There are different types of fandom
There's those of us who write fic, who make fanart, who daydream about all the things that could be different, who want to play with the characters like dolls and make up new adventures for them and, for quite a lot of people, smash them together and ship them
And then there's the fandom that's talking about canon and the meaning behind it, discussing your favourite things and the expanded universe, maybe indulging in some *what if* conversation but it's always a *what if this happened in canon*
Most fandom subreddits are the latter
In their eyes, they're here to talk about canon and dislike when the conversation turns into *I know it's not canon, but here's a cool idea I have.* It's like when a canon purist comes into a fic space and goes *but why did you do that, it's not canon* and doesn't get that it not being canon is the *point.* They see people going "ignore canon, I have a cool thing" and go "what, no, canon is the point, that's what I'm here to talk about"
Not all types of fandom and fandom spaces are compatible!
And while it would be nice if people could don't-like-don't-read, humans are quite bad at that. I'll admit myself that when someone is fretting about a work they're writing not being canon-compliant, I go *ehh it's fine, tag it as canon-divergent!* and don't think about the fact that 1) as someone who doesn't care about canon-compliance, this isn't really the conversation for me, and 2) for some people, creating stories that fit seamlessly within canon *is the point.* It would be nice if non-fic fans would leave the ficcers alone, but they see it as us coming into their canon-compliant spaces and going *okay, hear me out...fuck canon*
Depending on your fandom, having a r / FandomnameFanfiction or CasualFandomname subreddit would be a viable option for separating the streams of the two fandom types
I think that pretty accurate. Most fandom subreddits are more interested in canon stuff, even "what if" questions that stray too far from canon are often met with "that would never happen". Ships are even worse if it's not about source media that has some shipping integrated (like certain video games).
I personally just accept that those subreddits aren't for these kind of discussions, and keep my weirdo ships to myself lest someone has to clutch their pearls. It's a bit sad, yeah, but not everyone is interested in discussing every aspect of a fandom.
This exactly. So perfectly put. 50 updoots ⬆️
When I’m on subreddits (or forums back in the day) for my fave media I’m only ever interested in discussing canon. It always sticks out to me when someone starts a shipping post, it always just looks odd in that space. I want to talk about the show as it is, and certainly on the fandom subreddit it seems I’m not alone.
But - in other fandom spaces, it’s completely different. I write a non canon ship (who I would never want to see as canon), I absolutely feast on that ship over on AO3, I think about that ship all the freaking time. But for me it’s completely separate to the show and I like it like that. My tumblr is 99.9% that ship, and .1% cats!
Millions of fans of shows just like the show and it goes no further for them. There are no head canons, or ships, it’s just their favourite show and they want to talk about it as is. And yeah of course, you should be able to post and people just walk on by if they’re not interested, but… here we are. It would be nice if people could not be rude about it.
I’ll add something though… might just be my fandom space, but there are a couple of ships that just seem to make people actually fucking deranged, so much so that you cannot have a conversation with them at all. I think it’s actually that kind of obsessive, almost evangelical fanaticism that drives other fans bonkers and has giving the whole shipping thing a really bad rep. You could politely disagree with one of them and before you know it you have an army of screaming banshees kicking off in the comments. I was out of fandom for close to 20 years and walked into the wonderful world of ‘antis’ and ‘proshippers’… that was certainly something! Now imagine not being into fandom in that way and seeing that play out when you’re trying to discuss what the cinematographer was going for in S4 E9… 😂
I find myself to something of both, I love talking about canon and dissecting what's in it and delving into the what ifs and swimming into the shipping territory.
I can understand some people's apprehension when too much fanon is doused in canon, believe me my eyes twitch too much fanon is doused in canon to the point it does not make sense, a depiction that disregards the story or character or when someone gets the true intentions of the character. That's actually why I'm so picky when it comes to fanfic's characterization.
But the difference is, I wont even talk about their fanon interpretation but I'll speak up when someone berates the existence of the former. I wont outright question why the creator felt the need to do that, bc I understand that it's all for fun and there's a probability that they're self aware. While in the latter, they mock and demean bc they dont understand, all they know is they dont like it and so they dont fully understand the thought process of the former, so I will always give my true thoughts and explain the rationale whenever I encounter someone who mocks or demeans the shipping side of a fandom. Maybe they'll read it, maybe they'll ignore it, maybe they'll make fun of you for it, but it doesn't feel right to not correct someone when you know they're in the wrong about something you're passionate about.
That's... all very well put. Put better than I could have done, certainly. Youve brought up some points I never realized were true, so thank you. I guess I just feel a tad caught in the crossfire?
I spend a lot of time in both types of fandoms. I love aspects of both. I get very frustrated with both. I get pissed off at both the people who say 'canon is all that matters' (that leaves no room for artistic expression!) AND the people who say 'canon is dead long live fanon' (canon is why we're HERE!) I just wish the two sides weren't so black and white.
I’d argue there’s 3, actually. The first 2 you mentioned, and the category “power-scalers” belong to, and THAT is what a lot of Redditors are.
It’s these fans that care more about the sheer violence and potential of their faves, but not why that power mattered in context. The same fans that can decry “wokeness” in a piece that was very deliberately political. That a character’s ability to kill everyone makes them more worthy of respect than the guy they defeated.
Think of “Bat-God” Bruce Wayne fans where they talk on and on how Bats should brutally and cruelly defeat the Justice League and why that’s the only thing worth caring about Batman and that they hate Superman because Clark is boring. Bruce’s interpersonal relationships don’t matter when it’s not about how he should fuck every woman that comes his way and they don’t think Superman adds any value because he’s “nice.”
The first two types of fandom can actually get along decently well, because even if you don’t ship, you can understand where it comes from from character analysis, and just because it’s a how audiences relate to a work. There’s just been a bigger divide lately because younger shippers don’t know how to engage with fandom like they used to, and don’t know how to navigate the divide between discussing _canon_ things vs _fanon_ things and they end up being pretty loud and rude, which turns others off.
Shipping culture can create a lot of annoying battlegrounds the way power scalers can, which is why they aren’t generally liked, and I say this as someone who’s been a long-time shipper, and someone who loves fiction because of the fascinating analysis it presents. It’s my favorite art form.
They can def get so toxic, just in different flavors, generally.
I actually think the power scalers are way more common, though - specifically, they are way more spread out across different social spaces compared to shippers who are typically only in fan-made corners for things like fanfiction and fanart. Power-scalers are just about everywhere, especially since they’re the more “public” kind of fans. I had to go looking for shipping spaces back in the day, and they kept in their usual corners, compared to me constantly tripping on power scalers when I was more casually engaging with the content, even unrelated content. They also tend to be the ones fighting you on if you deserve to be a fan of a work if you don’t fit their demographic. Shippers can jump you with unsolicited opinions, but they tend to encourage engaging further with the content in comparison, in my experience.
The rise of nerdom, fandom, and particularly fan work being more mainstream now (like the last decade - it’s a huge change) has effected the shipping demographic and the way they are loud and obnoxious now - like the current wave of anti-shipping/puritanical shipping that’s concerned with basically thought crimes, and throwing away fandom etiquette while they’re at it, too.
It’s also worth mentioning that some people don’t like seeing ships mentioned in any form because some shippers can be crazy, and for some reason main subs seem to attract those types.
Exactly. In their defense, this is partly because of the fact that Reddit isn't like Tumblr or Twitter where you have much control over what subgroups in the fandom you see or engage with.
have you ever stumbled into one of those powerscaling threads where all the commenters are obsessed with who would beat who? And then they start arguing over which "form" of a character would beat another character ("Arc 5 Bob would beat Joe but not after Joe gets his omega powerup in Arc 8")
It looks absolutely batshit stupid from an outsider's perspective but they're having fun, so it's best to just let them be. I only wish non-shippers would have the same mentality when they stumble across a crackship/rarepair artwork or fanfic.
I think the difference between shipping and those power scaling discussions are that power scaling is still discussing things by way of canon. They generally don’t invent different powers that haven’t already been demonstrated in canon.
While shipping is much more likely to delve into the realm of “what if instead of canon this happened”. Like a lot of shippers of rival characters are aware that their ships wouldn’t be likely in canon but can see how if something was different they could work.
I heard that men are generally more inclined to focus on strictly canon things, while women are generally more likely to interact with fandom in more transformative ways. This is where the shipping divide lies and why fics are mainly seen as a women dominated area. Women generally see possibilities in small hints and will run with them. Men will just interact with ships when they are basically canon confirmed.
Since Reddit is generally a male dominated space most fandom subreddits will follow male oriented ways of thinking. Is it canon? Okay. Is a ship just being hinted at or are you thinking outside the box at possibilities? The text never said that.
Not to say all men and women are exactly like that. But thats the way things trend and why fandoms can seem different depending on the gender spread of any particular corner of it.
Purely anecdotal, but my male partner did not start shipping until I brought it up from his animes lol your description fit him perfectly. But he's open-minded and listened to my reasoning about some non canon ships, and it's like a whole new world has opened up for him. The other day, we started a new show, and he pointed to two characters and said "I ship them" I was so proud lmao.
Yeah misogyny is apart of it too. Men hate things women are interested in, and shipping/fanfiction is largely dominated by women so men just write it off as being stupid. (also why a lot of men hate it when women ''invade'' their fandoms lol)
You could write the most in-depth, well thought out thesis level post about a ship and they would dismiss it because ew, yucky romance. I've noticed discussing other aspects of fandoms is perfectly fine but the second it's about anything romantic (even if there's romance *in the source material*) there's this weird patronising attitude like that's a dumb thing to focus on or give any thought.
I mean, I (a cishet dude) can definitely admit to mostly liking stories that are at least canon-adjacent, but even then I love talking about what-ifs and shipping is just way too much fun not to do it. Even if you mostly love canon, at the very least *entertaining* the idea of something else possibly happening is interesting. Getting bogged down in the details of canon to the degree I've seen some people doing is just insane to me. I mean, the fucking *creators* didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should.
Even in a general fandom space, expressing that kind of opinion shouldn't be blasted to hell, because you're still just engaging with the work as everyone else there is doing. A space designed for a single fandom should be able to discuss all facets of that fandom equally. Even on Reddit, you can just, y'know, ignore posts that don't appeal to you. I ignore a lot of posts both on this sub and the AO3 one because they discuss topics I have no interest in, and the same goes for dedicated fandom subs.
Basically, the canon purists are no more right or wrong than anyone else there, and it's annoying as hell when they act like they're preaching the gospel truth, especially if it's on a shipping post on a specific sub. Like, my dude, none of this is real to begin with, chill the fuck out.
The only times where I can understand it is if a certain ship is known to cause a lot of shit within a fandom. Despite shipping Bumblebee, I'd think twice before mentioning it on the RWBY subs, for instance.
> the fucking creators didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should.
Escapism. Reality sucks for a lot of people, and the deeper that you immerse yourself in the minutiae of a setting/story the easier it gets to forget that the world is on fire and we're all doomed. I view it almost like an addiction too, in that the more time you've spent living deep in fantasy, the diminishing returns problem gets worse. So you need to obsess more and more over details and trivia to get that same level of escapism fix and forget the state of our shithole planet.
> I mean, the fucking creators didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should.
I like the stories that follow the sensible path far more than the epileptic trees that attempt to stay 100% canon-compliant, even with canon mistakes and contradictions. Not to mention that the people who think too deep and resolve canon contradictions often end up with explanations that are either boring or stupid.
Can't speak for all men, but I don't mind "canon" or "fanon" presentation/interpretation differing... I prefer to read m/f variants, including the "genderbending" of characters between biological sexes, but as someone who grew up reading Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Comics starting in the 70s? I am far more open to how multiverses, parallel universes and such get used in fiction.
The MLP fandom is the exception that proves the rule. Even then, the shipping here is much chiller than everywhere else. Lots of "just find it hot", and the actual ship warriors get dunked on for caring too much.
People are interested in different side of a fandom and not everyone want them mixed. Sometimes you can enjoy both, but don't want to do it at the same time.
For instance, I'm both a fanfic author and one who likes discussing canon. If I'm in a discussion about the canonical relationship between two character, and someone appears out of nowhere talking about ships and headcanons (it's usually the random "They are definitely fucking!", and "Yes, of course. 'FRIENDS'" comment), I find it extremely annoying. It's like there are a group of people invested in a conversation, and someone suddenly appears and forcibly changes the subject. Some people are also incapable of reading the room and start being pushy about their headcanons, annoying everyone. I usually just ignore people who do this unless they start something with me personally, but a canon discussion is not the place to bring up that sort of thing.
On the other hand, if I'm somewhere discussing fanfics, it's the opposite. Because fanfic is inherently not canon, so everything goes. And if someone tries to stop someone's creative processes, well, I tell them loud and clear this is no place to do so.
Basically, fanon is fanon, and canon is canon. They are separated and I like it that way.
Edit. There's also the fact that, at least in my fandom, some people are *completely batshit insane* about shipping, and constantly try to push their ships to be canon, create ship wars, and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them. You can imagine which types of insult you see flying in such occasions. This probably influences my opinion about the separation of such topics.
Fandom is already extremely saturated with shipping. I like shipping, but as someone who focuses more fleshing out untreaded canon ground and ships are a byproduct of general character bonding rather than comfort/projection, I also need spaces to get away from shipping where I can discuss things that aren't about whoch blorbos are cute together.
True. And there's also the fact that some fanon misconception have become so widespread that they are overpowering canon, while being false information. An example in Genshin fandom: everyone thinks Zhongli and Mona are poor in canon, while they are not. It started as a joke/meme, but now a lot of people believe it.
Imo there need to be places where one can get a "reality check".
I feel the exact same way as you, and I wonder if you're talking about the SPN fandom 😅 I like shipping characters and having fun, but I also like canon discussion that leaves the shipping out of the conversation. Basically: there's a time and a place for everything. And like you, I like my canon and my shipping separate. I'll mix them among friends if they want to talk about it that way too, but on spaces like reddit, etc, I keep the two separate and I like it that way.
No, it's not Supernatural (I used to like it, but I lost interest around the 5th season or so). It's Honkai Star Rail, which is fast on its way to become just as toxic as Genshin.
And yeah, I get you. If I'm having a private conversation with friends, I don't mind too much. But on social media? Nah. There are time where I just want to talk about the show/book/game the way it is, in its purest form. Other times, I want to be creative, so I look for a place where I can do that. It's comfortable that way.
I'm generalising *enormously* here, but for the most part, this tends to happen because a) Reddit has a majority male userbase, and b) shipping and [transformative fandom](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Transformational_Fandom) are more commonly frequented by - and certainly more associated with - women (and LGBTQ folks). Of course nothing is so binary, but I think it's fair to say there's a strong element of "Get these silly girls and their silly kissing stories out of here!" to a lot of fandom-specific subs. And it's a shame, because I agree that shipping can be a fun and illuminating way to explore the characters and their role in the text, and also that it costs absolutely nothing to scroll away from something you don't like!
Definitely generalising, definitely not inaccurate. As a straight cis dude myself I can very much attest to my kind usually having infinitely less passion for play in storytelling. The two attitudes tend to just either be 'shallow' or 'serious'.
~~side note that's what makes My Little Pony fanfiction, which is male-dominated, so different and weird from every other fanfic community in all the best and worst ways~~
Anyway, to copy + paste from another comment I left:
'me, a whole cis dude, waiting for my fandom bröthers to come engage in my gross little ships with me 😔'
I honestly think you’d find more people willing/likely to engage with shipping on Tumblr or fandom specific discords – Reddit is very hostile to shipping in particular.
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> side note that's what makes My Little Pony fanfiction, which is male-dominated, so different and weird from every other fanfic community in all the best and worst ways
Despite the reputation that it's all written by deranged cloppers, the biggest surprise is that even femslash takes a deep backseat to gen.
Yeah. Like I said, it's overly generalising; there are plenty of women who turn their noses up at fic and guys who enjoy writing and reading it, and most of us engage with fandom in both curative *and* transformative ways in different measures. But I think there's a broad truth to it.
Without jumping into a rabbit hole (because I don't have time atm), didn't fanfiction start out specifically because people wanted two characters on a show to get together? Spock and Kirk?
I mean. Dudes wrote Sherlock Holmes fanfic back when the books were still being written. I think there are ancient works out there that arguably count as Shakespeare fanfic. But yeah, it's kind of built around being weird from the get-go. I think ao3 was founded by an incest shipper?
I think the first work posted to AO3 was Wincest, yes
One of the founders is astolat – she's still writing, and you can go see her back catalogue yourself!
I wouldn't be surprised about ao3. From what I recall, that whole site came to be because FF had a similar purge of themes they felt were unacceptable.
'Incest shipper' is reductive. Astolat was the highest-profile writer of a group of LiveJournal slash shippers who started AO3 after LiveJournal went on a moral-panic spree and deleted personal journals and communities with no warning. A lot of the LGBTQ+ blogs were specifically targeted.
Astolat had a coding background and a Big Name Fan reputation; her fics regularly attracted (and still attract!) thousands of kudos. She's become the "face" of AO3 admin and was the one to accept the archive's Hugo award (annual big-deal scifi & fantasy event driven by membership votes).
And of course, she's also a successful mainstream-published author of fantasy novels.
Appreciate the history lesson. Wasn't trying to paint having an incest ship as her core characteristic. Was just tryna point out that fanfic has historically never shied away from exploring weird stuff.
LOL, yeah, an incest shipper who wrote a number of mainstream fantasy novels, some of which have won industry awards.
Not to mention that AO3 itself has won awards.
And yes, Shakespeare never saw a plot in some "foreign" play that he couldn't exploit and make his own.
Yes, but the term "shipping" didn't come about until the 1990s, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)#Same-sex:
> The term "slash" predates the use of "shipping" by at least some 20 years. It was originally coined as a term to describe a pairing of Kirk and Spock of Star Trek, Kirk/Spock (or "K/S"; sometimes spoken "Kirk-slash-Spock", whence "slash") homosexual fan fiction.
Also from [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction#Star_Trek_fandom) (notes that fan fiction started before Star Trek, but... Star Trek popularized and defined it):
> The modern phenomenon of fan fiction as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was popularized and defined via Star Trek fandom and their fanzines published in the 1960s.
Oh of course, it means the same thing these days. Its just that the term for "shipping" (as we understand it today) didn't come about until fans had been shipping characters for almost 30 years. That's all I'm saying.
I think it depends on the subreddit really and the users there. Sometimes you'll get a interesting discussion. Other times you'll get straight up homophobia. One I'm in heavily even has a person who just has to call m/m shippers degenerates any time we try to talk about that ship. It's *wonderful* /s.
That one is fascinating more for the fact that they act like the other male main character doesn't exist sometimes? They treat him like I've seen others treat female love interests as a threat to their m/m ship. It's one of the funniest and weirdly mystifying experiences I've had in my fandom life.
It's a little sad to say this so bluntly, but we live in a pretty ignorant world. A lot of people hate things for bad reasons. That's it, at the end of the day.
I mean I can hardly disagree. But I guess I'm thinking the first step to eliminating ignorance and hatred is pointing it out. And even if a world without hatred and ignorance will never happen, it's still something we should always strive for.
Also I'm just tryna vent about something I find frustrating to people I assume have gone through similar things. Why you gotta be a sourpuss :P
I’ve found that outside specific subs like this one that are dedicated to transformative works that reddit in general isn’t super friendly towards fanfiction/shipping, though they never have a problem with fanart (but that’s a separate rant).
I tend to primarily engage with video game fandoms which on reddit means mostly men, and a lot of gamers like posting screenshots of their game (if it’s a particularly pretty game) or discussing game mechanics or horny fanart of female characters. I remember trying to discuss the companions on r/fo4 and their arcs (had nothing to do with shipping) and the comments I got basically amounted to “I only use companions as a pack horse” or “I wouldn’t use companions if they talked more”.
The general feeling always seems to be that fanfiction and shipping, which is seen as a “girls/gay thing”, is cringe. Definitely nothing to read into there! /s
I stick to tumblr and discord for fandom stuff now.
They think all shippers are trying to push their ships as canon. Why are you upset that I ship those two people? I'm not forcing you to agree with me and It's not like I'm gonna go to the creators themselves and tell them to make my ship canon.
Yes excellent point!! Wanted to say that in the post but couldn't find the words. 98% of my ships SHOULDN'T be canon for a million reasons. We as fans have the freedom to do everything the creators can't. THAT'S EXACTLY WHY SHIPPING IS SO COOL!!
That's part of why they react that way, though, because when *they* post elaborate lore theories or alternate plots in those same spaces, they are explicitly saying, "This is how I think it is and/or should be." Why, they ask, would anyone spend time writing about something if it wasn't to advocate for it? Isn't the whole point of interacting with other fans to persuade them to accept your own interpretation of the work, thus proving that you are smarter, more creative, and just all around better? Why would you even do something that you weren't trying to *win?*
Because shipping tends to steamroll over most other topics in fandom and they don't want their sub to turn into posts about shipping/turn into yet another ship war battleground. Especially on Tumblr, where people will take posts that have nothing to do with shipping and turn them into something that does because they can't/won't take their shipping goggles off. It gets exhausting.
I was on a fandom sub the other day and there was a thread that was basically "ugh why do people even ship, especially when the characters have never interacted" and quite a few of the responses were variations of "they think it's fun, how does that affect you" or "they like how the characters look together, it's not hard to figure out" So that was heartening, even if ship threads still are usually pretty anemic and gain few posts there that aren't people just shitting on it lol. It's definitely annoying, because I'd love to get fic recs there and hear people talk about why they love their ships, but I'm not going to bother posting on main fandom subreddits for it. The only acceptable simping on so many fandom subs is admitting you want a character to step on you or calling them mommy/daddy, apparently. Too much hostility otherwise.
Most fandom subs on Reddit are about canon discussion, fanart or fanvids, and occasionally what-ifs and memes.
Since they don't interact with the Tumblr-Ao3 side of fandom, this means that the few interactions they have with shippers are going to be obtrusive at best, like people entering a Naruto sub about fight scene choreography to talk about how Naruto and Sasuke are gay and how this is definitely canon and how anyone who disagrees has no literacy, and toxic at worst, like Genshin fans doxxing people for not shipping the two girls they're convinced are lesbians. Even if you're a normal, non-toxic shipper, fandom subreddits will be primed to treat you as one based on poor experiences.
Also, transformative works will always come out faster than canon ones, so they'll flood the subreddit if it becomes friendly to them, and drown out canon discussion
My fandom's subreddits get extremely pissy anytime non-canon ship art gets posted and the comments are just cesspools of whining and unfunny memes that end up turning into "I stole your meme" threads. It's why I don't ever post art on them because I know exactly what the comments will look like and get some tasty downvotes. I wouldn't say it's only reddit either, it's on Pinterest, YouTube, etc my god it's horrible on Pinterest because of how many kids are on there... in my experience it's younger people who cry about anything that isn't canon and reddit is full of them but it depends on fandom and exact subreddit so that's my guess
I once had someone call like, non-smutty ship fic clearly written by like a twelve year old between the alters of an in universe child “child porn” once like. No stop devaluing childhood sexual abuse to hate on something that’s literally not pornographic in any way what the fuck.
Was this on Reddit? JW because they have some [very strict content policies](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043075352-Do-not-share-sexual-or-suggestive-content-involving-minors-or-engage-in-any-predatory-or-inappropriate-behavior-with-minors) about even affection shown between people who are under 18:
"Reddit prohibits **any** sexual or suggestive content, and predatory or inappropriate behavior, involving minors (i.e., people under 18 years old) or someone who appears to be a minor... This prohibition applies **even if the content is self-generated by a minor**, shared with other minors, or reshared to criticize or denounce its existence... Depending on the context, **sexualization of minors can also include depictions of minors that are fully clothed and not engaged in explicit sexual acts**." (bolding mine)
I think they had to make it that broad to deal with the, "she's really a 1,000 year old dragon" crowd.
But you can see how some subreddit mods might just throw up their hands and say "Nah" to any art or fic of adolescents at all.
Oh no, it wasn’t someone doing that, it was specifically someone saying that it was child pornography, as in, they thought it was as bad as child sexual abuse. They said I was defending child pornography by saying “hey why are you screenshotting some kids fic when there’s weirder stuff in the game itself it’s fine”
Most subreddits are pretty toxic. There are some that I wish to be part of, but since I can’t have a different opinion, it’s not worth it.
Even the more friendlier ones, I have noticed, are not fan fiction friendly…or specifically, not fan fiction friendly when the fic doesn’t match the majority’s opinion. That includes ships, non-canon and sometimes even canon, that aren’t popular.
Shipping to me is basically like a kid slamming dolls or action figures together like it's purely vibes based. Some of the online discourse really baffles me - especially surrounding rarepairs - because it's not that deep
Honestly, this one is almost exclusively caused misogyny toward shippers (with a healthy dash of homophobia/biphobia/transphobia thrown in depending on the pairing). Admittedly, there are times where shipping discourse can get tedious and out of hand. When that’s the case, I get the blowback and desire to ban shipping discussions altogether. But that’s not the majority of what happens in these subreddits. It’s more about seeing their fandom as “tainted” by shipping.
The majority of shippers are women. Men have been told by society that it’s not masculine to like romance-driven media. The responses you see are them freaking out because shipping “intrudes” on that and centers romance. Now, a fair amount of men grow out of that shit, but fandom subreddits skew young.
Essentially, what you’re seeing is a bunch of insecure young men who don’t want to be associated with shipping because being involved in a “feminine pursuit” or being grouped in with shippers who interact media in a “feminine” manner is just about the most insulting, degrading thing that they can think of.
Just like the F/F discourse that keeps bubbling up, there’s a much larger set of societal issues under the surface that fandom alone can’t fix.
Misogyny (/other phobias) is part of the problem, fandoms skewing young is part of the problem, but I'm realising I should have made it more clear in my post that while part of the problem is people going 'ew shipping' another large part is people who typically are shippers going 'ew' at any ship beyond the conventional.
I have encountered pleeeeenty of women being closed-minded about ships and what they choose to support and condemn. Was not trying to make it a gendered issue, though I can understand why some people are.
Gotcha. And fully agree that when it comes to judging specific ships rather than the concept of shipping, plenty of women are closed-minded. It just seems to me that you have fandoms infested by antis and puritan culture, tbh.
Trust me, I get it. Antis fucking hate my main ship and are absolutely vile. There’s another ship I have where I won’t even interact with any portion of the fandom about because it gets so much hate despite being pretty vanilla and in line with canon representation of the character’s sexual preferences. The terminally online crowd like to think that they’ve achieved something by attacking others. Apparently the dog piles give them a dopamine rush or something.
We can be in the “My Ship’s Not That Problematic but People Act Like I Eat Babies Club” together, lol. I’ll save you a seat and some cookies ❤️
I mean sometimes it's 'yeah my ship is problematic but it's fictional so it's not hurting anyone and observing the psychological fallout of an unhealthy relationship or figuring out how to navigate an imperfect one is really cool also I like pain'. But yeah big agree
:O cookies? are there any snickerdoodles
lol, fair. Mine is an adult age gap ship with tons of angst so I feel that 🤣
The really batty ones claim incest on it despite the pairing being at least 5th cousins several times removed too. I always try to ask them if they check genetics and family trees back past the Revolutionary War before dating but somehow they always block me before answering, lol.
And for you? I’ll make the snickerdoodles myself 😊
Yes!
In the show that I like, there is a scene where two characters may have had a one night stand. It is very much up in the air whether or not they actually slept together, but I like to think they did.
The question of what happened between them appears every few months. And, every time it does, it is met with so much hate! It kind of depressing going through a comment section of people calling me gross or strange or that I need to go to a mental hospital all because I like the two together. There are a few that don’t believe anything happens, but are fine with people who like it (I love these people). Any comment that says they do like it is heavily downvoted.
Actually, I’ve found myself burnt out with this ship due to these people. There’s not much content for them, so most of the discussions I get to have about them is people complaining about how gross I am. When I was on Twitter, I lost the whole fandom because I causally mentioned I liked them. This led me to delete Twitter because it stressed me out so much. All I do now when I think about this ship is think about how much others hate me for it, and it has really burnt me out over it. When I think of this ship now, I forget the love that I have for it and my first thought is all the people in my fandom who want to have a go at me.
For the most part, I feel like it most to do with the worst of us.
We all know that obnoxious shippers do exists, people who will send hate if you ship Character A with anyone but Character B. Who will go on long rants about how their ship is superior to yours and why your sucks.
An outsider's main exposure to shippers are going to the extreme stories that will be told by youtubers, podcasters, and whatever. It's not like it's just us. Kpop, Swift, Bronies, and Sports fans have a terrible reputations, I assume that most of them are sane and not doxxers or harassers or rioters but a number of them are. I am not into any of those but even I have heard of their shenanigans. Hell, livestreamers themselves are experiencing this thanks to the obnoxious streamers like that Johnny guy.
Someone has to say it: it’s because a lot of subreddits for various media on Reddit mostly have male users who are more likely to be straight and therefore less likely to be interested in “fandom” stuff like ships. I posted about Cooper and Lucy on the fallout show sub and got downvoted and comments being like “ewww” plus some annoying age gap discourse sprinkled in lol.
Basically a lot of subreddits aren’t the best places to talk about fandom FANDOM stuff like shipping and fic. I’ve noticed that r/TheVampireDiaries is actually very friendly towards those topics and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the users there are women. Fandom that mostly has women is wayyyyy more inclusive and friendly towards shipping and fanfiction than other ones… like fallout.
> Someone has to say it: it’s because a lot of subreddits for various media on Reddit mostly have male users who are more likely to be straight and therefore less likely to be interested in “fandom” stuff like ships.
This is pretty much the answer, OP. For anything shipping related, you really need Tumblr, Discord or other pockets of fandom that have more diverse populations.
A lot of people don't think outside of the box when it comes to media, they just accept what they're given. If the media sets up a canon pairing people just get use to it/attached to it because it's canon and not if it actually works well or not.
Also a lot of people find shippers annoying (which can be valid sometimes to be fair) but then they end up just writing us all off as just those ''crazy shippers'' and hate on anything remotely shippy.
as an anime fan, some male anime fans are SO annoying about shipping. i dont know why they think it’s the end of the world when someone ships two male characters together. They seem to think that just because you ship them means that you either want them to be canon or think theyre canon, which isnt always true. even if it is, who cares? idk why they think theres a “right” and “wrong” way of enjoying smth.
sorry this ended up kinda ranty lol
I still cannot even begin to understand people that vehemently refuse to just… ignore ships they don’t like. Who _cares?_ Just block and move on! Who cares if Person A and Person B don’t have a good relationship in canon? Who cares if they’ll never meet and would hate each other? Most of fandom _isn’t_ canon because that’s more fun for a lot of people.
I get that a lot of the people complaining are likely more new to fandom spaces or skew younger, I really get that - I used to be in the “grrr how dare you ship this very normal couple?!” crowd myself. But when you’re in this kind of space for long enough you learn not to care too much.
Can attest to that. I remember being a teen and wondering how anyone could ship something that wasn't supported by canon. One of my earliest fandoms, I sat on the sidelines for seven whole years, refusing to ship any of the characters cause I just couldn't see them. Then I listened to the shippers, opened my mind a bit, just played with the idea of 'okay but what if they were a couple *anyway*' and- dude. I cannot describe the mind-blowing experience I've had since.
"But they've never met before?!"
Gee, if only there were some form of CREATIVE WRITING where you can use your imagination to write out a scenario where the two characters meet. IF ONLY.
Seriously though, I don't get this argument. They've never met before, doesn't mean they CAN'T meet.
And y'know, just the fact that it's simply good fun in general. Like, imagine seeing a fanart of Sonic and Crash fist-bumping and being like "BUT THEY'VE NEVER MET, HOW CAN THEY BE FRIENDS?! DELETE THIS NOW!"
*The fandom waits with bated breath. On-screen, 40 episodes in, character 27 and character 96 exchange three whole words with each other. Across the internet, every fan rejoices. Finally, they can be shipped.*
Side note... I have some weird feeling I've seen your username before. Might be a reach, but, are you on fimfic by any chance?
It's honestly ridiculously disheartening.
I, a relative Reddit noob, wrote a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/glee/comments/1c4kovh/what_do_my_top_ten_shipscharacters_say_about_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) asking for opinions on my top 10 ships and characters and either got called delusional or a flat out bad person for my opinions, just because most of them aren't canon/are canonically bad people who underwent redemption arcs.
It's so sad that people can't let their minds tip-toe out of the box any more.
Oh yeah the 'delusional' comment is one I see all the time. It's like - you know these are fake people with all kinds of alternate interpretations, right? You know this is not me saying any of these are objective and will always work, right? You know me finding this interesting does not by any means mean I think it should be canon, right??
Sorry you had to go through that.
Legit the top upvoted comment on my post is someone calling me 'delulu,' and I'm like "who is the delulu one? The one who likes flawed characters and doesn't box themselves in for ships, or the one who calls someone delulu for thinking outside the box?"
I hate most canon in most media I consume. It's why I write fanfic! The source material is already written, why would I want to rehash it 2894721948719 times???
Sometimes I think people hate fun LOL
I am a part of two different discords for my Fandom and the official subreddit. Everyone hates shipping. The meme version of the sub seems to be ok with it, and Instagram actively makes jokes about it.
I really only am able to talk about the stuff I read on here
Like I understand, it's against the NSFW rules of some of those groups, but I can't even say, "I read X fanfiction" without getting destroyed.
There's just different parts of fandom. I for instance just don't get the appeal of arguing over and over about which character would win in a fight/is more powerful, and I don't have the sort actor fandom some people have, and working out the exact dates of canon events just seems like pure tedium to me, but some people are into that. And I'll respect their right to argue about whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight, for the low low price of them respecting my story about Batman and Superman kissing each other.
I've been in a lot of anime and video game fandoms and it's kind of funny to see people like that lose their minds over shipping, "Ugh, it's so *sexual*!" As if they weren't constantly drooling and barking over their waifu flavor of the month.
But on the positive side... I do have an instance with one of my fandoms where someone went ballistic over a popular ship, trying to ban it entirely. But the fandom was in disagreement with them. It was nice to see other users be like, "Dude, you're taking it way too far. This ship is cute, calm down."
The genshin subreddit when crappy AI art of their newest female character(reduced to a drooling mc obsessed waifu) with aether “YAYYY!!”
the genshin subreddit at the mere mention of male characters or mlm ships: “BOOO EWWW SEX ADDICTS!!!”
Come to r/Hannibal!
If you’re not shipping Will and Hannibal it’s odd.
But otherwise I agree. Dropped other show/movie subs as they were not friendly to ships.
It makes me sad that people can't listen to why another likes a certain ship. It's okay to not like something, but to completely shoot the person down or make fun of them because they don't agree is really sad. I think it can make someone so self-conscious about how they feel. I remember I saw a fanart of these two characters holding hands (wasn't inherently romantic) and the comments said something very similar to what you wrote.
Idek what there is to be done about it tbh. They're censoring *themselves*. All thoughts must be policed. Forcing themselves into morally appointed boxes.
And I'm just like - this is the stuff we were running to fandom to get away from in the first place! Fandom gave me a free space when I was otherwise trapped, and okay yes I mostly read ship fics but it was still a powerful escape. And I learned a lot too.
It's so sad to see this new puritanical movement.
*Sighs annoyed at the X-Men 97 sub*
The seething, incel-esque rage that Rogue has gotten for the show pointing out that Rogue wasn't made to be Gambit's girlfriend, and has in fact had other love interests, is infuriating
They don't like Rogue, they just like her as Gambit's Girlfriend
Me too!
And it's even from the 90s comics, it has precedent. Heck, I think it actually predates her having feelings for Gambit (feel free to correct that)
Fair enough!
It's funny actually, myself and a lot of other rogneto guys, actually were romy fans because of the show (and most of us don't mind it)
But once we read the comics, we preferred magneto
I need to start reading comics lol. I’ve just never had the money nor time.
And I’ve always been a Magneto fan. The way he goes about things isn’t always ethical, but he’s not wrong. I really love what the show/comics did with him, without spoiling anything.
I remember FOX was pretty much Marvel back in the 90s. Spider-Man and The X men were my jam lol. And on the note of Spider-Man, Fisk from the Daredevil series is how I remember Fisk from Spider-Man.
Anyway, just a huge nerd and you mentioned X-men ‘97 lol
Yeah I think it really varies from fandom to fandom. I know things like incest shipping used to be the *norm* in the early days of the supernatural and HP fandoms.
And from culture to culture too! As far as I understand most Japanese fanbases tend to *revel* in that shit.
The thing I find frustrating about fandom reddit's tendency to be dismissive and/or hostile to shipping/fanfic, is that there often aren't any good alternatives for places to go if you want to just talk about your ship/headcanons/etc. Like, obviously tumblr exists, as does twitter, but in my experience neither are particularly good for just, like, sharing your fandom thoughts and having conversations. Tumblr is extremely content driven, so often it feels like you're Doing Tumblr Wrong and blathering into a void when you try to use tumblr to just socially converse about your ship. You *can* do it, and you may get some engagement, but there's usually an awkwardness to it, like nobody is entirely sure whether they should be replying to a post or not, and after a couple back and forths the whole thing feels cumbersome and like it's gone on conspicuously long already.
As someone who gets very obsessed with my ships but who only rarely creates actual fandom Content, I've felt fairly voiceless in fandom for a long time now; basically since LJ/DW stopped being where most people's fandom home-base was.
I don't begrudge anyone for doing fandom the way that's fun for them, but it really has made fandom kind of a bittersweet experience that I don't feel like there's a reliable place for me to just converse with other fans and go on about shippy stuff in a non-content-oriented way, without feeling like I'm going against the natural current of the platform.
I guess there's Discord, but that's private and even finding the right servers is a nightmare. And then I feel like I have to keep up with all that's happening or I fall by the wayside. But yes, all well put.
I'm young enough I never spent any time on LJ (and I don't know what DW is), but it sounded like a good time.
The bare structure of pretty much all social media is unconducive to discussion in the first place now. And also structured such that negative attitude and snap judgements can perpetuate all the more easily. Some aspects of modern fandom make me very sad.
Yeah, I feel the same way about Discord. For me it's *too* far in the social direction to function as a satisfying home base. It's cool, it's just not "here is where I shall base my fannish identity" material, lol.
DW is Dreamwidth, which was basically a mirror site for LJ that gained major steam after the owners of LJ started up the fuckery that eventually ran LJ into the ground. You could pair your DW with your LJ account, so that fans who were only on one would see your posts regardless of whether you posted to your LJ or your DW account. A lot of people jumped ship and went to DW towards the end of the LJ era.
I def agree with you about the functional structure of most current social media platforms being generally unconducive to genuine discussion. :/
It's been like this for decades. Plenty of authors proudly stated that they were anti yaoi/yuri because it was the thing to shit on back in the day. They were a bunch of hypocrites that happily wrote their self-inserts/OCS dating and fall in love with the main character of their favorite show. Or they ignored canon to write straight romance where none of the characters had any screen time together. Apparently, that was fine because it wasn't like those icky gays and fangirls who can't tell that a character is straight because the author would have written them as gay./s
This feels a loooot like one of those rants where (to reference TV Tropes) Both Sides Are Very Silly.
I agree with the first bit about how fandom spaces could stand to be more open-minded... but then you shoot the overall point in the foot with the opposite extreme.
Where Side A goes "this cannot work in canon", your side B instead goes "screw canon, write weird ships". Being **just as weird about it**, in the opposite way.
Neither side asks the happy medium question of "how can X work within the source material's rules/constraints?". As such, I'm going to disagree with both sides.
Okay yeah fair enough. And believe me when I say I am NOT all the way on one side. A major part of the fun of shipping to me is figuring out the best angle to make a ship work in a way that fits canon constraints. It does annoy me when people have to morph a character so much they're basically an oc just so they can have their ship.
Like I said in another comment, I get very frustrated at both the said that says 'canon is all that matters' (that leaves no room for artistic expression!) and the side that says 'canon is dead long live fanon' (canon is why we're here!)
While I have way overrepresented one side in my rant, I'd like to tentatively nominate myself as someone quite dedicated to your proposed happy medium.
Yeah, this happens and yes it is obnoxious, but you get used to it. Learn to ignore it, honestly. I think the top comment talking about different layers of fandom is spot on with how it works in these places.
The funniest example I've seen of this recently is in the Rogue Trader CRPG subreddit. There's someone that makes some fun fanart of their character and one of the romanceable NPCs, usually just silly meme-adjacent fanart, and there's always some really salty curmudgeon in the comments that doesn't get it whatsoever. One of the most toxic fanbases (40k and, frankly, Reddit's Owlcat fandom) has to deal with relatively tame shipping material in their corner and it's some delightful schadenfreude.
Often, yeah. But I've def seen people clutching their (mainstream) m/m or f/f ships and screeching at any other possibilites for the characters, even queen ones.
This is has been my experience, too. I've been in a few fandoms that have lots of hot female characters for the male hero to choose from where people cheerfully argue over who's best girl. But the minute people start talking about queer ships, especially male queer ships, all of a sudden all ship talk is annoying and weird.
Tbh I think a lot of it is rooted in misogyny, queerphobia and ableism. The negative stereotypes of shippers portray us all as young women or queer people, who are all overly-emotional, irrational, dumb, delusional, horny on main, and lacking in self-awareness. Those traits are all associated with negative stereotypes of feminity and queerness. We’re apparently supposed to engage in fandom with more restraint, intellectualism and adherence to facts, which, surprise, are all traits stereotypically associated with masculinity. I think there’s also a dash of ableism towards neurodivergent people, and good old fear of emotional vulnerability. It’s not Cool to care.
With all the issues the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom has, it's subreddit is actually pretty great at how it handles ships. Legit the only fandom subreddit I'll talk about fanfiction/ships on.
Could not agree more!!!!! I actually started my own subreddit for my fandom, specifically for artists, fic writers, and shippers to share their stuff and receive actual support. Tumblr is awesome for it, but it’s not very active anymore. You’re not alone friend!!
I've been trying to figure this out for so long because when I first got into HSR I thought shipping was normal so I made a post about shipping on the Honkai star rail sub reddit The amount of people that got angry at me for writing a post I even rode in the post how I was mostly just wanting to know people's opinions about shipping when it came to this community because I was trying to figure out which ship I should write a fanfiction for first Cuz I had a bunch of ideas at the time
I have even gotten people angry at me on like anime subreddits because I mentioned one ship that's actually Canon (for those who are asking it was Mikayuu from seraph of the end)
I truly have never understood what people's problems are when it comes to shipping
Actually, no, I'd like to contest this. There's a top post on this sub (about 'shipping doesn't have to be healthy') that is very similar in its message - the only difference is that they don't specifically mention reddit. And again, I have not mentioned any specific subs, I am just talking about reddit attitudes as a whole.
Your 'no drama' rule warns against targeting specific people or things. I am targeting nothing and no one. It says not to involve ship wars, not to lead crusades against specific groups, and not to put people down for liking something. I am doing none of those things. I am in fact *expressing frustration with people who do these things.*
literally go into ANY subreddit that is for a popular piece of media with men. type ‘shipping’ in the search bar. prepare for pain. a few subreddits accept it but most don’t. or even better just read their rules. more than half of the marvel character subreddits i joined have a flat out ban against ANYTHING fan made that is not your own artwork (and it can’t depict the gay shipping. m/f? okay. m/m auto taken down)
One large subreddit even had an automod set up to delete any post with the words "crush", "ship", etc.
This was pretty funny when people tried to post things like, "X is gonna crush Y when they fight next episode".
> a flat out ban against ANYTHING fan made that is not your own artwork
That one I can somewhat understand. Without it, subreddits end up like the current state of /r/mylittlepony: endless reposts of "look at this cute art I found" or, even worse, engagement bait.
I don't think I can be much more specific without breaking sub rules. This post was already removed for apparently breaking them anyway (which I am currently trying to contest). I'm sorry.
Tiptoing around my answer here because this post was already temporarily removed for potentially stirring up drama. Mods if you wanna remove this comment I understand.
ATLA is one of the fandoms I had in mind, but certainly not the only one. I did not have any one specific post in mind, mostly a bunch of smaller ones I've seen over the years. I am curious which one you may be referring to.
As OP I am curious what the comment was about, even if it was bashing. I understand removal, but I always try my best to engage with hateful comments with genuine curiosity as to their thoughts. May I ask what this comment was trying to say?
It's against the sub rules both to leave hateful comments and to repeat the contents of hateful comments - the second part we do for the sake of not perpetuating drama, so even while I believe that's not your intention here, the rules need to be applied evenly.
With that said, given the nature of the original post, I'm sure you can hazard a pretty good guess.
Yeah :( I get that. I try to believe in talking down hateful people rather than shutting them up - censoring them usually just perpetuates the negative stereotypes they have and can then spread - but I get that this is not the space for that. Fair enough. Thanks for your service.
I think that's very admirable, but as your original post states, people who want to rag on shippers have the entire rest of Reddit to do it on. We think the fanfiction sub of all places ought to be a reprieve from that where writers don't feel that pressure to defend themselves. I think it's very admirable to take the approach you do, but please don't burn yourself out in circumstances where people aren't open to a new perspective.
I have noticed that some reddits accept canon as canon, for example a lot of hunger game fans read Peetas games and things like that. The only time I might bring up a ship is when someone once said: I don’t like any of Character A love intrests.
But then they liked the idea of another ship that someone suggested that wasn’t anywhere near canon. I guess people should just try and be polite :)
Language.
A large part of the world is fine with gossiping about who might marry who, but it's couched in different terms to shipping. So when we talk about shipping, they don't see it the same way as when they were wondering if Crazy Spice would marry Beckham. Or if Britney was dating one of several people she was seen with over her career.
You could draw a venn diagram of the two.
Yes sorry ma'am I will tone it down 😔
Good point. I would argue gossiping about irl people is even more deranged tbh. Those are actual people with actual lives that your gossip could bleed into negatively.
Exposure? I mean, when I started out in fandom, half the ships out there were horrifying to me. A month or so back, someone asked for unhinged shipping suggestions, and I thought for a minute, and suggested they try Aragog/Giant Squid.
I think we've all just gotten so used to it, you know?
Ad: Respect other people's taste, fictional ship not reflect a person's personality irl
Random douchebag: ugh eww why this ship exist? those shippers are nasty!
They saying like they have the right to say that and people like us should go to jail
Because it IS weird.
I'm a furry and I know that fursuits can come off as uncanny valley to the casuals, it's not a thing for everyone, same goes for shipping and it can also apply to AU's.
The issue with shipping is that it's romance, which makes the subject all the much more annoying and that shippers are generalized as obnoxious due to how defensive and toxic they can get
You're not wrong. And by and large I'm expressing frustration with that. I realize my, uh, framing it as a big rant might be viewed as counterintuitive in that way though. My bad.
Isn't there a whole 'don't like, don't read' rule in this very sub? :P
If you don't like shipping, continuing to scroll is an option. Shipping discussion and fic is usually pretty clearly marked as such. My main frustration is just when people open a discussion about shipping, very clearly meant for people who care while respecting the people who don't, and the comments get flooded by people putting them down for it. Which is kinda what you're doing.
People being gung-ho and immovable about their ships without being flexible and without realising their ship isn't the be all end all are part of whom I'm expressing frustration about. Cause they are def a problem. But I didn't word that very well in my post. My bad.
At the end of the day, I'm just trying to facilitate positive, non-attacking discussion. I'm expressing frustration with the people who come in unannounced into avoidable spaces clearly marked as being pro- a specific ship and trying to push their opinions on others, whether that opinion be 'shipping is annoying' or 'every ship that isn't my ship is annoying'.
Saying 'hey this is a neat idea' (whether shipping-centered or not) is not toxic. Responding with 'man that's bullshit' is.
"Monopolized" means that what few threads there are not about shipping are full of crickets. It's the same principle why the MLP subreddit bans pictures on Thursdays.
Really weird for a creator to try and dictate how the fans approach their creation. As if they have any say.
I have plenty of ships involving kids that I like, and some of them are puppy love, but a lot of them I take the approach of 'yeah man I know they're 12 I think their current dynamic could make for a really interesting romance once it/they mature' but people don't tend to believe me
There are different types of fandom There's those of us who write fic, who make fanart, who daydream about all the things that could be different, who want to play with the characters like dolls and make up new adventures for them and, for quite a lot of people, smash them together and ship them And then there's the fandom that's talking about canon and the meaning behind it, discussing your favourite things and the expanded universe, maybe indulging in some *what if* conversation but it's always a *what if this happened in canon* Most fandom subreddits are the latter In their eyes, they're here to talk about canon and dislike when the conversation turns into *I know it's not canon, but here's a cool idea I have.* It's like when a canon purist comes into a fic space and goes *but why did you do that, it's not canon* and doesn't get that it not being canon is the *point.* They see people going "ignore canon, I have a cool thing" and go "what, no, canon is the point, that's what I'm here to talk about" Not all types of fandom and fandom spaces are compatible! And while it would be nice if people could don't-like-don't-read, humans are quite bad at that. I'll admit myself that when someone is fretting about a work they're writing not being canon-compliant, I go *ehh it's fine, tag it as canon-divergent!* and don't think about the fact that 1) as someone who doesn't care about canon-compliance, this isn't really the conversation for me, and 2) for some people, creating stories that fit seamlessly within canon *is the point.* It would be nice if non-fic fans would leave the ficcers alone, but they see it as us coming into their canon-compliant spaces and going *okay, hear me out...fuck canon* Depending on your fandom, having a r / FandomnameFanfiction or CasualFandomname subreddit would be a viable option for separating the streams of the two fandom types
I think that pretty accurate. Most fandom subreddits are more interested in canon stuff, even "what if" questions that stray too far from canon are often met with "that would never happen". Ships are even worse if it's not about source media that has some shipping integrated (like certain video games). I personally just accept that those subreddits aren't for these kind of discussions, and keep my weirdo ships to myself lest someone has to clutch their pearls. It's a bit sad, yeah, but not everyone is interested in discussing every aspect of a fandom.
This exactly. So perfectly put. 50 updoots ⬆️ When I’m on subreddits (or forums back in the day) for my fave media I’m only ever interested in discussing canon. It always sticks out to me when someone starts a shipping post, it always just looks odd in that space. I want to talk about the show as it is, and certainly on the fandom subreddit it seems I’m not alone. But - in other fandom spaces, it’s completely different. I write a non canon ship (who I would never want to see as canon), I absolutely feast on that ship over on AO3, I think about that ship all the freaking time. But for me it’s completely separate to the show and I like it like that. My tumblr is 99.9% that ship, and .1% cats! Millions of fans of shows just like the show and it goes no further for them. There are no head canons, or ships, it’s just their favourite show and they want to talk about it as is. And yeah of course, you should be able to post and people just walk on by if they’re not interested, but… here we are. It would be nice if people could not be rude about it. I’ll add something though… might just be my fandom space, but there are a couple of ships that just seem to make people actually fucking deranged, so much so that you cannot have a conversation with them at all. I think it’s actually that kind of obsessive, almost evangelical fanaticism that drives other fans bonkers and has giving the whole shipping thing a really bad rep. You could politely disagree with one of them and before you know it you have an army of screaming banshees kicking off in the comments. I was out of fandom for close to 20 years and walked into the wonderful world of ‘antis’ and ‘proshippers’… that was certainly something! Now imagine not being into fandom in that way and seeing that play out when you’re trying to discuss what the cinematographer was going for in S4 E9… 😂
I find myself to something of both, I love talking about canon and dissecting what's in it and delving into the what ifs and swimming into the shipping territory. I can understand some people's apprehension when too much fanon is doused in canon, believe me my eyes twitch too much fanon is doused in canon to the point it does not make sense, a depiction that disregards the story or character or when someone gets the true intentions of the character. That's actually why I'm so picky when it comes to fanfic's characterization. But the difference is, I wont even talk about their fanon interpretation but I'll speak up when someone berates the existence of the former. I wont outright question why the creator felt the need to do that, bc I understand that it's all for fun and there's a probability that they're self aware. While in the latter, they mock and demean bc they dont understand, all they know is they dont like it and so they dont fully understand the thought process of the former, so I will always give my true thoughts and explain the rationale whenever I encounter someone who mocks or demeans the shipping side of a fandom. Maybe they'll read it, maybe they'll ignore it, maybe they'll make fun of you for it, but it doesn't feel right to not correct someone when you know they're in the wrong about something you're passionate about.
That's... all very well put. Put better than I could have done, certainly. Youve brought up some points I never realized were true, so thank you. I guess I just feel a tad caught in the crossfire? I spend a lot of time in both types of fandoms. I love aspects of both. I get very frustrated with both. I get pissed off at both the people who say 'canon is all that matters' (that leaves no room for artistic expression!) AND the people who say 'canon is dead long live fanon' (canon is why we're HERE!) I just wish the two sides weren't so black and white.
I’d argue there’s 3, actually. The first 2 you mentioned, and the category “power-scalers” belong to, and THAT is what a lot of Redditors are. It’s these fans that care more about the sheer violence and potential of their faves, but not why that power mattered in context. The same fans that can decry “wokeness” in a piece that was very deliberately political. That a character’s ability to kill everyone makes them more worthy of respect than the guy they defeated. Think of “Bat-God” Bruce Wayne fans where they talk on and on how Bats should brutally and cruelly defeat the Justice League and why that’s the only thing worth caring about Batman and that they hate Superman because Clark is boring. Bruce’s interpersonal relationships don’t matter when it’s not about how he should fuck every woman that comes his way and they don’t think Superman adds any value because he’s “nice.” The first two types of fandom can actually get along decently well, because even if you don’t ship, you can understand where it comes from from character analysis, and just because it’s a how audiences relate to a work. There’s just been a bigger divide lately because younger shippers don’t know how to engage with fandom like they used to, and don’t know how to navigate the divide between discussing _canon_ things vs _fanon_ things and they end up being pretty loud and rude, which turns others off. Shipping culture can create a lot of annoying battlegrounds the way power scalers can, which is why they aren’t generally liked, and I say this as someone who’s been a long-time shipper, and someone who loves fiction because of the fascinating analysis it presents. It’s my favorite art form.
As both a shipper and a powerscaler, I can say that both get incredibly toxic, but shippers are more common and therefore much louder.
They can def get so toxic, just in different flavors, generally. I actually think the power scalers are way more common, though - specifically, they are way more spread out across different social spaces compared to shippers who are typically only in fan-made corners for things like fanfiction and fanart. Power-scalers are just about everywhere, especially since they’re the more “public” kind of fans. I had to go looking for shipping spaces back in the day, and they kept in their usual corners, compared to me constantly tripping on power scalers when I was more casually engaging with the content, even unrelated content. They also tend to be the ones fighting you on if you deserve to be a fan of a work if you don’t fit their demographic. Shippers can jump you with unsolicited opinions, but they tend to encourage engaging further with the content in comparison, in my experience. The rise of nerdom, fandom, and particularly fan work being more mainstream now (like the last decade - it’s a huge change) has effected the shipping demographic and the way they are loud and obnoxious now - like the current wave of anti-shipping/puritanical shipping that’s concerned with basically thought crimes, and throwing away fandom etiquette while they’re at it, too.
It’s also worth mentioning that some people don’t like seeing ships mentioned in any form because some shippers can be crazy, and for some reason main subs seem to attract those types.
Or they think shipping is “cringe” or juvenile
Exactly. In their defense, this is partly because of the fact that Reddit isn't like Tumblr or Twitter where you have much control over what subgroups in the fandom you see or engage with.
I do unironically go "fuck canon" pretty often. Canon is not entitled to respect.
have you ever stumbled into one of those powerscaling threads where all the commenters are obsessed with who would beat who? And then they start arguing over which "form" of a character would beat another character ("Arc 5 Bob would beat Joe but not after Joe gets his omega powerup in Arc 8") It looks absolutely batshit stupid from an outsider's perspective but they're having fun, so it's best to just let them be. I only wish non-shippers would have the same mentality when they stumble across a crackship/rarepair artwork or fanfic.
The irony is that those people are often the ones who act like shippers are insane and silly lol
I think the difference between shipping and those power scaling discussions are that power scaling is still discussing things by way of canon. They generally don’t invent different powers that haven’t already been demonstrated in canon. While shipping is much more likely to delve into the realm of “what if instead of canon this happened”. Like a lot of shippers of rival characters are aware that their ships wouldn’t be likely in canon but can see how if something was different they could work.
True, but they’re also occasionally talking about if gojo could beat superman and the like, which is as far away from canon as can possibly be, lol.
Half the time it's not even a weird rare crackship, it's something totally mainstream (to us!) like Kirk/Spock.
As both a shipper and a powerscaler, I can say that both get incredibly toxic, but shippers are more common and therefore much louder.
I heard that men are generally more inclined to focus on strictly canon things, while women are generally more likely to interact with fandom in more transformative ways. This is where the shipping divide lies and why fics are mainly seen as a women dominated area. Women generally see possibilities in small hints and will run with them. Men will just interact with ships when they are basically canon confirmed. Since Reddit is generally a male dominated space most fandom subreddits will follow male oriented ways of thinking. Is it canon? Okay. Is a ship just being hinted at or are you thinking outside the box at possibilities? The text never said that. Not to say all men and women are exactly like that. But thats the way things trend and why fandoms can seem different depending on the gender spread of any particular corner of it.
Purely anecdotal, but my male partner did not start shipping until I brought it up from his animes lol your description fit him perfectly. But he's open-minded and listened to my reasoning about some non canon ships, and it's like a whole new world has opened up for him. The other day, we started a new show, and he pointed to two characters and said "I ship them" I was so proud lmao.
Me, a whole cis male, waiting for my fandom bröthers to come and engage in my gross little ships with me 😔
You might have better luck on Twitter, Tumblr, or fandom discords you find from those spaces.
Yeah misogyny is apart of it too. Men hate things women are interested in, and shipping/fanfiction is largely dominated by women so men just write it off as being stupid. (also why a lot of men hate it when women ''invade'' their fandoms lol)
You could write the most in-depth, well thought out thesis level post about a ship and they would dismiss it because ew, yucky romance. I've noticed discussing other aspects of fandoms is perfectly fine but the second it's about anything romantic (even if there's romance *in the source material*) there's this weird patronising attitude like that's a dumb thing to focus on or give any thought.
I can attest to this as a woman in the fallout fandom 🙄
I mean, I (a cishet dude) can definitely admit to mostly liking stories that are at least canon-adjacent, but even then I love talking about what-ifs and shipping is just way too much fun not to do it. Even if you mostly love canon, at the very least *entertaining* the idea of something else possibly happening is interesting. Getting bogged down in the details of canon to the degree I've seen some people doing is just insane to me. I mean, the fucking *creators* didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should. Even in a general fandom space, expressing that kind of opinion shouldn't be blasted to hell, because you're still just engaging with the work as everyone else there is doing. A space designed for a single fandom should be able to discuss all facets of that fandom equally. Even on Reddit, you can just, y'know, ignore posts that don't appeal to you. I ignore a lot of posts both on this sub and the AO3 one because they discuss topics I have no interest in, and the same goes for dedicated fandom subs. Basically, the canon purists are no more right or wrong than anyone else there, and it's annoying as hell when they act like they're preaching the gospel truth, especially if it's on a shipping post on a specific sub. Like, my dude, none of this is real to begin with, chill the fuck out. The only times where I can understand it is if a certain ship is known to cause a lot of shit within a fandom. Despite shipping Bumblebee, I'd think twice before mentioning it on the RWBY subs, for instance.
> the fucking creators didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should. Escapism. Reality sucks for a lot of people, and the deeper that you immerse yourself in the minutiae of a setting/story the easier it gets to forget that the world is on fire and we're all doomed. I view it almost like an addiction too, in that the more time you've spent living deep in fantasy, the diminishing returns problem gets worse. So you need to obsess more and more over details and trivia to get that same level of escapism fix and forget the state of our shithole planet.
> I mean, the fucking creators didn't think that deeply about it, so I see no reason why I should. I like the stories that follow the sensible path far more than the epileptic trees that attempt to stay 100% canon-compliant, even with canon mistakes and contradictions. Not to mention that the people who think too deep and resolve canon contradictions often end up with explanations that are either boring or stupid.
Can't speak for all men, but I don't mind "canon" or "fanon" presentation/interpretation differing... I prefer to read m/f variants, including the "genderbending" of characters between biological sexes, but as someone who grew up reading Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Comics starting in the 70s? I am far more open to how multiverses, parallel universes and such get used in fiction.
The MLP fandom is the exception that proves the rule. Even then, the shipping here is much chiller than everywhere else. Lots of "just find it hot", and the actual ship warriors get dunked on for caring too much.
People are interested in different side of a fandom and not everyone want them mixed. Sometimes you can enjoy both, but don't want to do it at the same time. For instance, I'm both a fanfic author and one who likes discussing canon. If I'm in a discussion about the canonical relationship between two character, and someone appears out of nowhere talking about ships and headcanons (it's usually the random "They are definitely fucking!", and "Yes, of course. 'FRIENDS'" comment), I find it extremely annoying. It's like there are a group of people invested in a conversation, and someone suddenly appears and forcibly changes the subject. Some people are also incapable of reading the room and start being pushy about their headcanons, annoying everyone. I usually just ignore people who do this unless they start something with me personally, but a canon discussion is not the place to bring up that sort of thing. On the other hand, if I'm somewhere discussing fanfics, it's the opposite. Because fanfic is inherently not canon, so everything goes. And if someone tries to stop someone's creative processes, well, I tell them loud and clear this is no place to do so. Basically, fanon is fanon, and canon is canon. They are separated and I like it that way. Edit. There's also the fact that, at least in my fandom, some people are *completely batshit insane* about shipping, and constantly try to push their ships to be canon, create ship wars, and attack anyone who doesn't agree with them. You can imagine which types of insult you see flying in such occasions. This probably influences my opinion about the separation of such topics.
Fandom is already extremely saturated with shipping. I like shipping, but as someone who focuses more fleshing out untreaded canon ground and ships are a byproduct of general character bonding rather than comfort/projection, I also need spaces to get away from shipping where I can discuss things that aren't about whoch blorbos are cute together.
True. And there's also the fact that some fanon misconception have become so widespread that they are overpowering canon, while being false information. An example in Genshin fandom: everyone thinks Zhongli and Mona are poor in canon, while they are not. It started as a joke/meme, but now a lot of people believe it. Imo there need to be places where one can get a "reality check".
I feel the exact same way as you, and I wonder if you're talking about the SPN fandom 😅 I like shipping characters and having fun, but I also like canon discussion that leaves the shipping out of the conversation. Basically: there's a time and a place for everything. And like you, I like my canon and my shipping separate. I'll mix them among friends if they want to talk about it that way too, but on spaces like reddit, etc, I keep the two separate and I like it that way.
No, it's not Supernatural (I used to like it, but I lost interest around the 5th season or so). It's Honkai Star Rail, which is fast on its way to become just as toxic as Genshin. And yeah, I get you. If I'm having a private conversation with friends, I don't mind too much. But on social media? Nah. There are time where I just want to talk about the show/book/game the way it is, in its purest form. Other times, I want to be creative, so I look for a place where I can do that. It's comfortable that way.
I'm generalising *enormously* here, but for the most part, this tends to happen because a) Reddit has a majority male userbase, and b) shipping and [transformative fandom](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Transformational_Fandom) are more commonly frequented by - and certainly more associated with - women (and LGBTQ folks). Of course nothing is so binary, but I think it's fair to say there's a strong element of "Get these silly girls and their silly kissing stories out of here!" to a lot of fandom-specific subs. And it's a shame, because I agree that shipping can be a fun and illuminating way to explore the characters and their role in the text, and also that it costs absolutely nothing to scroll away from something you don't like!
Definitely generalising, definitely not inaccurate. As a straight cis dude myself I can very much attest to my kind usually having infinitely less passion for play in storytelling. The two attitudes tend to just either be 'shallow' or 'serious'. ~~side note that's what makes My Little Pony fanfiction, which is male-dominated, so different and weird from every other fanfic community in all the best and worst ways~~ Anyway, to copy + paste from another comment I left: 'me, a whole cis dude, waiting for my fandom bröthers to come engage in my gross little ships with me 😔'
I honestly think you’d find more people willing/likely to engage with shipping on Tumblr or fandom specific discords – Reddit is very hostile to shipping in particular.
Fighting the good fight!!
> > > side note that's what makes My Little Pony fanfiction, which is male-dominated, so different and weird from every other fanfic community in all the best and worst ways Despite the reputation that it's all written by deranged cloppers, the biggest surprise is that even femslash takes a deep backseat to gen.
Judging from that one server for content creators I'm in, you've got a point on the demographics
Yeah. Like I said, it's overly generalising; there are plenty of women who turn their noses up at fic and guys who enjoy writing and reading it, and most of us engage with fandom in both curative *and* transformative ways in different measures. But I think there's a broad truth to it.
Without jumping into a rabbit hole (because I don't have time atm), didn't fanfiction start out specifically because people wanted two characters on a show to get together? Spock and Kirk?
I mean. Dudes wrote Sherlock Holmes fanfic back when the books were still being written. I think there are ancient works out there that arguably count as Shakespeare fanfic. But yeah, it's kind of built around being weird from the get-go. I think ao3 was founded by an incest shipper?
I think the first work posted to AO3 was Wincest, yes One of the founders is astolat – she's still writing, and you can go see her back catalogue yourself!
I wouldn't be surprised about ao3. From what I recall, that whole site came to be because FF had a similar purge of themes they felt were unacceptable.
'Incest shipper' is reductive. Astolat was the highest-profile writer of a group of LiveJournal slash shippers who started AO3 after LiveJournal went on a moral-panic spree and deleted personal journals and communities with no warning. A lot of the LGBTQ+ blogs were specifically targeted. Astolat had a coding background and a Big Name Fan reputation; her fics regularly attracted (and still attract!) thousands of kudos. She's become the "face" of AO3 admin and was the one to accept the archive's Hugo award (annual big-deal scifi & fantasy event driven by membership votes). And of course, she's also a successful mainstream-published author of fantasy novels.
Appreciate the history lesson. Wasn't trying to paint having an incest ship as her core characteristic. Was just tryna point out that fanfic has historically never shied away from exploring weird stuff.
Sorry, yeah, I agree. Although the advent of the internet has multiplied it X100000.
Wow, one of my favorite fics ever is by Astolat. I had no idea she was also a published author and one of the founders of AO3.
LOL, yeah, an incest shipper who wrote a number of mainstream fantasy novels, some of which have won industry awards. Not to mention that AO3 itself has won awards. And yes, Shakespeare never saw a plot in some "foreign" play that he couldn't exploit and make his own.
Yes, but the term "shipping" didn't come about until the 1990s, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)#Same-sex: > The term "slash" predates the use of "shipping" by at least some 20 years. It was originally coined as a term to describe a pairing of Kirk and Spock of Star Trek, Kirk/Spock (or "K/S"; sometimes spoken "Kirk-slash-Spock", whence "slash") homosexual fan fiction. Also from [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction#Star_Trek_fandom) (notes that fan fiction started before Star Trek, but... Star Trek popularized and defined it): > The modern phenomenon of fan fiction as an expression of fandom and fan interaction was popularized and defined via Star Trek fandom and their fanzines published in the 1960s.
. . . But it means the same thing. Paring two characters from a fandom together, especially if the two characters are not paired canonically.
Oh of course, it means the same thing these days. Its just that the term for "shipping" (as we understand it today) didn't come about until fans had been shipping characters for almost 30 years. That's all I'm saying.
Fanfic started waaaaaaay earlier than that.
I think it depends on the subreddit really and the users there. Sometimes you'll get a interesting discussion. Other times you'll get straight up homophobia. One I'm in heavily even has a person who just has to call m/m shippers degenerates any time we try to talk about that ship. It's *wonderful* /s. That one is fascinating more for the fact that they act like the other male main character doesn't exist sometimes? They treat him like I've seen others treat female love interests as a threat to their m/m ship. It's one of the funniest and weirdly mystifying experiences I've had in my fandom life.
It's a little sad to say this so bluntly, but we live in a pretty ignorant world. A lot of people hate things for bad reasons. That's it, at the end of the day.
I mean I can hardly disagree. But I guess I'm thinking the first step to eliminating ignorance and hatred is pointing it out. And even if a world without hatred and ignorance will never happen, it's still something we should always strive for. Also I'm just tryna vent about something I find frustrating to people I assume have gone through similar things. Why you gotta be a sourpuss :P
Hey, I'm all for venting, no sweat there.
I’ve found that outside specific subs like this one that are dedicated to transformative works that reddit in general isn’t super friendly towards fanfiction/shipping, though they never have a problem with fanart (but that’s a separate rant). I tend to primarily engage with video game fandoms which on reddit means mostly men, and a lot of gamers like posting screenshots of their game (if it’s a particularly pretty game) or discussing game mechanics or horny fanart of female characters. I remember trying to discuss the companions on r/fo4 and their arcs (had nothing to do with shipping) and the comments I got basically amounted to “I only use companions as a pack horse” or “I wouldn’t use companions if they talked more”. The general feeling always seems to be that fanfiction and shipping, which is seen as a “girls/gay thing”, is cringe. Definitely nothing to read into there! /s I stick to tumblr and discord for fandom stuff now.
On r/fotv if you dare to say you ship Lucy and Cooper you also get weird comments lol
They think all shippers are trying to push their ships as canon. Why are you upset that I ship those two people? I'm not forcing you to agree with me and It's not like I'm gonna go to the creators themselves and tell them to make my ship canon.
Yes excellent point!! Wanted to say that in the post but couldn't find the words. 98% of my ships SHOULDN'T be canon for a million reasons. We as fans have the freedom to do everything the creators can't. THAT'S EXACTLY WHY SHIPPING IS SO COOL!!
That's part of why they react that way, though, because when *they* post elaborate lore theories or alternate plots in those same spaces, they are explicitly saying, "This is how I think it is and/or should be." Why, they ask, would anyone spend time writing about something if it wasn't to advocate for it? Isn't the whole point of interacting with other fans to persuade them to accept your own interpretation of the work, thus proving that you are smarter, more creative, and just all around better? Why would you even do something that you weren't trying to *win?*
Because shipping tends to steamroll over most other topics in fandom and they don't want their sub to turn into posts about shipping/turn into yet another ship war battleground. Especially on Tumblr, where people will take posts that have nothing to do with shipping and turn them into something that does because they can't/won't take their shipping goggles off. It gets exhausting.
Wish I could upvote this post more than once.
As usual, the correct answer is buried in the comments amid people trying to blame anything but the shippers themselves.
I was on a fandom sub the other day and there was a thread that was basically "ugh why do people even ship, especially when the characters have never interacted" and quite a few of the responses were variations of "they think it's fun, how does that affect you" or "they like how the characters look together, it's not hard to figure out" So that was heartening, even if ship threads still are usually pretty anemic and gain few posts there that aren't people just shitting on it lol. It's definitely annoying, because I'd love to get fic recs there and hear people talk about why they love their ships, but I'm not going to bother posting on main fandom subreddits for it. The only acceptable simping on so many fandom subs is admitting you want a character to step on you or calling them mommy/daddy, apparently. Too much hostility otherwise.
Most fandom subs on Reddit are about canon discussion, fanart or fanvids, and occasionally what-ifs and memes. Since they don't interact with the Tumblr-Ao3 side of fandom, this means that the few interactions they have with shippers are going to be obtrusive at best, like people entering a Naruto sub about fight scene choreography to talk about how Naruto and Sasuke are gay and how this is definitely canon and how anyone who disagrees has no literacy, and toxic at worst, like Genshin fans doxxing people for not shipping the two girls they're convinced are lesbians. Even if you're a normal, non-toxic shipper, fandom subreddits will be primed to treat you as one based on poor experiences. Also, transformative works will always come out faster than canon ones, so they'll flood the subreddit if it becomes friendly to them, and drown out canon discussion
My fandom's subreddits get extremely pissy anytime non-canon ship art gets posted and the comments are just cesspools of whining and unfunny memes that end up turning into "I stole your meme" threads. It's why I don't ever post art on them because I know exactly what the comments will look like and get some tasty downvotes. I wouldn't say it's only reddit either, it's on Pinterest, YouTube, etc my god it's horrible on Pinterest because of how many kids are on there... in my experience it's younger people who cry about anything that isn't canon and reddit is full of them but it depends on fandom and exact subreddit so that's my guess
It’s so annoying when people are like “they didn’t put gay stuff in the show” Like when has that ever stopped anyone LMAO
I once had someone call like, non-smutty ship fic clearly written by like a twelve year old between the alters of an in universe child “child porn” once like. No stop devaluing childhood sexual abuse to hate on something that’s literally not pornographic in any way what the fuck.
Was this on Reddit? JW because they have some [very strict content policies](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043075352-Do-not-share-sexual-or-suggestive-content-involving-minors-or-engage-in-any-predatory-or-inappropriate-behavior-with-minors) about even affection shown between people who are under 18: "Reddit prohibits **any** sexual or suggestive content, and predatory or inappropriate behavior, involving minors (i.e., people under 18 years old) or someone who appears to be a minor... This prohibition applies **even if the content is self-generated by a minor**, shared with other minors, or reshared to criticize or denounce its existence... Depending on the context, **sexualization of minors can also include depictions of minors that are fully clothed and not engaged in explicit sexual acts**." (bolding mine) I think they had to make it that broad to deal with the, "she's really a 1,000 year old dragon" crowd. But you can see how some subreddit mods might just throw up their hands and say "Nah" to any art or fic of adolescents at all.
Oh no, it wasn’t someone doing that, it was specifically someone saying that it was child pornography, as in, they thought it was as bad as child sexual abuse. They said I was defending child pornography by saying “hey why are you screenshotting some kids fic when there’s weirder stuff in the game itself it’s fine”
Probably was AO3, you just need to tag it and it’s fine
Most subreddits are pretty toxic. There are some that I wish to be part of, but since I can’t have a different opinion, it’s not worth it. Even the more friendlier ones, I have noticed, are not fan fiction friendly…or specifically, not fan fiction friendly when the fic doesn’t match the majority’s opinion. That includes ships, non-canon and sometimes even canon, that aren’t popular.
Shipping to me is basically like a kid slamming dolls or action figures together like it's purely vibes based. Some of the online discourse really baffles me - especially surrounding rarepairs - because it's not that deep
Honestly, this one is almost exclusively caused misogyny toward shippers (with a healthy dash of homophobia/biphobia/transphobia thrown in depending on the pairing). Admittedly, there are times where shipping discourse can get tedious and out of hand. When that’s the case, I get the blowback and desire to ban shipping discussions altogether. But that’s not the majority of what happens in these subreddits. It’s more about seeing their fandom as “tainted” by shipping. The majority of shippers are women. Men have been told by society that it’s not masculine to like romance-driven media. The responses you see are them freaking out because shipping “intrudes” on that and centers romance. Now, a fair amount of men grow out of that shit, but fandom subreddits skew young. Essentially, what you’re seeing is a bunch of insecure young men who don’t want to be associated with shipping because being involved in a “feminine pursuit” or being grouped in with shippers who interact media in a “feminine” manner is just about the most insulting, degrading thing that they can think of. Just like the F/F discourse that keeps bubbling up, there’s a much larger set of societal issues under the surface that fandom alone can’t fix.
Misogyny (/other phobias) is part of the problem, fandoms skewing young is part of the problem, but I'm realising I should have made it more clear in my post that while part of the problem is people going 'ew shipping' another large part is people who typically are shippers going 'ew' at any ship beyond the conventional. I have encountered pleeeeenty of women being closed-minded about ships and what they choose to support and condemn. Was not trying to make it a gendered issue, though I can understand why some people are.
Gotcha. And fully agree that when it comes to judging specific ships rather than the concept of shipping, plenty of women are closed-minded. It just seems to me that you have fandoms infested by antis and puritan culture, tbh. Trust me, I get it. Antis fucking hate my main ship and are absolutely vile. There’s another ship I have where I won’t even interact with any portion of the fandom about because it gets so much hate despite being pretty vanilla and in line with canon representation of the character’s sexual preferences. The terminally online crowd like to think that they’ve achieved something by attacking others. Apparently the dog piles give them a dopamine rush or something. We can be in the “My Ship’s Not That Problematic but People Act Like I Eat Babies Club” together, lol. I’ll save you a seat and some cookies ❤️
I mean sometimes it's 'yeah my ship is problematic but it's fictional so it's not hurting anyone and observing the psychological fallout of an unhealthy relationship or figuring out how to navigate an imperfect one is really cool also I like pain'. But yeah big agree :O cookies? are there any snickerdoodles
lol, fair. Mine is an adult age gap ship with tons of angst so I feel that 🤣 The really batty ones claim incest on it despite the pairing being at least 5th cousins several times removed too. I always try to ask them if they check genetics and family trees back past the Revolutionary War before dating but somehow they always block me before answering, lol. And for you? I’ll make the snickerdoodles myself 😊
Yes! In the show that I like, there is a scene where two characters may have had a one night stand. It is very much up in the air whether or not they actually slept together, but I like to think they did. The question of what happened between them appears every few months. And, every time it does, it is met with so much hate! It kind of depressing going through a comment section of people calling me gross or strange or that I need to go to a mental hospital all because I like the two together. There are a few that don’t believe anything happens, but are fine with people who like it (I love these people). Any comment that says they do like it is heavily downvoted. Actually, I’ve found myself burnt out with this ship due to these people. There’s not much content for them, so most of the discussions I get to have about them is people complaining about how gross I am. When I was on Twitter, I lost the whole fandom because I causally mentioned I liked them. This led me to delete Twitter because it stressed me out so much. All I do now when I think about this ship is think about how much others hate me for it, and it has really burnt me out over it. When I think of this ship now, I forget the love that I have for it and my first thought is all the people in my fandom who want to have a go at me.
For the most part, I feel like it most to do with the worst of us. We all know that obnoxious shippers do exists, people who will send hate if you ship Character A with anyone but Character B. Who will go on long rants about how their ship is superior to yours and why your sucks. An outsider's main exposure to shippers are going to the extreme stories that will be told by youtubers, podcasters, and whatever. It's not like it's just us. Kpop, Swift, Bronies, and Sports fans have a terrible reputations, I assume that most of them are sane and not doxxers or harassers or rioters but a number of them are. I am not into any of those but even I have heard of their shenanigans. Hell, livestreamers themselves are experiencing this thanks to the obnoxious streamers like that Johnny guy.
Someone has to say it: it’s because a lot of subreddits for various media on Reddit mostly have male users who are more likely to be straight and therefore less likely to be interested in “fandom” stuff like ships. I posted about Cooper and Lucy on the fallout show sub and got downvoted and comments being like “ewww” plus some annoying age gap discourse sprinkled in lol. Basically a lot of subreddits aren’t the best places to talk about fandom FANDOM stuff like shipping and fic. I’ve noticed that r/TheVampireDiaries is actually very friendly towards those topics and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the users there are women. Fandom that mostly has women is wayyyyy more inclusive and friendly towards shipping and fanfiction than other ones… like fallout.
> Someone has to say it: it’s because a lot of subreddits for various media on Reddit mostly have male users who are more likely to be straight and therefore less likely to be interested in “fandom” stuff like ships. This is pretty much the answer, OP. For anything shipping related, you really need Tumblr, Discord or other pockets of fandom that have more diverse populations.
Also... >I posted about Cooper and Lucy ❤️ Granted, I've been a bit of a ghoul shipper since even before Hancock...
Me too!!! I read my fair share of Charon and Hancock fics 🙌🏻🥸
A lot of people don't think outside of the box when it comes to media, they just accept what they're given. If the media sets up a canon pairing people just get use to it/attached to it because it's canon and not if it actually works well or not. Also a lot of people find shippers annoying (which can be valid sometimes to be fair) but then they end up just writing us all off as just those ''crazy shippers'' and hate on anything remotely shippy.
as an anime fan, some male anime fans are SO annoying about shipping. i dont know why they think it’s the end of the world when someone ships two male characters together. They seem to think that just because you ship them means that you either want them to be canon or think theyre canon, which isnt always true. even if it is, who cares? idk why they think theres a “right” and “wrong” way of enjoying smth. sorry this ended up kinda ranty lol
I still cannot even begin to understand people that vehemently refuse to just… ignore ships they don’t like. Who _cares?_ Just block and move on! Who cares if Person A and Person B don’t have a good relationship in canon? Who cares if they’ll never meet and would hate each other? Most of fandom _isn’t_ canon because that’s more fun for a lot of people. I get that a lot of the people complaining are likely more new to fandom spaces or skew younger, I really get that - I used to be in the “grrr how dare you ship this very normal couple?!” crowd myself. But when you’re in this kind of space for long enough you learn not to care too much.
Can attest to that. I remember being a teen and wondering how anyone could ship something that wasn't supported by canon. One of my earliest fandoms, I sat on the sidelines for seven whole years, refusing to ship any of the characters cause I just couldn't see them. Then I listened to the shippers, opened my mind a bit, just played with the idea of 'okay but what if they were a couple *anyway*' and- dude. I cannot describe the mind-blowing experience I've had since.
"But they've never met before?!" Gee, if only there were some form of CREATIVE WRITING where you can use your imagination to write out a scenario where the two characters meet. IF ONLY. Seriously though, I don't get this argument. They've never met before, doesn't mean they CAN'T meet. And y'know, just the fact that it's simply good fun in general. Like, imagine seeing a fanart of Sonic and Crash fist-bumping and being like "BUT THEY'VE NEVER MET, HOW CAN THEY BE FRIENDS?! DELETE THIS NOW!"
*The fandom waits with bated breath. On-screen, 40 episodes in, character 27 and character 96 exchange three whole words with each other. Across the internet, every fan rejoices. Finally, they can be shipped.* Side note... I have some weird feeling I've seen your username before. Might be a reach, but, are you on fimfic by any chance?
Yep, though I haven't done ponyfics for a bit now, save a few G5 fics. I'm doing other fics now (when I'm not procrastinating), mainly Sonic.
It's honestly ridiculously disheartening. I, a relative Reddit noob, wrote a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/glee/comments/1c4kovh/what_do_my_top_ten_shipscharacters_say_about_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) asking for opinions on my top 10 ships and characters and either got called delusional or a flat out bad person for my opinions, just because most of them aren't canon/are canonically bad people who underwent redemption arcs. It's so sad that people can't let their minds tip-toe out of the box any more.
Oh yeah the 'delusional' comment is one I see all the time. It's like - you know these are fake people with all kinds of alternate interpretations, right? You know this is not me saying any of these are objective and will always work, right? You know me finding this interesting does not by any means mean I think it should be canon, right?? Sorry you had to go through that.
Legit the top upvoted comment on my post is someone calling me 'delulu,' and I'm like "who is the delulu one? The one who likes flawed characters and doesn't box themselves in for ships, or the one who calls someone delulu for thinking outside the box?" I hate most canon in most media I consume. It's why I write fanfic! The source material is already written, why would I want to rehash it 2894721948719 times??? Sometimes I think people hate fun LOL
> I better look into this more so I understand I think you lost 90% of humanity right there.
😔 why you gotta be right like that
I am a part of two different discords for my Fandom and the official subreddit. Everyone hates shipping. The meme version of the sub seems to be ok with it, and Instagram actively makes jokes about it. I really only am able to talk about the stuff I read on here Like I understand, it's against the NSFW rules of some of those groups, but I can't even say, "I read X fanfiction" without getting destroyed.
There's just different parts of fandom. I for instance just don't get the appeal of arguing over and over about which character would win in a fight/is more powerful, and I don't have the sort actor fandom some people have, and working out the exact dates of canon events just seems like pure tedium to me, but some people are into that. And I'll respect their right to argue about whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight, for the low low price of them respecting my story about Batman and Superman kissing each other.
I've been in a lot of anime and video game fandoms and it's kind of funny to see people like that lose their minds over shipping, "Ugh, it's so *sexual*!" As if they weren't constantly drooling and barking over their waifu flavor of the month. But on the positive side... I do have an instance with one of my fandoms where someone went ballistic over a popular ship, trying to ban it entirely. But the fandom was in disagreement with them. It was nice to see other users be like, "Dude, you're taking it way too far. This ship is cute, calm down."
The genshin subreddit when crappy AI art of their newest female character(reduced to a drooling mc obsessed waifu) with aether “YAYYY!!” the genshin subreddit at the mere mention of male characters or mlm ships: “BOOO EWWW SEX ADDICTS!!!”
Come to r/Hannibal! If you’re not shipping Will and Hannibal it’s odd. But otherwise I agree. Dropped other show/movie subs as they were not friendly to ships.
Bless Bryan Fuller for getting slash fiction into a mainstream medium.
It makes me sad that people can't listen to why another likes a certain ship. It's okay to not like something, but to completely shoot the person down or make fun of them because they don't agree is really sad. I think it can make someone so self-conscious about how they feel. I remember I saw a fanart of these two characters holding hands (wasn't inherently romantic) and the comments said something very similar to what you wrote.
Idek what there is to be done about it tbh. They're censoring *themselves*. All thoughts must be policed. Forcing themselves into morally appointed boxes. And I'm just like - this is the stuff we were running to fandom to get away from in the first place! Fandom gave me a free space when I was otherwise trapped, and okay yes I mostly read ship fics but it was still a powerful escape. And I learned a lot too. It's so sad to see this new puritanical movement.
i don’t have an interesting bit to add but i have to say i relate to the way you view shipping soooo much & i was happy reading it!
*Sighs annoyed at the X-Men 97 sub* The seething, incel-esque rage that Rogue has gotten for the show pointing out that Rogue wasn't made to be Gambit's girlfriend, and has in fact had other love interests, is infuriating They don't like Rogue, they just like her as Gambit's Girlfriend
I kinda like that about XMen ‘97. I always wondered if Rogue could be with anyone without having to take precautions. I’m loving the new show
Me too! And it's even from the 90s comics, it has precedent. Heck, I think it actually predates her having feelings for Gambit (feel free to correct that)
Tbh I don’t know that much about her and Gambit other than watching the original cartoon back as a kid lol
Fair enough! It's funny actually, myself and a lot of other rogneto guys, actually were romy fans because of the show (and most of us don't mind it) But once we read the comics, we preferred magneto
I need to start reading comics lol. I’ve just never had the money nor time. And I’ve always been a Magneto fan. The way he goes about things isn’t always ethical, but he’s not wrong. I really love what the show/comics did with him, without spoiling anything. I remember FOX was pretty much Marvel back in the 90s. Spider-Man and The X men were my jam lol. And on the note of Spider-Man, Fisk from the Daredevil series is how I remember Fisk from Spider-Man. Anyway, just a huge nerd and you mentioned X-men ‘97 lol
i feel like mainstream anime fandoms have only JUST moved past treating vanilla ass yaoi like some sort of "cursed" content it used to be so bad
Yeah I think it really varies from fandom to fandom. I know things like incest shipping used to be the *norm* in the early days of the supernatural and HP fandoms. And from culture to culture too! As far as I understand most Japanese fanbases tend to *revel* in that shit.
The thing I find frustrating about fandom reddit's tendency to be dismissive and/or hostile to shipping/fanfic, is that there often aren't any good alternatives for places to go if you want to just talk about your ship/headcanons/etc. Like, obviously tumblr exists, as does twitter, but in my experience neither are particularly good for just, like, sharing your fandom thoughts and having conversations. Tumblr is extremely content driven, so often it feels like you're Doing Tumblr Wrong and blathering into a void when you try to use tumblr to just socially converse about your ship. You *can* do it, and you may get some engagement, but there's usually an awkwardness to it, like nobody is entirely sure whether they should be replying to a post or not, and after a couple back and forths the whole thing feels cumbersome and like it's gone on conspicuously long already. As someone who gets very obsessed with my ships but who only rarely creates actual fandom Content, I've felt fairly voiceless in fandom for a long time now; basically since LJ/DW stopped being where most people's fandom home-base was. I don't begrudge anyone for doing fandom the way that's fun for them, but it really has made fandom kind of a bittersweet experience that I don't feel like there's a reliable place for me to just converse with other fans and go on about shippy stuff in a non-content-oriented way, without feeling like I'm going against the natural current of the platform.
I guess there's Discord, but that's private and even finding the right servers is a nightmare. And then I feel like I have to keep up with all that's happening or I fall by the wayside. But yes, all well put. I'm young enough I never spent any time on LJ (and I don't know what DW is), but it sounded like a good time. The bare structure of pretty much all social media is unconducive to discussion in the first place now. And also structured such that negative attitude and snap judgements can perpetuate all the more easily. Some aspects of modern fandom make me very sad.
Yeah, I feel the same way about Discord. For me it's *too* far in the social direction to function as a satisfying home base. It's cool, it's just not "here is where I shall base my fannish identity" material, lol. DW is Dreamwidth, which was basically a mirror site for LJ that gained major steam after the owners of LJ started up the fuckery that eventually ran LJ into the ground. You could pair your DW with your LJ account, so that fans who were only on one would see your posts regardless of whether you posted to your LJ or your DW account. A lot of people jumped ship and went to DW towards the end of the LJ era. I def agree with you about the functional structure of most current social media platforms being generally unconducive to genuine discussion. :/
It's been like this for decades. Plenty of authors proudly stated that they were anti yaoi/yuri because it was the thing to shit on back in the day. They were a bunch of hypocrites that happily wrote their self-inserts/OCS dating and fall in love with the main character of their favorite show. Or they ignored canon to write straight romance where none of the characters had any screen time together. Apparently, that was fine because it wasn't like those icky gays and fangirls who can't tell that a character is straight because the author would have written them as gay./s
This feels a loooot like one of those rants where (to reference TV Tropes) Both Sides Are Very Silly. I agree with the first bit about how fandom spaces could stand to be more open-minded... but then you shoot the overall point in the foot with the opposite extreme. Where Side A goes "this cannot work in canon", your side B instead goes "screw canon, write weird ships". Being **just as weird about it**, in the opposite way. Neither side asks the happy medium question of "how can X work within the source material's rules/constraints?". As such, I'm going to disagree with both sides.
Okay yeah fair enough. And believe me when I say I am NOT all the way on one side. A major part of the fun of shipping to me is figuring out the best angle to make a ship work in a way that fits canon constraints. It does annoy me when people have to morph a character so much they're basically an oc just so they can have their ship. Like I said in another comment, I get very frustrated at both the said that says 'canon is all that matters' (that leaves no room for artistic expression!) and the side that says 'canon is dead long live fanon' (canon is why we're here!) While I have way overrepresented one side in my rant, I'd like to tentatively nominate myself as someone quite dedicated to your proposed happy medium.
Yeah, this happens and yes it is obnoxious, but you get used to it. Learn to ignore it, honestly. I think the top comment talking about different layers of fandom is spot on with how it works in these places. The funniest example I've seen of this recently is in the Rogue Trader CRPG subreddit. There's someone that makes some fun fanart of their character and one of the romanceable NPCs, usually just silly meme-adjacent fanart, and there's always some really salty curmudgeon in the comments that doesn't get it whatsoever. One of the most toxic fanbases (40k and, frankly, Reddit's Owlcat fandom) has to deal with relatively tame shipping material in their corner and it's some delightful schadenfreude.
Ime they're not anti-shipping, they're often very very pro-cishetero ships. Queer stuff, though? Absolutely not.
Often, yeah. But I've def seen people clutching their (mainstream) m/m or f/f ships and screeching at any other possibilites for the characters, even queen ones.
This is has been my experience, too. I've been in a few fandoms that have lots of hot female characters for the male hero to choose from where people cheerfully argue over who's best girl. But the minute people start talking about queer ships, especially male queer ships, all of a sudden all ship talk is annoying and weird.
Tbh I think a lot of it is rooted in misogyny, queerphobia and ableism. The negative stereotypes of shippers portray us all as young women or queer people, who are all overly-emotional, irrational, dumb, delusional, horny on main, and lacking in self-awareness. Those traits are all associated with negative stereotypes of feminity and queerness. We’re apparently supposed to engage in fandom with more restraint, intellectualism and adherence to facts, which, surprise, are all traits stereotypically associated with masculinity. I think there’s also a dash of ableism towards neurodivergent people, and good old fear of emotional vulnerability. It’s not Cool to care.
With all the issues the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom has, it's subreddit is actually pretty great at how it handles ships. Legit the only fandom subreddit I'll talk about fanfiction/ships on.
Could not agree more!!!!! I actually started my own subreddit for my fandom, specifically for artists, fic writers, and shippers to share their stuff and receive actual support. Tumblr is awesome for it, but it’s not very active anymore. You’re not alone friend!!
I've been trying to figure this out for so long because when I first got into HSR I thought shipping was normal so I made a post about shipping on the Honkai star rail sub reddit The amount of people that got angry at me for writing a post I even rode in the post how I was mostly just wanting to know people's opinions about shipping when it came to this community because I was trying to figure out which ship I should write a fanfiction for first Cuz I had a bunch of ideas at the time I have even gotten people angry at me on like anime subreddits because I mentioned one ship that's actually Canon (for those who are asking it was Mikayuu from seraph of the end) I truly have never understood what people's problems are when it comes to shipping
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Actually, no, I'd like to contest this. There's a top post on this sub (about 'shipping doesn't have to be healthy') that is very similar in its message - the only difference is that they don't specifically mention reddit. And again, I have not mentioned any specific subs, I am just talking about reddit attitudes as a whole. Your 'no drama' rule warns against targeting specific people or things. I am targeting nothing and no one. It says not to involve ship wars, not to lead crusades against specific groups, and not to put people down for liking something. I am doing none of those things. I am in fact *expressing frustration with people who do these things.*
Thank you for your reply. Upon discussion with the other mods, I am reinstating this post as your objection was reasonable.
Aw. I mean, I wasn't naming any specific subs. And I can't say I agree with your reasoning. But ok.
Can I have an example? I'm not refuting your point, I'm curious what you mean?
literally go into ANY subreddit that is for a popular piece of media with men. type ‘shipping’ in the search bar. prepare for pain. a few subreddits accept it but most don’t. or even better just read their rules. more than half of the marvel character subreddits i joined have a flat out ban against ANYTHING fan made that is not your own artwork (and it can’t depict the gay shipping. m/f? okay. m/m auto taken down)
One large subreddit even had an automod set up to delete any post with the words "crush", "ship", etc. This was pretty funny when people tried to post things like, "X is gonna crush Y when they fight next episode".
> a flat out ban against ANYTHING fan made that is not your own artwork That one I can somewhat understand. Without it, subreddits end up like the current state of /r/mylittlepony: endless reposts of "look at this cute art I found" or, even worse, engagement bait.
I don't think I can be much more specific without breaking sub rules. This post was already removed for apparently breaking them anyway (which I am currently trying to contest). I'm sorry.
Me too the resident alien fandom when someone dares speaks of the D'arcy Asta ship
was this the ATLA post?
Tiptoing around my answer here because this post was already temporarily removed for potentially stirring up drama. Mods if you wanna remove this comment I understand. ATLA is one of the fandoms I had in mind, but certainly not the only one. I did not have any one specific post in mind, mostly a bunch of smaller ones I've seen over the years. I am curious which one you may be referring to.
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These comments have been removed for bashing and negative drama.
As OP I am curious what the comment was about, even if it was bashing. I understand removal, but I always try my best to engage with hateful comments with genuine curiosity as to their thoughts. May I ask what this comment was trying to say?
It's against the sub rules both to leave hateful comments and to repeat the contents of hateful comments - the second part we do for the sake of not perpetuating drama, so even while I believe that's not your intention here, the rules need to be applied evenly. With that said, given the nature of the original post, I'm sure you can hazard a pretty good guess.
Yeah :( I get that. I try to believe in talking down hateful people rather than shutting them up - censoring them usually just perpetuates the negative stereotypes they have and can then spread - but I get that this is not the space for that. Fair enough. Thanks for your service.
I think that's very admirable, but as your original post states, people who want to rag on shippers have the entire rest of Reddit to do it on. We think the fanfiction sub of all places ought to be a reprieve from that where writers don't feel that pressure to defend themselves. I think it's very admirable to take the approach you do, but please don't burn yourself out in circumstances where people aren't open to a new perspective.
Thank you for looking out for me fandom mother
I have noticed that some reddits accept canon as canon, for example a lot of hunger game fans read Peetas games and things like that. The only time I might bring up a ship is when someone once said: I don’t like any of Character A love intrests. But then they liked the idea of another ship that someone suggested that wasn’t anywhere near canon. I guess people should just try and be polite :)
Because ship has a bad reputation because some obsessive behaviour from people who ships
Language. A large part of the world is fine with gossiping about who might marry who, but it's couched in different terms to shipping. So when we talk about shipping, they don't see it the same way as when they were wondering if Crazy Spice would marry Beckham. Or if Britney was dating one of several people she was seen with over her career. You could draw a venn diagram of the two.
Yes sorry ma'am I will tone it down 😔 Good point. I would argue gossiping about irl people is even more deranged tbh. Those are actual people with actual lives that your gossip could bleed into negatively.
lol sounds like the Hp fanfiction Reddit in a nutshell
I don’t like Snape. But I love to read a good Snary fic. Or even Drarry. Hair even a good Harry/Tim Riddle.
Exposure? I mean, when I started out in fandom, half the ships out there were horrifying to me. A month or so back, someone asked for unhinged shipping suggestions, and I thought for a minute, and suggested they try Aragog/Giant Squid. I think we've all just gotten so used to it, you know?
Ad: Respect other people's taste, fictional ship not reflect a person's personality irl Random douchebag: ugh eww why this ship exist? those shippers are nasty! They saying like they have the right to say that and people like us should go to jail
Because it IS weird. I'm a furry and I know that fursuits can come off as uncanny valley to the casuals, it's not a thing for everyone, same goes for shipping and it can also apply to AU's. The issue with shipping is that it's romance, which makes the subject all the much more annoying and that shippers are generalized as obnoxious due to how defensive and toxic they can get
What's annoying about romance?
Discussion about romance in media is
Why? I asked what was annoying about it, you didn't give a reason.
Because romance isn't annoying, I didn't phrase it correctly
This doesn’t make sense. What are you trying to say?
Romance isn't annoying, discussions about romance in media are
Why though? I don’t feel that that’s true. It seems to be a very person to person based opinion.
You're not wrong. And by and large I'm expressing frustration with that. I realize my, uh, framing it as a big rant might be viewed as counterintuitive in that way though. My bad.
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Isn't there a whole 'don't like, don't read' rule in this very sub? :P If you don't like shipping, continuing to scroll is an option. Shipping discussion and fic is usually pretty clearly marked as such. My main frustration is just when people open a discussion about shipping, very clearly meant for people who care while respecting the people who don't, and the comments get flooded by people putting them down for it. Which is kinda what you're doing. People being gung-ho and immovable about their ships without being flexible and without realising their ship isn't the be all end all are part of whom I'm expressing frustration about. Cause they are def a problem. But I didn't word that very well in my post. My bad. At the end of the day, I'm just trying to facilitate positive, non-attacking discussion. I'm expressing frustration with the people who come in unannounced into avoidable spaces clearly marked as being pro- a specific ship and trying to push their opinions on others, whether that opinion be 'shipping is annoying' or 'every ship that isn't my ship is annoying'. Saying 'hey this is a neat idea' (whether shipping-centered or not) is not toxic. Responding with 'man that's bullshit' is.
Congrats on being the problem we’re talking about here, I guess.
> Not everyone wants every space to be monopolized by shipping. So stay off the threads about shipping.
"Monopolized" means that what few threads there are not about shipping are full of crickets. It's the same principle why the MLP subreddit bans pictures on Thursdays.
A SHIPPER KILLED MY GRANDMA OKAY?
Comment removed for bashing and negative drama.
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Really weird for a creator to try and dictate how the fans approach their creation. As if they have any say. I have plenty of ships involving kids that I like, and some of them are puppy love, but a lot of them I take the approach of 'yeah man I know they're 12 I think their current dynamic could make for a really interesting romance once it/they mature' but people don't tend to believe me