#lolrpf

Yeah, I also think the fact that Viper's early success and his career taking off in the LPL as opposed to Ruler, who won Worlds for the LCK first and played on 2018 Asia Games Team Korea before moving to the LPL later is some of it. That might be why CN fans are more drawn to vihends than rulehends.

But then why is vihends more popular than other Viper ships like pernut or viko?

First, because Lehends is globally popular for fairly obvious reasons - he's one of the most charismatic pro League players - and second, because Lehends is, was, and always will be incredibly important to Viper. Not only was Lehends his debut support on Griffin, but the two click together tremendously well. If you've ever watched content of the two of them together, whether back on Griffin or HLE or even more recently, they have an undeniable chemistry in that they understand each other very well. As an avid rulehends OTPer, I will admit that I think Viper is more similar to Lehends than Ruler is. Viper matches Lehends; Ruler complements Lehends. Inside you are two wolves. And by you I mean Son Siwoo. Read more in Snaps.

Another thing I've noticed in my brief search is that, as a broad generalization, the Chinese side of the fandom tends to prefer older ships - based on pairings from the 2017-2020 - whereas the English side of the fandom more frequently favors newer ships from the 2022-2026 range. With the exception of gumakeria (and to a lesser extent one2eus) being the global sensation it is, a lot of the most popular CN ships - NingShy, Lwx x crisp, fakenut, maolan - are from the days when the CN fandom first exploded on AO3, i.e. around 2018-2019. On the other hand, the English side of the fandom only really started gaining more popularity around 2022-2023. Maybe that plays some role in it as well.

It's really funny to me because I personally consider vihends a standard and popular ship - it's one of the most written lolrpf ships on AO3 - but not too long ago, someone called it a rarepair and I was somewhat shook. I mean, when I first started writing rulehends, that was rarepair, though I am proud to state that, as you've noticed, it's really taken off in the English side of the fandom over the past few years.