The Random Files

Yes I have a Tumblr post. And no I didn’t know what the majority of those posts entailed until after I began writing Fan Fiction. Now I’m sure what I have to say about Tumblr won’t be popular or even well-received, but I’m not interested in approval.

From what I can tell, Tumblr is all about approval and disapproval. Needless to say I don’t have a lot of followers there, never mind the fact that it’s filled to bursting with bad “ships,” graphic ships and lots and lots of conflicting opinions. It’s as though anyone with a phone creates a Tumblr account and posts whatever little thing pops in their mind that they happen to be passionate about.

ship

N: Short for romantic relationship, popularized in fanfiction circles.

V: To endorse a romantic relationship.

N: I see a ‘ship developing between Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

V: I ship Ron/Hermione

For the rest of the people using Tumblr, they have turned a simple fandom into an obsession with shipping characters who have no business being shipped together. Let me be clear, I will never ship characters who have no business being together. I don’t know about all of them, but I’ve seen enough to know that the things people ship can get very dark very fast and the people writing this garbage have no idea how damaging it is.

Examples of bad ships include incest and rape and turning heterosexual characters gay and gay characters straight because the author or fan doesn’t like them as they are. They can argue that it’s just because they are in love with the fictional character who doesn’t match their sexual preference all they want, but the very act of changing a fictional character’s sexual orientation is bigotry. Plain and simple.

If it was reality, shipping a gay man like Dorian Pavus with a female protagonist is as bad and abhorrent as communities who believe people who are attracted to same sex relationships need to be re-educated or that they are sick. Stop doing this! You are adding to everything that is wrong with society as a whole. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. If you continue to treat rape, incest and re-education as okay because it’s imaginary you are making intolerance normal.

It is disturbing and disheartening to see stories of incest, abuse and “rescue” romances as having the highest viewership on Wattpad. Readers are just as bad when they flock to these kinds of “ships” because they perpetuate the belief that thousands, sometimes millions of people believe this garbage is okay and something that should reach t the top of the readership list.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I read a post today by a gay person who was crapping all over straight women who ship gay people. Really? Why? Unless the author is using the aforementioned “bad” ships I don’t see the problem. Also, speaking only for myself, the only reason I ship ANYONE is because I am in love with love. I love to write romantic love scenes with or without an intimate encounter. Why? Because love is love no matter who it’s being expressed with. But that does not make incest romance, slave romance (of those I’ve seen all of them are very unhealthy), rescue romance (old rich person saves poor/ abused poor person) okay. None of it is okay, nor is it realistic, normal or in any way remotely romantic. It is all pure fantasy and authors who write this garbage are belittling and degrading people who have lived through these horrors.

I have no illusions that the practice of shipping these scenarios will stop any time soon, but I hope that by writing romances that work, that are believable and which are based on mutual respect, love and passion will at some point replace the crap some people seem to view as quality fiction which are representative of society as a whole.