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Man (right): Could you be a voice actor?

Justin McElroy (left, speaking over Man): Oh! Actually, I was in the movie, um... Trolls World Tour.

Man: Duet this to find out. Four scripts... fifty seconds...

Justin (still speaking over Man): So I think- Sorry. You're great. You're good. I was- did you- see, th-that? It's ok.

Man: This is the car commercial voice over challenge. Startiiiiing now.

Justin: Somebimes- [Starts wheeze-laughing for a solid 7 seconds] Subaru!

Life is full of things to worry about. S-luckily younew Soyolla Corolle it's the industry standard leading sabey and design and won' be one of 'em. Toyoba. [Laughs] Let's gooooo. Places.

Superior design... Oustanding quality... And the drive... to innobate... Merce...bees Benz. [Laughs] The best... or nothing.

I'm, personally, less interested in the prexisting chemistry than i am in the puzzle of figuring out what differing circumstances could potentially cause two characters who have seemingly nothing in common to become eachothers everything.

This could explain my favorism towards rarepairs and more convoluted dynamics, and my aversion to popular, fluffy pairings that have already been explored a thousand times over, there's no work for me to do there.

Not to mention that when a ship becomes too popular it starts cannibalising itself, and lots of good, interesting characterisations are lost in the sea of people bending characters into pre-orchestrated, saccharine dynamics. alot of which are usually downright fetishy in nature, particularly in mlm pairings.

I mean i would say being able to get ooc and self indulgent is downright mandatory for making a good fic, but there's only so many times i have to read a fic about a big, overprotective, manly-man top who does all the work and the shy, small, swoony, softhearted femme-wifey-bottom before it starts to just be lazy.

I actively have to go out of my way to search 'switch' tags if i want true-to-the-character, mutual emotional reciprocation. which i really, really shouldn't have to do as an ace person who actively skips through nsfw.

And it's not that popular wlw pairings aren't guilty of these problems aswell, but those tend to lean more into the 'soft lesbians who can do no wrong' stereotype, which always completely (butch)ers all nuisance that makes the ship worth shipping in the first place.

As well as that's if they're even the focus of the story at all and aren't just shoved to the side by the main mlm couple. mlw pairings can be culpable of both these things, with the added risk that you find out the author made a twitter post with the characters in front of the 'super straight' flag.

Though i also wonder if me being aspec plays any part as again; im not as interested in the romantic aspects as i am in the possible hurdles they may face throughout the potential relationship.

I do not read fanfiction usually (despite being a writer myself), solely because I do not want to risk weird characterizations or boring tropes the characters have been shoved into. Some of the other ships you've mentioned I actively avoid and hate because of fanon specifically (the other ships I'm just "meh" on and don't actively seek nor actively block those ones). Other honorable mentions for me include Kaeya/Albedo and Thoma/Ayato. I used to really, really love the former, found out a majority of fanon was incredibly off-kilter and OOC to the point they weren't even reading as the same characters to me, and now, more often than not, I can't stand the ship.

I also hate (for mlm pairings) the need to search two tags for "dynamics" when topping or bottoming, especially in SFW settings where they're doing neither of those things! I once stumbled upon a xiaother zine discourse where someone was trying to illustrate how whoever tops will affect a SFW scenario and it was genuinely the stupidest thing I'd ever read!

But I truly think my problem with most "big name" ships is how they've just been explored to death. You touched upon this already. Outside of Genshin, I'm in fandoms like Touken Ranbu, where there's very little "canon" interaction (even if you're counting things like the stage plays, musicals, and anime, and not just the original game) so one has to learn to extrapolate how characters would interact from either no interactions whatsoever or very little. As it stands, Touken Ranbu is one of the only fandoms I actually still enjoy talking to others in, which may or may not be related...

I have always said I'm contrarian for disliking "big" ships based solely on the fact they're highly popular. But it's true, and I'm not doing it just to be contrarian. Rarer pairings, even some where I'm the only one in the tag on AO3 (this is especially the case in Touken Ranbu), generally hold more appeal to me. In recent years, I've also pivoted to focusing more on Gen work (for instance, I really love imagining a friendship between Diluc and Klee, and Kaeya and Diona, but these are just two examples) because there's no pre-existing notion from "fanon law" about dynamics or whatever because it's just Gen.

I think another side of the coin is that many shippers of "big" ships refuse to see the characters outside of the context of the ship. They either only care for the ship or only care for one half of the ship. A very notable example in my experience is xiaoven. I have honestly never seen a Venti-first Xiaoven fan, which is already pretty concerning; the majority only care about Xiao and/or the both of them only when they're being shipped. (In my opinion, this ship is also one of the worst to be flanderized! I could fully see the appeal of the dynamic but no one explores the actual dynamic they could have!)

I often think about this post (which is no longer rebloggable). Namely: "it's a one size fits all of generic, pre-made tropes that will be forced into each and every piece of media that gets even a bit of attention, even when these tropes and scenarios don't fit the personality of the characters or are in any way related to the original story they are supposedly drawing from." I see so many people doing this! And I'm sitting here thinking, "You may be having fun, but if you're debasing the characters to such an extent they don't resemble the original whatsoever, then I think you may have even more fun writing with Original Characters!" And I think this is what happens with a majority of "big" ships, if not all (I have even seen it with neuvifuri plenty already, but thankfully I just love them too much to care).

Xiaoven, Thomato and Kaebedo are all such good examples that I'm shocked I forgot to add them in the first place. and I've never heard of Touken Ranbu before, but from what you've said i am very interested!

I agree on the gen focus as well, ironically i was actually reading through a Diluc and Diona fanfic when i got this notification. Simply put, in a genfic you're far more likely to find something organic and fresh— since there's no romance involved and it focuses on the characters and the story being told.

That said, i also relate VERY hard to loving a ship so much that you'll grit your teeth through the worst fic imaginable, hehe.

I feel the exact same way with what you said about feeling like a contrarian!

For a while, I was genuinely concerned I was being a dick, or had somehow suddenly become wildly homophobic just because I could never get into the popular, beaten to death, mlm ship it feels like every fandom has.

Though, since then, I've obviously realised i just prefer rarepairs! and for the exact reason a lot of people don't like them in the first place; there's a lack of content for them, and thus less of the character is lost in the hustle and bustle, and is free to be explored.

Speaking of the degeneration of canon in the face of fanon, alot of people tend to get into media through fandom, which while isn't necessarily a bad thing, greatly increases the generation loss phenomenon.

The post you sent captures my thoughts on this perfectly— i actually lost my mind at ‘the college coffee shop au’ line because both my hands and feet wouldn't be enough to count how many times I've been scrolling through ao3 and thought: ‘not another fucking college au by someone who only knows the characters though fanfiction.’

One in particular that comes to mind as I'm writing this that you may, or may not, know is the Batman fandom, which, even as a community with an unusually high abundance of genfic, nearly every single characterisation remains the same; absolutely nothing like the true source media.

It's such a prevalent problem that comic fans and fanon fans are nigh complete opposites when compared, and most of the other batman comic fans I know outwardly despise the fandom!

And while I do genuinely enjoy reading some cliche, fanon nonsense every once in a while, I can agree as well that these are simply just not the same characters. and that really grates on you after a while.

Related to the issue of people only knowing these characters through fanon and the misinformation it causes— is people using widely known headcanons as ‘gotcha!’ on posts. Fans presenting fanon like it's fact.

A good example of this would actually be Neuvifuri, with people claiming they're related when that's just… blatantly false. you're perfectly free to have a headcanon, but you've got to remember that it's a headcanon!

ah, went on a ramble there, guess i wanted to outdo you on the wordcount, ehm? anyway, my point is. yes. I absolutely agree on everything you said. 100%. my comrade in arms for REAL.

Diluc & Diona is also a pair I'd like to explore a lot, but Klee & Diluc has my heart so bad. But Klee is just the sweetest little girl, it'd be difficult for anyone to not think so I think... haha.

Recently I've made friends that are more "fandom" focused. When I say that, I mean they are more focused on participating in any fandom that fandom has become its own fandom. I think it's a little difficult for me to explain. I think there's nothing wrong with this in particular, but it isn't my preferred method of participating with others (I don't tend to participate at large, and this is like, very at large participation, even for individualized fandoms they wouldn't otherwise be in or for media they wouldn't otherwise consider themselves to be fans of in the first place). Anyway, I bring this up because I think that may also have something to do with the greater division between canon and fanon; while the people I've become friends with are more on-line with "fandom olds" and thus care greatly about being IC and making things that show their love for a series, there's been an uptick in people who make things just because they know they can be "popular" if they stick to a particular fandom, particular tropes, and particular ships. It's similar but different to the friends I've mentioned: These fame-chasing ones are trying to create things that will get popular, and they aren't doing it out of love for the series.

Long have people said statements like, "Canon sucks, so I'm making it my own!" While there's nothing inherently bad about statements like these (fix-it fics are a good example of this pulled off well, as well as canon divergence in some cases), people have begun to extremely diverge from canon in any way possible in order to fit it more to their tastes instead of just... finding something else. Like I said before, I think a lot of people would be way better off if they just made original characters.

Related to the above two points, I have to mention the AUs. Like the college AUs or the florist/tattooist AUs or the coffee shop AUs. Some of these AUs can be extremely well done. Most, however, are just writing the tropes and not the characters. (The Batman thing sounds so dire. Like so, so dire.) Like you said, these people only know these characters from fanfiction (when I was 12 I read Kingdom Hearts fanfiction without playing any of the games, and I roleplayed and wrote a character on DeviantArt who I had just informed myself of entirely through ff.net, and it's always a shock to me to learn people do this today but they're well over twelve). It's like a neverending cycle. A fanfiction ouroboros. And they yell at you if you don't use de-facto "canon" fanon. Also I don't even think half the people writing college AUs have stepped on a college campus. Half the people writing coffee shop AUs have never worked at a coffee shop (as someone who has, I have never met a single customer I would have wanted to bang).

And I love AUs! I've been thinking of reviving a Diluc/Venti AU that I've posted a few chapters of already, because I did love the story for it. But AUs have a different appeal to me than others it seems; I enjoy writing AUs for the challenge of putting these guys in situations that are definitely not canon while still making them the same guys. Some people seem to have different priorities, and that's fine, but I'm not going to read it...

And the fanon gotchas... It reminds me of how people, prior to Ayato even being revealed, had made up a guy and had already begun to ship Thomato. With their fanon based on only a few lines. Then they got mad at MHY when Ayato was actually released and wasn't like that at all. I saw people getting into discourse about Kavetham weeks before Kaveh was officially revealed, like they were trying to speed run being the most annoying subset of fans. (This actually turned me off from Alhaitham and his fans as a whole for an entire year until I was shown how fucking funny he is.) An ex-friend once told me they really like Kavetham and Cynari, but that they're both "kind of toxic in canon", and that they heavily prefer fanon. I don't think you enjoy the ships at all, actually. You enjoy the idea of the ships. (I'm also still struggling to figure out how Cynari is toxic to this day.) I think the Batman situation you explained (which still sounds so dire) is in a similar boat to this. Just so completely divested from the original source.

I also want to mention Wrio/Neuvi. Even before the last event where they had one (1) singular scene, they had no chemistry or clear dynamic. They had said only a few lines to each other on screen, and not much was implied otherwise, too. But the fans somehow made up two entirely new characters and called it canon, saying they had even more chemistry than nvfr. This isn't even because nvfr is my current OTP either! I love Wriorinde and Furirinde and Neuvia and other combos too! But the insistence on it being canon combined with the utter lack of on screen and implied anything just is so mind boggling to me. And yet somehow it's so popular???!???? (And it's only because they're both guys, I know this deep in my heart. If even just one of them was a woman, it would be a rare pair.) Again I can see the appeal (especially with post-canon), but so many people just don't do it like they actually like and care for the characters. They extrapolate chemistry that wouldn't be there, instead of figuring out what sort of chemistry would be. I had to block someone the other day because they posted something about "we need a tag for Neuvi and Furina that's familial because he's her dad and you can't convince me otherwise" and I am just like WHAT!! Even if you think their relationship is purely platonic in every scenario, there are more types of platonic relationships than just familial!!! Be creative!! I think people really have forgotten what "headcanon" means...sadly. Don't insist it's canon!!

Like, I dunno. If people want to write these sorts of things, then I can't stop them even if I wanted to. But it's just such a sad state of affairs to me, to live like this. Some people are so passionate and creative but they just have a hatred towards the source material, whether they realize or not...and I have to wonder if they're actually having fun at all. I'm truly a fanfic writer who reads only books because the fanfic situation is so fucked up right now. But even debut books are really "fanfictionified" nowadays too.

Anyway. I should be sleeping LOL. This is not even a good quality rant... But I'm glad to know I'm not alone... the true rare pair shippers... we exist!!

I've actually never bumped into the Klee & Diluc dynamic in the wild, but now I want to dig my fingers into it! pyro characters are always so fun to explore.

Gosh, I've been seeing that as well, there's such a rush to be ‘in’ these days, people dropping fandoms because they're not popular enough never used to happen, or if it did, I haven't seen it.

Yeah! These tropes do have the potential to be written well, if they weren't, they wouldn't be so popular in the first place. I just don't know why someone would want to make fanfiction in the first place if it wasn't… y'know, fanfiction.

While I've done my fair share of getting into canon through fanon for a good portion of my fandoms— I always try to fact check.

Wanting to write accurately is actually how I started reading the Batman comics in the first place. I had heard about the stark contrast but I'm not exaggerating when I say it's a hugeee tone shift!

Then I see people just winging it, and I have no idea how they do it without going insane? then i feel guilty because they’re free to do whatever they want and they're just having fun but also are they even?? sure doesn't look like it.

Do they even like the characters in the first place? the ship? the story?? ugghh it drives me crazy.

oh, also, as a coffee enthusiast myself, I too can agree, there is no place more sexless than a coffee shop. a single step between those pearly gates of stale pastries and weeping, sleep-deprived single parents is enough to reinvigorate even Genghis Khan's maidenhood.

ohh diluven… I've got a wip for them that is just sitting in my docs, they make me so insane. but yeah i feel the same! That's a big reason why I made this post in the first place. I don't feel as much as a shipper so much as someone who wants to put two characters in a room and see what happens.

I'm lucky enough to have gotten into GI post-ayato’s release, but that sounds absolutely miserable! i relate to you with kavetham— it's such a shame that fandom can turn you off of what otherwise could be a very fun character. took me a while to start liking him and kaveh (as individuals) for the same reason.

oh YES, honestly a lot of ships that people claim to be toxic are… regular relationship shit. not even inherently romantic relationship shit just straight up regular friendship between two characters that have, well, flaws.

fandom has a habit of demonising anything that doesn't fit the same brand of, as mentioned, oh-so-repetitive-college-coffee-shop-fluff aus. and i mean demonising. any conflict makes a relationship abusive and it's… actually pretty concerning on the authors part when you think about it.

what you said about there being more platonic dynamics than familial stuck me to my fucking core because that is so real…

Again, part of why I don't feel like I'm much of a shipper, is that mostly, i just like intreasting dynamics! which isn't always romantic. which isn't always familial either. There's more than two ways to mean something to someone.

while at the end of the day i have no problem figuring out chemistry between two characters who have basically never met— as a rarepair lover it would make me an absolute hypocrite—

It's really more about how stubborn people are on fanon-declared ‘canonicality’ that rubs me the wrong way. especially when it's used as an excuse to shit on other ships.

I definitely agree with you on wriolette! i like them as much as the next guy, but god knows if one was a woman people would be clutching their pearls and ‘don’t ship them! It's familial!’-ing them. and that's if they weren't calling the shippers out saying ‘they’ve barely even talked!’

Hey, I think it was a great rant! but yeahhhh, It's getting quite late for me as well, this was a nice chat! Have a good night.

I'm, personally, less interested in the prexisting chemistry than i am in the puzzle of figuring out what differing circumstances could potentially cause two characters who have seemingly nothing in common to become eachothers everything.

This could explain my favorism towards rarepairs and more convoluted dynamics, and my aversion to popular, fluffy pairings that have already been explored a thousand times over, there's no work for me to do there.

Not to mention that when a ship becomes too popular it starts cannibalising itself, and lots of good, interesting characterisations are lost in the sea of people bending characters into pre-orchestrated, saccharine dynamics. alot of which are usually downright fetishy in nature, particularly in mlm pairings.

I mean i would say being able to get ooc and self indulgent is downright mandatory for making a good fic, but there's only so many times i have to read a fic about a big, overprotective, manly-man top who does all the work and the shy, small, swoony, softhearted femme-wifey-bottom before it starts to just be lazy.

I actively have to go out of my way to search 'switch' tags if i want true-to-the-character, mutual emotional reciprocation. which i really, really shouldn't have to do as an ace person who actively skips through nsfw.

And it's not that popular wlw pairings aren't guilty of these problems aswell, but those tend to lean more into the 'soft lesbians who can do no wrong' stereotype, which always completely (butch)ers all nuisance that makes the ship worth shipping in the first place.

As well as that's if they're even the focus of the story at all and aren't just shoved to the side by the main mlm couple. mlw pairings can be culpable of both these things, with the added risk that you find out the author made a twitter post with the characters in front of the 'super straight' flag.

Though i also wonder if me being aspec plays any part as again; im not as interested in the romantic aspects as i am in the possible hurdles they may face throughout the potential relationship.

I do not read fanfiction usually (despite being a writer myself), solely because I do not want to risk weird characterizations or boring tropes the characters have been shoved into. Some of the other ships you've mentioned I actively avoid and hate because of fanon specifically (the other ships I'm just "meh" on and don't actively seek nor actively block those ones). Other honorable mentions for me include Kaeya/Albedo and Thoma/Ayato. I used to really, really love the former, found out a majority of fanon was incredibly off-kilter and OOC to the point they weren't even reading as the same characters to me, and now, more often than not, I can't stand the ship.

I also hate (for mlm pairings) the need to search two tags for "dynamics" when topping or bottoming, especially in SFW settings where they're doing neither of those things! I once stumbled upon a xiaother zine discourse where someone was trying to illustrate how whoever tops will affect a SFW scenario and it was genuinely the stupidest thing I'd ever read!

But I truly think my problem with most "big name" ships is how they've just been explored to death. You touched upon this already. Outside of Genshin, I'm in fandoms like Touken Ranbu, where there's very little "canon" interaction (even if you're counting things like the stage plays, musicals, and anime, and not just the original game) so one has to learn to extrapolate how characters would interact from either no interactions whatsoever or very little. As it stands, Touken Ranbu is one of the only fandoms I actually still enjoy talking to others in, which may or may not be related...

I have always said I'm contrarian for disliking "big" ships based solely on the fact they're highly popular. But it's true, and I'm not doing it just to be contrarian. Rarer pairings, even some where I'm the only one in the tag on AO3 (this is especially the case in Touken Ranbu), generally hold more appeal to me. In recent years, I've also pivoted to focusing more on Gen work (for instance, I really love imagining a friendship between Diluc and Klee, and Kaeya and Diona, but these are just two examples) because there's no pre-existing notion from "fanon law" about dynamics or whatever because it's just Gen.

I think another side of the coin is that many shippers of "big" ships refuse to see the characters outside of the context of the ship. They either only care for the ship or only care for one half of the ship. A very notable example in my experience is xiaoven. I have honestly never seen a Venti-first Xiaoven fan, which is already pretty concerning; the majority only care about Xiao and/or the both of them only when they're being shipped. (In my opinion, this ship is also one of the worst to be flanderized! I could fully see the appeal of the dynamic but no one explores the actual dynamic they could have!)

I often think about this post (which is no longer rebloggable). Namely: "it's a one size fits all of generic, pre-made tropes that will be forced into each and every piece of media that gets even a bit of attention, even when these tropes and scenarios don't fit the personality of the characters or are in any way related to the original story they are supposedly drawing from." I see so many people doing this! And I'm sitting here thinking, "You may be having fun, but if you're debasing the characters to such an extent they don't resemble the original whatsoever, then I think you may have even more fun writing with Original Characters!" And I think this is what happens with a majority of "big" ships, if not all (I have even seen it with neuvifuri plenty already, but thankfully I just love them too much to care).

Xiaoven, Thomato and Kaebedo are all such good examples that I'm shocked I forgot to add them in the first place. and I've never heard of Touken Ranbu before, but from what you've said i am very interested!

I agree on the gen focus as well, ironically i was actually reading through a Diluc and Diona fanfic when i got this notification. Simply put, in a genfic you're far more likely to find something organic and fresh— since there's no romance involved and it focuses on the characters and the story being told.

That said, i also relate VERY hard to loving a ship so much that you'll grit your teeth through the worst fic imaginable, hehe.

I feel the exact same way with what you said about feeling like a contrarian!

For a while, I was genuinely concerned I was being a dick, or had somehow suddenly become wildly homophobic just because I could never get into the popular, beaten to death, mlm ship it feels like every fandom has.

Though, since then, I've obviously realised i just prefer rarepairs! and for the exact reason a lot of people don't like them in the first place; there's a lack of content for them, and thus less of the character is lost in the hustle and bustle, and is free to be explored.

Speaking of the degeneration of canon in the face of fanon, alot of people tend to get into media through fandom, which while isn't necessarily a bad thing, greatly increases the generation loss phenomenon.

The post you sent captures my thoughts on this perfectly— i actually lost my mind at ‘the college coffee shop au’ line because both my hands and feet wouldn't be enough to count how many times I've been scrolling through ao3 and thought: ‘not another fucking college au by someone who only knows the characters though fanfiction.’

One in particular that comes to mind as I'm writing this that you may, or may not, know is the Batman fandom, which, even as a community with an unusually high abundance of genfic, nearly every single characterisation remains the same; absolutely nothing like the true source media.

It's such a prevalent problem that comic fans and fanon fans are nigh complete opposites when compared, and most of the other batman comic fans I know outwardly despise the fandom!

And while I do genuinely enjoy reading some cliche, fanon nonsense every once in a while, I can agree as well that these are simply just not the same characters. and that really grates on you after a while.

Related to the issue of people only knowing these characters through fanon and the misinformation it causes— is people using widely known headcanons as ‘gotcha!’ on posts. Fans presenting fanon like it's fact.

A good example of this would actually be Neuvifuri, with people claiming they're related when that's just… blatantly false. you're perfectly free to have a headcanon, but you've got to remember that it's a headcanon!

ah, went on a ramble there, guess i wanted to outdo you on the wordcount, ehm? anyway, my point is. yes. I absolutely agree on everything you said. 100%. my comrade in arms for REAL.

@alldayallshit you are actually so fucking real. done