A small thread.

So apparently, people are big mad at The Dragon Prince writers because they’ve coined a term called “Shipping oil” to describe “Two characters in a scene slathered with oil that makes people want to ship them together” (paraphrasing) and how they now avoid that.

People are saying “They don’t know how ships work” and “This means that the character writing has to be stunted.”
Counterpoint: I think they know all too well how ships work.

“Shipping culture” arguably began on Tumblr and then spread across the Internet like a plague -

that is incredibly infectious among young people. Obviously, “shipping” isn’t a bad thing at all. Wanting to see two characters be together and drawing art and writing fan fictions is really fun and creative endeavor. I do it too. It’s when that desire becomes obsessive -

is when problems start to arise. Fans of a movie series or show or what have you will start attacking the creators and writers because they’re not catering specifically to their favorite ship. If the story is an ongoing process, the showrunners and writers have a choice -

-to either continue with their original intent for the characters or give fans what they want.

And now shipping culture has gotten so toxic and obsessive that writers are now having to actively avoid putting characters they aren’t going to ship together in situations -

-that could maybe be coded as romantic.

Shipping culture has pushed them to this, they didn’t do this because they just decided to, no. Anyone super angry about this has nothing to blame but toxic shippers in their communities that harass creators for not giving them what -

they want.

I think creators shouldn’t have to avoid writing romantic or “charged” scenes between characters they have no intention of shipping together because they’re afraid fans will latch onto it. Either way, stunting character interactions like that is likely not -

-the best way to go about it, but what choice do they have now when media is controlled by major companies that want to please fans more than they want to see a story well told? (Looking directly at TROS, here.) -

While my immediate reaction would personally be to say “Fuck those people, I’m telling the story I want to tell and if they don’t like it that’s just too bad,” writers working in the system don’t have that luxury, usually. It’s a rock and a hard place.

-

What would YOU do in that situation? I honestly couldn’t say. I hate, hate, hate when fan opinion begins to sway a story and especially a romance away from the original intent the writers have, but I can never really say for certain that any of those writers “gave in.”