#ship war discourse

[shaylogic]

Inevitable Payneland

I heard some folks were worrying that Payneland wasn't endgame suddenly? What, cuz we're exploring Catwin, Cryland, and hopefully Montwin before we get there?

Have you not seen the signs? Look for the red and blue everywhere.

Cat King's sign isn't blue and ORANGE, now is it?

Monty's red-blue plaid and two-sided red-blue scarf, even under his solidly blue-yearning jacket.

Difficult to see, but despite Crystal's red socks (starting to fall for Charles despite herself), Niko's got one red and one blue shoe on.

They literally never give us a second to doubt.

Please rest assured and enjoy sipping on your slow burn. <3

[imakatperson22]

Yes, I ship Buddie.

Yes, I ship Tevan.

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

Which best describes the ship you're currently most obsessed with?

it doesn't have to accurately describe the ship, just the descriptor you think is the most fitting. all gendered language is there to preserve the meme and should be read as gender neutral. please reblog for a greater sample size. if you are equally obsessed with multiple ships or currently not obsessed with any, just pick a ship you enjoy (if you don't like any ships, the dynamic you think sounds the most entertaining)

edit: if multiple fit perfectly, chose the aspect you like best about the ship

[celtrist]

It's okay to be emotional over a ship.

It's okay to be emotional over a ship. It's okay to be emotional over characters. It's okay to share grievances over a ship as much as it's okay to gush over a ship. It's okay to feel so overwhelmingly negatively over a ship just as much as it's okay to feel so overwhelmingly positive.

While it's always going to be better to focus on positives, it can also be just as good to let out any negatives you might have about something rather than bottling it in and, for some, feeling alone in your thoughts about it.

It is so, so, SO OKAY to be so heavy in emotions concerning a ship whether negative or positive because it means you're invested in the characters and their relationships. When spaces seem to allow only positivity when some people might have some negative thoughts on a ship, it really negates any conversations about it and even understanding sides of why someone may or may not ship something.

While understandable, there is a double standard between being negative and positive about ships (or portrayal of characters). If you feel overwhelmingly negative about something, "you need to go touch grass". If you feel overwhelmingly positive about something, "go at it queen". I would personally argue we all need to touch grass.

It is NOT okay to harass others. It is NOT okay to let your emotions dictate that you should attack somebody for LIKING a certain ship or DISLIKING a certain ship. Your emotions DO NOT dictate how OTHERS should feel.

It is okay to be negative about a character or ship as much as it's okay to be positive about them. Neither side of being for or against a ship is more virtuous than the other. It's okay to have some fucking emotions regardless if they're positive or not, because it means you CARE about the media and the characters in it.

No, you should not revolve your whole online experience in negativity. Find the positive in things you DO enjoy. But to brush off people who vehemently might dislike a character or ship as "losers with no lives" is to disregard a person's emotions on something. And if you do wanna think that mindset, congrats, people who obsessively love a character or ship are just the same by your logic. Obsession is obsession, regardless if it's negative or positive.

TL;DR, If it's okay to be overwhelmingly positive in liking something like a ship or character, it should be just as okay to be negative in disliking something like a ship or character. Just as long as it's not the ONLY thing you focus on and no one is actively being bullied, attacked, or harassed about it. And of course, either way, positive or negative, it is all fiction, and a real person should not be attacked or harassed for it. And if you don't want to indulge in negativity you might have, 100% valid. Both sides always need to take a step back into reality.

[theweeklydiscourse]

I’m sick of people passing off patronizing and condescending commentary about how naive and impressionable women are as useful and educational. These people will base their analysis of fiction on sexist notions about how easily women are “tempted “ by malevolent villains and then act as if that’s some revolutionary take. They’ll unironically construe the narrative in a way that takes away all agency from the female heroine and frame her decisions as entirely the result of the villain’s manipulation.

They wring their hands about how dangerous it is for women to be exposed to these stories and moan about how terrible it is that hot villains appeal to the “baser instincts” and tempt female viewers further (Yes, I actually saw someone make this argument) It’s truly bizarre to see people agreeing with such patronizingly sexist rhetoric and saying things like “I miss the days when villain romances were cautionary tales and not encouraged.” As if women thirsting after attractive fictional villains is some epidemic that threatens society.

It’s especially irritating when women are the ones saying these things. They want to believe that they are a rare exception that, unlike those other brainless girls, can understand that liking hot villains will threaten their morals and lead them astray…OH THE HORROR!! Please save your dramatic preaching for the next purity conference and stop pretending that your sanctimonious commentary has any substance whatsoever.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

personally, I think people are allowed to ship a “toxic ship” as long as it’s fictional and they can separate fiction from reality. shipping a fictional “problematic ship” doesn’t mean you’re “abuse apologist” in real life. the same way people who enjoy fictional villains are not “murderers” in real life.

it’s okay if you think this ship makes you uncomfortable and so you personally dislike it. what you can and should do is avoid their contents and refrain from interacting with people who do ship them. that mute and block buttons are your friends.

what you shouldn’t do, though, is harass people who ship them and brag about how they’re “red flags irl” and how you’re “morally superior” simply because of fictional characters.

I promise you, minding your own business and not caring about what ship strangers on the internet ship will make your fandom so much less toxic and a whole lot more enjoyable.

[scarfonbannermanroad]

Aroace shipping discourse is such a strange phenomenon. I'm sure it happens with other sexualities too but whenever an aroace character pops up its like a senate hearing over how to treat them.

[elf-trash]

reposting this bc the OP blocked me (and is blocking anyone else who disagrees which means blocked people can't reblog) and i want to say this loud and with my whole chest!!!!!

another Dragon Age fic was recently outed as being AI, and this is what the writer had to say for themselves about it:

so actually, Grammarly uses generative AI and is just as bad as ChatGPT. it also objectively makes your writing worse, it sucks the voice out of your prose and turns it into corporate sounding homogenized paste. it's also unethical for all the same reasons any generative AI is unethical. get a writing group and have a real human beta read for you if you don't trust yourself to check your own grammar etc. but honestly something unpolished and written entirely by your human brain and human imagination will ALWAYS be better than AI slop.

also, the part about published authors doing this is patently untrue. i know this is a huge problem in the self-publishing space, but most publishers now are including clauses in their contracts that expressly forbid the use of AI in ANY part of the creative process. this includes using ChatGPT to generate or clean up outlines or Grammarly to spellcheck and revise. so if you're trying to publish, don't fucking do this or you could literally be asked to return an advance if you get caught.

i've posted about this in the past, but AI detectors are actually shocking accurate these days. i've tested them extensively recently and they can consistently and correctly flag individual sentences written by ChatGPT in an otherwise original passage. and they almost never flag false positives. so the argument that AI detectors can't be trusted is just flat out wrong. are they correct 100% of the time? no. but can they indicate with a high degree of accuracy if AI was used in some capacity? absolutely, especially if there is additional evidence.

and for all the people hand wringing about AI detectors flagging false positives, let me just say this: if something is not AI written it is very easy to prove. you can't write anything of any considerable length without leaving a massive paper trail of notes and drafts. almost all writing software tracks changes and makes it very easy to prove you wrote something yourself. being falsely being accused of AI isn't actually a real problem and is only being made to seem as such by people who are trying to get away with and justify using AI or who are worried about getting caught.

i think a lot of people are just lured by a seemingly easy shortcut, and to their untrained eye, what the AI is spitting out feels "better" to them than their own writing. but i promise you it's not. trust your own brain and put in the work to improve at your craft rather than outsourcing the gift of your imagination to a robot that steals from other people's work.

i will continue to die on this hill!!!!!

[takemetodragonstone]

people being upset about bix/cassian and the baby because they think it interferes with jyn/cassian is hilarious. one of the first things we learn about cassian in andor is that he’s a player. like I’m sorry you feel morally conflicted but have you considered there is no morally correct ship and you can hold space for both in your head especially if that’s what the narrative is directly offering you

[nqueso-lies]

Hey, guys!

I just heard from whateverfuckingfandom7532 that this actor said this thing to another actor and idk but I'm sure it's true because it's on the nazi bird site. The video has awful fucking audio but ONE person in the comments has super human hearing and verified the argument that no one else can hear. Also the two actors went on to laugh and seemingly have a fun time together.... I feel so bad for the actor I stan only. What a sacrifice that angel is making.

This is how so many of you sound! It's fucking weird. Knock it off.

[velvet4510]

16 Ships That Truly Define “Matching Each Other’s Freak”

Romeo and Juliet

Benedick x Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing)

Jane Eyre x Mr. Rochester

Heathcliff x Catherine (Wuthering Heights)

Amy x Laurie (Little Women)

Algernon x Cecily (The Importance of Being Earnest)

Scarlett O’Hara x Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind)

Éowyn x Faramir (The Lord of the Rings)

Magneto x Professor X (X-Men)

Han Solo x Princess Leia (Star Wars)

Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy

Jack x Rose (Titanic)

Jyn x Cassian (Rogue One)

Diego x Lila (The Umbrella Academy)

Prince Henry x Alex (Red, White & Royal Blue)

Agatha x Rio (Agatha All Along)

[nadiajustbe]

The other thing I immensely love about Bartimaeus of Uruk is how inhuman he is. Usually in media authors tend to "humanise" inhuman characters, by giving them stable human appearance or/and character traits. This vampire is actually a 17yo guy. This devil is a 30yo man. This magical god is a always teenage girl and they act accordingly. This is an easy route. Johnathan Stroud doesn't chose it.

Bartimaeus is not a woman but nor he is a man (even despite using he/him pronounce primarily it is canon all spirits are genderless out of nature, some just stend to stick more to one gender than the other). Sure he is not a "child" but nor he is an "adult", because he was never a human in the first place and was never fully presented as either of this. He doesn't devide love in platonic and romantic and doesn't feel a need to clarify. He struggles to explains the way he thinks and difficult for it to translate it to a human reader. He doesn't act as someone of a particular age in "human" understanding as well. He knows thousands of languages and switches between them. He loves humanity and yet still has an unique outside perception of it because he's not a human. He doesn't fit in any of human boxes to check, he's everything and nothing at once. He can look an act of any age or gender or feeling and perhaps fit none of those in your mind.

And this gives so much freedom for creating and fanfiction. Go on make him a young adult college student! Make him a middle aged man who has thousands of jobs! Make him a fourteen year old Ptolemy's twin! Create an AU where he as an anger or a cupid or an ageless God and none of it would be OOC to him! Human!Bartimaeus can be a traveler, a performer, a coffee shop barista, a hired killer! Perhaps don't make him a human at all, what If he is a tired cat who Kitty feeds on her way to work in a shop?

The possibilities are endless because instead of being a human with some cool flashing eyes and superpowers he is not actually a human. He's Bartimaeus of Uruk and that's it.

[commander-fox-enthusiasts]

Every-time I think about a Fox ship I don’t get the appeal of I think about when people make the argument ‘they haven’t even met in canon’/‘they hate each other in their one canon interaction!’ and remember how dumb that idea is.

This man deserves everyone

[justcallmemrslupin]

🐺💥 Canon vs Fanon: Remadora vs W*lfstar 💥🐺

Someone on TikTok commented under a post about Tonks: “I hated her relationship with Remus. W*lfstar made much more sense.”

Hmmm... More sense? Really??!

How can a fanon ship built entirely on projection make “more sense” than a canon relationship that showed emotional growth, mutual sacrifice, and real consequences?

Ok, let's brake this down:

Canon Sirius never gave much thought to Remus’ well-being.

- In Prisoner of Azkaban, we learn that Sirius literally used Remus as a weapon against Snape. That wasn’t a joke. If Remus had attacked Snape, he wouldn’t just have been expelled. He could have been executed. Sirius didn’t care.

- Sirius openly wished for a full moon when he was bored in Order of the Phoenix. Remus answered him dryly, because Sirius was being inconsiderate again.

- Sirius didn’t even trust Remus during the war.

He advised James to make Peter the Secret Keeper instead, specifically because he didn’t trust Remus. He says so himself in Book 3, and he even apologizes for it later (so no, it's not a headcanon that he didn't trust him, it's canon, it's his own words).

- Sirius left Remus nothing in his will.

Not a thing. Remus was poor, homeless, grieving, and Sirius — supposedly his best friend — didn’t leave him so much as a spare room in Grimmauld Place. That doesn’t scream “deep emotional connection” to me.

And the go-to argument?

"But Sirius became an Animagus to help Remus!"

So did James. So did Peter. They were teenagers, it was exciting, and for Sirius, it was probably more about doing whatever James was doing than any grand act of loyalty. Sure, Remus saw it as a huge act of friendship, but Remus was a lonely kid with no friends. Of course he idealized them. Even JKR says in his official bio that his biggest flaw was cutting his friends far too much slack because he was afraid of losing them.

Meanwhile, Tonks:

- Lost her powers and her Patronus changed because Remus tried to protect her by pushing her away.

- Fought for his love despite prejudice, danger, and family disapproval.

- Was nearly killed multiple times because she chose to be with Remus — Bellatrix targeted her because she married him. Guess what? Yes, Tonks actually DIED because she married Remus!

- Left her newborn baby behind to go fight beside him, because she 'couldn’t bear not knowing" (her words) if he was okay.

JKR’s own canon bio for Remus confirms: he had never fallen in love before Tonks. As for Sirius? He always got the women.

And don’t get me started on fandom reaching:

• “Remus was living with Sirius!” — So were a dozen other Order members. Including Tonks.

• “Remus looked at Sirius for 40 lines!” — Because Sirius was unstable, and Remus was bracing to intervene. Which he did. Like the responsible adult he was.

Remadora is not just canon. It’s about unconditional love in the face of prejudice. About two people who chose each other even when the world said they shouldn’t.

And for the record? I’m not even a hardcore Remadora shipper. I’ve always written Remus with my OC, before Remadora was even a thing. But saying "Wolfstar makes more sense" is not only ignoring canon. It’s ignoring character dynamics, consequences, and context.

Ship whoever you want. Really. But don’t pretend fanon is more "logical" than the canon story about love, sacrifice, and growth.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

one of the things I see the most in any fandom space is pearl clutching people saying how “shocked” they are when it turns out a “problematic” ship or a “problematic” character is loved a lot in said fandom.

the most recent example for me would be from this poll where it asks people to vote which ship they like the most, thousands of fans have voted, and the results happen to show the ship that is — according to these people — most problematic has won. needless to say, hundreds of these “noble people who usually harass real people, who just want to ship their little ship in peace, over fictional characters in the name of being morally superior” are so shocked that such a “harmful and problematic” ship is the one that is most liked within the fandom they’re in.

I mean… I don’t know what to tell you, but just because you’re “loud” and you like to “witch hunt” people who enjoy fictional things that you think is Bad, doesn’t mean the ship or the character you deemed Problematic is actually hated by the majority of the fandom you’re in.

sure, you are allowed to hate these ships and these characters for any reason, but other people are allowed to like them. and surprise surprise, the world doesn’t revolve around you and your mindset that Liking Bad Fictional Things Equals Condoning Bad Things in Real Life.

shocking, I know. but most sane people can actually distinguish the differences between fiction and reality. and that’s why people who like fictional villains aren’t actually serial killer in real life.

fandom is and has always supposed to be a safe and fun space in which anyone can like and enjoy whatever they want. it never is, and it’s never supposed to be a courtroom where someone’s moral compass is judged based on how they enjoy Fictional Things. because the whole point of enjoying a ship or liking a fictional character is that it’s fictitious, it’s not real. no one in real life is getting killed because a hot fictional villain is loved by hundreds and thousands of fans.

I hope you feel better soon though 🤍