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So I come back on-line after bronchitis (yes, so much fun), and reading various meta including discussions on OTP in various fandoms. And I have concluded that I must be a fandom freak. Because I have none. If anything, I have anti-OTPs, where I get annoyed by TPTB shoving a pairing at me that I don't personally buy. (*cough* Sam/Jack *cough*) But I don't have that OMG!TheirLoveIsSoCanon! squee that seems so prevalent these days.
Mind you, I enjoy reading a lot of pairings, both slash and het (though honestly my fanfic reading has cut back immmensely in recent years for RL reasons). But when I look at a show like, say, Atlantis, I feel I can definitely say that I don't care who, if anyone, ends up with whom. In fact, the producers seem to me to be deliberately laying fuel under all the possible 'ships, thus pretty much making no particular 'ship more canon (possible canon) than any other. This is of course, for the purpose of being able to bring in an "attraction of the week", as we've seen with Shep, McKay, and Beckett at least. So, I guess for me the producers have done such a good job that I can buy pretty much any ship if the author convinces me that it could work. (Weir/Zalenka? So adorable) But by the same token, since I'm not a die-hard shipper, I find fics written only for fans of those pairings difficult to buy, because they're working off a fanon base that doesn't exist in my own head.
This is true in 'Harry Potter' as well, where pretty much any named character has been paired with any other named character, and you can find a comm or an archive devoted to it. I just sit back and blink bemusedly at the Harry/Hermione 'shipping war just passed, and figure I've just moved on, grown up, or just not invested in the fandom as much as other people. But y'know, I can read Lily/James, or Lupin/Snape, or Draco/Harry, just fine, whatever. And really, if a story doesn't have a pairing, that's perfectly fine too, but those are pretty thin on the ground these days.
Yet even when I was a diehard, hard-core fangirl with hours to burn reading fic, it was usually individual characters, not a pairing, that was my attraction. I was most fervent in B5, but even then, when people were John/Delenn or Susan/Marcus and the pairings were quite firmly canon, it wasn't like I couldn't read some Sheridan/Garibaldi. As for writing, I only ever wrote Sinclair, and I had so much to say about him, I barely bothered pairing him with anyone.
In Farscape, I was from the beginning a John/Aeryn 'shipper, but yet again, I read an entire John/Crais story in some thirty parts and enjoyed it immensely. It didn't offend me, it didn't bother me that it wasn't canon or my fave 'ship, so I don't know -- is John/Aeryn really an OTP then? Seems like from the prevalent definition I should've avoided reading stories pairing John with anyone else. Or maybe the definition is too stringent, and it just means the romantic pairing that you favor.
Now my personal anti-OTP as I mentioned above is Jack/Sam. And I do, I admit, go out of my way to avoid reading that pairing. Even though I acknowledge that it is/was canon up to a point, I just can't stand it. At most, I think their relationship would run to: go to bed, wake up the next morning and realize they have *nothing* to talk about. Really I don't mind fics that go no further than what we see on screen (UST fics, IOW), but I've been led astray into so many "Jack and Sam fluffy bunny, keeping house, True Wuv" stories that I avoid the whole pairing as a general rule. But the odd thing is, in the reverse, I don't have any pairings that I actively seek out.
The closest I come to an OTP I think, is in Battlestar Galactica, where I read Helo/Boomer pretty much exclusively. But I sort of fell into by default, because Lee/Kara is my Anti-OTP (nope, don't like that one either, at least not in fanfic, since I really like the balance in the show, and very few writers can resist tipping them into a couple), and Helo/Boomer has all kinds of interesting issues to play with. But if Helo gets killed, I will be sad for the waste of a good character, but I won't be writing denial/fixit fic either.
So, hm. I guess my viewing and therefore my fanfic experience is just plain different from most people (or LJ ficcers/commentators, which may be an entirely different breed than "most people", I grant you).
Mind you, I enjoy reading a lot of pairings, both slash and het (though honestly my fanfic reading has cut back immmensely in recent years for RL reasons). But when I look at a show like, say, Atlantis, I feel I can definitely say that I don't care who, if anyone, ends up with whom. In fact, the producers seem to me to be deliberately laying fuel under all the possible 'ships, thus pretty much making no particular 'ship more canon (possible canon) than any other. This is of course, for the purpose of being able to bring in an "attraction of the week", as we've seen with Shep, McKay, and Beckett at least. So, I guess for me the producers have done such a good job that I can buy pretty much any ship if the author convinces me that it could work. (Weir/Zalenka? So adorable) But by the same token, since I'm not a die-hard shipper, I find fics written only for fans of those pairings difficult to buy, because they're working off a fanon base that doesn't exist in my own head.
This is true in 'Harry Potter' as well, where pretty much any named character has been paired with any other named character, and you can find a comm or an archive devoted to it. I just sit back and blink bemusedly at the Harry/Hermione 'shipping war just passed, and figure I've just moved on, grown up, or just not invested in the fandom as much as other people. But y'know, I can read Lily/James, or Lupin/Snape, or Draco/Harry, just fine, whatever. And really, if a story doesn't have a pairing, that's perfectly fine too, but those are pretty thin on the ground these days.
Yet even when I was a diehard, hard-core fangirl with hours to burn reading fic, it was usually individual characters, not a pairing, that was my attraction. I was most fervent in B5, but even then, when people were John/Delenn or Susan/Marcus and the pairings were quite firmly canon, it wasn't like I couldn't read some Sheridan/Garibaldi. As for writing, I only ever wrote Sinclair, and I had so much to say about him, I barely bothered pairing him with anyone.
In Farscape, I was from the beginning a John/Aeryn 'shipper, but yet again, I read an entire John/Crais story in some thirty parts and enjoyed it immensely. It didn't offend me, it didn't bother me that it wasn't canon or my fave 'ship, so I don't know -- is John/Aeryn really an OTP then? Seems like from the prevalent definition I should've avoided reading stories pairing John with anyone else. Or maybe the definition is too stringent, and it just means the romantic pairing that you favor.
Now my personal anti-OTP as I mentioned above is Jack/Sam. And I do, I admit, go out of my way to avoid reading that pairing. Even though I acknowledge that it is/was canon up to a point, I just can't stand it. At most, I think their relationship would run to: go to bed, wake up the next morning and realize they have *nothing* to talk about. Really I don't mind fics that go no further than what we see on screen (UST fics, IOW), but I've been led astray into so many "Jack and Sam fluffy bunny, keeping house, True Wuv" stories that I avoid the whole pairing as a general rule. But the odd thing is, in the reverse, I don't have any pairings that I actively seek out.
The closest I come to an OTP I think, is in Battlestar Galactica, where I read Helo/Boomer pretty much exclusively. But I sort of fell into by default, because Lee/Kara is my Anti-OTP (nope, don't like that one either, at least not in fanfic, since I really like the balance in the show, and very few writers can resist tipping them into a couple), and Helo/Boomer has all kinds of interesting issues to play with. But if Helo gets killed, I will be sad for the waste of a good character, but I won't be writing denial/fixit fic either.
So, hm. I guess my viewing and therefore my fanfic experience is just plain different from most people (or LJ ficcers/commentators, which may be an entirely different breed than "most people", I grant you).
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Some people do get bent out of shape over their OTP. Like the Frodo/Sam slasher I met who ran out of the theatre a the end of ROTK when they showed Sam and Rosie's wedding. Apparently she runs an anti-Rosie website. Whatever.