I freely admit I do this, too. I've never *not* done it, to be honest - I rationalize it by saying that I read fic for what I can't get on the show. Nine times out of ten, the thing I can't get out of the show is my pairing.
For me, fanfic is escapism from the show itself - even moreso as of late. In fandoms where I don't have an OTP (most of them, honestly) I'll read anything. I'll read pretty much everything for Angel, Buffy, or Queer as Folk for instance. But I don't read much of it. Whereas with Smallville I'm reading more fic than I did even in my X Files barbieshipper days...but it's all for my OTP. If someone were to grab me and point me in the direction of a fabulous fic that was for another pairing, I'd probably read it, but to be perfectly honest, I don't seek it out. I suppose I should feel guilty for that, but I don't.
Of course, the funny thing is that I do my damndest to not get tunnel-vision for a ship as far as everything else goes. I'll make fanart for anything (except Clana. They don't even have chemistry in *Photoshop*), vid anything that strikes me (I want to vid Clark/Lana/Lex very badly, and *have* vidded Angel/Buffy), and I try very hard not to base my judgements of episodes on the amount of screentime my favorite characters/pairings have. But as far as fanfic goes...all of that attention to fairness goes right out the window. Part of it is, I suspect, as you said - I only have a limited amount of time to read fanfic. Why would I read something that I wouldn't be able to get into, because I don't care about the pairing/characters?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
For me, fanfic is escapism from the show itself - even moreso as of late. In fandoms where I don't have an OTP (most of them, honestly) I'll read anything. I'll read pretty much everything for Angel, Buffy, or Queer as Folk for instance. But I don't read much of it. Whereas with Smallville I'm reading more fic than I did even in my X Files barbieshipper days...but it's all for my OTP. If someone were to grab me and point me in the direction of a fabulous fic that was for another pairing, I'd probably read it, but to be perfectly honest, I don't seek it out. I suppose I should feel guilty for that, but I don't.
Of course, the funny thing is that I do my damndest to not get tunnel-vision for a ship as far as everything else goes. I'll make fanart for anything (except Clana. They don't even have chemistry in *Photoshop*), vid anything that strikes me (I want to vid Clark/Lana/Lex very badly, and *have* vidded Angel/Buffy), and I try very hard not to base my judgements of episodes on the amount of screentime my favorite characters/pairings have. But as far as fanfic goes...all of that attention to fairness goes right out the window. Part of it is, I suspect, as you said - I only have a limited amount of time to read fanfic. Why would I read something that I wouldn't be able to get into, because I don't care about the pairing/characters?
Linzee