Talk:Crack Ship

The examples section makes no sense to me. None of the listed pairings seem to fit the defintion above, maybe with the exeption of "Anyone/Hogwarts Giant Squid". Like, what's ridiculous, bizarre or disturbing about Wonder Woman/Lara Croft? That's simply a crossover pairing. All the musician examples are about people living at the same time, working in the same business (aka being in the same canon), so there would be numerous ways to make them happen in fiction without even putting much work into it. --Doro (talk) 12:32, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I threw Wonder Woman/Lara Croft in there as I was trying to think of some unlikely f/f pairings to include that people have talked about but I totally get it just being in a crossover thing, feel free to change it up. As for the rest of them I presume part of the problem falls into the whole crack vs. rarepair discussion as what some call crack others might think of as an unpopular rarepair. Even looking at tvtropes's examples, most of them just seem like rarepairs to me but I think that speaks to how the term can be tricky when applied to "unlikely to ever become canon" pairings. Magpie (talk) 13:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I thought rarepairs are just rare pairings? Something that doesn't have a lot of content. That was what the RareSlash archive and mailing list were for. Hmm, I think what is missing from all these examples is an explanation what part of the definition of "crack ship" they are supposed to fit, because so far the defintion and the examples don't correspond at all. If someone explained that pairing A fit parameter x, y and z, someone else could argue against it and the line between rare and crack would be sharper and more clearly to defined. --Doro (talk) 16:15, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Placing an explanation beside each ships sounds like a good plan to me! And if there really is some gray area between what's a rare pair and whats a crack ship, maybe there should be a few sentences discussing that in the article? Cause I think Magpie def has a point there, I mean right now the article itself even describes a crack ship as "unlikely to ever become canon," "never interact," and "are in different canon." That would mean to some shipping characters from different universe (DC comics/Tomb Raider) could count as a "crack ship" and a cross over at the same time. And maybe some pairings could even overlap, like maybe they can be both a rare pair and a crack ship at the same time. Patchlamb (talk) 16:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

There definitely should be discussion on the page. The "unlikely to ever become canon" part for example doesn't seem useful to me as part of a defintion. That would mean that every non-canon pairing (aka every slash or femslash pairing from the 1970s to the late 2000s would per default be a crackship, including pairings like for example Kirk/Spock), which is far too broad to be applicable and also not what the term is about. --Doro (talk) 18:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm no expert on the subject, but when I hear the term crack pairing I think of something so out there that people would be like "where did that possibly come from?" when they first hear about it. Although, that being said, how people use the term crack is very subjective, and what some people would consider a rare pair others would consider cracky -- Kingstoken (talk) 20:48, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm... maybe we should see if we can find some good references to which the word crack ship is defined and used? Using that "Wonder Woman/Lara Croft" example again that's on the page... is there anyone out there online who actually calls that ship a crackship? And see if there are also any differences through time, like if it was used differently in 2000 than it is in 2020. Sounds like it could be fun to look into and then the definition on the page can be edited/expanded! :) Patchlamb (talk) 21:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Gosh I did not intend wondercroft (which I've now learnt is their ship name) to upend this article but here we are haha. Anyway if ya'll wanna keep that example, though I'm sure there are other stronger ones tbh, here are some people calling it a crackship: @lycorisdesu tweet, @Osteopatriarch tweet, plastic-pipes DA comment, Mongoose42 reddit comment, MadameBaggio's The Crackship Fleet ao3 series. However, the pairing itself only got "big" in the past 2 years or so when Stjepan Sejic started his little series with them so I don't think you'll find many people talking about it before then.

Outside of wondercroft, I know that fanlore's article on the shipping for The Legend of Korra mentions korrasami being considered a crackship in the early seasons. The korrasami timeline post also says "June 2012 - november 2013 - the first dark ages. Korrasami has evolved from rarepair to crackship," so there's definitely something to be said about pairings becoming so unlikely they are considered crack, not just a rarepair. Also I'm not sure how widely used this term is but I've seen Cargo Ship used on tvtropes and the Shipping Wiki to describe a crackship "between a fictional character, or real-life person and an inanimate object" (so the '1/His cape' example used on this page). Magpie (talk) 22:45, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

There are two definitions of crackship that I've seen used over the years: one is to mean "out-there, absolutely ridiculous ship" and one is to mean "these characters haven't met in canon". I definitely remember referring to my own then-OTP as a crackship in the 2000s in animanga fandom and that just meant they haven't interacted in canon, whereas I see people from Harry Potter and other western fandoms use the first definition to this day. They also seem to consider it an insult of some sort if a pairing they like gets called a crackship. I think the page needs to include both definitions because neither is more correct than the other. --Baycitybomber (talk) 06:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Baycitybomber. Definitions vary a lot, and it feels like fandom is moving away from the second definition, but it definitely used to be a thing and probably still is the definition of choice in some fandoms. In particular in comics fandom, all pairings of characters from different universes used to be considered crack ships. So in the past (and it may still be the case), Wondercroft would be considered a crackship just because it was a crossover. Looking at some of the definitions on UrbanDictionary some of them imply that all crossover pairings are also crackships. I'm unfamiliar with RPF fandom, but I wonder if they have a different definition of crack ship, just based on the examples included here. These various different definitions seem to be implied in the introduction to this page, but the page could be fleshed out more, to explicitly include both definitions baycitybomber mentioned. And if anyone knows what defines an RPF crack ship, I think that should be included too. --Auntags (talk) 10:45, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

The changing definition of crackship is due in part because fandoms absorbing slang from each other has transformed the meaning (crackship in a smaller fandom meant something quite different than a larger fandom), but I’d also argue that it’s because the culture that promoted and established our earlier views on what we consider a crackship/fic, is now dead. Fandom also tends to associate crack[insert here] with a very specific brand of surreal humor and framing, and while Lara/Diana (to continue with the example above) may be cracky in the sense that their universes never interact canonically there exists a good amount of well written fanfic and fan art for them that views Wondercroft as a legitimate crossover pairing. This is why RPF pairings don’t quite fall under crack despite the entire concept, by nature, following some standards of early crackship (two people who have never seen each other romantically, or even interacted one-on-one, in incredibly outlandish and out of character situations for the purpose of being placed romantically).Tanama (talk) 19:33, 4 August 2020 (UTC)