#I've reserved some discussion on scanlan because I was not in the fandom while VM was still airing

[revvethasmythh]

I've just read through your FCG meta/response from yesterday and I love it. With regards to the popularity of Sam's characters (and I agree with a lot of what you said on why), how much of that do you think is connected to how shippable his characters are from a fandom POV? In campaign 1, Pikelan is so much less popular than the other 2 canon ships. In campaign 2, anything other than Veth/Yeza (almost no fandom engagement) is treated as a crackship (fjeth) or most people insist it's familial (widobrave). Then obviously there is very little shipping for FCG in general. Is it because he's a funnyman? Is it what you were talking about with flawed characters and how they wouldn't consistently serve a fave enough to be shipped with them? Is it just that he tends not to create conventionally attractive characters? I'd say the gulf in ship popularity for the canon ships of campaign 1 followed the lines of conventional attractiveness a little strictly for me to write it off as coincidence, even if there were other extending circumstances like Pike being away a lot of the time. And the fact that one of Sam's most popularly shipped characters (Loquatius) happens to be one of the more conventionally attractive ones. Although it's pretty clear from watching calamity that those two would've been a very popular couple regardless.

That became a vent but the main question is do you think that one feeds the other? Are Sam's characters less popular because they're less shippable by fandom standards? Or are they less shipped because they're less popular? Or do those two things feed one another? I'm sorry that was a lot thrown at you but since your recent analysis was so good that I was curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Okay, there's enough to unpack here that I could probably write a few essays in response, but I'm going to try to keep this as concise as I can, so I'll answer the TL;DR as best I can keeping the rest in mind. I do think the two things feed each other to some extent, though I find myself leaning toward thinking his characters are less popular because they're less shippable, and less shippable because of their unconventionality. This might be the cynic in me, but I've been in fandom long enough to know that shipping tends to be a huge motivator for folks, though I'm also sure the fact that Sam's characters tend to have BIG personalities affects if people want to engage with them or not as well.

Like, I have caught myself on many occasions considering how balls to the walls popular Widobrave would have been if Nott wasn't a goblin and therefore very unconventionally attractive (lots of monsterfuckers in the fandom do be fakes, as it turns out), or considering how Veth gets overlooked as a shipping option or even just as a character who is attractive because, well. She's short, she's fat, she's brown, she's loud, and she takes up space. Like, we all know that's the reason even if we don't say it out loud very often. It's why it's easier for people to relegate her as a wife and a mother, heavy emphasis on mother, and not have to engage much deeper with her character and complexities than that, and certainly not her shipping viability (hence the "Veth is Caleb's mom" thing that will never ever go away)

And with FCG, I have seen with my own eyes people say that he's not shippable because he's a robot. Like, I don't think it's a secret that a fair few folk think that way. I find it interesting that when Sam said on 4sd, "Fresh Cut Grass is desperate to do things like be able to taste, be able to smell, be able to feel love, the things that you all can do that I can't" I saw people say in response: "but he CAN feel love. The love of his friends," but I've also not seen a single interpretation that this may be a desire to feel love in a romantic sense on his part. Now, I'm not saying that's what Sam meant--it could be much more general than that, as FCG is still struggling with understanding their personhood and what it even means to feel love at all, platonic or otherwise--but the absence of the interpretation is not, uh, lost on me.

So, I suppose the point to make here is that a huge amount of fandom prioritizes shipping over just about anything else. Sam's characters rarely take the spotlight in shipping situations (though he does do a huge amount of delicious, subtle pining. it's his speciality), with the exception of Quay, who is probably his most conventionally attractive character apart from Tary, who didn't actively get a big romantic plot in VM the way Quay did in Calamity (he got the Sam Riegel classic--quiet pining). So if Sam comes out swinging with these non-traditionally attractive characters, as he basically always does, who tend to make a lot of jokes, because he's Sam, fandom seems to write them off as jokes and/or unattractive and not viable for shipping, therefore less interesting or having less worth engaging with entirely.

And here's the thing--it's not just Sam this is affecting right now, either! Look at Chetney. Chetney is the fucking spiritual successor of Veth Brenatto, like all croaky and horny and hilarious and A LOT. He's also old, which immediately took him out of the shipping pool for a lot of people, and it feeds into the way people think of him as just a joke. like "lmao look there's an OLD guy in the party this time, what a racket." Which is ridiculous, but definitely an opinion you're going to find floating around, both said and unsaid. And I think all you need to do is look at the stark absence of Chetney on AO3, the fact that there are all of 22 Fearne/Chetney fics (a ship that gets seriously played up in canon, just like Pikelan did during VM), and the absence of serious discussion about him to see a correlation between a character being traditionally shippable and one that the fandom deems worthwhile to talk about.

I mean, here's the thing--this is a limited discussion that I'm able to do right now. This could be an entire dissertation and there are complexities I'm not hitting on, I'm absolutely sure of it. But I would generally agree that the more unconventional a character is, particularly one who is unconventionally attractive, the less shippable fandom will view them and then they would be less popular in general, and I think that's something Sam runs aground of often, yeah. Like I said, I'm sure there are complexities I'm not hitting right now, but I do think, generally speaking, this is often true. Even though I think it's really unfortunate that fandom bends so heavily toward prioritizing shipping like that. But, like, they do