lilabet wrote: Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:36 am
One of the things I found interesting (unless I’m misreading it) is that older phans also believe they are in a relationship but are less likely to ‘ship’ them.
This is fascinating to me as an older fan. It makes me think about the evolution of the term and of what shipping is. People used to be uncomfortable with real person shipping which could play a part. Also shipping has moved to people wanting it to be canon when before there was less emphasis on this. It was all about exploring subtext and alternatives in canon.
Personally I’m part of that group who believe they’re in the relationship but don’t ship it. Probably because of the way I consider shipping. However I still take part in Finnish behaviour like reading fics.
Just some thoughts.
i find this interesting too, and as someone who has been involved in fan/fandom culture since i was like 8, it's been interesting to see how it's grown over the years.
what i've found it that the term "shipping" or really to exclaiming that you "ship [insert couple]" seems to have started to become an outdated term. now that may just be me getting older, and younger people could still be actively using that terminology frequently, but i personally feel like it had it's huge heyday back in 2011-2014. i personally used "i ship it!" so much back then, and i noticed that after 2014 it just sort of faded away out of the limelight. again, that could just be me, but i didn't notice it being actively used in tumblr communities either, where the terms thrived.
also to tie into the deal with irl shipping, i know that back then it felt weird for be to consider shipping irl people, but eventually as others who felt uncomfortable were like "hey, i mean we aren't doing any harm, and they don't appear to mind, so it should be fine", i agreed with that mentality, and still do, so slowly i felt like shipping became more mainstream as people were more okay with shipping phan and troyler, for example, a ship that literally took over social media
(and then died so fast lol).
anyway, what i'm getting at is that i believe the people who "grew up" in fandoms as shipping culture became a thing, and are still here today are often able to see past the simplicity of 'just shipping' a couple and run with their own preferred canons, without feeling the need to explicitly state that they ship them or that they're their otp. the 2011-2014 period felt like a time when fan culture was high and intense, and people really had to stake their claims with as much purpose as they could muster. i think youtube fandoms, the rapidly growing rise of young adult books and the entire glee fandom were the main contributors to this intensity that brought the "fanatic" back to the "fan". as things evidently started to settle a bit and the intensity fell, as well as fans getting older and maturing, the need to be so explicit about who you ship wasn't as necessary or urgent as so many ships were 'established' in this time. unless it's a new fandom, like how i watched people flip over skam and who they shipped on that show, there isn't a need for people to be as intense about shipping besides asking others who they ship and why, as well as making it evident that they do ship them through edits or fics and whatnot.
in regards to depps directly, while there are new and young people joining the phandom who didn't have the wondrous experience of the glee fandom on tumblr when the show was still airing, so they're more inclined to take definitive sides on where they stand with phan, a lot of people who have been here for awhile took their stance, and due to how much they've 'opened up' from 2014 until now, the dramatics of shipping or not shipping phan are less prevalent in the community. now that's not to say people don't fight about whether or not dnp are together, but it feels a lot less like war than it did a few years ago.
personally, i believe they're in a relationship about 90% of the time, since my brain likes to mess with me the other 10% of the time and convince me that they're just best buds (apparently i'm in the 90% zone rn haha). i guess i could say i ship it, but i feel like the last time i said "i ship dan and phil" was in like early 2015. it just doesn't feel necessary for me to say it any more, and as i just word-dumped above, the fanatic shipping experience i had with this fandom and others feels like a form of adolescence within my fandom experience (and i personally think within most 'older' fandoms who thrived in the 2011-2014 period).
obviously this post is based on my own experiences, and as someone who isn't new to the phandom or fan culture in general, and isn't one of the really young people in the community- along with this probably not being how people have generally experienced shipping and fan culture over the years-this is just how i've viewed the development over the years. so idk if this makes sense to anyone, or if someone has had similar feelings/experiences to me, but i guess this can be taken with a grain of salt.
also sorry this is long, i really need to learn how to not write so much, especially at 3 am
okay damn i wrote this whole mess out and then hit preview to see a refreshed page with more stuff related to the topic
droopy wrote: Sat Dec 30, 2017 9:58 am
Ugh, you know the content drought is bad when I turn to numbers for entertainment.
But I agree with
lilabet that the perception of what "shipping" means has changed. Back in my day (like five years ago or whatever lmao), shipping just meant you wanted two characters (or irl people
a la the kpop fandom) to be together. I was too young for the early days of internet fandom, but it did seem like shipping was more exclusively used for characters that weren't together canonically? Whereas now it's used very casually for any couple you support, whether they're canon/official or not.
I think two possible reasons people don't want to label their beliefs/opinions as shipping are:
1) They consider their own views to be a belief ("I
believe deppy are together") as opposed to a desire they're imposing upon the boys ("I
want or
hope deppy are together").
2) They don't want to be associated with shippers because they think they're cringey/creepy/etc, even if their actual opinions on deppy's relationship are basically the same as a shipper's.
idk if anyone has a specific opinion on this, but I'm curious so I wanna ask: What do you think makes a shipper a shipper? What separates them from people who "just think D&P are together"?
i totally agree with this view on shippers/shipping!
fundamentally, i don't think they're anything that really differentiates shippers and people who just think dnp are together. it's really all in how people identify themselves. (sidenote: i am so glad i read this before posting because i meant to talk about the idea of shippers being cringe but it slipped my mind while typing all the other junk out).
i can't count how many times i've been made fun of for being in a fandom where the fans are really intense (being into one direction and glee right as they started to hit the mainstream was really wild back in the day), so i think a lot of people were annoyed, frustrated, and embarrassed by people outside of their fandom's view on the members of the fandom and decided to abandon those labels, as you said. i also really like the point about it being a belief. while i do believe that the exterminates of fan culture are becoming a thing of the past, perhaps temporarily (taking into account the fan culture surrounding the beatles in the 60s and then looking at the huge rise in fan culture in the early 2000s), beliefs are often something people use to legitimize their opinions and internally justify them, so it only make sense for fandom members to use that when functioning within their fandoms.
: https://twitter.com/tatinofphil
If anyone is still bored and wants something to do during this deppy famine, I'm gonna pose my favorite "would you rathers"- don't feel like you have to answer all of them, but I love reading people's answers to these kinds of things so I'd love to hear your thoughts! Enjoy! 
? How about the in-depth analysis of the Dan & Phil Survey results?
) people to be in a relationship. I see a lot of youtube comments on deppy's videos that say that deppy aren't a couple, but they still ship phan because it's fiction and they're not hurting dan and phil. If I could draw a Venn diagram right now I'd make two interlocking circles of shippers and people who think deppy are together, because I believe they overlap. What separates them from the people who believe deppy are together is that they may not believe deppy are together, or the people who believe deppy are together may fundamentally disagree with the idea of shipping real people.
