(Info about the event) (List of participating ships) (1C results)
Welcome back to Rarepair Rumble! We’re finally reaching the end of Round 1 with the contestants from block D. this time, however, we’ll have an extra pair - Raydia vs Jazi! These two were tied last round, so I decided to include them in this round to give them another chance.
Another change - we finally know the name of Viren’s ex-wife - Lissa. I changed her name and the new ship name for Viren’s ex x Sarai (or Lissa x Sarai) is Lirai! ^u^ I added my own drawing of her. You can find the bigger version here.
Click here to cast your vote for your favorite ships!
This week, the voting will close:
Tuesday, 16 June 2020 at 03:00 (3AM) PDT
Tuesday, 16 June 2020 at 06:00 (6AM) EDT
Tuesday, 16 June 2020 at 12:00 (12PM) CEST
Tuesday, 16 June 2020 at 17:00 (5PM) ICT
Click here to check for your time zone.
You can see this round’s competing ships under cut. Some of the ships are problematic, so please proceed with caution (you can check the tags for participating ships as well).
Results for Favorite Ships · Results for Total Ships · Discussion Part 1 · Discussion Part 3 · Ship list
CW: This discussion contains mentions of three ships which some people might not be comfortable with (sibling incest and adult/teen relationships). Only their shipnames are mentioned - the nature of these relationships is not discussed in any way.
Some terminology:
I will refer to the Total Ships as TS and Favorite Ships as FS.
The method I decided to use
So here’s a method, which, albeit less intuitive, is still more accurate.
My boyfriend suggested normalizing the ranks, i.e. making the ranks of both lists proportionally equivalent.
This means that there is no need to manually group anything together and it doesn’t matter if we have two lists of 14 vs 40 ranks or 14 vs 40 000 ranks.
This method still has issues of its own:
not as straightforward to interpret;
ships appear to have fallen in rank even though they didn’t (esp. for Janaya and Ruthari).
This is the formula that we used:
where
r_n is normalized rank;
r is the current rank of a given ship;
R is the lowest possible rank of a list.
So, for example, if we normalize Gremaya’s rank in the FS list, it’ll be:
where
5 is Gremaya’s current rank in the FS table;
14 is the lowest possible rank for FS.
Just like with a regular rank, the normalized rank is highest when its numerical value is lowest.
This is what we got:
bigger table, comparing different stats
You can see that the very first place (Rayllum) remains the same for both lists, as well as the very last place (everything ranked 100). My boyfriend also suggested adding a color scale - the darker the color, the higher the ship’s rank.
I also colored some of the ships:
light blue means the relative rank of the ship has not changed;
green means the ship has risen in rank;
white means the ship has dropped in rank;
yellow means the ship has massively dropped in rank (by at least 40 points).
I felt that it was important to point out the very huge falls, because many of them nicely correspond with some of my conclusions from the TS results (I’ll get to that in a sec).
I wouldn’t be myself if I hadn’t made a graph :D
bigger version (interactive)
I think this is the most intuitive visual representation of how different ships changed in rank:
the red dots are the ranks the ships had on the TS list;
the blue dots are the ranks they have on the FS list.
So that means:
red done above blue? - The ship fell in rank;
red dot only - the rank hasn’t changed;
red dot below blue? - The ship climbed up in rank.
Interestingly enough, only two ships actually improved their position!
Ships that haven’t changed rank and those that went up in rank
It is no surprise that Rayllum remained at rank #1 considering how much this ship is loved by the fans. Janaya and Ruthari didn’t move their position either, but the "weight” of their ranks slightly reduced in a smaller list of options.
Virex, Aarathari and Aaravum are the other ships that retained their position, but I think it’s more of a coincidence than something systematic.
Because the FS list is so much shorter than the TS list, most ships appear to have dropped in position, even if they didn’t (such as Janaya and Ruthari). And that makes the two ships that went up even more interesting!
Sordia went up by 17.8 points and Raydium - by 2.5. Both are small ships with not many voters:
Sordia - 10 TS votes, 6 FS votes;
Raydium - 3 TS votes, 2 FS votes,
yet the voters are pretty consistent - the majority of people who voted for these ships in TS chose them as their favorite ships. Sordia is particularly impressive in this regard, seeing how incredibly loyal its shippers are!
Ships which fell in rank the most
I chose the ships that fell by at least 40 points. The list is arranged from the biggest fall to the smallest:
Sabos fell by 84 points
Harrai fell by 76 points
Laidrin fell by 74 points
Grenvus fell by 51 points
Corpeli fell by 48 points
Kaudia fell by 48 points
Kasren fell by 41 points
We can immediately see that the top three ships were in the top 10 on the Total Ships list and they fell the most. It makes sense when you think about why these ships got so high in the first place. In addition to my vague word choice in the original questionnaire, these ships are either canon (Harrai, Laidrin) or include side characters that are not part of any popular ships (Sabos, Corpeli).
Sabos is especially fascinating, as it’s not only a non-canon ship, it’s a ship involving characters that got their names from fans! They do have a scene together that could be seen as “shippy”, which explains why so many people jumped on that wagon as opposed to, say, Sorcos.
The same goes for Corpeli. Gren and Corvus are canonically friends, but they don’t have any significant scenes together, while Corvus literally holds Opeli’s hand.
Speaking of Grenvus (and also - Kaudia and Kasren), they weren’t as high on the Total Ships list as the aforementioned ships, but all of them seem to have fallen from roughly the middle to the bottom of the list. I guess they just don’t have large fanbases.
This is the final part for the Total Ships table. I will proceed with the next results soon.
CW: This part is dedicated to discussing the so called “Problematic Ships”, namely large age gaps, adult/minor relationships and non-platonic relationships between family members.
If this is something you aren’t comfortable, I strongly suggest skipping this part. You won’t lose much and I’ll be back with stuff you can enjoy soon! ^u^
If you aren’t squeamish about this stuff or you ship any of these ships yourself - I would like to hear your opinions on the topics raised in this part of the discussion. Send me an ask, tell me what you think, who you ship and why! This is a pro-shipping blog and I promise you no judgement on my part!
Without further ado - let’s do this!
Problematic Ships
There are many things that can make certain ships problematic in the eyes of fans, but I would like to discuss four categories:
large age gaps between adults (yellow)
human/dragon relationships (orange)
adult/minor relationships (teal)
non-platonic relationships between family members (purple)
bigger version
As you can tell, several categories can overlap, but I will discuss the non-incestuous version of the first two separately from incest.
There’s also an interesting case - Nyx, who is shipped with both minors and adults. Since we don’t know her age, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about ships including her.
Large age gaps between adults
Out of 89 ships in the shipping poll, I counted 31 (more than a third) that include an age gap of 5 years or more between two non-related adult characters. Since there are plenty of healthy relationships with large age gap in real life, I decided to to define what could potentially make such a ship problematic:
the younger adult has entered adulthood only recently (18-20 years old);
the age gap is significantly high (10+ years).
The word “potentially” here is key, because even if both conditions are met, the ships are still not necessarily problematic.
One ship that gets extra attention when it comes to hate is Ruren. I think it’s due to its early popularity in season 1 (which seems to have declined since then). It’s interesting to note that Corpeli, a fairly equivalent ship (Corvus is 20 and Opeli is in her late 30s - early 40s) not only doesn’t get any hate - it’s actually the most popular non-canon ship (ranking at #6)!
I don’t know the exact nature of this inequality, but it could be due to Opeli looking very young and Corvus looking older than he is (frankly, I was very surprised he was only 20!). It does, however, reveal the inconsistency of fans judgement when it comes to the topic of “problematic” ships, which, in my opinion, is definitely worth noting.
Another interesting thing is that out of 11 of such ships (if we include Corpeli), 7 include Soren, 2 - Corvus, 1 - Crow Master, Kasef or Marcos. I will discuss Soren’s popularity in multishipping in a future post, but if you have any ideas to share - I’d love to hear them!
Human/dragon relationships
There are only two in my poll - Pyrren and Regicide. I have heard people call such ships zoophilia, however the dragons in TDP are as intelligent as humans and are able to give or refuse consent, which is the biggest issue with actual zoophilic relationships. Therefore, I would like to argue that they cannot be classified as “problematic” just because someone finds them “squicky”.
At the same time, the “squickiness” factor could influence why human/dragon or elf/dragon relationships are so rare. Another reason could be the size difference.
Adult/minor relationships
We are finally venturing into truly problematic territory. Before we proceed, I would like to clarify certain things:
1. Adult/minor is not automatically pedophilia!
Please stop using this word to refer to any relationship with a large age gap! It’s not just a matter of accuracy - by doing so, you create a “boy who cried wolf” environment, where it becomes impossible to distinguish shippers from online predators. You also turn “pedophilia” into a meaningless buzzword and make people who call out predators get taken less seriously. You’re not helping any children - you’re putting them in more danger.
2. Some people will ship adults with children
This does not give you the right to bully them! Fictional characters are not real and there has been no evidence of shipping having any real impact on children’s safety in the real world. Just block the tags you don’t like and move on with your life.
3. I will not discuss incest in this section - it will get a section of its own
With that out of the way, it is interesting to note that none of the ships I got in the poll are actually pedophilic. I don’t know if it’s because no one in this fandom ships Ezran, Aanya, Ellis and Zym with adults (or each other in a sexual way) or if this topic is so taboo, people aren’t comfortable admitting to that even in an anonymous poll.
This section will focus on adult/teen relationships.
Just like with the adult/adult age gap relationships, not all of these relationships are equal. I plotted all adult/teen relationships by vote count and divided them into three categories:
high school age (purple)
college age/high school age (orange)
older adult/teen (blue)
1. High school age
Relationships with such age gaps occur naturally in real life and are not inherently problematic. Since a great deal of TDP shippers are teens (ages 13 to 19), it is easy to see how Kadia (or Kaudia), Sorayla and Calren are the most popular in this group.
2. College student/high school student
Here we see Claudia pared up with slightly older guys, who are still young enough to be (at least visually) in her dating range (I do acknowledge that the 4 year gap is big enough here to be problematic, but give it two more years, and it would be a pretty standard age difference). The only young adult character missing here is Marcos. That would complete the Claudia shipping cycle :D
3. Older adult/teen relationships
Aka Claravos and Aaravum (Aarasordia, Aaravirdia, and Virdisoravos are all, in essence, Claravos x Soren/Viren/both).
These two ships are too character specific to be just random fetishising of Claudia and Callum. Both are connected to Aaravos through narrative and would make compelling dark stories.
It is also interesting that Aaravos and Viren (the villains) are the only adults shipped with minors (at least in this poll). There’s sadly not enough data to make any meaningful conclusions on that.
Non-platonic relationships between family members
Aka incest.
Incest in fiction is a topic I’ve always found fascinating. What inspires people to ship incestuous ships? How do people relate to those ships themselves? A connection between incestuous ships and irl practice/support of incest is often drawn by people, but I haven’t observed such a connection in my 14 years of fandom activity. Such correlation doesn’t seem to be there.
If I had to sum up incestuous ships in TDP, I could just say magefam and magefam + Aaravos. Does it mean people don’t ship the royal family? Not really, because I’ve seen some content of Harrow and his kids, or the princes together, but what I haven’t seen is Sarai/Amaya or Khessa/Janai.
Sordia is an interesting case, because it’s the only incest ship to score higher than some of the ships from my original list (it ranks #32 out of 40). It’s also one of those ships, I think, that would’ve had more votes if it actually were on the list.
So why do people ship incest? It’s not an easy question, but from the conversations I’ve had with people or things I’ve observed in fanfiction, I can list at least some of the reasons:
some people like the character dynamic regardless of whether or not they are related;
some people like the character dynamic because they are related;
the characters already show love for each other (especially in case of Sordia and Virdia), so they’re easy to ship;
some people would like to imagine a loving relationship between characters who don’t show it onscreen (in case or SorVir);
some onscreen character interactions can be interpreted as shippy;
some people find it sexy, or ship it in a strictly sexual way without getting into the characters’ feelings;
some people like the dark aspect of it and want to use this kind of shipping to explore darker themes.
If you ship incest of any kind, could you send me an ask and share why you ship it? I’m really curious. My main tumblr is @avtoservis
Conclusion
Problematic ships are an integral, albeit often unwanted, part of any fandom. They do not necessarily reflect the shippers’ real world views and opinions and are often used as an outlet to explore dark themes.
There’s often double standards regarding which ships are deemed problematic and which are not and disgust towards certain ships is frequently expressed through bulling and call-outs.
While most shippers of problematic ships are aware of the problematic nature of their favorite ships, there’s still merit in having civil discussions on various ships and their implications.
