Amassment Message Board

When thinking about romantic relationships, how important is canon to you? Do you tend to ship only couples that are canon, or those that are not? Or do you like/support both? If you ship a couple that isn't canon, how do you get your fix? (Eg. do you look to fanfics, fanart, talk about it with others?)

Screw canon, I am Captain of the Rarepairs and Crackpairings Armada.

I'm happy when my ship becomes canon and might be a bit discouraged if one or both characters are canon with someone else, but a lot of the couples I ship are actually non-canon. When I say discouraged I don't mean that I stop shipping but rather if I've seen the character with someone else, I don't start shipping in the first place.

If the shipping already happened and later the characters get canon with someone else, I still hold my opinion about the couple, but lose interest in the fandom and game/anime/movie/media because I have one less thing to look forward to. How much interest is left after that, depends on what else I liked about the story aside from the shipping. Most of my non-canon ships are single in the canon, so they could end up with anyone.

Some examples of non-canon couples without established relationships: GiovannixDelia (Pokemon) I like the theories about Ash's father and how interesting this would be. MagusxLucca (Chrono Trigger), I'm basically just putting my fav characters together. XD More recently there's SoreyxAlisha though I haven't finished Zesteria yet so I don't know if they're future will put them in specific relationships, though I think they'll be single at the end on the game, at this point that's just an educated guess.

An example of losing interest when canon breaks a ship is Avatar, both the original and Korra. ZukoxKatara never happened, and neither did BolinxEska or MakoxKorra. I still like the action and story, but Avatar has basically no couples for me to ship at this point, so the ship aspect of it is dead for me.

The strangest crackpair that I've ever "shipped" (not seriously but because of the silliness and amusement) is RudexCloud (FFVII). XD Fun times with Cherri, Snow and Hikou, who some of the few who understand why the words "sweet kiwi" are so funny. Though the canon pair ships are rarer for me, I do ship a few, such as ChatNoirxLadybug. <3

Doesn't matter to me, SHIP ALL THE THINGS!

I would generally define myself a canon shipper, unless the canon is so incredibly stupid that I HAVE to invent a fanon pairing to make sense of all the chemistry in the show. (FYI, this has never happened to me IRL.) I lump "strongly suggested as canon" into "canon" ships for simplicity. (Examples: Yugi x Tea from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Jessie x James from Pokemon, Sakura x Syaoran from Card Captor Sakura, Mr. Carson x Mrs. Hughes from Downton Abbey.)

But I also ship fanon pairings that have strong evidence for them/have a lot of chemistry, especially mental chemistry, that never really gets resolved or confirmed in the series. (Examples: Becky x Tobey from WordGirl, though Jessie x James could also fall into this category.) So I guess you could say I support both!

(I also have to admit that a couple of crack ships have slipped in...I recently viewed the Pokemon episode "Snow Way Out!" and got one hell of a plot bunny for a Misty/Brock fic. Whaaaat???)

In general, I get my fix for fanon ships by looking for evidence/support, following fanfiction writers and fan artists, and usually writing some fanfic of my own. For canon ships, I tend to look for the specific episodes that have the cutest moments and get my ship on. xD

Camy wrote:Doesn't matter to me, SHIP ALL THE THINGS!

This. ^

I don't tend to get passionate over ships these days... But I guess my favorite "OTPs" aren't canon so... *cough* Akihiko/Mitsuru and Dezel/Rose *cough* I feel like a chunk of canon relationships feel forced or unrealistic, so I don't tend to like a lot of them. I do have some favorites, though!

It's very rare for me to ship something in canon because a lot of relationships feel extremely unrealistic to me, but I do enjoy some. o: A lot of my favourites tend to be heavily hinted at in canon but never truly spoken of as canon. (Yukari/Mitsuru, Homura/Madoka, Fang/Vanille, etc.) They're also almost always... gay... but the reason for that is obvious lol.

I don't normally like media with a heavy focus on romantic relationships, but there are some exceptions, of course! Like Tidus and Yuna, and Mulder and Scully.

I am actually not a fan of shipping so it doesn't matter to me. Though, I wouldn't mind reading a shrine that supported a non-canon ship because I think there would be a lot of room to discuss theory and evidence versus "it's canon thanks episode 86".

Ugh, I struggle with this because it really depends. I usually prefer a canon pairing that has a solid backstory or a huge build up. If I can't have that then I will ship whoever I see best together.