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mimibwi · 8 months ago

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My thoughts on shipping

I have previously been silently exploring BTS ships and decided to put some of my thoughts on “paper”.

Now, I have been aware of the toxicities of certain BTS shipper fandoms and how messy shipping has been for groups that pre-date BTS such as One direction and Fifth Harmony. I have personally never been much of a shipper before BTS and naturally discovering my ship’s bond and starting to appreciate it. It always baffles me how shipping seems to mean different things to different people or groups of shippers. This is heard often but shipping should be something done for fun and I won’t say I hate that logic or that I 100% agree with it because I personally think its okay if you have a slight inkling your favorite pair may be dating/more than what they say they are and you try looking at it a bit more seriously. I think it’s human nature to be inquisitive and curious. However, like everything, there needs to be a limit and I think that’s a huge problem not only in shipping culture but stan culture in general. There’s been so many times that I have seen jokes or otherwise harmless discourses become a bigger deal than they were ever meant to be.

To me shipping is and always would be about observation, (rational) speculation and possibilities. I am never going to fight with anyone to prove my ship is real in a romantic way because to be frank I genuinely do not know. None of us know and that’s okay. I like discussing the possibility of ships (mainly my ship) being real (this always irks me to say cause every ship is real but anyway) and sometimes even theorize things based on that assumption. This is getting a bit messy because I have so much I want to say but I have no structure to it, bare with me.

Basically, what I am trying to say is, I think shipping is okay within limits. Once again, its all about observations and all of us are only human and can’t help but pick up on things from time to time and who knows maybe your hunch might actually mean something. So I never see any shippers or ship dynamic as a competition. I even seek out analysis, theories and videos of other ships because I love to see the different dynamics and how differently we all think and how things can look solely based on one’s perspective. Despite how frustrating it gets, I find shipping culture in itself very interesting. The way the same things can be interpreted in so many ways, seeing how differently people think from me and in many cases how other’s thoughts challenge my perspective and opinions.

The type of shipping I don’t enjoy is the type that:

makes it a competition of who is the closest or which bond is the best.

is already CONVINCED and 100% without a doubt BELIEVES that the ship they enjoy is the “real” one because like I said before none of us know for sure. It gets even worse because this subset of people speak about their theories/analysis/opinions as if its a fact known by many and some of us just need to get with the program.

degrade other members for ships. this is an instant red flag for me and if I’m being honest, many shippers aren’t as forward with the hate they have toward the member that “threatens” their ship. I have seen many shippers say the vilest things or agree with the rudest asks about some of the boys but at the end say “but I love him though” like…do you? do you really?—

push theories and delusions into the boy’s spaces to get confirmation…side eye. This is one of the worst things to me honestly. Shipping is meant to be enjoyed within fandom spaces and no matter how real you think your ship is, there is absolutely no reason to try to bring it to the boy’s attention that you apparently know what they are. Please do not make weird, inappropriate or suggestive comments about ships on their welives, do not DM them about it, do not DM or bug their family, friends and colleagues about it. PLEASE JUST BE NORMAL!!! If a ship is in fact real, they have their reasons for not being public about it and you as a fan of the group and especially as someone who enjoys the pair should be respectful of that. Sure it’s fine to talk about the duos on weverse or tag the boys in cute edits because I’m sure they like that their friendships are appreciated but please be cautious when pushing it to them through a romantic lens.

I think this takes away a lot of the fun of shipping and these subsets of shippers along with others I may have missed out here are the reason that the fandom tries to push out shippers for the most part. I always joke about many non toxic shippers getting thrown into it when all some of us really do is cry and gush about our ship TT its such a shame. But its understandable since the toxic shippers make up a large, VERY LOUD subset of the fandom and with the track record of shipping among groups, I frankly wish a lot of you weren’t around either.

((a lot more below the cut))

My Approach

To me, showing love and appreciation for the very REAL bond that we see is always going to be essential and the basis of everything I do as a shipper. And I am not talking about any theories or analysis of what we’re shown but taking in and appreciating what the boys say and the many ways they show love to each other.

No matter who you ship this is a very easy task to accomplish because the tannies are so loving and every single pair or trio has a special bond that is intriguing to explore. I have learnt so much in the few years I’ve been an ARMY, not only from my ship but from almost every ship and just the tannies on a whole. They’ve taught me a lot about friendship and help me understand the type of relationships I should aim to have and the type of person I want to be for others. These lessons and small appreciations are what I’ve anchored myself to so that I don’t stray too much from this original plot and even if I do, it’s very easy to find my way back.

That being said, I have acknowledged that I can be very delusional. I refuse to believe any of my theories or the theories that any shipper presents to me as 100% fact, no matter how convincing they might sound. I have accepted that everything I theorize about could be 1000% wrong and very very far from what is true and I’m fine with that thought. It’s what allows me to think up far fetch little theories or blip off into these delusional mind bubbles where my ship is real. It’s also why I can get out of my head and acknowledge the fact that it’s likely that no ship in BTS are romantic [ref to My unpopular(?) shipping opinions and this ask]. All of it is because I leave room for deniability.

I’ve expressed this here before but it is very much baffling to me how so many shippers believe with 100% certainty that the pair they like are actually dating and are willing to go to war over it. Y’all are way better than me because I, personally, refuse to look like a fool on the world wide web. Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely defend the tannies from the “not friends anymore” or “fanservice” allegations but I am not going out of my way to fight with delusional people about 2 Korean men (who I don’t know personally😭) being sexually or romantically involved. Y’all can keep that!

Why I don’t believe the believers

Okay now I’ll try to move on and talk about why some shipper discourses or theories don’t hold up to me and why its quite insane and sort of foolish to believe a ship exists in a romantic light 100% based solely on them. The short answer of this is CONTEXT.

Forming opinions and arguments (I am not saying shipping should be an argument but since many shippers treat it like one, I’m addressing it as such for now) about a topic always requires a massive amount of context and a foundation of already factual information to be built from to sound even remotely plausible and valid. That’s why I mentioned before that a lot of this shipping business is speculation and opinions and frankly some of the speculation/opinions I see from shippers just don’t make sense to me. This is all because with BTS and any real person whose life we only see a fraction of, we lack a lot of context and for that reason building a solid argument from a 5 second clip of their life is difficult because we as outsiders are the ones who fill in the blanks. That’s why there usually isn’t any solid or shared opinion on what certain things said or done by the guys mean because we all have different experiences and biases that reflect in the way we see and interpret people’s actions.

Okay, I am going to go into a bit more detail about what I mean and what type of context I am referring to when I say this: (this is where it may get even messier, stay with me)

1// Situational context- This is more for the shippers that breakdown specific moments and (over)analyze them. Personally, I am a big picture person so whilst there may be particular moments that I see as a moment for or against a particular ship being more than friends, most times one clip or period of time doesn’t affect the way I view a ship. I think its drastic to constantly be changing your opinions based on every clip you see or changing it because a ship hasn’t publicly interacted in a while. Despite all of this, there are many things I keep in the back of my mind and maybe even form fun, (tbh) far-fetched theories on but for the most part it doesn’t change much for me. The reason why is because from moment to moment, clip to clip there is so much context that we don’t have about what’s happening in that one moment. Like did x have a bad morning? did he just receive bad/good news? is he looking forward to or dreading what he needs to do after this? is x going through something personally right now? did x and y have a falling out/misunderstanding? is x looking at y or is he just zoned out?

Okay this is going overboard and some of these may sound quite ridiculous but these are some of the millions of things that give context to a situation and for that reason they’re all things that need to be taken into consideration when analyzing the boys. I won’t even lie, I was thinking about Taehyung and Jungkook (to a lesser extent) for these cause if I see someone calling Tae rude or saying Jungkook is jealous one more time I might lose it. I am not saying any of the above ever happened cause once again I don’t know but all I am saying is stating any opinion of yours of a vague moment as fact without even exploring one of the above or any other possible factors is never going to let me take you seriously. I am also not saying every shipper who talks about a moment needs to be able to tell me what x had for breakfast that morning but if you express your observation/opinion as the truth I expect you to be able to give me CONTEXT. It feels like I am going in circles, I told you it was getting messy.

There are moments that hold up quite well on their own and have sufficient context. In other words, some things don’t require much explanation to be seen as truth. I guess what I am trying to say is the amount of factual information you have should remain proportionate to the assumptions and opinions you form. Too many times people use tiny moments to come to huge conclusions and connect dots that make no sense being connected. And I think its fun to be a bit far-fetch and delusional but it becomes a huge issue when nonsensical theories are posted on the internet and pushed to other people who don’t understand how irrational those theories are. Hence, I often believe in freedom of thought more so than freedom of speech; not everything you think needs to be said, you can keep things to yourself or at the very least only share it with one person or two that you trust to understand your intent.

2// Cultural context- I will try not to stick to this for too long because I am not Korean, so I can add very little cultural context to any ship moment minus those I have been told about before. There are some things that the boys do or say that would probably have a different meaning to me vs someone who is aware of Korean culture. There are many times, none that I can pinpoint at this time, that I see a comment or post explaining a clip/moment with cultural context, which changed my view on that particular moment. Like I said, I am threading lightly here cause there is not much I can add to this conversation. I am adding this here to remind you that the moment that is a big deal to you may just be normal for Koreans shrugs. This one is even more difficult than the first because cultural context isn’t something you can just make assumptions about, its something you need to be exposed to to understand. A mere Google search may not even cut it to fully understand as an outsider.

Things like honorifics and politeness levels of speech or even specific translations need to be taken with a grain of salt. The bromance and skinship aspect of K-pop/Korean culture is also a huge part of shipping that may be new to people from different cultures. In many countries in the West, skinship between men isn’t something very normalized or in many cases even socially acceptable so the amount that BTS show physical affection to each other might be startling to many international fans when it’s something that’s more socially acceptable in Korea and normalized amongst their team.

“Holding hands, linking arms, and hugging amongst friends are acceptable ways to show closeness and comfort. So, don’t assume that every two persons holding hands in public are romantically involved! Conversely, public displays of affection by romantic couples are more toned down compared to in societies like, say, the US”. 4 Distinctly Korean Habits To Know Before Going To Korea (sejong.com.sg)

None of this is to say that certain types of skinship can’t mean more to any two members or to say we can’t find the interactions cute or endearing. It once again boils down to the confidence shippers have when using these moments as proof of their ship being the real deal.

3// Differing personalities, beliefs and relationship dynamics- All of these points bleed into each other and are interconnected in some way but I think this one is basically the backbone of all of the others. Despite having situational or even cultural context, its still difficult to draw any clear conclusions because EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT and any analysis or opinion will need to treat them as such—different people with different values, morals, beliefs, likes, priorities, dislikes, experiences and the lists goes on.

No matter how well the boys get on, they have continuously expressed how different all of them are as people. And because of that, no two ship can or should ever be viewed in the same lens. I think this “mistake” is something I see a lot in shipping: X and Y did this and X and Z didn’t hence XY>XZ, I honestly don’t think its that simple. In order to fully grasp a ship and its possibility of being real, you need to have a good idea of who the people you’re shipping are and what their likes, dislikes, values, priorities etc are.

Now this, like all these other points require a lot of assumptions to be made. Firstly, it assumes you interpret everything they say and do the way they meant it to come across, it assumes that their BTS persona is a good reflection of who they are as people OR that you have a good idea who they might be as people. I don’t know how to explain this one cause there are members that we as fans know as being a bit different on vs off camera and some of those differences are known to an extent but once again we’re dealing with a lot of assumptions so its tricky. Anyway, many shipper theories assume that we know how they’d react in various circumstances.

There are a few reasons I am bringing this up and I’ll mention it here to better explain myself. Like I said, I have been searching around at ship content just cause the more you fuck around the more you find out and I have been seeing people’s takes on shipping and forming opinions on them. At some point, I started feeling hypocritical cause of how my opinion may be different for particular ships and I concluded that this point was one of the reasons why. Let me explain-

I saw some people giving % probability scores for certain ships being romantic and the thought came into my head that Yoongi ships, I think they were specifically talking about yoonmin or sope, are not probable to me if we’re seriously thinking romantically. Even as someone who thinks Yoongi may be into men/women/both/none (girl honestly idk). The reason why i think this way is looking at Yoongi and what (I assume) his priorities and goals are in life. I mention in a previous post that I question the member’s willingness to take the risk that would come with being in a relationship with a bandmate and how I think that many of them don’t come across to me as being willing to. Yoongi is the epitome of that opinion for me. I mention this in the next point but dating someone within the same group as you will definitely be a big deal, it will be a PR/HR emergency if anything goes wrong and I don’t see Yoongi as the type of person to want to play around that and sacrifice his work for love whether he felt emotions or even trained himself to the point that feelings don’t develop in the first place. [I’ve said that I never want to date someone in the same field as me and after that, i haven’t found any of my colleagues attractive or as a romantic interest, even when I tried]

I think another example that works really well for this is Jimin and the way a lot of shipper’s interpret him compared to how I do. I think any ARMY or any one who keeps up with BTS for even 5 minutes, can see that Jimin is a very private person. Of all the members, he comes across to me as someone who is very cautious and particular(?) about the way he’s perceived. He’s very careful with his words and his actions. You can watch any video he’s in and see how much he thinks before he says something to the members (especially when it’s of a serious nature) or to ARMYs. A very easy example of this is how concerned he was in the FESTA 2022 video about how we may take what they said and almost pleading for the audience to just take them by their word (something that literally almost every person who watched that video DID NOT do but we move smh…). All of this to say, I can’t subscribe to theories that believe that Jimin is pointing out things between him and his secret partner or behaving risky with them in front of cameras and giggling about it. I can get into this more but I’ll digress.

I am not sure how these examples will come across but these are just some random examples I can think of where I think varying personalities might affect the way I see a ship. This is not me claiming any particular ship is over another or saying that any of these above points are true because my opinions are based on my specific perception of the different members and I am not claiming I know them best.

All in all, there is only so much (little) that we know of them, its difficult to know for certain what any of them would be like in a romantic relationship. However, it seems like many shippers tend to remove the bits of individuality we do see of each member whenever they look into ships which further makes things even more unrealistic and delusional sounding to me.

To add to this, many times shippers interpret things based on their idea of a relationship without really putting themselves in the member’s place. This is totally understandable considering what I mentioned before about us being the ones that fill in the blanks but it’s one of the reasons why we can’t take our theories 100% seriously all the time. At the end of the day, every single relationship is different and something that might be okay for the members in a relationship may not be okay with you or the way the members choose to deal with their relationship may not be how you think it should or would be dealt with. So once again, you can’t take your interpretation of things too seriously. If a ship is real, we aren’t and would never be privy to their private conversations regarding what is okay for them in THEIR relationship. We don’t know what their limits are or how they would choose to maneuver through their relationship on camera so our view of things will always be one-sided.

4// Knowing the gravity of the situation if any ship is real- This one is basically situational context but on a wider scope and might be the most serious of all of these, despite me putting it last on the list. I think a lot of people who ship members romantically do not even consider how serious a situation like that would be. For the most part, I don’t think this is a problem if we’re just having fun but I think people who seriously analyze things the boys do need to take it into consideration. We all are aware at least to some extent of the state of LGBTQ+ in South Korea. Korea is still a very conservative country and though members of the LGBTQ+ community are actively seeking change, things are not as progressive as one would hope.

Taking that into consideration, any two members of BTS— the biggest K-pop group in the world and one of South Korea’s representative brands— being aware that they have more than platonic feelings for each other would be a huge deal. There’s a lot to consider regarding the way the other member’s would approach it, the way the company would approach it and the way the two members themselves would want to deal with it: whether or not they decide to pursue it and if they do, how they go about doing that.

Any two members dating would serve a huge risk for not only those two members but the group as a whole and the other members individually. Aside from the risks of any of the members being queer, the fact that we as shippers aren’t opposed to the idea of two members dating and the fact that many ARMYs would also be open to it if it ever turned out to be the case DOES NOT take away from the fact that such a relationship may be seen as highly unprofessional and inappropriate. We know all the boys are friends who have grown up closely alongside each other and feelings developing is something that is possible but at the end of the day, they are coworkers working together as BTS and many people may not be able to look past that.

I think many shippers look at ships in a very isolated way. They remove the very real world that we live in and all the problems that would come along with a ship being real and opt to live in a world where their ship is real and everything around them is always sunshine and rainbows. And I get it, that’s way more fun but it is not realistic. I think its fine to have this outlook if you are shipping just for fun but that is a lot of the times not the case. Many of these shippers on YouTube, tumblr or X that seriously analyze these relationships tend to feed a very unrealistic, clouded world view to others that may also be very naïve thinking. This is why a lot of theories grow to become these huge nonsensical conspiracies that any rational person can deduce makes absolutely no sense in the real world. Let’s address some specifics:

Addressing some unrealistic shipperverse theories

Any “real” ship in BTS are not being careless with their relationship in front of cameras or when doing other work. All your theories about them kissing on/around cameras or going into changing rooms together during award shows and coming back dishevel will never hold up to me.

If a ship is involved romantically and the company is aware of it, there’s most likely only a small subset of people that would actually know. My guess of who would know is: some higher ups in the company, the members, a select few managers and maybe bodyguards, possibly trusted and long time members of the BTS team i.e. PDogg, Son Sungdeuk, Slow rabbit etc. and perhaps a trusted PR team to advice them on how to deal with things. Even this list feels a bit too extensive. Anyway I am making this point because I don’t get why shippers think that random hairstylists or camera directors or editors would be privy to such sensitive information. And this stands for any relationship really, it’s unlikely that ALL of their staff are even aware if any of the boys are in more “traditional” (heterosexual) relationships so why do some of you act like it’ll be an open secret if any of them are queer.

Theories about love triangles or stories saying a member left a member for another member are so crazy out of touch?? Any one pair realizing their feelings for each other and choosing to pursue it despite the risk it poses to them and to the team is unquestionably a huge deal and would need to be dealt with an immense degree of care. So its very hard to believe that the members are haphazardly messing around with each other, cheating, breaking up and just overall being messy about the whole thing.

I genuinely don’t get why you people think any pair in the group are being blatant and basically trying to out themselves to the public at this point in their career. It’s not far fetched to think that they would have or want some way to express themselves but I doubt it’s as blatant as shippers suggest. Honestly, if a couple does exist amongst the tannies I am not even confident it’s something the public may ever be made aware of…

Conclusion

All in all, I think shipping is something that can be really fun but needs to be done with a huge amount of care and respect. Making assumptions about the boys and being dead set on one particular possibility being the end game can be detrimental, not only to the boys but to you as well. Many shippers are very confident and secure about their ship being real romantically and will stop at nothing to prove their point. This is a very ridiculous approach because I would bet that a secret couple don’t want or need you to prove their realness, they also don’t need you to spread their message to the world and convert people to your side. It really should not be that serious. Shipping should be something that simmers instead of boiling over. Just enjoy what you enjoy without spreading hate and without seeking real life confirmation through the members or dispatch or their family.

With the tannies getting older, it’s important for all of us to have somewhat of an understanding that what we have imagined or want their life to be may just not be what is true. I would hate (though I have already seen it being in the future of some ships😞) to see the larry-fication of any of these ships where 10-15 years in the future, shippers are still making random connections even if the members are known to be married to other people and have 5 kids. With there being 21 unique pairings within the group, even if it turns out that one of them is “real” doesn’t that mean that the possibility of most of us being wrong is greater than us being right. And that is, if we ever find out…

This was always meant to be the first post on my blog but because of the shipper climate around the time I started writing it, I held back on posting it how I initially intended to. I decided to give it a bit of a revamp and edit it to fit with what I want my little blog here to be. I’ve been writing this for almost a year now and have enjoyed putting these thoughts together in a somewhat concise and comprehensible way. Even if you don’t agree with everything I said here, I hope the main point comes across i.e. no shipper knows better than the other, we’re all going based off our own perspective and rational and so we shouldn’t be 100% certain and we shouldn’t be fighting over or confidently pushing ideas that we are probably wrong about. I really don’t care who ships who (ship and let ship) but I certainly think shippers need to be more careful about the things they say and do in the name of ships.

Thank you for reading!💜

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links used in the post:

Harry Styles & Louis Tomlinson 'Ships' Into a Delusional Twitter Trend (ccn.com)

Lauren Jauregui Says Those Camila Cabello Relationship Rumors Were ‘So Traumatizing’ | Glamour

https://www.sejong.com.sg/4-distinctly-korean-habits-to-know-before-going-to-korea/

Interesting reads:

Queer Identity in Korea | CIEE

Ask a Korean!: I Love You, Man

It’s all in the Touch – Skinship. (스킨십) | Elwood 5566

LGBTQ Koreans Eager for Anti-Discrimination Bill | TIME

Narrow but Significant Win for LGBT Rights in South Korea (voanews.com)