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I originally typed all this ridiculously long meta in response to a post I was reblogging on tumblr, but then in retrospect going on and on in someone else’s reblog thread seemed kind of obnoxious, so here are My Thoughts On Yaoi OTPs as a stand-alone.
I’ve had OTPs since I first joined fandom nine years ago. I suspect I always will. It’s a part of how I am fannish, as integral to the way I interact with characters and source texts as my hurt/comfort kink (back when I was nine, I had the pages in Sword of Shanara where people got hurt memorized, and could tell you whether a given scene was printed on the left-hand page or the right). The OTPing goes back almost as far, too — I OTPed Gambit/Rogue back when I was a wee eleven-year-old who didn’t know fanfiction existed.
When I have an OTP, a true, hardcore, honest OTP rather than just a ship I like a lot, I ship only that pairing for those characters, to the exclusion of all others. OTP technically stands for “One True Pairing,” and for me, in the handful of cases where I have one, that’s pretty much literally what it is. “ I don’t always OTP when I ship - sometimes I just like the idea of a relationship between A/B and/or find A/B’s relationship interesting, something that’s sometimes accompanied by wanting to read or write fic for the pairing, and sometimes not. When I do OTP, though, A/B is a permanent, immutable part of my headcanon, something that is not up for negotiation. Character A and Character B love each other. Forever and ever, world without end, amen. I might be able to read gen about them, or other ship fic that doesn’t negate the OTP, like A/B/C threesome fic, or fic about C and D’s epic love where A and B are minor background characters and we never hear anything about their love lives/sex lives at all, but fic that negates A/B (either by stressing repeatedly how they’re just platonic friends, or by having them in love with other people) is a major DO NOT WANT.
And now, because I’ve typed up half-finished meta posts about this every time a discussion of OTPs vs. multishipping has gone around for the past five years, I’m going to share my unified field theory of OTPing.
(Yes, I know; you’re all super eager to read it)
( Elspethdixon's Thoughts On Yaoi - I mean, on OTPs )
I’ve had OTPs since I first joined fandom nine years ago. I suspect I always will. It’s a part of how I am fannish, as integral to the way I interact with characters and source texts as my hurt/comfort kink (back when I was nine, I had the pages in Sword of Shanara where people got hurt memorized, and could tell you whether a given scene was printed on the left-hand page or the right). The OTPing goes back almost as far, too — I OTPed Gambit/Rogue back when I was a wee eleven-year-old who didn’t know fanfiction existed.
When I have an OTP, a true, hardcore, honest OTP rather than just a ship I like a lot, I ship only that pairing for those characters, to the exclusion of all others. OTP technically stands for “One True Pairing,” and for me, in the handful of cases where I have one, that’s pretty much literally what it is. “ I don’t always OTP when I ship - sometimes I just like the idea of a relationship between A/B and/or find A/B’s relationship interesting, something that’s sometimes accompanied by wanting to read or write fic for the pairing, and sometimes not. When I do OTP, though, A/B is a permanent, immutable part of my headcanon, something that is not up for negotiation. Character A and Character B love each other. Forever and ever, world without end, amen. I might be able to read gen about them, or other ship fic that doesn’t negate the OTP, like A/B/C threesome fic, or fic about C and D’s epic love where A and B are minor background characters and we never hear anything about their love lives/sex lives at all, but fic that negates A/B (either by stressing repeatedly how they’re just platonic friends, or by having them in love with other people) is a major DO NOT WANT.
And now, because I’ve typed up half-finished meta posts about this every time a discussion of OTPs vs. multishipping has gone around for the past five years, I’m going to share my unified field theory of OTPing.
(Yes, I know; you’re all super eager to read it)
( Elspethdixon's Thoughts On Yaoi - I mean, on OTPs )