Supercarrier: fandom flagship. Everybody and their dog ships it. The fandom is glutted with artwork and fic. You cannot escape this ship.
Dreadnought: massively popular. Nearly everybody ships it. You can, with dedication, in theory, reach the end of the AO3 archive for the ship’s tag, but it’ll take a long time.
Cruiser: pretty popular ship. Not everyone ships it, but everyone knows about it. Has a good amount of fic/art, and probably multiple ask blogs.
Frigate: just plain popular. Feels like it could use more fanworks. New people to the fandom might not know about it, but they’ll stumble across it sooner rather than later.
Gunboat: bit of a rarepair. It might have an ask blog or two. A couple big name fans ship it. Probably only takes a few weeks to get through the entire AO3 backlog, and one new fic gets added during that time.
Tugboat: rarepair. Almost never seen except as a side pairing to a more popular ship. You can usually get through everything on AO3 in a matter of days. You’ve forgotten what it is to be picky about what you read.
Rowboat: less than a dozen people ship it. You all know each other. You exist in an endless cycle of the same five people desperately producing art and fic and one person who constantly contributes headcanons.
Canoe: you are one of maybe three people who ship it, and there’s a not-insignificant chance you’ve never encountered those other two hypothetical shippers. You spend your days paddling furiously in hopes of keeping the ship afloat, dreaming of the day you upgrade to a rowboat so you can finally rest.
*cries*
Come on, you have the ability to sway a lot of people, so all rarepair you propose quickly upgrade from canoe to Rowboat xD But… yeah, they’re gonna stay rowboats xDD
but, hey, look at the bright side! you created so many rowboats ships that you have a whole fleet of them!
Tag: shipping
Petition to have AO3 install a ‘main pairing’ / ‘side pairing’ button. It’s really disheartening to have 80% of the fics in your section be pair-the-spare background mentions for other ships.
SHIP WARS: A Simple Guide for Fandom
Q: Should I harass or bully someone over who/what they ship?
A: No.
Q: But they ship the wrong ship!
A: Still no.
Q: Their ship will never be canon! It’s so obvious to anyone
reading/watching/playing.A: I don’t care. The answer is still no.
Q: My ship is canon, and they ship one of the couple with
someone else! It’s like cheating! How about now?A: Nope, not now either.
Q: The ship they ship is unhealthy/abusive/incestuous/icky.
I should definitely harass them about that.A: It’s like you’re not even listening to me. No, no you
should not.Q: But if they ship this about fictional characters, they must
support it in real life!A: No, enjoying reading or writing about something is not
the same as supporting it in real life. Agatha Christie is not a mass murderer,
despite having fictionally killed over 100 people.Q: Well, I guess it’s okay if the person shipping it is
doing so to deal with abuse or trauma of their own. But only then! Everyone else is fair game.A: And how, pray tell, do you plan to enforce this arbitrary
rule? You’re planning to compel people
to show their victim bone fides to
you, a complete stranger? So that you can pass judgement on whether their
trauma was “real enough” or if they are “victim enough” to warrant shipping
something you disapprove of? Not only is that absurd, it’s extremely offensive and damaging to the very people you’re purporting to help.
You don’t get to be the arbiter of someone else’s life experiences, period.
Some people use fandom as a coping mechanism, yes, and that is 100% their
business. Some people ship unhealthy/abusive ships for completely benign
reasons, up to and including “because they look pretty together” and that is perfectly valid. You don’t get a
free pass to harass someone in the name of great justice here.Q: Fuck you, I’m going to harass someone anyway. I might
even make a blog about it!A: Well, you’re an asshole then. I hope you step on a lego.
A short comic about shipping and why I need to stop doing it
No. Keep doing it. Don’t even care is its not a ship I sail.
@fandomstuckportal @everybodyelseinmtahkhellwithme
BWAHAHAHA this is AMAZING and accurate!
When we drag someone new in, we throw a “Welcome to the Bunker” party and reread all five extant stories with our pair/group. There is no greater joy than warping someone from “You ship WHAT?” to “Oh, how I ship it. And hate you for making me ship it.”
*looks at @lieutenantseivarden*
*looks at plot idea text file, dwelling meaningfully on the bullet-point “Tisarwat, The Parent Trap, Breq/Anaander Mianaai*
*glares at @lieutenantseivarden*
hey @taraljc @sconesforjustice @wheremermaidsdwell “Pike/Number One”, right?
OH MY GOODNESS HAHAHAHA thank you @kailthia! @courtugger look 🙂
can you not?
I’m not here to tell you that you have to like any ship or even change whatever set of beliefs you have that makes you think that a certain ship is horrible. If you hate something or think it’s disgusting, that’s fine, that’s your business.
What I do want to do is ask you to just leave the people that ship the things you don’t like alone. Completely.
Someone is going to end up dead. I’m not saying this to be dramatic. There have been so many suicidal posts, that are increasing in frequency, and one of these times it is going to happen.
Do you really want someone to die because you don’t like what fictional characters they ship?
Read that sentence again. Read it a few times, out loud, until you realize just how absolutely ridiculous it sounds.
No matter how much you hate a fictional pairing, people are still going to ship it. People will still write fanfiction and make fanart and post it on Tumblr and elsewhere.
No amount of complaining, tag spamming, hateful anons or call out posts will ever stop all of it.
What you will do, is you’ll harass someone past their breaking point and someone who can’t take the incessant bullying and the toxic call out culture you are participating in is going to end their own life.
Look at how many teens have killed themselves over bullying.
You are bullying people. You are going to push someone at the wrong time and no amount of apologies, of saying “but I’m a mentally ill minor” or anything else is going to give that person their life back. Or take away the guilt you’re going to have hanging on your shoulders or the rest of your life if you don’t re-evaluate how you are treating people.
And if you think anyone deserves to die over any of this, you are pretty much the worst of the worst and have zero moral high ground or authority to be preaching at anyone.
Stop making call out posts. Stay out of the ship tags. Block users that produce or post content you don’t like or that isn’t properly tagged. Use blacklisting functions. Do not search tags while you are on mobile. Understand that there are millions of us with ptsd or that are trauma survivors that have various triggers and it is impossible to completely avoid them 100% of the time and it is something that, while it feels unfair, is something we just have to deal with.
I get triggered, too. I know what it’s like, I’ve been living with it for a very, very long time. But, I understand I cannot eliminate my triggers completely from the world. I can do what is within my power to avoid them, but sometimes everything I do just won’t be enough. It’s something I’ve had to accept. And I’ve had to accept that even though certain things trigger me, it doesn’t give me a right to hurt anyone else, particularly people that are doing things that are well within their rights to do – no matter how disgusting or problematic I think it is.
I want you to seriously consider how you are treating other people and how much these attacks hurt them. They don’t ship to hurt you. They ship for whatever their reasons are – to enjoy something, to cope, etc. But, their shipping has nothing to do with YOU personally. You are taking something they are doing that isn’t about you, no matter how much you try to make it so, and using it as a weak excuse to harass people. It’s not okay.
When you make call out posts, when you send hate anons, you are attacking an individual. Not an idea or a concept, but a person. Someone with feelings, that might be dealing with a slew of issues you have no idea about.
Please stop targeting shippers before this gets to a point where no amount of apologies can ever fix it.
There is a difference between attacking an idea and attacking a person. Please try and understand that.
Please. Yes. It’s reasonable to avoid what you don’t like. Purposely spending time on it and writing about it seems somewhat counterproductive to me. And. It has a great potential up actually ending up poisoning the joy for a great lot of people.
Aw Yiss 