pairings i have loved. there are a lot of them.

[cimorene]

I'm going to try to make an exhaustive list of my OTPs (which I define as 'important ships which I read/ship', because occasionally I have two that overlap even if in general I refuse to break OTP and read the characters involved with anyone else). If I forget any of them, and you manage to remind me, I lose! And then, uh, I don't know, this seems like it should result in a drabble promise. I suck at short things, and I probably won't forget any anyway (I am forbidden from checking my recs page/delicious/tags/wip folders/etc!), but... what the hell. Drabbles, okay, drabbles of any pairing that I forgot.



LOTR:
Sam/Frodo
Merry/Pippin
Legolas/Gimli

LOTR RPS:
(at one time, then abandoned) Sean A/Elijah
Dom/Elijah
Dom/Billy
Karl/Viggo
Viggo/Orlando
(I've read other pairings, but they weren't OTPs. Orlijah, for example, or Billijah - I read a bit, but I never really liked it.)

Popslash:
Justin/Chris
JC/Lance
(I wrote a little bit of everything in this fandom, but I had my preferences.)

Star Trek TOS:
Kirk/Spock
Sulu/Chekov
Scotty/Uhura

TNG:
Picard/Q
Data/Geordi

DS9:
Garak/Bashir
Odo/Kira

HP:
Harry/Draco
Harry/Snape
Sirius/Remus
Luna/Neville
Percy/Neville

random RPS:
Tim Roth/Gary Oldman
Patrick Stewart/Brent Spiner
Those swimmer dudes from the '04 Summer Olympics, Ian Thorpe/some European guy
Richard Dean Anderson/Michael Shanks
Santino Rice/Andraé Gonzalo (Project Runway)
Johnny Depp/Orlando Bloom
Keira Knightley/Clive Owen/Ioan Gruffuld
(I've written a handful of rps pieces in other pairings that were one-offs, which I didn't seek out to read or ship)

Askewniverse: Jay/Silent Bob
Batman: Batman/Gordon
comics: Superboy(Kon-El)/Robin (Tim Drake)
Die Hard 4: John/Matt
Due South: Fraser/Kowalski
Finding Nemo: Nemo/Gill
Gokusen: Yankumi/Shin
Good Omens: Aziraphale/Crowley
Highlander: Duncan/Methos
Hikaru no Go: Hikaru/Akira, Isumi/Waya
Hot Fuzz: Nicholas/Danny
I ♥ Huckabees: Albert/Brad
Jeeves & Wooster: Jeeves/Wooster
King Arthur (movie): Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot
Labyrinth: Jareth/Sarah
Meantime (although I've only written, not read it): Coxy/Colin
Phantom of the Opera: Christine/Phantom
Poirot: Poirot/Hastings
POTC: Jack/Will/Elizabeth
RAGAD: Rosencrantz/Guildenstern
Sentinel: Jim/Blair
SG1: Jack/Daniel
SGA: John/Rodney
She-Ra: She-Ra/Frosta
Sherlock Holmes: Holmes/Watson
Singin' in the Rain: Don/Kathy/Cosmo
Smallville: Clark/Lex
Sports Night: Dan/Casey
Star Wars TPM: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan
Starsky & Hutch: (you guessed it) Starsky/Hutch
The Dark Is Rising: Will/Bran
The Pros: Bodie/Doyle
The West Wing: Josh/Donna, Josh/Sam, CJ/Toby
Tombraider: Hilary/Brice (the butler and the hacker)

Bandslash:
Frank/Gerard
Ray/Bob
Pete/Patrick
Pete/Mikey
Ryan/Brendon
Bill/Travis
Alex/Ryland
(It's probable that I've read pairings not in this list, but if they're not here I probably actively disliked them, or even hated them with fiery passion)

Prince of Tennis: (in paragraph form because there are too many of these bitches)
Seigaku: Tezuka/Ryoma, Fuji/Taka, Eiji/Oishi, Momo/Kaidoh, Fuji/Inui, Inui/Kaidoh; Crossover: Inui/Yanagi; Hyotei: Oshitari/Gakuto, Ohtori/Shishido, Atobe/Jiroh; Crossover: Atobe/Sanada; Rikkai: Yukimura/Sanada, Yanagi/Kirihara, Niou/Yagyuu; Fudomine: Kamio/Shinji; Jyosei Shonan: Kajimoto/Wakato; Rokkaku: Bane/Davide; St Rudolph: Mizuki/Yuuta; Yamabuki: Akutsu/Dan, Akutsu/Sengoku

ETA:

Criminal Minds: Garcia/Morgan (bluesbell spotted it)
Arashi: Ohno/Nino (kegom and aeslis spotted it) and Aiba/Jun (jain spotted it)

ETA again the ones I forgot that no one mentioned:

CSI: Nick/Greg, Catherine/Warrick, Gil/Sara
CSI NY: Danny/Mac
The Fast and the Furious: Dom/Brian
Master & Commander: Aubrey/Maturin
Lawrence of Arabia/A Dangerous Man: Lawrence/Feisal

Comments

[someblazingstar.livejournal.com]

Damn, woman! Then again, I used to ship, but am now such a fandom whore that I'll read almost any pairing where I find the participants attractive and the dynamic interesting. Which means I won't read, say, Jack/Ianto, because even though I think they're both cuties I find their relationship really boring (much like Torchwood itself, honestly), but meanwhile I've been reading some Sam/Dean lately even though I've only watched 3 full episodes of Supernatural and found it to be unbearably crappy, and I used to read a bunch of Duncan/Methos in spite of it having the same problem. I'll read pretty much anything if it's written well and the author makes it hot and convincing, though; there are just certain pairings I lean towards because they're more likely to be written well, or away from largely because I've found it to be rare that anyone writes them well. (Like, I would like Gerard/Mikey in theory, what with my apparently being an incest-loving perv, but it's so rare to find fics that aren't overly melodramatic or overly casual or where the author feels the need to turn Gerard into a V.C. Andrews-style creepy rapist to make it work, and ugh.) I also tend to have favourite authors where I'll just read pretty much anything they write, almost regardless of fandom, because I know it'll be good if it's coming from them. I'm not sure if this means I'm open-minded, or just indiscriminate, even shallow...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

If the canon dynamic is boring, though, it wouldn't necessarily stop the fiction from being well-written. I'll happily read fiction for fandoms I know nothing about, and even contract unbreakable OTPs in said fandoms, but I usually won't read if I know and hate the canon pairing (Jack/Ianto I don't hate, I just find it uninteresting, but I sort of individually dislike all the characters in TW except Ianto, so why would I want to read it?). I wasn't introduced to canon for The Sentinel, Highlander, or The Professionals until long after I'd been reading. Or DS, for that matter. I don't think there's anything wrong, or particularly unusual even, about that - many people in fandom do it. As for writing off fanfiction that could be good on the basis of the canon, well, that's just a peculiarity of ours perhaps, but I can't shake the association with canon for reading purposes usually, so it would just destroy the experience even if I acknowledged the story was good.

[someblazingstar.livejournal.com]

If the canon dynamic is boring, though, it wouldn't necessarily stop the fiction from being well-written.

Oh, definitely - I'm really only likely to avoid a specific pairing if I've tried reading fics for it on a number of occasions and just haven't found any worth reading; I'd still give it a try if a story came highly recommended by someone whose taste I really trust, but other than that I'll usually give up at that point. It doesn't even necessarily have to be a matter of canon, in that case, though; I think Harry/Draco could theoretically be an interesting pairing, especially from Book 6 on, but I just read SO much badfic where Draco is portrayed as some smirking hottie or a Fragile and Misunderstood bishie or whatever that I'm just burned on the idea of them as a pairing, or really with reading anything with him as a main character - it just seems like too many fans get so caught up in the fanon characterisation of him that they forget that it has no real connection to the Draco of the books. Or, alternately, of course I generally won't read something if I just don't like one or both of the participants, though a good rec again can persuade me to change my mind.

I don't think there's anything wrong, or particularly unusual even, about that - many people in fandom do it.

Oh good - I was starting to think I was some kind of weirdo for the fact that I also used to read a ton of Sentinel fic, even though, to this day, I've never actually seen a single episode of the show...