POTENTIALLY CONTROVERSIAL OPINION UNDER THE CUT!! If you donāt feel like you can deal with something potentially controversial without getting super angry/toxic, donāt read!! /srs
So.. On the topic of shipping.. I recently came across a person hating on a Wally x Wally ship because āthe creator isnāt okay with their wally being shipped with other walliesā, essentially. And that sorta got me thinking about where I stand on that sort of rhetoric and shipping..
Obviously not going to post this particular opinion on TikTok because I just KNOW that they wouldnāt be able to handle the nuance of it. Because this is a pretty nuanced topic of discussion.
So, I personally believe ship and let ship. If someone ships something I donāt personally like, I really do not care. People can do as they wish and think what they wish, no matter how ācontroversialā it may be. As long as theyāre not harming REAL, ACTUAL PEOPLE in an ACTUAL, TANGIBLE WAY (for example, making intimate drawings of real children, etc.) then sure, do as you wish.
Personally, I genuinely have no clue why so many Welcome Home fans are so against Wally x Wally ships!! Like!! Huh???? I used to be in the Undertale fandom and a huge part of that was Sanscest and Papycest, the teens used to eat that shit up!! If anything itās probably because itās typically called Wallycest and children on the internet nowadays are allergic to anything that has -cest at the end of it, but I digressā¦
Soā¦ This whole thing sorta got me thinking about how much control a creator has and should have over their fan base. I think at a certain point people HAVE to accept that once you put your creations and characters out thereā¦ Theyāre no longer just yours. Once you have published your character for the world to see, you no longer have any real control over what others do with them. A version of your character exists in the minds of every single person who sees your content, and you CANNOT control what people will do with them. Maybe you can control what other people post (if the character is fully your intellectual property and you sue the creators of fan content you donāt like), but you CANNOT control what they ship in their heads! You can hate a certain ship all you want, but I GUARANTEE that someone out there ships it and they are going to no matter if youāre āokayā with it or not. And I donāt think thatās a bad thing at all!
Let me come up with a hypothetical example. So letās say youāre really into a certain character and you decide that they would be really good in a gay relationship. So you ship them with another character whoās the same gender! You enjoy this ship, it makes you happy, but then you find out that the creator doesnāt like gay ships and doesnāt want people to ship their characters in a gay relationship. Would you still ship that ship?
Me personally with my characters, there are absolutely ships I donāt want to see with them. Of course there are. But I know that I have posted my characters publicly and now I canāt really control what people do with them. Thatās just sort of the nature of fandom. If I ever see a ship I donāt like with one of my characters, you know what I would do? I wouldnāt a send people to flame that person, I wouldnāt ask them to take it down, hell, I wouldnāt even going to ask them to stop! I would just block that person, end of story. People are going to ship things the creator doesnāt like and doesnāt want them to ship no matter what they say, even if they donāt decide to publicly admit that.
Anyways, moral of the storyā¦ You donāt have control over what people do with your creations when theyāre posted publicly, ship what you want as long as youāre not hurting anyone.
