#adding those tags because maybe it's just me being aroace and not fully grasping different relationships

[redysetdare]

This may be the AroAce part of me talking but does anyone else feel like using the word “ship” is a bit too strong or not quite the right word when pairing characters up? Like, I’m not big into shipping culture and all that jazz and usually don’t really put characters into romantic pairs but when it does happen I feel like “ship” doesn’t convey the way i feel about these two characters being a pair. “Ship” implies a certain kind of intensity to me and I just never reach that level of intensity with characters that i pair together. Shipping feels like “OMG they are totally my OTP! I’m utterly OBSESSED with this pair!” while my feelings are more along the lines of “I just think they’re neat!” (I kind of think of it as im just more casually enjoying instead of being super invested, y’know??)

Not to mention sometimes i feel intensely about a pairing but not in the sense of the pairing being romantic, but more in a “I strongly feel like this pairing has a strong platonic/found family bond and that’s important to me” way. and before you go on telling me “Shipping isn’t inherently romantic” you can’t say that that isn’t what most people think of when you say you ship characters. it almost always is used in a romantic context so it feels wrong to put it on platonic relationships where it could be mistaken for people thinking i romantically ship the characters.

idk i feel like there should be different words for this sort of thing but also i don’t know what those words are or maybe i should start breaking down what my idea of shipping is and should be (which seems a bit difficult because even if i do that what about everyone else who may misinterpret my use of the word?) idk i’m probably making this more complicated then it needs to be haha...