Beats me, but it annoys the hell out of me. It's making Doctor Who fandom practically uninhabitable. :(
I mean, I'm certainly more interested in character inter-relationships than in anything else in most shows, I don't mind me a bit of well-written porn, and I'm not automatically against shipping and romance, by any means. What I don't understand is the whole OTP thing, the way people invest so heavily in particular, very narrowly-defined ideas about relationships to the point where everything else in the show -- all the other characters, other themes, plotlines whatever -- start to distort around the concept of the ship until everything is all about the ship and nothing else is allowed to matter at all. I call it the Black Hole of Shippiness, and it makes me tear my hair out. In Farscape, it led to characters, concepts and relationships I was a lot more interested in taking a firm backseat, for the fans and TPTB alike, to the John/Aeryn relationship, and in Who it's resulted in evil shipwars and character hate. And I just do not understand it. Does it have something to do with the cultural notion that romantic love is supposed to be this all-consuming, all-important obsession at the center of everyone's universe? Because I don't buy into that, either.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 07:30 am (UTC)I mean, I'm certainly more interested in character inter-relationships than in anything else in most shows, I don't mind me a bit of well-written porn, and I'm not automatically against shipping and romance, by any means. What I don't understand is the whole OTP thing, the way people invest so heavily in particular, very narrowly-defined ideas about relationships to the point where everything else in the show -- all the other characters, other themes, plotlines whatever -- start to distort around the concept of the ship until everything is all about the ship and nothing else is allowed to matter at all. I call it the Black Hole of Shippiness, and it makes me tear my hair out. In Farscape, it led to characters, concepts and relationships I was a lot more interested in taking a firm backseat, for the fans and TPTB alike, to the John/Aeryn relationship, and in Who it's resulted in evil shipwars and character hate. And I just do not understand it. Does it have something to do with the cultural notion that romantic love is supposed to be this all-consuming, all-important obsession at the center of everyone's universe? Because I don't buy into that, either.