general techniques to avoid gross shipping of your characters

obviously these aren’t hard and fast rules, and what/how you create will vary. but it’s how i generally approach my work

I am legitimately amazed that tumblr’s weird obsession with Never Have Anything Unwholesome writing advice has now reached the point of:

– Don’t have children in your work,

– Don’t have families in your work.

– Don’t have any themes or ideas darker than Nintendo, because that’s romanticising suffering.

– Don’t have villains unless they’re in the relatively simplistic, child-friendly mould of Disney or Pokemon, and don’t try to deal with any difficult themes.

– Don’t have characters dislike each other.

The idea that you should build your work – because these are all fundamental aspects of a story – around preventative measures against ‘gross shipping,’ and that coincidentally all those measures boil down to “Have as little nuance, conflict, or difficult and unpleasant things as possible,” is kind of creepy.

Well, they’ll be getting a big heapin’ helpin’ of that on the 17th....

“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t. This weird-ass modern culture of lobbying show-runners to make your ship canon didn’t emerge until the advent of social media. (And recent social media like twitter, not shit-you-forgot-existed like MySpace.) Shipping and fandom in general have been around much longer, so you can stop acting like “this is the way it has always been uwu” right the fuck now.

Until relatively recently, most fans I’ve known have been perfectly okay with their ships never being canon. I, personally, would be actively offended if certain ships of mine became canon. That is not why I ship them. What I want from canon and what I want from fandom are often entirely different things that only intersect on the margins.That is why fanworks are called “transformative” ffs.

Friendly reminder that exploring dark themes (murder, abuse, rape, kidnapping, etc) in fiction is something that humans have been doing for centuries - for all kinds of reasons - and is not something that automatically makes you a bad person.

While fiction can have an impact on you in real life, fiction itself doesn’t cause abusive behavior. It’s a bit more complicated than that - for example, different types of fiction resonate differently with people, the way the work is marketed/framed plays a part in how people view it, the reach the work has will affect its influence, people who already want to do X thing are more likely to see the depiction of X thing as support than people who don’t, etc etc, the list goes on.

At the end of the day, what matters is how you view/treat real life human beings. Don’t project your fictional interests onto real life people without their consent. Keep fiction and reality separate.

“friendly reminder” posts annoy me, but here’s one anyway:

The word “problematic” was never meant to be the auto-win card of social justice discussions. Problematic is not a synonym for bad or wrong. Problematic literally means that an issue is complicated, open to debate, and raises important questions about an issue, questions that should be analyzed, discussed, and unpacked.

So when you say something is problematic, don’t just lean back in your chair, pat yourself on the back, and call it a day. Go deeper. Get a discussion going. Analyze that shit. Hear from others and come to some tough conclusions.

Saying “we shouldn’t do X because X is problematic” is as nonsensical as saying “the weather outside is weather.”

me: oh this person’s kinda popular and seems chill. lemme check out their blog.

that person: fiction is reality/don’t ship “problematic” ships/people who get harassed off-site by anti-shippers aren’t victims and don’t matter

me: …*closes tab and furiously washes hands*

Anti starter pack checklist (feel free to add)

✅ “you’re disgusting if you like this” ✅ “sweetie :)” ✅ under 21 ✅ doesn’t know how to use blacklist ✅ “this is wrong and obviously im smarter than u so i have to tell u why ur wrong, ugh” ✅ “i dont care that youre a survivor” ✅ “relive your traumatic experience by telling everyone online or you arent valid” ✅ “kill yourself” ✅ “get hit by a truck” ✅ everyone is a racist ✅ everyone is a pedophile ✅ fiction = reality ✅ :) ✅ ;)

✔ calling everyone Becky ✔ identity politics: what you’re allowed to think depends on your gender and orientation ✔ your sex life and masturbatory habits are my business ✔ misusing these words: normalizing, romanticizing, fetish/izing ✔ “(insert kink) is not a kink”

They’re the end of January 2017 meme in my books

There is also: ✔ “if you like (insert ship/kink here) you can/I hope you choke” ✔ usually US centric ✔ misuses of the term pedophilia/pedophile ✔ will falsely report any artist/writer for supposed pedophilia (when it actually isn’t) ✔ “block me if you like (insert kink/ship)” ✔ also doesn’t know how to use the block function ✔ literally fucking crosstags into ship tags ✔ treats certain headcanons like it is canon ✔ “bad post op” ✔ dedicates time to creating ship hate blogs because a ship upsets them that much ✔ talks about ship they hate more than those that like said ship ✔ “shipping someone that is 15 and 19 is pedophilia!!!” ✔ teenager = child ✔ also infantilizes teenagers while assuming anyone at or over 18 a pedophile ✔ also “age gap ships are problematic!!” ✔ tends to bully people over a goddamn ship then play the victim card when called out on it. ✔ will doxx you, your family, and your pets over a fictional ship ✔ has no idea how Bi, Pan, or Ace people work ✔ Yikes or Yikes™ ✔ has “character-against-ship name” url ✔ honestly does not know how laws work or that they are different in every country, state, religion, culture, or district ✔ “I hope you go to hell. :)” ✔ makes call out posts for fanartists, fanfic writers, content creators, etc. over a ship or series in general ✔ ship policing

This is the best post on this god forsaken website

@jeusus be like: #This whole list if my new bingo card lmao So I made one:

big version

me after finishing a movie: wow that was rly good!! im amazed

movie critics: trashiest movie ever created; possibly the worst movie of the year; complete disgrace

it’s either that or complete reverse like there’s no in between

A lot covered in one book….

where have you been, jack douglas

what kind of things have you seen

I’ve recently attracted a lot of attention from antis, likely due to me implying that they don’t have much of a cause. It’s…. given a lot of insight.

These are people who genuinely think that they are fighting against real pedophilia and abuse. They think shippers want to rape their children and abuse their partners. They think they’re standing up for real children and survivors by constantly posting about how we should choke for our ships.

And I almost have to feel bad. They believe these things so deeply that they feel like they have to lash out at us. And it’s almost hard to watch, how they think our community is so evil, despite the entire point is being able to explore things we can’t in reality.

Just something to think about.

It’s weird fiction isn’t real but somehow what we like it fiction to antis equal we condone it or do it ourselves ( like support abuse, rape, pedophille, racist) But again not true.

Antis go after shippers and base what they ship off who they are. Example: ship reylo=abuser and rapist in real life. Which is false.

Like we have actual pedophiless on this webiste making posts about REAL CHILDERN and doing god awful things. But no lets go after this 16 or 20 year old that ships reylo and call them a pedo abuser. ( Antis don’t care if they really trying to protect someone)

Antis terrify me because they honestly believe reading/writing/seeing fiction makes you want to act on whatever you see.

If they honestly believe this whole fiction = reality thing, then what have they done in their own lives? Or what will they do? Will they watch a show about a serial killer and have urges to kill? Do they actually read fics where a character is raped and think ‘that’s an okay thing to do since I read it’?

Are they projecting their own insecurities about their own intrusive thoughts? Do they believe this is how everyone views the world and those who deny it must be lying?

If the blame isn’t on the person acting, but on the content creators, then what is to stop them from doing something truly terrible in real life?

Those of us on the other side, who know fiction does not translate into action, should be cautious of these people. They already have zero qualms about threats and baiting, which speaks volumes on their character.

Really telling is… if they belive intrusive thoughts are a problem for themselves and others… why not advocate for education and support? Spread information about how to help yourself, how to prevent actions from those thoughts? Give resources, not hate.

I’m sorry but here is some more cats on Snorlax because I am dying from how adorable this is

Brian Kane hacked this into the funniest thing I have seen in a while.

i have reblogged this before but have i mentioned that i love how it opens its mouth when it makes that tone that signifies that it’s ready for use? it’s small, but it’s there, and it amuses me every time

Quick reminder that you’re totally allowed to like things without diving completely into knowing everything about them

you like 2 or 3 songs by a band and never listened to more? that’s perfectly okay

you like the Marvel movies but have no interest in reading 50 years of comic books? totally fine

you only play one or two videos games, mostly on your cell phone? they’re fun!

you read and enjoyed the Harry Potter books but don’t care about looking into crazy theories and clues planted in the stories? It’s not for everyone!

You don’t need to meet a requirement to enjoy something and anyone who claims you do is an elitist and an asshole

Please fire me. A lady came in screaming and ranting how we wrote an obscene insult on her sandwich. Turns out she ordered a BLT with cheese. We wrote Blt +ch on it. It took me and a manager 15 minutes just to calm her down enough to even listen to us.

sounds like she was a real BLT with cheese

“Yeah, well, you like (insert fandom here), lol!” continues to be the laziest deflection tactic on this entire website.

@fiction is reality crowd

“Peter Benchley’s Jaws caused a whole lot of Shark death”

Yes but is that his fault for writing it or should we blame the people that base their actions on a fictional book/movie??

People as a whole were already afraid of sharks at this point too. For the “Jaws Effect” to be applied to other fiction, there needs to be a mass miss/un-educated populace.

Did GoT’s treatment of young females lead to an upsurge in people marrying 13 year olds? No. Because we are educated about it. If the same the same thing had been a play a few hundred years ago, then it could have served to reinforce it was okay- because A) it was socially accepted, and B) it would be written in such a way the audience doesn’t feel bad for the girl

So. When an anti says “fiction about X will make people do X”, they are also implying the general populous already holds X to be acceptable.

There are a few great articles on the Jaws effect. This ones gives a good historical summary and also moves past the initial reaction. http://www.livescience.com/8309-jaws-changed-view-great-white-sharks.html worth the quick read, but I’m just going to pull some bits out.

‘That began to change when a deadly rampage by a rogue great white shark on swimmers along the New Jersey shoreline and in a nearby creek during the summer of 1916 — attacks that helped inspire “Jaws,” Burgess noted.’

(my)Note: public perception lead to the inspiration for the movie. And their existing bias agaisnt sharks lead to not questioning the portrayal of sharks in the movie

’ “Perceptions especially changed during World War II, when a lot of people were put out to sea, and stories of shark attacks after ships or airplanes going down rose,” he explained. “So there was this stereotype of sharks being man-eaters that had to be looked out for.”

….

“The movie helped initiate that decline by making it sexy to go catch sharks,” Burgess said.

One inadvertent benefit linked with this calamitous drop in shark numbers was that scientists became aware of the need to learn more about sharks. This resulted in increased funding for shark research, improving our understanding of shark biology.

“Up until that point, there was virtually no funding for sharks, because they were not thought particularly interesting to humans, not being a major food fish — they were regularly regarded as a pest or nuisance that ate the baits or catches of commercial fishermen,” Burgess said.’

tl:dr the world is not always black and white, cause and effect.

It (2017), dir. Andres Muschietti

This is creepy as hell holy shit. Mirrors are a fucking tool you dumbasses happy signs don’t tell you if your hair’s straight or if there’s something on your face.

And why only in the girls room? That aspect very much gives off the message that girls are too weak to face life and look at themselves the way boys can.

“Do I have something in my teeth?”

“Fuck you! Body posi!”

Fucking end me please

Oof

This is our big floof cat. His name is Everard, but never call him that. He mostly goes by Mr. Floof, Jerkface, or Captain Catacular depending on the day and our mood.