Shipping Thread

@Ranch  
I agree

@Ranch  
Ikr?

@Ranch  
That’s a dumb reason to hate a ship.

@Meanlucario  
Shipping in general is kinda dumb. “It’s not canon so I don’t like it,” is pretty reasonable if it stops there.

@Ranch  
Agreed. Not liking a ship is fine, I would even go so far as to say reasoning out why you may dislike it is okay in certain discussion contexts. Attacking the ship and especially attacking the people who ship a certain ship is dumb.
 
I remember back when Sparity was more popular, there were people going around not just attacking the ship but straight up calling Sparity shippers pedos. Those threads always got kinda ugly.
 
Same energy was present in some of the anti fluttercord brigades.

@Brass Beau  
Why?
 
@Background Pony #1F55  
Part of why I don’t like Fluttercord (other than being a Dislestia and Soarinshy shipper) are how aggressive those shippers used to be. It gets tiring real quick when a Dislesttia image has people in the comments going “this isn’t canon, only fluttercord is.”

@Brass Beau  
Shipping was just supposed to be a fun little thing some in a fandom enjoy doing with some of their favorite characters. Its become, like most bigger fandoms, a toxic mess at times. We were never Voltron level bad where we tried to blackmail staff if they didn’t make our favorite ship canon but shipping wars could get pretty ugly around this place back in the day.
 
In the end, I don’t think shipping itself is dumb, just some shippers. Especially the ones who take this whole thing way too seriously, who obsess over every little screenshot and shout ‘canon’ when their ship so much as appears in the same shot together, attack others who don’t agree with them, who attack even others who ship one oc the characters in their otp with another character. Luckily those crazies are few and far between. They are very vocal in their opinions, however, so they do have an outsized voice compared to the mostly sane average shipper.

@Meanlucario  
Investing energy, especially negative energy, into the love lives of fictional characters is ridiculous when you get down to it. And I’m especially ridiculous.
 
Speaking of ships, here’s one that I talked myself into: Spike x Moondancer

@Meanlucario  
Yeah. Obsessive, especially possessively obsessive shippers, are kinda insane. Ship either character in their OTP with someone else and its like you’re encouraging infidelity or something to them.

@Background Pony #1F55  
Reminds me of an old joke where Lyra was shown in a shot with someone other than Sweetie Drops/Bon Bon and they fandom cried “cheater!”

@Background Pony #1F55  
I think even the early years had that problem. How many fics involving Lyra and Sweetie Drops have them not hook up by the end?
 
@Brass Beau  
People do that with their friends and family, and fictional characters gives said people complete control of the outcome. And people tend to put a lot of effort into being assholes for no good reason other than to feel powerful or because they’re way too sensitive.

@Meanlucario  
Pretty much, yeah. Sometimes the right answer really is “it’s just a cartoon.” Surprisingly, the most tagged ship on this site is “oc x oc” so the artists clearly have a preference.

@Brass Beau  
oc x oc is also very generic, which would be the reason why.

@Meanlucario  
True but it’s still a huge portion of all shipping tags.

In my next gen AU I was going to have Octavia and Vinyl be half sisters. With Vinyl getting married and Octavia staying single. But I never got around to drawing a scenario around that because I knew it would just get downvoted to hell.

@Ranch  
I say do it anyway. The fandom needs to be shaken when it comes to ships.

Lol thanks for encouraging. I might still do it.

With all the lesbian stuff around this fandom (art, fics, speculation on random screencaps), I’m really surprised the straight tag has more images on this site than the lesbian tag.

@Background Pony #F849
 
Well the bulk of the fandom is males. Many of them probably want wish fullfillment.

@Ranch  
I think that’s the case when it comes to that type of shipping in general.

Applejack and Rarity are the two outspoken racists in the Mane 6. They deserve each other.

@tngjstn  
…What?

@tngjstn  
A case could be made for Rarity but outside of redneck stereotypes, I can’t immediately recall AJ being overtly hostile towards any creature for what they were. Outside of vampire fruit bats but those were devouring her livelihood.

@tngjstn  
Rarity in Simple ways sure but farmponies is an occupation, not a race.
 
Applejack might be one though. All of ponyville in winter wrap up may be. We all know ‘traditional ways’ is code for anti unicorn bias. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)