Shipping

kindafooey:

billmotherfuckingcipher:

I’d like to address a post I made a good long while ago, specifically this one- http://billmotherfuckingcipher.tumblr.com/post/159450107317/all-ships-are-good -I’ve gotten a few negative comments on it and I’d really like to say that by all ships are good I mean that it’s ok to ship stuff so long as you don’t condone it irl if it’s something bad like incest or pedophilia or abuse. I should have been more clear in my original post and I’m sure people will still have bad things to say about this one but I wanted to clear that up.

Aight, here’s a bit of Foo commentary on this matter mainly from a cultural viewpoint, since that’s not brought up very often…

Thing is, there’s shipping and then there’s “shipping”. Let me elaborate.

Before I joined this fandom, I never considered myself a shipper despite having always had, uh, strong preferences for interactions between certain characters. This is because those ships were never inherently built upon the expectation of the two characters falling in love and building a traditional romantic relationship, ending up together for the rest of their lives or becoming canonically involved with each other. Let’s face it: this is what shipping is to a vast majority of people. Traditional romance.

These days, I definitely identify as a Billford shipper. Billford is one of the most complicated ships I’ve come across – it has the pre-betrayal canonically borderline romantic elements, and everything post-betrayal that makes it what the cool kids call “problematic”. (I’d really rather just call it multilayered.) Furthermore, the pre-betrayal aspect of their relationship never got a proper closure in canon, so the two aspects don’t necessarily negate each other. Add to that the fact that we really know close to nothing about Bill’s background and real motives, and you’ve got yourself a relationship that’s about as far from fitting the traditional mold as possible. But I digress.

My point is this: some people see the romantic, socially normative element as something that’s essential to the shipping culture. To others, it’s more about exploring the characters and the broader context to the relationship in question, and to those people, the romantic/sexual elements are more of a means than a goal.

Now, I’m inclined to think most people involved in the anti culture fall under the group I mentioned first. They don’t see shipping as explorative and experimental, but instead as a normative and representative form of culture. And as a historian, I want to make something very clear. Not every cultural product is a representation. We wouldn’t have queer history – my field of specialization – was it not for historians stepping outside the assumed norms and clashing with the usual narrative. We need to wander into the realms of potential and possible, because that’s how today’s culture works.

We. Need. To. Experiment.

(Plus, from a fanfic writer’s point of view, exploration is the fundamental basis of good storytelling. Come on.)

That being said, there are bad ways to go around this as well. I’ve seen works that romanticize abuse or shrug off problematic elements as, well, unproblematic. THAT, my dudes, is seriously harmful shit and needs to be condemned. These artists and authors need to be told what’s up, but it can be done in a completely civilized manner. No need for witch hunt or banning an entire subculture just because one or two people hecked up. It’s not that complicated, really.

I’ll end this conciliatory rant on the note that I actually feel some sympathy for the antis. Some people do have a lower treshold to grow deeply upset by content they never wanted to see, and hell, of course you’d want to share that experience with others who feel the same way. It’s liberating, and so is aggression. But these people need to sit down and think how their actions might affect others, and most of all, whether it’s even realistic to expect anything else in the culture we lead. Some things you just gotta learn to deal with. That’s maturity.

So as a bottom line: not every ship out there exists solely for the purpose of fortifying the myth that everything related to romantic or sexual attraction is Good And Pure. So go ahead and ship whatever the hell you want, but make sure to clarify one way or the other that you actually understand what you’re dealing with. And tag your shit, people. Save a life. Thank you.