ship dynamics explanation

i know this is a confusing thing for a lot of people so i thought i might as well try and explain. i'm not the best with words so...bear with me, i guess. ask questions if you want to ask them. i'll answer you.

when i talk about ship dynamics it means shipname/emoji order. i will use "A" and "B" as examples here. AB and BA may be the same ship, but they tend to be very different regardless.

of course, the common definition that everyone knows is top/bottom dynamics. of course, this is used, i'm not denying that. it's not what i mean when i say it, though. i don't care for nsfw content, never consume it, never create it. why would i care about t/b?

often, especially in eastern fandom, where the concept pretty much originated (iirc), ship name order tends to signify the dynamic of the characters in the ship itself. "but that's stupid!" i know. there isn't any reason for the characterization within a ship to be so different with just a change in name order. however, everyone headcanons characters in different ways, whether those ways are "correct" or not. and often those interpretations and headcanons influence the way they write ships and characters in ships, and those interpretations lead to a separation in dynamic.

this is really clear and obvious when you look it up - say, art of AB and BA tends to draw the characters differently. fics tend to write the characters differently whether the difference is small enough to ignore or large enough to be completely different people. no, i don't want that to be the case, but it is and there's nothing i can do but avoid what i don't like.

when i say i'm fixed/no reverse on a ship it means that i dislike the alternate characterization/headcanons that people use. if i say i'm AB no reverse, it means that i dislike the way BA fans hc the characters and the ship and don't want to see it. i can enjoy art and fic of reverse if i think that the characterization is still good or aligns with how i interpret it - if i were pickier or took it more seriously maybe i wouldn't, but i don't take it seriously because these are fictional characters in a fictional relationship. none of it is real and a perceived "dominance" of one character or a "power dynamic" just doesn't matter to me. it's just headcanon preferences. i care about characterization and if i don't like it then i don't like it and i will avoid it. if AB shippers treated the characters in a way i didn't like i'd switch to BA. that's just how it is.

fandom specific example: i dislike the babying of izuku and the way he gets over-feminized and mischaracterized, so i switched from tododeku to dekutodo - because dktd tends to have a view of izuku i can tolerate. even then, i rt tddk art pretty often, because when the parts i dislike aren't super strong or in my face then i don't care what order the name is in.
i really dislike touaki because common toak hcs (making akito shorter, cat hc, the way he's written to be more...pathetic??) irritate me. when this doesn't happen, i can enjoy it just fine! but because it's so common, i decided to make my preference fixed. it's that simple.

even then some people do take it seriously and refuse to see the other dynamic and that's fine. it doesn't matter because it's their preference. it may be the same ship but the differences can be really stark regardless because not everyone sees ships in the same way. nobody's wrong for having preferences and avoiding what they dislike...

it's not really as weird as people say it is and most of the time people just don't understand what it means. or...refuse to understand. i use the signifier because it's easier than sitting down and explaining the intricacies of my favourite ships and how i view them. if you don't care about dynamics and think they don't matter then the signifier isn't for you. it's just for the people who care and want to know.

Edit
Pub: 09 Oct 2023 21:42 UTC
Edit: 03 Dec 2023 23:53 UTC
Views: 338