wolfkitty42 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 10, 2025 9:25 am
I was trying to come up with a reason for why someone might feel very surprised that this is a ship. I dunno though, idk June's reasons? My perspective is just that the ship has a foundation so it's not necessarily a random pairing, but the surprised reaction to it still makes sense to see. I don't think I have ever seen much dedicated Janeliborn content outside of their interactions in the comic. They don't have many interactions that come off as romantic and not just straight up uncomfortable, and subsequently the ship is a very unpopular rarepair. Most rarepairs seem pretty random at first, anyways. I'd love to hear some examples of the other ships you said had more foundation in your initial comment.
I guess maybe I lead my original post poorly but I was trying to articulate that I do not think Janeliborn is a popular ship and I am not surprised by June's reaction to it seeming random because of that lack of popularity.
I wasn't commenting on the fact that junebertVEVO was "surprised", though, I was commenting very specifically on the remark that it's a ship "wheel of names dot com picked out". That's very directly insinuating that the ship is "random" when it isn't; it's between two characters with strong and relevant interactions all throughout their appearances in the comic! A lottery didn't pick out those two characters,
Homestuck itself did; to me, this would be like saying Erisol is a "randomly generated" ship, even though their popularity is very clearly based on the strong interactions the characters have in the story. This isn't me saying either of those are 'good' ships; I don't ship them, I don't really ship ANYTHING, but this kind of stuff is the very basis of shipping, isn't it? The interactions between two characters don't have to be overtly "romantic" for people to see value in the pairing. Erisol itself is this case in point.
I said that Jane and Caliborn have MORE foundation than a lot of more popular ships in my original comment, so I'll assume you just mistyped and respond with some examples of "troll yaoi" that come across far more "wheel of names dot com" than Jane and Caliborn. Equius Zahhak is a character whose interactions with (most) other male trolls are sparing and/or meaningless (an Equius slash ship that I would say 'has foundation' would be with Gamzee), but if I punch "Equius Zahhak / Karkat Vantas" or "Equius Zahhak / Eridan Ampora" into the ao3 search, you'll find both of these pairings appear in over a hundred fics each - at least 130, in Equius/Karkat's case. Compared to Jane and Caliborn, a ship which currently appears in exactly 12 fics - a number almost ten times smaller than both of the others. And I could go even more 'random'; what about Equius with Jake English? 14 fics! Jane / Caliborn somehow outstripped by two characters who have not only never interacted but have in fact never once been in the same
room.
Based on this - on top of a decade+ experience watching people ship things - it's pretty clear to me your assumption that two characters having "straight up uncomfortable" interactions is somehow related to their being an "unpopular rarepair" is ignorant of the wider way in which shipping is practised. All shipping being equal, Jane / Caliborn SHOULD be popular; (not to digress, but it is Act 6's direct parallel to John and Karkat - a HUGE ship!) and the fact that it isn't says a lot less about the way the characters treat each other in canon and a lot more about how little the fanbase at large cares about Jane Crocker. Not to accuse anyone of anything - truly, because so much of this is subconscious and also outside of our individual control - but I don't think anyone would even
suggest that it were "random" if Jane were a male character. Dirk and Caliborn is a MASSIVE pairing, (200+ fics!) especially now, not in spite of but BECAUSE of the intrinsically uncomfortable dynamic between them! Again, this isn't me coming out in support of (or against) ANY of the mentioned ships; this is just my assessment from a purely objective look at the text itself and the history of shipping as a phenomenon. Jane and Caliborn are some of the most obviously shippable characters in all of fandom history, not JUST through their similarity to other big
Homestuck pairings but through their relationship to much broader romance fiction tropes: there have been
multi-hundred-million-dollar film franchises spun out of fanfictions with more toxic origins than those two. The people love a nice girl x truly nasty guy story!
Also, you guys gotta start trimming your quotes better than this. you're making me feel soooooooo ooooooldddddd
idk like fuggin sans and the flower
