#ships discourse

[screampotato]

Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.

[saintmachina]

Shipping fictional characters isn’t representative of your moral values. It’s representative of your particular psychic damage and the themes and motifs that haunt you. Hope this helps.

[nymph1e]

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?

[hjbender]

The Four Discoursemen

[garnet-xx-rose]

Yes, I’ve done the work analyzing this relationship’s problematic traits and I’ve come to the educated conclusion that I still want them to fuck

[samble-moved]

post itself

false flags

trans/adjacent tags

accessibility features

tumblr live post (thanks for the link, @problemnyatic)

flashing / strobing / lights

unblockable flashing ad

buying ad free

staff @/macmanx guilt trip

list of staff + more issues

[bebx]

“this ship is not canon” babe, they’re fictional characters. they’re not real. they’re literally dolls we play with. we don’t care about whether or not these fictional characters’ love story is canon in this piece of media that is also entirely based on fiction. I mean, sure, canon would be lovely, but it’s a bonus. it’s not necessary. what we care about is the fun of talking about these 2 idiots being in love.

we don’t give a fuck if they didn’t kiss in “canon”. they had raw sex in thousands of fics about them though. and I’d say that’s more than enough to make people who ship them happily ship them even harder. happy shipping!

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Okay I take it back the actual funniest thing about how many people performatively hate on scum villain because they think it’s bad and trashy and irredeemable and Problematic is that they are unwittingly re-enacting an almost perfect impression of the main character, a young terminally online guy who hate read a trashy porn novel and got in so many internet fights about how bad and irredeemable and garbage it was that he died choking on his rage and was transported to suffer the role of expendable backstory villain in the world of this trashy porn novel he hated so much.

And that’s fucking hilarious.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for 'outing' someone for writing inc*st?

I (20F) am in a moderately large fandom that got popular during the pandemic. Most of the fic for this fandom is gen and platonic pairings, which is a rarity and fantastic. One of the most popular creators in the fandom puts out a ton of gen fics that I really loved. Unfortunately, I learned after that they write fics on a different account, and not just any fics, but inc*st. I'm not talking about found family. These characters are literal brothers in canon. I can't believe anyone would ship them together, much less this person. I unfollowed them and now, whenever I see anyone talking about how much they love this creator, I inform them about the alt account and their ships. Ignorance may be bliss, but I felt awful when I found out and realized I'd been supporting them for so long and I don't want anyone else to feel that way. But someone replied to one of my comments calling me the asshole, telling me I was outing the creator, and to mind my own business. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[mywitchcultblr]

Stop putting DNI on your tags and stop bringing shipping discourse into AO3

AO3 hid the story and asked OP to remove the tag (the fanfic is not even removed) due to the inflammatory tag. That's deserved. AO3 is not a social media for people to fight over ship and chronically online discourse. It's a library. If people keep bringing DNI and discourse into AO3 it'll make the place toxic for writers and reader.

What are you trying to accomplish with putting DNI? Do you think people actually care about DNI? No, it's just making you looking like an asshole doing this

Also AO3 was founded by a Wincest and Thorki shipper. Astolat made AO3 because FF net and other sites keep purging nsfw fanfic. AO3 is literally made for problematique shipper that op don't like.

Then OP doing this? For what? People want to enjoy reading their fanfic not seeing DNI and online discourse on AO3. I hate using the word virtue signaling as it's often used to demean progress but this is what a real virtue signaling looks like 🤦🤦‍♀️

(I bet op wrote more inflammatory tags on their fic other than 'proshitter DNI get a life' because it take a lot to get your story hidden or removed)

[abyssalbloom]

People on tumblr really will go „I cannot believe silly right wingers fall for fear-mongering and moral panics and accuse random queer people of being pedophiles for self expression and kinks, anyway, block and unfollow xyz because they’re a proshipper and glorifying abuse”

[bewareofdeaddove]

Once you start harassing people over their tastes in fiction, you've gone too far.

You should not be sending anon hate.

You should not be telling people to kill themselves.

You should not be contacting people's family members, job, or school.

You should not be sending people gore.

You should not be telling people that they deserve their trauma.

You should not be attacking people over liking something fictional. At that point, you're the problem. Not the person making things you don't like, YOU. Harassment is never acceptable.

[cowboylikeyouu]

my favorite gender is men finding out about the concept of shipping non-canon ships

[my-special-place-in-hell]

tua fandom rn

[prokopetz]

Discourse about whether shipping the Chosen Hero with the immortal Beast of the Apocalypse represents a problematic age gap, and if so, in which direction (i.e., the Hero, on account of the fact that the Beast is ten thousand years old and the Hero is like thirty, or the Beast, on account of the fact that the Beast is only awake for like two weeks once every century and thus has less lived experience).

[madlori]

On Tommy Kinard

"It's not that I don't like Buck and Tommy, it's just happening so fast, he's underdeveloped!"

*clears throat*

Here is a recap of what we know about Tommy. And this is just off the top of my head, I didn't rewatch anything.

He was closeted at the 118 before and found the atmosphere repressive. He (probably) acted like a dick to fit in. When presented with the chance to make things better, he took it, and developed positive relationships with Hen, Chim and Bobby.

He was in the army and trained there as a pilot.

He knows Muay Thai and has a set up in his house.

He likes to work on cars and has a lift at his house (where TF does he live is my question - he has some nerve being agog at Buck's loft if he has a muay thai gym and a car lift)

He is down for violating departmental policy at the drop of a hat (has done so on at least two occasions) to help a friend and has no problems fucking with the fire chief.

He is a nerd. He likes pub trivia and has incorrect Star Wars opinions, and can keep up with Chim in the movie-quoting department.

His favorite movie is "Love, Actually" and he likes craft beer and monster trucks.

He came out when he transferred to Harbor and felt comfortable enough to stop lying about who he was.

He follows MMA and has friends in Vegas who like him well enough to hook him up to a frankly insane degree.

He'll risk his own life and engage in helicopter skulduggery to save people he doesn't know...I mean, apart from doing that for a living.

He'll take time out of his day to give a tour to the cute boy who called him up and offer to give that boy flying lessons (a significant time investment) which was probably maybe about more one on one time with said boy.

He yearns for the belonging and found family that the 118 became after his departure and probably befriended Eddie hoping to earn a plate at the cookout, aside from just clicking with him.

He likes Eddie and Chris a lot and they like him. Chimney also likes him.

He was attracted to Buck right away and was emotionally aware enough to pick up on Buck's jealous feelings over Eddie and his friendship, even if he was surprised that it was him Buck wanted to get to know.

He respects and values Buck and Eddie's friendship and wanted to make sure Buck knew that.

He's brave enough to shoot his shot by planting one on a dude.

He's a lil bitchy but also generous and ready to throw in with this insane guy who's inviting him to a family wedding after 0.5 dates.

He showed up to a bachelor party when he was on call because Buck asked him to, then showed up in turnouts after fighting a fire for like 12 hours yadda yadda we all know this part.

He has got it BAD for one Evan Buckley, who he only calls "Evan" which according to LFJR is a conscious decision by the writers, which fascinates me.

He was willing to take a chance with a man just discovering his sexuality BUT wasn't willing to put himself through that if the man in question wasn't ready for it. When Buck showed him that he was, he was all in.

He does NOT take his coffee like that.

Oh and

He's a beast.

This is VASTLY more information than we knew about ANY of Buck's previous girlfriends with the possible exception of Abby. Even Taylor did not get this much development over 20 episodes (things we knew about her: she was an ambitious and ethically flexible reporter, did not eat fudge, had a dad in jail, and sometimes jogged for exercise, she was capable of being nice and did love Buck, I believe). And as for it being fast? Sometimes it just be like that? A relationship doesn't have to have year(s) of buildup. Sometimes people do just meet, like each other, and start dating, in fact in the real world that's usually what happens. It's in TV Land that you have to have eighteen seasons of UST before pulling the trigger. Most of the time in reality people just vibe off each other and decide to go out and THEN they learn about each other.

And they've got a great start. You'd think they'd barely spoken by how a few naysayers are talking about it - the loft scene was like a solid five minutes of very open conversation, the Cringe Date seemed to have gone well and again, open and honest (if cringey) conversation before Cockblocker Eddie showed up, and the coffee meetup was again....open and honest conversation. They're not gonna show us long scenes of them exchanging firefighting stories and workout preferences (I mean, I'd watch that, but it's not what the show is about).

In conclusion, anyone saying he's poorly developed or the relationship is "out of nowhere" either is being willfully obtuse or has ridiculously unrealistic expectations for relationships and/or what constitutes character development.

As for whether they have chemistry, that's a matter of subjective opinion. Given that a TON of people watched that harbor tour scene (even when it was posted as a sneak peek) and started going "wait...what's going on here...are they flirting??" might be a clue. People were talking about Bi!Buck maybe happening with Tommy based solely off that clip of the harbor tour and what they were seeing between them. And imho that loft scene was crackling. But we all see things through the lenses of our biases, myself included.

Got that off my chest, whew.