i don't know if shipping has always been like this, or maybe i'm just noticing it more and more now, but i see people saying things like "why would you ship them, they hate/wronged/betrayed each other", or "how can you ship them, one of them hurt/maim/rip/teared/shot the other".

and i wonder where the misconception arose that the goal of shipping was to find only the most saccharine, hollywood version of a good christian ship, so that you may parade it around as the gold standard of a moral, fictional relationship. people have become so convinced that "shipping" is synonymous with "condoning", that anything as risque as "tried to kill each other once" is grounds for throwing the thousand other intricacies of a relationship between two people into the trash.

i've always viewed shipping is the exercise in creativity, an opportunity to take a microscope and put a potentially fascinating relationship under it. "they don't love each other" what if they loved each other in a way that was only possible for them to love each other. show me a love that is only possible between these two messed up people with all their baggage and ugly, twisted up feelings and views on each other. show me something that will stick with me for days, for good or bad.