#shipping is spicy or entertaining or heartwarming or just goofy and that's why it happens

[brightsuzaku]

shipping? yeah you can ship that,

hi, effortless textpost here, but

sometimes i think one of the ways i generally avoid shipping discourse or ship wars within fandoms is mostly by being a multishipper

you can ship these characters with anyone! i don't have to always like it, though there are many pairings and throuples, and polycules i enjoy a lot, but also there are ones i don't always enjoy or like, and... it's fine!

if it makes someone else happy or it entertains them, then that's a fine and okay ship! I DO NOT ATTACH MORALITY TO SHIPPING BECAUSE A MAJOR PART OF IT IS ENTERTAINMENT.

I had a wild time in college discussing crack pairings and strange ship ideas with friends, and it was specifically because it was entertaining to think about, and not because we had any serious attachment to whether these characters "ought to be together" or something. I have shipping goggles and have used them for good, and warned a friend about their writing, "you better watch out, this sounds like an implied ship that you REALLY ARE NOT INTENDING," before.

Anyway, back then, I didn't even ship in hopes that a ship ought to be canon, as much of the fun was ships and pairings not being canon at all. Then, we could break other rules about how that would go, without any expectation that the author would actually put these characters from two different left fields together, AND IT WAS FUN.

The blessed thing about being a multishipper is also that I, implicitly, am fine with not shipping a given character to another, either. lIKE, "Oh, you don't actually ship Sherlock Holmes with anyone because you consider him aroace? Go ahead!!!!"

Heck, you don't even have to come out and defend your ships with me. This is a no-judgement zone. Yeah, some stuff miGht make me uncomfortable, but there's been plenty of characters I don't ship, and other character ships that I don't want to ship, but I see the kernel of why they get shipped, and I'm like, "dang, you're having a good time over there".

I am not even annoyed about shipping in general, I am old and tired. I have lived through the flame wars of the early 2000s internet and have been aware of even older ones of times past. It's fine. I don't mess with it.

This was supposed to be a really short post, but then it got out of hand.

Much of the thrill of shipping is first the entertainment of it, and then the rest is the romance and the character exploration. Heck, I have seen ace pairings before, and you know what? That's the coolest thing ever!

I get why some people don't want to see specific ships tagged with their art: it is very tiring if you have a strong aversion to a certain specific ship, or just find its fans annoying, or just dislike a certain type of ship, and so on. That's fine!!!

I'm not one of those people, I actually like discovering new ships, lol. But, there is nothing wrong with traversing fandom on your own terms! And ,if that means blocking ships you don't wanna see, or putting a "please don't tag" in the text, then that's all OK, too!

I would say that shipping is a part of fandom, it's been there for a long time! And while I so strongly" wish it could be wholly fun again", I know that it wasn't always fun even in the past, either. The flame wars existed back then, and they will continue, too.

But shipping isn't the only way to play with a story or tis characters, and not shipping characters is great, too!

I am always down to see more about characters that aren't romantically or sexually with each other, too!

TL;DR, hi I am a multishipper, and I like shipping in general, because it's fun. Even the ships I think are uncomfy, or ones I don't really jibe with, well: someone else likes it, and I'm not them, so that's OK! You can ship characters and you can not ship characters. All of that is fine! I think multishipping includes choosing not to have a pairing, and that is good, too.

This post is not about when people "take it too far". You gotta learn to make your own boundaries and make use of working within your own boundaries too. I promise you, teenagers have been joking about boy band members dating each other since probably forever. 90% of the time or something, it's not actually that gross, people just do this for fun. People generally start shipping characters (or people, lol) primarily because it's fun.

Yes, I turned off reblogs in advance.