tikli: You Are Not Shipping the Way I’m Shipping and That’s Okay

TL;DRShipping can be a way to imagine things we’d actually want to happen (in canon or to ourselves). Shipping can also be an enjoyable way to explore other possibilities, no matter how unrealistic they might be. Both approaches are fine and everyone can ship however and whatever they want.There are two distinct ways of shipping. (I’m not saying there are ONLY two ways, but my focus is on these two here.) I’ll refer to them as ”What If?” -shipping and ”Letter to Santa” -shipping.[READ-MORE]”Letter to Santa” -shipping is about what you want. It’s wish-fulfilment and hope. Shipping lets you experience things you want to happen, either for the characters in canon or for yourself in real life. It’s escapism and longing. It’s indulgent daydreaming of sweet things with low stakes. It’s creating the things you don’t have, but wish you someday will. You hope your ship will become canon, because ”why would you ship it if you didn’t want them to end up together?” Shipping is just imagining it happening in several different ways, before it happens canonically. You are rooting for your ship.”What If?” -shipping is about curiosity and imagination, and there are no limits. It’s like getting a chemistry kit and starting to do experiments, to see how different things react when put together. There are several different combinations you can try, and you can have different flavours, play with different tropes, go wild. The characters and the canonical material are there to be transformed into something new. Canon gives you a big bucket of play-dough in all the colours of the rainbow and you can do whatever you want with it. Scary, fluffy, cute, sexy, immoral, funny, disgusting, angsty, violent, romantic… You are just playing, creating different things because something inspired you and doing it in an environment where it hurts nobody. It’s titillating because it is NOT real. It is safe. Like  a horror movie or a haunted house in an amusement park.People who use one of these approaches don’t always remember/understand that not everyone ships the same way. This can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts.If a ”Letter to Santa” -shipper thinks that everyone’s shipping tendencies are motivated by ”realistic” wants and hopes, and a scenario from a ”What If?” -shipper is something they wouldn’t personally want, they might ask ”why would you ship that?!” Why would anyone want an abusive relationship? Why would anyone want these two characters to have it bad in the next season? Why would anyone crave pain, hurt, angst, abuse? To a ”Letter to Santa” -shipper, having a ship like this translates to ”you want this to happen to yourself or to these characters in canon.”If a ”What If?” -shipper thinks everyone’s shipping tendencies are motivated by trying to come up with new and exciting cocktails using the ingredients you’re given, and they witness how ”Letter to Santa” -shippers keep creating domestic fluff and romantic scenarios of the characters finally getting together and kissing for the first time, they might ask ”why are you so boring and unimaginative, do you hate having fun?!” Why would anyone stick with just one ship and put them in cutesy vanilla scenarios over and over again, with no actual stakes or conflict?One Correct Way to Ship does not exist. Ship and let ship.[/READ-MORE]

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