I have been hesitant to make this post but I do think it's something worth talking about, because of how common this ship is and the fact that it has been encouraged by a crew member. In a fandom with mostly minors, I think it's important to be clear about the potential implications with pairings like this so that young people can make informed decisions.
This is NOT an attack on anyone who likes this ship, nor is it intended to make anyone feel bad about themselves. I also ask that people please not harass people that do ship this. I'm only making this post in hopes that I'll encourage people to think critically about their own behavior, and assess whether or not they feel comfortable with this ship after considering my points.
Here are the reasons why I think Bill/Chip shippers may want to reevaluate how they see this pairing.
Chip is an adult man who is obsessively stalking a child, a child he has attempted to murder on multiple occasions. And Bill is that same child's primary guardian.
Chip is also stalking Bill himself and has tried to murder him more than once. The only time Bill trusted him, it was purely due to a manipulation tactic so that Chip could violate that trust just for the sake of hurting Bill's family.
There may be an implied age difference. I list this reason last because it is implied, not explicit. We do not know Chip's canon age (we do know that Bill is around 40 according to the timeline of Greens' Acres). But we do know that Chip is young enough to canonically flirt with Gloria, a character that is also young enough to canonically be Bill's surrogate daughter figure. One could argue that maybe Gloria is 30, Chip is 35, and Bill is 40, and so they're still all technically within similar age ranges. But the fact that it's a gray area is something worth considering to people who ship this, as others may view it as an age-gap relationship. Bill has also referred to Chip as "son", which isn't something men his age generally do with peers.
Again, this is not an attack on any shippers, nor do I want anyone to harass shippers or crew. This is just me offering another perspective in hopes that people will think a bit more critically about the implications of this ship, and whether or not they feel comfortable normalizing dynamics like these in communities filled with impressionable minors.
Thank you for reading, if you took the time.
