Thoughts Aren’t Real

The first thing you learn in therapy for anxiety is that thoughts aren’t real.

So no, someone’s problématique fictional ship isn’t going to “normalise” anything in real life. I assure you, whatever you think is so toxic or problematic about other people’s ships (and not yours, of course!), all of those things have existed in fiction long before 21st-century fictional shipping.

And the reason why all of those toxic or problematic things exist in fiction in the first place is that people were doing those behaviours long before fiction itself was a thing. So no, fiction just isn’t going to “normalise” anything that didn’t already exist.

This argument is as stupid as saying that “video games cause violence”. This might come as a shock but people have, in fact, been absolutely violent towards each other before and without video games.

But.

And this is an important but. This is where we get to nuance.

It’s also true that whenever powers that be or powers that would be want to influence or change people’s perception of something, they start with mass media. Fiction, art, music, films, news, non-fiction etc.

However, that only works on people it would’ve worked on anyway and it usually lasts only so long as someone doesn’t ever get in touch with reality.

But no individual is going to wake up one day and read — I don’t even know, Killing Stalking? — and decide that hey, stalking and killing is really cool actually. The people who would do that would do that without that extremely niche webtoon existing.

To be honest, if someone thinks that shipping or fiction is going to “normalise” anything in real life, it shows that they’re either way too young to be having those conversations or that they’ve just never really engaged with any sort of fiction in their life.

Murder Mystery Writers Are Not, In Fact, Murderers

Or the one in which I will ramble about Supernatural, wincest, and other works of fiction dealing with the subject of fictional love between fictional siblings. If reading about any of that bothers someone, there’s backspace or that lovely x in the right corner of the tab.

Okay?

Okay!

Recently I’ve been reading episode meta about the wincest subtext in Supernatural and once again I’ve been reminded that Supernatural was the funniest non-incest incest show, ha ha.

For those who don’t know, wincest refers to the ship between Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester and yes, before someone needs to point it out, they’re brothers. The show has its roots in gothic horror and what is a little incest subtext in gothic horror? Nothing, I tell you. Also, apparently the creator liked writing unspoken homoeroticism in his works so… you may make of that what you will, ha ha.

I’ve also noticed that it’s generally impossible to talk about the wincest subtext with a casual or peripheral fan. Which is a bit of a shame because it is there, it is a part of the show, the horror story started with the brothers’ mother kissing her demon-possessed father and selling her child down the line after all.

But if you try to talk about the wincest subtext with a casual fan, all you’ll get in reply is “That’d be incest”.¹ And I can’t help it, I’m just…

You are an adult, aren’t you?

That’d be fictional?

To be fair, the casual fan can absolutely miss the subtext, especially if they don’t pay much attention to subtext in the first place. So if someone interested in Supernatural reads this post, don’t let my talk about the wincest subtext scare you away from giving the show a try, ha ha.

But it honestly feels ridiculous that you can’t talk about one aspect of a work of fiction because “that’d be incest”. It’d be like — what can I use as an example? — not being able to talk about Koi Kaze, which actually is a romance story about siblings? It also has an age gap so it’s double problématique, ha ha. Or maybe Oedipus Rex would’ve been a better example here?

I mean, I’ve just never had this reaction to fictional incest even when I was ten? I was like, “wait, weren’t they siblings? was there a mistake? no? oh, okay” and then I just rolled with it because it was simply another part of the story.

Koi Kaze was a manga about two siblings falling in love and, to be honest, I was more weirded out by the sister looking like a ten-year-old because of the art style than I was about the fictional incest between ink siblings.

Flowers of Evil was a manhwa about twins who were arguably in love, but I didn’t like it because I thought the brother was an enormous loser. I also felt that the sister was more codependent than in love with her brother and that she actually fell in love with a classmate. She just didn’t realise it because of her obsessive codependency. Also, spoilers: they both died. It was more of a badly written edgy tragedy than anything else, to be honest.

Haikei, Niisan-sama was a manga about two brothers, which was actually quite delicately written. And ambiguous enough that you can ignore the romance aside from one non-brotherly kiss. So if I’d recommend anything on this list, I guess it would be this one.

Killing Stalking was a horror webtoon about a serial killer and his stalker, and the serial killer was sexually abused by his mother and the stalker was sexually abused by his uncle. I actually wanted to do a post about the tragedy of Sangwoo because, as far as I know, this webtoon was seriously read by a bunch of people whose literacy was in the pits and it turned so ironic it was like performance art. But I’d have to re-read the webtoon and I… don’t feel like doing that, ha ha. The ending was rushed and bad, okay? To be fair, I don’t exactly know what I was expecting but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it.

Most of these examples are South Korean or Japanese, though.²

Well, for an infamous American example, there’s Flowers in the Attic. I haven’t read the books but I have them on my reading list because I’m curious. Another famous example is the Lannister Twins from A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones for those who only watched the television show.

Regardless, the reason for this long-winded post (mostly) about fictional siblings loving each other fictionally is that… it’s fiction, okay? The characters are nothing but abstractions of ink and text or code? Like, I just honestly don’t see the point of getting morally outraged or offended at ink?^{3, 4}

But, Chicory, a more astute reader might ask, didn’t you get morally outraged at Harry Potters?

And the answer is, in fact, no. Those books aren’t my mortal enemies because of moral offence. Those books are my mortal enemies because they’re so badly written. As I already said in the chapter breakdowns, they’re so self-contradicting and badly written that they’re basically relentlessly gaslighting the reader.

Another reason why I brought up Supernatural is that I once again stumbled on someone who thinks that Dean/Cass was a thing on the show and that Cass was canonically LGBT+. Which… yeah, in a way because he was an asexual multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent the size of a Chrysler building who had a preference for women when he was either human or graceless (probably because his vessel was a heterosexual man). But Dean/Cass? Like, no. They’re not even particularly good friends let alone more than friends.

This one was particularly funny, though, because this person thinks that another non-canon pairing was totally canon. Like, this person seems to be consistently failing at media literacy?

I honestly don’t know why so many non-canon shippers want canon and fandom validation for their ships? Like, embrace the non-canon. It doesn’t make the ship any less than.

Also, a disclaimer: I’m strictly talking about fiction, okay? I’m talking about abstractions of ink and text or code. Merely writing or talking about fiction is not the same as approving or advocating for something in that fiction. For example, most murder mystery writers are not, in fact, murderers. In real life incest is taboo and usually sexual abuse which is, of course, bad and that should go without saying. But in fiction it can be abuse, romance, tragedy or anything in between.

Thought crimes don’t exist and neither do someone’s thought heroics.

Okay, that said… how do I title this post, ha ha?

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¹ Talking about Supernatural is kind of difficult anyway because the brothers are canon. They’re just not romantic or sexual on the show. But they are platonic life partners who reunited for eternity in heaven.

² Never mind that Japanese BL features surprisingly a lot of incest in various combinations so if you read a lot — like me — then you just kind of quickly get used to it. I don’t care about most of it so I don’t read it but I am willing to give something a try if it sounds interesting. Or if it sounds so terrible that it must be hilarious, ha ha. I usually end up regretting that second, though. Curiosity killed the cat, indeed. I mean, I could tell horror stories about the stuff I’ve seen in fiction but I am trying to keep my blog relatively clean so I’ll refrain, ha ha. But considering all the horror I’ve seen, fictional love between fictional siblings honestly doesn’t even make my list of problematic stuff in fiction.

³ This is particularly annoying because the people who are all ~that’d be incest~ are hardly consistent about it. I mean, if you want to censor one problematic fictional thing, you might as well start censoring the really problematic fictional things — such as murder, genocide, sexual assault, torture etc — and lo and behold, soon we would have very little fiction left. Not to mention that I’m not seeing anyone out there suffixing ships like Voldemort/Harry or Sephiroth/Cloud with ‘ew’. That ‘ew’ is… like, it’s particularly ridiculous if it comes from middle-aged adults.

⁴ Live action is more of a grey area, though, because it does involve real people.

TLDR: Rowling Is Completely Unserious

So~ since I finished Chapter 12, Skogsrå’s Grove of Bramble: The Mountain King, I thought I might as well use it to illustrate how utterly unserious Rowling is as an author.

Though, I already have so few people reading my blog, ha ha. So I’m sorry if I’m annoying anyone with more regular posts? Especially since I’ve accidentally messed up with a few. Sorry about that!

You know, the thing is. Ultimately, Harry Potters are so porous and badly written that you can pretty much read anything into them, whether Rowling intended it or not. As I keep saying, the books are a shallow self-contradicting mess that relentlessly gaslight the reader. And I think it’s this porousness that has kept the franchise alive for so long instead of any sort of literary merit because there basically is none.

Which is why I always personally run into the wall of “Rowling is not a good author” instead of finding it interesting to engage in fanon or speculation of “What Did Rowling Mean With This”. Because the answer is, nothing. She didn’t mean anything with any of the drivel she wrote — aside from her midlife crisis of faith and obsession with death — and you can see it in the world-building and plot segregation and thorough narrative dissonance, never mind all the little moments. Such as Molly asking, “What’s the platform number”.

Like, woman, you and your entire litter have gone to Hogwarts? Why the fuck are you asking “what’s the platform number”?

Though~ I will eventually post my Totally Awesome For Reals Ron/Ginny proofs for fun and absolutely no profit, ha ha.

Let’s take Quirrell and Harry from Book One:

Quirrell raised his hand to perform a deadly curse, but Harry, by instinct, reached up and grabbed Quirrell’s face –

‘AAAARGH!’

Quirrell rolled off him, his face blistering too, and then Harry knew: Quirrell couldn’t touch his bare skin, not without suffering terrible pain – his only chance was to keep hold of Quirrell, keep him in enough pain to stop him doing a curse.

Harry jumped to his feet, caught Quirrell by the arm and hung on as tight as he could. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off –

‘He left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies.’

Bolded by yours truly.

Dumbles says that Tommy left Quirrell to die but who actually got Quirrell to the point of dying? It wasn’t Tommy. It was Harry. Harry straight-up boiled a man to death, at eleven years old, no matter how much it was self-defence.

And absolutely nothing was said about it afterwards. Harry murdered a man in self-defence, at eleven years old, and Harry never thinks or feels anything about it because that’s how fucking brainless he is and that’s how utterly unserious Rowling is as an author.¹ Her first book ended in the happy climax of her eleven-year-old main character murdering a man in self-defence and she didn’t find it interesting enough to mention or acknowledge. She didn’t even acknowledge that she was not acknowledging it.

Like, there’s literally nothing in the narrative to even hint that Rowling even thought about it.

And I can’t even begin to explain how frustrating that is. You have six books of Rowling’s morons acting like complete psychopaths, the constant unacknowledgement and trivialisation of violence, and yet in Books Six and Seven I’m suddenly supposed to believe that not only is Harry ~full of love~ but he totally cares about people dying? Or at least about some random bus driver who gawked at him once dying.

Like, this is the same moron who denies that he can’t be a wizard because he hasn’t been able to exact his wrath and revenge on helpless muggles? This is the same moron who enjoys other people’s fear, discomfort and panic? This is the same moron who consistently threatens and assaults people with physical violence? This is the same moron who murders a man in self-defence at eleven years old and then never thinks about it? This is the same moron whose first instinct for anger and hurt is to torture the source of it? This is the same moron who spends an entire year smirking at a scared girl’s permanent scarring? This is the same moron who almost murders someone again “in self-defence” and then cares more about an inanimate object and quidditch than almost murdering someone?

And I’m supposed to believe that this moron is so ~full of love~? I’m sorry, but how does anyone take anything in these books seriously?

Contrast that with Bramble: The Mountain King, which is actually good (I adore that game, ha ha). Olle goes stab-happy at a murderous magical creature’s face and when he snaps out of it, he’s completely traumatised. He’s covered in blood, horrified and in shock, crying, and guilt-ridden at what he did. And Skogsrå would’ve murdered him and had a giggle about it if given half the chance.

But it doesn’t matter what or who or how Skogsrå was. Because ultimately Olle’s reaction wasn’t about her. It was about Olle. What kind of character he is. And unlike Harry, Olle actually is sweet, kind and full of love. And Bramble: The Mountain King actually has competent writers to show that.

In short, Rowling is an unserious hack and I really don’t understand why these books still have hordes of people obsessed with them. But I guess that goes back to what I said about the porousness. And probably all the fan-imagined slash that also don’t have the writing there. Well, except Hagrid and Tommy ironically but no one’s out there shipping them. Aside from me. I seriously need to write that third- and fifth-year AU for them.

I mean… I guess there really is no accounting for taste? But you do know that you can actually like good stories? Likewise, you can read actual LGBT stories that don’t involve self-inserting, projecting and twisting established characters into pretzels? Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to write a review of sorts for one.

Okay, and now I can get back to free writing Ron/Ginny, ha ha~.

Also, if I’m totally honest and serious, Ron/Ginny has more textual and subtextual support than basically any of the slash ships in Harry Potters and Ron/Ginny is utterly nonexistent. So… to each their own.

Oh, and one last thing for possible haters: this entire fandom is predicated on mostly adults obsessing over these children’s books so they can write all of the underage and adult characters fucking each other in various combinations regardless of their canonically expressed sexualities. So maybe, you know, leave the ship shaming at the door? Just a thought. Or at the very minimum don’t gossip about it in someone’s blog behind people’s backs like you’re in middle school?

No one has the “moral high ground” in fandom spaces. Also, the characters are fictional so it literally doesn’t matter. Well, except for the bad takes and worse fan fiction, ha ha.

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¹ It’s even more ridiculous when you consider Book Seven in which Harry tells Tommy to “be a man, feel a little remorse”. Like, how you felt about Quirrell? I honestly despise this brainless brat.

Character Flaws

are only interesting if the narrative acknowledges them as such. Otherwise, the narrative is basically gaslighting you.

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Which, of course, doesn’t mean flaws that people outright fabricate or character quirks that weren’t meant to be taken as flaws. Both of those happen particularly in shipping discourse.

Pet Peeve of Literary Discussion

When someone discusses their personal experiences¹ while supposedly analysing fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s personal experiences are perfectly valid for liking or not liking something in fiction. If something in fiction resonates with someone’s personal experiences then that’s great.

But you’re literally not engaging with the actual text and dear internet strangers, how is anybody supposed to argue or debate with your personal experiences? They’re personal for a reason?

You know?

For example:

“I don’t like this fictional couple because of *insert personal experiences here* so I will lowkey or outright say that this fictional couple isn’t canon, and the (non-canon) couple I do like is also or more canon.”

Like, I don’t like Harry/Ginny or Ron/Hermione from Harry Potter, not because of any personal experiences but because they’re honestly badly written, okay? Ginny and Ron deserve better. Ginny deserves better than a kid who literally couldn’t waste one brain cell to ever think about her and then reduced her to nothing more than a body to re-create his loved ones. And Ron deserves better than a girl who attacks and scars him for the great offence of dating someone else when she never acted on her own attraction(?) to him. Pre-domestic violence isn’t any more cute than domestic violence, just saying. Neither is girl-on-boy violence any more cute than boy-on-girl violence.

But I still would never say that they’re not canon or that the ships I liked are more canon than them. Though, I do want to do a post on my totally awesome for reals Ron/Ginny proofs for fun and absolutely no profit, ha ha.

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¹ And you can replace experiences with preference too.

Ship Wars

do not endure because “both pairings are plausible or canonical”. Neither does the existence of ship wars imply either of those things.

For example, Supernatural. Sam/Dean was never going to be explicitly romantic or sexual, and Dean/Cass just never was. (And to be honest, they’re not even that great as friends so I don’t even…?)

Ship wars endure because some people truly cannot comprehend that liking a pairing is not the same as that pairing being canon or that it should’ve been canon. It does not make it canon. It does not mean you are entitled to it being canon. Or that everyone else needs to play along with you pretending it is/should’ve been canon.

For example, I like Ron/Ginny from Harry Potter. I could have all the laughs about the text and I could make all the essays about how it’s a plausible interpretation (and trust me, I could make it totally plausible), but neither of those would ever mean it’s canon or make it canon.

Shipping is supposed to be fun. Not an ever-microscopic scrutiny of cherry-picked moments of the source material to prop up one ship and completely demonise, misinterpret and invalidate the other (usually canon) ship.

Just say you like a pairing and go.

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Which of course gets muddied a bit when there is legitimate criticism to be made about canon pairings, such as Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione in Harry Potter. But again, there’s a difference between saying “these are badly written” as everything else in the text and “these don’t exist, and even if they do exist, here’s xyz why they’re misogynistic, toxic and bad and why you — the real person who likes the ship — are misogynistic, toxic and random ists for liking it”.

Like, please. Stop conflating social justice verbosity with shipping. Because, trust me, your ship is not some new groundbreaking thing that would’ve changed media and life on Earth forever.

Especially when most people don’t even seem to engage with the actual characters involved in their ship and instead turn them either into completely bland trope fill-ins or self-inserts who just share their names and looks.

Fandom Purity Spirals

There’s something really funny about people purity spiralling ships (fan-created fictional pairings from published fictional works, basically) specifically because it’s, like, if these things existing in fan-created spaces and works bother someone, I can pretty much tell they’ve never read anything other than fan fiction.

Like, if someone thinks “problematic” ships are just fan-created ship things then imagine what kind of monsters you find in original fiction¹ and let’s not even get started on what people have been getting up to in real life since before the first human stood up, consensually or nonconsensually. And people usually are so weird about their specific moral objections too.

For example: Oh, I don’t mind these two characters being serial killers but their relationship is so toxic. Or you have a fandom with major age gaps and power imbalances, necrophilia, bestiality, (gang) rape, other consent issues, torture, etc. and then people draw the line on consensual incest between adults and it’s like? Really? That’s the line for you? That’s the part that makes you go nope?

I mean, there’s just something funny about people specifically complaining about consensual incest in fiction (or fan fiction) when there are loads more problematic stuff in fiction, including but not limited to genocide, pedophilia, murder, violence, torture, (gang) rape, major age gaps, major power imbalances, necrophilia, bestiality, abuse, bullying, mutilation, etc. Those are like water off a duck’s back but fictional incest between fictional characters, now that’s bad. And I think a part of that boils down to this: can you separate reality from fiction and can you separate yourself from fiction? Because most people are unlikely to experience any of the aforementioned but almost every person does have a family.

But as I’ve said before if fictional incest between fictional characters makes someone automatically think about their family then that’s a little bit weirder than just the fictional incest existing, I think.^{2, 3}

Obviously, there are a lot of things I wouldn’t check out even out of curiosity so I just do this neat thing where I don’t think about them or go looking for them and then have moral vapours about it. And if I do check something out against my better judgement then that’s on me really — and I might complain about it on my blog if it’s badly written. But otherwise I’d just go yep! this was a mistake! and then proceed to never think about it again.

Besides, if people are going to purity police ships maybe start with real person ships because those involve real people at least? Including real minors.

Moreover, fiction is a more complex — issue? problem? concept? thing? let’s go with thing — than a lot of pro-fictioneers acknowledge but it’s also not as, I don’t even know, nefarious as most anti-fictioneers make it out to be?

I mean, at the end of the day basically the only valid criticism of a work of fiction is if it’s well-written or not.

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¹ Though, honestly I dislike using the term “original” fiction because there are at least 60,000 years of continuous human story-telling. So most of it just isn’t original anymore in any meaningful sense.

² Of course, if the characters or the dynamic between them resembles one’s own then I can understand being uncomfortable about it. And I really wish I wouldn’t need to make these disclaimers and people would just implicitly understand that yes, of course, ha ha.

³ And it’s not as if reading about murders makes anyone think about murdering people so…? Why the focus on fictional incest as the be-all and end-all of problematic fiction that should be banned?

My Favourite Pairings

So I thought I’d write about stuff I like for a change. I’ve wanted to do a post about this for a while to see if there’s some overlap but on the other hand, it does feel a bit embarrassing because ships are kind of personal? But I’ve mentioned these in other posts anyway so. I guess I can deal with the embarrassment, ha ha.

I’m not exactly an active shipper. I can basically read about any old pairing out of curiosity but for me to really get into a ship and want to write about it, I need a dynamic that I find interesting and worth exploring. Even then, my own writing for said ships tends to slant more towards “familial” because I’m of the opinion that any relationship that lasts long enough inevitably becomes more “familial” than — *gestures* — infinitely obsessive passion or whatever? Moreover, utterly contradictorily, I find sincerely platonic relationships far more romantic than explicitly romantic or sexual relationships so… that all kind of shines through, ha ha.

I don’t really have a lot of ships and I’m kind of monogamous about it; if I ship characters, I ship them only with each other and I usually only have one ship from a particular work of fiction. Because, as I said, I need a dynamic I can get interested in. I’m not into it just to smash paper dolls together.

Which is why it’s kind of funny when I was once asked why I ship Katsuki and Izuku from My Hero Academia just because I’ve repeatedly expressed that I don’t like how Izuku’s character was written. Like, why don’t I ship Katsuki with Todoroki or Kirishima?

And I was just…

One) It’s not really your business what reasons I have for shipping something?

Two) Those are completely different dynamics?

Anyhow~ my favourite pairings. It’s been a while since I’ve seen or read some of this stuff so I might not go at length about some of them.

Supernatural, Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

Sam and Dean are actually the first ship I had. Supernatural was just one of the most hilarious experiences of my life because these two brothers are so utterly weird about each other. The show depicted them as the central “romance”, constantly paralleled them to fictional and real-life couples, made psychotically, irrationally and erotically codependent references, and by the end of the show they were pretty much in a sexually open emotionally exclusive asexual relationship. So the whole time I was watching this show I was like,

I’m honestly surprised that anyone can watch Supernatural and go, “oh, these are totally normal brothers brothering normally”.

Also, personally I was more squicked out about them being played by real people so when I first started reading fan fiction for them I was like, DO NOT IMAGINE THE ACTORS. D:

Oh, and reading meta about this pairing is kind of funny because most of it waxes poetic about the horrors of incest or the toxicity and I’m like, yes, that, but I just think they’re hilarious and cute together?

Merlin (BBC), Arthur and Merlin

Obviously, ha ha.

Okay, so here’s the thing: Merlin is kind of a bad show overall. So basically the only thing I liked about this show was the bond between Arthur and Merlin. Arthur and Gwen — the actual canon couple of the show — were basically a parallel of Arthur and Merlin, except the latter was actually active and reciprocative. Also, they were huge dorks.

Oh, and I had the same problem with this as the above that I had to exercise great mental fortitude not to imagine the actors when reading fan fics. Because that’s just… no.

Kuroko’s Basketball, Kagami Taiga and Kuroko Tetsuya

Dorks. Who support each other and drive each other to be better. They also have that platonic soulmatism via being each other’s shadow and light.

Well, basically all of the pairings I’ve mentioned so far are canonically platonic soulmates so I guess I have a type.

Haikyuu!!, Hinata Shoyo and Kageyama Tobio

This is actually the only manga so far that I got into because I first read this really cute doujinshi about this pairing. And I was like, “who are these cute dorks?” so I read the original manga too. And now this manga is, like, my go-to comfort when I feel down.

But they’re basically the same as above: cute dorks who support each other and drive each other to be better.

My Hero Academia, Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku

Contradictorily, I don’t actually ship Katsuki with anyone but I can only ship Izuku with Katsuki because the only way I could describe Izuku’s thing for Katsuki was “head over heels”.

From what I’ve seen through my assorted meanders around the internet, though, most people who ship this pairing are apparently kind of weird about it? Like, they actually seem to think it will be canon? Which is just… not going to happen?

But aside from Katsuki, I really can’t stand this manga anymore.

(Is this thing even ongoing anymore?)

Resident Evil, Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy

What can I say? I have a thing for cute dorks who are cute dorks together. I also like the potential in this pairing because I think they’re similar but also different in this complementary way.

Like, some people seem to think that complementary means just being different. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life it’s that it’s practically impossible to maintain a relationship with someone who doesn’t share any of your values or decorum.

Harry Potter and Tomb Raider, Draco Malfoy and Lara Croft

I’m not sure if I’d classify this as a “pairing” because I — don’t really ship Draco or Lara with anyone and I mostly just want these two dorks to be friends. This is also the first pairing I have that doesn’t even exist in the same franchise, ha ha.

But Lara is, like, pretty, classy, resourceful, clever, tenacious, cool-headed, impeccably mannered, and she has this mean streak I’m absolutely convinced Draco would find hilarious. So even though they were created by totally different people and they’re in different franchises, I’m sure they were made for each other, ha ha.

Now I just need to make it happen in a fic.

Also, when I refer to Lara Croft, there’s only one that exists as far as I’m concerned: the original and only.

Harry Potter, Rubeus Hagrid and Tom Riddle

Well, when I was re-reading Book Two, I somehow converted myself into reluctantly shipping these two. Mostly because I can totally see and understand how it would’ve been a thing. I even have this fan fiction all planned out for them but… so far no luck with actually starting the thing.

Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Ginny Weasley

This is a total crack pairing that’s not shipped by anyone except yours truly. Like, I know. I’ve already written a few fics for this pairing and there’s basically zero engagement. (Unless, of course, my fics were bad which is also an explanation).

I started this as a joke to amuse myself because I hate these books with the force of a million dying suns and I needed a distraction, and I read this really funny post years ago about The Chamber of Secrets interpreted through Freudian sexual symbolism.

Surprisingly, this ended up being a gift that keeps on giving in canon and there is a lot you can dig into with this pairing which is what interests me even if it isn’t anyone else’s cup of tea. For example, extrapolating from canon Ron is Ginny’s emotional safe space (Books 1, 2, 3), Ron has the exact same reactions to Ginny dating as he has to Hermione dating (Books 5, 6), Ginny is equally if not as blatantly possessive and jealous of Ron (Book 6), Ron started treating Percy like trash since he inadvertently kind of implied that Ron doesn’t care about Ginny (Book 2), and most importantly Ginny has actual emotions around Ron whereas with Harry she isn’t even allowed to feel anything about her brothers almost dying and getting mutilated.

Like, this:

Ron fell over, still thrashing against his bonds.

‘Harry, it’ll suffocate him!’ screamed Ginny, immobilised by her broken ankle on the floor . . .

is the strongest she’s felt about her brothers being in danger and ironically it was towards Ron.

Then there’s silly stuff like Ron winning the quidditch matches he played only with Ginny and Ginny’s pet, Arnold, being an anagram of Ronald.

And it’s my firm conviction that all the canon pairings in Harry Potter are terrible so the most I can do for any of them is neutral. Well, I mean involving the trio. Vernon and Petunia and Lucius and Narcissa, on the other hand, are really cute. The latter less so than the former but it’s not the Malfoys’ fault.

There are also canon pairings that I like — and I guess Sam/Dean is canon but it’s not (explicitly) romantic or sexual? — but if I like a canon pairing then I probably like the canon story too so I don’t think I really need to “ship” them.

Hm. I guess the overlap is cute dorks who are cute dorks together, canonically platonic soulmates, and the canon pairings being so bad that you kind of go for the more compelling, active and reciprocative relationships?

Well, I guess I can post this? Other people talk about their ships and pairings all the time too so there’s no need to feel shy or embarrassed, me.

Toxic Shippers

So I decided to try to make this as general as possible without naming any particular fandom or ship. It’s not like it’s very important anyway because these behaviours overlap regardless of the fandom or ship. This list is based on observations I’ve made in… three different fandoms and it’s possible I didn’t manage to write all of them.

That said! Let’s get to it, shall we? Toxic shippers and how to recognise them.

This probably isn’t going to be very comprehensible.

As a bit of a preface, there are basically two types of shippers. The ones who live and let live, ship and let ship, and then the other kind of shippers. The first group is basically split into canon shippers whose pairing will be or already is canon, and the people who are just having fun with their chosen pairing(s) while understanding that it doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming canon. The second group are people who, for some incomprehensible reason, have got it into their heads that their fanon crackship is a Totally Real Thing That Should Happen For Great Justice, otherwise they’re oppressed.

And these people can’t leave well enough alone.

The toxic shippers will insist on the canonicity of their ship unless the story already has established pairings, at which point they will insist that no pairings are canon or that they all are. They will impose their ship on everyone else and harass creators, actors, and other fans for constant validation. Everyone must see their ship as the One True Pairing, otherwise they’ll feel personally attacked and persecuted — never mind that they’re the ones doing the attacking and harassment and not leaving people alone in their own spaces.

They seemingly have no literacy comprehension, an impression exacerbated by the inconsistency of their arguments, saying whatever they think is going to “win” in the moment, and the fact that very few of them have actually consumed the story their ship is from. At most they’ve only engaged with out-of-context screenshots and meta of the ship’s so-called leaders.

Which is another thing, all information on the ship is filtered through thought-leaders instead of engaging critically with the text. The rest are, well, basically drones who disseminate the information through the seeming appearance of majority, as in bots and sock accounts, and overwhelming the general tags instead of just staying in their line.

As a bit of an aside, this actually seems to work. I’ve been told twice now in the past six months that the show Supernatural “teased” the Dean/Castiel pairing — by people who, by their own admission even, have never watched the show in question.

As someone who actually watched the show, I found it hard to believe that it would change so drastically that not only would it suddenly make Dean bi (or Castiel for that matter) but also pair him up with at least a 4 billion-years-old supernatural creature that’s either inhabiting a married man or a corpse. Not to mention that for all of this show’s flaws and frequent bad writing, it has consistently depicted the Winchester Brothers as each other’s one true love. I don’t even mean that in any wincest or incestuous sense (except maybe the emotional kind), it’s just an “it is what it is” fact of the show. Like, the whole point of Supernatural was to basically write the brothers as a romantic pairing, for all intents and purposes, and keep them familial/platonic — consistent subtext bordering on text and fan service aside. (And to be honest, I have to say that hit every single button I have. Sam and Dean were the first pairing I have ever shipped. And unlike probably everyone else on the planet, I was more squicked out about them being acted by real people than the fictional incest that wasn’t even, you know, text à la the Lannister Twins in A Song of Ice and Fire.)

So I did a little research and as it unsurprisingly turned out, the people who have never even watched this show were talking out of their arses.

Stupidity is better

kept a secret

than displayed.

And

It is excruciating to listen to anyone holding forth about something they know little about, whatever it may be.

As for the toxic shippers, they will make everything about their ship. And when I say everything, I do mean everything is unciphered through their ship. Other characters, character motivations, lighting, wallpaper, food, the colour of clothes, never mind “parallels” in other totally unrelated media — in general anything but the actual text of the story. And if some character happens to get “in the way” of their ship? Erase, demonise, obfuscate, and lie. If they have to pretend that they totally like this character for ship-touting purposes then the character can stay on as a cheerleader for their ship.

And if all that fails? They will disguise their fanon crackship as a crusade for Minority Rights or Social Justice because, you see, it’s not just a ship, it’s a Morally Righteous Cause, Now Make It Canon or Else.

I might have missed some behaviours but this is a general overview I’ve gathered.

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Edit 22.12.2022: I forgot, toxic shippers also have this tendency to bring up family members or friends or cousins of friends in some weird effort to prop up the validity of their ship.

Families and “Families”

A while ago someone recommended one of his writings to me. He called the theme of his writings “found family” buuuut…

→ he ships all the characters together (though, I don’t think he’d call it a dirty word like “shipping”)

→ implies that half the characters have had sex together or wanted to have sex together (and then complains about other people’s porn)

So I just don’t think that those words mean what he thinks they mean.

And this is exactly what I mean by tv americanisation. Because that’s like half the shows on American networks.

“Oh, these characters are just like found family!” the show says, while what it shows is basically just a swingers club of various dubious friendships.

Other people might be into that, but personally? Nah.

Tanabata

Sometimes I see people who ship characters from Japanese media associate their ship with Tanabata. For those who may not know, Tanabata is a star festival, held on the evening of July 7. People would write wishes on these strips of coloured paper and tie them with other ornaments on bamboo branches. It’s… actually kind of like Yule in Europe, I guess?

Whenever I see people associate their ship with this festival as if it’s some crown of honour, though, my first exact thought is: but why would you want to?

There are probably other versions of this myth^(?) but the way it went was basically that the sun god looked at his too serious and industrious daughter, thought how boring she was and how she should loosen up, and arranged her to be married with the cow-herder.

The daughter, indeed, became so in love with her husband that they both started neglecting their work and thus the sun god decided to separate them on the opposite banks of the silver river of heaven (milky way, that is) as if it wasn’t his fault in the first place. They’re only allowed to meet once a year during — you guessed it — the Tanabata festival if it isn’t raining.

I mean, aside from being a festival for lovers^(?) — though, I think Yule, or christmas if you prefer, has a stronger association for that in Japan — it just kind of isn’t a good myth to associate your ship with?

So, I don’t know. Kind of makes me laugh every time I see it.

Final Fantasy VII

I’ve been having fun observing bits and pieces of this fandom because I have a soul of mischief and my misanthropist side likes laughing at people. And the people in this fandom are… well, they certainly have character.

There are people who think the devs should write for the dumbest common determinator because, yes, writing for the people who never even played the game makes for great storytelling. Never mind that others have already complained about this; mainly about the fact that the girls’ characterisations were changed as response to the unreasonable flak they’ve gotten over the years, and that instead of giving Cloud and Tifa any sort of meaningful interaction their relationship was reduced to “flirting uwu”.

Look, I ship characters but you really don’t want to write for shippers. Characters saying each others’ names is enough to get their little shipper hearts all aflutter. In shipping every human interaction and character trait gets reduced to “we’ll bang, okay?” which makes neither for good writing nor good basis of human interaction.

There are people who imply that there’s a shipping war going on with the devs and that the devs hate Aerith, too, that’s why she’s so toxic and abusive and her section of the game is a chore and she’s horrible to play with. Also, Cloud is not allowed to have any feelings for her. Not even friendship. Partly because of the aforementioned toxicity and abusiveness. And yes, these people hate Aerith.

These people also think the devs are fantastic writers. So on one hand, they imply the devs are unprofessional shippers who hate their own characters and on second hand, they’re the bestest writers who ever bestet.

Right.

There are Tifa fans who maintain that if you don’t like Tifa you must kill puppies in your spare time. This is said jokingly, but I guarantee half of it is dead serious. I like Tifa but, man, her fans kind of turn me off.

These same people tend to think that if you don’t worship Tifa or Cloud/Tifa then you must be a “Clerith” (these ship portmanteaus make my soul weep) or otherwise a horrible person.

Let’s not moralise liking or disliking fictional characters, okay? You can’t control what people think and you can’t control what they feel. No one is obligated to like a fictional character, no matter how likeable that character is. The same, frankly, applies to real people.

There are people who hate the Remake, the fandom, the fanfics, the characterisation in fanfics and official supplementary material alike (often, granted, with good reason), and how their gen fics aren’t popular because of the heaps of badly written porn they have to compete with. I checked a few of these gen fics, and they just tv americanised the characters. I swear, I’ve seen that exact same characterisation across hundreds of American YA fictions and the horror elements unfortunately weren’t enough to mask it. I suspect this characterisation was partly in petty response to the fandom wankery but, like, no. Don’t do that.

One of these gen fics criticised Shinra for eroding all cultures it came in contact with. I found this particularly funny because Shinra (a globalist one world government/corporation and the game actually called them fascist, ha ha ha) is basically America, and yet this writer tv americanised Japanese characters.

No matter what the characters look like, the Japanese just don’t write their characters like the Americans write theirs.

There are people who hate Crisis Core because it’s “war apologist nonsense” which, eeeeh, might be a legit point? But at the same time, no. I doubt the Japanese writers saw it that way.

For example, in Dragon Ball Vegeta is the fan favourite (well, probably after Goku since he’s the protagonist). Vegeta is also the character who genocided entire planets, cannibalised the soldiers, and enjoyed it. He was redeemed. Not because he ever had an epiphany that what he did was wrong, but just because he simply stopped doing evil things. Mostly.

I liked Crisis Core. More precisely, I liked the ideas in Crisis Core. I don’t even mind Genesis; he’s one of those characters I want to slap silly to make him shut up but at the same time I do find him amusing because he’s so extra. I liked the idea of Genesis. I liked the idea that Angeal and Genesis were failed experiments so Sephiroth could be perfect, and what that would do to their friendship. I liked the idea of Zack and Aerith, and Zack and Cloud, and Zack and Sephiroth.

But the thing is, the execution of those ideas was atrocious. This is actually one of the reasons why I hope Zack is alive in the Remake. So they can fix the terrible writing he got in Crisis Core. He honestly deserved better. I would do it myself but I’m busy with other things, such as Harry Potter and giving Draco all the good things in the world.

There are also people who still maintain that the Remake is the same as the original. Even though the Remake is, y’know, already different from the original. I think I find this group the most interesting, just from a psychological standpoint.

But anyway~ That was my amusement for a while.