Sonic fans, Digimon fans, and shippers in general are a bit weird

[Tyranno]

I found a Mario fan community site once. It was pretty odd, because I'd figured Mario was one of those characters like Bugs Bunny, or the duo of Tom and Jerry, in the sense of being a character ("mascot" might be a better word), people grew up with, many people liked the franchise, but to give a s*** about the characters of the frnchise was a bit surreal. I'm saying I find it impossible to believe these are deep characters that people establish a real emotional investment in.

Which brings me to Sonic, who is also more a mascot than a character. Well not just Sonic the mascot, the cast of Sonic the franchise and the crazy shippers. For one, the shipping between characters of ridiculous ages (like, single-digit ages in some cases), which they then defend and argue with each other over. 

I'm not terribly familiar with the Sonic mythos, besides which I'm not going to believe there is a particularly deep mythos. Some of the less absurd (still absurd though). pairings may even be canon, like one involving a 15-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl, and maybe because of crazy(er) fans, some fans are over-protective of canon pairings. But whether its canon or a fan pairing, its still nonsense. A twelve-year-old who "loves" a 15-year-old is undoubtedly feeling a crush admiration. The fifteen-year-old meanwhile would be more interested in sex than relationships*, or not interested in any kind of relationship at that point.

* they would think they were interested in sex, at least 

Digimon is a Toei show. That means its probably designed to be a cash cow franchise, doing the same thing again and again, but with a different gimmick each season. Despite this, it still has a part of its fandom who insist it's a work of art. Somehow. Even more disturbingly, some people still complain about issues with the "pairings" despite these things being resolved years ago in the story, which is also nonsense by the way.

Again, the characters are very young (7-13), and wouldn't have serious relationships. The fan pairings, along with all the canon pairings of most seasons, are still complete nonsense. 

Now a thing about slash fans. They are slash fans because "yaoi fans" and "yuri fans" don't exist, because if they did, the idea that sticking a Japanese word in an English sentence makes you sophisticated would be true.

[Joel]

People on the internet are weird ?!

[Vallium]

1 hour ago, Tyranno said:

I found a Mario fan community site once. It was pretty odd, because I'd figured Mario was one of those characters like Bugs Bunny, or the duo of Tom and Jerry, in the sense of being a character ("mascot" might be a better word), people grew up with, many people liked the franchise, but to give a s*** about the characters of the frnchise was a bit surreal. I'm saying I find it impossible to believe these are deep characters that people establish a real emotional investment in.

Sounds like @Vae

[littlerock]

Furries are just as weird overall, the pot and the kettle are both still black, more news at 11.

[Fossa]

Huh, I never would have guessed people got that into Mario. But as the pope said, who am I to judge? Well, at least now now I know what Vaes avi is about; always did wonder if it was like a vampire Smurf/Beethoven hybrid, or something. Had me guessing till now.

[Vae]

I was @ed, so I'm responding.

Literally all I can say is fandoms exist. Headcanons exist. Exploration of ideas exists.
Not everything is cut and dry because it doesn't have some strict underlying guidelines to hold your hand through doing what you want with that universe's elements.

Also, the idea of overthinking why people get invested in fictional concepts is laughable to me, considering this is a forum for pretend cartoon animal people.

[Hux]

A U T I S M

U

T

I

S

M

[Troj]

Shipping seems like the biggest goddamn waste of time and braincells. I don't hang out with 12-year-olds, so I only know one person who is even remotely into shipping, and I'm thankful for that.

And yes, my experience of Sonic fans has been that they're, erm, odd. Poke-fans seem like they can go either way, and I don't think my sample size of Digi-fans is big enough for me to pass judgment.

 

 

[FlynnCoyote]

The Sonic mythos is almost as deep and convoluted as any Marvel series, I had enough trouble just reading a synopsis about it on Cracked. I guess if there's really that much material for the fandom to use, then they'll use it.

Really this isn't new or unique to these franchises. There are these types of people in every fandom.

[Zeke]

Shipping....

 

Lol.

[Troj]

I might be a failure as a biological female, because I can count the romantic movies I like on one hand, and they're all atypical and strange. I don't care who's dating whom in real life, let alone who fictional characters are dating, or even more, should be dating according to people's headcanons.

At the end of the day, I just want fictional characters to get what they deserve, and I want their choices to make sense in light of the narrative.

How people paired off in Harry Potter never made sense to me, and that did bug me a little. Still, I didn't 'splode my nips over it.

[Saxon]

Why stick to one franchise? Ship those digimons with those pokémons. ;3

I'm sure this would be worth doing, if only to leave purists aghast at the heresy.

[Troj]

I'd be great if Digimon could make more internal logical sense, and if Pokemon weren't just glorified fighting cocks.

[Victor-933]

25 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Why stick to one franchise? Ship those digimons with those pokémons. ;3

I'm sure this would be worth doing, if only to leave purists aghast at the heresy.

Pokemon are like Digimon with Down's that can only say their own name though and I'm pretty sure retards can't legally consent

[Tyranno]

1 hour ago, Troj said:

At the end of the day, I just want fictional characters to get what they deserve, and I want their choices to make sense in light of the narrative.

How people paired off in Harry Potter never made sense to me, and that did bug me a little. Still, I didn't 'splode my nips over it.

If people get emotionally invested in fictional characters, if the writing is so good that they can empathise, feel their pain, etc. that's just an example of good writing and/or an emotionally open viewer, reader or whatever. If you spent hours and hours watching something and felt nothing for the character's, that would be very questionable, really, unless it was a Michael Bay type movie.

But like in this case, you're not fuming and ranting about it nearly twenty years later.

[Vae]

50 minutes ago, Tyranno said:

If you spent hours and hours watching something and felt nothing for the character's, that would be very questionable,

Except not really.

Fiction isn't a "put Token A into Slot B and receive Prize C" process.
People value and attach to different things.

Speaking of the shipping debate earlier, the draw of that tends to be towards the emotions and psychological conflicts involved between the characters. That's not gonna appeal to everyone, but again, people value different things in media and how they interpret media.

Not everyone's gonna like the same things you do.

[Toshabi]

@Tyranno I fuck a Raichu daily.

[Wrecker]

So... By shipping we're not talking about UPS or Purolator or something like that? I'm lost.

[WileyWarWeasel]

7 hours ago, Wrecker said:

So... By shipping we're not talking about UPS or Purolator or something like that? I'm lost.

We're talking about shipping Hanjin

with Hyundai Merchant Marine

 

Pretty sure that's how it works ;V

[Tyranno]

16 hours ago, Vae said:

Except not really.

Fiction isn't a "put Token A into Slot B and receive Prize C" process.
People value and attach to different things.

I don't believe that.

I mean, if I watched many episodes of a show and felt indifferent about it, I'd stop wasting time on it. 

People may be different to receptive things, yes, but if the people behind the [medium] are responsible for making people feel what they're trying to convey.

There's a point where someone's view of reality becomes skewed:

If I said, "Staring at my neighbour's fence is better than visiting the Great Wall of China", under the rationalisation  "I don't care much about walls or fences, and my neighbour's fence is closer, so it's much more practical and thus better". That, through a twisted sort of logic, is rational.

If I tried to get holiday companies to advertise my neighbours fence, and passionately tried to convince people not to visit the Great Wall of China, but instead, my neighbour's fence, that's irrational.

So, getting back to shipping, here's the thing: if Digimon was, as many fans have convinced themselves,  some masterpiece of deep and realistic characterisation, then realistically, kids of those wouldn't get into meaningful relationships at all, meaning pretty much every pairing is total nonsense. Despite this blatant hole in the logic (these two things just can't share a reality) they argue passionately. Almost decades later. 

16 hours ago, Vae said:

Speaking of the shipping debate earlier, the draw of that tends to be towards the emotions and psychological conflicts involved between the characters. 
 

 

I'd believe this if not for how many shipping issues are less about [character 1} and [character 2] and more about [character archetype 1] and [character archetype 2].

Furthermore, with the aforementioned franchises they haven't seen the main characters at a point in their lives when they might get involved in a relationship. Even if they focus on psychological conflicts of said characters, since the characters wouldn't care about relationships at that point, said conflicts wouldn't be evidence of any potential relationship ideas.

[Vae]

3 hours ago, Tyranno said:

I don't believe that.

I mean, if I watched many episodes of a show and felt indifferent about it, I'd stop wasting time on it. 

People may be different to receptive things, yes, but if the people behind the [medium] are responsible for making people feel what they're trying to convey.

There's a point where someone's view of reality becomes skewed:

If I said, "Staring at my neighbour's fence is better than visiting the Great Wall of China", under the rationalisation  "I don't care much about walls or fences, and my neighbour's fence is closer, so it's much more practical and thus better". That, through a twisted sort of logic, is rational.

If I tried to get holiday companies to advertise my neighbours fence, and passionately tried to convince people not to visit the Great Wall of China, but instead, my neighbour's fence, that's irrational.

So, getting back to shipping, here's the thing: if Digimon was, as many fans have convinced themselves,  some masterpiece of deep and realistic characterisation, then realistically, kids of those wouldn't get into meaningful relationships at all, meaning pretty much every pairing is total nonsense. Despite this blatant hole in the logic (these two things just can't share a reality) they argue passionately. Almost decades later. 

 

I'd believe this if not for how many shipping issues are less about [character 1} and [character 2] and more about [character archetype 1] and [character archetype 2].

Furthermore, with the aforementioned franchises they haven't seen the main characters at a point in their lives when they might get involved in a relationship. Even if they focus on psychological conflicts of said characters, since the characters wouldn't care about relationships at that point, said conflicts wouldn't be evidence of any potential relationship ideas.

You didn't mention feeling indifferent about the plot, entirely. You mentioned feeling indifferent towards the characters. Those are two different things.
The characters are not the only element of a plot.

I don't know where you're getting advertising from, since I literally said all of jack and shit about promotion or advertising. I couldn't care less if people are into the same things I am.
Just that people enjoy different aspects of different things as individuals.

And again, I'm gonna repeat myself about the shipping thing: Different people like different things. You don't have to have canon holding your hand when you indulge in the foundations and elements a story lays out for you.
I mean, some people probably do, but a lot don't.

[Tyranno]

32 minutes ago, Vae said:

You didn't mention feeling indifferent about the plot, entirely. You mentioned feeling indifferent towards the characters. Those are two different things.
The characters are not the only element of a plot.

It seems, if the viewer couldn't care less about what happens to anyone, if the story was short, like a single movie, they might enjoy it, but I can't imagine sufficient episodes whose  sum total of runtime amounts to multiple days, that sounds like someone who can't not have closure.

37 minutes ago, Vae said:

I don't know where you're getting advertising from, since I literally said all of jack and shit about promotion or advertising.
 

That was a point about the difference between things that make sense in a twisted way and things that have an obvious gap in the logic.

For example, for Digimon to both portray realistic, deep characters and for its 7-13 year old kids to have romantic feelings to each other is a contradiction. Either of those things being true mean the other can't be.

44 minutes ago, Vae said:

And again, I'm gonna repeat myself about the shipping thing: Different people like different things. You don't have to have canon holding your hand when you indulge in the foundations and elements a story lays out for you.
I mean, some people probably do, but a lot don't.

It feels like I'm going insane. Correct me if I'm wrong, this is how I'm reading this debate thus far:

"the draw of that tends to be towards the emotions and psychological conflicts involved between the characters" (As I'm reading it, shippers use things from the franchise to fuel their ships]

" Even if they focus on psychological ..." [I'll abbreviate mine: since kids of that age wouldn't have any remoantic interest, such "fuel" cannot exist]

" You don't have to have canon holding your hand when you indulge in the foundations and elements a story lays out for you." (I'm reading - something about taking canon elements out of context. Or you're saying they disregard canon elements which doesn't mesh with the previous point, so I'm assuming that's not what you meant).

But if they're taking stuff out of context, why use anything from canon at all?

 

[Troj]

Are we overthinking shippers here, though?

My stereotype of shippers is that they're mostly tweens who've scarcely dated and who've never had sex who either like pairing up characters because they're OMG SO KAWAII together, or because they generate the best imagined drama-sparks.

It's almost like interior decorating or accessorizing, except with fictional characters instead of lamps and rugs or belts and hats.

Of course, my stereotype could be wrong.

[Xaende]

Yeah, but the shipping is free. Who doesn't like free shipping?

[Wrecker]

17 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

We're talking about shipping Hanjin

with Hyundai Merchant Marine

 

Pretty sure that's how it works ;V

Oh, shipping on an actual ship! Jeez, that makes way more sense.

So, basically all that's happening is there's a bunch of poor, trapped people that are losing their minds because they're stuck in containers on ships something something anime.

I'd go crazy too if I was stuck in a container.

 

[WileyWarWeasel]

2 hours ago, Wrecker said:

Oh, shipping on an actual ship! Jeez, that makes way more sense.

So, basically all that's happening is there's a bunch of poor, trapped people that are losing their minds because they're stuck in containers on ships something something anime.

I'd go crazy too if I was stuck in a container.

 

Precisely, and this is what the shippers themselves look like

[Cingal]

I don't get it.

I don't understand it.

I don't really care.

 

 

[Imperial Impact]

[Tyranno]

Because you're neither oblivious nor impetuous, I don't believe you couldn't removed that from a screencap without seeing the below shout - the non-sequitur that serves as a delivery for the one you posted, almost like the setup of a joke, you must've realised you were posting the punchline of a joke, so I'm going to assume you're trolling.

But I'll admit to your two minor victories - getting more laughs than the original joke, and making me double check that other guy hadn't recieved sufficient shouts so as to push the setup of the page.

[Tsuujou]

Shipping is fun and fine if you're not obsessive.
Also, holy crap. This thread is a "Don't like or do what I don't approve of" if I've ever seen it.