User blog comment:Redroses24/Is The Cam Ship More Popular Than Creddie?/@comment-3419317-20110325142912

As Cameddie correctly pointed out earlier, a Carly S./Sam P. story isn't necessarily a Cam Relationship story. It could be a Carly/Freddie/Sam love triangle story, a Carly/Sam friendship story, or just a generic story with no shipping at all. (Although, in my experience, non-shipping stories tend to be rare in iCarly fanfics.)

I once read a fanfic called iWill Survive (a beautifully written story, by the way) which was listed as Carly S./Sam P. I initially passed over it because I have no real interest in Cam.

(Please don't misunderstand me. I have nothing at all against gay people or relationships, and I fully support gay marriage. On that subject, I am totally as liberal a person as you will find anywhere. I just don't happen to have any real interest in the Carly/Sam romantic relationship, that's all.)

I later found out (from reading reviews on another of that author's stories) that iWill Survive was actually about the characters coping with the aftermath of Freddie's suicide. That sounded like an interesting premise, so I read it, and I'm glad I did. It was a great story.

As it turned out, it was really more of a Carly/Freddie story, I think, and the Carly/Sam relationship only happened in the epilogue. That sort of thing is hard to convey when an author can only choose two names from set lists for the "pairings" for a story.

Another story, iAm Jealous of Melanie, was listed as Sam P./Freddie B., but it was actually more of a Sam/Freddie/Melanie love triangle story. Fans of the Freddie/Melanie relationship might have liked this story (I don't know), but unfortunately would have missed it in searching for Freddie B./Melanie P. stories.

A third example : A story that depicted Carly as having a serious mental illness, and explored how she and the other characters were coping with it. It was listed as Carly S./Freddie B., and it was, but it also had a very touching Sam/Freddie storyline that might have been missed by Seddie shippers.

In short, the pairings settings for FanFiction.Net tend to be rather imprecise, and different writers will always have different ideas about what would be a suitable setting for a particular kind of story.

On the other hand ... In my experience, the Carly S./Freddie B. setting is a lot less likely to be used as a "catchall" than the Carly S./Sam P. setting is. A story listed as Carly S./Freddie B. is generally unlikely to be anything other than a Carly/Freddie relationship story, while the Carly S./Sam P. stories have a lot more possibilities.