Fandom Meme DAY 4 - Harnessing the emotional power in NOTPs and NOPES

[sarasa_cat]

4. What is one pairing you hate and why?

Wow. I do not like this question for so many reasons. Here is the new question:

4. Talk about your thoughts on pairings that cause discomfort in your fandom(s).

I had to change the original meme question because there are no pairings that I truly, intensely, passionately hate to the point that I avoid the pairing at all costs. Here is why: if the thought of any specific pairing causes me discomfort, that pairing or something that pairing represents has strong emotional power in it.

AND THAT MEANS IT IS MUSE FUEL.

The idea here is not to provoke readers. Instead, this is a matter of understanding the power that a NOTP has over me so I can harness it and tell an emotionally honest and emotionally powerful story.

Some of my most kudoed/commented stories were born from NOTP pairings and from NOPE prompts (where the prompt itself is a NOPENOPENOPE, rather than the pairing).

As for reading NOTP pairs and prompts, this is where my notion of “trusting the author” comes in.

A writer gains my trust when they write a NOTP or a NOPE in a way that knowingly nods to why I feel a knee-jerk NOOOOOOO. It's like this secret handshake of "yep, know how you feel on this one, and here is a story that validate the reality of those feelings." 
...

Anyone else with thoughts on this?

Comments

[fragilespark]

That's a really interesting take. Sometimes feeling honour-bound to fulfil a prompt leads to a challenging exploration because you have to write the pairing/situation and therefore find a way to address the issues with it at the same time.

But you are right on trusting the author - I've read some quite outstanding Seb/Anders fic for example where I wouldn't have ever touched the pairing before.

[sarasa_cat]

Needing to fill prompts causes interesting things to happen. I once needed to fill an Isabela/Carver prompt in a prompt-exchange challenge and as much as I enjoy both of those character, I had never considered them together so I had no feelings what so ever. Luckily, the prompt included a few ideas that sparked a wonderful idea and the story more or less wrote itself. ***phewwww*** If not for those extra ideas in the prompt, I would have been left with nothing, which is why I usually prefer writing a NOTP over a *shrug*!ship.

Trusting the author: this is an issue for me even with my OTPs (ot3s, etc.).

[zen_monk]

Sometimes a NOTP happens for me because the authorial authority really doesn't sell a ship well, and even more so if done in a way that is blind to its problems. Sometimes it's a superficial justification for me too, since it would come from overexposure of it. Like, no matter how well done the relationship, how many times am I gonna see a white guy coded to get paired up with an Asian lady and have to accept liking it while without her having other significant relationships from her community? Bonus points if her Asian community is abusive in some way because of "culture".

Even without the extra addendums, I would just get a visceral side eye out of it. But this is just one example what I don't enjoy out of a ship, and it gets worse if fandom just eats it gleefully.

[zen_monk]

that being said, tho, it's not as though i go out of my way to not read NOTPs or that it's going to be an auto-block. I've merely been more selective, and sometimes if it doesn't seem as though people are more conscious of the relationship then it feels more validated and more real.

Sometimes, tho, when i start getting into why i don't like a ship or why i really nope out of it, I start to also realize the overall narrative's weakness with character and plot and themes, and it just starts to make a story not feel right with its flaws magnified through these kinds of character interactions.

[sarasa_cat]

...But this is just one example what I don't enjoy out of a ship, and it gets worse if fandom just eats it gleefully.

All of this gets back to my long running (how many years now?) song about how there is no such thing as a universal story. There are quite a few tropes in original media and in fanon that fandom eats gleefully while I am either "NOPE, sorry, no" or **yawwwn**.

To continue with your example, when a character's ethnicity & culture is automatically viewed as a flat one-dimensional stereotype, the trope is only going to "work" for people who get to feel better about themselves because of the trope. If the original media features this trope in a flat one-dimensional manner, the fanfic writers who are fans of that media *and* who are capable of transforming the story into something three-dimensional have an uphill battle if fandom as a whole isn't aware of the issue or doesn't really care or doesn't really have anything to add.

Sometimes, tho, when i start getting into why i don't like a ship or why i really nope out of it, I start to also realize the overall narrative's weakness with character and plot and themes, and it just starts to make a story not feel right with its flaws magnified through these kinds of character interactions.

Sometimes I feel this when I example my NOTPs. Maybe 50% of the time?? This is usually how I feel when a NOTP ship is canon.

But, when the NOTP ship is fanon, my feelings are different. Instead it feels like fandom is flattening the characters and removing aspects of those characters to make them fit into a beloved trope. At that point, I either tune out or I write reactionary fanfic that emphasizes the canonical elements of those characters that contribute to the NOTPness.