#shipping discourse mention

[be4utiful4byss]

flashback to the time I talked about spy x spy in a discord server and the mod was so “concerned” about me being “a filthy comshipper” that they

sent other members to interrogate and harass the shit out of me instead of dealing with it like a proper moderator should (directly and discreetly sending out punishment in the face of a problem)

sent a fucking carrd website clearly made by a fancop whenever someone got confused ??? all for giving sources if the source you’re giving is from an uncredited website by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about

let people keep lunging at me despite the fact I literally had to explain the definition of slapstick to them until I just left the hellhole

… keep in mind this all happened because they didn’t know the fandom at all and I called the ship toxic yaoi. because it’s toxic even if it’s goofy as shit .

[notquitehuman-creations]

https://youtu.be/R80hXdU4-9o?si=fCfPqtB4BdSY0H9X

https://www.tumblr.com/iloveyoumost/736078863498723328/if-you-dare-to-rank-gwen-low-on-your-list

LOOK AT THIS COWARD WHO CANNOT ACCEPT THE TRUTH THAT HE IS A FUCKING HYPOCRITE FOR SAYING THAT HE LOVES GWEN IN THAT CRAPPY 3 HOUR VIDEO ONLY TO TRASH HER BY PUTTING HER LOW!

1: huh

2: saw that vid in my recommended. watched about an hour and got bored lol(if there's a tldw lmk). discourse, shipping discourse especially, does not interest us. and as a fellow Gwen enjoyer the whole love triangle just makes me tired lmao

3: who are you

[sparkling-pink-lemonade]

Saw a post of an anti saying that they are leaving AO3, as they are too uncomfortable to post their fics there now. The reason? They found out one of their long time readers was a proshipper, despite their fics having proship dni. And how "that includes silent readers too, I don't want you all looking at my content."

My brother in christ, you are posting on the fiction freedom site. The proshipping site. Dnis aren't god damn restraining orders. They are one tool in helping you display your boundaries. It's still on you to enforce your boundaries. You post something publicly, you forfeit your ability to regulate who can view your work. If you're obsessive enough, you can regulate who actually interacts with your work by stalking each person in the kudos list, comments, or bookmarks and then blocking snyone you don't like, but you do not get a say on who may silently read your posts. Not unless you private your work and only show it to specific people.

And if you don’t want proshippers to interact, get off the profic site.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

literally just saw another “call out” post in my fandom, “this person ships these characters together, they support fucked up things in fiction. moots, unfollow them, they’re disgusting for liking these fictional things 🤢” can we please just. not do this? especially with all that’s going on in the world recently, can we please not try to take away people’s source of comfort? who cares what fictional things a person enjoys? they’re ✨fiction✨. they’re ✨not real✨. you don’t know what battle a person is going through outside of social media. you don’t know if fandom is literally the last source of happiness they have left. you don’t know if fandom is the only thing keeping them alive right now.

ask yourself, is it really worth it? you claim to be “morally superior” by “exposing” people who find comfort in fictional things you deem morally unacceptable. but is it really worth it if your words drove a person into harming themself?

are you really being morally superior by being the reason someone hurts themself?

these characters are fiction. but the person you’re harassing in the name of being morally superior is a real person with real feelings.

if you find something that you don’t like, instead of going out of your way to harass someone, scroll past it, ignore it, mute it, block it. and focus on the things you do enjoy.

with everything that’s going on in the world right now, now is the time we need to keep fandoms safe. they’re the last source of happiness some people have left.

[carto0ncritter]

I'm sorry but I genuinely can't understand how people can look at Stolitz and Catradora and think these ships are healthy in any way, shape or form.

Stolas r*ped Blitzø. No, consent given in a life-or-death situation doesn't count

Stolas is racist towards imps, and this didn't change even when he "fell in love" with Blitzø

Stolas doesn't appreciate or respect Moxxie and Millie in the slightest (and was disappointed that his "Prince Charming" wasn't the one to rescue him)

He looks down on Blitzø and calls him things like "impish little plaything" and "his big dicked Blitzy" and doesn't stop treating him like shit even when Blitzø says loud and clear that he hates being talked down on like this (DUH)

The only thing Stolas knows about Blitzø is that he hates books and the only thing Blitzø knows about Stolas is that he's a boring bookworm. Keep in mind, the two figured this out about each other while they were kids, 25 YEARS AGO, after Blitzø was bought so that he could be Stolas' "friend" for ONE DAY

Stolas doesn't love Blitzø for Blitzø. Stolas loves the *idea* of Blitzø. The bird man wants to live a romance that is just like the romances in his cheesy novels. He wants to ride into the sunset with his one true love. He wants grand romantic gestures. He wants his "Prince Charming". Except, Blitzø isn't the type of guy for such sappy displays of affection, he never was. Especially combined with his trauma. And as soon as that other imp guy asked him to dance, Stolas not only accepted the offer, but Blitzø was no longer on his mind. And no, I don't think being drunk is proof that Stolas didn't mean what he had told Blitzø. Drunk people find it easier to say what's really on their mind after all

Blitzø fell in love with his abuser. This makes sense, actually. The guy always pushed everyone away and never got to experience true love, and now that he has the chance to be "wanted," even if the "relationship" is toxic, he finds it hard to let it go

As for Catradora, the things I wanna say about this ship have already been said throughout the years, but it all boils down to these things:

Catra mentally, emotionally and physically abused Adora

Catra had no problem ending the whole entire universe if it meant she'd finally be better than Adora

Catra was a war criminal and a fascist

Catra was responsible for what happened to Glimmer's mom and never apologized, let alone faced consequences

Their relationship was toxic even when they were kids

They were both raised by Shadow Weaver and were the only ones in the Horde who saw her as a mother figure, thus making the ship straight up incest, with even the official source material calling them sisters (adoptive siblings ARE REAL SIBLINGS!!!)

Catra got exactly what she wanted in the end (the girl she's always been obsessed with and dependent on) and, once again, faced 0 consequences for her actions

The show (and C//A stans) fetishizes abuse. As a SA survivor, I felt physically sick during the final episode, where the abuser ends up with her victim/sister and they kiss

In short, these ships are disgusting and the lgbt community deserves better representation

[5typesoftrash]

if you are pro-censorship, you are not my ally. Not in feminism, not in queerness, not in anti-racism. Bad actors aren't going to just censor the things you don't like; they won't stop. Sure, they'll sweep over the explicit incest and pedophilia, but then, just like the fancop teenagers have, they will start stretching those definitions to include everything that they dislike. Calling queer people pedophiles is a textbook example of queer oppression; you don't think conservatives are gonna use that as an excuse to burn books about trans joy and wlw/mlm experiences? Because they will.

If you are pro-censorship, you are not my ally.

[dead-pidoves-dirt-takes]

I’m literally begging y’all not to disclose your trauma in order to justify and validate your tastes in fiction.

The people who are or you fear are going to get on your case about your fantasies, taste in fiction or how you identify? Do not give a shit about you. Or the trauma you have faced. They don’t give a shit about other trauma survivors either, and they don’t care about how callous and shitty they seem. All they care is about controlling and policing people they think they might have a sliver of power over.

You can block or clown or do whatever you want. (I recommend blocking, don’t feed the trolls) But please for the love of god do not tell random strangers on the internet who have absolutely no business knowing you’re traumatized and have X Y and Z mental illnesses from it.

Don’t reveal yourself as vulnerable, don’t paint that target on your back, and don’t give people access to possible triggers that may hurt you.

[frownyalfred]

Can I get clarification on your pro shipping post? The example you gave was a 20 year old with a 40 year old, and that's "problematic" (not really), but not really what I think of when I hear "pro shipping". Usually it's the shipping of minor/adult or incestuous relationships that I see getting defended. Does being against fictional works/ships that depict pedophilic or incestuous relationships as normal/romantic count as puritanism to you? Do you see the ship of Bruce Wayne/Damian Wayne as a personal preference with no moral implications?

I think there's a huge difference between being personally against something, and wanting to shame others or ban others from reading or writing something. The Puritanism comes from wanting to limit and ostracize others who don't share your beliefs. It comes from believing that your perspective is the only morally right one.

I think there will always be people who want to write or read about ships like that, yeah -- incest, pseudo-incest, everything in between. By moral implications, do you mean for the person interested in the ship? Or do you mean for others? Because I see that concern a lot on here -- this idea that somehow, by wanting to read/write about something, people are either 1) harming others by spreading this morally wrong ship or 2) harming themselves by normalizing the ship, and therefore making it more likely that they'll pursue similar relationships in their real lives.

We don't have much evidence for either of those claims. People have been clutching their pearls and wringing their hands over "morally wrong" books for ages -- and yet, Game of Thrones is still available in every bookstore. Am I a bad or woefully misguided person for having read Lolita in high school? Is a 16 year old reading a Bruce/Damian fic likely to turn around, shrug, and say "guess fucking my Dad is okay now"? Did an entire generation of fans shipping Wincest somehow have lasting, moral effects? I really don't think so. Not at the scale anti-shippers online seem to think, at least.

I think we need to separate how we moralize people from the content that they consume. And acknowledge that shaming and excluding people for wanting to read something doesn't exactly do much to prevent "moral implications." There's also a huge difference between reading a book, and endorsing the ideas/events inside of it. Same things with fics.

Anti-shipping is very appealing to people because it purports to protect people from harm. Until you look a little closer, and you realize that that protection comes at the expense of free expression, creative license, and agency to choose what we personally do and do not consume. And that that protection isn't really airtight out of your anti-shipping discord or tumblr community.

I think the best we can do is let people write and read what they want -- whatever they want, with limited warnings/etc like ao3 employs -- and ensure that those pieces of content are tagged, warned, and displayed accurately. We need to understand that the only control we have is over ourselves, and what we choose personally to consume or not consume.

I don't generally read those fics you mentioned, but I'm not saying they should be banned from ao3. Just because I might possibly think they're wrong or gross doesn't mean I think the person who wrote them is wrong or gross, either. The more we go down that moral slip and slide, like I said in my previous post, the worse off we will all become.

[averysherwood]

A guide to determine who are siblings and who are not on the example of TOH

Follow the instructions below and don't harass people for nothing

1. Do they have the same parents?

Yes? Congratulations, they are siblings! ✅

2. Do they have one same parent?

Yes? Cool, they're siblings! ✅

3. Is one of them adopted by another's parent(s) / Are both of them adopted into the same family?

Yes? No questions, they are siblings! ✅

4. Do they have the same parental figure who raised them / Do they call each other brother/sister?

Yes? Then... It's complicated. They're not siblings in the usual sense, but it's still really wierd to see them in a romantic way, even if they don't have any other problems (king x luz clearly does have other problems, don't get me wrong)

5. Is none of the above list suitable for characters in question?

I have some news for you, they are NOT siblings! ❌

You can headcanon them whatever you want, but it doesn't give you any rights to harass people who doesn't see them in the way you see!

[petrock42clone]

I swear to God, arguments made by proshippers to justify their degeneracy will never cease to amaze me with how stupid they can get.

"But it's not real." Doesn't matter, it's still gross to portray that shit in a positive light.

"I wouldn't support this in real life." If you're not gonna support it in real life then why the hell would you support it in fiction? Just admit you're a creep and get it over with.

"I use it as a way to cope with trauma." I don't want to call those people liars, but nine times out of ten I only ever see them saying this when they get called out for it. And if it's meant for coping, then why do most pieces of proship media glorify and portray it as a good thing when it shouldn't be seen that way? Also, I don't wanna be that guy, but maybe you shouldn't post that sort of thing publicly when actual creeps/criminals could use that for gross purposes.

"Fiction doesn't affect reality." Tell that to every piece of government propaganda ever released. Also, proship content does have an effect on people, especially young kids. I was exposed to a proship undertale fan blog when I was nine, and for at least two years I thought that shit was ok.

"So you support harassment towards proshippers?" Harassment is bad no matter who it's directed towards, so no I do not support harassment towards proshippers. Though I'll be completely honest and say that I don't feel sympathetic towards proshippers either.

"You're just a puritan." Dude if I were the puritan you claim I am, I probably wouldn't be ok with writing gore/torture scenes in some of my fanfics. And before you start yapping, I make it clear in those fics that those acts are not ok and are not meant to be seen in a good light.

Proshippers/Neutrals do not interact. Try arguing with me about why this shit is ok and the most you'll get out of me is a block.

[be4utiful4byss]

over here going to the theatre with my mom and I feel bad talking about the movie because I know it’s going to leave me tottering into shipping discourse that would result in me getting ‘called out’ by a 30yo cishet lady

[whatsjulietslastname]

expending on the mlm pricefield thing (and i’m not talking about double exposure anymore), i think if pricefield had been one of the first mlm pairing to be openly queer in video games history, it would’ve been way more of a big deal back when the game was released and years later. i also think little to no people would be debating whether their relationship is platonic or not, and people would’ve been way faster at jumping to the conclusion that you were homophobic if you thought they were.

historically, the most popular mlm pairings (i’m thinking johnlock, kirk and spock from star trek, merlin and arthur, all the h*rry p*tter and marvel gay ships) have a way bigger fanbase and are way less denied than the wlw ones (i’m thinking supercop, emma swan and regina mills, betty and veronica from riverdale etc). (for the record, i looked up “queerbaiting” to make this post and have examples, and found like a dozens of mlm pairings and always the same few wlw ones…) AND it is way more socially acceptable to say “those two women have a platonic relationship” whereas, if you do the same with johnlock, for instance, you WILL get an angry twenty paragraphs long reply about how there was nothing platonic about it (even though John Watson married a woman).

my point is not “he married a woman so he wasn’t queer” my point is, whenever one part of a wlw pairing has a boyfriend, or a man who she shows a glimpse of interest in (*cough cough* Warren Graham *cough cough*), it is IMMEDIATELY used as ‘evidence’ that this character cannot be queer since she can be in a heterosexual relationship — which is an argument that, again, you will practically never find directed at a gay ship. and, again, the few people who do use this argument against mlm pairings are called ‘homophobic’.

AGAIN, i am not saying that you cannot ship Warren and Max or are homophobic if you do, i’m saying that if Chloe and Max had been two guys, people would’ve been so focused on them, on Max’s diary’s entries, and the two possible kisses they can share onscreen, and the flirting and implications in their relationship, and Chloe’s obvious attraction to Max, that grahamfield would’ve had a way smaller fanbase — or no fanbase at all. and people would’ve absolutely disregarded the fact that you can make Max romance Warren (who is a girl in this scenario). they would’ve seen Warren’s nearly one-sided flirting, and would’ve immediately gone “she (Warren) is in love with him (Max) and he doesn’t give a fuck” (and the kiss in the Two Whales would’ve been collectively ignored by the entire fandom, as is Mary Watson, or Pepper Potts, or Tonks, or Ginny Weasley).

but BECAUSE Max and Chloe are girls, people are still debating whether she is even queer or not by saying “if i make her romance Warren she experiences no attraction towards Chloe and therefore is straight” which is false, because the attraction is HERE. all you, as a player, get to decide is whether or not Max acts on it. and no matter how much evidence there is that Max is indeed romantically interested in Chloe, you will NEVER convince those people, because to them, the moment a woman and a guy interact in a non-platonic way, this woman has to end up with said guy, no matter how queer-coded her relationship with another woman is.

and now that pricefield is broken up, people who would’ve been rioting if it had been guys are calling people who are rightfully upset ‘dramatic’. just try and imagine the reaction of the Sherlock fandom if Sherlock was returning without Watson because “they argued off-screen and decided to stop seeing each other”. those guys aren’t childhood best friends, are never romantically involved, their fandom hasn’t been begging to have a glimpse of them together for ten years, and yet i can’t even imagine how angry people would be. all this fandom was asking was to at least not destroy Max and Chloe’s friendship, and look where we are now.

[qiu-yan]

wow this post got depressing really fast. sorry

if you think about it. if you were just some random no-name cultivator who somehow got invited to the phoenix mountain night-hunt, and you heard something about 1. hanguang-jun of the sterling reputation, 2. wei wuxian the demonic cultivator already flouting social norms, and 3. a forced kiss....which would you believe? that lan wangji forcibly kissed wei wuxian? or that wei wuxian forcibly kissed lan wangji?

depressing thoughts.

[thirdeyeblue]

“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”

I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.

Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨

When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.

While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.

In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):

He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.

Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.

He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.

And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.

Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.

(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)

Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…

His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.

It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:

He is still in love with Rose.

(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)

Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.

But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.

Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.

I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.

So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.

But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”

-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!

Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!

Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.

The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.

But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.

[gasterofficial]

um no offense but while we are romanticizing being freaks (cool and good) could we maybe not do that with incest and pedophilia maybe ^_^

[dandelioncasey]

Love when there's bashing fics in the main ship tag 🙃 love when I'm searching for fics for a specific pairing and the fic is specifically written to bash on one half of the pairing and break them up in favour of a different pairing 🙃🙃 love when people write queer characters as cheaters with absolutely no basis in canon just so they have an excuse to hate on them 🙃🙃🙃

ETA: i originally put this in the tags but I think it deserves to be in the main post: if your fic is written specifically because you hate a pairing and want them broken up, then why is it in that ship's tags?? Nobody who's a fan of the pairing wants to read that shit, and your target audience of people who hate the ship aren't looking in that tag!