lore - you can't choose what to ship, it's the ships that choosee you, in a sense. Recently I tried to put some sense on why I shipped the pairings I shipped. I can see some patterns, and if someone told me the summary of a movie, I could probably tell you what I am or am not going to ship, but it's never going to be set in stone until I actually experience the content.
Now to my point - I thought it was like that for everyone, but sometimes I see messages on communities, blogs, that are like "This is why I always ship the canon ships" or "why do you ship this when you can ship this other thing?" or even "I used to ship this and that, but the fanwork for this is better than the fanwork for that so now, I only ship this." This completely baffles me. I understand fanwork making you see two characters in a new light so you end up shipping them, I understand shipping only fanon versions of characters, I understand falling out of love with a pairing. But this idea of consciously being able to choose what you ship seem very strange to me. I understand choosing to engage in active fandom behavior about your ship - or choosing not to. But for me, it's impossible for anyone to choose what they ship.
Is this a language thing? Do people define "shipping" as "doing fanwork for this pairing?" Do you feel like you have always chosen your ships or it's kind of a struck-by-lightning deal like it is for me?