#And to the people it concerns please burn this onto your brain's hardware memory drive already:

[glon-morski]

What are your personal thoughts about "problematic" ships in the fandom? (i.e Age gaps,...)

My general consensus is 'you do you’. If I don’t like your ship, I avoid it. If you don’t like my ship, I expect you to do the same. If someone likes a “problematic” ship, I don’t judge them for it and I’d hope to be given the same courtesy.

The thing is, many people seem to think that liking a problematic or controversial ship means you condone the problematic side of it in real life or that you willfully ignore the fact it's “problematic”. That is not the case. The thing with fandom is that it gives you a safe way to enjoy and/or explore stuff you cannot in real life for various reasons, one of them (and the one that often applies to “problematic” ships) being that you wouldn’t ever do or condone in real life something you may like to read/write/whatever about in fiction. Which is why rather than judge the ships themselves (or the people who sail these ships, so to speak), I tend to judge how a ship is handled.

Let me illustrate on an example that admittedly hits close to home thematically: Character A used to bully Character B and so far, in canon, there's no indication they'll ever be involved romantically. People ship them anyway. I see two fanfics.

Fic 1: Character A is still an asshole, but isn't a literal bully anymore. Still, the past they have with character B never gets addressed or called out as problematic or anything. It's not even implied, like it never happened. There's no remorse from A and no apology, much less anything more than that. B either forgives A anyway or doesn't really think the past matters or is an issue at this point. The entire thing is ignored and/or portrayed as a 'shit happens, it doesn’t matter anymore, let's move on with our lives' kind of normal.

Fic 2: Character A actually realizes their previus behavior was shitty and unacceptable. They're shown to feel genuine remorse and to want to atone for their actions, even if they may still display asshole-y behavior because that’s what they’re like. They and Character B have talked about things, be it on- or off-screen. Stuff that's fucked up and wrong gets called out as fucked up and wrong and character B's choice to forgive is just that: a choice, with both options (to forgive or not to forgive) being valid. There’s redemption, there’s healing, there’s moving on together.

Both these hypothetical fics show the same ‘problematic’ ship of BullyXBullied. But while fic 1 basically ignores all the problematic stuff and pretends it’s not there, fic 2 addresses it and tries to deal with it. Issues aren’t swept under the rug, bullshit that should be called out gets called out and stuff that’s just plain wrong is said to be plain wrong and that it shouldn’t happen. In such a situation, I would be extremely against the portrayal of the ship in fic 1, because it just isn’t right to sweep everything under the rug like that. It did happen to these fictional characters and you can’t just pretend it didn’t without any consequences or closure or anything. But I would have nothing against the portrayal of the ship in fic 2, which takes all the problematic sides, acknowledges them and tries to work around them. And to me, in fandom, that’s ultimately the only thing you can judge others for. Not for what they ship, but how they’re shipping it.

And there’s also the question of what you consider ‘problematic’ in some cases. Like the age gap you mentioned, Anon. To me personally, an age gap in and off itself isn’t problematic or controversial. Couples who have 5, 7 or even more years difference between them aren’t something I see a problem with most of the time. The defining factor would be the age of the younger character (if they’re around 10, then they’re definitely too young to be shipped with anyone in the first place) and how the older character deals with that age gap. In most cases, the only real issue portrayed in fics (and it seems to be the main issue IRL as well, though I can’t say I would have a way of knowing) is the issue of the younger character not being ‘legal’, which considering that minors doing ‘certain adult activities’ (*coughcough*) isn’t a new thing at all is utter BS. So long as both characters make an informed decision on what they’re getting into, there’s no issue. It’s all about understanding and consent, more than it is the actual age. But then we can hit the hard limit of a taboo topic if the age gap is too big, with one character being a literal child and the other an adult. We all know what the adult being attracted to a child is called and we all know that it’s considered disgusting and unacceptable.

If I see a fic with that kind of ship and it utterly ignores those issues, I’m going to be horified and disgusted, but I’ll still judge the how of the ship, rather than the ship itself. But if I see a fic in which an adult character feels attraction towards a child and that character or another one (repeatedly) point out it’s wrong? If it’s a story about an adult giving in to his desires while the people around them judge them for it because of how immoral it is? Or a story about an adult feeling attraction to a child and fighting themself on it because it’s wrong? But they still want to be with the child and they constantly fight themself on it because they know they shouldn’t do shit without proper understanding and consent from the child, which they won’t have a chance of getting until the child is older? And they keep struggling between perverse desires they can’t help and the logical knowledge that they must not act on them, must not take advantage of the child’s inno8cence just to get what they want? Well, I’d still cringe at the general theme of it (because ultimately my first reaction is and always will be ‘EW!’), but I’d definitely give the author a big round of applause for having the guts to write such a thing and for handling it that way. (Though seriously, can you imagine such a story evry being written? I can’t, it would blow up faster than the destiel shit today did.) Liking problematic/controversial ships (or any other kind of problematic/controversial content, really) is fine. What really matters is what about it actually draws your interest and what you do with it all.

TL;DR: It’s not about whether or not a ship is problematic and/or controversial. It’s about what the shipper does with the problematic and/or controversial side of it that really matters and it should be the only thing that people get a right to judge.