“How can you ship that, it’s toxic!” is honestly a question that makes no sense to me.
Like, “How can you eat that, it’s spicy!”
That may make you not want to eat it, and I respect your decision. But you’re going to get a bit of a blank look from me.
To continue the metaphor;
Places that serve spicy food (that I have been to) tend to make note of that on their menus, and occasionally note how spicy it is as well.
Sometimes you’ll order a dish and take a bite and say ‘oh, this is hotter than I was expecting.’ At that point, some people will continue to eat it anyway. Maybe they’ll find out that they enjoy it. Some people will have their eyes start to water and they’ll need to eat an entire basket of breadsticks after to get rid of the taste. Some people might offer it to someone else at the table and get another dish that they like better. Those are all reasonable responses to getting food you weren’t expecting.
What you don’t do is order the hottest dish on the menu, and then complain how spicy it is.
Boom.
AFAICT “shipping” has this connotation of “what’s best for the characters” so watching people defend ships that are toxic/unhealthy/abusive/whatever because they’re interesting (and they very well can be) always feels like watching people repeatedly use words slightly wrong and then wonder why they’re misunderstood.
Wait, how am I using words slightly wrong? Am I doing that when I write fic, too?
If so, *uses all the words wrong*
When people say “how can you ship that, it’s toxic” they might be wrongly over generalizing a distaste for “spicyness” into an objective rule, but more often (imo) they’re leaning on certain connotations of shipping: that it’s something one does when one is emotionally involved with a character and wants to see them happy and thriving in a certain relationship (which is obviously anti-thetical to “spicy” ships, given that spicy = toxic here). I say “slightly wrong” because ignoring connotations really isn’t wrong, but at the same time it’s really not surprising that both sides are somewhat mistified at what the other side is even saying.
If people who want “spicy” ships were to consistently say “I think this relationship would be entertaining to watch/read about” instead of “I ship this relationship” I don’t think there’d be nearly half the discourse about this.
That operates from an assumption that the “right” connotation is “shipping means wanting to see a character in the relationship best for them” and not “shipping means wanting to see a character in the relationship most interesting to me.”
I have always assumed people ship things because it’s interesting to them. When did it ever become “what’s best for them”?
No, really, that’s a question – I’m an old school fandom denizen and shipping used to be something you defended on the basis of you liked reading XYZ, or maybe canon supported more interaction of A + B, or at closest the argument that C + D would balance out or cause redemption for one of them, but I can’t say I’ve ever assumed that even the last bit meant “best/healthiest” because it’s not. It’s interesting to me the reader.
To “ship” is short hand slang. I feel like assuming it means “best/healthiest” is reading a lot into what someone else is saying. Also assuming someone wants to see a character happy and thriving is sort of counter to every fanfic author or reader who likes putting the characters through the wringer. I might like a happy ending, but I want 100k of wringer squeezing, angst, hurt, and agony first.
I think, really, shipping is “what makes the character tastiest to me”, and the default vanilla kind of flavour is “what makes the character happiest and healthiest”. This is the kind of flavour I like, so I very very rarely ship ships that “taste” any other way–for me, “shipping” is usually synonymous with “wanting the character at their happiest and healthiest”.
But those of us who like vanilla need to remember that ours is not the only flavour preference, and other flavour preferences aren’t wrong.
I suspected some months ago that a lot of the wank about “shipping” might actually be an issue of semantics, and this thread certainly seems to bear that out.
@szhmidty I’m not sure how long you’ve been in fandom, but in my twenty-ish years floating around various fan communities, it’s only very recently and in very limited Tumblr circles that I’ve seen people using the term “ship” to refer exclusively to healthy relationships. Browsing through the notes on this post, longer-term fans all seem to agree that “ship” has traditionally meant putting characters together for any reason that seems interesting – not necessarily as representation of an ideal or healthy relationship.
Yeah, this. “I ship it” has a huge variety of meanings. For me, it can mean anything from “So what if they’ve never met? They’d be hot together!” to “Oh man they could break each other to pieces, I need to read that” to “What if?” to “wow, I never even thought of that before but that art is GORGEOUS” to “obviously they need to be together forever.” It says nothing about whether I think the releationship is healthy. It says nothing about whether I think it’s ever going to be canon. Fiction isn’t only wish-fulfillment or morality plays, it’s a lot richer than that. So many flavors all immersed together, so rich and complex. Like a good vindaloo – you appreciate the complexity even while your eyeballs are melting just a little. (I crave spicy food like air.)
I once read that “I ship it” is shorthand for “I think there’s a story there, and I’m interested in that story.” It doesn’t make a statement on what kind of story it is–a lovely romance unfolding, or dirty fucking, or two people being manipulative toxic shits to each other. Those are all interesting stories, and some people are going to like some of those stories more than others.
Published
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 