Crack Pairing

BUR #60697 has been rejected.

convert pool:1499 -> crack_pairing

I fear for its potential future health but it is a somewhat popular thing I guess. Whether we think this is something far too subjective to be a tag is open to be discussed as shipping characters generally can often cause a stir...

A potential tag for crossover couples would compliment this well whether the BUR goes through or not.

I'm particularly wary about different interpretations of ships by different people particularly in non-crossover pairings and I'm also wary about gacha games peeking from around the corner with a box of matches in hand. It sounds searchable but I would imagine there'd be a pretty fair amount of ships that can't really be nailed objectively as crack ships. This is the kind of thing I would think fits sooner in a favgroup or a "personal tags" feature.

The comments section of post #9623170 and post #10331220 come to mind personally thinking about this idea as it would work in the copyright that I upload most. The latter one would probably be agreed upon by most as crack but the former would probably catch arguments on both sides suggesting the other is wrong.

I think this is one of those pools that would be hard to convert, or arguably shouldn't be, until we have a proper alternative for collection pools. Right now there's no alternative; it's either conversion, nuking or keeping it, and the lattermost action is the only real option for things that should probably still be findable but might face some trouble becoming a tag.

The only way I can see this tag working is if it was narrowed to only inherently silly ships like post #9682308

There is no way in hell this doesn't get abused on non-canon, perfectly reasonable ships that particular taggers don't like. Especially on yaoi posts.

I think it makes sense to have a tag for posts which reference the concept of crack shipping, like shipping (fandom) (and technically pairing name), but just having a tag for crack shipping in general is not a good idea, similar to how we don't have a general relationshipping tag.

We just need to establish a specific definition of crack pairing: A pairing between characters who have never met, have no reason to ever interact with each other, or are clearly incompatible for some obvious reason. Obviously, for crossover pairings only the third point applies.
Or we can do as wispydreamer says and limit it to pictures that are truly crack (as in, the guy who drew this was high on crack).

Plenty of crackships exist in literally the same IP.

Lawine and Richter in frieren.

Misaka and accelerator in toaru.

Madoka and kyousuke in madoka magica.

This tag is stupid, fundamentally better suited for a pool like most unlikely crossovers.

Freshblink said in forum #443846:

Plenty of crackships exist in literally the same IP.

How does that contradict my proposal? All of those seem to fit the definition I gave.

BaiserLaVerite said in forum #443845:

We just need to establish a specific definition of crack pairing: A pairing between characters who [...] are clearly incompatible for some obvious reason.

I think that's the problematic part of the definition of these and where all the "I don't like it" pairings would slip in. Can you expand on what you mean a bit with this?

Yeah, I don't see any way to make this a tag without shipping wars. It's a shame because I think unusual/rare pairings (particularly non-crossover ones) is something that should be taggable but there's just no way for people to agree on what constitutes a noteworthy weird pairing. Even something like non-canon pairing would invite arguments over heavily teased but not confirmed pairings or Gacha Protagonist x Latest Character.

I think there's room for a tag to indicate crossover pairings since that's purely objective, but anything beyond that seems too iffy to me.

BaiserLaVerite said in forum #443847:

How does that contradict my proposal? All of those seem to fit the definition I gave.

I quoted you by accident, that was meant to be a standalone post.

CrossbowArcanePlus said in forum #443901:

I think that's the problematic part of the definition of these and where all the "I don't like it" pairings would slip in. Can you expand on what you mean a bit with this?

Characters who are so different that you can't see them getting along in any circumstance, not even as friends or rivals. For example, character A x character B who murdered their loved ones or something. Or a purely good character with a purely evil character (if depicted as romantic and not just rape porn).

Basically, any pairing that requires one or both characters to act massively out-of-character for it to work.

Confetto said in forum #443838:

There is no way in hell this doesn't get abused on non-canon, perfectly reasonable ships that particular taggers don't like. Especially on yaoi posts.

I agree; crackship is a fine term for describing your own work but when you're labeling things other people are doing with it (in a somewhat objective area like gentags) it turns into a weapon to denigrate ships you dislike.

BaiserLaVerite said in forum #443924:

[..]

I get the signal you're trying to send here but even something that should sound as simple as determining that a character is completely incompatible like that is subject for intense arguments and I'm not ready to mediate for copyrights I know nothing about or even have to deal with vandalism because someone's way too upset that posts are tagged a certain way despite consensus. Even then, we might have a consensus as far as active users of the site, but what about people who just come here to search and go? What if they don't find the pairs they want in the tag, or find a pair they think doesn't fit?

You can't exactly make everyone happy but things like "they definitely wouldn't get along period" or "they are massively out of character" have different thresholds for different people. I would not be surprised if out there in the wild there's a debate about the specific example scenario you proposed where C-A murders C-B's loved ones and people are arguing if they could reasonably be a crack ship or not. At best you could probably get away with reorienting towards tagging "contentious ships" since you can objectively measure how much of a fandom is at each others' throats about a ship but that would be pointless to tag, I think.

BaiserLaVerite said in forum #443924:

Characters who are so different that you can't see them getting along in any circumstance, not even as friends or rivals. For example, character A x character B who murdered their loved ones or something.

This is extremely common. Just look at all the very popular murder/victim ships in Dangan Ronpa.

Or a purely good character with a purely evil character (if depicted as romantic and not just rape porn).

This is also extremely common. See Harry/Voldemort from Harry Potter.

A crack pairing differs from person to person and is hard to put a subjective definition on. That's why I downvoted this tag to begin with. There's no definition of it that wouldn't cause massive amounts of tedious tag gardening.

downtempo said in forum #443937:

This is extremely common. Just look at all the very popular murder/victim ships in Dangan Ronpa.

This is also extremely common. See Harry/Voldemort from Harry Potter.

A crack pairing differs from person to person and is hard to put a subjective definition on. That's why I downvoted this tag to begin with. There's no definition of it that wouldn't cause massive amounts of tedious tag gardening.

Danganronpa is not the best example because Danganronpa characters are in fact friends and usually get along, and they only kill each other out of their circumstances.

Anyway, if this is all too subjective to tag, we could narrow it down to the more objective "characters who have never met and have no reason to meet". Pairings that make you think the artist just picked two names out of a hat at random.
This does present a problem for crossover ships, since at that point we're back at the very subjective "would they get along?" arguments.

REally the problem seems to be that the term "crack pair" degenerated a lot over the years (as internet terms tend to do). It should mean "a pairing so out of left field that the one who came up with it must have been high on crack", but it seems many use it to mean any non-official pairing.

The bulk update request #60697 (forum #443824) has been rejected by @nonamethanks.

The general concept of crack ships is unusable as a tag, yeah, but I think enemies to lovers could work as a tag, for romantic/sexual depictions of characters that canonically hate each other (harry & voldemort, Ryoumen Sukuna & Gojo Satoru)... As long as it's not rape though.

The problem is that such a name would suggest that the tag can also be used for original depictions of characters going through that process, so IDK about the name.

I suppose a tag for "characters that have never ever interacted in the same show being depicted as lovers for no reason" is also objective, but no idea what that could be called.

And finally, something like post #11378459 where the pairing itself does not make any sort of sense could also work as a tag imo. Basically completely nonsensical shipping. Maybe nonsensical relationship? nonsensical couple, nonsensical pairing?

What if the characters only become enemies in a certain route, while can be romanced in another? Tag only when the route is depicted in the image?

nonamethanks said in forum #443950:

I suppose a tag for "characters that have never ever interacted in the same show being depicted as lovers for no reason" is also objective, but no idea what that could be called.

TVTropes seems to call this Ships That Pass in the Night, but we could just call this 'shipping strangers' or 'strangers in love' or something (or, if we do use 'strangers', we can render it as 'canon strangers').