#shipping discourse is so important

[anetherealpoetess]

shipping discourse is so crucial because it encourages people to examine and re-examine their perceptions of female characters. when we actively think about why a ship feels comfortable or uncomfortable, we are less likely to be swayed by patriarchal notions of womanhood disguised as progressive ideals within fandoms.

female-dominated spaces, like many fandoms, are growing more conservative in tone, especially around complex female characters, and there is a growing discomfort with heroines attracted to villains. this trend parallels the conservative impulse to judge a person's morality based on their reading preferences. (a bad, bad thing.)

we are seeing a huge shift towards puritanical ideals of female purity (check out the trad-wifers on tiktok), and it is a rot seeping into fandoms. we have to keep shipping discourse alive. we have to keep talking about female characters and their complicated relationships with themselves, but also with other characters, including their attraction to morally-grey or outright villainous characters. keep asking people to examine and re-examine their perceptions of womanhood. keep them thinking.

we cannot let our fandoms reduce complex female characters and their relationships to simple moral statements. this approach creates a pipeline to conservative radicalisation, where the only shipping discourse allowed is through a tiny patriarchal lens. fandoms are spaces were we should explore, brainstorm, and celebrate female complexity, resisting the urge to flatten characters and their relationships into 'good' or 'bad' based on narrow conservative ideas of female purity.

[hearthmistress]

i'm sure this has been articulated before and probably better, but i can't stop thinking about the fact that the main reason buddie fans hate Tommy (outside from the fact he is blocking their ship from becoming "canon") is because Tommy is getting the Eddie storyline they want. Or rather, the fandom idea of Eddie is being played out with Tommy's character arc.

This really clicked with me after I watched a nearly 4hr 9-1-1 recap youtube video created by a buddie fan. I genuinely think (the buddie of it all and their view of Tommy aside) it's a great video and worth a watch! Really articulates what makes 9-1-1 fun and lovable, the issues the show has (especially with copaganda), the bad writing with certain characters and character plot arcs, and genuinely had a lot of points I agree with/have been saying myself since I started watching 9-1-1. Even the buddie of it all, I could get on board with because I like watching people argue why they ship something - I don't have to agree with it or like the ship to be interested.

My main issue with the video (and why I can't stop thinking about it) is how the creator viewed Tommy and how (perhaps purposefully) bad-faith they have interpreted his actions towards Buck. Again, I don't care if someone doesn't like Tommy or has no strong opinions of him, but I prefer people's dislike to be based on reality and/or what the character actually did, and not through the rose-coloured glasses of a shipper lens.

When the creator of the video brought up Tommy as Buck's love interest, they mostly said they were rather cool on him and that we don't know a lot about him yet to really know the character (and given that this was published before S8, that's fair). However, they bring up the cafe scene in S7E05 and Tommy's "mmmm, not like that" line as "evidence" that Tommy's indifferent to Buck and this is where buddies and general audiences separate into different realities, because this moment is a) clearly supposed to be funny/romcomsque and b) demonstrates Tommy's dry wit and, dare i say, sassiness - a trait applauded by buddie fans with Eddie (and they use as proof as his "queerness") but condemned when a canonically gay character does it. The video creator themselves mentions numerous times Eddie's sassiness as a positive trait (and to be fair, they also mention that it's sort of Eddie's default trait because he's a nothingburger character - which I agree with), but when Tommy does it, it suddenly demonstrates that a character doesn't really like/care for their love interests (which given what we know about S8.... hilarious in hindsight, holy projection batman).

Anyways, that really clicked into place for me that the (outsized) outrage buddies have towards Tommy is because he is canonically demonstrating traits they want to see in Eddie/how they view (fandom) Eddie.

Tommy as a character is:

-a deeply closeted gay man when we first meet him, who participates in toxic masculinity as a means to protect himself and/or because he can't (or is unable to) fully articulate himself as a queer person.

-alluded to have been raised in an environment where he had to hide his queerness (as discussed specifically in S7E10 with 118 being a "regressive place" when he was there). Is pressured by both his biological family and his work "family" to maintain a certain idea of manhood, and by extension, stay closeted. Also served in the army, an institute infamous for being homophobic, and undoubtedly influenced his ideas around duty and manhood.

-unable to maintain relationships with women, even serious long-term ones as with Abby, and uses these relationships (either subconsciously or not) to maintain the illusion of his heterosexuality.

-tied with "traditional" masculine interests/hobbies/institutes. He was in the army, he likes monster trucks, fighting, craft beer, flies a helicopter, etc. He seems, on the surface, a guy's guy.

-now canonically out and was/is in a relationship with Buck and has served, vitally, as a closet key to Buck, ensuring that two firefighters on the silly weewoo show are, in fact, together.

-very clearly invested in Buck's well-being, both within and outside of relationship. Has demonstrated numerous times "going out" of his way to put Buck's emotional needs first and to value Buck in way others (Eddie) do not.

-one half of a groundbreaking queer relationship. Cannot be repeated enough, the fact that the show has a main character (beloved by fandom and the general audience alike) come out as queer in a long-running mainstream show is groundbreaking. The fact that Tommy is one half of this ship is so important both to the show and Buck's entire arc. It is important and groundbreaking.

These are almost all things/traits that buddie fans argue make Eddie queer and/or why buddie would be a groundbreaking ship. Which sure, but the reality is the showrunners, the actors, the show itself have maintained Eddie is straight, and (as articulated by the creator themselves in the video) most of what they project onto Eddie comes from the fact he is poorly written rather than because the show was planning on making Eddie gay in the first place.

I read through numerous comments for the recap video and for a following video from the same creator about whether they had been queerbaited (I wish buddies learned the term "ship-tease" because if one half of your ship is canonically queer, no you cannot be queerbaited and dismissing Buck's canonical queerness just because your ship is not happening is, uh, a problem), and numerous times buddies have mentioned how "groundbreaking" buddie would be as if all the things they mention about the ship hasn't already happened with Bucktommy on the show. Their issue is not that the show refuses to do this (and the amount of comments I read that said things like 'they'll never make buddie happen because the network is too conservative'.... for a show with a black lesbian relationship from season 1 and has already made half of your ship queer and made him fuck nasty on screen with his male love interest.... the mental gymnastics is too much), but the fact that the show HAS already done this, just not with their blorbo of choice.

My closing thoughts (for now, I have MANY!) is that in the follow up video about being "queerbaited by 9-1-1", numerous comments asked "if Eddie isn't gay, that would mean he's just emotionally immature, terrible to women, and not a great friend or parent. He would be the worst character on the show".... and like yes, that's the real character you are choosing to stan, not the fanfic one! I fully understand that Eddie is blank canvas for most buddies to pin their hopes and dreams onto (again, because he is poorly written and is essentially a nothingburger character), but no matter how you twist each bucktommy interaction, make bad-faith interpretations, project things that never happened onto Tommy, in the end, Eddie is still a straight boring character. And Tommy is the one who is canonically living out the character-arc you so desperately want to see on the show.

[musicalmoritz]

Blocking isn’t enough I think I should be allowed to shoot people who have bad takes on Anakin and Padmé

[venice-1987]

An annoying phenomenon I've noticed

Alternatively: Whatever you do, don't go onto the TDP reddit

(Alternatively, let people ship things)

[buddivorce]

sometimes people are like "wow people who actually take sides in ship wars suck! both sides are always equally morally wrong and everyone involved is stupid!" and then the ship war they're talking about is people who like longloved-friends-to-lovers ship vs. people who like guy-who-was-invented-to-be-a-racist-homophobic-plot-device-for-our-main-characters'-developments x chill-and-beloved-main-guy ship. and the fans of the latter are the most braindead racist misogynistic WHITE bitches you've ever talked to in your life. and you wanna tell me i'm in the wrong. ok

[murphysiblings]

censorship is a bigger & more serious issue than like . petty fandom drama & i wish more ppl realized that

[eveningspirit]

We are now in the territory where certain people think they have a right to tell people what to ship, or act superior because they don't like the ship. Fandom isn't fun or safe when people aren't allowed to actually have fun and are actively told off for shipping to fictional characters. This is referring to the ask you reblogged. Basically everyone else is allowed to ship characters, expect King and Langdon; not to mention if we're calling this a predatory ship because Langdon is her 'boss' than what's Abott and Mohan, what's Robby and Collins? Both have one character who are technically their boss, and Collins wasn't even an R4 when her and Robby were together. She was probably like an R2-3. Both those ships have bigger age gaps, and seniority gaps yet that's fine.

Thank you for the ask.

Not sure which post you are referring, because today I reblogged two asks-and-answers, one of which was pro_platonic_frank-and-mel, and the other was pro-romantic-kingdon.

From the text of your ask, I believe you're a kingdon shipper. Meanwhile I am quite vocal about loving Frank's and Mel's potential friendship.

Now. I'm not sure who is actually being shunned for shipping? And I'll only speak about tumblr and AO3 in this post, because I don't go to twitter, threads, only look at official actor's instagrams, and don't participate in any other fandom spaces, discussion boards and whatnot.

The number of kingdon fanfics on AO3 is staggering. The few friendship fics that show up, are nearly invisible (btw, if any fic author writing Frank and Mel friendship (or ANY friendship on the show) reads this, please, let's all tag our stories "Friendship Fic". Those stories are so rare, and we should have a way to find them, if we so choose, right? :) right). So. No kingdon shipper has it hard on AO3. I think that point has been proven.

Now, as for tumblr, WE ALL have to remember one thing. As long as someone doesn't comment on your post, or doesn't send an ask directly to you, stating that 'you are predatory, or wrong, or whatnot'--you shouldn't feel offended. We all should be allowed to express our own opinions about the show in our own posts. That being said, it is better to express opinions ABOUT THE SHOW, not about how others interpret said show. But we can't control others, we can only control ourselves. And, to make our tumblr experience more enjoyable, we can always use block button on specific people, or block tags we don't want to see.

A tumblr etiquete tip--let's not post negative opinions in the character tags, in the ship tags and so on. When I was starting at tumblr several years ago, something like "anti-" tag was in use, so if you want to say something negative about kingdon, use "anti-kingdon" tag. Please.

BTW, I am sorry, I believe earlier today I did comment on that pro-kingdon post (in the tags), but it was more in a defensive way? I hope? I didn't try to attack anyone.

I wanted to talk about who is more shunned on tumblr, shippers, of friendshippers. But I won't. Because we all take certain opinions to heart and tend to ignore negative opinions that we agree with, not thinking that people of the opposite provenience may be hurt by them.

What I want to stress again, please, let's resepct each other. Let's allow others to enjoy their media in a way that makes them happy.

Only a small note to kingdon shippers--as in real world amatonormativity is the norm, so it is in this social media space. There's definitely more of you, fans of romance between Frank and Mel, than there is fans of their platonic friendship. We are a minority, as much as aroace people are a minority in the real world (although by percentage there's probably more of us here, than aroace peoples in the real world ;). Give us space to breathe. :)

Thank you all for reading. Peace.

[discoelysco]

I fucking hate it when someone claims to be a proshipper but then they're against

>shipping regardless of canon sexualities

>"copaganda" ships and such (caitvi. This is about caitvi)

>literally any "problematic" content as soon as it gets put in a book aimed at straight women

>whatever popular (often completely unproblematic) ship tumblr chooses to hate that week

>or when they make fun of other people's fan content for being "cringe" (ooc, self-indulgent, whatever) as if our entire philosophy wasn't supposed to be "let people do whatever they want forever"

Like broski if you think "fiction is not reality" and "fandom is not activism" only apply to your incest fetish then think again <33

[a-most-beloved-fool]

hate it when people act as though you're """diminishing characters' relationships""" by not shipping them. like excuse me?? i am not the one here who thinks two characters have a less meaningful relationship when it is platonic instead of romantic! you are the one who thinks i'm "lessering" them by saying they're friends instead of lovers. what about friendship is "less" to you, exactly? do explain!

[habitina]

sometimes i get fooled by all the 'stories with love as a secondary theme or an unimportant one at all' new wave of enthusiasm until i look it up and find that like. five people out of a hundred didn't read the source material as a romantic story

[stackslip]

blacklisting dungeon meshi and farcille as tags until everyone has calmed down about this lol

[im-an-international-superspy]

Seeing a community made for my semi-niche favorite character that's not crowded, just the right amount of active and the type of posts I enjoy:

Seeing that the rules in the community say proship & those who support them dni you will be blocked and reported thrice before even stating the name of the character it's about:

[collectors-tablet]

To clarify bc my last post confused some people! (I got an ask about it but I'm not posting it publicly)

I basically only ship canon things for ToH, + very-far-distant-future-adult King/Collector. Normally I ship them platonically, there's not even, like, Disney-safe shipping with the kid versions I just only ship them as friends haha. I don't even recognize your shipnames

[schr0dingers-catboy]

These sort of posts that are like “are you REALLY a leftist? 🤨 well you participate in online discourse” is always the biggest source of chronically online. Imagine having your life ruined by the unfair justice system and some so called “ally” preaches about how spreading online discourse is what’s actually ruining your life. Like yeah people are being unfairly executed and imprisoned for life over minor offenses but sure let’s worry about fandom discourse. Because I sure can recall the day fascists like trump and putin spread a callout post about the user “proship-vr1sk4” thus pushing the world towards a red shift.

[lilac-set]

I dont have a dni at all, but i do block people who call themselves endo neutral. If theyre not a system and they dont state any opinion at all on syscourse i dont care, thats fine, its when people specifically go out of their way to say theyre endo neutral. They have an opinion, they know what syscourse is, and theyve decided their opinion is “neutral”. Its like “racism neutral” or “transphobia neutral”. Its a “silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor” situation, if you have no connection to syscourse at all and’ve never heard of it thats fine, but someone who knows what endogenic plurality is and has decided they want to publicize the fact that they dont know whether or not a whole group of people deserves respect, that they think theres reasons to think both ways, or actively dont care or think it matters whether we’re respected, thats effectively “anti endo” for my purposes and im curating them out of my online experience

people with "[discourse here] neutrals" in their DNI are so obnoxious. not everyone lives in your world where internet discourse is everything

[fandom]

Top 24 of 2024

Well, well, well, look what we have here. If it isn’t 52 weeks’ worth of data drawn from the exemplary original posts you’ve been producing day in, day out, combined with the likes, reblogs, and search data—all of it weighed, ranked, and presented here for your viewing pleasure. In news that will come as a shock to no one at all, 2024 was the year of Artists on Tumblr. But quite right, too, as just a cursory scroll through the fanart, illustrations, digital pieces, paintings, textiles, and more will attest. It’s a goldmine. But this ain’t just any goldmine, this is your goldmine, and we’ve got abundant gratitude for the wonderful work you’ve shared this last year. 

Dungeon Meshi won hearts and minds with its cozy feel, its cookery, its cast of eclectic, likable characters, and a delightfully off-center vibe. Farcille made for the sapphic love story we didn’t know we needed—and the inspiration for endless, exquisite fanart. There was much appreciation for season one, and excitement abounds for season two. But there were endings as well as beginnings, sadly, as the much-loved Jujutsu Kaisen brought six years of sublime storytelling to a close with Chapter 271. Good faced Evil, a nephew faced an uncle, and some really liked it, and others really did not. Discourse ensued, as discourse is wont to do. 

Television! And lots of it! 2024 was the year in which animation ruled supreme with an embarrassment of riches to plunder. Gravity Falls and The Book of Bill became your fall fixations and simply refused to stop trending for seemingly an age (a Good Thing). Bill Cipher and Stanford Pines both made the Top 24 in their own right as you shipped them to high hell, with Billford coming top of Ships for 2024. Speaking of Hell, Hazbin Hotel was the new kid on the block. And, after a five-year wait, the new kid charmed—it was filthier, funnier, raunchier, and more heartfelt than you could have hoped for. 

When it comes to hope, the times continue to be challenging, and the news can threaten to overwhelm. 2024 was no different. But you all painted the dash every color of the rainbow, stood loud and proud, and supported your ever-growing community online and offline in the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights. While folks continue to voice their distress and concern for the ongoing crisis in Palestine, they also fight the good fight with activism and fundraising efforts across the dash. These may be dark days, but you all work tirelessly for the greater good as only you know how.

Looking after oneself is vital in these trying times, and you’ve all done just that in your own inimitable fashion. Cats still rule Tumblr as bears still poop in woods, and everyone has taken essential time to peruse the dashboard’s plethora of cat GIFs, cat art, boopin’ cats, cats of yore, and so on. You’re keeping things similarly wholesome with some more Tumblr mainstays: cottagecore, and its sister aesthetic, naturecore, imagine a simpler, greener, and quieter time. A time where the breeze billows softly through the long grass and gently turns the blades of the windmill; a time where we, too, might poop in woods.

The only thing more important than looking after oneself is treating oneself, and what better way to do that than gaming? Baldur’s Gate 3 made a most impressive leap from #21 last year to #7 in 2024, as the need for sexy monsters and beautiful beasties becomes ever more imperative with each passing year. Pokémon may have dropped a little from five to 11, but these games and shows still hold a dear place in your hearts—as demonstrated by your bountiful and beautiful fanart.

Here are the 24 most-mentioned things on Tumblr in 2024.

Artists on Tumblr

Palestine

Dungeon Meshi

Gravity Falls

Hazbin Hotel

Baldur's Gate 3

Cats of Tumblr

Jujutsu Kaisen

The Batman Universe

Pokémon

One Piece

Good Omens

Marcille Donato | Dungeon Meshi

Laios Touden | Dungeon Meshi

Cottagecore

Hermitcraft

LGBTQIA+

Bill Cipher | Gravity Falls

Naturecore

Doctor Who

Percy Jackson

Falin Touden | Dungeon Meshi

Stanford Pines | Gravity Falls

Jason Todd | the DC universe

Feeling inspired? Want to create a dedicated place to discuss the things you love with the other people who love them? Create a Community here on Tumblr to do just that.