#Shipping commentary

[kingcanis]

Okay, so this is something that has been bothering me, so I'm gonna make a post about it.

I am sick and tired of going into the Stranger Things tag on Tumblr, my Fandom website, and having nothing but posts about a couple of ships that are only loosely supported by the actual text of the show turn up.

This post is aimed directly at Steddie and Ronance posts. Both of these relationships do get some screen time in s4, and the interactions are all great, and while not textually romantic, there's enough there that if you want to ship those characters that's fine.

What irritates me is that when go into the Dustin Henderson tag, because I want to interact with the elements of that specific character (because Dustin is the bravest softest boy) and examining his role in the series, I get nothing but Steddie posts where Dustin is a vaguely supporting character to the ship interaction (which again, is not in the text).

When I go the Nancy Wheeler tag, because that character has shown major growth and change and is individually an interesting and badass character and great sister (I have such a hard time finding ANYTHING about her growth as a sister), all I get is Ronance.

Like, I encourage people to ship what they ship, and this may be a problem with the Stranger Things Fandom specifically, but yall need to be a little more selective in your tags. I would like to engage with the cool shit that is in the textual material of the show without having to spend an hour wading through woobified skinny white boys being gay and wildly out of character as compared to how they exist in the writing of the show.

[pjunicornart]

(Palette x Goth sorry, didn't read the last paragraph on ur post-)

It's alright! I'll just answer this one since it's more recent and specific.

Poth... okay. If we're talking outside of AU contexts (NaJ), then I like the dynamic this ship offers. The shy type and the bubbly type. Kind of like Pinkie Pie x Fluttershy from MLP. So I do semi-support this ship. Is it my absolute favorite OTP? No, but it's a good ship.

NaJ Poth. Now, if we're talking about the ORIGINAL NaJ Poth made by you know who - FUCK NO. I don't need - or want - to explain why it's problematic, so I won't. If you know, you know! But Poth in the rebooted NaJ AU? Well, I still have yet to see what it's gonna be like. But knowing where the AU is right now, it'll be in better hands to write a better story. It really sucks that in the original iteration for NaJ, Poth had potential to be an interesting dynamic. But SOMEONE had to fuck it up... Well. The whole AU was fucked up in retrospect, but especially Poth.

As a bonus, I'll give you some insight for Palette and Goth for Student's Echoes! Because they're not gonna end up together in SE. This is because Goth is younger than Cil - 14 years old starting high school (Cil is 15). Goth is PJ and Cil's cousin on their old man's side (Error). Goth is... scared to start high school, to say the least. Contrast to Palette, who is 18 at the start of the story and heartbroken. Because prior to moving to his new neighborhood with his mom (Ink), he broke up with his two year girlfriend - who cheated on him. On top of that, for his senior year he has to go to an entirely new school with no friends there? Ouch. There is quite the age gap between Goth and Palette, because I planned completely different stories for them... as you can tell. I'm unsure if they'll meet. But if they do, it'll probably be for a class project and they will only ever be acquaintances or friends. One thing does stay the same though! Goth is still a bookworm. :}

[shyjusticewarrior]

Love that Tim's endlessly forgiving towards his parents, but when it's Bernard's parents then he's like "aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you wanna go apeshit?"

[stark-lord]

Constantly plagued with thoughts of Edwin now knowing he enjoys being courted and Charles (compulsive charmer) with a whole new arsenal up his sleeve (laser focus on Monty’s whole deal)

“I mean, my smile is prett-y convincing” yeah yeah okay I can see where this is heading. Outlook not so good (for me)

[linootte]

Experimenting. Toph and Sokka are hanging out & chilling somewhere else

[necrotic-nephilim]

what's fun about shipping Tim with Dick, Jason, or Damian is he has, at some point, hallucinated all of them to comfort himself. even when he doesn't like them or particularly get along with them, he has to imagine/hallucinate them just so he has the power to go on. Tim's concepts of the Robin mantle and what it should be is so fun, because he respects the others through the Robin mantle. Tim worships Dick because he was the first Robin. he wouldn't be Robin if Jason hadn't died in the mantle. and a lot of his frustration with Damian is he feels Damian isn't honoring the mantle correctly. when you ship Tim with the other Robins you can't divorce their identities as Robin from it because Tim will always see them as a Robin first and that's so fun and fucked up. like.

batman (1940) #456

Tim perceiving Dick as *Robin* cheering him on, not Nightwing, which is the version of Dick that Tim actually knows? that's just. wild of him. he will always view Dick as Robin first, his personal hero but also the original of the legacy. his love for Dick is shaped by that.

and then of course, even when he's hallucinating/imagining Jason cheering him on, it's *still* through the lense of being reminded how Jason failed? subconsciously believing that Jason got himself killed because of his actions, and that being a lesson for Tim to learn from? Jason isn't a person to Tim, he's a moral lesson about how to be Robin. any potential idolization he could have of Jason isn't because he loves Jason, it's because of the lessons Jason's death taught him.

and then, even though him hallucinating TIm is from the New-52, which makes characterization all kinds of questionable, i do think it makes sense for TIm to hallucinate/imagine Damian after Damian's death in an attempt to cope with it.

teen titans (2011) #18

to an extend, he sees Damian's death as in part his own fault. and even hating Damian, Tim needs the comfort from this to cope with Damian being gone. he's angry that Damian even was Robin, and has to learn something from Damian's death and how it impacts the Robin mantle, and teenage heroes as a whole. like, Tim can pretend he hates Damian all he wants, even getting taunted by the image of Damian, but there's still an underlying love to their relationship.

i think that's just the fun of shipping Tim with any of them. you will never divorce Tim's views of them from the Robin mantle and how fucking Unwell he is about anyone else who's been Robin before or after him, to the point he has to hallucinate them comforting him when he's at his lowest. it's always going to be a little unhealthy, a little toxic, and driven by Tim's relationship with being Robin as well. i need more Tim being weird about Robin in these ships.

[emblazons]

Thinking about the fact that Mike and Will are insinuated and blatantly shown to be attached at the hip, crying-screaming-throwing up over each other for an entire decade and now fighting / showing signs of romantic interest in each other (one confirmed)….but NOT ONE SINGLE SOUL over the course of this entire show (including their parents) has ever called their relationship brotherly or said they were like family?

honestly I’m still floored. Like.

As someone who has watched a million and a half shows and movies, “you’re my brother” or “they’re like family” is one of the easiest plausible deniability things you can do in writing to give yourself an out for a queercoded friendship (especially one with a confirmed gay character)…and the duffers absolutely refused to do it—and instead gave the familial coding to mlvn. It’s iconic.

[ashenberry]

[ID in ALT]

mgs doodle dump + 2 shitposts i shoould like. organize these somehow. i wont but i should

thank you @counterfeitubiquity for helping me ID and also letting me steal one of ur memes

[noperopesaredope]

"It's not about the CANONICAL chemistry. Canon can go fuck itself. It's about the POTENTIAL for chemistry. It's about the fact that, had things gone just a little differently, had they gotten just a little more screentime together, they would be in a serious relationship."

-- Me explaining rarepairs and crackships and stuff to my sib

[lunalikestowriteanddraw]

The more time I have Astarion in my party and getting to see more and more of his personality, the more I realize that Gale and Astarion are more or less the same—both personality and story wise (obv their stories are very different, but the key features driving their stories are eerily similar). The only major difference between their personalities is that Gale is more aligned with good, and Astarion is more evil aligned.

Think I’m kidding? Spend a playthrough talking to Gale and Astarion literally every chance you get (especially at camp), and sooner or later, you’ll see just how similar these power-hungry attention-seeking manwhore malewifes these motherfuckers are

[jessmalia]

Mal's Avatar: The Last Airbender rewatch: The Fortuneteller 1.14

[kairukitsuneo]

Go Go GO VOTE at here !!!!!!! (1 day left) Will Megop win or will KOBD/Dratchet catching up? (I imagine the ship war is like a three-legged race :3c) Edit: The poll has ended. Continuation here!

[pjunicornart]

Mettaton x Papyrus

Ink x Fresh

NaJ Cray x Cotton

Mettaton x Papyrus ...guys I think this might be my OG Undertale OTP. I don't know! There's something wholesome about this ship. The goofball with the more up kept personality is charming. Maybe it's because it reminds of my own relationship with my girlfriend, but this one does have a place in my heart. It's also really nice to think about how Mettaton is often read as trans, and to think that Papyrus is just supportive and okay with that is... yes, yes, all the yes.

Ink x Fresh I said this in a previous ask, but it's hard for me to ship anyone with Ink because he's aro ace. Fresh? Hm... well, considering he's a parasite with not much else going on besides "survive off current host like a tapeworm", I find it confusing how people ship Fresh with anyone at all. Because, again... parasite. As for the ship... meh? I can see why people would ship it, but it's not really my taste.

NaJ Cray x Cotton No. Absolutely not. If I'm remembering correctly all the characters involved, and there isn't another character named Cotton, then no. Teacher-Student Relationships (TSRs) make me extremely uncomfortable. Especially if they go through with it... It has a lot of weird and gross implications. So, no. I don't support this ship or ANY ship where there is an implied significant age gap.

[shyjusticewarrior]

The context that Bernard knows Tim's Robin means this sentence can be read two ways.

"My boyfriend, named Tim Drake."

"My boyfriend, you."

[cairafea]

houseki no kuni brainrot doodles. ichikawa please release the new chapter soon the hnk countdown twitter account is gonna run out of pages to attach to each tweet

[erraticprocrastinator]

Reposting this on Tumblr because, why not?

I’d like to add, now that I’m free from X’s character limit, that I am aware that there are a select few people out there who do write or make art for certain ships with the goal of criticising or “fixing” the relationships and identities in canon, but, at least from what I’ve seen, I truly don’t believe that this is the majority of Hazbin shippers (or non-canon shippers in general). Especially for a show with such heavy queer representation, with a largely queer audience, where most of the popular fan ships are also queer, I don’t think most people are approaching this with erasure in mind.

I know that I, for one, definitely didn’t start shipping RadioApple because I wanted to ignore or change Lucifer and Alastor’s identities in canon. I just found myself drawn to the characters, and their potential for chemistry outside of a canon setting, and decided to let myself have fun with those ideas — which, until now, I kind of thought was supposed to be the purpose of fan content, anyway. I don’t ship them because I don’t like who they are in canon, or because I want them to ever get together in canon (I don’t!), just like I think it’s generally assumed that most people who make gender-bend content don’t actually want the characters to be a different gender, or that people who kill off their favourite characters don’t actually want it to happen.

I’ve truly never seen this be such an issue in any fandom other than Hazbin, even for other LGBTQ-friendly animated shows. I know that this fandom can be pretty hostile in general, but I can’t pretend that I don’t find it disheartening when the comments of almost every adorable piece of fanart I find are littered with things like “but Charlie is with Vaggie!”, “Alastor is ace so this would never happen” (a topic that honestly deserves its own post), or “Angel can’t be with XYZ because HuskerDust is confirmed!”. We know guys. We know. That’s why we sit here writing fanfiction, making fanart; to explore ideas we haven’t seen in canon, or that haven’t been expanded on yet. Fandom is supposed to be a safe space for people who want to test their creativity, not a place to jump on each other because of it. As always, if something isn’t your cup of tea, you’re free to scroll past, click back, or filter out. There’s no need to rain on content that ultimately isn’t harming anyone, especially, and I really can’t emphasise this enough, especially if you support non-canon ships in other fandoms.