#Non-shippers vs terminology

[illicien]

I'm fucking dying so I'm gonna share this story:

I've been building up my playlists on Spotify, as I usually do for a new ship (with the added bonus of hey I can build playlists for the individuals because they're not characters I already have playlists for), and my roommate's girlfriend was over so I guess they had Spotify open and noticed what I was listening to.

My roommate comes in after his girlfriend leaves and, without that context, goes: "WinterBaron is the Bucky and Zemo ship, right?"

Now, I have not dragged my roommate into this pit yet. In fact, I usually spare him all the gruesome details of my shipping since his ass has walked into my room without thinking and read over my shoulder the porn I've written more than once, so he brings enough of this shit on himself. But this query has me confused, because normally this isn't the kind of thing he asks me.

"Yes. That's Bucky and Zemo."

"Yeah, I thought so. Good. I didn't want to give [girlfriend] the wrong information about shipping things." (queue me laughing at this because the fact that he cares about this is genuinely entertaining to me.)

"Generally speaking, 'Winter' - as in Winter Soldier - is representative of Bucky in any particular ship. Except with Bucky and Steve, for some reason. Logic would dictate that should be WinterCap or CapWinter, but no it's apparently Stucky."

"... wait why is it Stucky?? WinterBaron at least sounds like something cool; Stucky sounds like you pinned it to a wall to throw darts at." (queue me laughing even harder.)

"You know, that might be how Stucky shippers feel after Endgame, to be honest, but I have no answers for that. Steve seems to be an anomaly this way; normally, shipping with Tony would be 'Iron' something, but for Steve and Tony it's--"

"Oh my god, please don't say it's Stony."

"It's Stony."

"Well this is awful and I'm sorry that I asked."

"Why did you ask?"

"[Girlfriend] and I were puzzling out your playlists. I'm going to go, now, and wipe 'Stucky' and 'Stony' out of my brain."

I just want to say, absolutely nothing here against the names of these ships, I am just laughing my ass off at my roommate's absolute expression of horror and displeasure at learning these things.

[zenkindoflove]

Fandom Shipping Terminology 101: ACOTAR edition

Hi! So I decided to put a little resource together for the ACOTAR fandom. Since many people join the SJM/ACOTAR fandom and have never been in fandom before, they encounter a lot of fandom terminology that they are not quite sure what it means or have seen others use it incorrectly so they get a false impression of the meaning of the word. So I put this together, including examples from the fandom, so that people can use it as a reference to learn more about what these terms mean and when they're appropriate to use. This list is focused on words related to shipping.

Tldr definitions (note: these are definitions that I wrote based on my own experiences/research on fanlore. These are always up for interpretation and meaning and nuance change over time and depend on fandom context)

Canon ship - a relationship where the characters have romantic interactions in canon

Fanon ship - a relationship where in canon the characters are platonic but the fandom has accepted as a ship with romantic undertones, canonical potential, or has become so popular within a fandom it's has surpassed the need/desire for canon

Crackship - a pairing of two characters where the idea of them together is strange or funny depending on the circumstances. Often in these ships, the characters have little or even no interactions in canon

Rare pair - agnostic to fanon or canon status. A rare pair simply means the fandom does not make a lot of fan content for it.

End-game - This is a canon ship that is together by the end of a series.

Slash ship - Fanon ships that feature queer relationships. M/M usually takes on the term slash and F/F has the term femslash.

OTP - Stands for One True Pair. This is a ship that a shipper considers to be the most important one that they love in a fandom.

NOTP - anti-OTP, or a ship that a shipper detests/is squicked out by

Multishipping - the act of shipping a character with multiple other characters.

For more context and thorough examples read more under the cut 

First, what the heck is a ship?

The origins of shipping and becoming obsessed with fictional relationships predate our modern understanding of fandom. Modern fandom roots can be traced as early as Star Trek: The Original Series. But the terminology of calling a couple you like a ship or the act of obsessing over fictional (and sometimes non fictional) couples "shipping" has its origins in the X-Files fandom. While ACOTAR is a romance, many fandoms do not have romance as a central element of its plot, and yet, shippers find a way. That's exactly what happened for the fans of Mulder/Scully. Those who wanted them to be in a romantic relationship were called "relationshippers" which then got shortened to "shippers". The verb "to ship" would appear later from this origin.

The way to think about "what is a ship" though is really based on do people think up romantic scenarios with these two characters? If yes, then you have a ship. And in ACOTAR, oh baby, are there MANY, MANY SHIPS.

Canon vs. Fanon ships

Where does a canon ship end and a fanon one begin? Now that, my friends, is not as clear cut as you might think.

I think this discussion is very important for the ACOTAR fandom because of the state of the ship war currently. Often, there is back and forth about which ship is canon or fanon (and *eye twitch* people throwing around crackship as a derogatory term to de-legitimize a ship which makes me wanna punch shit).

I'm gonna burst everyone's bubbles and say, I personally think Elriel, Elucien, and Gwynriel are all CANON ships.

Why? Well, that's the part that is up for interpretations my friends. What is deemed canonical romantic interactions? That is where a lot of lines can become blurry and if you have ever shipped a fanon ship before - you KNOW what I mean by that. Is it a charged glance? A caress of a hand that lingered too long? Is it a shared kiss? Or do the characters have to explicitly declare "I'm yours and you're mine"?

I've shipped a lot of kinds of ships. Canon. Fanon. Canon that had its end-game blown up. You name it, I've shipped it. And to me, a canon ship is anytime the writer of the canon is putting characters in a romantic situation, regardless if they end up together or not by the end of the series. If they wanted you to feel butterflies and think "could they?", and you felt butterflies, well my friends, you're responding to canon romance. And we've seen evidence of all three ships having those moments.

But, what does that mean for fanon ships? I have shipped a fanon couple where I got butterflies from their canonical scenes together. I've read into their moments and thought "wow, that was romantically charged". I think this is where the lines of canon and fanon are blurred. Because what this comes down to is, did the author intend this? Or am I seeing more into an interaction because I like it? Most fanon ships do hinge a lot of their interest in said ship because of what happens in canon. But, often times, the authors of said content are not necessarily wanting you to take away from their writing that these two characters are interested in each other romantically. You just can't help it. You see it. You see the potential, and you want it to go there so you see more of it the more you look.

Sometimes fanon ships are very clear that the canon is not even hinting at these two characters together romantically. And that is perfectly fine. To me, a fanon ship is a ship that has become so ingrained in the fandom community that the fandom thinks of these two together romantically. That it doesn't really matter anymore what the canon says or doesn't. The fandom has created this relationship and it lives and breathes within what the fandom builds for it. Azris is a perfect example of a fanon ship in ACOTAR. The canon interactions between Azriel and Eris are sparse and platonic in nature, yet the fandom itself has created a whole fanon around them with a large enough community that as soon as you enter the ACOTAR fandom, you immediately know this ship exists.

Rare pairs and Crackships

These two terms are often used interchangeably as if they are synonyms. Now, a rare pair can be a crackship but not all rare ships are crackships and vice versa.

Generally, a rare pair is devoid of canon or fanon connotations. A rare pair is a ship that receives little attention from fans and has few associated fanworks. So, a rare pair could be a fanon couple that few people think about romantically. For example, Emerie and Gwyn have a lot of interactions in canon. I would not think shipping them together to be a crackship because I mean, they're friends, they like each other, they read smut together. There are a lot of scenarios one could imagine them falling in love. But they have a whopping 12 fanfics under their tag in AO3. Therefore, they are a rare pair but not necessarily a crackship.

A rare pair can also be a canon ship. For example, Thesan and his unnamed lover are canon. However, when you look up their relationship tag on AO3, there are 23 works and most do not appear to be focused on them.

I also have seen people use rare pair for very popular ships (like Azris) when they mean fanon. Again, rare pair is really an indication of "how much fan content can you find for this" not necessarily are they canon.

Crackships really were birthed from the intention of putting two characters together "4 da lulz" to bring back early 2000s internet lingo. Crack shipping is usually a pairing that the idea of them together is a little absurd but also fun. Beron/Tamlin is a quintessential crackship example, especially why it came to be (but we will avoid getting into all the origins of that). There is no real reason to think Beron or Tamlin would ever have a romantic interaction and thinking about it makes you laugh. Crackships can sometimes turn into fanon ships. This is another example where the lines do get blurry. But really, crackshipping is about intention and the use of absurdism within fan creation.

I also want to say, often what I see in the Elucien v. Elriel and Elriel v. Gwynriel ships wars is the use of crackship in a derogatory way, and thinking that if one of these ships does not become end-game, therefore, it proves the other was a crackship. Simply put - no. That's not how it works.

End-game

Related to the above point, I think often where the ACOTAR ship wars really derail themselves, is conflating fanon/canon/endgame with each other. I don't see people often using the term end-game, when really, it would help so much with the judgmental and strange ship policing that this fandom loves to do. Specifically, this fandom has a hard time talking about the value within shipping fanon, or shipping the blurriness between fanon and canon for any characters that do not have end-game potential. ACOTAR is not a complete series. Therefore, in a strict definition, no couples are end-game. However, given the genre, there are several couples who are clearly going to be end-game. And really, what I think the ship war community needs in their discourse, is to start using the term end-game when they want to discuss the outcome of Elucien, Elriel, or Gwynriel having a canonical Happily Ever After. The reason being is that you can use end-game, and not insult another ship. End-game is simply a fact. There is no hierarchy involved in what ship is best or not. Because ships can be beloved whether they're canon or fanon or canon who did not end up together. And they all can have very valid reasons why people ship them despite not achieving end-game.

I also urge the ACOTAR fandom to realize that end-game is not the end of YOUR experience of your ship. Your ship lives on despite what the canon may or may not give you. Even if you ship a canon ship that does not achieve end-game, you can create those fanon end-games for yourself. Many popular ships end up being popular because of the effect of that ship not achieving end-game. And while I am using the prime-ship war as examples within this post, I've seen other microshipwars popping up within the fandom as well. So, I'm not trying to pick on this specific set of conflicts, it's just the one I see most prominently.

OTP vs NOTP

I think the ACOTAR fandom could also really benefit from adopting this terminology.

The point of declaring OTPs and NOTPs is a way for you to signal to others in your fandom, "This is how much I care about this ship. Whether I love it it or hate it. Tread carefully". These terms are not meant to say one ship is better than the other from a moral standpoint. Instead, it's to indicate to others that you have a strong preference. You're going to love your OTPs regardless of what arguments others throw at you to convince you to not love them. You will probably be very annoyed by your NOTPs regardless of what others try to do to convince you that they're actually cute/sexy/hot/perfect for each other. And what the ACOTAR fandom could benefit from, from readopting OTP/NOTP language, is having a common understanding where different shipping communities boundaries are and how they can better utilize those boundaries to prevent constant fighting. Now, ship wars are inevitable because of how people see their OTPs and NOTPs, but general rule of thumb is - don't engage with your NOTP's content for your own mental sanity.

Multishipping

Multishipping can be used in many ways. Some people use it to say, hey I'm in this fandom, and I ship a lot of couples. But the origins of multishipping as a term, comes from ship war discourse in other fandoms. Multishippers generally are people who ship one character with multiple other characters. For example, if you ship Elain/Lucien, Elain/Azriel, Elain/Gwyn, Elain/Tamlin, etc etc etc, you are a multishipper. I generally would not consider someone a multishipper if all of their ships do not cross streams. It just sort of means that you ship a lot of couples. Which tends to be normal for romance series with a lot of couples. Maybe not a single of those couples is your true OTP, and that's what you mean by saying you're a multishipper. And that's okay. I think though that multishipping generally in other fan spaces is a marker of you telling others that you don't draw harsh lines with who you see characters with. I often see multishippers not declaring NOTPs. It's kind of a state of how you go about shipping often. I, for one, identify as an OTP shipper. I've never really multishipped. But I also have a very strict standard of what I call my "ships". Anyways, this is to say, this term has a lot of uses. And sometimes it can be confusing which of these uses a person means when they say it.

Slash shipping 

I've seen over the years that slash as a terminology has fallen out of favor. In the past, slash shipping was the pinnacle of shipping in fandoms. The term slash comes from the first modern fanon ship, Kirk/Spock, where the / between their names, which we now all know and use to indicate a romantic pairing (note: & is used to indicate a platonic interaction between characters), exists because the Kirk/Spock shipping community really were the originators of shipping communities creating fan content and sharing it in with each other in a massive way. In general slash (and femslash) is an important modifier of shipping because it explicitly tells you that this is a queer ship which often were not mainstream and considered canon until more recently. With the rise of canonical queer ships, I think the subversiveness of shipping queer couples has lost it's edge, therefore slash is not needed as much anymore to directly state the nature of your ship.

I wanted to keep this in the post though, because I think it's incredibly important history for ALL ACOTAR fans to understand. Shipping queer couples, and especially shipping FANON queer couples, has always been the backbone of fandom. Kirk/Spock walked so Destiel could fly. These are all queer ships that have strong fanon roots (and that fanon has had impacts on their canon) and have shaped fandom and your concept of shipping and romance tropes in inextricable ways. You don't have / without Kirk/Spock. You don't have Omegaverse, without gay shipping within the Supernatural fandom. And I wanted to make this point because this fandom has a strong het (heterosexual) ship bias. Which is okay. It's a romance series with a lot of heterosexual canon couples. But, I think because of that, many people are not entering this fandom with an understanding that people shipping queer fanon couples have been the ones who were the originators of many fandom terms that we have come to know and use today.

Conclusion:

I hope you all found this informative and that you can take away something from this post that can help you have better interactions and ability to communicate with others in this fandom. Again, I want to stress, that this is heavily influenced by my own 25 years of experience being in fandoms. And I haven't seen it all. Others will have different interpretations of these terms and experiences using these terms. So, feel free to add on anything that you think would be helpful to those in the ACOTAR community to better understand how to "ship and let ship". I do think that ship war are inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing. But using the right terms can help you engage in a more respectful way within ship war discourse.

[aro-and-tired]

Aromantic Experiences in Fandom: Survey Results

PART 1 - PART 2 - ANALYSIS: TIME IN FANDOM - ANALYSIS: AROALLOS VS AROACES

As this is the second part of the discussion regarding results of this survey, I suggest checking out Part 1 before this.

This post will discuss how aromantic content creators in fandom feel when it comes to creating aro-specific content, and how aromantic fans feel when it comes to shipping and their preferences for it. There will also be a space for additional comments.

Content Creators Questions

The first question here was a check asking respondents whether or not they ever created fancontent, such as fanfiction, fanart, etc. 76.5% (701) of the respondents stated that they have created fancontent, while 23.5% (215) stated they haven’t. Non-creators skipped the rest of this section.

Question 1: Which kind of content do you create in fandom? 

Starting with the options I had given, from most to least picked we have:

Fanfiction - 71.3%

Fanart - 58.8%

Memes - 44.4%

Meta - 22.3%

Playlists - 16.3%

Fanvids - 7.3%

Merch - 1.9%

Furthermore, many people mentioned other kinds of content they create. This includes headcanons, edits, moodboards, roleplay, cosplay, podfic. translations, fan music and ask blogs.

Question 2: Have you ever made content focusing on aromantic headcanons, or other kinds of aromantic content?

Yes, in addition to other kinds of content - 57.2%

No - 41.5%

Yes, I only make aro content - 1.3%

Question 3: If you have created aro content, would you say it got more or less attention than your non aro content?

52.6% of respondents declined to answer or stated that it wasn’t applicable. Excluding these respondents, the results were

It got less attention - 68.1%

It got the same amount of attention - 29.5%

It got more attention - 2.4%

Question 4: Have you ever felt discouraged by your fandom when it comes to making aro content?

Yes, because I didn’t think it would get attention - 42.6%

Yes, because I was afraid to get hate for it - 35.7%

No - 39.2%

Question 5: Have you ever received hate because of the aro content you made?

40.7% of respondents answered saying they have never created aro content. Excluding these respondents, the results were

No - 81.5%

Yes - 18.5%

Shipping Questions

The first question was a check that asked whether or not the respondents were at all into shipping. 88% (806) said they enjoy shipping, while 11.2% (103) said that they are not. 0.8% (7) said that they are not into shipping, and not involved in fandom. Respondents who picked the last option skipped the following section, and were taken to the end of the survey.

Shippers

Question 1: How important is shipping to you when it comes to being in fandom?

Shipping is my primary form of engaging with fandom - 7.1%

Shipping is fairly important to me, but I’m also into other sides of the fandom - 22.5%

Shipping is about as important to me as other sides of the fandom - 38.8%

Shipping is not particularly important to me, I prefer other sides of the fandom - 29.7%

Shipping is the least important part of engaging with fandom - 2%

Question 2: Do you consider non-romantic shipping (shipping characters as queerplatonic partners, friends with benefits, etc.) to be a valid form of shipping, or do you think shipping only refers to romantic situations?

I think shipping can be both romantic and non-romantic - 71.2%

I think some types of non-romantic situations can count as shipping, but not all of them - 21.7%

I think shipping only refers to romantic situations - 7.1%

Question 3: When it comes to your ships, do you prefer content that focuses more on the romantic or sexual aspect of the relationship?

I prefer content focusing on the romantic aspect, I dislike sexual content - 33.1%

I prefer content focusing on the romantic aspect, but I also enjoy sexual content - 23.2%

It makes no difference / I like both equally - 31.9%

I prefer content focusing on the sexual aspect, but I also enjoy romantic content - 9.4%

I prefer content focusing on the sexual aspect, I dislike romantic content - 2.4%

Question 4: Would you say fans place too much importance on romantic shipping, leaving too little space for other kinds of discussions?

Yes - 84.7%

Unsure - 10.7%

No - 4.6%

Question 5: Here I will give you a list of tropes commonly found in shipping fan content. I ask that you pick 5 that you consider your favorites. You can pick less than 5 if there aren't enough tropes that you like, but please try not to pick more.

As a disclaimer, this question is not meant to judge whether or not someone is a “valid” aromantic or anything of the sort. It also does not necessarily indicate that liking the more popular tropes picked is an aro thing, especially since some of these are also popular in fandom spaces at large. It is only meant to highlight general trends in the community.

The five most popular tropes picked were:

Mutual Pining - 46.8%

Domestic Fluff - 46.5%

Slow Burn - 44.8%

Enemies to Lovers - 40.6%

Friends to Lovers - 38.2%

All of those tropes were picked by more than 300 people. Following these, the only trope picked by more than 200 people was Established Relationship.

Tropes picked by more than 100 people were, in order of popularity, Soulmate AU, PWP, Fake Dating, Getting Together, Porn with Feelings, and with the same popularity Friends with Benefits and Telepathic Bonds.

Tropes picked by less than 100 people were, in order of popularity, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love, Hanahaki Disease, Arranged Marriage, Hate Sex, Friends with Benefits to Lovers, Jealousy/Possessiveness, First Dates, Break Ups, and least popular Love at First Sight.

Question 6: Here I give you the same list of tropes, but this time I ask that you pick the 5 tropes you dislike the most. Again, you can pick less than 5, but please try not to pick more

The same disclaimers as the previous question apply.

The five most disliked tropes were

Jealousy/Possessiveness - 52.9%

Unhealthy Relationships - 48%

Hanahaki Disease - 42.9%

Love at First Sight - 42.4%

Hate Sex - 40.6%

All of these tropes were picked by more than 300 people. Following these, tropes picked by more than 200 people were Soulmate AUs, Break Ups, Arranged Marriage, PWP and Unrequited Love.

Tropes picked by more than 100 people were Fake Dating and Porn with Feelings.

Tropes picked by less than 100 people were Friends with Benefits to Lovers, Telepathic Bonds, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friends with Benefits, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationships, First Dates, Slow Burn, and least disliked with the same amount of votes Getting Together and Mutual Pining.

Once again, there is no judgement on anyone who hates popular tropes or loves hated tropes. The aromantic community is not a monolith, there is great variety between us, and no aromantic people is made up only of their aromanticism. There can be all sorts of reasons why one would like or dislike a trope.

That being said, some considerations can be made from these trends. For example, various aros have said that since romantic attraction is confusing we don’t quite get how can someone fall in love with people they barely know, or why is falling in love with a friend considered strange and not the norm. Many of the popular tropes involve characters who have known each other for a long time (Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn) while things such as Love at First Sight or First Dates are less popular.

We can also look at tropes various aros find arophobic. Hanahaki Disease is often mentioned as making many aros deeply uncomfortable, and we can see that here few people have it as a favorite, and many pick it as one of their most disliked tropes. Another one that is often mentioned in those discussions is Soulmate AU, that people are more ambivalent about - it’s both the sixth most disliked and seventh most liked. Maybe because it has much more variation than Hanahaki Disease, or maybe because people find it less arophobic as a whole. Or maybe simply due to personal tastes.

Non-Shippers

Question 1: Is the reason you don't enjoy shipping connected to the fact that you are aromantic?

Yes - 87.4%

No - 12.6%

Question 2: Would you say fans place too much importance on romantic shipping, leaving too little space for other kinds of discussions?

Yes - 97.1%

Unsure - 1.9% (2 people)

No - 1% (1 people)

Question 3: Do you think you would be more into shipping if people more often shipped characters in a non-romantic way, such as writing about queerplatonic relationships?

Yes - 82.5%

No - 17.5%

Additional Comments

People were allowed to leave additional comments here about anything that wasn’t covered previously.

Many people remarked on the general amatonormativity that is present in fandom spaces, in particular how it often seems as if fandoms are not interested in character dynamics that don’t involve romance. Some people also talked about often aro headcanons overlap with gay/lesbian headcanons because of the similar traits that can count as coding for both identities, and this can cause conflict within fandom. Overall, many people felt that aromantics are often a subcommunity within the larger fandom communities.

Some people also stated that they feel smaller fandoms are more open to aromantic interpretations than bigger ones. Various people mentioned fandoms that they felt were more or less friendly, often saying that small fandoms with few people tend to be more welcoming to aro fans.

There was also some discussion regarding the concept of non-romantic shipping. While many people agree that they enjoy viewing their ships as, for example, queerplatonic relationships, some also feel that using shipping terminology is inadequate for them. Shipping is by default assumed to be romantic by most people, and some don’t like having to using that word or words derived from it for non-romantic situations.

Part 2 Summary

Many aromantic content creators have felt discouraged by fandom when it comes to making aromantic content, either because they are afraid of not gaining any attention for it or because they fear receiving hate for it.The first concern seems quite valid, as a majority of people who did create aro content found that it got less attention compared to their non-aro content. When it comes to receiving hate instead, less than a fifth was a victim of it. This being said, there’s also a good number of aros who don’t overall feel discouraged when it comes to creating said content.

Out of the aros who enjoy shipping, most of them consider it neither the most nor least important part of their fandom experience, usually also enjoying other ways of engaging with fandom. Most prefer romantic content over sexual content, or enjoy both equally, with a minority favoring sexual content over romantic content. The majority also feels that fandom spaces can be too dominated by shipping.

An even higher percentage of aros who do not enjoy shipping find it too prevalent. A good number of them believe that they do not like shipping because they are aromantic, with many also saying that they would be more favorable to shipping if there was more space for non-romantic shipping.

Thank you for having paid attention so far! You can contact me if you have any questions. As I said in Part 1, I am also working on a couple more posts to look for potential differences in the opinions of a few groups, I will publish them in upcoming days.

[tdp-fandom]

Result Discussion: Favorite Ships (part 2)

Results for Favorite Ships · Results for Total Ships · Discussion Part 1 · Discussion Part 3 · Ship list

CW: This discussion contains mentions of three ships which some people might not be comfortable with (sibling incest and adult/teen relationships). Only their shipnames are mentioned - the nature of these relationships is not discussed in any way. 

Some terminology:

I will refer to the Total Ships as TS and Favorite Ships as FS.

The method I decided to use

So here’s a method, which, albeit less intuitive, is still more accurate.

My boyfriend suggested normalizing the ranks, i.e. making the ranks of both lists proportionally equivalent.

This means that there is no need to manually group anything together and it doesn’t matter if we have two lists of 14 vs 40 ranks or 14 vs 40 000 ranks.

This method still has issues of its own:

not as straightforward to interpret;

ships appear to have fallen in rank even though they didn’t (esp. for Janaya and Ruthari).

This is the formula that we used:

where

r_n is normalized rank;

r is the current rank of a given ship;

R is the lowest possible rank of a list.

So, for example, if we normalize Gremaya’s rank in the FS list, it’ll be:

where

5 is Gremaya’s current rank in the FS table;

14 is the lowest possible rank for FS.

Just like with a regular rank, the normalized rank is highest when its numerical value is lowest.

This is what we got:

bigger table, comparing different stats

You can see that the very first place (Rayllum) remains the same for both lists, as well as the very last place (everything ranked 100). My boyfriend also suggested adding a color scale - the darker the color, the higher the ship’s rank.

I also colored some of the ships:

light blue means the relative rank of the ship has not changed;

green means the ship has risen in rank;

white means the ship has dropped in rank;

yellow means the ship has massively dropped in rank (by at least 40 points).

I felt that it was important to point out the very huge falls, because many of them nicely correspond with some of my conclusions from the TS results (I’ll get to that in a sec).

I wouldn’t be myself if I hadn’t made a graph :D

bigger version (interactive)

I think this is the most intuitive visual representation of how different ships changed in rank:

the red dots are the ranks the ships had on the TS list;

the blue dots are the ranks they have on the FS list.

So that means:

red done above blue? - The ship fell in rank;

red dot only - the rank hasn’t changed;

red dot below blue? - The ship climbed up in rank.

Interestingly enough, only two ships actually improved their position!

Ships that haven’t changed rank and those that went up in rank

It is no surprise that Rayllum remained at rank #1 considering how much this ship is loved by the fans. Janaya and Ruthari didn’t move their position either, but the "weight” of their ranks slightly reduced in a smaller list of options.

Virex, Aarathari and Aaravum are the other ships that retained their position, but I think it’s more of a coincidence than something systematic.

Because the FS list is so much shorter than the TS list, most ships appear to have dropped in position, even if they didn’t (such as Janaya and Ruthari). And that makes the two ships that went up even more interesting!

Sordia went up by 17.8 points and Raydium - by 2.5. Both are small ships with not many voters:

Sordia - 10 TS votes, 6 FS votes;

Raydium - 3 TS votes, 2 FS votes,

yet the voters are pretty consistent - the majority of people who voted for these ships in TS chose them as their favorite ships. Sordia is particularly impressive in this regard, seeing how incredibly loyal its shippers are!

Ships which fell in rank the most

I chose the ships that fell by at least 40 points. The list is arranged from the biggest fall to the smallest:

Sabos fell by 84 points

Harrai fell by 76 points

Laidrin fell by 74 points

Grenvus fell by 51 points

Corpeli fell by 48 points

Kaudia fell by 48 points

Kasren fell by 41 points

We can immediately see that the top three ships were in the top 10 on the Total Ships list and they fell the most. It makes sense when you think about why these ships got so high in the first place. In addition to my vague word choice in the original questionnaire, these ships are either canon (Harrai, Laidrin) or include side characters that are not part of any popular ships (Sabos, Corpeli).

Sabos is especially fascinating, as it’s not only a non-canon ship, it’s a ship involving characters that got their names from fans! They do have a scene together that could be seen as “shippy”, which explains why so many people jumped on that wagon as opposed to, say, Sorcos.

The same goes for Corpeli. Gren and Corvus are canonically friends, but they don’t have any significant scenes together, while Corvus literally holds Opeli’s hand.

Speaking of Grenvus (and also - Kaudia and Kasren), they weren’t as high on the Total Ships list as the aforementioned ships, but all of them seem to have fallen from roughly the middle to the bottom of the list. I guess they just don’t have large fanbases.

That’s it for part 2 - stay tuned for part 3!

[tdp-fandom]

Result Discussion: Total Ships (part 2)

Part 1 · Part 3 · Part 4 Results

Ship list in case you don’t know some of the ships

Some terminology:

I will refer to Viren, Soren and Claudia as Mage Family or magefam.

Non-canon ships between 11 and 90 shippers

I chose this number arbitrarily.

Here, the ships in light blue are where characters know each other/have interacted.

The ship in dark blue - where they don’t know each other or have not interacted.

Normally, I don’t discriminate ships by such criteria, because there’s a lot more to a ship than on-screen interaction. Fans are capable of creating wonderful stories with characters who had never met each other in the show, fleshing out their personalities beautifully. Sure, some ships are based on the characters’ looks, but my theory is that personalities have a bigger influence.

Often, when I start shipping someone, it's not a deliberate choice. There’s hardly any “okay, now I’m gonna ship The Big Sword Guy and Sunforge Dagger Guy” moment. When it comes to ships where characters don’t have a lot of (or any) on-screen interaction, their personalities play an important role. If I like some characters, I start putting them into my own stories more. Sometimes, they interact with other characters and as the story progresses, so do relationships between certain characters who wouldn’t necessarily have a relationship in canon.

Usually, such ships are called “crack ships” and are not very popular. But then there’s Soryx.

I have to say, I did not expect Soryx. In fact, I would never have even thought of shipping them together. Then I saw how popular it was (5 people chose it as their favorite ship, which is not bad for a “crack ship”!) I started to think about it more. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense! Their personalities really do go well together!

It’s incredible - Soryx is almost as popular as Virrow, and, given the 3.7% margin of error, either of them could be more popular than the other, given a bigger sample (my sample was only 701 people).

Speaking of Virrow, I was really surprised it wasn’t as popular as Viravos (Virrow - 12.55% vs Viravos - 28.39%), because when browsing for posts on tumblr and twitter, there always seemed to be an equal amount of content for both. Then again, I never took into account the age of those posts - perhaps Virrow has lost some of the fans it had in S1 after Aaravos’ introduction in S2.

Dominating characters

Can you look at the graph above and tell me what’s in common between all the ships colored in orange?

You guessed it! They all involve a member of the Mage Family (Viren, Soren, or Claudia). The possible reasons:

Viren, Soren and Claudia are well fleshed out and complex characters;

they interact with many different characters;

if a person likes one member of magefam, they often like them all;

Soren is especially versatile because of his age - he’s young enough to be shipped with teens and he’s also an adult;

of all the teenage characters Soren and Claudia have the most screen time after Rayla and Callum. Viren has the most screen time from all adult characters.

We haven’t even covered the more rare ships, which also include plenty of magefam.

User added ships

No user-added ships have made it into the top 11, and only three made it into top 30. Are they less popular? Liked less? I don’t think so. As I mentioned in part 1 - the reason for that is the fact that they weren’t on the list.

Consider Aarrow for a bit. As much as I like this ship, I don’t actively ship it and the only reason it made it onto my list was because I came across this post. I thought it was a cool idea for a ship and I wanted to see who else shipped it. And here we are - 11 people. 1 person even chose it as their favorite ship!

Another interesting example is Opiren. I hadn’t found anyone shipping them on tumblr, but I lowkey ship them myself, so I decided to add them. My boyfriend came up with the ship name and there we go - 19 people! No one chose it as their favorite ship, though.

Now compare it with, say, Grazi. It got an almost the same number of votes, but it wasn’t on the list, which means that only the users who care enough about it to include it manually voted for it. One person chose it as their favorite ship as well. If I had included it myself, I’m sure it would’ve got as many ships as Sabos or Swordjanne simply by being there.

Why didn’t I, then? Because it hadn’t occurred to me and I tried to limit my list to ships I could find content of on tumblr (I hadn’t thought of checking ao3 at the time).

Ezranya and Ezris are an interesting case, because quite a few people added “when they’re older” as a sort of justification, even though I feel like it’s ok to ship them as kids Shipping does not need to be sexual. You can have platonic or romantic kids ships (kids have crushes!) or just very strong friendships bonds. I don’t know if the latter counts as shipping in the eyes of most fans, but I just want Ezranya and Ezris shippers to feel happy and supported <3

Part 3